Gardaí investigating the disappearance of a number of women in Ireland want to interview a serial sex offender serving a life sentence for murdering a London schoolgirl, it was reported today.
Robert Howard (61), who is serving his sentence in Northern Ireland, dumped the body of 14-year-old Hannah Williams in a disused cement works in the Northfleet, Kent. He was convicted of her murder in October 2003, two years after she diappeared.
Robert Howard
Details of Howard's conviction in Maidstone, Kent were only be made public last month after separate sex charges he faced in the North were dropped.
The Garda Press Office was unable to confirm the reports and could not say if a statement would be issued today. However, it is reported that gardaí are now interested in Howard movements in the Republic in the 1980s and 1990s.
Howard, who was born in Wolfhill, Co Laois in 1944, had a string of previous sex convictions stretching back to 1964. He strangled Hannah with a 12-metre rope.
Earlier this year, a jury at Belfast Crown Court cleared Howard of murdering Co Tyrone teenager Arlene Arkinson.
In August 1994, Howard drove Arlene to the seaside town of Bundoran, Co Donegal, for drinks with his girlfriend's daughter and her boyfriend. On August 14th he dropped the couple off at the boyfriend's house, outside Castlederg, at around 2.30am.
He drove off with Arlene and was the last person to see her alive. The 15-year-old's body has never been found.
Howard has been preying on young girls for five decades - drifting throughout the Ireland and Britain from community to community offering his services as a tradesman.
His first sex attack was in London in 1964 when he attacked a six-year-old girl during a burglary.
He was also convicted of attempted rape and aggravated burglary in Durham. In 1974 he received a 10-year sentence for rape in Cork. He was released after seven years in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.
But as there was no sex offenders register to catalogue crimes from the 1970s, he was free to drift into communities and ingratiate himself with locals unaware of his past.