More pics PHOTO GALLERY
originally published 05/06 16 9:06pm | last updated 21/09/16 1.21am
my opinion is in PURPLE links are in BLUE Robert Black quotes in ORANGE all else quoted from source
ROBERT BLACK aka SMELLY BOB Born April 21st 1947. Died January 12th 2016 (aged 68)
Robert Black (born 21 April 1947 in Grangemouth, Scotland) is a Scottish serial killer and child molester. He kidnapped, raped and murdered three girls during the 1980s, kidnapped a fourth girl who survived, attempted to kidnap a fifth, and is the suspect in a number of unsolved child murders dating back to the 1970s throughout Europe.
Early life
Robert Black was born in Grangemouth, about 20 miles from Edinburgh, on the Firth of Forth. His natural mother -Jessie Hunter Black [24] was unmarried & earning a meagre amount as a factory- worker & was really in no position to care for an illegitimate baby, still a stigma in 1947. She refused to put a father’s name on his birth certificate. Within weeks of his birth, Black’s mother formulated plans to have her son adopted before she emigrated to Australia. These proceedings were never completed, and so six months after his birth. Black was fostered. His birth mother subsequently married Francis Hall, had four more children and died in Australia in 1982. Francis Hall’s niece, Joyce Bonella, recalls that Jessie “didn’t like it to be generally known that she had had a child out of wedlock. I don’t think she ever told anyone who the father was.” From the time that she gave Robert up, Jessie never had any contact with her son again & Black never had any further contact with his half-siblings. Years later Robert Black, by this time a man in his forties, told psychologist Ray Wyre, “I don’t know whether it was pressure from her parents or whether she just didn’t want me. I don’t know. I was fostered at six months.”
Black fostered by Jack and Isabel Tulip who were an experienced, middle-aged foster couple who lived in Kinlochleven near Glencoe in the West Highlands and had fostered children on several occasions previously. Robert adopted their surname. & lived there for the next eleven years, the majority of which were spent in the care of Margaret Tulip, as Jack died when Robert was just five. Black claims to have no memory of him, indeed, no memories at all before the age of five. To Ray Wyre, this unusual memory block suggests the presence and repression of some sort of emotional or physical trauma Black had been subjected to as an infant, probably at the hands of his foster-father. After all, Wyre says, “most of us can recall something, some vague, impressionistic sense of who we were” before we were five. Although locals remember Robert Black as being frequently heavily bruised as a boy, Black himself cannot recall how he got these injuries. He recalls no abusive behaviour from Jack, though he does remember how Margaret used to lock him in the house as a punishment for bad behaviour, or alternatively, pull down his trousers and underwear and spank him with a belt. At nights Robbie was scared that there was a monster under his bed waiting to get him, and used to suffer from a recurring nightmare featuring a “big hairy monster” in a cellar full of water. When he awoke he frequently found that he had wet the bed, which invariably provoked a beating.
Although his foster mother insisted upon physical cleanliness, he cared little for his own hygiene, so to his classmates at primary school Robert was known as ‘Smelly Robbie Tulip’[5] & is remembered as having been an aggressive and slightly wayward boy who showed anti-social tendencies from an early age; “A bit of a loner but with a tendency to bully”, was how one old primary school mate, Colin McDougall, put it. It seems that Black didn’t “mix in with the normal playground games”, with few friends of his own age.[4] he preferred to spend time with children younger than himself whom he could easily dominate. As Colin McDougall also remembers, “We had a gang but he insisted on being leader of his own gang. The members were always a couple of years younger than him.” Another classmate, Jimmy Minnes, remembers an incident where Black gave a boy with an artificial leg a beating: “He gave the poor lad a terrible hammering. He just jumped on top of him as he was walking over the bridge to school one day. Black just punched and kicked him for no reason.” Sudden, mindless violence perpetrated against those physically less able than himself was typical of Black as a boy
The “Dirty” Part
As he grew older his reputation as a bit of a ruffian grew. The local copper, Sandy Williams, later said that Black was a “wild wee laddie” who “didn’t give a damn – no respect for authority. He had a dangerous spirit” and “needed a smack round the ear to keep him in line.” Having said this, in the period that he was living with the Tulips, Robert never really got himself into any serious trouble: he had childish fights, played up at school, and bullied the younger children, yet he seemed to avoid anything more serious than a rebuke from Williams for swearing in front of ladies. But in addition to this propensity for petty violence, Black was also developing a precocious sexual self-awareness. At the age of five, Black and a girl the same age compared their genitalia; this incident triggered a childhood belief within Black that he should have been born female, and he developed a deep interest in his genitalia, the genitals of female children, and body orifices. At the age of seven, at his Highland Dance classes, he remembers being far more interested in lying on the floor and looking up the girls’ skirts than dancing. At the age of eight while looking after a neighbour’s baby, he took off her nappy to look at her vagina. Both vaginas and anuses fascinated him, and he was obsessed with discovering how big they were, how much they could hold.
Years later Black remembers the emergence of a practice which began while he was living with the Tulips and would continue, and intensify, as he matured:. “I used to push things up my anus,” Black told Wyre, “I was eight years old.” When asked what objects he would use, Black replied – holding his fingers about eight inches apart – that it was usually “a little piece of metal” – After his arrest in 1990 police found photographs that Black had taken of himself: one showed him with a wine-bottle up his anus, another with a telephone-handset, yet another with a table leg. Black explained to the incredulous officers that he wanted to see just how much he could fit up there. – At around the same age Black also remembers fantasising about excreting on his hands and then rubbing the faeces in. He also always had an uneasy feeling that he would have preferred to have been a girl – although there was certainly nothing feminine about his behaviour, he was by no means homosexual in his desires.- he simply hated his penis and would have preferred to have had a vagina. We have here a nice inversion of the usual Freudian model, wherein women envy men the presence of the penis, whereas the lack, or absence, that Black experienced all of his life was that of the vagina. His life-long practice of self-penetration seems to have been an enactment of this vagina-envy.
It is interesting to speculate what he was looking for – what could the orifices hold that he might discover? To search the vagina for some large hidden content is like a regressive version of the fantasy of searching for the origins of the self. If one looks up there, knowing how much it will hold, might one not encounter the ultimate secret: the baby, oneself? For one who had never known his parents, never had access to his birth-mother, and may subsequently have been abused, what a compelling obsession, to look into that darkness to see what it might have contained.
There is the further fascination, of course, with the anus, which may be thought of as the Thanatos to the Eros of the vagina. But a child’s first fantasies are cloacal, it is the hole that fascinates, and the functions are not so closely differentiated in infantile fantasy. As the child grows more self-aware, the anus, of course, is differentiated as the remover of waste, though it may continue to exercise its old childish fascinations – so much so that Freud calls an entire personality type, formed round a matrix of characteristics such as tightness and the tendency to withhold emotion, the anal personality type. That Black was universally characterised as messy and smelly his entire adult life, also suggests some further manifestation of his compulsion to play about with the ‘dirty’ part of himself.
Black lived with the Tulips until Margaret died of natural causes in 1958. It was the worst possible thing that could have happened. Black was only 11, and was once again deprived of a mother. He was placed with another foster family in Kinlochleven. Shortly after his placement he committed his first known sexual assault; he dragged a young girl into a public lavatory and sexually fondled her. When his foster mother learned of the incident, she reported the offence to social workers, and insisted that he be placed in alternative accommodation. Black was sent to the Redding Children’s Home near Falkirk, close to the place of his birth. It was during Black’s time there that his fascination with sex, and particularly with the vagina, finally drove him across the line from childish experimentation to criminal behaviour. The fascination with the secret of birth, the hidden contents of the womb, was clearly exacerbated by the loss of the second mother. At the age of 12, Black, along with two other boys, made his first inept attempt at rape.
He told Ray Wyre: “Me and two other boys went into a field with a girl the same age. We took her knickers off, lifted her skirt and all tried to put our penises in.”
They attacked a girl, but found themselves unable to complete the act of penetration, so the boys contented themselves instead with touching the girl’s vagina. When asked if she was consenting to this, Black told Wyre: “I was forcing her, like, you know?”
The incident was exposed and the authorities decided that Black would be better suited to a home with stricter discipline, not to mention an all-male environment. Black was moved to the Red House in Musselburgh. Here, having been sent away as an abusive bully and potential rapist, Black swiftly found that he had changed roles. For at least a year, possibly two, out of the three that Black was at the Red House, a male member of staff – now dead – regularly sexually abused him. The man’s custom, apparently, when the time approached for his current victim to leave, was to force him to recommend another boy to take his place. Robert Black was recommended. Black later described the form that the abuse took: the man, he said, “Made me put his penis in my mouth, touch him, you know… He did try to bugger me once, but he couldn’t get an erection.” Even before his time at the Red House, Black had associated sex with dominance and submission. This association was now cemented in his mind. Now in the position of victim himself, he empathised and identified with his abuser: from the abuse perpetrated upon him, Black concluded that it was acceptable to take what you wanted without regard to other people’s feelings.
It was while Black was at Red House that he also entered Musselburgh Grammar School.He was slightly above average academically, but it was sport that he was really interested in, especially football, swimming and athletics. When he later moved to London, in his early twenties he was given a trial for Enfield Town. Unfortunately his poor eyesight put a career in professional football beyond his reach. His love of swimming continued throughout his adult life, and he even worked as a life-guard for a time which was ideal fuel for his paedophilic fantasies. As a boy at the Red House Robert often walked from Musselburgh to nearby Portobello where there were two swimming-pools in which he would practise. Over 20 years later a little girl called Caroline Hogg was to be abducted from Portobello, and later murdered. Caroline’s house was on the route between the two swimming-pools
In the summer of 1962, aged 15, Blacks time at the Red House was up. With some help from the authorities, Black got a job as a delivery boy and found a room to rent in a boys’ home in Greenock, outside Glasgow. He later admitted that while he was doing his delivery rounds he molested 30 or 40 girls.
He told Ray Wyre that if “there was a girl on her own in the flats where I was delivering, I’d like sit down and talk to her for a few minutes, like, you know, and try and touch her: sometimes succeeded, sometimes not.”
Amazingly none of this behaviour seems to have been officially reported, and it was not until a year later that Black’s first conviction came about. On a summer evening in 1963, Black (17) —loitering in a local park—met a 7 year old girl playing alone on the swings. After talking with her for a few minutes, he lured her to a deserted air-raid shelter on the pretext of showing her some kittens. Inside the shelter, he held the girl by the throat until she lost consciousness, before masturbating over her body, & then running from the scene. Black told Ray Wyre that:
“I took her inside and I held her down on the ground with my hand round her throat… I must have half-strangled her or something because she was unconscious…When she was quiet I took her knickers off and I lifted her up so as I was holding her behind her knees and her vagina was wide open and I poked my finger in there once.”
