00:00:08
-Stow, Scotland,
July the 14th, 1990. A six-year-old girl was walking
to her friend's house
00:00:15
in this small,
picturesque village. -A local man was working
his garden and saw a van draw up
00:00:24
and saw the wee girl's legs
walking under, as if she was walking past the
van, and suddenly disappeared.
00:00:30
-The man dialed 999,
the police rush to the scene. They manage to stop the driver.
00:00:37
When they open the back
of the van, they made a startling discovery. -That child is trussed up.
00:00:43
She has a plaster
across her mouth, she's got a bag over her head. She's minutes away
from suffocating.
00:00:51
The driver was a 43-year-old
delivery man called Robert Black,
a prolific pedophile
00:00:57
responsible for the rape,
assault, and murder of at least four young children
in the 1980s.
00:01:04
-This is a man for whom
the word "depravity" could almost be
precisely applied. -I always feel
that what Robert Black did,
00:01:14
he did to each
and every one of us. He murdered us. He took our lives. Black's reign of terror
came to an end that day,
00:01:26
but the heinous crimes
he had committed against his vulnerable
and innocent victims
00:01:31
makes Robert Black one of
the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Scotland, 2001.
00:02:03
Robert Black, a Scottish
pedophile and serial killer, had attacked children
across the U.K.
00:02:09
He was responsible
for the rape, kidnap, and sexual assault
of young girls from the late 1950s onwards.
00:02:18
-This nightmare of abduction
and sexual assault and murder of innocents -- just wee girls --
00:02:35
is particularly horrific. -Black was finally arrested
in 1990 after trying to snatch
a young girl in broad daylight.
00:02:46
He was eventually convicted
of four child murders between 1981 and 1986. His youngest victim
was only 5 years old.
00:02:56
-I think the impact
of the Robert Black case on the community
and on the nation was pretty devastating.
00:03:02
This was the end of the idea
of the innocence of childhood. After the Black case,
I think parents started
00:03:10
putting more restrictions
on their children's freedom. -Pat Cardy's 9-year-old
daughter, Jennifer,
00:03:16
was abducted
and murdered by Black in 1981, but it would take several years
before she knew
00:03:23
who was responsible
for killing her daughter. -We still miss her,
particularly our two boys.
00:03:34
When she was taken, how hard,
how difficult... how heavy it was upon them,
not understanding anything,
00:03:45
but just knowing that
she would never be there again. That was brutal. -Journalist Tim Tate
investigated Black's life
00:03:56
in the hope of discovering
why he did what he did. -They were terrible crimes. He probably killed more children
than any other convicted
00:04:06
child-sex serial killer
in Britain. -This killer's story
begins in 1947. Robert Black was born
on the 21st of April
00:04:18
in Grangemouth, about 20 miles
from Edinburgh, Scotland. -Robert Black's mother
was unmarried at the time.
00:04:25
There was a real stigma
around illegitimacy, so he was given up. Now, his mother went on
to get married
00:04:33
and to have four other children,
but she never, ever wanted anything to do
with Robert Black.
00:04:38
So, right from the outset,
this is somebody who's facing rejection
and exclusion.
00:04:45
He's somebody who has come into
the world with a stigma on him. -Black was fostered by
Jack and Margaret Tulip,
00:04:53
who lived in a remote
western Scottish village. -They were in their mid 50s. They had no previous experience.
00:05:02
They were strict,
they were God-fearing, and he's never given a name --
he's always Robert Black,
00:05:08
something that would've
marked him out at the time in that small community. -Black later alleged
that his foster parents
00:05:16
were abusive towards him. -The foster father died
when he was 5, but the foster mother continued
the abusive behavior
00:05:25
that had been perpetrated
beforehand. So, he was beaten
when he wet the bed. Here is somebody who does not
have a safe
00:05:33
or a secure home environment. This is a young boy who has got no comfort
from anybody whatsoever.
00:05:40
-From this disturbed
upbringing, Black unsurprisingly rebelled and developed an unhealthy
interest in other children.
00:05:49
-By the age of 8,
he started offending. He's already developed
sexualized behavior.
