Huntley 'wanted girls to go in bedroom'

Ian Huntley "lured" schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman into his home, the Old Bailey heard today.

Prosecutor Richard Latham accused the former caretaker of pretending that his girlfriend - and the 10-year-olds' class assistant - Maxine Carr was at the house to get them to come inside.

And the QC claimed Huntley invented a story of Holly's nosebleed to explain why she had been in the bedroom "because that's where it all happened".

Mr Latham said during cross-examination that Huntley knew it was "inappropriate" for the girls to enter his home.

He said: "It was just too tempting, wasn't it?"

Huntley asked: "What was just too tempting?"

Mr Latham said: "Two 10-year-old girls."

Huntley replied: "If you mean what I think you mean, no."

Mr Latham said the girls would have felt "absolutely safe" if they thought they were going to see Carr.

"You lured those two girls into the house, didn't you?"

Huntley insisted he had not: "I told them Maxine had gone away for a few days."

Mr Latham asked Huntley if he felt it had been appropriate to take 10-year-old Holly into his bedroom.

Huntley said: "I accept that to take a 10-year-old girl into a bedroom is not appropriate. I accept that."

But Mr Latham insisted: "You thought it was appropriate because it was what you wanted to do, didn't you?"

Huntley denies murdering the two girls on August 4 last year.

Home Office pathologist Nat Cary earlier told the court that Holly and Jessica's bodies were too badly decomposed to tell if they had been sexually abused.