This article discusses the controversial case of Maxine Carr, the former fiancee of Ian Huntley, who was given a new identity and life after serving half of her sentence for perverting the course of justice in the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. The article explores the cost to taxpayers of protecting Carr's safety and privacy.
How many people yearn to wipe the slate clean and begin a new life as someone else? For most it is but a passing whim, something to ponder at this reflective time of year, perhaps while wistfully mulling over new year's resolutions. The theme has been explored many times in fiction, and there are notable real-life examples.
In 1974, John Stonehouse, a Labour minister facing exposure as a spy and financial ruin, left his clothes in a pile on Miami Beach and invited the world, including his wife and three children, to believe he had drowned. The ruse involved fraud and deception and the law eventually caught up with him. Yet an exceptional handful of criminals get to vanish with the full blessing of the State – and, most controversially, at taxpayers' expense. One such is Maxine Carr, the former fiancee of Ian Huntley, whose murder of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in Soham, Cambridgeshire, in 2002, horrified the nation. Emotions ran high at the time and when it transpired Carr, a teaching assistant, helped Huntley cover his tracks by providing a false alibi, she became a hate figure. Her defence counsel called her the most vilified woman in England. Hyperbole or not, there were concerns that disclosure of her whereabouts would be 'detrimental' to her safety and so, on her release from prison after serving only half of her 42-month sentence for perverting the course of justice, she was given a new identity, a new home, a new life. Maxine Carr, pictured, helped Ian Huntley, who murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, cover his tracks by providing a false alibi Keeping her safe and her privacy intact has cost several million pounds, and, more than two decades on, the bill to taxpayers is still rising. A recent three-part television drama, Maxine, has brought her story to a new generation unfamiliar with the murder
CRIMINAL JUSTICE TAXPAYERS IDENTITY THEFT TRUE CRIME PUBLIC SAFETY
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