00:05:54
He's taking the time
and the trouble to peer up little girl's skirts. He has molested --
that's putting it gently --
00:06:03
a baby, and he's begun
to explore bodily orifices. This is the obsession that
will be with him all his life.
00:06:11
-In 1958,
Black's foster mother died, and he was sent to
a children's home near Falkirk.
00:06:18
His fascination
with sex continued, and along with some other boys
in the house,
00:06:24
he tried to rape
a 12-year-old girl. -I think that act, if you like, was the genesis
of Black's pedophilia.
00:06:35
-At some point,
almost every pedophile who's attracted
to a very young girl was placed in a sexual situation
00:06:45
when the pedophile himself
was immature and did not understand
what was going on,
00:06:50
or what the feelings were,
and all kinds of strange, almost morbid curiosities
are aroused.
00:06:57
-As a result of the assault, Black was removed
from the children's home and sent to a single-sex
residential home in Musselburgh.
00:07:05
-He's 12, he's isolated, he's lonely,
he's been physically abused, he's now in this highly
regimented,
00:07:14
severe,
strict disciplinarian regime. -And things would only
get worse for the 12-year-old.
00:07:22
-There was a member of staff
who had been abusing one of the boys
at this children's home,
00:07:26
and when that boy reached
the age of 16, he left the home. But before that, he was asked
to find a replacement,
00:07:33
and he essentially
recommended Black as the next abuse victim
for this staff member.
00:07:39
-Did this contribute to Black's
own offending behavior? Probably.
Was it because of it?
00:07:47
Probably not. Black had already embarked
down that road. He was already on the path of
being a serial sexual abuser.
00:07:57
-Well, it's interesting,
because the abuse that Black suffered at the home
was male-on-male sexual abuse.
00:08:07
So, one's first thought is
it wasn't a model for pedophilic behavior. Quite the opposite.
00:08:14
What happens is that
the children who are subject to that kind of abuse
become obsessive about sex,
00:08:20
especially when it happens
before or at adolescence. -The abuse continued until
Black left the residential home
00:08:30
when he was 15. He rented a room in a boys' home
in Greenock, a town just outside Glasgow,
00:08:36
and found work
as a delivery boy. In 1963, age 16, Black approached
a 7-year-old girl
00:08:45
and lured her into a disused
air-raid shelter. -He promised to show her
a box of kittens.
00:08:53
He choked her... ...until she became unconscious, and he molested her. He left her for dead.
00:09:03
She was later found wandering
on her own, in tears. -At this point, Black is
arrested for the first time.
00:09:12
-This is a really,
really significant point in the development
of Robert Black's offending.
00:09:17
This was an opportunity
to intervene. This was a chance to actually
stop that behavior spiraling,
00:09:23
or, at least, put him in a place
where he couldn't hurt people. -Although Black was convicted
of attacking the girl,
00:09:31
he was only found guilty
of lewd and libidinous behavior by the Scottish courts,
00:09:36
and was not, as he should have
been, to my mind, incarcerated. -At the time, there was just
no understanding of pedophilia
00:09:45
or what drives men to sexually abuse
and to kill children. -This callous assault would be
just the start
00:09:56
of Black's reign of terror. His depraved sexual desires toward young girls
would only escalate.
00:10:04
Black was, once again,
free to roam the streets. -I think he developed
an appetite for it.
00:10:11
I think he thought he could
get away with it after the experience
in the air-raid shelter.
00:10:16
I think he felt emboldened by the fact that no one
had actually stopped him. -In 1966, Black returned
to Kinlochleven
00:10:28
where he lived
with his foster parents. He found lodgings with a couple
and their 6-year-old daughter.
00:10:35
One evening, the 19-year-old
was babysitting the child. Unable to control his urges,
00:10:41
Black took the opportunity
to violate her. -The one thing, though, that many people
have speculated about is that...
00:10:51
...pedophiles are very immature. Not really capable,
for the most part, of adult sexual relationships.
