Huntley did dump girls

Ian Huntley today made the dramatic admission that Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman died in his house.

In a series of admissions, Huntley for the first time set out five key facts surrounding his involvement in the deaths of the 10-year-olds.

On a short list read out at the Old Bailey Huntley admits that he was the only person present in his house when the friends died.

He also admits that he loaded their bodies into his red Ford Fiesta car and drove them to the remote woodland ditch near RAF Lakenheath where their naked burned bodies were found 13 days later.

But Huntley has yet to give any more details about how the girls came to die on that Sunday evening on 4 August last year and why he went to such lengths to hide their bodies. He denies murdering the girls.

Before today the jury had only been told that "it was unlikely to be disputed" by Huntley that the girls had died in his house while he was alone with them or that he disposed of their bodies.

Today prosecution lawyer Karim Khalil told the court that a total of 21 admissions would be dealt with "in due course".

But the five main admissions were.

Huntley's lawyer Stephen Coward, QC, said yesterday that the caretaker at Soham Village College did not dispute he had driven along the track near where the girls' bodies were found, that he had cut off the girls' clothes as their bodies lay in a remote ditch beside the track, and that he had taken the clothes back to the college and set fire to them.

The charred remnants of their red Manchester United shirts and other clothes were later found hidden in a bin bag stuffed into a bin at the college, with hair that matched Huntley's mixed in with them, the court heard.

Earlier a gamekeeper told of the moment he discovered the bodies.

Keith Pryor saw the badly decomposed bodies of the girls lying alongside each other face up in a boggy ditch on the edge of fields close to RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk.

He said he immediately thought of the two girls who had been missing from Soham for 13 days by then. He added: "I was not prepared for what I saw."

Huntley asked to leave the dock at the Old Bailey as Mr Pryor's disturbing statement was read to the court by prosecuting QC Richard Latham.

Mr Coward told the court: "Can I ask for leave for my client to go below as he is not feeling too well."

Moments later as a police officer described how he discovered a lock of Jessica's hair snagged on the end of a branch at the scene, Huntley's girlfriend Maxine Carr was also taken ill and left the dock.

Mr Pryor, from Brandon, Suffolk, said he ran a pheasant shoot, rearing young birds to be released on land around Wangford Estate on the edge of the airbase.

He had noticed "an awful smell" when he drove along Common Drove leading to the woods where the bodies were to be found.

He said that he had become increasingly concerned about the smell but could not identify the source.

On the morning of Saturday 17 August he had arranged to meet two friends, Adrian and Helen Lawrence at the scene.

All three noticed the smell and decided to find out what was wrong. "I went into the cornfield parallel to the Drove and Adrian walked along the pathway so that we were either side of the drain, attempting to identify the source of the smell," said Mr Pryor in his statement.

"After 40 or 50 yards I heard Adrian say, 'Don't come any further Helen, go back to the van'. And he shouted to me and go over and verify what he had seen.

"As I approached there was a smell of rotting flesh and I joined Adrian on the raised bank of the drain and looked in. It was about six feet wide at the top, narrowing to three feet wide at the bottom and a depth of about four feet.

"I was not prepared for what I saw. There appeared to be two very badly decomposed human bodies lying side by side. I immediately thought of the two missing girls from Soham and Adrian rang the police on his mobile phone. I don't recall seeing any clothing on the bodies."

In another statement, Mr Lawrence, said he had been walking about 10 yards ahead of Mr Pryor on his side of the ditch.

He described the ditch as being surrounded by undergrowth of trees, bushes and nettles, at places so dense he could not see into the irrigation drain.

"I was about 40 or 50 yards from the van and the smell was now really strong and I knew from past experience that it was decomposing flesh of some description," he said.

"I looked over the edge and saw the source of the smell - I saw two bodies. The dyke was four or five feet deep."

Police sergeant Adrian Benford said he arrived at the scene at 12.45 and ensured that it was taped off.

The girls' parents, Kevin and Nicola Wells and Leslie and Sharon Chapman, were in court to hear the evidence.

Huntley, 29, denies murder but admits conspiring with Carr to pervert the course of justice by giving police a false alibi. Carr, 26, denies the conspiracy and has also pleaded not guilty to two charges of assisting an offender.

Botanist Patricia Wiltshire told the court she had found a "high degree of similarity" between plant spores found at the ditch with what had been found in Huntley's car.

Pollen grains found on the red plastic petrol can found in the boot of Huntley's car indicated a "reasonable possibility if not probability" that it had been placed on the verge of the track leading to the site.

Ms Wiltshire said she found two paths into the ditch, Route A and Route B, and Route A where vegetation had been pressed down was much more marked than the other route. She said that three species of plant had been "trampled down", including stinging nettles.

The Crown claims that Huntley made two visits to the site, returning three days after the girls' deaths to set fire to the bodies. The case continues.