Soham trial jury sent home again
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Huntley: Charged with double murder
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LONDON, England -- The jury in the the trial of Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr -- charged over the deaths of British schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman -- was sent home Monday after a second day of deliberations.
The seven women and five men failed to reach verdicts against Ian Huntley and his ex-girlfriend Maxine Carr and the case was adjourned until Tuesday.
Monday's deliberations meant the jury has considered the case for about 11 hours in total.
Huntley, 29, denies murdering Wells and Chapman, both 10, in Soham, in the eastern English county of Cambridgeshire, but has pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.
Huntley's ex-girlfriend Carr, 26, a former classroom assistant at the school where the girls were pupils, denies one charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and two charges of assisting an offender.
The defense for Huntley, a caretaker at the school, said Holly died accidentally in the bath at his home in the grounds of the school on August 4, 2002, and that he killed Jessica unintentionally as he tried to silence her screams.
He admitted bundling their bodies into his car and dumping them in a ditch at a remote spot near Lakenheath U.S. air force base in Suffolk where they were found 13 days later. He cut off their clothes and set fire to their corpses.
Carr told the jury she lied to protect her then fiance and gave him a false alibi. But she insisted she never suspected he was involved in the girls' disappearance.
