by Chris Clark
She was by now panicking and instinctively cycled furiously past the parked vehicle on the off-side of the road. She then went into the driveway of the first house that she came to and there was no one in.
She got back on her bike and pedalled furiously into Great Paxton. Her would-be abductor had by now obviously been scared off, thinking that she lived in the house. Jeanne, still hysterical, knocked on a cottage door in Great Paxton and told the woman who opened the door what had happened. A bit later the woman’s husband took Jeanne and her bike home to her parents. The local police were called and a male and female officer attended but basically said that there was nothing they could do as the man had not done anything! But for Jeanne it was a traumatic experience, which affects her to this day and with which she has never fully come to terms.
The modus operandi bears all of the hallmarks employed in the later abductions and/or murders committed by Robert Black, and was identical to that used with April just two years before and which would be used with Genette and Jennifer seven and nine years later. As far as Black goes, no photos have been released to the public as to how he looked then, so we are reliant on the 1968 image which bears a good likeness to the man Jeanne saw except that it shows him with his hair gelled. The 1968 photo bears no resemblance to how he looked a good decade later when Susan Maxwell was abducted and murdered, by which time he had put on weight and his hair had thinned further.
As far as the Mini was concerned it was dark blue in colour and either a saloon or, more probably, a minivan, which had rear doors for easy loading. An important fact that Jeanne remembered was that the index plate included the numbers 777. This could so easily have been narrowed down by permutation to identify the owner of this vehicle and there was a good chance that had the police taken the matter seriously and passed the details to all of their divisions and to surrounding forces via radio, telex and other means of communication used by the police, the offender would have been traced and the intelligence gained may well have solved other outstanding and future enquiries, even if the vehicle had been stolen.
Going from 1960 the registration number or index plate would have been made up of three letters signifying the local taxation office area, three numbers and no suffix. From 1963 it would have been made up with an A suffix and a yearly letter through to a 1971 model when it would have an H suffix. So the information Jeanne gave the police would have given them something to go on, at least if it was a company vehicle Black was using. By his own admission he frequently lost jobs through his poor time-keeping. But there were other ways of acquiring a vehicle: significantly, one of Black’s convictions – on 22 September 1972 at North London Magistrates’ Court – was for stealing cars and going equipped with a bunch of car keys. The circumstance leading to this conviction was Black’s arrest on 26 August by PC 356 N Robertson as a passenger in a stolen Ford Zephyr car when he admitted another similar offence. Black had in his possession a bunch of car keys – but he was not driving the Zephyr, which raises the question, who was his co-accused? This criminal associate if traced could tell a lot about Black during this period including what they were stealing vehicles for and the areas they frequented.
14
A DISAPPEARANCE AND ANOTHER NEAR MISS
THE CHRISTINE MARKHAM CASE
On 21 May 1973, a cool Monday morning, nine-year-old Christine Markham vanished from a street in Scunthorpe after changing her mind about going to school that day. She had celebrated her ninth birthday the day before, and her father, Sidney Markham, said that she didn’t want to go to school on the Monday morning. He added that she had played truant before.
Christine and two of her siblings, Susan aged thirteen, and Wayne aged ten, left their home in Robinson Close for school at about 8.45 a.m. Their mother Margery watched them set off for the bus stop. This was to be the last time that she saw Christine.
As they usually did, the three of them went to the bus stop in Avenue Vivian where the older two caught their bus to St Hugh’s, leaving Christine to walk on her own the short distance to her school, Henderson Avenue Junior, five minutes away.
As Susan and Wayne left on their bus they saw Christine through the bus window turn around and walk back in the direction in which they had come. A number of sightings of Christine during that Monday morning were reported to the police, the last being from an aunt of hers who was on a bus going into town and saw her at around 10 a.m. on the A159 Ashby Road between the Brumby corner and the Priory pub, not far from the junction with Queensway, then part of the main A18 Doncaster Road, which linked the nearby Steel Works and five miles south-east with the A15, a direct route south via Peterborough and the A1 to Stamford Hill.
