Soham murders: Police fear media stories could stop trial

Newspapers were warned yesterday that the coverage of the deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman could have prejudiced the case against those accused of involvement in their murders.

A file on the reports that followed the abduction of the two 10-year-olds on 4 August has been passed to the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Attorney General yesterday issued a warning reminding editors of their responsibilities under the laws governing how much can be reported now that Ian Huntley has been arrested and charged with murder, and Maxine Carr charged with perverting the course of justice.

The move comes as the Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine of Lairg, prepares to announce tough new contempt laws in which editors could be jailed for making cash payments to witnesses or potential witnesses in court cases.

Lord Irvine will announce on Thursday a package of tight controls on the media amounting to a ban on chequebook journalism before and during a trial.

He is also expected to address the issue of increasingly sizeable rewards offered by newspapers for information. This follows the criticism of several publications that offered escalating rewards at the height of the search for the missing schoolgirls.

As the police investigation into the girls' deaths continues, officers on the Cambridgeshire force indicated they believed tabloid reporting following the arrests of the couple from Soham might be used to suggest that Huntley, 28, charged with the murders of Jessica and Holly, and Carr, 25, charged with perverting the course of justice, will not be able to get a fair trial. If a judge ruled some of the articles violated the Contempt of Court Act, the case against them would be dropped.

This week's announcement on payments to witnesses – part of proposals to enhance legal safeguards of the judicial process – comes after months of consultation. Lord Irvine's department was charged with looking into how to avoid incidents such as the collapse of the trial last summer of Leeds United footballers Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate following an article in the Sunday Mirror, or the coverage of the trial of schoolteacher Amy Gehring, who was acquitted of underage sex charges. Some of the witnesses in that case are thought to have been offered money for their stories by tabloids.

The Lord Chancellor is expected to make paying witnesses a criminal offence . Editors will not even be able to claim their actions were not intended to prejudice a case. The offence will be one of strict liability, punishable by up to a month in jail or a fine.

Meanwhile, as the wall of flowers stacked against the walls of St Andrew's parish church in Soham grew to an estimated 10,000 bouquets, the nation paused in a minute-long silent remembrance of the two 10-year-olds.

At Premiership football matches yesterday, footballers bowed their heads and some spectators looked close to tears as the minute's silence was observed. At Upton Park, before West Ham played Arsenal, the scoreboard read: "In loving memory of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman."

At Newmarket, nine jockeys due to take part in the John Smiths sprint championship handicap stakes stood in a line in the parade ring at the Suffolk racecourse during the minute's silence.

The scene was repeated around the country at cricket and football matches, race meetings and supermarkets.

More than 150,000 messages have now been posted on the website dedicated to the two girls, which has had two million hits. And inside the town's church, where more than 500 candles flickered near a picture of Holly and Jessica smiling, messages have come from as far away as Brazil, Hong Kong and the United States.

The parish priest Revd Tim Alban Jones said yesterday: "Each day, I'm taking boxes of cards to the families that have been sent to me at the church. On Thursday I delivered six boxes, six on Friday and four today."

Some who came to Soham yesterday wore Manchester United shirts identical to the ones the girls were wearing when they disappeared. Others laid similar shirts at the site. One group of boys left a football – they could not afford flowers, they said, and this was their way of saying goodbye.

A second field of flowers – 200 yards long and up to five feet in depth – has grown up at the scene 10 miles away, where the bodies were found last Saturday.

The headteacher of St Andrew's Primary, where Holly and Jessica were pupils, yesterday appealed for his school to be allowed to return to normal, but said trained counsellors would be on hand to support the girls' distraught classmates. In a statement released today, Geoff Fisher said: "Term starts again in two weeks' time and we are anxious that it should be business as usual as far as possible.".

"We will remember them as two happy, generous, caring, giving little girls, and those are the memories of them which we will carry with us throughout the new term and for many years.

"Although Soham will never forget the events of the past three weeks, we must now all pull together and start rebuilding our lives and the lives of those around us."