He then “laid her down on the floor and masturbated” over her inert body. Her lack of consciousness, far from detracting from his pleasure, enhanced it. When he left the girl in that derelict building he didn’t know – nor, it seems, care – whether she was unconscious or dead. She was later found wandering the streets: bleeding, crying and confused. The following day, Black was arrested at his lodgings and appeared at Greenock sheriff court, charged with lewd and libidinous behaviour.[13] But before his court appearance on 25 June, Black was subject to a psychiatric examination, the official report of which suggested this incident had been an isolated offence, and that he was not in need of further treatment. Unlike the psychiatric report, however, the Social Services probation report viewed the incident as more serious and it was decided that Black should leave Greenock and return to Grangemouth to make a new start.
Here he got a job with a builders’ supply company and rented a room with an older couple. & he met his soon to be girlfriend Pamela Hodgson at the local youth club. Pamela was his only known girlfriend; they dated for several months. According to Black, they were deeply in love & had a sexual relationship. He had even asked Hodgson to marry him, but was devastated when she abruptly ended their relationship, in part due to his unusual sexual demands. Years later he still remembers the ‘devastation’ he felt when a letter arrived from Pamela after some months telling him that it was over. Perhaps she had heard some of the gossip that was circulating about her boyfriend and his sexual preferences. Or, indeed, that she was beginning to experience them at first hand.
In 1992 after Black had been served with ten summonses, including three for the murder of three little girls, in an attempt to shift the moral responsibility he told officers: “Tell Pamela she’s not responsible for all this.” This, of course, implied the opposite: that the break-up of their relationship had left him so devastated that she had driven him to murder. Black’s mounting obsession with little girls, and his fascination with their vaginas, did not disappear during his relationship with Pamela – although he may have had less opportunity to act out his desires – Although Black claims that while he was seeing Pamela he did not molest any girls, he was forced to leave Grangemouth for just that.
In 1966 Black’s landlords discovered he had repeatedly molested their nine-year-old granddaughter when she visited their household. Out of fear of the trauma to which their granddaughter might be subjected if authorities were informed, Black’s landlords did not notify police, but ordered him to leave their house. Shortly after, Black was fired from his job, and he returned to Kinlochleven where he was raised. He took a room with a couple who had a 7 year old daughter. As before, Black molested the girl. This time, however, when the sexual abuse was discovered, the police were notified. On 22 March 1967, Black was sentenced to a year of borstal training, to be completed at in Brightons The borstal specialised in training and rehabilitating serious youthful offenders, and although he later freely talked about every aspect of his youth and adolescence to criminologists —including the sexual abuse he had been subjected to at the Red House Care Home—he refused to discuss his experiences at Polmont Borstal beyond saying he had vowed never again to be imprisoned. This has led to speculation that he may have been brutalised there.
In September 1968, six months after his release from Polmont Borstal,[4] Black left Scotland and moved to London, He initially found lodgings in a bedsit close to King’s Cross station. This was when Black began to collect child pornography, with much of it bought from a contact he had met at a King’s Cross bookshop. At first, this material was in magazine and photographic format; he then expanded his collection to include videos depicting graphic child sexual abuse
Between 1968 and 1970, he supported himself through various—often casual—jobs. One of these was as a lifeguard at a Hornsey swimming pool; where he was sometimes able to go underneath the pool and remove the lights to look at little girls as they swam. At night he used to break into the baths and swim lengths – with a broom-handle lodged up his anus. Black was a keen photographer, and he occasionally discreetly photographed children at locations such as swimming pools; he stored these images alongside his pornographic material inside locked suitcases, and most images taken were of girls between the ages of eight and 12.[20] It wasn’t long before Black became the subject of a complaint from a girl who claimed that he had touched her. The police were called but luck was on Black’s side and despite his record he was not charged with any criminal offence, although he lost his job.
Although he avoided criminal convictions in the 1970s his obsession with young girls was growing, fuelled by his discovery of child pornography. In the 1970s Black discovered that magazines such as Teenage Sex and Lollitots were clandestinely available, particularly in places like Amsterdam where the pornography laws are less stringent.
While Black lived in London & wasn’t working, he spent a lot of time in pubs playing darts. He became a reasonable player, and became a well-known face on the amateur darts circuit. Most of his spare time was spent in pubs: drinking (although never heavily), playing in various darts teams, or doing part-time bar work. Although he enjoyed going to pubs, Black never made any good friends as he was a solitary man. Michael Collier, the former landlord of the Baring Arms in Islington where Black played for the pub team, recalls that: “for all the years he drank in my pub you would never have called him a mate. He always drank pints of lager shandy but he never got involved in rounds. When he wasn’t playing darts he just stood by the fruit machine. He was a bit of a wind-up merchant and enjoyed irritating people, particularly women… He never talked about himself and he never spoke about his interests or joined in conversations.”
The former world darts champion, Eric Bristow, who knew Black from the amateur darts circuit in north London similarly remembers him as “a loner” who “never turned up with a girlfriend or anything. He just wasn’t the type. He was a regular guy who would come into the pub and play darts.”
Black met Eddie and Kathy Rayson in a pub in Stamford Hill in 1972. They got chatting and Black told them how he needed a place to live. The Raysons’ attic room was free, and although Eddie wasn’t too keen initially, Kathy said that Black seemed like a “big softie” so they decided to take him in. After Black’s conviction in 1994, Eddie Rayson remembered Black as “a perfect tenant. He always paid the rent on time and never caused us any problems.” He used to eat meals with the couple and their children (who had nicknamed him ‘Smelly Bob’), and they occasionally went up to his room to listen to music or play cards, but other than that they rarely saw him. Although Eddie Rayson says that he “was a bit like a father to him”, Black never talked to him about personal matters or his past. Eddie and Kathy’s son, Paul, says of Black, “He was a bit odd and as kids growing up we called him names mainly because he smelled. But he was an ideal tenant.” In fact, he was “more than just a tenant but not what you would call a friend… not the sort of person you would ever be able to get close to, or would want to.”
The Raysons say that Black was a keen photographer and they sometimes jokingly called him David Bailey. It later transpired that one of his favourite pastimes was to go to the seaside or a playground which was frequented by young children and video them playing or take snap-shots of them. Photography not only serves as a source of images that can be chosen to excite but it is also frequently used in a documentary sense: to provide the killer with a chronicle of his own history. As such, of course, the killer becomes the hero of his own world: the maker of it, the director, the protagonist.
In 1976 Black began to work for a firm called Poster Dispatch and Storage (PDS) as a driver. His job was to deliver posters to various depots around England and Scotland. It was ideal work for him: he was a bad time-keeper so it suited him to keep basically to his own schedule, and as a loner he found driving for hours by himself an agreeable way to earn a living. He worked for PDS for the next ten years until his employers were forced to dismiss him as he was constantly getting involved in minor car accidents and costing the company a fortune in insurance payments. Luckily for Black, shortly after his dismissal PDS was bought out by two employees who gave him his job back. He continued to get into scrapes, but he was a hard worker and was always glad to cover for his work-mates, doing the longer runs which the other drivers disliked as they interfered with their family commitments. Black frequently did the London to Scotland run, often stopping in the Midlands on his way back to see the Raysons’ son John and his new family.
In the back of his van he would keep various objects as masturbatory tools, to be inserted up his anus while he fantasised about touching young girls. He later told police that he would get into the back of his van on night runs and dress himself in girl’s clothing, particularly swimming costumes, while he was masturbating. He told Ray Wyre that over the years the recollection and image of the assault in which he had left the seven-year-old girl for dead kept returning. The assault would have been replayed and extended in Black’s mind so often that when it finally drove him to his first murder it seemed a perfectly natural progression to him. But the fantasy is never totally fulfilled, the deep anger and frustration never finally resolved and tragically the cycle of fantasy and murder repeats itself. There is always the desire to re-enact the sequence in the quest for ultimate fulfilment.
When Black’s room was eventually searched by police in the 1990s they found over a hundred child pornography magazines and over 50 video tapes, with titles such as Lesbian Lolita. When Ray Wyre asked Black what he thought the age of consent should be, Black replied approvingly that someone had once told him that his motto was, “When they’re big enough, they’re old enough.”
11-year-old Susan Claire Maxwell, who he abducted on the afternoon of 30 July 1982 – Susan had asked her mother, Liz, if she could cycle to the tennis game which she was going to play with her friend Alison Raeburn. Liz was reluctant to let Susan cycle on her own as she was worried about the traffic, but after some consideration she told her daughter that she could walk if she liked. Susan had never yet walked anywhere alone, but at some point a child has to be allowed to start the process of independence. The Maxwells lived in a farmhouse outside Cornhill on Tweed, a small village on the English side of the English-Scottish border. Susan’s tennis game was across the Scottish border in Coldstream. In the end Susan didn’t walk to her game as one of the farm-workers going into Coldstream offered her a lift, but she planned to walk back. When four o’clock came and it was time for Susan to be walking home, Liz decided to go and pick her up. Liz remembers, “She wasn’t expecting me. But I thought, ‘It’s a very hot afternoon; after she’s been playing tennis for an hour, she’ll be hot and sticky and too tired to walk back.’ So I put the wee ones in the back and we went over.” On the way there, where Liz was expecting to encounter Susan on her way home, there was no sign of her. At the Lennel Tennis Club and on the return journey to the farm, Susan was still nowhere to be found. A phone call to Susan’s friend Alison quickly established that she had left Susan making her way home. “I started to panic then”, said Liz, “and Fordyce [her husband] said to just phone the police straightaway.”
She was seen by several eyewitnesses walking the two miles from the tennis courts to her home; at 4:30 pm she was last seen alive crossing the bridge over the River Tweed.
The following day, a full-scale search was mounted, involving police from both sides of the border & search dogs. At the peak of the search, 300 officers were assigned to it full-time; their search involved house-to-house inquiries and grew to include a thorough search of every property in Cornhill and Coldstream and, with assistance from fell rescue teams, over 80 square miles of terrain. Several people spoke of seeing a white van in the locality, with one witness stating the van had been parked in a field gateway off the A697, although the model of the van was unknown.
Many people had seen Susan that afternoon, both people who knew her, and people who simply remembered a little girl, dressed in yellow, swinging a tennis racket. These sightings of Susan were numerous until a certain point just over the Tweed bridge, yards across the border into England. She was seen as she crossed the bridge by several people at about half past four and then she was gone. Northumbria police appealed for volunteers nearly two thirds of the population of Cornhill joined in the search. Fordyce himself went out every day with the search parties. As the Maxwells were journalists themselves, they spoke to the press constantly in the belief that it could only be beneficial to keep Susan in the public eye. It was after one such media event that the news which they had been dreading finally arrived, two weeks after Susan’s disappearance.