The aunt realised that Christine was making her way to Grange Lane South and hopped off at the next stop – however, Christine must have caught the bus going the opposite way and they missed each other.
A timeline of Christine’s movements:
8.45 a.m. left home in Robinson Road with siblings
Soon after, in Henderson Avenue Circle
9.10 a.m. Near Scunthorpe United FC Old Showground
9.30 a.m. Seen at junction Avenue Vivian/Long Road where a woman gave her 2p
9.45 a.m. Seen junction Cliff Gardens/Oswald Road
10 a.m. Seen by aunt who was on a bus into town, sitting on wall near St Hugh’s Church in Ashby Road. The aunt alighted at the next stop but Christine had gone by the time she reached St Hugh’s. Someone had given Christine 5p for her fare to her aunt’s address, Grange Lane South, where a neighbour fed her.
1.00 p.m. The next sighting of Christine in Theodore Road is the last definite sighting and near to the house where the family lived prior to moving to Robinson Close, a two-minute walk away from her current home. Interestingly, the River Trent, now tidal-fed and much wider, flows not far away and feeds into the Humber Estuary and the North Sea – this is the same river that Sarah Harper finished up in at Wilford near Nottingham some thirteen years later in 1986.
There were numerous possible sightings of her in the course of that afternoon.
7.30 p.m. possibly seen in Ferry Road near Sheffield Park, a five-minute walk from her home.
11 p.m. possibly seen – which would make it the last ever sighting of Christine Markham – at the junction of Davy Avenue/Long Road/Robinson Road.
Of the last three sightings, the location of the 11 p.m. one was just a two-minute walk from her home.
My main reason for introducing Robert Black as a suspect in abducting and murdering Christine Markham is his ‘guilty knowledge’ of her case: in 1983 during a conversation (see p. 269) he included her name in a list of names of children that he was later convicted of, or is strongly suspected of, having abducted and murdered. The case of Christine’s disappearance, although published in the local papers, never made the nationals.
ANOTHER NEAR MISS?
During January 2016 I received a message via my website contact page, from a woman whom I will refer to as M, who after reading recent newspaper reports about Robert Black and possible links to Norfolk and seeing my name quoted, wanted to tell me about an incident that occurred to her in Norfolk around 1976 or 1977 when she was a fourteen-year-old schoolgirl. Robert Black began driving for PDS (Poster Despatch and Storage) in 1976, and the East Anglian run was one of the routes out of London used by the company, encompassing the trunk roads including the A12 from London to Lowestoft, the A140 Cromer-to-Norwich, the A47 Great Yarmouth to Peterborough and the A11 back to London; Black himself also drove along the quieter routes interspersed between these roads.
M’s family, consisting of her mother, father, elder sister and herself, one weekend stopped their car at a public house situated on a trunk road, possibly on the A47 on the Narborough-to-King’s Lynn stretch and her parents and sister went inside, leaving M, who was underage, outside in the parking forecourt sitting on a bench alone with her dog.
She remembers very clearly that a van came past the pub and slowed down, while the male drive
r stared intently at her as he drove slowly by. He then came back in the opposite direction, again looking at her, and then turned round again and then drove into the car park. She remembers feeling very uncomfortable because he had driven past her more than once and doubled back. M lifted her dog up and put him next to her on the bench to act as a barrier as she was on her own outside the pub.
The man got out of the van but made no attempt to go into the pub, instead walking over to the bench. He then said, ‘Do you mind if I sit down next to you?’ M felt that she should get away from the man urgently and not speak to him, so at this point she leapt up and ran into the pub, crying, dragging her dog with her and frantically looking for her family. M’s father was very embarrassed at the commotion and was more concerned about everyone looking at them than he was about his daughter’s fright. So he did not go outside and investigate what he had been told, although her mother said several times following the event that she felt they should have reported it. Even though the incident was entirely downplayed at the time, it stayed with M for many years just as Jeanne’s experience some five years previously never completely left her.
