by Chris Clark
This information, although it did not reinforce the Crown’s claim that Black was in Ulster on that day, did indicate that Black would have been very familiar with the A1 dual carriageway between Belfast and Newry which runs past the lay-by and McKee’s Dam where Jennifer’s body was found.
The defence counsel, David Spens, proceeded to cross-examine Mr Hughes and asked him if he had company records that would show the exact day PDS delivered posters to him. Mr Hughes answered that he did not.
The Crown then brought up the subject of the £50 bonus paid to Robert Black two days after Jennifer was murdered, as shown on the PDS wage book, asserting that it was the bonus drivers received for doing the Ulster trip.
In 2003, police investigators had taken a statement from the co-owner of PDS, Mrs Valerie Staalem, and it was read to the court. She had been asked about a wage book that recorded Black’s £50 bonus for the week in question. ‘I would say on looking at it,’ she had told them, ‘that the Ireland run was done some time between the sixth and thirteenth of August 1981, and Robert Black did it as there was a £50 bonus paid to him.’
Mrs Staalem had died since then, but had she been alive and in court, David Spens defence QC informed the jury, he would have cross-examined her on whether or not an Ulster run actually did occur during these dates in August 1981.
Another witness, Raymond Baker, a former warehouse manager at PDS, revealed that Robert Black was only one of two PDS drivers who didn’t mind travelling for work to Northern Ireland – the others were worried about the political troubles of the time.
On 13 August 1981, the day after Jennifer’s murder, in addition to the Coventry petrol-station receipt, Black signed another receipt; this time it was later in the day, at a Greater Manchester filling station and he was using a different work vehicle, another type of van, and not the white Datsun.
When asked about this, Mr Baker said he thought Black had stopped in Coventry to refuel on his way back from Northern Ireland, returned to London, picked up more posters from the PDS depot in the east of the city and then made a delivery run to Manchester. ‘A few times I could remember that Robbie [Black] has come from Ireland, possibly could’ve filled up in Coventry, and there was another load for him [at the depot] because he was a single chap who didn’t worry about trips and he could have gone up and done another trip in the Fiat.’
The defence counsel in cross-examining Mr Baker asked him if he was absolutely certain that Black was in Northern Ireland the day before – that is, on the 12th – suggesting to him that Black might have simply driven to Coventry, made a delivery there, and returned to London.
‘I can’t be certain about anything at this stage, it’s long after,’ replied Mr Baker.
Mr Spens then turned his attention to the white Datsun van that Black had been driving and asked the next witness, another former PDS driver, John Radford, if the white Datsun van had been used in places other than Northern Ireland, London and East Anglia in the early 1980s as there were petrol receipts from then that indicated the vehicle had also been elsewhere in England, for instance Preston, which is north of Liverpool.
‘The white Datsun van, although most of the time it was doing runs to East Anglia, London and Northern Ireland, it also made other runs, didn’t it?’ said Mr Spens.
‘So it seems,’ replied Mr Radford.
Mr Hedworth for the prosecution then asked Mr Radford if the white Datsun van could have refuelled at Preston as the Stranraer-to-Larne boat route had taken over from the Liverpool-to-Belfast route in 1981. Mr Radford agreed that this was possible, which would have meant the white Datsun van could still have been Northern Ireland-bound.
When Mr Spens pointed out that Mr Radford had once been paid a £50 bonus for a working week that did not include a trip to Northern Ireland, Mr Radford explained that payments in the wage book did not have to mean a driver had undertaken a particular job, and bonuses could be paid to cover a combination of road tolls, routes and overtime work.
* * *
Wednesday 28 September, day four of the trial, heard from another former PDS driver, Michael Carder, who was unwavering in his conviction that Robert Black was in Northern Ireland the day Jennifer was abducted and murdered. He reiterated what had been said by the previous witnesses that the petrol-station receipt signed by Black outside Coventry suggested he was on his way south, having come off the Liverpool ferry; and this was reinforced by the fact that the vehicle used was the white Datsun van, which was utilised primarily for trips to Ulster, East Anglia and in and around London.
