Child Killer Robert Black Dies in Maghaberry Prison at 68
Convicted of murdering four girls in the 1980s, Black died weeks before police were due to send prosecutors a file on Genette Tate, missing since 1978.
Published
Robert Black died at Maghaberry Prison in Northern Ireland on Tuesday, January 12, 2016. He was 68. Police said in a short statement that they had attended "the sudden death of a 68 year old man" at the prison and that it was not being treated as suspicious.
Black, a Scottish-born van driver, had been convicted of abducting and murdering four girls in the 1980s. Jennifer Cardy, 9, left her home in August 1981 to meet a friend and never arrived; her bicycle was found abandoned, and six days later her body was found near Hillsborough, County Down. Susan Maxwell, 11, of Cornhill-on-Tweed, was taken a year later. In July 1983 Caroline Hogg, 5, disappeared from near her Edinburgh home after witnesses saw a scruffy man watching her in a playground and then holding her hand in an amusement arcade. Three years later Sarah Harper, 10, ran an errand to the corner shop near her home in Brunswick Place, Morley, outside Leeds, and was bundled into a van. Her body was recovered from the River Trent near Nottingham weeks later.
He was already serving life for the murders of Susan, Caroline and Sarah when, in 2011, he was convicted of Jennifer's murder, and the judge told him he would be at least 89 before he could be considered for release.
His death ended something else as well. Devon and Cornwall Police had long suspected him in the 1978 disappearance of Genette Tate, 13, who vanished while delivering newspapers in Devon and was never found. After 38 years they believed they finally had enough evidence to bring a case and were due to send a file to prosecutors the following month. "Professionally it's a huge disappointment," said Detective Superintendent Paul Burgan, "not only for myself but for the rest of the investigation team, some of whom have worked on this inquiry for up to ten years." Genette's father, John Tate, said he had been trying to see Black in the hope of learning where she was, "and giving her a funeral," but never got the chance. Her mother, Sheila Cook, said a charge would have been empty. "We still wouldn't have known what happened or where she is," she said. "I am sorry for us, I'm sorry for them, but not for him."
Black never acknowledged any of it. Investigators had once tracked his movements around the country through his petrol receipts, and after the three Scottish and English murders West Yorkshire Police reviewed fifteen unsolved killings of young girls and came to suspect him in eight, according to the investigative journalist Tim Tate. Those suspicions were never tested in court. Bob Bridgestock, a retired detective who had worked the Sarah Harper inquiry, said he had gone to the grave when "he could have given closure to a lot more families."
In County Down the old wound opened again. Dolores Kelly, a local SDLP member of the Assembly, remembered searching in vain for Jennifer Cardy and said she still drove past the spot where her bike was left "on almost a daily basis."
What this story covers. The death, the police statement, the four victims and how they were taken, the 2011 sentence and the judge's remark, and Dolores Kelly's words come from TheJournal.ie's report of January 12, 2016. Sarah Harper's last errand, the Genette Tate inquiry and the words of Paul Burgan, John Tate, Sheila Cook, Bob Bridgestock and Tim Tate come from ITV News Calendar's report of January 13. The two reports differ on how long Sarah's body lay undiscovered, three weeks in one and a month in the other. No cause of death had been made public in these reports. Black was never charged over Genette Tate, and the wider suspicions remain unproven.
Sources
- Child killer Robert Black has died in prison, TheJournal.ie
- Death of child killer leaves many questions unanswered, ITV News Calendar