On Friday 13 August Liz and Fordyce had been on Radio 2 talking of Susan’s abduction and appealing to the public for information. When they returned, the police were waiting for them. Liz recalls: “He said they’d found a little girl. And I remember he wouldn’t say the word ‘dead’. He just said: ‘This little girl is not alive’. And that was when the sort of coldness spread right through me.”
On 12 August, Maxwell’s body was found by lorry driver Arthur Meadows. She was in a ditch next to a lay-by on the A518 road at Loxley, just outside of Uttoxeter in the Midlands, 250 miles from where she’d been abducted. She was fully clothed save for her shoes and underwear. She was identified via dental records.[36] The precise date and cause of her death could not be determined due to the advanced state of decomposition. The only clue was that Susan’s pants had been removed. Her shorts were then replaced, her pants folded beneath her head. This confirmed suspicions that the motive for the attack was sexual, though what form this took has never been established. Maxwell had been bound, her mouth had been gagged with sticking plaster The Coroner’s inquest concluded Maxwell had died shortly after she had been abducted Evidently, Maxwell remained in Black’s van—alive or dead—for in excess of 24 hours, as his delivery schedule encompassed Edinburgh, Dundee, and finally Glasgow, where he made his final scheduled delivery close to midnight on 30 July. The following day, Black returned from Glasgow to London, discarding the body in a copse beside the A518 road near Uttoxeter, 264 miles (425 km) from where Maxwell had been abducted.
One of the most promising leads came from Mark Ball, a psychiatric nurse, who claimed to have seen a little girl matching Susan’s description hitting out at a maroon Triumph 2000 with a tennis racket on the day Susan was abducted. His evidence was finally dismissed by the police, although not until some 19,000 drivers of maroon Triumphs had been questioned.
If anyone can help me wi any info about Triumph 2000s I would be very grateful, because I really don’t know anything about cars!
After almost a year the inquiry began to draw to a close. The manual database now comprised of about 500,000 hand-written index cards. Yet despite all the data, the investigation had reached a dead end; and like the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry, the investigation was also in imminent danger of swamping the police by generating such an immense amount of un-computerised information.
A year after Susan Maxwell’s murder, on Fri 8th July 1983, in the seaside resort of Portobello on the outskirts of Edinburgh, Caroline Hogg {5} & her mother Annette had just taken her grandmother to the bus-stop. They returned just before seven o’clock that evening and Caroline asked to go down the road for a few minutes play before bed-time. It was usual for Caroline to go to the playground, But it was only a short walk from their house, and Annette said she could go for five minutes..{her house was also on the route between two swimming-pools} Like Coldstream, Portobello is a small community where the residents all know each other.
At 7.15 Annette sent her son Stuart to look for his sister. Unable to find her, Annette herself went, soon the whole family were looking for Caroline. The police were called just before 8pm. Many people had seen Caroline and some of the sightings werewith her abductor. There were reports of Caroline holding hands with a “scruffy man”. This man was seen looking at the girl in the playground, and then at Fun City, the place forbidden to her, where he paid for her to go on the children’s roundabout. They were last seen walking out of the back entrance of Fun City, still holding hands.
Caroline was abducted on Friday, by Sunday the police had more than 600 volunteers who went over every inch of the local area for any sign of her. A week later there were 2,000 people. It was the largest search ever carried out in Scotland but they would find nothing, as Caroline, like Susan, had quickly been transported many miles south. Annette and John Hogg spoke only once to the media, in a press-conference where John begged to her abductor, “just bring her back… Please, let her come home”; Annette, crying, told the public, “We really miss her. I really miss her.” There seemed to be no leads, as Superintendent Ronald Stalker candidly told the press, “I am afraid that all we have to say at this stage is that we have turned up nothing at all.”
Caroline’s body was found on 18 July, in a ditch at a lay-by close to the M1 motorway in Twycross; Leicestershire [39] near to the A444, the road that goes from Northampton to Coventry. Her body had been left around 310 miles (500km) from her home & just 24 miles (39 km) from where Maxwell’s body had been found the previous year. The cause of death could not be determined due to decomposition
Because of the obvious similarities between the murders it was decided by the Chief Constables of the four forces now involved – Northumbria (Susan was abducted), Staffordshire (Susan was found), Edinburgh (Caroline was abducted), and Leicestershire (Caroline was found) – that the investigations into the murders should be made into a joint inquiry. Deputy Chief Constable of the Northumbria police, Hector Clark, was put in charge. From the outset Clark had been told that part of his objective in this inquiry was to see how computers could be used to aid such an investigation. It was the first opportunity since the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry for the police to see how the early use of computers in a serial murder investigation could be beneficial.
As the amount of data from the Susan Maxwell investigation alone was immense Clark thought that the joint inquiry would be most efficient if this was computerised, which would involve transcribing all the manual files onto a computer database. The Caroline Hogg inquiry would be fed into the same database as it progressed. The idea was right, yet it was not given the go-ahead as it was felt that too much time would be spent in back-converting the files. Instead a computer programme was written for the Caroline’s inquiry alone, and the Susan’s investigation was to remain manual.
In Portobello, witnesses were interviewed & inquiries were made; in Leicestershire, officers sat for weeks by the A444 taking down the registration numbers of cars that passed. LIO’s (local intelligence officers) from every force in the country were asked to draw up lists of possible suspects. The houses of men who were established to have been on the promenade that night for ‘immoral purposes’ were searched; holiday-makers from as far as Australia were asked to send in rolls of camera or cine-film taken. A reconstruction of Caroline’s last journey was staged; parking tickets issued were examined; and an artist’s impression was drawn up of the ‘scruffy man’ which prompted more than 600 names to be put forward. Perhaps the most hopeful lead was from a Mr and Mrs Flynn who saw a blue Ford Cortina with a man and a “scared-looking” young girl in it. 20,000 drivers of blue Cortinas were interviewed. Unfortunately, as with the maroon Triumph, the lead turned out to be a red herring
& Jul 20th 1983
Three years later, on March 26, 1986, Sarah Harper (10) went missing from Morley in Leeds. At 8pm Sarah’s mother, Jacki, asked if one of her children would go to the corner shop for her. Sarah volunteered, Taking £1 from her mother and picking up two empty lemonade bottles to get the deposit on them, Sarah left her home in Brunswick Place to go to K&M Stores on Peel Street, just over a hundred yards from her house.
The shop proprietor, Mrs Champaneri, clearly remembers Sarah coming in. She returned the lemonade bottles, and bought a loaf of white bread and 2 bags of crisps. She left the shop at 8.05pm and shortly afterwards two girls who knew her saw Sarah walking home to Brunswick Place via the ‘snicket’, an alley used by locals as a short cut. Then, like Susan and Caroline, she disappeared
When she had not returned by 8:20 pm Jackie, and sarah’s sister briefly searched the surrounding street. 9pm the police were called and once again searches and inquiries were swiftly set into motion. Once again they proved fruitless.
19 April, David Moult was walking his dog by the River Trent in Nottingham when he spotted “something floating in the river. I thought it was a piece of sacking then the current turned it round and I realised it was a body.” Sarah’s partially dressed, gagged and bound body floating in the River Trent near Nottingham, () 71 miles (114 km) from the site of her abduction.[67] It was later determined Sarah had been put in the river at around junction 24 of the M1 when she was still alive An autopsy showed she had died between five and eight hours after her abduction, and that the cause of her death was drowning; injuries she had received to her face, forehead, head and neck had most likely rendered her unconscious prior to being thrown into the water.[32] Harper had also been the victim of a violent and sustained sexual assault prior to being thrown into the river, causing pre-mortem internal injuries which the pathologist described as “terrible”. As Ray Wyre later described it, “Sarah’s assailant had violently explored both her vagina and her anus.”
It fell to – Terry Harper – Sarah’s father, Jacki’s ex-husband to identify his daughter’s body: “It was worse than I ever dreamed of”.
Although Hector Clark was careful to keep an open mind, he believed at the time that Sarah’s abduction and murder was not connected to those of Susan and Caroline. The differences, he said, outweighed the similarities. Susan and Caroline were both abducted on hot July days, in colourful summer clothes; Sarah was abducted on a cold, dark, rainy night in March, her small body covered with an anorak. Both Coldstream and Portobello are on, or near, main roads, commonly used routes through which many travellers pass; Morley is not the sort of place you go without a reason. This initially lead Clark to believe that Sarah’s abduction was committed by a local man who knew the area well.
In retrospect, however, the similarities, although perhaps fewer in number, were certainly more telling. All of the victims were young girls who had been skilfully abducted from public places for a sexual purpose. They were all driven south and murdered, their bodies dumped in the Midlands, within 26 miles of each other. Sarah may have been subjected to a more vicious attack than the other two girls (although the evidence is inconclusive), but if anything this pointed to, and not away from, the same offender being responsible. In serial murders the attacks can often do get more violent, as the killer gains confidence and needs more and more acts of violation and mutilation to keep him aroused. Therefore it would not be surprising if the murder of Sarah was more extreme in its sexual brutality than the murders of Susan and Caroline
Initially the investigation into Sarah’s murder was conducted as a separate inquiry, led by DS John Stainthorpe of West Yorkshire police. Yet close links were maintained to the joint Maxwell/Hogg inquiry in order to keep all avenues open. The same painstaking inquiries were made in the case of Sarah as had been with Susan and Caroline. People who had seen a white van parked by and near Sarah’s house were interviewed, and an artist’s impression of a strange man who was seen on the street and in K&M Stores was circulated. LIO’s were again asked to draw up lists of men who had committed similar offences, and they were all interviewed. A witness later contacted West Yorkshire Police to say that at approximately 9:15 p.m. on 26 March, he had seen a white van with a stocky, balding man standing by the passenger door, parked close to the River Soar. The Soar is a tributary to the Trent
Dec 11th 1986
1986
Attempted abduction in the Nottingham district of Radford {} not initially deemed by Police to be linked to the three child killings, thus remained unreported to Clark or senior investigators. The victim of this attempted abduction, Teresa Thornhill, (15) was 4 ft 11 in tall, which may have led Black to think she was younger She had been at the local park with boyfriend, Andrew Beeston, before they walked home. The pair had parted company at the end of Norton Street when Thornhill noted a blue Transit van slowing to a stop ahead of her; the driver got out, raised the bonnet and asked “Can you fix engines?” With that, Black clasped his arms across her mouth and tried to drag her into his van. Thornhill resisted: writhing and kicking as she attempted to get free from what she later described as his “bear hug” As he wrestled her to his van, Thornhill squeezed his testicles, causing him to loosen his grasp enough for her to bite into his right forearm. Black shouted, “Oh! You… bitch!”, & Thornhill began to scream, she wedging her feet on each side of the door frame as she struggled not to be forced into the van.[39] At the same time, Beeston ran towards them shouting, “Let go of her, you fat bastard!” Black loosened his grip on Thornhill, got into the driver’s seat and sped away[89]
Police investigation
The three bodies were found within 26 miles of each other, and police already believed that the murders were linked. Detectives also thought that, because all three victims had been left long distances from where they had been taken, that the killer travelled as part of his occupation – possibly a lorry driver. The police faced great pressure to solve the crimes, as some newspapers compared them to the Moors Murders. It was one of the first inquiries to widely use the HOLMES computer system, following recommendations in the aftermath of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation.