Mr Hedworth asked Mr Carder if he had any doubt Black was in Northern Ireland on 12 August 1981.
The answer was unhesitating: ‘No.’
Mr Spens responded to this steadfast claim by Mr Carder by suggesting that his belief was based on the assumption that PDS had made a delivery on 12 August 1981 and that the white Datsun van had been used exclusively for the delivery runs mentioned. Mr Carder conceded the point, but maintained his belief that Black was in Ulster that day.
Another former PDS driver, a son of the proprietors, Mr Ian Staalem, who while he admitted he could not be certain Black had been in Northern Ireland that day, when he was asked what he made of the petrol-station receipt said, ‘That would suggest to me that he was returning home to London. As it was the smaller van [the Datsun], it could have been from Liverpool, having done the Belfast run.’
The defence then presented evidence from a woman called Susan Marchant who had managed a London filling station in the early 1980s, and who revealed that dates on old fuel receipts could be wrong as the machine had to be manually wound on every morning.
Then David Spens QC once again suggested to the court that Robert Black could have been making a single delivery trip to and from Coventry on 13 August; the day he purchased the petrol. Toby Hedworth QC countered this by asking another former PDS driver, Mr Raymond Aldridge, if he remembered PDS drivers ever undertaking trips just to Coventry and back during his employment there. ‘It never happened in my time,’ Mr Aldridge answered firmly.
The prosecution then commented that Black would go off main routes and motorways on his delivery runs, and instead drive through smaller towns and villages – which would explain how he came to encounter little Jennifer Cardy on that quiet country road in Lower Ballinderry. This was indeed the case – Black would boast to his workmates of his almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the road network, explaining how he had come up with and travelled alternative routes between destinations using slip roads and the like rather than taking the more obvious route like a motorway. Those he talked to about this, as he showed them the routes he was referring to on maps, could never understand his enthusiasm for all this driving as such journeys took far longer. In hindsight it’s easy to see why they appealed to someone like Black as it is virtually impossible on a busy dual carriageway or A road to stop and remain unseen, or to spot, target and abduct a little girl, while the quiet country roads that lay between towns and villages did provide such opportunities for a predatory paedophile like Black.
Michael Carder and another former PDS driver, Paul Scargill, both confirmed to the prosecution and court that Robert Black was well known for taking alternative roads off the main arterial routes.
* * *
The fifth day of the trial, Thursday 29 September, continued with the prosecution concentrating on the task of dispelling any doubt that Black was in Northern Ireland on the day of the murder.
In 2003, former PDS warehouse manager Albert Wells, who had since died, had provided police investigating the Cardy killing with a statement which Mr Hedworth read to the court:
‘Robbie Black did the poster delivery runs to Ireland ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Other drivers did not like the ferry times and considered the bonus payment too small.’
Mr Spens told the jury that had he been able to cross-examine Mr Wells, he would have suggested to the court and to the witness that he was exaggerating. Mr Wells’s statement, however, was su
pported by that of another witness, a former PDS accountant, John Thompson, who was not in court but had testified to the police,
The defence then returned to the validity of the dated petrol receipt obtained by Black in Coventry on 13 August 1981 and asked if human error could mean that the date on the receipt might in fact be wrong since the credit card machine that issued and printed the receipt had to be manually operated.
David Johnston, the owner of the Coventry Shell garage in question, where the petrol receipt was issued, told the court from the witness box that in his more than twelve years of working in the industry he had never been aware of any such mistake occurring.
‘I can’t recall any, no,’ he asserted.
