Maxine Carr's dark relationship with Huntley and lie she told after girls' death
Maxine Carr's abusive relationship with killer Ian Huntley is explored in Channel 5 drama Maxine, which has now landed on Netflix. The four-part true crime series raises questions about how much the teaching assistant knew about her fiancée's dark secret, which she went to great lengths to hide.
On the night of August 4, 2002, Soham school caretaker Ian Huntley lured 10-year-old best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman into his home, which he shared with Maxine, before murdering them. The pair, wearing Manchester United shirts, had left a family barbecue in search of sweets from the local leisure centre vending machine.
On the way home, they were spotted by Huntley, who claimed his partner was inside, whom the girls previously had lessons with at St Andrew's Primary School. He later hid their bodies in an irrigated ditch, close to the RAF base about 10 miles from their home.
Best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were murdered more than 20 years ago (Shutterstock)The entire nation reeled when the tragic news broke that their bodies had been found by a gamekeeper almost two weeks later. It was revealed that Huntley, who had already been taken in for questioning, had gone back to where he dumped the bodies to cut off the girls' distinctive United shirts and tried to burn them in a bid to destroy any DNA evidence.
He then dumped the shirts in a bin at the school where he worked, covering them with another bag of rubbish, but the police found them in a watershed moment for the case. On August 20, Huntley was charged with two counts of murder and sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment, with a minimum of 40 years behind bars.
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Maxine on the other hand was found not guilty of assisting an offender but was sentenced to three-and-a-half years for perverting the course of justice. In the true drama depiction, the now 46-year-old's devotion to Huntley is evident.
She is shown supporting him for his initial job interview with the school, and despite being home in Grimsby, where the couple first met, on the fateful night she provided Huntley with an alibi. Maxine told police that he had spoken to the girls outside the front of the house but after cooking her partner a Sunday dinner with all the trimmings she treated herself to a long bath. She added that it had been a 'shame' that she had missed the girls.
Wanting to be seen as supporting the police investigation, Maxine went on the record with the press, describing how lovely the girls were whilst bragging about a thank you card they had once made her on the last day of term. She was even pictured holding the card to go with the story. But those following the case closely noticed her slip-up, that she had referred to the pair in the past tense.
Carr did press interviews about what the missing girls were like (Press Association)
Huntley had Carr give him a false alibi (PA Archive/PA Images)In a live interview, Carr corroborated Huntley's claims that he conversed with the students before walking away, adding: "I only wish we had asked them where they were going... if only we knew then what we know now. Then we could have stopped them, or done something about it."
As she displayed the hand-drawn card, Carr, referring to Holly in the past, said: "She was just lovely, really lovely" before making a direct appeal to the children: "Just get on the phone and just come home. Or if somebody's got them, just let them go."
But after police searched their house and following further investigation, Maxine realised she could no longer keep up the front, and admitted to being in Grimbsy on the weekend of the murder, visiting her mother. In the Netflix drama, Huntley, played by Scott Reid, accuses Carr, portrayed by Jemma Carlton, of sleeping around, and she is then seen snogging a local in a bar toilet, who tells people that she was 'all over him' on the night in question.
While the pair were kept in a safe house for questioning, police conducted a thorough search of the school residence cottage, 5 College Close, along with the school grounds. They discovered that every single room in the cottage had been meticulously cleaned, and as shown in the TV drama, Maxine scrubs tiles and surfaces to an inch of their life, with what was later described as 'lemony' cleaning fluid.
Huntley's Ford Fiesta was also forensically examined on August 16, which also had been shown to be extensively cleaned. But traces of brick dust, chalk and concrete of the same type used to pave the road leading to where the girls' bodies would be discovered were found around the wheel arches and on and around the pedals. Meanwhile, a cover from the rear seat was missing, and the lining of the boot had been recently removed and replaced.
She has now been given a new identity (Getty Images)When Carr went into the witness box to testify in her own defence on December 3, she explained that her first impression when she returned from her weekend away was that he had had a 'woman in the house' - as their bedding had been washed. She also raised that she came across a large crack in the bathtub, which hadn't been there when she left for Grimsby.
But when quizzed about her extensive cleaning of the home in the days following the murders, Carr said she had always been "obsessive about tidiness". And when questioned on her efforts to mislead the police and deter media suspicion from her partner, she reiterated that she lied to the police to protect Huntley, who had reportedly assured her of his innocence.
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Yet he feared he would be 'set up' if anyone discovered the 1998 rape claim made against him. While her justification for referring to Holly in the past was merely because she had worked with the children in the past. She claimed that she had tried to persuade Huntley to be 'open' about his claims to have invited the girls into the home due to Holly's alleged nosebleed, but he reportedly refused to do so because he knew it would have been a violation of the rules imposed for his job.
Carr told her counsel: "If, for a minute, I [had known] or believed he'd murdered either of those girls I would have been horrified." She was found not guilty of assisting the murders but was jailed for three-and-a-half years for perverting the course of justice.
After having served just half of her sentence, Carr was released from Foston Hall prison in Derbyshire in May 2004. But due to the strength of public hatred, she had to be given a new identity by the courts along with round-the-clock protection.
Over the course of two years, Carr was moved to more than 10 different safe houses for her safety and in 2011, it was reported that she had given birth to her first child - a son - in a secret safe house. In 2012, she was believed to have started a serious relationship with a man who is aware of her horrifying past, whom she went on to marry. The mum is now said to be living in an undisclosed seaside town.
Maxine is available to watch on Netflix now.
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