Enlarge imageBy Peter Griffiths
LONDON (Reuters) - Maxine Carr, the former fiancee of Soham schoolgirls’ murderer Ian Huntley, has failed in her bid to win early release from jail, the Prison Service says.
Martin Narey, who heads the government’s new National Offender Management Service, said on Thursday Carr would be at risk at the address where she wanted to live if freed early.
Letting her out early would undermine public confidence in the government’s early release scheme, known as Home Detention Curfew (HDC), he added.
"The possibility of your early release has attracted, and continues to attract, huge adverse publicity," Narey said in a written ruling sent to Carr.
"Your release on HDC, so soon after the trial has ended, would undermine public confidence in the HDC scheme."
Advertisement starts
Advertisement ends
Carr, 26, was jailed for 3-1/2 years for lying to police investigating the disappearance of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire.
She was sentenced last December but had been in jail on remand since August 2002 when the girls disappeared.
Carr hoped to be freed with an electronic tag after serving half her sentence for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.
Newspapers said she had wanted to live at her mother’s house in Grimsby but had been warned by police and prison officials that she would be at risk of attack.
The former teaching assistant planned to give a television interview after her release in a bid to clear her name, newspapers had reported.
The Daily Mail said Carr told inmates at Holloway Prison that police should have thanked her for helping to convict Huntley, jailed for life on December 17.
She told police she was in the bath at home with Huntley when the girls disappeared. In fact, she had gone home to Grimsby.
The bodies of the 10-year-old friends were found in a ditch 13 days later.
