by Chris Clark
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By the summer of 1984, we now know, Black had abducted and murdered at least three young girls over the previous three years, all during the months of July and August, all when he was on work trips in his van delivering posters for PDS.
That year, however, during the summer or at any other time, no murders of children were recorded that match Black’s modus operandi. It is highly likely that he stalked children during this period and very possible that he tried, maybe even several times, to abduct a child, but if he did so it never came to police or public attention. It seems that 1984 was a gap year for Robert Black’s serial killing. This is not unusual even with the most prolific of serial killers: there is usually in the timeline of an offender’s murderous activities a break or gap in their offending. This gap can be anything from a couple of months to a year or even several years. The reasons for this stop in killing can vary – the offender may have experienced a change in their personal or professional life that has in some way and for one reason or another brought about a stop to the killing, or they may have been imprisoned for other offences. In Black’s case he simply seems to have carried on that year watching his child pornography in the privacy of his attic flat, drinking the odd pint of shandy, playing darts in pubs, as well as attending family get-togethers with the Raysons, whom he lodged with. Work continued, travelling all over. Hard worker, that Robbie Black, people remarked, never complained and helped his workmates out if they couldn’t make a trip and a replacement driver was needed. The mask that covered the face of a serial killer was well and truly on.
Black simply kept his head low during the year of 1984. He would have wanted the fury of public and police reaction following the Maxwell and Hogg killings to have calmed down and any further killings that year would surely have given the police fresh impetus or information which in turn would have aided them in catching him.
By the summer of 1985 Black was still at large. He confided to sex crimes expert Ray Wyre in prison following his 1990 arrest that in June 1985 in Carlisle he lured two young girls into his van, but, he said, once they were in his van he changed his mind and let them get out, unharmed, to go on their way. And in the following August, he later admitted, he had approached a girl who looked around ten in an alleyway in South London; the girl had screamed at his approach and had run away, while Black in a panic had jumped in his van and sped off. These incidents or, rather, attempted abductions were never reported to the police and would probably have remained unknown if it wasn’t for Black’s own admissions. It is impossible to know if he was telling the truth about these attacks, or even if they had ever actually happened. He claimed that having got two young girls into his van, he then let them out just like that … He claimed that when a young girl screamed he fled … We might wonder if those reactions were likely, considering Black had already killed at least three young girls. My gut feeling, however, is that he was telling the truth, for while he was undoubtedly a determined paedophile, abductor and killer, even Black would have had his reasons not to take abduction opportunities, not just necessarily because he didn’t want to on that particular day but because there may have been external factors at play that presented the risk of his being detected.
At first glance no child murders took place in the United Kingdom in 1985 so it would appear Black’s break from killing was extended. Or was it? In the summer of that year a ten-year-old girl called Silke Garben was abducted and murdered in Germany, of which more later.
Of the three confirmed murders Black was responsible for by 1985 all had been committed during the summer months. Jennifer Cardy had been murdered in August 1981 and the now jointly investigated Susan Maxwell and Caroline Hogg murders occurred in July 1982 and July 1983 respectively. Does this suggest a summer theme or reasoning to his murderous activities? A more likely answer would be that children during the summer months are off school and in the warm weather are often found outside gaining some independence, having fun playing, or walking or cycling just as Black’s victims all were. It is a time of year when prey is more easily accessible for a predator and opportunities for abduction present themselves more often. Having said this, the summer periods may also have been a time of year when Black, himself a fan of summer and outdoor activities such as swimming and football, found his paedophiliac desires more often than not at the front of his mind while he was making his deliveries in the hot and sunny weather. It is therefore somewhat ironic that the next little girl he murdered in the United Kingdom was abducted on a very wet, miserable night in March 1986.
THE MURDER OF SARAH HARPER
Robert Black had just signed the delivery log book on an assignment of posters, it was the evening and night was approaching fast. With no one at the location in Morley where he dropped off his load he signed his name, indicating an out-of-hours delivery, confident the posters would be discovered the next morning. He had done this before; it was common practice for after-hours deliveries. As he walked towards his white Transit van with his work done he must have been very aware of the wet weather as the dark of the night came upon him in a mixture of rain and cold. As he sat in his van preparing to set off back to London, he caught sight of a small figure heading up a nearby road.
