World's Most Evil Killers - Season 3, Episode 9 - Robert Black - Full Episode | Forensic Files

-Stow, Scotland, July the 14th, 1990. A six-year-old girl was walking to her friend's house
in this small, picturesque village. -A local man was working his garden and saw a van draw up
and saw the wee girl's legs walking under, as if she was walking past the van, and suddenly disappeared.
-The man dialed 999, the police rush to the scene. They manage to stop the driver.
When they open the back of the van, they made a startling discovery. -That child is trussed up.
She has a plaster across her mouth, she's got a bag over her head. She's minutes away from suffocating.
The driver was a 43-year-old delivery man called Robert Black, a prolific pedophile
responsible for the rape, assault, and murder of at least four young children in the 1980s.
-This is a man for whom the word "depravity" could almost be precisely applied. -I always feel that what Robert Black did,
he did to each and every one of us. He murdered us. He took our lives. Black's reign of terror came to an end that day,
but the heinous crimes he had committed against his vulnerable and innocent victims
makes Robert Black one of the world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Scotland, 2001.
Robert Black, a Scottish pedophile and serial killer, had attacked children across the U.K.
He was responsible for the rape, kidnap, and sexual assault of young girls from the late 1950s onwards.
-This nightmare of abduction and sexual assault and murder of innocents -- just wee girls --
is particularly horrific. -Black was finally arrested in 1990 after trying to snatch a young girl in broad daylight.
He was eventually convicted of four child murders between 1981 and 1986. His youngest victim was only 5 years old.
-I think the impact of the Robert Black case on the community and on the nation was pretty devastating.
This was the end of the idea of the innocence of childhood. After the Black case, I think parents started
putting more restrictions on their children's freedom. -Pat Cardy's 9-year-old daughter, Jennifer,
was abducted and murdered by Black in 1981, but it would take several years before she knew
who was responsible for killing her daughter. -We still miss her, particularly our two boys.
When she was taken, how hard, how difficult... how heavy it was upon them, not understanding anything,
but just knowing that she would never be there again. That was brutal. -Journalist Tim Tate investigated Black's life
in the hope of discovering why he did what he did. -They were terrible crimes. He probably killed more children than any other convicted
child-sex serial killer in Britain. -This killer's story begins in 1947. Robert Black was born on the 21st of April
in Grangemouth, about 20 miles from Edinburgh, Scotland. -Robert Black's mother was unmarried at the time.
There was a real stigma around illegitimacy, so he was given up. Now, his mother went on to get married
and to have four other children, but she never, ever wanted anything to do with Robert Black.
So, right from the outset, this is somebody who's facing rejection and exclusion.
He's somebody who has come into the world with a stigma on him. -Black was fostered by Jack and Margaret Tulip,
who lived in a remote western Scottish village. -They were in their mid 50s. They had no previous experience.
They were strict, they were God-fearing, and he's never given a name -- he's always Robert Black,
something that would've marked him out at the time in that small community. -Black later alleged that his foster parents
were abusive towards him. -The foster father died when he was 5, but the foster mother continued the abusive behavior
that had been perpetrated beforehand. So, he was beaten when he wet the bed. Here is somebody who does not have a safe
or a secure home environment. This is a young boy who has got no comfort from anybody whatsoever.
-From this disturbed upbringing, Black unsurprisingly rebelled and developed an unhealthy interest in other children.
-By the age of 8, he started offending. He's already developed sexualized behavior.
He's taking the time and the trouble to peer up little girl's skirts. He has molested -- that's putting it gently --
a baby, and he's begun to explore bodily orifices. This is the obsession that will be with him all his life.
-In 1958, Black's foster mother died, and he was sent to a children's home near Falkirk.
His fascination with sex continued, and along with some other boys in the house,
he tried to rape a 12-year-old girl. -I think that act, if you like, was the genesis of Black's pedophilia.
