His black heart exposed

21 min read

ROBERT BLACK

WORSE THAN BRADY AND THE WESTS: THE TRAIL OF DEATH PAEDOPHILE ROBERT BLACK LEFT IN HIS WAKE POTENTIALLY MAKES HIM THE UK’S MOST PROLIFIC CHILD SLAYER IF ONLY POLICE COULD PROVE HIS GUILT FOR MULTIPLE UNSOLVED MURDERS ACROSS EUROPE

WORDS TANITA MATTHEWS

As Susan Maxwell’s mother drove to and from Cornhill looking for her daughter walking along the side of the road, she grew more worried. By that point, Susan had already been snatched by Black and was killed shortly after

Although nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy from Ballinderry in Northern Ireland was Black’s first known victim, her murder went unsolved for more than three decades

Fred and Rose West, Moors Murderers Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, and Peter Tobin have long been an unholy trinity of standout British child serial killer cases. But there is another who, despite his merciless attacks on young girls in the UK, still remains a shadowy figure and may have topped the total number of victims racked up by any of them. Robert Black’s reign of terror lasted decades and spanned multiple countries, until he was finally caught red-handed in 1990 and put behind bars for life. Convicted of three more historic child murders in 1994, he then had a further life tariff attached to his already unlimited sentence in 2011, when he was connected to the murder of a nine-year-old girl in Northern Ireland, dating back three decades. Then in 2016 Black became the “only suspect” in the unsolved murder of another young girl, shortly before he died from a heart attack.

Black’s true toll as a serial killer was never finalised. He’s suspected of many more child killings but barely uttered a word about his crimes, refusing to give closure to families whose small children had disappeared the day Black came to town. We may never know the scale of Black’s depravity, but Real Crime has spoken with three leading sources about his predatory behaviour: retired Norfolk Constabulary detective Chris Clark, criminologist Robert Giles and investigative journalist Tim Tate, who all believe the fuller picture of Robert Black is far more horrible than we realise.

A DARK ROAD

Black was born in April 1947 to an unmarried 24-year-old Scottish factory worker in Stirling, Scotland. As shameful evidence of premarital sexual relations in an era of prudish and judgemental Britain, Black was handed over to a foster family – a couple named Jack and Margaret ‘Betty’ Tulip living in a remote village in the west Highlands – at the age of six months. Black never knew his biological mother, who soon emigrated to Australia. Of his father he knew even less, as his mother had left his name off Black’s birth certificat