I had a quick look mysel, the 3 bodies were all found VERY close.. in between the 3 is Ashby-de-la-Zouch & Burton Upon Trent Burton being the closest to all 3 being only 14, 15 & 19 miles away (approximately)
|
Mandy Wilson (6) 14 July 1990, Black attempted to abduct Mandy from Stow in the Scottish Borders and Mandy was walking to her friend’s house to play. As she walked down the road one of her neighbours, David Herkes, watched her approach a van with its passenger door open. Herkes later told the police in his statement that as he bent down to look at his mower blades, “All I could see were her little feet standing next to the man’s. Suddenly they vanished and I saw him making movements as if he were trying to stuff something under the dashboard. He got into the van, reversed up the driveway the child had just come from and sped off towards Edinburgh.”
Herkes had the presence of mind to take the van’s registration number, and then quickly rang the police. Within minutes, six police vehicles had arrived in the village, where they were met by Herkes and the schoolgirl’s distraught mother.[93] Herkes recalls what happened next: “I was standing near the spot where the child had been abducted, briefing the police and the girl’s distraught father about what had happened. Suddenly I saw the van again and shouted ‘That’s him’. The officer dashed into the road and the van swerved to avoid him before coming to a halt.” One of the officers who had raced to the scene of the abduction was the father of the abducted child. While officers handcuffed the man who identified himself as Robert Black, Mandy’s father, Mr Wilson, recalls: “I shouted at Black ‘That’s my daughter – what have you done to her, you bastard?!” But his reaction was nil, he had no expression. I could have got my hands round his throat there and then, but my concern was for my daughter, not him. Where was she? Was she alive or, God forbid, dead? upon seeing movement in a sleeping bag. The girl’s father then untied the drawstring sealing this bag to discover his daughter with her wrists bound behind her back, her legs tied together, her mouth bound and gagged with sticking plaster, and a hood tied over her head. “I can’t tell you how I felt as I unwrapped her from the bag and saw her little face bright red from the heat and lack of air. She was so terrified as I untied her and took the tape from her mouth that she didn’t utter a word.”
How lucky was it that Henke just so happened to be there to witness it all?! & it just so happened to be a coppers kid that Black had snatched. AND the SAME copper just so happened to be 1 of the 6 who “within minutes” had “arrived in the village” That was DEFINATELY lucky!!
For all the 6 coppers knew, Mandy coulda been dead in the van- as Wilson himself pointed out “Was she alive or, God forbid, dead?” – but yet daddy copper was allowed by workmates to go into the back by himsel? There were 6 of them! Even if it took four to keep a hold o Black, that still leaves 1. So why was Daddy cop allowed anywhere near the van? Far less in it & also to be the 1st person to go in??
Henke said Mandy was bundled into the front. So presumably Black musta stopped somewhere & put her into the back then bound, gagged, & had a look before sticking her into the sleeping bag. Which I can only imagine would take at least 5 mins ish? So where did he stop? Did the coppers pass him on their way in to the village?? They would have known they were looking for that particular van & in which general direction it was headed as Henke remembered to take note o the Reg, so would have given full description etc when he phoned and reported it.
Henke said, “He got into the van, reversed up the driveway the child had just come from and sped off towards Edinburgh.” Mandy was going TO her friends, Henke was her neighbour, So therefore she musta just left from her own house. So AFTER bundling Mandy Wilson into his van, Black then reversed up in to the Wilson’s driveway?? Really? That was either hellava stupid or hellava brave. Black didn’t know who was at home or whether he had been seen.. BIG risk no??
Then Henke said “I was standing near the spot where the child had been abducted, briefing the police and the girl’s distraught father about what had happened. Suddenly I saw the van again and shouted ‘That’s him’. The officer dashed into the road and the van swerved to avoid him before coming to a halt.” So they were standing near the Wilson’s drive & he suddenly saw the van again? So Black came back? & a copper dashed into the road? so the van was VERY close, & must have been going to drive pass them all. 6 coppers, 2 per car. that’s 3 cop cars & 8 people {that we know of} all in the street. You coulda seen them a mile away. & Black returned to scene o crime, ignored all the coppers etc & tried to drive passed them?? This is the same bloke who in an effort 2 get away as quick as possible, had just reversed up the Wilson’s drive before speeding off towards Edinburgh.. Why the hell did he go back to the scene?! Also the very same man who had evaded capture & left every police force in several countries totally baffled for decades. That doesn’t make any sense. He had got Mandy & got away.. Why did he go back?? That doesn’t sound right at all.
“Within minutes, six police vehicles had arrived in the village” So obviously not local village coppers so I assume the came from Selkirk cop shop as that is where they took him to after. If so, according to google maps that would take approx. 26mins So the cops would have entered Stow from the south & if we take what Henke said, Black was already heading north towards Edinburgh Except Black said “When I’d done the delivery in Galashiels down the road, I would have assaulted Mandy sexually.” Galasheils is South & approx. half way between Stow & Selkirk
Before Black had tied Mandy’s hands behind her back, covered her mouth with Elastoplast and shoved her into a sleeping-bag, he had sexually assaulted her. He later told Ray Wyre that, “I pulled her pants to one side and I had a look. I thought I’d just sort of stroked [her vagina]… but there was bruising on the inside – I don’t know how.” He then told Wyre what he would have done if he had not been caught:
“When I’d done the delivery in Galashiels down the road, I would have assaulted Mandy sexually. I would have probably stripped her from the waist down, but I would have untied her and probably took the plaster off her mouth. And if she called out when I was assaulting her, then I might have put the gag back on.”
“I thought I’d just sorta stroke it, but there was bruising” & “I would have assaulted” both imply that he hadn’t done anything sexual to he. although, by his own admittance he would have, but he hadn’t & then he got caught.
According wiki Shortly after her rescue, the child victim of this abduction was examined by a doctor, who discovered she had been subjected to a serious sexual assault.[91] The schoolgirl was able to pinpoint the lay-by on the A7 where Black had sexually assaulted her before returning to Stow. (Black’s intention had been to quickly make a final scheduled delivery to Galashiels before further abusing and almost certainly killing his victim.[91])
More specifically, Wyre quotes Dr Baird, psychologist for the Crown, who Black told that,
“he would have put things into her vagina ‘to see how big she was’. He would have put his fingers in and also his penis. When asked about other objects, he agreed he might have put other objects into her vagina, and when asked for an example, he saw a pen with which I was writing… ”
When Wyre asked Black how he could do such a devastating thing to a child while simultaneously claiming (as he had done previously) that he loved children, Black admitted that “I wasn’t thinking about her at all… like, you know, what she must be feeling”. If she had died “it would have been a pure accident”.
Black said “but there was bruising on the inside – I don’t know how.” Black had NO REASON to make that up. Lying about that wouldn’t have been beneficial to him in the slightest. I think he was telling the truth.. IF he was, surely it begs the questions, how the hell did she have bruising there? Had she already been abused? & If so, by whom??
On the way to Selkirk police station Black told officers that the abduction was “a rush of blood” and added, “I have always liked little girls since I was a kid.” He said that he had just wanted to keep her until he had done his next delivery and then he would have “spent some time with her”, maybe in Blackpool. Then he would have let her go.
Aye? Very good, except I found this…
“Sergeant William Ormiston, of the Lothian and Borders police force, told the court that he had spoken to Black in an unmarked police car after his arrest and he had said:
‘What a day it has been. It should have happened on Friday the 13th . . . It was a rush of blood. I have always liked young girls, since I was a kid.’
Sgt Ormiston went on to say that Black had told him he intended taking the girl to Blackpool to spend some time with her and he would then have ‘let her go’”. HERE
{Fri 13th was the day before} Why SHOULD it have happened on Fri 13th? Was there a reason for Fri 13th in particular? Special day? It occurs to me, if he was just kidnapping kids for his own sexual gratification, then he could do that whenever he liked, but the words SHOULD HAVE happened… Well, I d’no, but it sounds to me like it was pre planned & there was somebody else 2 answer to? Almost like he was kidnapping to order or something?!? Or even, with the speed the cops arrived & Black going back to the scene o the crime… Was his capture a set up? STRANGE
Robert Black’s case came to trial on 10 August 1990. As the evidence in this particular case was overwhelming Black had little choice but to plead guilty. In light of the plea the job of the prosecution was simply to give the facts of the case, which the Lord Advocate, Lord Fraser, did, stressing that medical opinion said that Mandy would probably have been dead within the hour if she had been kept bound and gagged in the sleeping-bag. Dr Baird’s report for the Crown said that Black was, and would remain, a danger to children. The task of the defence was to speak in mitigation. To this end, Herbert Kerrigan said that Black had admitted to liking little girls but had never before acted upon his desires. The abduction had been a one-off, and Black merely wanted to spend some time with Mandy; he did not intend to injure her, certainly not to kill her. Furthermore, Black had accepted that he was a threat to children and, said Kerrigan, “wishes to engage in some sort of programme to get assistance”.
Dismissing the arguments of the defence, the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Ross, described Mandy’s abduction as being “carried out with chilling, cold calculation.” “This was”, he said, “no ‘rush of blood’, as you have claimed. This is a very serious case, an horrific, appalling case.” Lord Ross sentenced Black to life imprisonment and told him that his release would not “be considered until such time as it is safe to do so”
I agree. It was cold & calculated. Black was not in an adrenalin induced fluster nor was he confused. He had done this several times before, He would have known EXACTLY what he was doin. All o which just makes me more convinced. HE WOULD NOT HAVE GONE BACK…. Not unless he was deliberately TRYING to get caught????
On December 16th 2009, Black was charged with the murder of Jennifer Cardy, a 9 year old girl whose body was found at McKee’s Dam () near Hillsborough, County Down in August 1981.
The first murder Black is proved to have committed, but the last he was convicted for, was that of Jennifer Cardy, who was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered on 12 August 1981— two weeks after her 9th birthday.[27] Cardy was last seen by her mother, Patricia {dad’s name Andy} at 1:40 p.m. as she cycled from her house in Ballinderry , County Antrim, to play with a friend; when she had not returned home to watch Jackanory, her family telephoned her friend’s parents, learning their daughter had not arrived there. Cardy’s parents reported their daughter missing to police, who started a search for the missing child.
Hours later, Cardy’s bicycle—covered with branches and leaves—was discovered less than a mile from her home. The stand of the bicycle was down, suggesting that she had likely stopped her bicycle to converse with her abductor.[27] Despite extensive police inquiries, and an intense search of the area aided by 200 local volunteers,[28] no potential eyewitnesses to Cardy’s evident abduction could be located.
