A new documentary featuring interviews with child killer Ian Huntley shows how he gave himself away in just three words.
Huntley murdered schoolgirls Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells in Soham back in 2002, but denied any involvement in their deaths.
The school caretaker even spoke out to the media, calling for the girls’ safe return.
But after his lies were exposed, Huntley was eventually charged with the girls murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.
And his girlfriend at the time, Maxine Carr, was found guilty of perverting the course of justice.
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In new documentary Faking It: Tears of a Crime, forensic psychologists and criminal experts analyse interview video footage recorded at the time to demonstrate how Huntley’s body language betrayed him and gave away his guilt.
As he answered one question with just three words, experts show how there were seven signs of deception which gave away his guilt.
Huntley had been asked if he had ever had any physical contact with schoolgirls Holly and Jessica. He replied: “Physical contact? No.”
But in just those three words, his subtle body movements provided experts with evidence that he was lying.
Body language expert Cliff 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,” he added.
“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.”
Karim Khalil QC, who was junior counsel for the prosecution, revealed they discovered Huntley had lied about swapping a tyre on his car by closely examining every frame of his interviews.
“On screen we were able to establish one fact particularly which is that there had been a change of tyres on that car and it must have happened very soon after the killing of the two children,” he said.
“Our theory at the time was that he had killed the children, taken them to the burial site and then returned but as part of his forensic clean-up had done what he could to alter the appearance of the car so that it was a clean vehicle.”
Forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes claims Huntley had been planning his attack “for some time”.
“He’s already assaulted young girls, so he’s rehearsed it behaviourally. So, this isn’t something that comes out of the blue,” she explained.
“This is something that’s been in the back of his mind, maybe in the forefront of his mind, for some time.
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Verbal communication expert Dawn Archer said: “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.”
Faking It: Tears of a Crime starts on Friday at 10pm on Investigation Discovery.