by Chris Clark
At this stage, Black became as terse and monosyllabic as he had been in Clark’s interview on 16 July. The two detectives closed the six hours of interview with a direct appeal to him to confess in order to end the suffering of the families of his victims. Black said nothing. Although the information gleaned from this exhaustive interview would achieve little to actually advance the ongoing murder enquiry, it did serve to strengthen Hector Clark’s conviction that Black was guilty. As the three police officers left, Clark commented to his two colleagues: ‘That’s our man. I’d bet my life on it.’
Combining their efforts, detectives from the six forces in the United Kingdom involved in the case (Northumbria Police, Lothian and Borders Police, Staffordshire Police, the Leicestershire Constabulary, West Yorkshire Police and the Nottinghamshire Constabulary) then embarked on an intense and painstaking hunt for sufficient evidence to satisfy the Crown Prosecution Service that it would be justified in instigating legal proceedings against Black with a reasonable chance of convicting him of the murders of Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper. Black himself clammed up and, as was his right by law, refused to co-operate with the detectives.
One of the first areas of focus for this joint investigation was the firm that had employed Black since 1976. Detectives contacted Poster, Despatch and Storage Ltd in the hopes that the company had travel records that could verify Black’s whereabouts on specific dates crucial to the investigation. PDS staff confirmed that Black had always paid for petrol with credit cards and would then submit the receipts to the firm for reimbursement. The files containing them, along with several historical delivery schedules, were still in the company’s archives. Searching through these archives, the investigators discovered that Black had made scheduled delivery runs to the counties where the abductions had occurred, and on dates that coincided with those of the abductions. While the precise times he had been in each locality were difficult to determine, petrol-station receipts confirmed that he had purchased petrol close to the location from where each girl had disappeared, and on the date of her disappearance. In the case of Sarah Harper, for instance, Black had been scheduled to make a series of deliveries across the Midlands and Northern England, with the two final deliveries being in the West Yorkshire towns of Brighouse and Morley. A petrol-station receipt showed that he had refuelled his van between these two towns shortly before Sarah had last been seen alive. His last delivery was to a firm located just 150 yards from the Harpers’ home.
The investigators also discovered that on his journey back to London from his long-distance deliveries to Northern England or Scotland Black had often slept overnight at the house of his landlord’s son John Rayson in the Midlands village of Donisthorpe. This village was in the so-called Midlands Triangle, close to where the three victims’ bodies had been discovered. On his regular deliveries to Morley, the Leeds police discovered, Black often slept overnight in his van in the premises of the firm he delivered to, not so far from Sarah Harper’s home.
Upon learning that Poster, Despatch and Storage had accounts with several oil companies, allowing their drivers to purchase fuel without cash changing hands, investigators approached the oil companies in question, who handed over seven million archived microfiche credit-card slips detailing fuel purchases made via this method at every one of their nationwide premises between 1982 and 1986. These were sent to the incident room in Newcastle upon Tyne, where a team of officers undertook the task of combing through them for Black’s distinctive signature in order to identify exactly when, where and at what time he had refuelled his van. Although tedious, this endeavour did pay off: from October 1990 investigators began to unearth vital evidence of the precise times Black had paid for fuel at petrol stations close to the abduction sites. In every case, the time of purchase had been not long before or after each child had been taken. By December 1990 the enquiry team decided they had accumulated sufficient circumstantial evidence to persuade the Crown there existed a reasonable prospect of securing convictions against Black. Even though Clark harboured concerns that the enquiry had not discovered any actual forensic evidence to tie Black to the murders, all the accumulated evidence was submitted to the Crown in May 1991.
In March 1992 Crown lawyers decided that the sheer weight of this evidence was sufficient to warrant Black being tried for the three murders and the attempted abduction of Teresa Thornhill. Police held a news conference on 11 March in which Hector Clark told the press he was able to confirm that ‘criminal proceedings have been issued on the authority of the Crown Prosecution Service against Robert Black’.
