Byline: PAUL HARRIS
IAN Huntley told Holly Wells's father he was 'so sorry' she was missing, the Soham murder trial heard yesterday.
His words came three days after he is alleged to have mur- Turn to Page 2, Col. 3 dered Holly and her friend Jessica Chapman.
Huntley approached Kevin Wells minutes after the girls' parents made a desperate public
appeal for their safe return and photographers were trying to organise a picture.
Mr Wells told police: 'I was aware of somebody standing just behind my left shoulder, certainly too close for comfort, and invading my personal space.
'I turned round and saw it was Ian Huntley. I said, 'Hello Ian'. He said, 'Kevin - I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was your daughter'.
'I said, 'I know. Thank you for your kind words. It just beggars belief, doesn't it?'
'He agreed, and replied, 'Yes, I know'.' Mr Wells said in his statement: 'I remember thinking 'God, he looks drained'.
Huntley had panda eyes with bags underneath and around the eyes.' The prosecution claims that school caretaker Huntley murdered the ten-year- olds and dumped their bodies in a ditch on the night they went missing in August last year.
The Old Bailey jury has been told that the day he spoke to Mr Wells was the day he returned to the ditch and set fire to the bodies.
It was the third encounter between the two men during the agonising search for Holly and Jessica.
The first had been less than five hours after the girls were last seen.
Mr Wells and a friend, driving round and round the small Cambridgeshire town, saw 29-year-old Huntley walking with his dog in the grounds of the girls' school at 11pm.
The second meeting came at 4.30am the next day, while Mr Wells was still searching after a sleepless night.
He and two friends went back to check the school area again and noticed a light on in the caretaker's office. Huntley asked: 'How did you know to come here?' Mr Wells, who runs a cleaning company, told police he assumed Huntley meant how did they know where the office was. He said he explained that he knew the building because his firm used to have the contract to clean the school.
Mr Wells said they told Huntley that Holly and Jessica were missing and that they planned to search the grounds of the school complex, which includes St Andrew's Primary, where the girls were pupils, and the secondary school, Soham Village College.
Mr Wells told police: ' Huntley raised no objection, but went on to explain that the police had already searched the site with dogs.
'Without prompting, he explained he was up writing a note to one of his co-workers to explain that he would be late for work that morning because he had had his sleep pattern broken by the police visiting.' Mr Wells was not in court to hear his statement read out, but the other three parents sat in silence as they listened to their own accounts of the night their lives were shattered.
In one statement, Mrs Nicola Wells had to describe to police what Holly was wearing - right down to her 'sparkly necklace' and the little white pants that had 'princess' written across the front.
Her husband told of the mounting panic that swept over them and the moment his wife asked if they should phone the police. 'Yes,' he said. 'Do it.'
Then, the Chapmans - Les Chapman had also driven round endlessly in the hope of spotting the girls.
Sharon Chapman told how she knew immediately that something was wrong when she found that Jessica's mobile phone was switched off. Jessica would never do that, she said.
The jury had already been told by a phone expert that the signal went dead at 6.46pm that night in the area of Huntley's home.
The court also heard from people who saw Holly and Jessica in their distinctive red Manchester United shirts, effectively plotting their route through Soham.
One, Lucy Tuck, told how her husband Mark saw the girls from their car and said: 'Look, there's two little Beckhams over there'.
Another, Karen Greenwood, saw the two small figures walking arm in arm just after 6.30pm, only yards from Huntley's home. It was the last time they were seen alive.
The jury also heard from Claire Norton, sports hall assistant at the Ross Peers Sports Centre, which the girls passed on that last walk.
She said police had failed to spot Holly and Jessica on CCTV footage of the car park.
It was only when she checked the film herself, two days later, that she found the sequence and the time they were there could be established.
Miss Norton said she had seen Huntley 25 minutes before she saw the girls.
Huntley denies two counts of murder but has pleaded guilty to conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
His former girlfriend Maxine Carr, 26, denies two charges of assisting an offender and one of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
The hearing continues.