-At some point, almost every pedophile who's attracted to a very young girl was placed in a sexual situation
when the pedophile himself was immature and did not understand what was going on,
or what the feelings were, and all kinds of strange, almost morbid curiosities are aroused.
-As a result of the assault, Black was removed from the children's home and sent to a single-sex residential home in Musselburgh.
-He's 12, he's isolated, he's lonely, he's been physically abused, he's now in this highly regimented,
severe, strict disciplinarian regime. -And things would only get worse for the 12-year-old.
-There was a member of staff who had been abusing one of the boys at this children's home,
and when that boy reached the age of 16, he left the home. But before that, he was asked to find a replacement,
and he essentially recommended Black as the next abuse victim for this staff member.
-Did this contribute to Black's own offending behavior? Probably. Was it because of it?
Probably not. Black had already embarked down that road. He was already on the path of being a serial sexual abuser.
-Well, it's interesting, because the abuse that Black suffered at the home was male-on-male sexual abuse.
So, one's first thought is it wasn't a model for pedophilic behavior. Quite the opposite.
What happens is that the children who are subject to that kind of abuse become obsessive about sex,
especially when it happens before or at adolescence. -The abuse continued until Black left the residential home
when he was 15. He rented a room in a boys' home in Greenock, a town just outside Glasgow,
and found work as a delivery boy. In 1963, age 16, Black approached a 7-year-old girl
and lured her into a disused air-raid shelter. -He promised to show her a box of kittens.
He choked her... ...until she became unconscious, and he molested her. He left her for dead.
She was later found wandering on her own, in tears. -At this point, Black is arrested for the first time.
-This is a really, really significant point in the development of Robert Black's offending.
This was an opportunity to intervene. This was a chance to actually stop that behavior spiraling,
or, at least, put him in a place where he couldn't hurt people. -Although Black was convicted of attacking the girl,
he was only found guilty of lewd and libidinous behavior by the Scottish courts,
and was not, as he should have been, to my mind, incarcerated. -At the time, there was just no understanding of pedophilia
or what drives men to sexually abuse and to kill children. -This callous assault would be just the start
of Black's reign of terror. His depraved sexual desires toward young girls would only escalate.
Black was, once again, free to roam the streets. -I think he developed an appetite for it.
I think he thought he could get away with it after the experience in the air-raid shelter.
I think he felt emboldened by the fact that no one had actually stopped him. -In 1966, Black returned to Kinlochleven
where he lived with his foster parents. He found lodgings with a couple and their 6-year-old daughter.
One evening, the 19-year-old was babysitting the child. Unable to control his urges,
Black took the opportunity to violate her. -The one thing, though, that many people have speculated about is that...
...pedophiles are very immature. Not really capable, for the most part, of adult sexual relationships.
And so they need to explore their sexual fantasies and their sexual curiosity with somebody who's weak,
who will surrender to them, because no adult would. -This time, he was punished for his behavior
and was sent to borstal youth detention for a year. In 1968, Black headed to England and rented a room
above a pub in Stamford Hill, London. -While he was living in Stamford Hill, he got a part-time job as a lifeguard,
which allowed him to indulge his appetite for taking photographs of young girls in their bathing costumes.
-In those days, it was called child pornography. It isn't pornography. It is the recording of the sexual assault on a child.
That's what he was consuming -- images of very, very young children being seriously, grossly sexually abused.
-In 1976, Black found work as a van driver delivering posters around the U.K. and Europe.
It gave him the means to hide in plain sight and act upon his depraved urges towards young girls.
-So, here's somebody who hasn't really got fantastic social skills spending long periods of time unsupervised.
But these are also periods of time in which he is fantasizing, in which he is ruminating, in which he is planning.
So, this is somebody who is a very dangerous offender in the making. -It gives him the time and the ability
to seek out potential new victims. He would spend the time driving round and round
looking for an opportunity and a suitable victim. -And that opportunity would soon arise.