There were several pre-trial hearings held between July 1992 and March 1994; these hearings saw Black’s defence team argue that their client should be tried on each count separately and that the prosecution should not be allowed to demonstrate any similarity between the modus operandi of each offence at the upcoming trial. In the penultimate pre-trial hearing, held in January 1994, Judge William Macpherson ruled against defence motions to try Black on each charge separately and also ruled in favour of the prosecution’s request to tender similar fact evidence, a principle that is not always admissible as it has its flaws. In the case of Black’s trial, the similar fact ruling allowed the prosecution to present the similarities between the cases and to introduce into evidence Black’s recent conviction for the abduction and sexual assault of Laura Turner. The prosecution was, however, prohibited from introducing into evidence the transcript of the interview of Black carried out by detectives Andrew Watt and Roger Orr in August 1990.
On 13 April 1994 Robert Black stood before Mr Justice William Macpherson at Moot Hall in Newcastle upon Tyne and, as the charges were read out, pleaded not guilty to each of the ten counts of kidnap, murder, preventing the lawful burial of a body and attempted kidnap. Throughout the entire trial, Black rarely displayed any notable interest, typically remaining expressionless, and speaking only when asked a direct question.
In his opening statement on behalf of the Crown, prosecutor Mr John Milford, QC called the case ‘every parent’s nightmare’ as he set out the prosecution’s contention that Robert Black had committed the three child murders and the attempted abduction as charged, highlighting the similarities between these offences and the 1990 abduction and sexual assault of the Stow schoolgirl for which Black was already serving a life sentence. Milford then outlined for the jury the circumstances of each abduction and murder one by one, asserting that each victim had remained alive in Black’s van for several hours before her murder and that each had been killed at or close to where her body was later found. Upon hearing the details of the girls’ kidnapping and murder, the victims’ relatives present in court wept openly. Mr Milford cautioned the jury: ‘It would be too easy to dwell on the suffering but we have to put that to one side, along with all our natural emotions and consider only this: is it proved by the evidence that this defendant, Robert Black, abducted and killed them.’
Referring to both Black’s history of child sexual abuse, and to the paraphernalia discovered in his vehicle and at his London address, Mr Milford addressed the court: ‘These three offences were so unusual, points of similarity so numerous and peculiar, that you can, members of the jury, safely conclude that they were all the work of one man. The Crown alleges that Robert Black kidnapped each of these children and did so for sexual gratification and then transported them and murdered them.’ He closed his five-hour opening speech with the contention that the petrol-station receipts and travel records to be introduced into evidence would prove Black that had been at all the abduction, attempted abduction and body-recovery sites on the dates in question.
The second day of the trial saw the prosecution beginning to introduce witnesses, witness statements, circumstantial evidence, and forensic testimony. Each case was covered chronologically, with various witnesses describing the circumstances surrounding the abduction and the subsequent discovery of each victim, and investigators describing the evidence they had uncovered relating to Black’s w
hereabouts on the relevant dates; the attempted abduction of Teresa Thornhill and the kidnapping and assault of Laura Turner were also covered. Statements made by the mother of each murder victim at the time of her child’s abduction were also read to the court, followed by the testimony of the pathologists who had examined each body at the recovery location and also later conducted full autopsies upon each victim.
Black’s appointed defence counsel Mr Ronald Thwaites, QC proceeded to cross-examine a number of the witnesses, focusing on matters such as minor discrepancies between times logged within record books at a firm to which Black had made a delivery on the date of Susan Maxwell’s disappearance and those of petrol receipts introduced into evidence – which proved to be an administrative error – and the statements given by witnesses to police at the time. Thwaites also questioned the issue of memory accuracy, for many years had gone by, but most witnesses remained steadfast in their insistence as to the accuracy and honesty of their testimony.
