by Chris Clark
Five months later, on 9 October 1987, a couple picking apples found a body in an orchard in Mareuil-lès-Meaux in the Seine-et-Marne district east of Paris at a bend of the main A140 heading towards Meaux and the A1, which links to the Port of Calais. It was Virginie. Her body was naked and was too deeply decomposed for the post mortem to establish whether she had been sexually assaulted, but it found signs of strangulation and that she had been killed on the day of her abduction; her clothes were neatly folded next to her body and her shoes placed together.
The police checked the movements and alibis of several suspects on 5 May but found no connecting evidence. In 1997 investigations were dropped, but in 2005 a cold case investigation was reopened without success and no links were found by the French police between her murder and the three that follow.
THE HEMMA DAVY-GREEDHARRY CASE
On Saturday, 30 May 1987 Hemma Greedharry, aged ten, left her home on the Boulevard de Stalingrad in the Paris suburb of Malakoff around 3 p.m. with 10 francs in her pocket to buy a set square from a stationer’s just at the end of her street. On her way home she vanished. There were eyewitnesses who saw her with a stocky man with wavy, blond hair. Less than two hours later, her naked body was found, on fire, in a bin liner behind a hedge, near a campervan in the car park of a council estate in Châtillon on the Rue Guynemer/ Rue Jean Mermoz intersection, only about 900 yards, or a one-minute drive, away from her home; strangely, her clothes were never located, which suggests to me that she was stripped, assaulted and killed by strangulation elsewhere before being put in a bin liner, dumped and set fire to using a combustible material composed largely of liquid styrene – a hydrocarbon found in the composition of many plastics and used in rubber, insulation, fibreglass, pipes, automobile and boat parts, food containers and carpet backing. There was no sign of its container.
Human blood group A+ was found under Hemma’s fingernails – her own blood group – and semen inside her, but the DNA has not led to any advances in the investigation. On several occasions the investigators established suspects, a stonemason on whom styrene was found; a teacher already arrested for rape and indecent assault, but no charges have been brought against them.
THE PERRINE VIGNERON CASE
On the afternoon of Wednesday, 3 June 1987, seven-year-old Perrine Vigneron was abducted while heading to her pottery class nearby in the commune of Bouleurs to the east of Paris. When she had not returned home by six, her father went to fetch her – to be told that she had not shown up. Her naked body was found by a dog walker over three weeks later, on 27 June, in a rapeseed field near Chelles, only about 3 miles from the village of Neuilly-sur-Marne, from where Virginie Delmas was abducted just one month earlier; and near the dental surgery where Perrine’s father practised. The farmer had sprayed the field on 6 June, so the body had to have been dumped after that date. The weeks of summer sunshine meant that the little body was too badly decomposed for pathologists to establish if she had been sexually assaulted, but it was clear that she had been strangled – there was still a ligature round her neck. Her clothes and shoes had been carefully placed next to the body just as Virginie’s had been, but there was no sign of her glasses.
A white van had been seen in Bouleurs, and in the vicinity of the rapeseed field at the time of Perrine’s dumping; Robert Black is known to have sometimes used a white van in his PDS work, as in the 1981 case of Jennifer Cardy. Eyewitnesses gave descriptions of the driver and the police issued a photo-fit in the hope that the man could be identified, but they drew a blank. In 2002 Perrine’s body was exhumed and for DNA testing, but nothing came of it.
THE SABINE DUMONT CASE
On Saturday, 27 June – the day Perrine’s body was found – Sabine Dumont, who was nine years old and the youngest of six children, left her family apartment in Bièvres in Essonne, south-west of Paris, to buy a tube of white paint for a picture she was painting for her new baby cousin. She was last seen, as rain began to fall, at around 5.30 p.m. by a friend. She was barely over a hundred yards from her home and then suddenly she disappeared without trace near the railway station, just a few minutes’ walk from her home.