On Wednesday, the 12th of August, 1981, 34-year-old Robert Black had taken a delivery job in Ballinderry,
a small town in Northern Ireland. 9-year-old Jennifer Cardy was enjoying the school holidays with her mother and sister.
-It was just myself and little baby Victoria, and Jennifer was to go to her friend's house
on her new bicycle. And as Jennifer went out, she was laughing, joking, "Bye-bye," and whatever.
And I'll never forget how she closed the door behind her, and how her blond hair just, you know, came around her face
as she closed the door and said, "Bye-bye." And that was the last I ever saw her.
-As Jennifer set off to her friend's house, Robert Black was lying in wait. -She was going about a mile down the road
to her friend's house. This particular day, 12th of August, would be her last time,
because she was to go to a children's camp, and they were so looking forward to it.
[ Whispering ] I'm sorry. -It's thought that Jennifer stopped at the side of the road
to put on a cardigan, and at the same time, encountered Black, who snatched the young girl
and drove off in his van. I expected her to be home, and she was always very punctual,
and at 20 past 4:00, I thought I heard her bicycle being tinkled on the back wall.
You know the chain on the bike? I thought, "Oh, there's Jennifer back." But it wasn't.
I never heard the little steps run up the kitchen into the living room. -Jennifer's father, Andy,
had come home from work to his anxious wife. -Pat stared at the back door, looking so worried,
and when I asked her why she was so worried, she told me that Jennifer hadn't come home.
And this wasn't terribly late, and I really wasn't terribly concerned because children are children.
Very hard to explain in today's world what it's like, but in them days out in the country,
little boys and little girls cycled everywhere. The word "pedophile" wouldn't have even been
in our vocabulary. I wouldn't have known what a pedophile was, and it wasn't a danger.
-Pat went to look for her daughter. -And I set out in the car, and realized very quickly
that Jennifer had not reached her friend's house. I tried to keep these fearful, panic-y thoughts to myself,
telling people, "Oh, it's okay. She's probably at home now." Made my way home -- She wasn't home.
-Growing more concerned, Andy joined the search for Jennifer along with a friend.
-And we'd found somebody who had seen her go past him, we found another guy who'd seen her go past,
and then just totally disappeared into thin air. -At approximately 9:00 PM, the Cardy's called the police.
-The police were very quick to put into action. Quite a lot of search parties. The army was there, the police was there,
the reserves were there. -Just before midnight, two local men spotted Jennifer's bike
lying in a field a mile away from her home. It had been thrown over a hedge. -The stand was in the down position, which indicated
that she may well have stopped, stood it up to talk to someone. That someone was Robert Black, who almost certainly used
a not-dissimilar strategy to attract her attention. "Oh, I've got a kitten," or, "Would you like to see my puppy?"
-Well, when we realized that Jennifer was most definitely missing, particularly after we found her bike,
then we knew we had a problem. -Black was nowhere to be seen. He'd left the area soon after
snatching the young girl in his van. Over 200 locals joined the police and the army
to help find the 9-year old. -Everyone who lived in Ballinderry was out on those search parties.
Everyone who lived within five miles of Ballinderry were out on those search parties.
No one will ever appreciate how much Andrew and myself and the children appreciated that.
-As the days passed, the chance of finding Jennifer became less likely. -It's very hard to explain what it feels like
to have a child missing. It was very hard to walk into a room and everything you trip over just reminds you of that child.
Wendy house and little things sitting on her dressing table. -Then, on the 18th of August,
six days after Jennifer had gone missing, her parents received a phone call. -Liaison officer, a lovely girl --
still very friendly with her to this day -- called and told us that they'd found Jennifer's body.
-The strange thing about that was that there was a certain amount of relief in that.
If you'd been looking and wandering for six days, you know, at least we had found Jennifer.
-Jennifer's body was found by two duck hunters in the McKee's Dam, 10 miles away from where she was abducted.
Robert Black had sexually assaulted and strangled the 9-year-old before placing her body into the dam.
-When I was told I have to go and identify her body, it was... an excitement that I was going to see my daughter again.
