Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were two 10 year old best friends with their whole lives ahead of them when they were brutally murdered by a callous local school caretaker, Ian Huntley.

The inseparable pair had been enjoying their summer holidays, spending their days playing together and having fun.

On the fateful day of August 4 2002, they had been at a family barbecue at Holly's home before heading upstairs to play.

However, the popular schoolgirls decided to fetch some snacks from the vending machine at the nearby leisure centre, slipping out without Holly's parents noticing.

This would be the last time either Holly or Jessica would ever see their families again.

As they made their way back to Holly's house, they passed the home of Huntley.

He spotted the girls and enticed them inside under the false pretence that his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, was there.

Carr, who worked as a teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica's school, was well acquainted with both girls.

Once the young girls were inside, Huntley savagely murdered them and hid their bodies.

Meanwhile, Holly's parents discovered the two best friends had vanished from the house and launched a frantic search to find them.

When Jessica had not returned home by her 8:30pm curfew, Nicola rang the Chapmans to enquire whether the girls were with them.

Both families were gripped by terror, frantically searching for the missing 10-year-olds, Holly and Jessica. Police were notified, and an extensive manhunt commenced, with over 400 officers working around the clock to locate the girls.

Alongside door-to-door enquiries, the entire surrounding area was meticulously searched for any indication of the young girls.

Countless locals offered their assistance, as did US Air Force personnel from a neighbouring base.

Every registered sex offender in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire was interrogated, but there appeared to be no trace of the primary school pupils.

A substantial media appeal ensured that Holly and Jessica remained prominent in every newspaper and news bulletin, and for 13 days, every avenue was explored.

Bizarrely, Huntley himself was questioned by journalists and even took part in the search for Holly and Jessica.

In one chilling interview with Huntley and his girlfriend, Maxine Carr, the killer offered his perspective on how Holly and Jessica would respond to stranger danger.

BBC journalist Brian Farmer, the first to interview Huntley, remembered: "I asked Carr if the girls were taught about stranger-danger at school, and how they might have reacted, for example, if they had been approached by a man in a car.

"To my astonishment, Huntley leapt in.

"He said he thought Holly would probably get in the car and be quiet, but Jessica wouldn't.

"Jessica would put up a real fight and a real struggle.

"A parent might have a good idea how a child would react. A teacher, or class assistant, might be able to speculate.

"But Huntley was a caretaker at a school Holly and Jessica didn't attend.

"How could he know?"

Carr, who furnished Huntley's alibi for the night the girls vanished, was equally eager to engage with the media.

In one interview, she boasted about her supposed significance to little Holly.

She displayed to reporters a card Holly had created for her on the final day of term, expressing gratitude for being such a wonderful teaching assistant.

Speaking to another TV reporter, Carr said: "No one believes they would ever run away. They were very close to their families. This is something that I will keep for the rest of my life.

"It's what Holly gave me on the last day of term and there's a poem written inside saying 'to a special teaching assistant' and that we will miss her and we will see her in the future.

"That was the kind of girl she was, she was just really lovely."

Her disturbing error was noticed almost immediately - she had referred to Holly in the past tense.

Suspicions began to mount around the couple, who were summoned for questioning 12 days after Holly and Jessica vanished.

The next day, a gamekeeper made a horrifying discovery - Holly and Jessica were found lying side by side in a ditch near an RAF base in Suffolk, 10 miles from Soham.

It was Huntley himself who inadvertently revealed his own culpability through just seven gestures made to police officers during interrogation.

Body language expert Cliff Lansley has disclosed the subtle movements exhibited by Huntley as he was questioned about his involvement with Holly and Jessica.

Mr Lansley said: "There are multiple things wrong. He has clamped his hands. He is rubbing and manipulating his fingers to try and comfort himself.

"And his shoulder is raising slightly on the right-hand side. Then when he says, no, the volume of no comes down fifty percent and he synchronises his head one to two seconds afterwards.

"So, there are seven, eight indicators of deception here when he is using just three words."

Mr Lansley further noted Huntley's deceit became evident when he "forgot to take the sad expression off his face."

He went on: "Indicator two, he is contradicting these affirmative statements with a slight head shake, no.

"And in addition, we have got gestural leakage from his shoulder it is raising a couple of millimetres on his right-hand side which contradicts the positive, affirmative statements he is making. That is a strong signal of deception."

Dawn Archer, a specialist in verbal communication, observed that Huntley was "very good at using the truth and then using it to his advantage."

She added: "The most convincing way to tell a credible lie is to stick closely to the truth.

"This is somebody that history has shown got away with lying for a long time and got away with being abusive for a long time.

"And I think people who get away with that kind of behaviour believe they won't be caught. So they have a certain level of confidence when they tell their lies."

Forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes suggests Huntley had been planning his attack "for some time."

She said: "There was no planning on the part of Huntley in terms of him not knowing that Holly and Jessica were going to arrive that day.

"He's already assaulted young girls, so he's rehearsed it behaviourally. So, this isn't something that comes out of the blue.

"This is something that's been in the back of his mind, maybe in the forefront of his mind, for some time."

On August 20, Huntley was charged with two counts of murder, while Carr faced accusations of attempting to pervert the course of justice.

She was subsequently charged with two counts of aiding an offender.

Huntley received a minimum sentence of 40 years before he can be considered for parole, while Carr was handed a sentence of three-and-a-half years.

He died on Saturday, March 7 after sustaining 'significant' injuries after being attacked by a fellow inmate at HMP Frankland.