The next day, the 28th, after a night and morning of searching, police found Sabine’s clothes, rolled into a ball, on the verge of the Route Nationale 118. It had rained that morning, yet the clothes were dry, suggesting that they had been flung there very shortly before. Her underpants and one of her trainers were missing. A couple of hours later, Sabine’s naked body was found in a ditch at Vauhallan, also along the N118 but on the other side, near junction 7 along a stretch of road beside the railway, where there is a loop back towards Bièvres. That stretch of road had been inspected that morning, so she had clearly been left there only a few hours before the discovery. An empty white spirit bottle was found nearby, which was taken as evidence, as well as tyre marks, of which the police took imprints, and a number of cigarette ends.
The girl had died after being strangled and raped and her body had been set on fire with white spirit and was partially burned. Like Hemma, she had traces of blood group A+ under her nails – her blood group was O− – but A+ is common in France, and the discovery led nowhere. In 1999 French investigators at Nantes found a DNA semen trace on Sabine’s T-shirt but to date it has not been identified from the FNAEG (the Fichier National Automatisé des Empreintes Génétiques – France’s national genetic fingerprint database).
* * *
A judicial investigation was opened in February 2001 to verify the statements of a Dutch prisoner involving Michael Stocks, a Belgian lorry driver jailed in the Netherlands. Stocks died on 25 September 2001 after being burned in the workshop of the prison where he was serving a sentence of 20 years for the murder of three children. According to the information given to the French authorities by the Dutch police, Stocks admitted to a crime against a young girl in Mulhouse, a city in eastern France close to the Swiss and German border, but the French police were unable to find a connecting crime.
My thoughts are that the Hemma Greedharry and Sabine Dumont murders, both committed to the south of Paris, were by the same killer but that they were not Robert Black’s work – unless it can be shown that he used styrene and white spirit for putting up billboard posters.
The Perrine Delmas and Virginie Vigneron murders were also committed by the same killer but are distinct from the other two, and these two I am linking with Robert Black: in both the MO is strikingly similar to that of the murders Black has been convicted of.
At the time the use of DNA in solving crime cases was in its infancy – since then, huge advances have been made in DNA profiling and there is still hope that these mysteries will be cleared up definitively.
THE RAMONA HERLING CASE
On Thursday, 11 May 1989 eleven-year-old Ramona Herling, wearing white trousers, a pink jumper and a denim jacket, left her home in order to walk the 500 yards to the open-air swimming complex situated at Brunnenstrasse 32 in the spa town of Bad Driburg set in the Höxter district of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, a 25-minute drive east along Highway 64 from Paderborn and a 35-minute drive south from Detmold, where Silke Garben was murdered in June 1985. She never arrived and has never been seen since.
Given that her sudden disappearance was in a triangular stretch of rural countryside and close to two British-Army-on-the-Rhine bases, coupled with the fact that an open-air swimming pool featured, there is every likelihood that this was yet another abduction and murder committed by Robert Black. It is also, interestingly, sandwiched between the 1988 failed abduction of Teresa Thornhill and the abduction of Laura Turner in 1990, which led to his downfall. Either way, if the German police authorities conferred with their British counterparts it should be easy to establish if Black was delivering posters in Germany during May 1989.
18
AN ENDLESS LUST FOR KILLING
During 2012 I contacted the Hackney Gazette, the North London newspaper covering Stoke Newington, and on Friday, 17 August 2012 they published a full
report about what nearly happened to Jeanne over forty years before. The article also asked any member of the public who might have any information about Black to e-mail me.
I only received one response – however, an important one as the following e-mail extracts show:
Date: Sunday, 2 September 2012, 12.08
Hello Chris,
As far as i can remember it was about 1983 when i saw Robert Black. My local pub was The Red Lion as it was named back then in Church St, Stokenewington n16 & i had seen Black in there a few times, playing darts with the locals. One night i happened to be at the counter where he was sitting & i had a conversation with him. He told me a bit about himself, saying his name was Bob Black & how he was Scottish, i remember saying to him how his name was unusual as i had never known anyone to be named Black before. Talking about Scotland i mentioned about how terrible it was regarding the murder of Susan Maxwell, he agreed it was dreadful, & then went on to list a string of other murders & missing girls etc saying how they were equally as bad. Some of the names he mentioned i knew about from the newspapers but others i hadn’t, & he said he was surprised that i didn’t know about them, he seemed to be disappointed.