I'll never forget the awfulness of that when I went in, liaison officer was with me.
I can remember it so well that she had to hold me up 'cause I would've fainted, so...
We got our -- the body of our child back, and she was given a beautiful burial and funeral.
-Pat and Andy Cardy would have to wait over 30 years before justice was served for Jennifer.
Robert Black had got away with murder, and it wouldn't be long before he struck again.
In August, 1981, after murdering 9-year-old Jennifer Cardy, Robert Black left the country and returned to work.
-Black continued to present to the world the same affable, big-softy exterior that he'd done throughout.
Drove back, went about his business. It wasn't for another year, almost, until he struck again.
-While he was driving his van, he was always on the lookout for his next victim.
And he had, in the back of his van, what can only be described as an abduction kit.
He had bindings, he had this sack, which he would put the child in. -On the 30th of July, 1982, Black was on a delivery job
in Northumberland, northeast England, near to the village of Coldstream, where a young school girl was leaving her house
to go and play with her friends. -Susan Maxwell is 11, she lives with her mum and her step-dad and their children in a little village.
It's a happy, warm, loving home. It's a summer, it's afternoon, Susan says she wants to go and play tennis with her friend,
and it's agreed that Susan will walk home. -The tragic, tragic irony is that she encounters
none other than Robert Black and his van. -She had begun walking home, and at some point after 4:30,
which is the last time anyone saw her, she was snatched. literally snatched -- put into the back of Black's van,
and driven away. -Susan's mother had changed her mind about letting Susan walk home
and decided to pick her daughter up, but there was no sign of her anywhere, and she called the police.
Tom Wood was the Detective Inspector at the Lothian and Borders Serious Crime Squad.
-We were sent down to the borders straightaway to help with the investigation, and there were huge searches made off the area,
because we thought that she might have been thrown over the bridge, or fallen over the bridge,
or might have come to harm locally. -On the 12th of August, a body was found near a village
in a lay-by in the West Midlands, over 200 miles from where Susan had been abducted.
-It was the middle of the summer, and so the body was badly decomposed to the extent it was some time before we discovered
that it was actually Susan. -That made it impossible for the coroner to determine an exact cause of death.
-Susan was found partially clothed, indicating that she'd been sexually assaulted.
The police were desperate to find the person responsible for such a heinous act.
-Most people are murdered by someone close to them, so we had to be very, very careful
that we didn't go off in flights of fancy, and that we did our homework first. Who was with her, when was she last seen?
We then looked at local offenders. Were there any young men around who were committing sexual offenses?
And then we started on the big investigations, looking for vehicles that were seen in the vicinity,
and we got absolutely nowhere with it whatsoever. -Well, Black avoided capture simply by taking the one precaution
before he kidnapped a child of looking around to see if there was anyone who would observe him.
That's all he had to do. He had no relationships to the victim. He was willing to move bodies hundreds of miles
in order to avoid capture. -Black had got away with murder yet again. However, his depraved urges were still there.
His next victim would be even younger. On Friday, the 8th of July, 1983, in the seaside resort of Portobello,
just outside Edinburgh, 5-year-old Caroline Hogg was at home with her family. -It's a summer's evening, she asks if she can go
and play on the swings outside in the little park nearby. And they say yes. -As the 5-year-old walked to the playground,
she was spotted by Robert Black, who was on a delivery job in the area. -Robert Black would see a target of opportunity,
always an attractively-dressed young girl, and that was the thing that was the same
about Susan and Caroline was they were both attractively dressed. -Again, it's impossible to overstate
how quickly Black operated. He snatched her, and it would've taken no more than seconds --
drove her away. -After 15 minutes, Caroline's brother went to look for her, but there was no sign of her,
and her parents called the police at 8:00 PM. Tom Wood was, again, part of the team
that was investigating the disappearance of the young girl. -Again, we started looking for her.