00:10:59
And so they need to explore
their sexual fantasies and their sexual curiosity
with somebody who's weak,
00:11:07
who will surrender to them,
because no adult would. -This time, he was punished
for his behavior
00:11:14
and was sent to borstal
youth detention for a year. In 1968, Black headed to England
and rented a room
00:11:22
above a pub
in Stamford Hill, London. -While he was living
in Stamford Hill, he got a part-time job
as a lifeguard,
00:11:33
which allowed him
to indulge his appetite for taking photographs of young
girls in their bathing costumes.
00:11:42
-In those days, it was called
child pornography. It isn't pornography. It is the recording of the
sexual assault on a child.
00:11:51
That's what he was consuming -- images of very, very young
children being seriously,
grossly sexually abused.
00:12:02
-In 1976, Black found work
as a van driver delivering posters
around the U.K. and Europe.
00:12:09
It gave him the means to hide
in plain sight and act upon his depraved urges
towards young girls.
00:12:16
-So, here's somebody who hasn't really got fantastic
social skills spending long periods
of time unsupervised.
00:12:23
But these are also periods of
time in which he is fantasizing, in which he is ruminating,
in which he is planning.
00:12:30
So, this is somebody who is a very dangerous offender
in the making. -It gives him the time
and the ability
00:12:39
to seek out
potential new victims. He would spend the time
driving round and round
00:12:46
looking for an opportunity and a suitable victim. -And that opportunity
would soon arise.
00:12:55
On Wednesday,
the 12th of August, 1981, 34-year-old Robert Black had taken a delivery job
in Ballinderry,
00:13:03
a small town
in Northern Ireland. 9-year-old Jennifer Cardy was enjoying the school holidays
with her mother and sister.
00:13:12
-It was just myself
and little baby Victoria, and Jennifer was to go
to her friend's house
00:13:20
on her new bicycle. And as Jennifer went out,
she was laughing, joking, "Bye-bye," and whatever.
00:13:28
And I'll never forget how she closed the door
behind her, and how her blond hair just,
you know, came around her face
00:13:42
as she closed the door
and said, "Bye-bye." And that was the last
I ever saw her.
00:13:50
-As Jennifer set off
to her friend's house, Robert Black was lying in wait. -She was going about a mile
down the road
00:14:00
to her friend's house. This particular day, 12th of August,
would be her last time,
00:14:06
because she was to go
to a children's camp, and they were
so looking forward to it.
00:14:17
[ Whispering ] I'm sorry. -It's thought that Jennifer
stopped at the side of the road
00:14:25
to put on a cardigan,
and at the same time, encountered Black,
who snatched the young girl
00:14:31
and drove off in his van. I expected her to be home, and she was always
very punctual,
00:14:37
and at 20 past 4:00, I thought I heard her bicycle
being tinkled on the back wall.
00:14:48
You know the chain on the bike? I thought, "Oh,
there's Jennifer back." But it wasn't.
00:14:55
I never heard the little steps
run up the kitchen into the living room. -Jennifer's father, Andy,
00:15:09
had come home from work
to his anxious wife. -Pat stared at the back door,
looking so worried,
00:15:18
and when I asked her
why she was so worried, she told me that
Jennifer hadn't come home.
00:15:23
And this wasn't terribly late, and I really wasn't
terribly concerned because children are children.
00:15:30
Very hard to explain
in today's world what it's like, but in them days out
in the country,
00:15:36
little boys and little girls
cycled everywhere. The word "pedophile"
wouldn't have even been
00:15:43
in our vocabulary. I wouldn't have known
what a pedophile was, and it wasn't a danger.
00:15:48
-Pat went to look
for her daughter. -And I set out in the car, and realized very quickly
00:15:57
that Jennifer had not reached
her friend's house. I tried to keep these fearful,
panic-y thoughts to myself,
00:16:09
telling people, "Oh, it's okay. She's probably at home now." Made my way home --
She wasn't home.
00:16:17
-Growing more concerned,
Andy joined the search for Jennifer
along with a friend.
00:16:23
-And we'd found somebody
who had seen her go past him, we found another guy
who'd seen her go past,
00:16:27
and then just totally
disappeared into thin air. -At approximately 9:00 PM,
the Cardy's called the police.