The defence’s cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses continued into the third day of the trial. One of these witnesses was James Fraser of Lothian and Borders Police forensic laboratory, who had earlier testified as to the results of his forensic examination of more than 300 items recovered from Black’s van and his London flat. Asked if he and his colleagues, having made over 1,800 microscopic comparisons, had uncovered evidence against Black, Fraser conceded that no forensic link had been established between Black and the three victims. In direct re-examination by the prosecutor Mr Milford, however, Fraser pointed out that the interval between the offences and Black’s arrest – plus the fact Black had only bought the van in which he was arrested in 1986, later than at least two of the three murders in question – would make establishing a forensic link between the three murders highly unlikely.
The final prosecution witnesses testified on 29 April. Several detectives from the various police forces involved in the manhunt attested to the sheer scope of the investigation while Black had been at large and to the subsequent painstaking searches carried out to obtain the evidence required to prove his guilt – in all, over 20 tons of material had been collected for sifting through. The last detective to testify on this date was Hector Clark, who conceded Black’s name had not been among those entered into the HOLMES database during the manhunt because he was not a known sex offender; his conviction for molesting his landlords’ young daughter was in 1976 – a less serious offence and one that predated the timescale of those judged to warrant further investigation. Clark added that he could not recall any other cases where children had been abducted, killed and their bodies transported considerable distances. ‘I don’t believe there has been a bigger crime investigation in the United Kingdom, ever,’ he stated.
On 4 May Ronald Thwaites presented his case in defence of Robert Black. He first reminded the court that the police had been unsuccessfully investigating the crimes for eight years before Blackhad been arrested for the Stow abduction in 1990 and subsequently convicted of it. The investigation, said Thwaites, ‘reeked of failure, disappointment and frustration’ and he went on to suggest that the investigators had seized the opportunity to make a scapegoat of his client to appease their feelings of failure and in an effort to restore broken reputations.
In describing the evidence presented before the court Thwaites claimed that although the paraphernalia introduced as evidence by the prosecution did indeed confirm his client’s admitted obsession with procuring and viewing paedophiliac material, there was no direct evidence to prove Black had ‘graduated from molester to murderer’. Thwaites had decided against permitting Black to testify in respect to the petrol receipts and travel records introduced into evidence, remarking to the jury that ‘No man can be expected to remember the ordinary daily routine of his life going back many years.’ He also reminded them that the fact that Black was not giving evidence was not a presumption of guilt.
‘This case,’ Thwaites added, ‘has been determined using one incidence of abduction, which he [Black] admitted, as a substitute for evidence in all the other cases. Without it, there is no direct evidence against him,’
Witnesses for the defence were then called up to testify. To support Thwaites’s contention that the three murders were not part of a series and had not been committed by Black, much of the testimony delivered by the defence witnesses referred to sightings of alternative suspects and suspicious vehicles seen in the vicinity of each abduction. Several people testified that on the date of Susan Maxwell’s abduction they had observed a girl matching her description striking a maroon Triumph saloon with a tennis racket close to the site of Susan’s abduction. This vehicle had contained at least two men. Yet others spoke of seeing red or dark-coloured cars in the vicinity. A fourteen-year-old girl who, eleven years previously had said she had seen a ‘bad man’ trying to take Caroline Hogg away, now only remembered that a child who used to play with her stopped being there to play with her. While these witnesses may have served to demonstrate the fragility of decade-old evidence, they did little to advance the case for the defence.
On 12 May the two counsels delivered their closing arguments to the jury. Prosecutor John Milford, QC spoke first, opening his final address to the jury with a description of the circumstances of Black’s arrest in 1990, and then recapitulating the extensive circumstantial evidence presented throughout the trial. He was careful to refer to the total lack of physical evidence to link Black to the crimes, reminding the jury that this was because a considerable length of time had passed between the offences and Black’s arrest. As to Black’s close proximity to each of the abduction and body disposal sites on the dates in question being merely coincidence, Milford commented that this was ‘an affront to common sense’ – if this defence contention were true, it would be ‘the coincidence to end all coincidences’. He closed by requesting the jury to reach a guilty verdict.
