SOHAM accused Ian Huntley admitted yesterday it was inexcusable to tell Kevin Wells that he hoped his daughter, Holly, would return home safely when he knew she was already dead.

Huntley acknowledged at his Old Bailey murder trial that he had told lies designed to throw the police off the scent during a number of media interviews after the two Soham schoolgirls went missing.

But he denied playing with the emotions of the families of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman.

During his cross-examination by prosecution counsel Richard Latham QC, the former school caretaker admitted having repeatedly lied to the media.

Mr Latham referred Huntley to a transcript of an interview he gave to BBC Look East on August 10 last year, in which he referred to an alleged sighting of the girls.

Mr Latham read from the transcript in which Huntley said: "It's been confirmed as an accurate sighting and I'm sure that that helps them to retrace the steps of the children."

Mr Latham asked Huntley: "That was a lie, wasn't it?"

Huntley answered: "Yes."

Mr Latham said: "Because, far from helping them retrace the steps of the children, what you had done was designed to confuse, wasn't it?"

Huntley replied: "It was not designed to confuse."

Mr Latham said: "To put police off the scent, wasn't it?"

Huntley agreed: "Yes, that's correct."

Mr Latham referred Huntley to more of his comments made during the Look East interview, in which the accused said he had spoken to Mr Wells on the morning of Wednesday, August 7.

According to the transcript, Huntley said: "I had a brief chat with him just to say, basically, I hope everything turns out OK and that the kids return safely home."

Mr Latham said such a remark to a person whom Huntley had described as very distressed was "just inexcusable, wasn't it?".

Huntley agreed with this judgement.

Mr Latham put it to Huntley that he had been playing with the emotions of that parent.

Huntley replied: "I wasn't playing with anybody's emotions."

Mr Latham then told Huntley he had appeared sympathetic to Mr Wells, telling him he had been "the last friendly face that those two girls" had spoken to.

Huntley agreed.

Mr Latham asked: "Did you regard yourself, now that the memories have come rushing back, as a friendly face to those two girls?"

Huntley answered: "I was a friendly face, yes."

Asked why he had sought out one of the girls' parents so soon after they had died, Huntley replied: "I wanted to say sorry to him."

Mr Latham pointed out that Huntley had said in the interview: "I keep reliving that conversation and thinking perhaps that something different could have been said, perhaps kept them here a little longer, maybe changed events."

Mr Latham continued: "It was a barefaced lie, as had been the entire fortnight."

Huntley answered: "Yes, it was."

The QC then pressed Huntley on his expression of hope that the two girls would return safely.

Mr Latham said: "Words uttered by you, the person who had dumped these two bodies in the ditch, Mr Huntley."

The lawyer then continued: "You could stand and face the camera and face the interviewer and tell barefaced lies, that's what they are, aren't they?"

Huntley said that he did not want to do the interviews but "they didn't leave me with much choice".

Huntley, 29, denies murdering the ten-year-old schoolgirls but has admitted one charge of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

His former girlfriend, Maxine Carr, 26, denies two counts of assisting an offender and one of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

The case continues.