The defence team continued to attempt to confuse matters and plant seeds of doubt by claiming there was no real proof that Black was in Northern Ireland on the day of the murder despite the prosecution’s claims to the contrary. The defence pointed to the statement made the day before by Susan Marchant in which she said that occasionally a member of her staff would forget to wind on the manual date settings on the card machine resulting in the wrong day being printed on dockets and asked Mr Johnston if his lack of recollection of such an incident meant it never occurred:
‘I’m not saying that,’ Mr Johnston replied, ‘but I can’t recall any [instances]. But it’s a possibility.’
The prosecution after the first five days of the trial had made a solid start demonstrating to the jury that Black was in Northern Ireland on the day of Jennifer’s murder and thus establishing he had the opportunity to carry out the crime. The next stage was to continue to emphasise to the jury how well Black knew the area where Jennifer’s body was found, and demonstrate unequivocally that he had driven past the lay-by when on the Ulster delivery run, for which he travelled the A1 dual carriageway between Belfast and Newry.
* * *
On day six of the trial, Monday, 3 October, the court heard transcripts, read out by the prosecution junior counsel Donna McColgan and PSNI detective Patrick McAnespie, of an interview conducted with Robert Black in 1996 by the then Northern Irish police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), when they travelled to Wakefield in West Yorkshire to first interview him about the murder of Jennifer Cardy. During this interview, RUC detectives had asked Black how often he did the delivery run to Ireland for PDS.
‘Often enough,’ he had replied. ‘Quite a few times actually, I couldn’t put a number on it.’ He added that only two or three PDS drivers did the run as the other drivers disliked it.
‘I think they were a bit scared about the Troubles.’
In the interview Black went on to talk about how the typical Ulster work trip involved drop-offs of posters in Belfast, Dunmurry and finally Newry. He also admitted he had used the road where Jennifer’s body was found outside Hillsborough, mentioning a BP service station where he filled his van regularly, located at the start of the A1. A crucial point was his admission that he used a lay-by to sleep in on the northbound side of the A1 dual carriageway between Newry and Lisburn. The RUC then proceeded to show Black a photograph of the lay-by on the A1 near to McKee’s Dam, in which Jennifer’s body was found. Black denied it was the lay-by he used, claiming he didn’t recognise it. When, however, the RUC later provided Ordnance Survey maps from 1981 that clearly showed there was only one such lay-by on that stretch of the road at that time and that layby was adjacent to McKee’s Dam, he conceded that it must have been the one he had used.
* * *
The seventh day of the trial heard tapes and transcripts from the1996 interviews conducted in Wakefield, and also interviews from 2005, for which Black had been transported from Wakefield Prison to Antrim Police Station. The courtroom was deadly silent as the recordings began to play. In one of the tapes, Black was asked if he accepted he was in Northern Ireland on 12 August 1981, having been shown the petrol receipt he signed at Coventry on the morning after (the 13th) and the wage book that showed he was paid a bonus. When asked if the evidence showed he was in Ulster on 12 August 1981 Black replied calmly and coldly: ‘That seems the most likely explanation.’
Pressed further as to if it could be the only explanation for the evidence, Black responded: ‘I think the best I can give you is most likely, most probable – a high possibility.’
The detective described step by step the journey the police believed Black had taken from London to Belfast, and, his deliveries having been made, his route back to London. He then asked Black to give a firm answer as to whether he was in Northern Ireland on the day in question: ‘You would have been in Ireland from the morning of the 12th of August until that evening – do you accept that?’
Black’s response was a simple ‘Yes.’
Crown lawyer Donna McColgan and DS Patrick McAnespie read the transcript from the next interview, during which Black agreed that he had used the road near which Jennifer’s body was found on the day of the murder:
‘Do you accept you would have been on the A1 road to Newry?’ the interviewing detective had asked him.
‘Yes,’ replied Black.
During the 2005 police interviews, Black was not asked outright about Jennifer despite him fully knowing it was the reason for the PSNI interviewing him.
In 1996, however, the then RUC had attempted to take a direct approach with Black and Jennifer’s killing. From the exchanges read to the jury, it would seem that such an approach tended to make Black less accommodating.
