The Face of Evil

by Chris Clark

  A man of similar description was also seen walking in Peel Street – was it the same man? Nobody locally who had seen him recognised him, but why would he not come forward? He could have been a witness … or maybe the killer.

  The artist’s impression, drawn from the Champaneris’ description of the man in the shop, would later be seen to bear a striking resemblance to Black as he would have looked in 1986 – as police discovered when, following his 1990 arrest, they found a number of photographs of him taken during the 1980s.

  Black also was driving a white Transit van at this point in 1986 and was working that night in Morley – he made a recorded delivery of posters to a depot 150 yards from where Sarah lived with her family. All this would be explained in detail to the jury by the prosecution during Black’s trial for the murder of Sarah Harper eight years later.

  In July that year Sarah was eventually laid to rest. Her family and school friends, many in their uniforms of the Salvation Army, of which Sarah was a member, sobbed as they said goodbye to another little girl who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  By the end of 1986 Sarah’s killer was still at large and enjoying his freedom when he should have been behind bars. To Black as the months ticked by it must surely have looked as though he had once again got away with a brutal child murder. By now he had claimed at least four murder victims in different parts of the United Kingdom, but the number might well be higher.

  The end of 1986 also saw a change in the direction of the Sarah Harper enquiry as a decision was made to officially include Sarah’s murder in the investigation of the murders of Susan Maxwell and Caroline Hogg, and it was agreed that the information relating to all three murders was to be entered into a computer system, for the similarities in all three cases were too striking to ignore. The computer system in question to be used was HOLMES, standing for Home Office Large Major Enquiry System, a suitable name and acronym for the task involved as well as a nod to the legendary fictional detective. The police could only hope that, as in the books of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, HOLMES, the computerised version, would get the killer and justice would be served.

  The HOLMES system was introduced to ensure that mistakes like those made in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation by West Yorkshire Police several years previously were not repeated. On that occasion, errors were made and connections were not made, largely due to the mass of paperwork all on handwritten index cards that contained the details of thirteen murders and several attempted murders. The police were simply overloaded with a paper trail of information so vast that there was not time nor space nor manpower to sift through it all and valuable clues and links were hidden – and so Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, managed to stay at large and continue killing until he was caught almost in the act by a chance arrest in 1981.

  The Midlands Triangle killings were fast becoming the largest and most expensive police investigation in Britain since the Yorkshire Ripper case so it was vital that all that could be done in terms of new technology was to be tried in an effort to catch the killer, and HOLMES was the prime example of this new technology.

  The information on the Susan Maxwell murder enquiry was still all recorded on card indexes, and the Caroline Hogg investigation, whilst computerised, was on an older, different system from HOLMES and could not be transferred. As a result the backlog of details relating to the Maxwell/Hogg killings had to be fed into HOLMES as Sarah Harper’s had been. The entire process took three years, and the single database was completed in 1990; long as it would take, however, the police were hopeful that, given the vast information fed into the system, it was worth it as a connection could be made, or a statement compared, or details on a suspect produced, at the click of a button on a computer keyboard.

  With the end of 1986 and the beginning of 1987, questions surrounding this serial killer were continually being asked. Apart from the obvious one of his identity, police speculated as to his actions during the three-year gap between the murder of Caroline Hogg in 1983 and that of Sarah Harper in 1986. As the years passed after Caroline’s death, people wondered if the child killer had been convicted of an unrelated offence and was therefore in prison, or if he had died. Or had he taken his offending elsewhere? Sadly, the latter remains a possibility but now with the murder of Sarah Harper police knew he had struck again and were concerned at the very real prospect of him claiming yet another victim.

  When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was entering her third term of office, visited the headquarters of Lothian and Borders Police in Edinburgh with her husband Denis, she met and talked with Hector Clark, no doubt about the progress of the investigation that was both shocking and frightening the public. This was September 1987, a year and a half after Sarah’s murder and preying on everyone’s minds was again the dreaded question of whether he would strike again before the police caught him.

  Eighteen months had passed and no child had been abducted and killed by this dangerous serial killer who was stalking the children of the kingdom. Once again the possibilities were explored, perhaps he was in prison? Perhaps he was dead and buried? Maybe he had stopped once and for all this carnage and had learned to control his proclivity for abduction and murder?

  But what nobody knew was that Robert Black in the early summer of 1987 had been to France for work purposes and during his time there, as when he made his trip to Germany in June 1985, little girls were abducted and murdered. Was it a coincidence? Or had he taken his crimes elsewhere due to the intense police investigation after Sarah Harper’s murder? These possibilities will be explored later.

  Either way, Black had not finished his attacks at home. As the spring of 1988 approached he once again attempted to abduct a young girl. This time, however, his attempt would be unsuccessful. Yet it would not result in his capture.

  6

  A LUCKY ESCAPE

  The body of Sarah Harper had been found in the fast-flowing River Trent near Nottingham. Two years after the discovery of her body and whilst the hunt for her killer continued, Black was once again in Nottingham.

