She was once the face of pure evil in the eyes of a nation.

Maxine Carr – dubbed “Britain’s most hated woman” – stood shoulder to shoulder with Ian Huntley as the country wept for two little girls in pink Manchester United shirts.

While Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman lay buried in a ditch, Carr smiled for the cameras and swore her boyfriend had been with her all night.

That lie protected a monster for 13 crucial days.

Now, more than 23 years later, the monster is dead.

Ian Huntley, 52, was attacked with a metal bar in the workshop of maximum-security HMP Frankland on February 26. He suffered catastrophic head injuries, was placed on life support, and died on March 7 after his machine was switched off.

The man who murdered two ten-year-old best friends in one of Britain’s most harrowing crimes has finally met a violent end behind bars – bludgeoned by another killer.

But for the woman who once lied to shield him, the news will arrive in a way almost no one outside the highest levels of the justice system will ever know.

Insiders have told the Daily Mail that Carr, now 48 and living under one of the UK’s rarest lifelong anonymity orders, will be informed through a secret “ghost protocol” – a pre-arranged, ultra-secure notification system written into her High Court protection order back in 2005.

A single, anonymous voice – a specially vetted probation liaison who has never met her and never will – will deliver the words over an encrypted line using a code phrase agreed when her new identity was created.

No letter. No face-to-face meeting. No risk of anyone tracing the call.

Just a cold, clinical sentence read out in a voice she has never heard before: “The subject has died.”

It is the extraordinary length the state still goes to protect the woman who helped a child killer walk free for nearly two weeks.

And it has reignited the fury that has never truly gone away.

“How dare she still be shielded while Holly and Jessica’s parents have to live with their grief every single day?” demanded one relative of the murdered girls last night. “Huntley is dead – good riddance – but Carr is still living her secret life on our money. It makes me sick.”

This is the full, devastating story of the woman who lied for a killer – and the extraordinary bubble of protection that still surrounds her even now.

The summer of 2002 remains seared into Britain’s collective memory.

It was the summer two ten-year-old best friends vanished from the sleepy Cambridgeshire village of Soham.

Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman had been to a barbecue at Holly’s house. They left at 6.05pm wearing matching red Manchester United shirts with the names of their heroes, David Beckham and Michael Owen, on the back. They were heading to buy sweets.

They never came home.

For 13 agonising days the nation watched in horror as police, volunteers and the girls’ families searched every ditch, every field, every pond.

Ian Huntley, the 28-year-old school caretaker at Soham Village College, and his girlfriend Maxine Carr, 25, a teaching assistant at the girls’ primary school, were thrust into the spotlight.

They gave endless interviews. Huntley appeared concerned, almost helpful. Carr stood beside him, sometimes in tears, claiming she had been with him the entire night the girls disappeared.

She even showed reporters a card Holly had drawn for her – proof, she said, of how much the girls loved her.

It was all a lie.

On August 17 the girls’ decomposed bodies were found in a ditch near RAF Lakenheath, five miles from Soham. They had been murdered by Huntley. He had lured them into his house on College Close, sexually assaulted and strangled them, then dumped their bodies.

Carr knew.

She had been in Grimsby visiting her mother that weekend. When Huntley phoned her in panic saying the girls had been in the house, she agreed to lie for him. She told police she had been home with him all night. She even washed his clothes to remove evidence.

Her lies gave him precious time.

When the truth emerged, the country’s rage was volcanic.

Carr was arrested and charged with perverting the course of justice. At her 2003 trial the judge called her actions “wicked”. She was jailed for three and a half years.

Huntley was convicted of both murders and given two life sentences with a minimum of 40 years.

But the hatred directed at Carr was on another level.

She was labelled “Britain’s most hated woman”. Effigies of her were burned outside court. Death threats poured in. Prison officers had to move her between jails for her own safety.

When she was released after serving just 21 months in May 2004, the public wanted blood.

Instead, the state gave her a new life.

In one of the most controversial decisions in modern British legal history, the High Court granted Carr a lifelong anonymity order in 2005.

It was only the second such order ever issued to someone not directly involved in a murder.

The judge ruled that her life and “fragile psychological state” would be in danger without it. Publication of her new name, address, appearance or job was banned forever.

The cost to taxpayers has been staggering.

Sources say she has been moved through more than ten safe houses in the first two years alone. She reportedly underwent cosmetic surgery – including dental work and changes to her hair and features – to alter her appearance beyond recognition.

The total bill for her protection is believed to have topped £2 million – and continues to this day.

She has rebuilt a life far from the fury.