Interviewing officer: ‘I’m saying to you, Robert, were you on that road, and did you lift Jennifer Cardy?’
Black: ‘No.’
Interviewing officer: ‘I want you to think about it.’
Black: ‘I don’t need to. It’s something you would remember.’
The Crown’s line of reasoning was that Black enjoyed going off motorways and exploring quiet country roads and villages in between or after finishing deliveries – which, said Mr Hedworth, was why he was in Ballinderry on 12 August.
There is no doubt that this was the case. In 1996 one of Black’s RUC interviewers – in an unhappy choice of phrase – asked him if he was often left with ‘time to kill’ after he had finished his deliveries in Northern Ireland. Black had replied, apparently unconscious of the inadvertent double entendre – ‘I would have all afternoon and early evening to kill.’ He would have completed his assignment after his last drop-off in Newry, some time after midday. With several hours before he was due to board the ferry at Belfast he could have done what he did on some other occasions and gone to a pub near the docks where he would have had a pint or two of shandy and played a game of pool, or he might have gone swimming at a leisure centre he used off the Falls Road in West Belfast. That sunny afternoon, however, he decided against doing this and chose instead to go exploring in his van as he made his way from Newry towards Lisburn on the A1 dual carriageway. Sadly, as he made his way onto the rural Crumlin road on the outskirts of Ballinderry village he came upon a little girl on her new red bicycle on her way to play with her best friend. There and then, in a matter of seconds, he decided to abduct the child.
The prosecution had, in spite of attempts by the defence to prove otherwise, demonstrated that Black was in Northern Ireland on the day of Jennifer’s murder through the signed petrol receipt and wage book with the bonus payment paid to him for doing the Ireland run, interpreted to mean just that by his former PDS colleagues and admitted to by Black himself. He clearly had the opportunity and the time to commit the crime. Black also agreed that he knew and had used the lay-by near where Jennifer’s body was found in 1981, demonstrating that he knew the specific area. The next step was laying out the motive for him to abduct and kill Jennifer.
* * *
The ninth day of the trial, 7 October, was to be a pivotal day for all involved. During the previous eight days the women and men of the jury had, for legal considerations, been told nothing of Black’s criminal past and convictions. Day nine changed all that as a shocked courtroom heard details from the Crown
QC of what Black had done in the past and been found guilty of in a court of law. At the beginning of the day Mr Hedworth announced to the jury:
‘The stage in the trial proceedings has been reached where I can tell you …’ and he went on to tell the court how Black had been arrested in Stow in the Scottish borders in 1990 after abducting and sexually assaulting a six-year-old girl who was rescued from the back of his van, gagged, bound and without mercy bundled into a sleeping bag. He had pleaded guilty to this abduction and was jailed for life. The prosecution described to the jury how police had subsequently found evidence to charge him with the murder of three children – eleven-year-old Susan Maxwell in 1982, five-year-old Caroline Hogg in 1983 and ten-year-old Sarah Harper in 1986, all three of whom had been sexually assaulted – and with the attempted abduction of a fourth, fifteen-year-old Teresa Thornhill, in 1988. He had pleaded not guilty to all the charges but in 1994 was found guilty in Newcastle upon Tyne and was sentenced to ten terms of life imprisonment.
Toby Hedworth made it clear to the jury, however, that his other murders did not make him automatically guilty of Jennifer’s.
‘What you certainly must not do is say, “Well, he’s done those other ones, he’s a thoroughly bad man so we’ll find him guilty in this case as well”,’ he cautioned. ‘What you have to do is look at what he has been proved to have done in respect of those other girls and see whether it assists you in deciding whether you can be sure that it was Robert Black rather than some other individual who abducted and killed Jennifer Cardy. The prosecution will submit that the similarities between Jennifer’s case and the other cases make it clear that they were in fact the work of the same man.’