'I interviewed Ian Huntley after killings - one chilling detail made me call police'

A local reporter who first tipped off the police that Ian Huntley could be responsible for the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman has told of the uneasy feeling the caretaker gave him. Brian Farmer was a Cambridgeshire-based reporter when the two schoolgirls went missing in Soham in August 2002.

As police began their search and media outlets descended on the town, Mr Farmer knocked on Huntley's door to speak to the last person to see them alive. He told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire: "Detectives said, about 30 minutes after setting off, the girls had spoken to the caretaker of Soham Village College - the local secondary school - outside his home. Huntley told me how he had been washing his Alsatian dog, Sadie, when the youngsters strolled by.

"I thought some of the things he said could not possibly be true."

Huntley killed the girls after they left a family barbecue to buy sweets on August 4, 2002. He dumped their bodies in a ditch.

At the time of Mr Farmer's interview, Huntley was not yet a suspect, despite police knowing that he had seen the girls 30 minutes after they left the barbecue.

Huntley claimed he was on a dog walk at the time of the disappearance and was washing his dog outside his home when the girls walked past.

He claimed that his partner, Maxine Carr, who knew the girls after working in their class as a teaching assistant, was in the bath at the time.

She was later jailed after giving Huntley a false alibi.

*** Ensure our latest news headlines always appear at the top of your Google Search by making us a Preferred Source. Click here to activate or add us as Preferred Source in your Google search settings. ***

Mr Farmer continued: "I asked Huntley whether the girls stopped and said anything. They had asked where "Miss Carr" was - he claimed - and how she was. I asked him to tell me every word they had said.

"He repeated the same story - they had merely asked after Carr. I was troubled, not by what Holly and Jessica had apparently said, but what they hadn't said.

"They hadn't mentioned the dog. No "oohs", no "aahs", no "so cutes", no giggles. Two 10-year-old girls, enjoying a summer's day, who see a big hairy dog covered in soap. But they don't mention it? I didn't think it was credible."

Mr Farmer added that a comment about how the girls might act when approached by a stranger started alarm bells ringing in my head.

"I asked Carr if the girls were taught about stranger-danger at school, and how they might have reacted, for example, if they had been approached by a man in a car," he says.

"To my astonishment, Huntley leapt in. He said he thought Holly would probably get in the car and be quiet, but Jessica wouldn't. Jessica would put up a real fight and a real struggle.

"How could he know?"

Shortly after leaving the property, Farmer says he called police and told them of his suspicions.

Huntley would later join the search for the girls and appear in other media interviews in print and on TV.

He also raised suspicion with continuous questions asked to police officers about their progress in the search and any leads they might be following.

Their bodies were found 13 days after their disappearance, with Huntley and Carr arrested on the same day.