Robert Black background: Full of self-loathing, unwilling to speak out

Robert Black once told the late sexual crimes expert, Ray Wyre, he felt “disgust” over his feelings towards young girls, a compulsion which became a bloodlust.

Yet an acknowledgement of his shame would be Black’s sole confession. Time and again, he refused to assist police with their inquiries, or offer comfort to those parents who believe he may be responsible for the deaths of their children by confirming or denying his role in their disappearance.

Born in Grangemouth in 1947, Black endured a lonely and troubled childhood, attempting rape for the first time at the age of 12 along with two other boys.

Authorities subsequently moved him to Red House, a Musselburgh-based care establishment, where Black alleged he was the victim of sexual abuse.

Aged 15, he moved to Greenock, where he began working as a delivery boy. In later court hearings, it emerged he may have molested up to 40 young girls while on his rounds, although none was officially reported. He finally came to police attention when he lured a seven-year-old girl into a deserted building where he strangled her until she lost consciousness.

Black, then 16, was convicted of lewd and libidinous behaviour at the Inverclyde town’s juvenile court, but received an admonishment.

He then moved to Kinlochleven, where he assaulted his landlord’s seven-year-old daughter while babysitting her. Black’s second court appearance, in Oban in 1967, saw him convicted of indecent assault, and he was sentenced to a year in Polmont borstal.

After his release, he ventured south, where he spent several years doing odd jobs in and around Stoke Newington, north London, before obtaining his licence to drive heavy goods vehicles in 1976.

It would allow him to travel the breadth of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, where in August 1981, he claimed the life of Jennifer Cardy.

Less than a year later, he did the same to Susan Maxwell from Cornhill-on-Tweed, a cheerful 11-year-old who, until yesterday’s verdict, was Black’s first confirmed victim.

A year later, Black abducted and killed five-year-old Caroline Hogg from Portobello. The little girl’s body was found ten days later in a ditch in Leicestershire.

Officially, it was three years until Black struck again. In 1986, he murdered ten-year-old Sarah Harper, from Morley, near Leeds. She was raped and murdered, and her body was found in the River Trent near Nottingham. The trail of death came to an end in dramatic fashion when, in July 1990, the balding, bearded opportunist was seen snatching a six-year-old girl from the streets of the Border village of Stow, bundling her into his van.

A member of the public witnessed the incident and alerted police. Among the officers giving chase, although he didn’t know it at the time, was the abducted girl’s father. When Black’s van was stopped, he discovered his daughter in the back, tied up and stuffed into a sleeping bag.

In 1994, at Newcastle Crown Court, Black was found guilty of the three murders and the attempted abduction of a 15-year-old in Nottingham in 1988. He received ten life sentences and was told he will serve a minimum of 35 years in prison.

Former Lothian and Borders detective chief superintendent Roger Orr, who has been investigating Black for more than two decades, explained: “He knows what he’s like, he knows what he does, he doesn’t understand why he does it. These trials and all the rest of it he’s feeding off as much from the trials – he is trying to understand himself.”