A lot of people had seen her, or thought they had seen her in the area of Portobello Promenade
on that summer's day. There were thousands of people on that promenade, and the key struck a chord.
Because Caroline was such a pretty, wee girl, and numerous people turned out to help with searches,
and to try to support the police in investigations. -The police issued appeals for information to the press,
and the hunt for Caroline became one of the largest search parties in Scotland, with nearly 2,000 people looking for the little girl.
On Monday, the 18th of July, 10 days after she went missing, everyone's worst fears were confirmed.
-Poor Caroline's body is found in a lay-by yet again, this time in Twycross in Leicestershire,
300 miles from where she disappeared. -This was a murder that also happened in the summer months,
and when her body was found, it was, again, quite badly decomposed. So, this was another young life taken by this predator.
-This time, there's not much doubt that she's been assaulted. This poor, innocent 5-year-old
has been abused by a man who shows no compassion, no conscience, no remorse. -But it's almost certain that Black did what he always did.
He never saw himself as killing. He saw himself as allowing the child to die, and that allowed him, in his mind,
to carry out the awful, horrible, painful abuse on the child's body, which was his pattern.
-On examining the scene, police found connections with another of Black's victims,
Susan Maxwell, whom he'd killed less than a year earlier. -We linked the two crimes straightaway.
They'd been abducted in almost the same circumstances -- dragged off the street.
They'd been transported several hundred miles. They had been deposited not in the same location,
but in very similar locations. -Due to the similarities in the murders of Susan and Caroline,
a joint inquiry was formed between four police forces, but without any evidence,
they were still no closer to catching the killer. Less than three years later, Black would strike again.
On Wednesday, the 26th of March, 1986, he was on a delivery job in Leeds, near to where 10-year-old Sarah Harper was living.
-Sarah lives with her mum, Jackie, in Morley, Leeds. It's a safe, northern, terraced street community.
After "Coronation Street" is over, so 8:00 o'clock, Jackie says to Sarah, "Would you just nip to the corner shop
and get us some bread?" Black has been in the area, he's been delivering posters,
and he spent time, as was his M.O., quartering those streets. At some point, just at the point
where Sarah is walking from the corner shop, Black sees her. And once again, within seconds, he grabs her,
bundles her into the back of the van, and drives off, and Sarah is never seen again.
-Yet again, she's disappeared. A young girl has disappeared into thin air. -When Sarah did not return home,
her family grew concerned and went to look for her, but there was no sign of Sarah, so they called the police.
Days turned into weeks, then on the 19th of April, just over three weeks later, her body was found by a dog walker
near the River Trent, Nottingham. -Her body is found several miles away in this rough geographical area
that police came to call The Triangle in the Midlands. The same rough geographical area that Susan Maxwell's body
and Caroline Hogg's body were found. -The postmortem showed that Sarah had been sexually assaulted.
-Black was extraordinarily careful. This wasn't an out-of-control, spur-of-the-moment decision to abduct a child.
He planned this. He spent hours, days looking for suitable victims. -Well, Black's modus operandi was fairly simple,
similar to almost every pedophile that I've examined. He would drive around. He would look for a child.
The child had to have two sets of characteristics that was physical, that had to do with his fixation,
and that second criteria was that no adults had to be near that child or nearby responsible for taking care of that child.
-He would rehearse. He would drive round and round. Even if he saw a child who he thought matched his image of...
an ideal victim, he wouldn't abduct straightaway. He would monitor, he would look for escape routes,
and only when everything was perfect would he pounce. -For Robert Black, these girls
were essentially disposable objects. He would abduct them in these blitz attacks off the streets,
he'd abuse them, and then he would just discard them. He really was the most remorseless offender.
-Robert Black had now killed four young girls in just over 4 1/2 years. His appetite for abducting, abusing,
and murdering young children would only intensify. The police had connected the murders
of three of the young victims, but they were no closer to catching the killer. But a chance encounter would soon change everything.