00:16:35
-The police were very quick
to put into action. Quite a lot of search parties. The army was there,
the police was there,
00:16:44
the reserves were there. -Just before midnight, two local
men spotted Jennifer's bike
00:16:51
lying in a field
a mile away from her home. It had been thrown over a hedge. -The stand was in the down
position, which indicated
00:17:00
that she may well have stopped,
stood it up to talk to someone. That someone was Robert Black,
who almost certainly used
00:17:08
a not-dissimilar strategy
to attract her attention. "Oh, I've got a kitten," or, "Would you like
to see my puppy?"
00:17:17
-Well, when we realized that Jennifer was
most definitely missing, particularly after
we found her bike,
00:17:27
then we knew we had a problem. -Black was nowhere to be seen. He'd left the area soon after
00:17:33
snatching the young girl
in his van. Over 200 locals joined
the police and the army
00:17:39
to help find the 9-year old. -Everyone who lived in
Ballinderry was out on those search parties.
00:17:46
Everyone who lived
within five miles of Ballinderry were out on those
search parties.
00:17:52
No one will ever appreciate
how much Andrew and myself and the children
appreciated that.
00:18:03
-As the days passed,
the chance of finding Jennifer became less likely. -It's very hard to explain
what it feels like
00:18:12
to have a child missing. It was very hard to walk
into a room and everything you trip over
just reminds you of that child.
00:18:20
Wendy house and little things
sitting on her dressing table. -Then, on the 18th of August,
00:18:29
six days after Jennifer
had gone missing, her parents received
a phone call. -Liaison officer,
a lovely girl --
00:18:37
still very friendly with her
to this day -- called and told us that
they'd found Jennifer's body.
00:18:47
-The strange thing about that was that there was a certain
amount of relief in that.
00:18:53
If you'd been looking
and wandering for six days, you know, at least
we had found Jennifer.
00:19:00
-Jennifer's body was found by two duck hunters
in the McKee's Dam, 10 miles away from
where she was abducted.
00:19:09
Robert Black had sexually
assaulted and strangled the 9-year-old before placing her body
into the dam.
00:19:17
-When I was told I have to go
and identify her body, it was... an excitement that I was going
to see my daughter again.
00:19:24
I'll never forget the awfulness
of that when I went in, liaison officer was with me.
00:19:31
I can remember it so well
that she had to hold me up 'cause I would've fainted, so...
00:19:40
We got our --
the body of our child back, and she was given
a beautiful burial and funeral.
00:19:51
-Pat and Andy Cardy
would have to wait over 30 years before justice
was served for Jennifer.
00:19:58
Robert Black had got away
with murder, and it wouldn't be long
before he struck again.
00:20:05
In August, 1981, after murdering
9-year-old Jennifer Cardy, Robert Black left the country
and returned to work.
00:20:13
-Black continued to present
to the world the same affable, big-softy exterior
that he'd done throughout.
00:20:23
Drove back,
went about his business. It wasn't for another year,
almost, until he struck again.
00:20:32
-While he was driving his van,
he was always on the lookout for his next victim.
00:20:37
And he had, in the back
of his van, what can only be described
as an abduction kit.
00:20:43
He had bindings,
he had this sack, which he would put the child in. -On the 30th of July, 1982,
Black was on a delivery job
00:20:56
in Northumberland,
northeast England, near to the village
of Coldstream, where a young school girl
was leaving her house
00:21:04
to go and play with her friends. -Susan Maxwell is 11,
she lives with her mum and her step-dad and their
children in a little village.
00:21:16
It's a happy, warm, loving home. It's a summer, it's afternoon, Susan says she wants to go
and play tennis with her friend,
00:21:24
and it's agreed
that Susan will walk home. -The tragic, tragic irony
is that she encounters
00:21:33
none other
than Robert Black and his van. -She had begun walking home,
and at some point after 4:30,
00:21:42
which is the last time
anyone saw her, she was snatched. literally snatched -- put into the back
of Black's van,
00:21:52
and driven away. -Susan's mother had changed
her mind about letting Susan walk home
00:21:59
and decided
to pick her daughter up, but there was no sign
of her anywhere, and she called the police.
