'He kept seeing their faces in his head'

Ian Huntley was gripped by panic when he realised people knew he was the last person to see Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman alive, the Old Bailey heard today.

Maxine Carr told police Huntley had been "shaken to the core".

She described how upset he had been after the girls vanished, claiming he "kept seeing their faces in his head".

Carr told detectives in her statement last year that Huntley thought an unfounded rape allegation from his past would lead people straight to his door.

Huntley had assured her he had been drinking beer at home watching a DVD film when the girls vanished.

Transcripts of Carr's interviews with detectives after her arrest were read to the jury today. She said that she and Huntley had kept in touch with each other by mobile phone calls and text messages while she was in Grimsby visiting her mother on the weekend Holly and Jessica went missing.

Carr said: "He mentioned some girls had asked about me (the previous day), but he was more bothered about me going out than these girls."

In a later phone call Huntley told her that Holly and Jessica had come to his house asking after her and that then they had run off.