The counsel for defence Ronald Thwaites, QC then delivered his closing arguments. ‘Where is the jury that will acquit a pervert of multiple murder?’ he asked. He continued by representing his client as an individual against whom ample prejudice existed but no hard evidence, pressing upon the jury the need to differentiate between a child sex pervert and an alleged child killer. He attacked the credibility of several prosecution witnesses and ridiculed the nationwide manhunt: ‘The police have become exhausted in not finding anyone; the public are clamouring for a result. What good are you if you can’t catch a child killer? Is he their salvation, or a convenient expendable scapegoat?’ Mr Thwaites then reminded the jury of witness testimony that implied an individual or individuals other than Black had committed the three murders before concluding his statement.
Mr Justice Macpherson began his summing-up on 16 May, and finished on the 17th. He called on the jury not to be swayed by emotion, distaste for Black as a person, or for his proclivities; adjuring them not to be prejudiced by his record of sexual offences against children or his admission to and conviction of the 1990 kidnap of the young girl in Stow. The judge further directed the jurors to concentrate on the physical and circumstantial evidence in all the cases presented at the trial. ‘The question is whether you are sure that the interlinking and similarities of these five cases drives you to the conclusion that this man, Robert Black, is guilty in the four sets of cases which are before you,’ he said, adding that any conclusions of guilt on one charge should not automatically mean he must be guilty of all charges. The jury were then ushered out to begin their deliberations somewhere private, and reminded before they retired to consider their verdict that they were barred from speaking to anyone other than one another, from reading newspapers, watching television or making any telephone calls. Their deliberations would continue for two days.
On 19 May 1994 the jury returned their verdict. They found Black guilty of abducting and murdering Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper, and of preventing the lawful burial of their bodies, and of the attempted abduction of Teresa Thornhill – ten counts in
all. For each of these, Mr Justice Macpherson sentenced him to a term of life imprisonment, and recommended that for each of the three counts of murder this ‘extremely dangerous man’ should serve a minimum of 35 years. The life sentences were to run concurrently.
The families of the victims were overcome with relief, long and harrowing as the trial had been, the verdict brought closure of a sort.
Black did not react on hearing the sentence, but as the judge dismissed him, he turned to the police officers present, who had been involved in the case, some from as early as 1982, and said, ‘Tremendous. Well done, boys.’ Mocking in tone, perhaps, but the words were seen as an admission of guilt, and tears of relief came to the eyes of some of those who had worked so long and tirelessly for this outcome. He was led away to start serving his sentence at HM Prison Wakefield, a high-security establishment for Category A prisoners (those considered a danger to the public).
Outside Moot Hall, a crowd of reporters had gathered, waiting to hear the verdict and for statements from the twenty-odd detectives from all the forces involved in the manhunt, who had attended the hearing. ‘The tragedy,’ commented Hector Clark, ‘is these three beautiful children who should never have died. Black is the most evil of characters and I hope there is not now or ever another like him.’
* * *
Black’s conviction marked the culmination of one of the longest, most exhaustive and costly British murder investigations of the twentieth century, with a dossier of evidence weighing some 22 tons and a total cost estimated at £12 million. But it was not over.
In the wake of Black’s conviction, a meeting was arranged in Newcastle, attended by senior detectives from the police forces involved in the cases, and also officers from other forces in the UK that were grappling with unsolved missing-child or child-murder cases. At this conference, which was held in July 1994, all the evidence amassed by each force was considered in the light of Black’s convictions. By then, his name had been linked to a number of further child murders and disappearances between 1969 and 1987, stretching from the Republic of Ireland, across the United Kingdom and into continental Europe. As he had been found guilty and given sentences that made it highly unlikely that he would ever be a free man, and he knew it, police hoped he might be persuaded to confess to several other child murders they believed he had been responsible for. Black, however, who had never admitted his culpability in any of the offences for which he was convicted, other than the abduction of Laura Turner, refused to cooperate with the investigators.