At night I sometimes just lay there and cry

Twelve-year-old Natalie Parr told how she had struggled with the guilt of wondering if her two friends would still be alive if she had stayed with them on the day they were murdered.

Natalie stayed at Holly’s house the night before Holly and Jessica Chapman died.

She left her friends only hours before they made their fateful decision to slip away from the barbecue.

"It’s hard because I don’t know whether if I’d stayed there they wouldn’t have gone - I just don’t know," she said.

The schoolgirl spoke of the heartbreaking impact her friend’s deaths had had on her life, saying sometimes all she wanted to do was curl up and cry.

She had known Holly and Jessica since their first day in the nursery at St Andrew’s School, Soham, aged four.

"Everyone loved Holly and wanted to be her best friend, she was so pretty and bright and bubbly. She was so cool but really nice with it.

"Sometimes, especially at night, I’ll go to bed and read a book or whatever and write my diary and I’ll lay there and just cry, just to get my emotions out," she said.

As Natalie tried to come to terms with their deaths, she started writing to Holly and Jessica in her diary, telling them what had been going on at school.

"I just hope they didn’t suffer in any way. I don’t think I could ever bear that."

Natalie still receives counselling and over the next few days plans to visit Holly’s grave.

"My parents take me every few weeks so I have some time with Holly alone. I sit and chat and tell her about what we are all doing at school, which boys we fancy and who’s at number one."

Speaking about Huntley, Natalie said: "I hate him to pieces.

"I hate anybody that had anything to do with it and I personally don’t think they should be allowed to stand up and talk any more."

As Natalie spoke out more details of Huntley’s sordid past emerged.

Police admitted Huntley had come to their attention on nine occasions for alleged attacks - but he was never prosecuted.

Dozens of his alleged victims have now told their stories including two 13-year-old friends and an 11-year-old he molested and then threatened to kill if she told her mother.

One of his ex-girlfriends even told how he beat up his wife so badly he caused her to lose her unborn baby.

Janine Oliver, 22, who was 14 when she met Huntley in Immingham, near Grimsby, said he definitely had a "thing about school uniforms" and had treated her badly during their relationship.

She said her cousin, Claire Evans, had been married to Huntley and he had "knocked her about until she had fairly bad internal bleeding and she lost her baby to him".

Ms Oliver had begun living with Huntley when she was 15, but despite the local social services department mounting an investigation into their relationship, nothing was done as she was close to the age of consent. Police were never informed.

Another ex-girlfriend, Amanda Marshall, who was 16 when she moved into a flat with then 17-year-old Huntley in Grimsby, said her ex-lover "could convince anybody to do anything".

But when Ms Marshall, now 28, said she was expecting his baby, Huntley "flipped". "It just used to be pushing at first and it gradually got worse," she said.

"He came round and he was really, really nice at the door, he said he had come round to see how I was and I let him in.

"As soon as he got upstairs and we got into my room, he just flipped, he just lost it.

"He pushed me on to the floor and he held me down and then he started kicking and screaming and saying I wasn’t having his child."

Ms Marshall, now a mother-of-two, said Huntley used to fake asthma attacks to make her feel guilty if she was upset after he hurt her.

"I couldn’t believe he had got a job with children, knowing about the rape allegation and his violence."

Hailey Edwards was just 11 when she reported an alleged assault by Huntley to police.

She claimed Holly and Jessica "would still be alive today" if Huntley had been locked up for an earlier attack.

However, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to take the case to court.

Bernadette Currier, also from Grimsby, claimed Huntley raped her on her daughter’s bed when she was just 18, leaving her suicidal.