A new television series is dramatising the investigation into Maxine Carr and her fiancé Ian Huntley, who were jailed for the murder of schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

On August 4, 2002, 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were enjoying a family barbecue at Jessica's family home in Soham, Cambridgeshire.

The school friends were dressed in matching Manchester United football shirts when they left the home, but did not return.

The bodies of the two friends were later discovered by a farmworker in a ditch close to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.

Former school caretaker Ian Huntley, 48, was found guilty of the murder of Holly and Jessica. He is currently serving a life sentence.

His fiance Maxine Carr was also jailed for giving him a false alibi.

The new series on Channel 5, Maxine, tells the story of the Soham murders from Carr's perspective.

The three-part series began on Monday, with the last episode airing tonight at 9pm on Channel 5.

Debbie Davies, who in 2002 was deputy editor of the Ely Standard, recently recalled distributing posters made by the newspaper around Soham four days after the girls were last seen.

The posters had a photo of Holly and Jessica wearing Manchester United shirts, taken on the day they disappeared, and text asking people to contact Cambridgeshire Police if they had information.

Miss Davies, 62, said she knocked on the door of the home shared by Huntley and Carr, with Carr answering the door and taking a poster, then promptly putting it up in their front window.

But she said she felt “sick” when it later emerged that, at the time Carr displayed the poster, Huntley had already murdered the girls.