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It was a wet, dark and miserable Wednesday night on 26 March 1986 when ten-year-old Sarah Harper disappeared. She lived with her mother Jackie, sister Claire and brother David in a terraced house in Brunswick Place, Morley, a suburb of Leeds in West Yorkshire. After finishing her evening tea Sarah was asked by her mother if she would pop to the local shop to buy a loaf of bread. The little girl agreed, picked up a couple of empty lemonade bottles to return, and put on her anorak coat to make the short journey to the local shop, which was just along Peel Street on the corner. Sarah lived at Number 1 Brunswick Place, an end-of-terrace house that latched onto Peel Street. The corner shop in question was K and M Stores, owned and run by a Mr and Mrs Champaneri. When Sarah entered the shop she handed over the empty lemonade bottles, purchased the loaf of bread and with the returned deposits on the bottles bought two bags of crisps. Shortly after she had stepped in, another customer entered the shop – except the man was not a customer. He walked about the shop, had a quick look around, then left without buying anything or asking for anything. He was in the shop for too short a time to be genuinely browsing and left the shop before Sarah did. It was about 8.05 when Sarah left the corner shop, and as she set off home two young girls saw her make her way down an alleyway known as ‘The Snicket’, which was used by local people as a short cut and would have shortened Sarah’s walk home on that very wet and cold evening. It was to be the last time anyone, other than the man who would abduct and kill her, saw Sarah Harper alive. As she made her way through the alley Sarah was forcibly seized and taken away in a vehicle. Robert Black had struck again.
The minutes ticked by. Jackie Harper was aware that Sarah’s journey should have taken no more than ten minutes, but perhaps she was chatting to somebody she knew in the shop or had met someone to play with or talk to on the way home. As the time approached 8.30, Jackie asked her other daughter Claire to go out and fetch her sister. But Claire returned saying she’d not seen Sarah. Getting concerned, Jackie instructed Claire to stay with her brother David while she went out to look for Sarah. She put on her anorak and setting off in the heavy downpour, she made her way along the street to the shop looking for Sarah. Mrs Champaneri told Jackie that Sarah had indeed been in the shop and bought some items but had left shortly after 8 p.m. As the search for Sarah continued it was fast approaching an hour since Sarah was last seen. The police were called at 9 p.m.
While searches went under way in the local vicinity of Morley, and house-to-house enquiries were undertaken, there was nothing solid coming to the police that pointed to where Sarah could have been taken. In a public appeal on television a desperate Jackie Harper said that the family just wanted Sarah home. As the reservoirs, railways and parks of Leeds were searched by police and volun
teers, Detective Superintendent John Stainthorpe from West Yorkshire Police, who was in charge of the investigation, told a press conference that whilst he remained hopeful of Sarah being found safe and well, the possibility of abduction could not be ruled out.
Sarah’s body was found three and a half weeks later, on 19 April 1986. It was discovered by a man called David Moult who was out walking his dog along the bank of the River Trent in Nottingham. As he strolled alongside the river he noticed something floating on the surface of the water. Initially he thought it was something commonplace like a piece of clothing or a sack, but he took a closer look and as the pace of the river turned it around he saw to his horror it was the body of a child. Quickly he found a stick and managed to guide the body to the side of the river. Once he had dragged it to the bank, he contacted the police.
It fell to Sarah Harper’s father Terry to identify the dead body as that of his daughter. Jennifer Cardy’s father Andrew had had to do the same task five years earlier when his daughter was murdered. This was not to be the only thing, however, that linked these two murders, five years apart and right across the United Kingdom, over nearly 400 miles of land and sea.
Sarah’s post-mortem made for some horrifying reading. The pathologist had concluded that Sarah had died from drowning, and that, significantly, she had been alive when submerged in the river, although in all likelihood she had been unconscious. Police worked out that Sarah would have been put into the River Trent at junction 24 off the M1. The pathologist also noted that Sarah had suffered heavy injuries to her vaginal and anal areas, indicating she had been subjected to a serious prolonged and violent sexual assault. Her anorak, skirt and shoes had been removed and have never been found, in spite of appeals on television and the official appeal poster from West Yorkshire Police on Sarah’s murder.
At this early stage of the Sarah Harper murder investigation the police had to make a decision regarding the future direction of the enquiry. The similarities to the killings of Susan Maxwell and Caroline Hogg had not escaped them, but they were not convinced of a link at that stage. The question was, should they combine their investigation with the joint Maxwell/Hogg enquiry, which was already engaging four police forces; and take the number of forces involved to six?
Hector Clark, who was the overall chief in charge of the Maxwell/Hogg enquiry weighed up the similarities and differences between the two enquiries and decided at least initially to keep the two investigations separate but keep an open line of communication on what the other was doing. John Stainthorpe, who was running the West Yorkshire end of the enquiry, at first believed that the answer to who killed Sarah was to be found in Morley itself where she was abducted, rather than that it was linked to the other two murders.
There certainly were differences between the 1986 murder of Sarah Harper and the murders of Susan Maxwell and Caroline Hogg, four and three years previously. The differences included:
Susan and Caroline were abducted on hot summer Fridays in July whilst Sarah Harper was abducted on a wet, dark and miserable Wednesday evening in March.
Susan and Caroline were both dressed in customary summer attire for children, which would have made them both recognisable and attractive to a watching, passing predator, whilst Sarah was wrapped up in an anorak that covered her hair; her face would also have been barely visible on that dark, wet evening and she would therefore not have been instantly identified as a girl.