Six days after Cardy’s disappearance, two duck hunters discovered her body 16 miles (26 km) from her home, in a reservoir near a lay-by alongside a dual carriageway in Hillsborough.[30] The pathologist called to the scene noted signs of sexual abuse on Cardy’s body and underwear;[31] a full autopsy concluded she had died of drowning—most likely accompanied by ligature strangulation.[31] The watch she had been wearing had stopped at 5:40 p.m.,[32] suggesting she had died four hours after her abduction.
While Cardy’s abduction and murder initially remained unsolved, her body, was found at McKee’s Dam () near Hillsborough, County Down near a major arterial road between Belfast and Dublin, & was a traffic route frequented by long-distance delivery drivers,[33] and the possibility was never discounted that Cardy’s murderer worked in a profession which required him to travel extensively.[33] here | here
According to wiki…
The trial of Robert Black for the sexual assault and murder of Jennifer Cardy began at Armagh Crown Court on 22 September 2011 {9/11}.[146][147] He was tried before Judge Ronald Weatherup, and acknowledged that he may have been in Northern Ireland on the date of Cardy’s abduction, but pleaded not guilty to the charges.
As in his 1994 trial, circumstantial evidence attesting to Black’s guilt of Cardy’s murder had been obtained by Northern Ireland investigators searching through petrol receipts—560,000 in total—stored in his former employer’s archives to ascertain Black’s whereabouts on the dates surrounding the abduction and murder. Black’s trial began with the prosecutor, Toby Hedworth, stating that the discovery of Black’s signature upon these receipts was as good as signing his own confession.[148]
On the second day of the trial, prosecutors introduced into evidence petrol receipts proving he had been near Ballinderry on the date of her abduction. Further evidence presented at trial included a salary ledger proving Black had been paid £50, which had only been given to drivers from his firm who made deliveries to Northern Ireland, and an order book confirming a delivery of billboard posters had been due near Ballinderry on the date of the abduction
- Tragic Jennifer Cardy’s final few hours – BelfastTelegraph
- Robert Black convicted of murder of fourth schoolgirl
The police suspected Black of the murders of Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper due to his occupation as a van driver, which gave him opportunity to travel far and wide, as the killer of those children had evidently done, not to mention his recent and past convictions.
They checked his petrol receipts which placed him in the appropriate locations and eventually charged Black with all three murders, in addition to the attempted kidnapping of a 15-year-old girl who had escaped the clutches of a man who had tried to drag her into a van in 1988.
In the spring of 1994, Black stood trial. He denied the charges. The prosecution were able to place him at the scenes and show the similarities between the three killings and with the kidnap of the six-year-old girl who had been rescued (juries are not usually allowed to know of a defendant’s current or past convictions, but in this case the judge allowed it)
Wonder why? Was it because there was no actual evidence so they needed all the help they could get?!
On May 19, the jury found Black guilty on all counts, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment and told that he should serve at least 35 years behind bars before being considered for parole. This would keep him behind bars until at least 2029, when he will be 82 years old if he is still alive.
Police have asked Black about the disappearance of up to nine other girls whose fates remain unknown, but have not made progress. The files on these missing children all remain open.
Robert Black by Anna Gekoski
Search for Justice
Of course the abduction of Mandy Smith made Black a prime suspect for Hector Clark, as the MO was strikingly similar to that in the cases of Susan, Caroline and Sarah. When Clark first saw Black following his arrest in July 1990 he remembers,
“Slowly he looked up at me and my gut feeling was that this was my man. I had always thought that when I saw him I would know him and every instinct told me this was the guy. I knew by his body smell and his dishevelled appearance. Except that he was bald, he was just as I expected.”
But “gut feeling” and “instinct” are not good enough. In spending so much time analysing such crimes, the police inevitably start to feel that they know the offenders in certain ways. They think they know what they will look like and how they will behave. George Oldfield, heading the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry, similarly said on several occasions that if he were in a room full of potential suspects he would instantly ‘know’ his man. But as the Ripper investigation showed us, this is a dangerous assumption. Peter Sutcliffe was interviewed nine times during the course of the five-year investigation, but nobody ‘recognised’ him.
In the hope of eliciting some incriminating evidence, {Does that not say it all!} the police decided to interview Black. As he was already serving a life sentence they thought that he might be willing to talk about any other crimes he had committed.
Interviewed in Scotland, Black talked candidly to officers about the offences for which he had previously been convicted, for the best part of six hours. He was frank about a variety of topics, including his one proper relationship with a woman, his attraction to little girls, the sexual abuse he had endured as a child, his fantasy life, and his masturbatory practices. Eventually however, when the officers asked Black about his work with Poster Dispatch and Storage and his whereabouts on the day of Caroline Hogg’s abduction, he fell silent. When it came to the abductions and murders of the three little girls, Black would simply not talk to the police.
So Black spilled his guts & told the truth about everything he had done & the way he felt etc. He admitted a lot of stuff that he really didn’t have to.. Stuff that wasn’t even illegal, repulsive but not illegal!! BUT AT NO TIME DID HE EVER SAY HE MURDERED ANYONE, He didn’t even hint at it. He did not talk about it. Perhaps because If he didn’t do it, he wouldn’t know the details to tell would he?? Or perhaps because he was protecting someone(s)?? Or perhaps because he was being heavily leant on? I d’no. But there is still no evidence Black killed anyone.
It was apparent that the police would have to find their evidence the hard way, through old-fashioned, painstaking detective work: they were going to have to look at Black’s life over the past eight years. In most cases the tracing of a person’s daily movements over the past decade would prove an impossible task, but in this case the police were fortuitous due to the nature of Black’s work. From a careful examination of work records, wage books, and receipts from fuel credit cards, the police were able to begin tracing Black’s life.
Looking for evidence? Or losing some? Or creating some? all of which are possible
Susan Maxwell’s abduction had taken place in Coldstream on 30 July 1982. It was the task of the police to establish where Black was at every stage during that day. The first step in the process was to see whether PDS had records of journeys carried out by drivers dating that far back. The police were initially dismayed to find that potentially vital company records had been destroyed just months beforehand, {Imagine that? How conveniently inconvenient!} as was company policy after a certain length of time had elapsed. Yet new hope arose when it was established that the wage books from that time were still available. As different runs command different wages it was established – from the amount of money that Black received in his pay – that he must have done the London-Scotland run sometime between 29 July and 4 August. The time still needed narrowing down, however. The police next looked at petrol receipts from the company’s fuel credit cards that all drivers carried and it was established that Black had been in the Borders area on 30 July. He had filled up his white Fiat van just south of Coldstream before the time that Susan was snatched, and just north of Coldstream after the time of her abduction. The quickest route between the two garages was the A687, directly through Coldstream. Black had previously told his work-mates that when returning from a Scottish-run he preferred not to take the most direct route (which was the M6 to the M1) but to get to the M1 via the A50 through the Midlands. Susan’s body was found by the A518 in Staffordshire, not far from the junction for the A50.
So nothing other than he was in the approx area at roughly right time? SO WERE A LOT O PEOPLE!! Black admits 2 being a child raping paedo. they were trying to find EVIDENCE that PROVES he committed murder
The case against Black for the murder of Caroline Hogg was built in a similarly meticulous fashion. On 8 July 1982, the day of Caroline’s abduction, it was established that Black had delivered posters to Mills and Allen in Piershill, just over a mile north of Portobello. Petrol receipts showed that he had filled up at a petrol station in Belford, Northumberland, on this day and that the most obvious route from Belford to his delivery point in Piershill was through Portobello. The post-mortem had found that Caroline’s body had been kept by her killer for four days after her abduction – dead or alive, they could not determine – making the 12th the first day on which her body could have been disposed. On this day Black had delivered posters to Bedworth, just over ten miles from where Caroline’s body was found.
They couldn’t tell if he had kept her dead or alive?? Eh? had she been alive then there would be 4 days less decomposition/deterioration?! & if they couldn’t determine dead or alive, then how the hell could they possibly determine number of days he kept her?? & anyway, there is no proof that HE personally kept her. Coulda been anyone that kept her IF she was kept at all.
The circumstantial evidence for the case of Sarah Harper was equally strong. {can be as strong as it likes. it still aint proof of murder}. On 26 March, the day of her abduction, Black had delivered posters to a depot just 150 yards from the place that Sarah was last seen. Petrol receipts from the next day put Black as driving directly past the spot on the A453 to Nottingham where Sarah’s body had been deposited. {That IS strong CIRCUMSTANTIAL evidence}
In addition to the growing mountain of circumstantial evidence another incident came to Clark’s notice. On 28 April 1988, 15-year-old Teresa Thornhill had been to the park with some friends. Teresa walked part of the way home with one of these friends, Andrew Beeson. Just after she and Andrew had gone their separate ways, Teresa noticed that a blue van had stopped just ahead of her on the opposite side of the road; the driver had got out and was looking under the bonnet. As she approached, the man shouted to her: “Can you mend engines?” Uneasily she replied that she could not and walked on. The next thing she knew, the man had grabbed her from behind, picked her up and was carrying her across to his van. She said later:
“I will never forget his hairy arms, sweaty hands and smelly T-shirt. He came over to me and got me in an all-encompassing bear hug which I could not get out of because he was very strong. I tried to struggle free and began shouting for my mum. I was looking around for something to hit him with, but there was nothing there. Then I grabbed him between the legs.”
She also knocked his glasses to the ground, screaming all the while. Teresa’s friend Andrew heard her screams and ran towards the van shouting, “Get off her, you fat fucking bastard.” Teresa’s struggle and Andrew’s timely arrival meant that her attacker had little choice but to drop his victim and make his get-away. Was Black fat in 1988??
Unfortunately, at the time there was nothing to obviously link Teresa’s attack to the abductions and murders of Susan, Caroline and Sarah. Most importantly, these girls were aged between five and 11, whereas Teresa was 15, nearly a woman. Teresa looked far younger than her years, however: she was under five feet tall, with a girlish figure, and wore no make-up. She did not look like a teenager. If this had been taken into account at the time, the abductions would have seemed remarkably similar. If this case could be shown to be linked to the murders, then it was an important breakthrough as Teresa’s description of her attacker and his van matched Black exactly.
So NOBODY actually identified Black? A fat bloke that has hairy arms that wears glasses & stinks… I could name several o them!! & he had a similar blue van
By the end of 1990 the police had gathered a mass of circumstantial evidence against Black, but unfortunately they had **no forensic evidence and no confession**. They decided to re-interview Black more rigorously, but for three days he refused to answer any of their questions, as was his right. The police had no real choice but to proceed with what they had. {NOTHING is what they had} In May 1991 the police submitted their report to the Crown Prosecution Service who would decide whether to go ahead with a prosecution. In April 1992 Black was served with ten summonses.
A “Murderer for All Seasons?”