00:22:05
Tom Wood
was the Detective Inspector at the Lothian and Borders
Serious Crime Squad.
00:22:11
-We were sent down
to the borders straightaway to help with the investigation, and there were huge searches
made off the area,
00:22:20
because we thought
that she might have been thrown over the bridge,
or fallen over the bridge,
00:22:26
or might have come
to harm locally. -On the 12th of August,
a body was found near a village
00:22:34
in a lay-by
in the West Midlands, over 200 miles from where
Susan had been abducted.
00:22:43
-It was the middle
of the summer, and so the body
was badly decomposed to the extent it was some time
before we discovered
00:22:52
that it was actually Susan. -That made it impossible for the coroner to determine
an exact cause of death.
00:23:02
-Susan was found
partially clothed, indicating that she'd been
sexually assaulted.
00:23:07
The police were desperate
to find the person responsible for such a heinous act.
00:23:13
-Most people are murdered
by someone close to them, so we had to be very,
very careful
00:23:17
that we didn't go off
in flights of fancy, and that we did
our homework first. Who was with her,
when was she last seen?
00:23:24
We then looked
at local offenders. Were there any young men around who were committing
sexual offenses?
00:23:29
And then we started
on the big investigations, looking for vehicles
that were seen in the vicinity,
00:23:36
and we got absolutely nowhere
with it whatsoever. -Well, Black avoided capture simply by taking
the one precaution
00:23:45
before he kidnapped a child
of looking around to see if there was anyone
who would observe him.
00:23:51
That's all he had to do. He had no relationships
to the victim. He was willing to move bodies
hundreds of miles
00:23:57
in order to avoid capture. -Black had got away
with murder yet again. However, his depraved urges
were still there.
00:24:06
His next victim
would be even younger. On Friday,
the 8th of July, 1983, in the seaside resort
of Portobello,
00:24:16
just outside Edinburgh,
5-year-old Caroline Hogg was at home with her family. -It's a summer's evening,
she asks if she can go
00:24:24
and play on the swings outside
in the little park nearby. And they say yes. -As the 5-year-old
walked to the playground,
00:24:32
she was spotted by Robert Black, who was on a delivery job
in the area. -Robert Black would see
a target of opportunity,
00:24:42
always an attractively-dressed
young girl, and that was the thing
that was the same
00:24:47
about Susan and Caroline was they were both
attractively dressed. -Again, it's impossible
to overstate
00:24:55
how quickly Black operated. He snatched her, and it would've
taken no more than seconds --
00:25:03
drove her away. -After 15 minutes, Caroline's
brother went to look for her, but there was no sign of her,
00:25:10
and her parents called
the police at 8:00 PM. Tom Wood was, again,
part of the team
00:25:15
that was investigating the
disappearance of the young girl. -Again, we started
looking for her.
00:25:23
A lot of people had seen her,
or thought they had seen her in the area
of Portobello Promenade
00:25:29
on that summer's day. There were thousands of people
on that promenade, and the key struck a chord.
00:25:35
Because Caroline was such
a pretty, wee girl, and numerous people turned out
to help with searches,
00:25:43
and to try to support
the police in investigations. -The police issued appeals
for information to the press,
00:25:51
and the hunt for Caroline became one of the largest
search parties in Scotland, with nearly 2,000 people
looking for the little girl.
00:26:01
On Monday, the 18th of July,
10 days after she went missing, everyone's worst fears
were confirmed.
00:26:10
-Poor Caroline's body is found
in a lay-by yet again, this time in Twycross
in Leicestershire,
00:26:18
300 miles from
where she disappeared. -This was a murder that also
happened in the summer months,
00:26:26
and when her body was found,
it was, again, quite badly decomposed. So, this was another young life
taken by this predator.
00:26:34
-This time, there's not much
doubt that she's been assaulted. This poor, innocent 5-year-old
00:26:42
has been abused by a man
who shows no compassion, no conscience, no remorse. -But it's almost certain that
Black did what he always did.