M said that the man was probably in his late twenties or early thirties (Robert Black was twenty-nine in 1976) and that the van was either white or dark blue, but time had taken the colour out of her memory.
She added that she had thought about reporting the incident to the police over the years but she felt that it would not provide anything significant and didn’t want to waste police time, coupled with the embarrassment of reporting, in her words, a ‘non-event’.
From what M has told me I am in no doubt that this was Robert Black on an early ‘scouting tour’ whilst working for PDS, and it is my opinion that she had had a lucky escape. Due to the passage of time M could not be more specific about the exact date and location, but I advised her to report the incident to both Norfolk Police Cold Case Team for the April Fabb case and the Devon and Cornwall Police for the Genette Tate case.
15
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF MARY BOYLE
‘The Troubles’, the conflict between Britain and Ireland lasted from the late 1960s until 1998, and during that time there was little or no cooperation between the Irish police, the Garda Siochana, and the Northern Ireland police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (since renamed Police Service of Northern Ireland). The British border towns were fortified and there were police and army checks at most border-crossing roads including Belleek, part of which crosses the border south into County Donegal, but most of which is situated in Northern Ireland’s County Fermanagh, and lies some 25 miles from Enniskillen, which housed a large British Army garrison and NAAFI shop.
As we know, Robert Black started working for Poster Despatch and Storage (PDS) during 1976, and that year visited the village of Annagry (in Irish, Anagaire), in the far west of County Donegal, before going into Northern Ireland to deliver his posters. While in Northern Ireland, he would often park his van overnight in one or another pub car park and drink at the bar, where he would befriend local teenagers. He carried on visiting the area annually until 1979, when he used the Belfast to Birkenhead (Liverpool) Ferry to return to England. During 1976–1979, to avoid the stringent road checks when entering County Donegal from the British side, it is more likely that he caught the Irish Ferry from Holyhead in North Wales to Dublin, where the Garda security was far more lax as the Irish Republic was not under siege and threat of terrorism. He would then use the Republic of Ireland roads to go across to the west and enter County Donegal via Sligo and the seaside resort of Bundoran.
Mary Boyle is one of Ireland’s youngest missing persons at just six years old, and was once considered by both the Garda and UK police to have been abducted and murdered by Black whilst she was visiting her Gallagher grandparents in Cashelard near Ballyshannon on the southern tip of Donegal.
Thursday, 17 March 1977 was St Patrick’s Day and Mary’s family, including her twin sister, had travelled from Keadue, Burtonport in the north of County Donegal the forty or so miles to the quiet, isolated hamlet of Cashelard in south-east County Donegal, three miles north-east of Ballyshannon and four miles north of Belleek. It is also a 47-mile drive from Enniskillen in Northern Ireland.
The Gallagher farmhouse in Cashelard is on a hill with access along a narrow laneway and any view from the bottom road and Lough Columbkille is completely obscured by the terrain, trees and tall undergrowth. It is also hidden from view of the nearest neighbours, at the time the McCawley family.
On the following afternoon, Friday, 18 March, around 3.30 p.m. Mary Boyle’s uncle and godfather Gerry Gallagher, after doing jobs at the front of the Gallagher house carried a heavy wooden ladder back to his neighbour Patrick McCawley some 450 yards away over marshy ground. His little niece Mary followed at a distance, her black wellington boots occasionally getting stuck in the mud, along the isolated bridleway shortcut between the Gallagher and McCawley houses.
About 70 yards from the end of this journey Gerry, with the ladder over his shoulder, was having to make his way through mud up to six inches deep; Mary, who was only four feet tall, hesitated. She then turned back in the direction of the Gallaghers’ and Gerry continued his journey. Mary Boyle would not be seen again.