Susan and Caroline were abducted from areas that had a lot of people either travelling through them or visiting them as a main route from England to Scotland (in Susan’s case) or holiday resort (in Caroline’s case), whereas Morley, where Sarah was abducted from, was the type of location that you would have to have had a specific reason to be there– it was not the sort of place that attracted random strangers, it was a tight-knit local community not uncommon across the north of England.
Susan and Caroline were abducted not particularly far from each other; Susan on the England/Scotland border and Caroline on the edge of Edinburgh, still deep in the southern half of Scotland, while Sarah was abducted from a suburb of West Yorkshire in England.
Susan and Caroline were each found in waste ground adjacent to lay-bys whilst Sarah’s body was dumped in a river.
Susan’s and Caroline’s remains when examined showed no visible physical injuries to the body whilst Sarah Harper showed that she had been victim of a violent physical assault and a sexual attack.
In hindsight, it does appear that if the police had decided to conduct all three murders as one investigation – perhaps as a result of pressure, both internal and public – while they were not one hundred per cent sure the same man was involved in all three cases, it could have jeopardised both investigations and produced more problems than results in catching the killer.
But what was the open line of communication between the two investigations? What was the purpose of it? The reason for these two enquiries being run both separately and yet in parallel, comparing and contrasting information on tactics, suspects etc., and regularly and openly communicating was because while Hector Clark and the other senior police involved were not certain the same killer was responsible, they also were far from sure the same killer was not. To sum up, they kept an open mind and did not rule out either possibility. For there were similarities binding the three cases together despite the on-the-surface differences:
All three were pre-pubescent little girls abducted near their homes in public places and on all three occasions a vehicle was certainly used in the abduction.
All three victims were taken south from Scotland or northern England many miles from their abduction points and all were left in the Midlands: Susan in Uttoxeter, West Midlands; Caroline in Twycross, East Midlands, and Sarah was found in the River Trent in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands. On a map the locations of the three bodies make a triangle within a radius of twenty-six miles – hence the killings being later referred to as the Midlands Triangle murders.
All murders were sexually motivated, with Susan Maxwell’s underwear removed, Caroline Hogg being found naked, and Sarah Harper the victim of a vicious sexual assault and with her skirt, anorak and shoes removed.
The differing sexual elements in all three murders, with the sexual emphasis of the murder becoming more recognisable or stronger from one killing to the next, would have pointed to a serial killer plunging to new depths of depravity and cruelty, a worrying factor to consider for all involved in the investigations.
The possibility of the three murders being omitted by a serial killer was aired in the April 1986 edition of the television series Crimewatch. The aim of the programme, presented at that time by Nick Ross and Sue Cook, was to bring unsolved crimes to the greater public attention, in the hopes of getting information from viewers that would help solve the crimes; using contributions from police officers in charge of the featured cases and reconstructions, it was a useful tool and still is to this day. The edition of the programme that was shown a few weeks after Sarah’s killing featured the murders of Susan Maxwell and Caroline Hogg, with the murder of Sarah Harper featuring just briefly at the end of the programme as it was still an open and live investigation in its early stages. One has to wonder if Black watched the broadcast and whether he was concerned that any leads from it would bring the police to his flat door; unfortunately, however, he didn’t have to worry. Black’s name was not put forward to the detectives taking calls in the studio nor would it at any point be known until his 1990 arrest.
In the meantime West Yorkshire Police, along with their counterparts in the Nottinghamshire Constabulary, were undertaking other forms of investigation, rapping on front doors of houses in Morley, tracing and interviewing potential witnesses, stopping and questioning drivers, and contacting local intelligence officers from neighbouring forces for the details of possible suspects – in other words, men with ‘form’ in regard to crimes of a sexual nature – who were subsequently interviewed and traced. Nottinghamshire police also searched alon
g the banks of the Trent for possible clues and appealed for fishermen or regular walkers by the river in get in touch if they had any information or had seen anything suspicious around the times between Sarah’s disappearance and the discovery of her dead body in the river. Motorway users on the M1 between Morley and Nottingham were stopped at service stations by police and asked if they had travelled along that route on the evening of 26 March and, if so, whether they had seen anything at all that could be relevant to the investigation.
Police in West Yorkshire did glean some useful statements from witnesses in Morley on the night Sarah Harper disappeared. A few witnesses stated that they had seen a white Transit van parked out Sarah’s house ten minutes before she disappeared. Neither the van nor its driver were ever traced and the man never came forward despite public appeals for him to do so. Another question that West Yorkshire police asked was who was the man with receding hair, heavy-set and wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, who came into the shop after Sarah Harper had entered and left before she did, without buying or saying anything. Too brief surely to be a genuine browser, and he was in the shop too short a time to be someone seeking shelter from the rain of that night; an artist’s impression was drawn up and released, and appeals were made for the man to come forward as he could have been a witness; however, he never came forward, arousing police suspicions that he was implicated in Sarah’s murder.