The British press expressed outrage yesterday after a school caretaker with a police record was jailed for murdering 10-year-old girls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, whose disappearance and tragic deaths in August last year shocked the nation.
Newspapers heaped blame on the police after it emerged officers had failed to keep computer records of caretaker Ian Huntley, despite him being accused several times in the past of rape and having sex with underage girls.
"The serial pedophile," headlined The Sun next to a photo of a smirking Huntley, a day after he was jailed for life for killing the best friends.
Britain's biggest selling daily devoted 42 of its 112 pages to the case while the tabloid used its back page, normally reserved for sports news, for a photo of the girls and the simple message: "Holly and Jessica. Remember them."
Broadsheets also covered the story in length following Wednesday's culmination of a sensational trial lasting six weeks.
"No mercy, no regret," headlined The Times.
"Guilty. But still only he knows why he killed Holly and Jessica," said The Independent.
After three days of deliberation, a British jury found Huntley, 29, guilty of murdering the girls in August last year.
Following his conviction, the court heard that Huntley had in the past been accused of serious sexual allegations.
"Beyond Belief," roared the front page of the Daily Mail.
"For years, Huntley sexually abused under-age girls and was four times accused of rape. How the hell did he get a job as a school caretaker?," asked the tabloid.
The Daily Express said the girls' murders "could have been avoided if only the police had done their job properly," adding:
"Such basic errors make this appalling tragedy all the more disturbing and devastating."
Home Secretary David Blunkett immediately launched an inquiry into police vetting procedures following disclosure of Huntley's past.
Huntley's partner at the time of the crimes, Maxine Carr, a teaching assistant at the girls' school, was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for conspiring to pervert the course of justice as police investigated the deaths.
Carr, who was cleared of two counts of assisting an offender, will serve half that sentence, as time already spent in custody will be taken into account.
The Sun described her sentence as "ludicrously lenient" adding that "it will be an affront to justice" should she not serve her entire term.
The Daily Express said Carr, 26, was likely to be given a new identity at the taxpayers' expense.
"But the public should not be expected to pay for a woman who was so complicit in one of the most shocking crimes this country has witnessed," it said.
The partly-burnt bodies of Holly and Jessica were found in a ditch outside a US airbase near their hometown of Soham, eastern England, 13 days after they disappeared wearing matching Manchester United football jerseys with David Beckham's number seven on the back.
Huntley denied murdering the girls, saying they died accidentally inside his house. He testified that he inadvertently knocked Holly into his bathtub, killing her, while trying to staunch her nosebleed. He said Jessica died after he put a hand over her mouth to silence her screams.
"I kept thinking `How do I explain this to the police?' If you can't believe what has happened yourself, how are you going to expect the police to believe it either?" he said.
He admitted trying to set the bodies on fire and dumping them in the remote ditch.
"There are few worse crimes than your murder of those two young girls," trial judge Alan Moses told Huntley on Wednesday.
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