Huntley was on rape charge

Ian Huntley was charged with rape five years ago, the Old Bailey heard this afternoon.

Huntley, who denies murdering Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman last year, was accused of the sex attack in 1998.

The revelation was contained in a statement made to police by his girlfriend Maxine Carr.

Carr, who is accused of giving Huntley a false alibi for the day the girls disappeared, said he was acquitted but suffered a nervous breakdown.

This was the reason, she told police, that she said she was in Soham with Huntley on Sunday 4 August. In fact she was in Grimsby 110 miles away.

The court was told that Carr said to police that when Huntley told her he was the last person to speak to the 10-year-olds she "didn't know what to do".

Carr said Huntley had told her he had "not done anything". She told officers: "He just hasn't done anything. He just doesn't do anything like that." But Huntley was convinced he would be "fitted up" for the murder of the two girls. Carr made the statement on 17 August last year. It was read out to the court by prosecution barrister Karim Khalil.

After being told by police she was entitled to a lawyer and free advice, Carr replies: "I haven't got anything to hide really, nothing." She immediately admits to lying to police about being with Huntley in Soham.

Carr said the rape allegation against Huntley had "hung around his neck like a tombstone".

In the interview with the police she said that Huntley had been arrested and went to a prison "in Leeds way or something" before he was released to a bail hostel in Scunthorpe.

Later CCTV evidence showed Huntley with other people in a pub at the time he was alleged to have committed the rape, she said. Carr said the case had come to court but the new evidence had led to his acquittal. Asked if that experience continued to bother her, Carr replied: "It does when he is blamed for a thing he has not done."

Carr said she met Huntley in February, 1999, and moved in with him four weeks later. "It sounds like love at first sight," said a detective.

"Yeah, for me, maybe," she replied. She explained to detectives that all the details she had given to police who had called while the search for Holly and Jessica was going on had come from what Huntley had told her.

"The only extra thing I put in was that I had been in the bath" she said. "It just spiralled."

She told police that on the evening before they were arrested, as police prepared to dig up their garden, Huntley told her to tell the truth because she had not done anything.

Earlier a pathologist dismissed Huntley's claims that Holly and Jessica died accidentally in his bathroom. Dr Nat Cary said that if Holly did die from drowning, as Huntley claims, it was much more likely that she was held down "by a third party".

He also cast serious doubt on the caretaker's claims that he unwittingly smothered Jessica when he tried to stifle her screams.

Dr Cary said for Jessica to die in such a way she would have to have been forced up against a wall or had a hand placed behind her head.

"You cannot smother someone in mid-air," he told the Old Bailey.

Edge of bath

Dr Cary first dealt with yesterday's claims by the defence that Holly drowned accidentally in Huntley's bath which the caretaker had filled with water to wash his dog.

The pathologist said that baths were run with children running in and out of bathrooms around the country - but he was not aware of any similar case to the death Huntley described.

He said the bathroom at Huntley's house, number 5 College Close in Soham, was too small for her to slip backwards without the girl becoming wedged - unless her legs were lifted over by a third party.

Dr Cary said it seemed "unlikely at the least" that a fit young girl "could have slipped into a pre-run bath of water and drowned in the presence of two others".

He added: "Why no rescue of Holly? Drowning would take some time, it's not instantaneous.

"The restraint, the covering of the nose and mouth of Jessica prevented her, I would suggest, from being able to rescue her friend from the bath, if that's what happened." Dr Cary pointed out that Huntley's claim that there were 18 inches of water in the bath was undermined by the fact that the overflow was set at 11 inches.

Huntley claims he accidentally knocked Holly as she sat on the edge of the bath while he passed her tissues to stem a nosebleed.

Dr Cary threw severe doubt over Huntley's claims that Holly ended up totally immersed in the bath water. Dr Cary said Holly was 4ft 8in and would probably have been wedged over the bath if she slipped backwards. He said of Huntley: "If someone is giving help with a nosebleed why shouldn't that goodwill be continued to lift her out of the bath. It is a matter of common sense."

The pathologist then dealt with a suggestion from Huntley's QC Stephen Coward that Holly died from "dry drowning" - effectively from the shock of being suddenly immersed in cold water.

"I don't think this is a realistic possibility," said Dr Cary. "Not in a bath full of tap water in August."

Dr Cary then turned to Huntley's claim that the girls had gone into his house for treatment to Holly's nosebleed. The pathologist said he would have expected to find blood from the nosebleed in the house from the front door to the bathroom and also over Holly's Manchester United shirt. But none was found.

On the death of Jessica, 10, whom Huntley's counsel said died standing up when her nose and mouth were covered, Dr Cary said: "Smothering is something that I, as a forensic pathologist, would associate with the elderly or very young, and I mean infants, or occasionally the intoxicated.

"Jessica was none of these. She was a fit, conscious young girl. The only way she could have been smothered to death would have been by forcible restraint. I find it wholly incredible that Jessica could have been smothered to death in an upright posture." Dr Cary said that because of the condition of the bodies he could not rule out the possibility that Holly and Jessica had died in the way Huntley described.

But for the same reason neither could he rule out deliberate strangulation of one or both girls or sexual assault. He said he still believed that the most likely cause of their deaths was some form of asphyxiation.

Richard Latham, QC, prosecuting, asked Dr Cary if - under the scenario of someone being immersed underwater - how long would it take for them to stop breathing.

Dr Cary said through a lack of oxygen it would take a longer time but because of the issue of water into the lungs and into the bloodstream "drowning could be relatively rapid, proceeding to a very dangerous stage perhaps in a minute or two".

Mr Latham clarified: "Between 60 to 120 seconds?"

The witness agreed and stressed that it had to be borne in mind the situation relating to how long it would take for Jessica to collapse.

'You pushed her'

He said: "If she collapsed in a short time as is possible with compression of the neck, you have got most of that 120 seconds still present to get Holly out of the bath."

Mr Latham then asked alternatively what it meant if Jessica had taken a long time to die.

Dr Cary said: "It means she has had sustained compression of the neck or obstruction of the mouth or nose." The witness said that strangulation would often involve asphyxial changes in the face some of which can come within 10 seconds.

He added: "Ten seconds is a long time if you are having your neck suppressed."

Huntley claims that when Holly had her accident Jessica started screaming "You pushed her, you pushed her".

He says he put his hands on her to stop her screaming until he suddenly found she could no longer support her weight and she fell to the floor. Huntley said he checked both children and found no signs of breathing.

He admits taking the bodies that night to a ditch 15 miles from Soham outside the perimeter fence of RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.

He returned three days later to cut all the clothes from the girls and set the bodies alight, the court has heard. Huntley, 29, denies murdering Holly and Jessica but admits conspiring with his girlfriend Carr to pervert the course of justice.

Carr, 26, denies the conspiracy, and pleads not guilty to two charges of assisting an offender.

The case continues.