00:26:56
He never saw himself as killing. He saw himself as allowing
the child to die, and that allowed him,
in his mind,
00:27:07
to carry out the awful,
horrible, painful abuse on the child's body,
which was his pattern.
00:27:18
-On examining the scene,
police found connections with another of Black's victims,
00:27:24
Susan Maxwell, whom he'd killed
less than a year earlier. -We linked the two crimes
straightaway.
00:27:31
They'd been abducted in
almost the same circumstances -- dragged off the street.
00:27:37
They'd been transported
several hundred miles. They had been deposited
not in the same location,
00:27:43
but in very similar locations. -Due to the similarities in the
murders of Susan and Caroline,
00:27:50
a joint inquiry was formed
between four police forces, but without any evidence,
00:27:55
they were still no closer
to catching the killer. Less than three years later,
Black would strike again.
00:28:03
On Wednesday,
the 26th of March, 1986, he was on a delivery job
in Leeds, near to where 10-year-old
Sarah Harper was living.
00:28:13
-Sarah lives with her mum,
Jackie, in Morley, Leeds. It's a safe, northern,
terraced street community.
00:28:23
After "Coronation Street"
is over, so 8:00 o'clock, Jackie says to Sarah, "Would you just nip
to the corner shop
00:28:30
and get us some bread?" Black has been in the area,
he's been delivering posters,
00:28:35
and he spent time,
as was his M.O., quartering those streets. At some point, just at the point
00:28:42
where Sarah is walking from
the corner shop, Black sees her. And once again, within seconds,
he grabs her,
00:28:53
bundles her
into the back of the van, and drives off, and Sarah is never seen again.
00:28:59
-Yet again, she's disappeared. A young girl has disappeared
into thin air. -When Sarah did not
return home,
00:29:08
her family grew concerned
and went to look for her, but there was no sign of Sarah,
so they called the police.
00:29:15
Days turned into weeks,
then on the 19th of April, just over three weeks later, her body was found
by a dog walker
00:29:23
near the River Trent,
Nottingham. -Her body is found
several miles away in this rough geographical area
00:29:35
that police came to call
The Triangle in the Midlands. The same rough geographical area
that Susan Maxwell's body
00:29:45
and Caroline Hogg's
body were found. -The postmortem showed that Sarah had been
sexually assaulted.
00:29:53
-Black was extraordinarily
careful. This wasn't an out-of-control, spur-of-the-moment decision
to abduct a child.
00:30:02
He planned this. He spent hours, days looking
for suitable victims. -Well, Black's modus operandi
was fairly simple,
00:30:12
similar to almost every
pedophile that I've examined. He would drive around. He would look for a child.
00:30:19
The child had to have two sets
of characteristics that was physical, that had
to do with his fixation,
00:30:25
and that second criteria
was that no adults had to be near that child
or nearby responsible
for taking care of that child.
00:30:34
-He would rehearse.
He would drive round and round. Even if he saw a child who he
thought matched his image of...
00:30:44
an ideal victim, he wouldn't abduct straightaway. He would monitor, he would
look for escape routes,
00:30:51
and only when everything
was perfect would he pounce. -For Robert Black, these girls
00:30:59
were essentially
disposable objects. He would abduct them in these
blitz attacks off the streets,
00:31:04
he'd abuse them, and then
he would just discard them. He really was the most
remorseless offender.
00:31:11
-Robert Black had now killed
four young girls in just over 4 1/2 years. His appetite for abducting,
abusing,
00:31:19
and murdering young children
would only intensify. The police had connected
the murders
00:31:26
of three of the young victims, but they were no closer
to catching the killer. But a chance encounter
would soon change everything.
00:31:35
-In July, 1990,
Black is still driving his van, and this time, he returns
to the borders of Scotland --
00:31:46
a little town called Stow. A retired post office worker
is mowing his lawn when he sees a van pull up.
