'Maxine told me to burn the bodies'

Soham killer Ian Huntley claims he was following orders from girlfriend Maxine Carr when he burned the bodies of his victims, it was reported last night.

He said Carr took charge of the attempted cover-up after he murdered 10-year-olds Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells.

The revelation dramatically contradicts Carr's evidence at their trial - and the verdict of the jury who cleared her of assisting an offender.

Huntley, serving life for the murders, claims it was Carr who cleaned their house and told him to clean the car he used to take the girls' bodies to a ditch near Lakenheath airbase in Suffolk.

Carr, who was not in their house in the Cambridgeshire village when Huntley killed the girls, was freed in May after serving 21 months for giving him an alibi.

Now living under a false identity, she strongly denied the allegations last night.

Huntley said it was Carr, 27, who made him return to the ditch where he had dumped the bodies of her former pupils to set fire to them.

He said: 'I said in court I only went back to Lakenheath that once. I didn't - I went back twice. I only went back there then because Maxine told me to go in.

'Maxine wanted me to go back. She told me to destroy all the evidence. I didn't know what she meant at first. And then she explained what she meant.

'Which is where the petrol can and everything came in. And that makes me feel ten times worse, on top of everything else, because to do that was unforgiveable.'

The revelation was carried in the Sun newspaper, which had reported the previous day that Huntley had been captured on tape as he admitted lying about Jessica's last moments.

He confessed to killing her in his living room, not the bathroom as he told the Old Bailey, as she tried to escape after Holly 'accidentally' drowned in the bath.

The Sun refused to say how it obtained the tape of the conversation, apparently between Huntley, who is in topsecurity Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire, and a relative.

The former school caretaker's comments were immediately condemned as self-serving and grossly insensitive.

They add to the grief felt by the families of the two girls, still struggling to come to terms with the murders.

The girls ' parents, Les and Sharon Chapman and Kevin and Nicola Wells, maintained a dignified silence over the Huntley interview.

At their trial Carr denied ever knowing that Huntley had killed Holly and Jessica. She did admit lying for him, but said she wanted to prevent him being victimised because of previous allegations of rape and indecent assault against him. Now 30-year-old Huntley says she knew much more.

He said Carr, who was in Grimsby visiting her family when he killed the girls on Sunday August 4, 2002, knew the next day that he was involved because he told her in a phone call.

He said: 'I was in a bit of a mess and I told her I was involved and didn't know what to do. I told her it was an accident. She wanted to come home straight away.

'She told me to arrange on the Tuesday to come and get her, which is what I did. She told me not to say anything to anybody.'

Huntley said after he returned to Soham with Carr he was called to work and it was then that she cleaned the house. He said: 'She was the one who told me to give the car a good clean. She obviously knew I would have had to get them out of the house and I think she assumed I had to use the car.

'She also told me to make up a story about somebody being seen on the college ground with a black bag. She said that might lead their attention elsewhere.'

Huntley said: 'Maxine didn't want to lose everything. She didn't went to lose me, she didn't want to lose her home, she didn't want to lose the new job she'd got.

'She kept saying how hard we had worked to get this far, She couldn't see why we should lose everything for an accident.'

Huntley has always claimed that he took the girls into his house to help Holly, who had a nosebleed. But he accidentally knocked her into the bath he had filled with water to wash his dog.

He said Carr went over their story 'time and time again, exactly what I had to say. If you look at me on the news footages, it's like I'm reading from a script, which is basically pretty much what I am doing.'

He added: 'I remember my mum and dad were coming down and I was in a right mess. Maxine, she slapped me across the face and said, "If they see you like that, they are going to know there's something wrong".'

Huntley said he thought 'long and hard' about whether to lie to protect Carr. He said: 'I didn't know what the hell to do, I really didn't, but in the end I decided to lie about it. You'll probably find it hard to understand why but when you think of how many lives that day had ruined, I thought perhaps we could salvage one thing.'

He allegedly said of Carr: ' Maxine's out there and going to have to try and forge a life out for herself. They can't try her again - I wouldn't have told you if they could. She can live with this, believe me. Much as I love her, I hate her.'

Carr's lawyer Roy James insisted last night: 'Maxine denies what Huntley is suggesting in the strongest terms possible. I have grave concerns that repetition of these falsehoods put her at even greater risk than she is at the moment.'

Carr has been forced to keep

moving since she was released from Foston Hall jail in Derbyshire last May. She has been abused at home and in the street.

The Prison Service has launched an investigation of the Huntley revelations, but last night Cambridgeshire police said they had no plans to interview him again.

A spokesman said: 'If Huntley makes it clear he is ready to tell us the truth then we would be interested in talking to him.

'Maxine Carr has already been acquitted of assisting an offender, making it highly unlikely that she could face any fresh charges.'