Serial child killer Robert Black dies in prison

Child killer: Robert Black has died in prison in Northern Ireland aged 68
PA Wire
Hannah Al-Othman12 January 2016
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A serial child killer and sex attacker has died behind bars.

Scottish-born Robert Black died in non-suspicious circumstances in Maghaberry high security jail in Northern Ireland.

The 68-year-old from Falkirk was serving multiple life sentences for the murders of four schoolgirls in the 1980s and a number of other crimes.

It is thought Black could be behind several other historic killings and unsolved disappearances.

Black, who spent time living in London where he worked at a swimming pool, was a delivery driver who stalked the roads of the UK searching for victims.

His reign of terror was ended in 1990 when he was caught red-handed by police with a barely alive six-year-old girl hooded, bound, gagged and stuffed in a sleeping bag in the back of his van.

He had picked up the girl in the Scottish village of Stow, and had sexually assaulted her moments before he was caught.

After he was arrested, detectives were able to link the predator to a series of unsolved crimes in the previous decade.

In 1994, Black was found guilty of three child murders in the 1980s - those of 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper, 10, from Morley, near Leeds - as well as a failed abduction bid in Nottingham in 1988.

In 2011, he was found guilty of the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy, from Ballinderry, Co Antrim.

The killer was working in Northern Ireland at the time, for a London-based poster company.

Black had also long been the prime suspect in the case of missing 13-year-old papergirl Genette Tate, who was last seen in a rural lane in Aylesbeare, Devon, in 1978.

A Northern Ireland Prison Service spokeswoman said: "The Prison Service has confirmed that a 68-year-old prisoner has died at Maghaberry Prison.

"While this is not being treated as suspicious, the Prison Service has informed the PSNI, Coroner, and Prisoner Ombudsman. It would not be appropriate to comment further at this time."

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