A Scottish van driver accused of murdering a Co Antrim schoolgirl has been unmasked as a triple child killer at his trial.
Paedophile Robert Black’s criminal past was revealed to the jury in Armagh Crown Court.
Black, now 64, is accused of kidnapping and murdering nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy in Northern Ireland 30 years ago.
Prosecution lawyer Toby Hedworth QC told the jury legal reasons had prevented Black’s record from being disclosed in the trial. “But now the stage in the trial proceedings has been reached when I can tell you,” he said.
He told them the defendant had been convicted in 1994 of murdering three young girls in the 1980s, the abduction of another and the attempted abduction of another.
Black, wearing a red jumper, sat impassively in the dock as the revelations were made.
Jennifer was abducted as she cycled to a friend’s house in the Co Antrim village of Ballinderry in August 1981. Her body was found six days later floating in a dam 15km away. The schoolgirl’s parents Andy and Patricia watched from the public gallery as the jury heard of Black’s past.
In 1994, Black was tried at Newcastle Upon Tyne Crown Court and found guilty of murdering three girls - Susan Maxwell (11), Caroline Hogg (5), and 10-year-old Sarah Harper - and the attempted kidnap of a 15-year-old girl.
Susan went missing as she walked between the villages of Cornhill-on-Tweed and Coldstream on either side of the Scottish/English border after playing a game of tennis in July, 1982. Her body was found dumped by a roadside near Uttoxeter, Staffordshire 400km away. Police suspected a sexual assault.
A year later in July 1983, Caroline Hogg vanished as she played near her home in Portobello close to Edinburgh.Her body was found in a ditch in Leicestershire, 500km away, 10 days later. A sexual assault was again suspected.
In 1986, Sarah Harper disappeared after leaving her home in Morley near Leeds to buy a loaf of bread in a corner shop. She vanished on her way home. Her body was found floating in the River Trent near Nottingham a month later. She had been raped.
Black was arrested in 1990 near Stow in Scotland with a six-year-old girl gagged, bound and stuffed into a sleeping bag in the back of his van. He was convicted of her abduction after pleading guilty.
Police subsequently found they could link him with the three murders, the attempted abduction of the 15-year-old in Nottingham in April 1988 and a series of other charges. He denied all those counts but was found guilty of them all at the 1994 trial.
Black, whose work in the 1980s took him all over the country in his delivery van, denies kidnapping and murdering Jennifer.
Mr Hedworth said while he denied the crimes he was found guilty of in the past - apart from the kidnapping in Stow when he was "caught red handed" - he did admit to police in 2005 that he fantasised about abducting pre-pubescent girls and having sex with them in his van.
The court then heard highly disturbing details of what Black told officers he dreamed of doing to the girls.
Mr Hedworth said Black had never admitted that "his behaviour ever moved from the fantasy to reality in a sexual way".
He added: "There comes a point beyond which he is simply not prepared to face what he has done."
But he told the jury the scenarios Black admitted dreaming about had distinct similarities with the circumstances of Jennifer's disappearance.
"Standing back from these lengthy interviews in 2005 the prosecution will submit to you that they contain a partial or perhaps even coded admission to Jennifer Cardy's abduction and murder by a man who cannot bring himself to admit to the enormity of his behaviour."
PA