00:31:55
He also sees a young girl
walk past the van. And then he sees the young girl
lifted up
00:32:02
and whisked into the van. -With great presence of mind, this guy noted the number
of this van accurately
00:32:10
and immediately
phoned the police. And the police attended,
and as they were standing,
00:32:17
discussing the issue
on this little road in Stow... -Black drives back down
the same road
00:32:24
where the same post office
worker shouts, "That's the van!" And it is the same van,
and it is Black driving it.
00:32:32
-Policeman stepped out,
stopped the van, and detained the driver,
and then searched the van.
00:32:38
First found nothing,
and then found a wee girl lying in the bottom of the van, in a bag, semi-suffocated.
00:32:47
-And the man who opens
the back doors of the van is the little girl's father,
who's a policeman.
00:32:55
Can you imagine what impact
that must've had on him? There can be no doubt that
it was Black's overconfidence,
00:33:03
his arrogance to do something
so outrageous, in broad daylight,
in a tiny Scottish town,
00:33:09
and, what's more, then to drive
back down the same road in which he's abducted. -And, thankfully,
the little girl is still alive.
00:33:16
She's been sexually assaulted,
but she's escaped with her life. -It's important to understand
that a serial killer
00:33:25
of the kind that Black was -- he was an obsessed
serial killer, not an incidental
serial killer --
00:33:32
he was destined to kill over
and over and over again. Had he not have been caught
that day,
00:33:38
that girl would have died,
and many others would have died. -Now, immediately, Robert Black
was arrested for that.
00:33:47
Literally within the hour, we knew this was the man
we were looking for because the modus operandi
was so identical.
00:33:57
-On the 10th of August, 1990, Black pleaded guilty to
the abduction and sexual abuse
00:34:03
of the 6-year-old girl in Stow. He was given a life sentence and was sent to Sutton Prison
in Edinburgh.
00:34:11
Black wanted to appeal
the sentence, but his lawyers decided that he should be
psychologically examined
00:34:17
before they started the process. And they ask Ray Wyre, who was then the country's
leading expert
00:34:26
at dealing with men
who sexually abused children. Ray went to visit Black
in prison, and over two days,
00:34:33
assessed him and wrote
a report for the solicitors, and that report said the
sentence is absolutely right.
00:34:40
Black is a very, very,
very dangerous individual. And Black drops the appeal. Black then gets in touch
with Ray and says,
00:34:51
"Would you come
and see me again? I want to try and understand
why I do this." And Ray agreed.
00:35:01
-The police were certain
that Black was responsible for further abductions and
murders of other young children,
00:35:08
but they had little evidence
to prove it. -We tied him to the location
of Sarah Harper's abduction,
00:35:17
the location of
Susan Maxwell's abduction, and Portobello
for Caroline Hogg. Now, that's not a lot
of evidence.
00:35:27
It's still very circumstantial. -Without any proof,
the police needed Black to confess to his crimes.
00:35:34
-Now, Black resisted interview, wouldn't say anything, would speak away
about everything
00:35:42
until you came to the business
about abductions, and then just close down --
wouldn't say a word.
00:35:47
-But then there
was a breakthrough in the investigation. -The company he worked with
00:35:54
were a very old-fashioned
company, and they kept years
and years and years of petrol receipts
for all their vehicles.
00:36:03
So, after a long investigation,
we could actually determine exactly where
Black was at certain times
00:36:12
because of the petrol receipts
of his van. -By May, 1991, the police
had built up a case
00:36:19
to charge Black with the murders
of Sarah Harper, Caroline Hogg,
and Susan Maxwell.
00:36:26
-The police and prosecutors
had two things on their side. The first was they had petrol
receipts, credit card receipts
00:36:36
for Black filling up his van,
which put him in the area for each of those cases
at the time.