-In July, 1990, Black is still driving his van, and this time, he returns to the borders of Scotland --
a little town called Stow. A retired post office worker is mowing his lawn when he sees a van pull up.
He also sees a young girl walk past the van. And then he sees the young girl lifted up
and whisked into the van. -With great presence of mind, this guy noted the number of this van accurately
and immediately phoned the police. And the police attended, and as they were standing,
discussing the issue on this little road in Stow... -Black drives back down the same road
where the same post office worker shouts, "That's the van!" And it is the same van, and it is Black driving it.
-Policeman stepped out, stopped the van, and detained the driver, and then searched the van.
First found nothing, and then found a wee girl lying in the bottom of the van, in a bag, semi-suffocated.
-And the man who opens the back doors of the van is the little girl's father, who's a policeman.
Can you imagine what impact that must've had on him? There can be no doubt that it was Black's overconfidence,
his arrogance to do something so outrageous, in broad daylight, in a tiny Scottish town,
and, what's more, then to drive back down the same road in which he's abducted. -And, thankfully, the little girl is still alive.
She's been sexually assaulted, but she's escaped with her life. -It's important to understand that a serial killer
of the kind that Black was -- he was an obsessed serial killer, not an incidental serial killer --
he was destined to kill over and over and over again. Had he not have been caught that day,
that girl would have died, and many others would have died. -Now, immediately, Robert Black was arrested for that.
Literally within the hour, we knew this was the man we were looking for because the modus operandi was so identical.
-On the 10th of August, 1990, Black pleaded guilty to the abduction and sexual abuse
of the 6-year-old girl in Stow. He was given a life sentence and was sent to Sutton Prison in Edinburgh.
Black wanted to appeal the sentence, but his lawyers decided that he should be psychologically examined
before they started the process. And they ask Ray Wyre, who was then the country's leading expert
at dealing with men who sexually abused children. Ray went to visit Black in prison, and over two days,
assessed him and wrote a report for the solicitors, and that report said the sentence is absolutely right.
Black is a very, very, very dangerous individual. And Black drops the appeal. Black then gets in touch with Ray and says,
"Would you come and see me again? I want to try and understand why I do this." And Ray agreed.
-The police were certain that Black was responsible for further abductions and murders of other young children,
but they had little evidence to prove it. -We tied him to the location of Sarah Harper's abduction,
the location of Susan Maxwell's abduction, and Portobello for Caroline Hogg. Now, that's not a lot of evidence.
It's still very circumstantial. -Without any proof, the police needed Black to confess to his crimes.
-Now, Black resisted interview, wouldn't say anything, would speak away about everything
until you came to the business about abductions, and then just close down -- wouldn't say a word.
-But then there was a breakthrough in the investigation. -The company he worked with
were a very old-fashioned company, and they kept years and years and years of petrol receipts for all their vehicles.
So, after a long investigation, we could actually determine exactly where Black was at certain times
because of the petrol receipts of his van. -By May, 1991, the police had built up a case
to charge Black with the murders of Sarah Harper, Caroline Hogg, and Susan Maxwell.
-The police and prosecutors had two things on their side. The first was they had petrol receipts, credit card receipts
for Black filling up his van, which put him in the area for each of those cases at the time.
That on its own probably wouldn't have been enough. What they were able to use was a provision of English law
which says, in really serious cases, you can introduce evidence of system. They were able to show the what happened to Susan Maxwell,
Caroline Hogg, and Sarah Harper matched almost exactly with the abduction in Stow
in the Scottish borders. -Two years after his arrest in May, 1994, Robert Black was convicted of the murders of Susan Maxwell,
Caroline Hogg, and Sarah Harper. He was given 10 life sentences and was also charged
with the failed abduction of a 15-year-old girl in 1988. The murder of 9-year-old Jennifer Cardy
in Northern Ireland wasn't initially linked to the other killings, but her family were convinced he was responsible.
-We knew very shortly after Robert Black was caught, we knew Robert Black had murdered Jennifer.
