Maxine Carr became one of the most hated women in Britain after she provided killer Ian Huntley with an alibi for the murders of 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002.
Today, Carr is one of just a handful of former prisoners protected by a lifelong secret identity, after authorities granted her an anonymity order following her time in prison for perverting the course of justice. The injunction is so strict that even details or her hairstyle or job are forbidden from being published.
20 years on, Ian Huntley won’t be eligible for parole until 2042 after being handed a double life sentence for the murder of the two schoolgirls. Carr was one of several girls and young women who are said to have fallen under Huntley’s spell, The Mirror reports .
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Criminologist Prof David Wilson said of Carr’s secret identity: “It’s a unique situation, incredibly rare in British law. It’s a landmark case. What makes her unique is that Maxine Carr, unlike Mary Bell or Robert Thompson, did not murder anyone; she perverted the course of justice.
“The Soham murders created such an intense feeling of revulsion from the public that anybody who played a part would have difficulty after their release from having any sort of life that could be regarded as normal under their old identity.”
Born Maxine Capp, Carr changed her name because she wanted “nothing to do” with her father, according to her mother Shirley. Dad Alfred said after Carr’s arrest in 2002 that he had not been in touch with his daughter for 20 years.
Carr was described as a “volatile child” at school, who was bullied and went on to become “very ill” after suffering from anorexia. Following her recovery she was involved in a string of relationships, with her ex-boyfriends saying that her personality would switch from quiet and timid when sober to raucous and flirtatious after a few drinks.
Former boyfriend Jason Wink said of Carr: “She loved being the centre of attention and if you so much as looked at another woman she would go mad. She was really insecure.”
Prof Wilson, a former prison governor now working as a professor of criminology at Birmingham City University, said: “What’s interesting about Maxine Carr is just how difficult her own set of circumstances were. Somebody like Huntley could come into her life and give her a sense of being that was missing from her own familial circumstances.”
Carr was 22 when she met 25-year-old Ian Huntley at a nightclub in Grimsby in 1999, and she soon moved into his flat. Huntley started his job as a caretaker at Soham Village College in November 2001, while Carr was working as a teaching assistant at the school where Holly and Jessica were pupils.
After evil Huntley lured the two girls into his home and murdered them, Carr spent the two weeks they were missing vouching for Huntley and cleaning the house of evidence. In photos not published until this year, Carr can be seen smiling and giggling during a TV interview just days after Holly and Jessica went missing, before anyone but the couple knew that there was no hope of finding the girls alive.
During the BBC Look East interview she kept slipping into the past tense while speaking about the girls, and laughed when she was corrected. Carr and Huntley were later arrested, but a judge accepted that Carr had played no role in the murders after a witness confirmed that Maxine was at her mother’s house in Grimsby, 100 miles away from Soham, when Holly and Jessica were killed.
However, police believed that Huntley used Carr’s friendship with the schoolgirls to lure them into his house, and may have led them to believe that Carr was inside so that they would go in and say hello. Huntley, now 48, was eventually found guilty of the murders and jailed for a minimum of 40 years, while Carr served 21 months out of a three-and-a-half year sentence.
While Carr initially defended Huntley to police, saying: “He’s done nothing wrong, I love him,” she later turned on him during the trial. “I’m not taking the blame for what that thing has done,” she said.
Carr claimed that Huntley was abusive, and said that her fear of him caused her to lie to the police. “He had a very controlling attitude towards me,” she said of Huntley.
Prof Wilson said: “The coercive control Huntley exercised made her behave in a way that ultimately she recognised she shouldn’t have done.”
Carr was released in 2004, and was handed anonymity to live the rest of her life under a new identity. Two decades on, what became of Carr is still unknown, though The Mirror reports that she is now thought to be married with children.
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