Yet it would be another two years before the case was tried. Aside from the fact that there were 22 tons of evidence {circumstantial} that had to made available for the defence to examine, there were many difficult legal problems to sort out in the preliminary hearings. Firstly there were jurisdictional questions to clear up, given that the crimes had been committed across two countries with different legal procedures. Additionally, the prosecutions’ case relied upon being allowed to present the murders as a series, while the defence applied for severance of the charges. Finally, the abduction of Mandy Wilson was an issue under hot debate. The prosecution needed to present it as evidence of the defendant’s unique MO, whereas the defence wanted it precluded from proceedings. The submission of a past offence as evidence of the commission of a present offence is called ‘similar fact evidence’ and is notoriously controversial. It is usually only permitted when the past offence is ‘strikingly similar’ to the present. In Black’s case it was allowed. The pre-trial rulings were all made in the prosecution’s favour and at last the case was ready to come to trial.
As most of his crimes had been carried out in England it had been decided that this was where Black would be tried. Mr John Milford, leading for the Crown, began his opening speech at two o’clock on the afternoon of Wednesday 13 April 1994 in the Moot Hall in Newcastle. Ultimately he aimed to prove that the murders of Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper, and the abduction of Teresa Thornhill, were all part of a series committed by the same person; and that this person had to be Black. There was no forensic evidence nor any admissions of guilt from the defendant himself, so the case was to be based upon evidence which, while admittedly circumstantial, was still very strong. Black had been in all the abduction points and the places where the bodies had been dumped at the pertinent times; descriptions given by witnesses matched Black’s appearance at those times; on the days in question Black was driving the types of van spotted at the scenes; and he had already admitted to an abduction in 1990 which bore exactly the same unusual MO as the offences for which he was now being charged.
Circumstantial evidence DOES NOT PROVE HE KILLED ANYONE!! I am NOT SAYING he wasn’t there, I am not even saying he didn’t kidnap & rape these poor bairn. BUT I am saying there is no evidence he killed so much as a bloody spider!! For a start, anyone could have known his route…
Milford highlighted to the jury the similarities between the murders in order to prove that they were all committed by the same man, which was his first essential point:
- All the victims were young girls.
- All were bare-legged, wearing white ankle socks.
- All were taken from a public place.
- Susan and Caroline were both abducted on hot July days
- All were abducted in a vehicle of some sort; Susan and Sarah were both abducted in Transit-type vans.
- After abduction, all the victims were taken some miles south.
- All the bodies showed signs of a sexual motive for the attack:
- Each victim was obviously taken for sexual gratification.
- Susan Maxwell’s pants were removed, Caroline Hogg was naked and Sarah Harper was found to have suffered injury.
- None suffered any gross bruising or broken bones.
- Both Susan and Sarah had been unclothed and then reclothed; all three victims had their shoes removed.
- No real attempt was made to hide the bodies.
- All the bodies had been dumped in what became known to police as the ‘Midlands Triangle’, a 26-mile area encompassing parts of Nottinghamshire, Staffordshire and Leicestershire.
These murders, said Milford, “are so unusual, the points of similarity so numerous and peculiar that it is submitted to you that you can safely conclude that they were all the work of one man.” And this one man, as overwhelming evidence would prove, was Robert Black. “The Crown alleges that Robert Black kidnapped each of his victims for sexual gratification, that he transported them far from the point of abduction and murdered them.”
Having outlined the similarities in the murders, Milford moved on to the charge of the abduction of Teresa Thornhill in Nottingham in 1988. This case clearly had the same features as the previous abductions: {NOT SAME similar maybe but NOT SAME} Teresa was a girl (who looked younger than her 15 years) who was snatched off a busy street in the north of England by a scruffy looking man driving a van. After detailing the similarities, Milford told the court that on that very day Black was delivering posters to a firm in Nottingham in his blue Transit van, and the description that Teresa gave to the police of her attacker matched photographs of Black at the time. When police searched Black’s room after his arrest they found a paper from 1988 with a report in it about the attempted abduction. Teresa also told police that her attacker smelt strongly; the Rayson children had nicknamed their lodger ‘Smelly Bob’, and Eric Mould, Black’s former boss at PDS, told the court that his workers used to complain that Black was unclean and had bad body odour. {AYE! So do a lot o people! strong circumstancial. Still doesn’t prove he murdered anyone}
Following Justice Macpherson’s pre-trial ruling the court were next told of Black’s arrest for the abduction and assault of Mandy Wilson in Stow in July of 1990. Milford said that Black had admitted to this abduction and assault and that it had all the hallmarks of the three murders and the abduction that he now stood trial for. In fact, the crimes were “virtually carbon copies. At Stow he was repeating almost exactly what had happened at Coldstream.” Milford continued, {WE KNOW he is a paedo raping kidnapper. DOESNT make him a murderer}
“The little girl in Stow was wearing shorts when she was taken, was bare-legged and was wearing white socks. She was to be transported many miles south. Again it was the end of the week, it was July and it was hot. Stow and Coldstream are similar villages only 25 miles apart… Even more remarkably, like Susan Maxwell, the little girl was wearing yellow shorts.” SO? Right he didn’t dress them that morning! & what? Did he plan the kidnappings around the colour of their shorts!!
Black had admitted to the abduction of Mandy Wilson; this abduction was a ‘carbon copy’ of that of Susan Maxwell; the abduction of Teresa Thornhill and the abductions and murders of Caroline and Sarah were carbon copies of Susan’s abduction and murder, ergo, Black committed the three murders.
{“ERGO Black committed the three murders” WHAT?!? Oh well, ergo proves it then?!?}
The prosecution had made a good start. It had detailed striking comparisons which linked the murders of Susan, Caroline and Sarah, and the abduction of Teresa, as a series. It had also shown the similarities between these offences and the one to which Black had already admitted. It was an important beginning but by itself was not enough: they had established a series, but they now had to establish that Black was the perpetrator. The prosecution’s next job was to go through the police inquiry for the court telling them exactly how the police had gathered the evidence which put Black at all the abduction and dumping areas at the salient times. At the end of this evidence, which lasted for some days, Milford sardonically concluded that either Black was the killer, or a similarly perverted “shadow” of Black was following him around the country – a shadow who also had convictions for sexual assaults on children and a penchant for child pornography. The murders of Susan, Caroline and Sarah, and the abduction of Teresa, were all committed by one man and Robert Black had been present at all the pertinent sites at the these times.
“or a similarly perverted shadow of Black” That IS possible, unlikely but STILL A POSSIBILITY
Deputy Chief Constable Hector Clark was saved for last. Clark described the mammoth investigation as “the largest crime inquiry ever held in Britain”. The computer held details of 187,186 people, 220,470 vehicles, and interviews with 59,483 people. When Milford asked Clark how unusual it was for three children to have been abducted, murdered and then dumped a relatively long distance away Clark replied that in his 39-year career as a policeman, “I have no knowledge of any other cases with these features.” The case for the prosecution was closed.
There had been much speculation as to how Ronald Thwaites would conduct the case for the defence. Certainly the prosecution had no forensic evidence nor did it have any help from the defendant himself. But equally Black had not offered any alibis which the defence could use, nor did it have any other alternative suspects. Thwaites also had a self-admitted child abductor and molester to defend. The only realistic path to take was to acknowledge Black’s previous known offences and admit to the court that yes, this was a “wicked and foul pervert” but argue that this did not necessarily make him a murderer.
Thwaites said that Black had become “a murderer for all seasons”, a scapegoat for the desperate police who, after an eight-year investigation, had got no further than from where they had started. “This series of cases,” said Thwaites “reeks of failure, disappointment and frustration.” When Black was arrested for the abduction in Stow, officers “set to work to dissect the whole of his life”, with total disregard for anything that didn’t fit into their picture of events. Thwaites told the jury of Black’s previous convictions in Scotland for ‘lewd and libidinous’ behaviour, and spoke of the paedophilic pornography found in Black’s room. Of the abduction of Mandy Wilson he said that, “The judge saw it fit to give him a life sentence. No one can be surprised by that and everyone must applaud it. Black’s lifelong interest in children is further confirmed by the haul of pornography in his home. It is revolting and sickening to look at.” But, he said,
“However wicked and foul Black is, and I am not here to persuade you to like him or find any merit in him at all, it is not unreasonable to suppose that there might be some evidence to adorn the prosecutions case other than theory. This case has been developed before you using one incident of abduction, which he admitted, as a substitute for evidence in all these other cases. There is no direct evidence against Black.”
By evidence of course, he meant that of a forensic variety, as there was plenty of other evidence to link Black to the murders. Although it was the prosecution who had called James Fraser of the Lothian and Borders police forensics laboratory his testimony benefited the defence. Fraser testified that he and four to six other scientists had spent six months working solely on this case, examining over 300 items belonging to Black, “almost all his worldly goods”. When Thwaites asked him, cross-examining, “Have you been able to make a scientific link between this man, Black, and any of these murders?”, Fraser replied, “No.” (The prosecution did, however, regain some credibility by asking Fraser if he would expect, after a decade, to find any significant forensic evidence to which Fraser replied that he would not.)
Thwaites alleged that as both the police and the prosecution were so certain that Black was their man they refused to look elsewhere. The Crown had “tried to match together a new suit made from oddments, but it is full of holes whereas the original suit has been left – until discovered by my team.” Black himself, said his defence, would not be testifying on his own behalf as nobody could be expected to remember routine details of their lives going back over ten years. But the truth was that the girls’ killer or killers were still out there.
WITNESS 1 – Thomas Ball as their star witness who testified that on the day of Susan’s abduction he saw a young girl hitting a maroon Triumph with a tennis racket. “She was making quite a lot of noise,” he recalled, “It seemed to be a child throwing a fit of temper.” He said that there were two or three people inside the car; the driver was a teenager with a wispy beard. When later shown a photograph of Susan by police he said he was “certain” it was the child he had seen.
WITNESS 2 – Sharon Binnie who told the court how she and her husband had seen a dark red saloon car like a Triumph 2000 parked in the same place as Thomas Ball described;
WITNESS 3 & 4 – Joan Jones and her husband, who had also seen a dark coloured car in a lay-by
WITNESS 5 & 6 – Alan Day and Peter Armstrong who had similarly seen red saloon cars.
WITNESS 7 – Michelle Robertson, who was a young girl at the time of the murders, testified about seeing a “scruffy” man in a blue Ford Escort
WITNESS 8 & 9 – Kevin Catherall and Ian Collins claimed to have seen red Fords.
This evidence did not further the case of the defence, however, as none of the people associated with these cars were doing anything remotely suspicious, they were simply in the vicinity of the abductions when they occurred.
Ultimately the question for the jury to decide, said Thwaites, “is whether it may be proved he graduated from molester to murderer. There is nothing automatic about that. The prosecution”, he said dramatically, “has conducted their case here from beginning to end without letting you into an important secret. The secret is that there is no evidence against Black.”
