This week marks an agonising anniversary that no parent should ever have to experience. It was twenty years ago that best friends Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were callously murdered by Ian Huntley as they walked from a family barbecue to buy a packet of sweets.
It took almost two weeks of tireless searching by their families, police and the community before the bodies of the 10 year olds were found lying in a shallow grave. And the man who did it? It was a man they should have been able to trust completely. School caretaker Huntley was jailed for life and must serve at least 40 years of his sentence before he's eligible for parole.
However, while Huntley committed the murders that horrified Britain, his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, lied to the police to protect the twisted killer.
Teaching assistant Carr, who knew both Holly and Jessica, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice and jailed for 42 months.
On August 4, 2002, Holly and Jessica planned to spend the day together as usual.
Jessica left her home in Soham to go to a barbecue at Holly's, where, after a day of playing and enjoying food and fun, the girls said they were going upstairs to play.
Without telling anyone, they snuck out of the house to go and buy sweets from a vending machine in a nearby sports centre - the typical actions of two young girls.
It was the last time either Holly or Jessica would see their families.
As they made their way back to Holly's house, they walked past the home used by their school caretaker, Ian Huntley.
He spotted them and lured them into his house, claiming his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, was at home.
She worked as a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica's school and was close to both the girls.
While the two little girls were inside, Huntley murdered them both and hid their bodies.
Meanwhile, Holly's mum, Nicola, went upstairs at 8pm to ask the girls to say goodbye to everyone who had been at the barbecue, and was horrified to find they were both missing.
She and her husband, Kevin, frantically searched the home and nearby streets, and when Jessica wasn't home in time for her 8:30pm curfew, Nicola called the Chapmans to see if the girls were there.
Desperate, Holly and Jessica were reported missing to police and a huge manhunt was launched, with more than 400 officers working full-time and round the clock to find Holly and Jessica.
As well as house to house enquiries, the entire local area was combed for any trace of the youngsters.
Hundreds of local people volunteered along with US Air Force staff from a nearby base.
Every registered sex offender in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire was interviewed but there seemed to be no trace of the primary school pupils.
A massive media appeal kept Holly and Jessica on the front pages of every paper and in every news bulletin and for 13 days no stone was left unturned.
Chillingly, Huntley himself was interviewed by reporters and even helped in the search for Holly and Jessica.
His girlfriend, Maxine Carr, who was Huntley's alibi for the evening the girls went missing, was also keen to speak to the press.
In one interview she bragged about how much she had clearly meant to little Holly especially.
She showed reporters a card Holly had made for her on the last day of term to thank her for being such a good teaching assistant.
Speaking to a TV reporter, Carr says: "No one believes they would ever run away.
"They were very close to their families. This is something that I will keep for the rest of my life.
"It's what Holly gave me on the last day of term and there's a poem written inside saying 'to a special teaching assistant' and that we will miss her and we will see her in the future.
"That was the kind of girl she was, she was just really lovely."
Her chilling slip was spotted almost instantly - she had referred to Holly in the past tense.
Only those who knew what had really happened to the best friends would know that they had been killed.
Suspicion was now starting to fall on the pair, who were taken in for questioning 12 days after Holly and Jessica disappeared.
The following day a gamekeeper made harrowing discovery - Holly and Jessica were found lying side by side in a ditch close to an RAF base in Suffolk, 10 miles from Soham.
On August 20 Huntley was charged with two counts of murder and Carr was charged with attempting to perverse the course of justice.
She was later charged with two counts of assisting an offender.
Huntley was jailed for at least 40 years before he is eligible for parole while Carr was jailed for three-and-a-half years.
He will not be considered for release until 2042 at the earliest.
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