English girls' autopsies 'inconclusive'

11.15am - By TERRI JUDD and SARAH CASSIDY

Post-mortem examinations of the murdered 10-year-olds Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman have proved inconclusive, leaving the prospect of several weeks before police discover when and how they were killed.

This morning's announcement means the victims' families face an indefinite wait before they can hold their daughters' funerals.

Police have been granted an extension to question Ian Huntley, 28, giving them until 5pm tomorrow (NZT) to charge or release the school caretaker. Magistrates were still considering a similar application for the second chief suspect, Maxine Carr, 25.

As piles of blooms outside St Andrew's Church in Soham continued to mount yesterday and a counselling helpline was inundated with callers, education officials were drawing up plans to find school places for 1,700 children in the town.

With less than three weeks to the start of the academic year, St Andrew's Primary School ­ attended by Holly and Jessica, and where Ms Carr worked as a part-time teaching assistant until last month ­ and Soham Village College, the secondary school where Mr Huntley was a caretaker, remain sealed as possible crime scenes. Bob Pearson, a spokesman for Cambridgeshire County Council, said: "We would hope students would not have to stay at home but trying to relocate 1,700 pupils at two and a half weeks' notice is a massive, massive task. We don't know when we will be allowed back into the schools. No one is allowed to cross the police lines. The headteachers are not allowed in to pick up files or school records."

GCSE results that were due to be posted at the college on Thursday could be collected by students from the local library, the council announced yesterday.

Specialist post-mortem tests will have been ordered to try to discover how the girls were killed but the results will not be known for weeks. A further delay is likely to be caused by an independent post-mortem examination for the use of legal advisers to anyone charged with the murders. Police have already declared that they are "as certain as we possibly can be" that the bodies are those of Jessica and Holly.

Scenes of crime and forensic science officers continued to examine the site near RAF Lakenheath where the girls were found and a renewed search, using dogs, was made of Mr Huntley's father's home in Littleport, Ely. A team of officers ­ scaled down from 400 to 50 ­ was still checking Soham Village College, where Mr Huntley and Ms Carr had an on-site home, and St Andrew's Primary School.

The outpouring of grief at the loss of the girls was evident as people from all over the world left messages of condolence on a Cambridge police website.

Downing Street said Tony Blair, on a family holiday in France, had been following events with sadness. A spokeswoman said: "Clearly he is very distressed to hear about these offences and he feels a great deal of sympathy for the parents."

The Home Office minister Beverly Hughes said the Government was prepared to bring forward further child protection measures, but played down calls for the publication of the Sex Offenders Register. She told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "I am not clear, and I don't think anybody can be at the moment, whether that issue has any relevance whatsoever for this particular horrific crime."

- INDEPENDENT