On Tuesday 17 May Mr Justice Macpherson sent the jury away to begin their deliberations. It was not, however, until the morning of the third day – the 19th – that the jury finally agreed upon a verdict. When they found Black guilty on all counts, a sigh of relief went around the courtroom. Mr Justice Macpherson sentenced him to life for each of the charges, adding that for the murders “I propose to make a public recommendation that the minimum term will be 35 years on each of these convictions.”
As Black was taken down he turned to the 23 officers who were there to hear the verdict and said, “Well done, boys.” At a cost of some £1m to the tax-payer the trial was over and Black would not be eligible for parole until he was at least 82, in 2029. To this day Black has never admitted his guilt to the police. But in his last talk with Ray Wyre, when Wyre asked why Black had never denied the charges to him, Black replied that he hadn’t done so because he couldn’t.
That IS NOT an admission. He said he couldn’t, he DID NOT say he couldn’t cause he did in fact murder them nor did he say for fear of incriminating himself! Maybe he couldn’t cause he was being leant on?
NOWHERE have I found ANY concrete evidence that Black committed murder. NO forensic, NO witnesses, NO admission. There was however NINE witnesses stating there were other people/cars about. Black ALWAYS ADMITTED he was a repulsive, vile kidnapper & child rapist. & I personally think he deserved everything he got. But HE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN JAILED FOR MURDER.
HOW THE HELL did they convict him of 4 murders based on circumstantial evidence?
I d’no if the numerous sightings of a maroon triumph 2000s {or a very similar car} is anything other than coincidence. But obviously the police thought it relevant enough, as at one point as they questioned 19,000 maroon triumph owners.
“His evidence was finally dismissed by the police, although not until some 19,000 drivers of maroon Triumphs had been questioned.”
That is a lot o skanky coloured Triumphs. So I can only assume they were ten a penny?? Which is helpful!
For arguments sake, let’s say this Triumph was linked to the disappearances, *IF* it was, it is slightly more plausible that Black was being followed.. Could Black have been the kidnapper & “allowed” first shot of the girls (I know, I hated even typing that) & then did he pass the kids on to whoever was in the triumph? *IF* that was the case, the comment he made to Wyre.. “I wanted to kill her because I didn’t want her to be hurt.” and also, when he said.. “It should have happened on Friday the 13th” That would also fit in with someone else being involved or possibly kidnapping to order.
Which all proves nothing, but I think it is worth baring in mind as it is a possibility.
Recriminations
The question is really why Black was not identified as a suspect at any stage. After Black’s trial criticism was directed at Hector Clark from the media and, more distressingly, from other officers on the inquiry, particularly Detective Superintendent John Stainthorpe who had headed the Sarah Harper investigation. Stainthorpe’s criticism was that Clark had defined his parameters too narrowly when looking at men with records for sexual offences as potential suspects. Clark had confined his search to men who had been convicted of serious sexual offences: the attempted or actual abduction, rape or murder of a child under 16. Black however, had been convicted of ‘lewd and libidinous’ behaviour – a charge which did not match the severity of the offence – with a seven-year-old girl in Scotland in 1967. Stainthorpe said that if Clark had included all sexual offences Black would have been a first-class suspect straight away, or at the very least would have been in the system: “Black should have been arrested years ago, with his history and convictions.”
Clark was quick to defend himself to the press and public: “We just couldn’t check on everybody,” he said, “It would have overloaded the system to an unmanageable extent.” He argued that criteria based on the most likely suspects had to be utilised, and given that the charges being investigated were for murder, looking at those offenders with convictions for more serious offences seemed the most sensible way to proceed.
However, when we look at research done into the backgrounds of serial killers we see that if they have any past convictions they are hardly ever serious and usually not sexual. John Christie, Ian Brady Colin Ireland and Fred West had previous convictions for offences such as theft, fraud and breaking and entering. Peter Sutcliffe, Dennis Nilsen, Myra Hindley and Rose West had no criminal records at all before their convictions for murder. But Black was not just – or primarily – a serial killer, he was also a paedophile and unlike serial killers paedophiles often do have past convictions for sexual offences. These offences, however, may often be relatively minor. Thus if the investigation was to be centred around the creation of suspects based on previous form, Stainthorpe was right to say that even minor sexual offences needed to be included. But of course this was not a viable way to conduct the inquiry. In this sense, at least, Clark was right: the creation of a database with all sexual offences committed in the past 20 years on it, and the subsequent investigation of the offender, was not a task the inquiry could manage.
Brady worked for Arthur Thompson the Glasgow Godfather here who in turn worked for MI5 & was pals wi The Kray twins here & Fred West was a paedo procurer & passed the kids on! Peter Sutcliffe was Savile‘s pal here. Myra Hindley is reported to be still alive here & here & here & is linked to Savile here & to Lord Longford & David Astor here &
Just as the case of Peter Sutcliffe highlighted the need for a computer system such as HOLMES to replace the old manual system of data collation, the Black inquiry made apparent the need for a constantly updated national database of all sex offenders and killers.
The incident in 1967 hadn’t left him full of remorse or regret: these were things he told Wyre that he knew he should, but could not, feel. When looking back on the event all he felt was lust. The image of that day reformed again and again in Black’s fantasies, as he relived it and improved upon it until it was just right. The compulsion to re-enact and refine the experience in reality would have been too deep and over-powering to leave for almost 20 years.
In July 1994 a meeting was held in Newcastle to consider the possibility of Black’s involvement in similar murders. As well as possible murders in France, Amsterdam, Ireland and Germany, there were up to ten unsolved abductions and murders in England which bore Black’s MO: April Fabb who was abducted from her bicycle in Norfolk in 1969; nine-year-old Christine Markham who was snatched in Scunthorpe in 1973; 13-year-old Genette Tate who disappeared in Devon in 1978; 14-year-old Suzanne Lawrence who was found dead in Essex in 1979; 16-year-old Colette Aram who was found strangled and sexually assaulted in a field in Nottingham in 1983; 14-year-old Patsy Morris who was found dead near Heathrow in 1990; and Marion Crofts and Lisa Hession.
Wee bit of background on these girls murders….
April Fabb {13} – Norfolk
April Fabb (22 April 1955 – disappeared 8 April 1969) is a 13-year-old English schoolgirl who disappeared on 8 April 1969 between the villages of Metton and Roughton, Norfolk
Police Say No Evidence To Link Black To April Fabb
Christine disappeared from her home in Robinson Road, Scunthorpe, on May 21, 1973 and has not been seen since. She left home to attend school but failed to arrive. Police searched some 5,000 homes but she was never found. Jo kappen also prime suspect, here but he died of cancer in 1990. comment section here
Suzanne Lawrence, of Leamington Road, Harold Hill, has not been seen since July 1979, after leaving her sister in Harold Hill, Essex, and asking her to tell their mother she would be home later. Her body was never found. The case is being linked to convicted murderer and serial killer and sex offender Peter Tobin, 61, who is suspected of killing a string of young girls and women as he travelled across Britain as an odd-job man from the late 1960s until the early 1990s.
Left her home in Normanton Lane Keyworth, shortly after 8pm October 30th 1983 to walk 1.5 miles to her boyfriend’s. She was last seen at 8.10pm turning into Nicker Hill where she stopped to talk to friends. Witness reported hearing a woman screams and a car drive off at speed afterwards. The alarm was raised when she didn’t arrive at her boyfriend’s house. Police were called at 10.30pm & her naked body was found the next morning having been raped & strangled & dumped in a field about half a mile away from where had been abducted at approx 9pm. On 25th of Jan 2010 Hutchinson was found guilty & jailed for a minimum of 25 years. Hutchinson refused to tell the family why he killed Colette. On 11 October 2010, Hutchinson was found unconscious in his cell & died in an ambulance on the way to hospital. It is believed he took an overdose of medication but a post mortem was inconclusive
Patsy Morris {14} -1990 – Heathrow {Levi bellfield‘s girlfriend here & here}
Brutally raped and killed as she was cycling from her home in Basingbourne Close, Fleet, Hampshire, to Wavell School, North Camp, Farnborough, on 6 June, 1981. Former Army chef was jailed for life for the murder and rape of the schoolgirl. Tony Jasinskyj, 45, who at the time was stationed in Aldershot, was caught after traces of his DNA were found on clothing and the body of the teenager. Marion, was dragged from her bicycle as she rode to band practice in Aldershot, Hampshire, and beaten to death. In 2002 Jasinskyj, was jailed for life for murder and 10 years for the rape charge. In 2014 Jasinskyj from Kegworth Avenue, Leicester, appealed saying there was an irregularity in the DNA profile. Experts at his original trial explained that stray DNA from his victim had got mixed in with the sample. Jasinskyj argued the anomaly suggested the attacker had a chromosome disorder, which exonerated him. However, Mr Justice Phillips described this as “fanciful” and said his “fixation on an anomaly” The court heard Jasinskyj attacked Marion as she cycled by a canal in the town. here, here & here
Lisa Hession {14} 1984 – Leigh
Lisa was murdered as she walked home from a party in Leigh, near Wigan, on 8th Dec 1984. She was attacked from behind and killed in an alleyway off Rugby Road, She was found strangled within 500 yards of her home on Bonnywell Road. Her mum, Christine Hession, called the police. Within 15 minutes, officers were at her door – asking her to come to Leigh Infirmary. Christine said: “I had to go there and identify her. I felt shocked – just devastated.” here & here
Genette Tate disappeared from Aylesbeare, Devon Aug 19th 1978
Eyewitnesses reported seeing a MAROON CAR in the lane at around the time of the disappearance here
In 1988 police revealed that they had spoken to James Godfried, a multiple killer from Surrey, after he told a fellow inmate jailed in Britain that he knew what had happened to her. He hung himself in prison in Athens in 1987. here. Police.. insufficient evidence to charge Black here
THE DETECTIVES INVESTIGATING BLACK ruled him out YEARS AGO.
Detective Furzeland was subsequently able to tell our chief investigator this “We looked at Black and although he’s a bad egg he wasn’t anywhere near Devon at the time.” here
One senior officer was quoted in the Express as saying, “We know he killed Genette Tate and April Fabb, and we believe that their bodies are buried somewhere in the Midlands Triangle.”
How did they KNOW that? They couldn’t even get any evidence to link any murder to Black!!
John Stainthorpe said that in his opinion there was an 80 percent likelihood of Black being involved in the disappearance of Genette. Inquiries into these murders have been re-opened. Had these abductions and murders been linked at the time to the cases of Susan, Caroline and Sarah, the police might have unearthed useful new leads. Had they had a national database Black might have been identified as a suspect. An enormous amount of fruitless work could have been averted, a quicker conclusion reached, and lives saved.