We knew he was in the province on the day that Jennifer went missing, and we knew it was a waiting game.
-It would take till 2009 for Black to be charged with the murder of Jennifer Cardy.
The trial took place two years later at the Armagh Crown Court, Northern Ireland,
on the 22nd of September, 2011. -We -- I, particularly, worried about seeing him for the first time,
seeing the man who was the last person that my daughter seen. I was amazed how old he was.
He just looked like an old man. An old man who, uh, really had given himself over to depravity.
-He looked ordinary. But he shouldn't have looked ordinary. I could've touched the hair that curled at the back of his neck,
only it was beyond a Perspex glass. But I could've touched him... ...and know he was real.
And Andrew and I both do the trauma of the impact of seeing this man's face, the man who killed her.
-The Cardys had to listen to painful details about what had happened to Jennifer.
-Not only to her, but to every little child he got his hands on, and it was more and more traumatic...
cruel...depraved. There was nothing in this man that he could ever have said, "I didn't mean to do it,"
because he got more aggravated in his depravity. And we had to listen to this, and we made ourselves listen to it.
-What they did hear made them believe that when abducted, Jennifer had fought back.
-I don't allow myself to think what that innocent, beautiful little girl had to go through.
But I'll tell you this. She gave up one big fight, because Robert Black, after that, took shoes off all --
each of his victim's feet after he had killed her. And I know she gave him a hard time.
Her wee legs had more fire and strength in them than a lot. -On October the 27th, 2011,
Black was found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy and was sentenced to a further 25 years.
-Well... My feelings to Robert Black was that... ...certainly, I pitied the man.
I pity anybody who has an addiction like he had. I pity any man who has allowed himself to go down that road.
-The police were still determined to hold Black responsible for the abductions of other missing girls.
Eventually, they had enough evidence to bring him to trial for the disappearance of 13-year-old Genette Tate
in Devon in 1978. -But on the 12th of January, 2016, Robert Black died in Maghaberry Prison.
He was 68 years old. -I was gutted. I remember the phone call that came that day.
Part of me...wasn't sorry. And yet, part of me was big-time sorry because I did want to talk to that man.
-These young, innocent children had their whole lives in front of them, and those lives were stolen by Robert Black.
-I think we're particularly disgusted about crimes against children because children are the most innocent of victims.
They are the most vulnerable people in society, the people who are in need of our protection.
So, when they become the victims of crime, we feel particularly affected by that.
-I always feel that what Robert Black did to Jennifer, he did to each and every one of us.
He murdered us. He took our lives. But no one knows that unless they have to come through it.
We had an able God. We have a great faith, but it's not the faith. It's the God that he is who helped us through.
And we saw all our family being strengthened and given back a new life. -Robert Black spread a plague of terror across the U.K.
His heinous crimes against defenseless children make him one of the world's most evil killers.
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Robert Black was a Scottish serial killer and paedophile who was convicted of the kidnap, rape, sexual assault and murder of four girls aged between five and eleven.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Robert Black, a serial killer, abducted and murdered young girls across the UK, leaving a lasting impact on victims' families and communities.

Key points

The Disappearance of Jennifer Cardy. In August 1981, 9-year-old Jennifer Cardy was abducted by Robert Black, leading to a frantic search.
The Discovery of Jennifer's Body. Six days after her abduction, Jennifer's body was found, bringing a mix of relief and horror to her family.
Robert Black's Pattern of Crimes. Robert Black's history of abduction and murder reveals a chilling pattern of behavior.
The Discovery of Caroline Hogg. Caroline Hogg's body is found, confirming the worst fears of her family.
The Abduction of Sarah Harper. Sarah Harper disappears after being sent to the shop, never to return home.
The Arrest of Robert Black. A chance encounter leads to the arrest of Robert Black, who had been abducting children.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This nightmare of abduction and sexual assault... is particularly horrific.

Describing the nature of Black's crimes.

2:26WatchJul 29, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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