As the Gallagher house was out of sight of the McCawleys’ and over 380 yards away over the rough terrain, it is reasonable to think that she could have found the nearer lane which connects the McCawleys’ house to a quiet roadway to the right leading to Lough Columbkille and the A46 Belleek–Enniskillen road or to the left to another quiet country road which is a direct link to the N15 and Annagry 40 miles away – a good half-hour or more ahead of the her absence being noticed – and into the arms of her motorised abductor.
After about twenty minutes, around 4 p.m., Gerry Gallagher returned back home retracing his steps taken earlier and soon after he had got back he learnt that Mary had vanished. Both he and Mary’s mother walked and drove around the country lanes, searching as many likely places as possible, while local people were summoned to assist.
At 6.30 p.m. the local Garda station in Ballyshannon was contacted and the Garda called in an army helicopter to conduct an aerial search whilst local people combed the countryside. As dusk turned to night the search was called off until morning.
Throughout the following day and during the following weeks, time and time again, all of the land, the waterholes, rivers and lakes were searched for miles around but to no avail; nothing, not even the Tayto Crisps bag Mary had been holding, was ever found.
Going back to the last sighting of Mary, this was in a quiet muddy lane about 70 yards from the McCawleys’ and about 380 yards from her grandparents’ home. These were the two houses in the immediate area and, to put it bluntly, either she was abducted and taken away in a motor vehicle or she wandered into a part of the countryside where she accidentally met her death. For me the former is the more definite taking that the whole area was searched early and searched again, and no trace of her has been found to this day.
This brings us to abduction, and the Garda first investigated the movements of local men who would have been known as potential suspects. All were ruled out – and that leaves a travelling abductor and Robert Black.
After an intensive investigation the Garda now believe that on the day Mary Boyle disappeared, Robert Black then aged thirty, may have been travelling in Northern Ireland. An analysis of the employment records of PDS shows that he made deliveries in Northern Ireland at some time in the early part of 1977. It is my belief that on these early occasions, in 1976 to 1978, that Black used the safe-option voyage to Dublin and the Republic of Ireland roads to visit Donegal, before travelling east over the border and delivering in Northern Ireland.
There is evidence to show that Black was in Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh, that Friday, 18 March 1977, helping to put up a poster billboard. Enniskillen is about 30 miles from Cashelard, a journey of less than one hour. A petrol receipt discovered by British police in 1994 shows that he b
ought petrol somewhere in Northern Ireland in March 1977, the exact date is not known, probably due to the receipt having faded with time.
Black was as will become clear a frequent visitor during the mid-1970s to Annagry and Dunglow in the north of County Donegal, visits which stopped after the IRA murdered Lord Mountbatten on 27 August 1979 by blowing up his boat in Mullaghmore Harbour, not far south of Donegal, as the British-registered vehicle Black was driving in the Republic of Ireland would now invite attention from the IRA. In the preceding years, however, Black is known to have frequented several pubs in the area, where he became drinking buddies with a group of young men and women. That there is documented evidence of Black having been there is possibly thanks solely to an unappreciated wisecrack. A normally tolerant garda was going through the routine of taking down the names of a group of drinkers left in an Annagry pub after closing hours, as reported in an article in the Irish Independent of 16 May 1999: ‘… The first name, Green, was a lady; the second name was White; the third name was Robert Black. The last man copped on to the irony of it and decided to throw in Johnny Blue. With a shadowy suspicion that he was being ridiculed, the garda charged them with after-hours drinking’ – and Black’s name was in the Garda records.
It has been revealed that during 1978 Robert Black had an overnight stay in Annagry with a family with children. The following morning he asked to borrow their car to buy a Sunday paper and drove along until he came up behind a young girl walking along. He stopped her to ask for directions to the paper shop, calling her to come closer to the car, then realised the child was a boy with long hair, asked for another shop and drove off towards Rannafast before circling back towards Annagry and attempting to stop a young local girl.