A triple child killer could be charged with the murder of a Co Antrim schoolgirl more than 20 years ago, it emerged today.
Robert Black, who is serving 10 life sentences, was arrested and questioned earlier this year in connection with the death of Jennifer Cardy.
The nine-year-old was snatched as she cycled to a friend's house in August 1981. Her red bike was found in a field near her home in Ballinderry and her body was discovered six days later by fisherman at McKee's dam near Hillsborough, Co Down.
Prosecutors are also considering whether Black can be charged in connection with the disappearance of an east Devon teenager in August 1978.
The Genette Tate missing persons inquiry is Britain's longest. Devon and Cornwall police and the Police Service of Northern Ireland have linked the Cardy and Tate inquiries, and both police forces have questioned 58-year-old Black about them.
A Devon and Cornwall police spokesman said: "We are putting together papers which will be considered by a prosecuting authority."
The file would not be completed this year, added the spokesman. In May, Black was flown from Wakefield Prison, Leeds, to Northern Ireland where he was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Jennifer Cardy and interviewed.
Black was questioned by the Devon and Cornwall force in 1996, 1998 and earlier this year. Genette went missing near her home village of Aylesbeare on the afternoon of August 19, 1978, while delivering newspapers.
Her body has never been found . In 1994, Robert Black was given 10 life sentences for the abduction and murder of three young girls and the abduction of a 15-year-old girl.
The former poster delivery driver, of Stamford Hill, north London, was convicted in 1994 of the murder during the 1980s of 11-year-old Susan Maxwell from Cornhill-on-Tweed in the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and 10-year-old Sarah Harper, from Morley, near Leeds.