00:36:44
That on its own probably
wouldn't have been enough. What they were able to use
was a provision of English law
00:36:51
which says,
in really serious cases, you can introduce
evidence of system. They were able to show the what
happened to Susan Maxwell,
00:37:01
Caroline Hogg, and Sarah Harper matched almost exactly
with the abduction in Stow
00:37:08
in the Scottish borders. -Two years after his arrest
in May, 1994, Robert Black was convicted
of the murders of Susan Maxwell,
00:37:18
Caroline Hogg, and Sarah Harper. He was given 10 life sentences
and was also charged
00:37:25
with the failed abduction
of a 15-year-old girl in 1988. The murder of 9-year-old
Jennifer Cardy
00:37:33
in Northern Ireland wasn't initially linked
to the other killings, but her family were convinced
he was responsible.
00:37:42
-We knew very shortly after
Robert Black was caught, we knew Robert Black
had murdered Jennifer.
00:37:49
We knew he was in the province
on the day that Jennifer went missing, and we knew it was
a waiting game.
00:37:55
-It would take till 2009 for Black to be charged with
the murder of Jennifer Cardy.
00:38:01
The trial took place
two years later at the Armagh Crown Court,
Northern Ireland,
00:38:05
on the 22nd of September, 2011. -We -- I, particularly, worried about seeing him
for the first time,
00:38:16
seeing the man who was the last
person that my daughter seen. I was amazed how old he was.
00:38:22
He just looked like an old man. An old man who, uh, really had
given himself over to depravity.
00:38:30
-He looked ordinary. But he shouldn't
have looked ordinary. I could've touched the hair that
curled at the back of his neck,
00:38:42
only it was beyond
a Perspex glass. But I could've touched him... ...and know he was real.
00:38:52
And Andrew and I both do
the trauma of the impact of seeing this man's face,
the man who killed her.
00:39:07
-The Cardys had to listen
to painful details about what had
happened to Jennifer.
00:39:14
-Not only to her, but to every little child
he got his hands on, and it was more and more
traumatic...
00:39:24
cruel...depraved. There was nothing in this man that he could ever have said, "I didn't mean to do it,"
00:39:35
because he got more aggravated
in his depravity. And we had to listen to this, and we made ourselves
listen to it.
00:39:47
-What they did hear
made them believe that when abducted,
Jennifer had fought back.
00:39:53
-I don't allow myself to think what that innocent, beautiful
little girl had to go through.
00:40:03
But I'll tell you this. She gave up one big fight, because Robert Black, after that,
took shoes off all --
00:40:15
each of his victim's feet
after he had killed her. And I know she gave him
a hard time.
00:40:25
Her wee legs had more fire
and strength in them than a lot. -On October the 27th, 2011,
00:40:35
Black was found guilty
of murdering Jennifer Cardy and was sentenced
to a further 25 years.
00:40:43
-Well... My feelings to Robert Black
was that... ...certainly, I pitied the man.
00:40:55
I pity anybody who has
an addiction like he had. I pity any man who has allowed
himself to go down that road.
00:41:05
-The police were
still determined to hold Black responsible for the abductions
of other missing girls.
00:41:11
Eventually, they had enough
evidence to bring him to trial for the disappearance
of 13-year-old Genette Tate
00:41:17
in Devon in 1978. -But on the 12th of January,
2016, Robert Black died
in Maghaberry Prison.
00:41:27
He was 68 years old. -I was gutted. I remember the phone call
that came that day.
00:41:36
Part of me...wasn't sorry. And yet, part of me was big-time sorry because I did want to talk
to that man.
00:41:50
-These young, innocent children had their whole lives
in front of them, and those lives were stolen
by Robert Black.
00:41:59
-I think we're particularly
disgusted about crimes against children because children are
the most innocent of victims.
00:42:06
They are the most
vulnerable people in society, the people who are in need
of our protection.
00:42:12
So, when they become
the victims of crime, we feel particularly
affected by that.
00:42:20
-I always feel that what
Robert Black did to Jennifer, he did to each
and every one of us.
00:42:31
He murdered us. He took our lives. But no one knows that unless
they have to come through it.
00:42:41
We had an able God. We have a great faith,
but it's not the faith. It's the God that he is
who helped us through.
00:42:50
And we saw all our family
being strengthened and given back a new life. -Robert Black spread a plague
of terror across the U.K.
00:43:02
His heinous crimes against
defenseless children make him one of the world's most
evil killers.
00:43:08
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