  It was a hot Sunday evening, 24 April 1988, and fifteen-year-old Teresa Thornhill had been to a local park with a group of friends. When the evening came to an end, Teresa began to walk home with one of her friends, a boy called Andrew Beeson. Teresa and Andrew eventually went their separate ways and as Teresa made her way down Norton Street she heard a voice call out to her. ‘Oi, can you fix engines?’ A well-built man in a stained white T-shirt was peering through his glasses under the bonnet of his blue van. Replying that she could not, Teresa continued on her journey. She had barely walked a few steps when the man came up behind her and grabbed her, lifted her from the ground and walked with her towards his van. As he tried to contain her in a strong bear hug, Teresa screamed for help and struggled frantically with her attacker, knocking his glasses to the ground and grabbing him between the legs, which made him call her by a derogatory term and yell at her to get into the van. She continued struggling, and as he tried to bundle her into the vehicle Teresa, screaming for help all the while, managed to stick her feet against the van, on either side of the rear door of the vehicle in an effort to keep her attacker from pushing her in. At that point a timely intervention brought the abduction attempt to an immediate halt. Andrew Beeson, who had not gone far after he and Teresa had parted company at the end of the road, heard her screams and ran to where they were coming from, witnessing to his horror Black’s attempt to abduct his friend. He ran towards them, shouting at Black, ‘Get off her, you fat fucking bastard!’ As Andrew drew close, Black let go of Teresa and quickly jumped in his van and drove away from the scene. Andrew helped a frightened and shaken Teresa to her feet and the two teenagers quickly ran to Teresa’s home. There they told Teresa’s parents who phoned the police at once. In the meantime, Black, apprehensive about being identified through the glasses Teresa had knocked from his face during the struggle, swerved his van round back to the scene of crime to pick them up before the
y could be found by someone else.

  The Nottingham police took the incident seriously – Teresa had had a lucky escape from an abduction – and they immediately began searching for her attacker. Teresa and Andrew had provided good descriptions of Black and had noted that his van was blue – but blue Transit vans were common throughout the United Kingdom, and in the chaos of the situation they didn’t get to take note of the van’s registration number. A CCTV camera managed to film the incident but unfortunately it too was unable to record the registration number. The police put an appeal out via local media in an attempt to catch the perpetrator, showed Teresa photos of possible suspects, and asked her to attend an identity parade. But all was to no avail and the case went cold, to remain stalled until Black’s arrest over two years later.

  As Black hurriedly drove his way out of Nottingham that evening, down south to London he would undoubtedly have been deeply anxious. He would have worried that Teresa and Andrew might have provided enough information in their description of him and his vehicle that somebody would recognise him, or that his van would be traced and, through it, he would be. But in the end once again he had no need to worry as his name never got put forward.

  One of the strange things to come about in the aftermath of this very serious incident was the failure to link the attack to the Midlands Triangle murders. In fact a link was not made or brought to the attention of Hector Clark and his team until Black’s arrest in the Scottish Borders over two years later, in 1990. It is puzzling as to why the two cases were not connected; on the surface they may appear slightly different, with Teresa at fifteen being older than the three other girls, but it is worth noting that Teresa was petite and looked much younger than her actual age – more like eleven or twelve, which fitted in with the ages of Black’s other victims, rather than fifteen.

  Teresa was a young girl almost abducted not far from her home in an urban street – remarkably similar in circumstances to the abduction of Sarah Harper, also in a street near her home in a suburb of Leeds. Considering the fact that Nottinghamshire Police were also involved in the Harper murder investigation as Sarah’s body had been discovered in the River Trent on the outskirts of Nottingham just two years previously, the lack of connection seems even stranger. It was a serious abduction attempt only foiled by Teresa’s strength, courage and determination, and the timely intervention of her friend. The description given of Black and the presence of a Ford Transit van should also have provided a link, given the similarity in the descriptions of the suspect in the Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper cases, and the sighting of a Ford Transit in those two cases; not to mention the suspicion that the serial killer drove long distances regularly, perhaps for a living, something which should have pointed to a possible connection. In hindsight, it is easy to criticise, but at the time – perhaps because the outcome was, happily, so different – no link was observed.

  The connection was firmly made after Black’s 1990 arrest as police discovered evidence he was in Nottingham an hour before Teresa was almost abducted. They also found a newspaper article from the Nottingham Evening Post in Black’s West Bank attic room after his arrest, which detailed the attempted abduction of Teresa Thornhill and contained a police appeal for information on her attacker. A forensic examination revealed semen stains on the newspaper article, which Black probably bought when he was on his next trip to the city just a few days after the abduction attempt. It was no doubt kept as a ghoulish souvenir: serial offenders often collect items as ‘trophies’ or reminders of their crimes.

  If the connection had been made in 1988 between the attempted abduction of Teresa Thornhill and the three child murders, would it, we have to ask ourselves, have made a difference? Would Black have been apprehended any sooner? If a connection had been made then, the available details about Teresa’s attacker, such as his description and that of his vehicle, would have reached far more people all over the country in a national appeal as part of the Midlands Triangle killings coverage, which went nationwide, rather than an appeal in the local Nottingham newspaper. But in spite of this, there is no way of knowing for certain if this larger amount of coverage, awareness and publicity would have led to Black’s name being put forward to the team of detectives still hunting him down.