The monster revealed his dark motives to sexual crimes expert Ray Wyre in a series of interviews following his arrest
Twisted mind: Robert Black said the only way parents could protect their children from him was to ‘never take your eyes off them’ Only one man ever got inside the evil mind of serial child-killer Robert Black .
And today the terrifying secrets he unearthed, revealed her in the Sunday People , will send a chill down the spine of every parent in the country in the wake of the monster’s death in jail.
Because Black revealed his dark side to sexual crimes expert Ray Wyre in a series of interviews – explaining in his own words how he carried out attacks and what drove him to do it.
Black, 68, died on Tuesday in Maghaberry prison in Northern Ireland, serving 12 life terms for the abductions and murders of four young girls in the early 1980s.
Police were days from charging him with the 1978 killing of Devon paper girl Genette Tate
In one of the 1990s interviews Wyre asked the killer how his victim’s parents could have protected their children from him. Black replied: “Never take their eyes off their kids, I suppose.”
The killer told Wyre he was battling to understand his lifetime obsession with attacking young girls and asked: “Am I mad or am I evil? I’ve often felt like I’m disgusted I’ve got this thing about girls. I’ve often thought, why am I like that?”
Asked by Wyre to talk honestly, Black replied: “I find it difficult because I don’t know myself. I don’t look at it so much as a crime but more as a sickness. There’s things about me I wouldn’t want anyone to know about.”
When questioned about his feelings for victims, Black said: “Maybe I’ve blotted it out.”
Talking about his first serious offence at 16 against a girl of seven in Greenock, he said:
“I was in the park. I talked to her, gave her a push on the swings. I asked if she wanted to go and see some kittens. The funny thing was we passed a policeman who knew me. I took her down to this air-raid shelter. As she started to go in, she realised it was dark inside and she started to cry. She wanted to come out. I think I put my hand over her mouth to stop her crying out. I held her down on the ground with my hand round her throat and she must have gone unconscious. I left her there and the next day I was arrested. From what I gathered she was found wandering, crying and bleeding. I very rarely think of that first incident, but when I do it’s not with erotic feelings.”
But as Wyre got under Black’s skin, the killer went into denial.
As he talked about the six-year-old girl he was caught abducting in his van in Stow in the Scottish Borders in 1990 he said he had
“offered to write to the parents of the little girl and apologise”. He told Wyre: “I wanted to kill her because I didn’t want her to be hurt.”
Hurt whom? By him or somebody(s) else?? That is STILL NOT an admission
Wyre asked: “What about the others?”
Black snapped back: “I can’t do anything about the others. It’s just going to be ‘not guilty’ across the board.”
He refused to admit he had killed Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper.
But Black did confess to Wyre about his failed abduction of Teresa Thornhill, 15, in Nottingham in 1988 – which he had denied in court.
“I called myself all kinds of idiots,” said Black.
Asked if almost being caught then had helped him control his urges for a while, he said:
“I’d say it wouldn’t have mattered if the next day I’d seen a little girl of 10 or nine. If she had been in a short skirt, I’d have probably thought ‘Cor, good lassie that.’”
Wyre, who died in 2008, also got him to talk about Genette Tate, and Black let his guard down, admitting the case got him aroused.
Black added: “I think that was how I started with the scenario with paper girls. Early morning, getting myself into a position where it would be possible to take somebody.”
But the killer continued to deny killing Susan, Caroline and Sarah.
Wyre told him bluntly: “You’re a child sex abuser, you’re a child abductor, and you were there every time. What’s your defence?”
Black said: “It wasn’t me.” Source
Black’s body was cremated at Roselawn Crematorium, outside Belfast, on 29 January. No family or friends were present. In a short service, the Presbyterian chaplain of HMP Maghaberry, the Reverend Rodney Cameron, read a section of Psalm 90.[184] In February 2016, Black’s ashes were scattered at sea.[185]
Psalm 90
Unique among the Psalms, it is attributed to Moses. The Psalm is well known for its reference to human life expectancy being 70 or 80 (“threescore years and ten”, or “if by reason of strength … fourscore years” in the King James Version), although the Psalm’s attributed author, Moses, lived to 120 years
Judaism
Christianity
Extracts from The lost chance to stop killer Black 30 years ago 28 Oct 2011
The Herald / Lucy Adams
RECORDS of sexual offences committed in Scotland by Robert Black which could have alerted police to the danger he posed before he became a serial killer were lost, The Herald can reveal.
The Herald can disclose that, tragically, records of Black’s teenage conviction for sexual offending had gone missing, and that meant he was not connected to later murders, nor caught for the murder of Jennifer, before he abducted and killed other children.
He said: “As part of the investigations, we had looked at everyone across Scotland who had been convicted of sexual or similar offences. Black had been convicted of a minor sexual offence in the old Argyll and Bute police area but the records had gone missing. It was during this time that there was a great deal of reorganisation in the police and courts, and offices were moved around. When we asked for records earlier he did not come up against the records of those convicted of sexual crimes. They looked at him but he had no record. It was not until after 1990 that we discovered he did have a conviction. When he was arrested [in 1990] we did a tremendous amount of work looking into his background, and a witness told an inquiry officer about his upbringing in care homes. The conviction in Argyll and Bute was for a sexual offence when he was a teenager. Police records were kept but these were lost in the re-organisation of the 60s and 70s. DNA was not really used. It was a different era.” Read in full HERE
The Murder Of Childhood – Tim Tate & Ray Wyre {}
Yorkshire Ripper – Tim Tate & Chris Clarke
Robert Black: the mistakes, the man & the monster Tim Tate Blog 14.01.16
CYCLE OF OPPORTUNITY: Chris Clarke
Jeanne Clarke Ex Cops wifes ordeal {Chris Clarkes wife}
Jeanne Clark, who is married to cold case expert Chris, was just 15 when she encountered a man she thinks was Black on a country lane.
She was cycling home from an open-air swimming session in St Neot’s, Cambridgeshire, when she came across the man waiting with a van parked within a farm gateway.
Mrs Clark, now 58, said: “I was cycling and spotted a dog lead in the road. I stopped and got off my bike to pick it up. It was then I realised the van was parked. This man was stood there. He didn’t say anything. He just kept staring at my legs. I was terrified.”
She added: “He was blocking my way so I went to go past then suddenly turned and pedalled as fast as I could the other way to get away. I didn’t want to go out on my own after that.”
The circumstances are similar to the unsolved disappearance of April Fabb, 13, in Norfolk in 1969.
“It was reported to the police but nothing was done about it”
Jeanne Clark
Mr Clark believes Black, 67, who is serving life for the murder of three girls between 1981 and 1986, was also responsible for kidnapping April.
And it was his research into the case that struck a chord with his wife. Last week Mr Clark, 68, obtained photographs of Black taken when he was between 11 and 16 years old, and again at the age of 32. In them his appearance looked very different from the photos taken since his conviction. The snaps jolted Mrs Clark’s memory and she is now convinced they are of her attempted abductor.
She said: “I am pretty sure that’s the face I saw that day.” She says the incident has haunted her all her life. “It was reported to the police but nothing was done about it,” she said.
Mr Clark added: “We may now submit this new evidence to help in the April Fabb case.”
Black, who was also found guilty of kidnapping a girl who was later rescued, is suspected of other unsolved child murders in the UK dating back to 1969.
Among those he is believed to have been involved in is Genette Tate, 13, who disappeared in Devon in 1978. Both Genette and April were snatched off their bikes, like other victims of Black’s. Their bodies were never found.
Mr Clark has also identified a series of similar child abductions and murders across Europe in the 1980s which bear Black’s hallmarks.
He says the killer stayed at a holiday home in the Dordogne, France, during the early 80s and regularly travelled across Europe.
He added: “There were incidents reported in Paris, Essen, Amsterdam and in Denmark that I believe he may have been responsible for. ”SOURCE
Dealing with the issue of opportunity, Sir Declan detailed “a formidable case supporting the conclusion that the appellant was in Northern Ireland on the day of the abduction”. He held that the trial judge carefully review evidence of the so-called signature method deployed by Black.
“It is, however, important to remember that the prosecution case did not depend on the scientific evidence alone as there was also evidence of alleged admissions by way of the fantasy evidence,” he added. Sir Declan confirmed: “We do not consider that any of the grounds of appeal have been made out.” SOURCE
WHAT? “did not depend on scientific evidence alone” That’s because THERE WAS NONE! “evidence of alleged admissions by way of the fantasy evidence” ALLEGED admissions & damn right the evidence was fantasy! If it’s fantasy, IT’S NOT FLOOKIN EVIDENCE!
Genette Tate’s dad was abusing her & her sis Tania here
Mandy Wilson had bruises on her girl parts here (sorry I can’t use any of the other words when I am talkin about kids!)
fri 13th here
OTHER SOURCES USED
- MURDERPEDIA
-
- wiki
- Murder UK
- Robert Black PDF 2006
- UK’s Unsolved Murders
- Doe Network
- truecrimediva
-
The Queen vs Robert Black 2013
MSM
- Genette Tate: Detectives’ bid to nail prime suspect Robert Black
- Killer Robert Black had in-depth knowledge of unsolved child murder cases
- Killers Behind Bars: The Untold Story
- Robert Black describing how he targeted kids
- Parents of Robert Black victim say he was ‘evil through & through’
- Robert Black’s timeline of terror and how monster was brought to justice
- Did Black kill 18 girls?
-
Robert Black may have killed 16 children in his 18-year spree, says ex-cop
- Blacks Police Interview
READ MORE
- Inside the horrific and twisted mind of serial child killer Robert Black
- Robert Black PDF spring-2006
- Robert Black ALIVE & FREE to roam the country?
- Robert Black Cremation Undertaker Premises Vandalised
- Could Robert Black Be Innocent Of Murder?
- Serial killer Robert Black linked to child abduction in Germany
- New Appeal For SANDY DAVIDSON (3) Who Vanished 40yrs ago. WHERE WAS ROBERT BLACK?
- Prisoner quizzed over paedophile Robert Black’s child killing ‘confessions’
- ROBERT BLACK: Paedophile Murderer now linked to 19 murders over two decades
- Serial Killer ROBERT BLACK, DIED In Prison
- Notorious serial killer was in Donegal when Mary Boyle vanished
- Mary Boyle: The Untold Story {full documentary}
- Spot The Paedo Child Killers & Myra Hindley is ALIVE?
- Satanic Cover Up: Fred & Rose West – Occult connection?
- Moira Anderson, Gallogley, Gartshore, Willie McRae & The Untouchables
- Circles & Rings: Major, Minor & Magic
Find out if a person has a record for child sexual offences
citizensreportuk
https://archive.org/web/
Like this:
Like Loading...
Boarded up windows at Bairds Funeral Directors who carried out the funeral of Robert Black
Genette’s dad John Tate, 73, told the Mirror
Genette’s abandoned bicycle was found in a remote Devon lane following her disapperance in August 1978