According to recent reports, Carr now lives in a quiet seaside town (its identity protected by the order). She is said to be married to a man who knows her full past and is “besotted” with her. She has a job, friends who know nothing of her history, and a completely new identity.

She has never spoken publicly since her release.

And until last week, the one man who could have exposed her secret world was still alive – locked away in Frankland prison.

Now Ian Huntley is dead.

The details of his final moments are as brutal as the crimes he committed.

On February 26, in the prison workshop, another inmate – convicted triple murderer Anthony Russell, 43 – allegedly attacked him with a makeshift metal bar. Huntley was found in a pool of blood with catastrophic head injuries.

He was rushed to Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, placed in a medically induced coma, and kept on life support for more than a week.

On March 7 his life support was switched off. He died at 52.

The Ministry of Justice confirmed the death. Prison sources say Huntley had been attacked multiple times over the years – his throat slashed in 2010, and other assaults.

Many in Britain greeted the news with grim satisfaction.

Holly’s mother, Nicola Wells, released a short statement: “No parent should outlive their child. Today does not bring our girls back, but it closes one chapter of unimaginable pain.”

Jessica’s parents, Sharon and Leslie Chapman, have remained private but friends say they feel “a weight has lifted”.

Yet for Maxine Carr, the announcement brings its own complications.

Because of her lifelong anonymity order, she cannot simply be told like any other ex-partner.

Insiders with detailed knowledge of the protection arrangements have revealed to the Daily Mail the existence of the “ghost protocol” – a little-known clause written into the 2005 High Court order specifically for major events involving Huntley.

Under this extraordinary rule, Carr must be informed of any significant development in Huntley’s life or death through a single, pre-arranged channel.

A senior probation officer, specially trained and bound by lifelong secrecy, will make one encrypted telephone call.

The officer will use a code phrase established when the anonymity order was granted – words known only to Carr and a tiny handful of handlers.

The message will be brief and factual. No details of the attack. No emotion. Just confirmation that the man she once lied to protect is dead.

The call will be untraceable. The officer will never know Carr’s current name or exact location.

It is designed, sources say, to prevent any risk of her new identity being compromised – even in the moment of shock.

One probation source told us: “This protocol has been in place for nearly 20 years, updated as technology improved. It is there precisely for moments like this. She will hear the news, process it in private, and her new life will continue uninterrupted. That is the deal the court made.”

The revelation has triggered fresh outrage.

Campaigners for victims’ rights say it is obscene that the woman who helped delay justice for Holly and Jessica is still wrapped in taxpayer-funded secrecy while the girls’ families have had to rebuild their lives in the full glare of publicity.

One senior figure at a victims’ charity said: “Maxine Carr chose to lie. She chose to stand by a man she knew had killed two children. Yet she gets cosmetic surgery, multiple homes, a new husband, and now a secret phone call to break the news gently. Where is the protection order for Holly and Jessica’s parents? Where is their anonymity from the horror?”

Even now, more than two decades on, the wounds of Soham refuse to heal.

The village itself has changed. The house on College Close where the murders happened was demolished. A memorial garden stands in its place.

Every year on August 4, fresh flowers appear at the spot where the girls’ bodies were found.

Huntley’s name is still spoken with venom.

Carr’s name, by law, cannot be linked to her new identity.

Yet the public has never forgotten.

Online forums still buzz with theories about where she lives. Tabloids have tried – and failed – to identify her. Vigilante groups have been disbanded after court warnings.

And now, with Huntley gone, many ask the same question: does Maxine Carr finally feel safe? Or does the ghost of her lie still haunt her every single day?

Her husband, according to reports, knows everything. Friends in her new life apparently do not.

She is said to have built a quiet, ordinary existence – shopping in local supermarkets, walking the dog on the beach, perhaps even having a small circle of friends who believe she is simply “Maxine from somewhere up north”.

The £2 million-plus spent protecting her has bought her that peace.

But for the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, there is no such peace.

They have campaigned tirelessly for better child protection, for changes in how alibis are checked, for stronger sentences for those who pervert justice.

They have watched Huntley survive multiple prison attacks over the years.

Now he is dead – killed by the very system that was supposed to keep him locked away forever.

And somewhere, in a seaside town whose name we cannot print, Maxine Carr will soon pick up a phone and hear a stranger’s voice tell her the man she once loved enough to lie for is gone.

Will she cry? Will she feel relief? Will she finally feel free?

The protocol ensures we will never know.

Because that is the price Britain still pays for the woman who lied for a killer.

The ghost protocol will do its job.

Her secret life will continue.

And the two little girls in their red football shirts will remain, forever, the innocent victims whose short lives changed the country – and whose deaths still demand answers that no anonymity order can ever bury.