  What is clear, however, is that this failed abduction attempt was followed by a lull in Black’s offending for over two years. Still nervous about the chances of being apprehended, he went about his work life as usual, and there is no record of any other child murders, sex attacks or abduction attempts that could be attributed to him for the rest of 1988 and 1989. That is not to say that he did not carry out crimes during this period; he may well have done but if he did they have not come to light, or if they did come to public attention then they were never connected to him.

  When Ray Wyre later interviewed Black, after his 1990 arrest, his statement speaks volumes about his build-up to an abduction. ‘I don’t know what possessed me in Nottingham, like, you know, in broad daylight in the middle of the day … She was with a boy. I thought she looked about eleven or twelve … I turned up a side street, and as it happened the girl turned up the side street as well. I pulled up and stopped just inside the street and I got out and lifted the bonnet. I asked her if she would do me a favour and asked her to help … As I came back round her she went to go away. I grabbed her and tried to get her into the vehicle. She struggled and then, I don’t know, the boy must have come round the block because he was coming down towards us shouting and I let her go.’

  When Wyre asked what he had been going to do Black replied, ‘Well, get her into the van, like, and then drive somewhere, a lay-by somewhere … Assault her.’

  It would appear that Black was not put off by aborted abduction attempts to go by his response to further questioning by Ray Wyre. ‘… When was Nottingham? ’Eighty-eight? I’d say that it wouldn’t have mattered if the next day I’d seen a nice little girl of ten or nine or something like that. If she had been in a short skirt with socks up to here or something like that, I’d probably have thought, Cor! Good lassie, that.’

  The lull did not last long, and the hot summer of 1990 would see Black return to his predatory habits. This time, however, not only would the victim, thankfully, survive, but he would be caught. Caught and arrested in the act, and this time there would be no release, no chance to resume his murderous depravities. This time it was over for good. The cycle of opportunity had ended.

  7

  STOPPED IN STOW

  The village of Stow of Wedale lies in the Scottish Borders. A place with a population of several hundred people, it is a stunningly pretty and picturesque area. This beautiful landscape is where Robert Black’s run of luck would at long last come to an end when he was caught red-handed in the act of abducting a child, after unknowingly being spotted by a well-placed and sharp-eyed witness who quickly alerted the police.

  Until then, luck, so unfair and so cruel, had, as we have seen, been on his side. He had been lucky not to have been identified following the attempted abduction of schoolgirl Teresa Thornhill in Nottingham in 1988. He was lucky before that attack to still be working as a van driver: he had been sacked by PDS because of the high number of scrapes and collisions with other vehicles he had had, which had cost the company a great deal in insurance claims over the ten years he had worked for them. But, as mentioned earlier, when two PDS employees bought the company out, they rehired Black – on condition that he bought his own van and insured it himself. It is hard to doubt that as the 1980s came to a close, Robert Black must have been revelling in his luck: he still had his very convenient job, and over some ten years he had committed at least four murders, yet somehow had always managed to stay one step ahead of the law. Until, finally, justice did catch up with him.

  The day was 14 July 1990, a warm and bright day in Stow as elsewhere, with everyone been going about their business, work or pleasure, both adults and children, enjoying the fine summer weather. Black had been working in his van from th
e early morning of that Saturday making deliveries to Edinburgh amongst other places and was on his way down south to England and home. He had just one more drop of posters to do. His route took him through Stow, a village where he had stopped off a number of times in the past to catch a bite to eat, and he knew it well. It was a hot weekend, children were playing barelegged in the sun, there was just the one delivery left to make – to Galashiels, only several miles down the road. As he headed south towards the border, Black had plenty of time – time to go looking for a victim. He must have known this would inevitably lead to another little girl being discovered in the English Midlands and a renewed hunt to catch him, but he had always got away with it ….

  As he entered the village, a girl immediately caught his eye, a young girl called Mandy Wilson walking her dog, whom he later described to Ray Wyre in prison interviews as looking around twelve years of age. He watched her in his rear-view mirror until she was out of sight, then drove out of the village and found a place to turn the van round to see if there was any chance of a pick-up. He looked up the side streets and saw the girl again. He pulled his van alongside her as she walked along the pavement and got out. Positioning himself near the passenger door of the vehicle, he asked the girl if there was a café in the village and she gave him directions. Clearly this girl was his intended victim that day but he quickly backed out of any abduction attempt when her golden retriever started barking erratically and loudly, which put Black off as he certainly did not want to attract attention to himself. But there was something other than a large canine making a lot of noise that stopped him from carrying out his intention – he had momentarily noticed, whilst the child was telling the dog to be quiet, that there was a man further up the road, working on his car: a potential witness who could get him caught. He changed his mind, thanked the girl, got back in the van and thought, as he later put it, ‘no chance there’, and casually drove away from the girl, who certainly had had a lucky escape, unaware as she was of the danger she was in.