Last night, after 16 months of trying to outwit police and the prosecution, Huntley was starting two life sentences, carrying with him the grisly secret of what really happened that summer night to Holly Wells and her best friend, Jessica Chapman.THE AGONISING HUNT FOR HOLLY AND JESSICA – AND FOR THEIR KILLERSUNDAY 4 AUGUST 2002*6.15pm: Holly and Jessica leave the Wells’s house; enter Huntley’s cottage 20 minutes later*8.30pm: Holly’s parents, Nicola and Kevin Wells raise the alarm. Search beginsMONDAY 5 AUGUST*500 people plus police officers join search. Parents appeal for helpTUESDAY 6 AUGUST*The soccer star David Beckham appeals for girls to return homeWEDNESDAY 7 AUGUST*Police believe the girls have been abducted*Vigil held at St Andrew’s Church in SohamTHURSDAY 8 AUGUST *Police reveal Huntley’s sighting of the girls. Huntley and Carr interviewed for the first time by journalists*Two journalists alert police to Huntley’s “odd” behaviour. It had been six to eight inches, he said.And it was not until the final weeks of the case that he would admit he had changed perfectly good tyres on his car the day after Holly and Jessica died, a key part of the prosecution’s case that a calculating Huntley had tried to cover up for his actions. The pathologist, Mr Cary, was caught “on the hoof” when Stephen Coward QC, for Huntley, outlined his version of how Holly had drowned accidentally while Jessica had been smothered as he tried to stop her screaming.Even then his account would continue to change.

When the 18ins of water he claimed was in the bath was found to be an impossibility, he suggested that was a matter of miscommunication with his lawyers. Huntley told the Old Bailey it was a suicide attempt in June, an overdose after Carr, who had slashed her wrists superficially weeks earlier, ended all communication, which led to his memory returning. Prosecutors insisted it had a lot more to do with the taped conversations between Carr and his mother in which she explained that he not only remembered the girls were in the house but had told her.Just weeks before the trial, Huntley’s legal team disclosed that he was going to admit the girls died in his house Only during the court case was more detail to emerge. I’m gonna put this to Roy [his solicitor] to see what he thinks,” he continued. “Yeah, well this is what I’ve been thinking, I think somebody’s been following them girls, seen them girls at my bloody house knowing full well they might find some DNA in my house, bugger off and put the clothes down at the school to make it look like it’s me and that’s really what I believe happened.”But further forensic evidence required him to relinquish his claim and again revise his defence. But far from being unable to understand what was going on around him, the prosecution said, he was analysing the case against him and working out devious answers for any damning evidence. His illness meant he could not be forced to show his hand in police interviews.Two months later, when psychiatrists at Rampton failed to support his claim of mental illness, Huntley was transferred to Woodhill prison, Milton Keynes, and forced to change his strategy again Still he claimed to have little memory of that night.

In a secretly taped conversation during a visit from his mother, Lynda, on 23 October last year, Huntley suggested the “real killer” was framing him. “I am adamant, I 100 per cent remember them girls leaving my house,” he told his mother, suggesting somebody, having spotted the girls going into his house, placed Holly and Jessica’s charred clothes in the college hangar to point the finger of suspicion at him.”I think this is what’s possibly happened, yeah. But she spun a new set of lies, protesting her partner’s innocence and failing to reveal she knew the girls had been in the house Huntley also opted for a new strategy. Huntley’s fingerprints were on a bag next to them, his hairs mixed up within the clothes.The pair were arrested just after 4am the following day, 17 August.