I would say he mentioned about 8 or 9 names one after the other & i was surprised that he had such a close knowledge of these crimes, but then i assumed he was one of those people who takes an interest & studies about murders & missing girls etc in the news & i thought no more of it. One of the names was Jenette Tate which he dwelt on saying she was abducted off her bicycle, also Jennifer Cardy in Ireland & he mentioned another girl also in Ireland. Then April Fabb & a string of others which i cannot remember, i did remember some but because time has elapsed i have forgotten them. That was the only time i had a proper conversation with him, other times i would see him there & i played darts with him once.
Date: Saturday, 29 September 2012, 17:47
Hello Chris, i didn’t find out anything from the guys around Stamford Hill or Stokenewington, most of the people there now are of a different generation, those that would have met him are mostly gone to the happy hunting ground.
I used to live in Albion Rd when i was a teenager, lived at 207 for about 12 months in 1963/64 didn’t see him then maybe he came later to Albion Rd.
The names that he mentioned to me in the Bar, in his low soft voice were April Fabb, Genette Tate, Jennifer Cardy, Susan Maxwell, I think he mentioned a young girl in Essex (cant think of her name) but i know she was murdered, & yes Christine Markham, i cant remember the names of the 2 girls in Ireland that he mentioned, & he also spoke of 3 or 4 more young girls just mentioning their names & saying how terrible it was that so many were murdered or missing.
It struck me straight away how it was very unusual for anyone to remember the names of these girls so well & the way in which he rattled them off, but again i would never have suspected him as he told me he lived in Stamford Hill & the girls were from areas mainly long distances away. He was a cool customer.
Regards John
With regard to the last e-mail it is quite significant that Black was talking during 1983 about the murder of fourteen-year-old Suzanne Lawrence from Essex who was reported as a missing person in July 1979 and was last seen at a funfair in Highbury, London and thought to have run away with it. Highbury is very close to Robert Black’s then haunts.
Her disappearance only made the local Romford area papers and her name was unknown until after Black’s arrest in1990, certainly not a name made aware to Norfolk Constabulary Intelligence Departments. So there he is, talking about her murder some seven years before she became a known possible victim.
Again, Christine Markham who went missing in1973 was not a household name during the 1980s outside of her native Scunthorpe.
The case of Jennifer Cardy made a small article on page 5 of the Daily Express on 15 August 1981 when she was still a missing person and there was no further British newspaper reference until 2002. She and Mary Boyle are the Irish girls referred to by Black.
In the course of 2012 through to 2014 I supplied Norfolk Constabulary and Devon and Cornwall Police with copies of my research material.
During June and July 2014 I had several newspaper articles published, which highlighted Jeanne’s case and the other unsolved abductions that Black is suspected of.
In August 2014, to draw attention to the similar fact evidence of Jeanne’s case in relation to others, I contacted Cambridgeshire Police and Jeanne was interviewed by a detective from their Major Crime Unit, but they didn’t take the initiative and no liaison was made by them with either Norfolk or Cornwall and Devon.
During the autumn of 2014 I made e-mail contact with one of April’s surviving family members, as a result of which officers of Norfolk Constabulary Cold Case Team arranged to meet me. I supplied them with the up-to-date research that I had collected and continue to do so.
In March 2015 I made contact with retired Lothian and Borders Detective Chief Superintendent Andrew Watt who was the senior officer involved with Robert Black’s 1990 arrest for abduction and subsequent interviews for the Maxwell, Hogg and Harper triple murder investigation.
I outlined Jeanne’s case by e-mail and Andrew replied stating, ‘I am confident that the 1971 incident [Jeanne’s] is Robert Black based on more than one point. He would be at the swimming pool [St Neots] looking for potential victims. This is part of his MO. He had a particular attraction to swimming pools.’
In a further communication he commented:
I agree with you that Robert Black is a likely candidate for the 1971 attempted abduction. This has an uncanny similarity to the attempted abduction of Teresa Thornhill in Nottingham in 1988. This case was used at Black’s trial at Newcastle in 1994 as I had asked that it be included in my remit to support the similar fact evidence in the murder cases and was an important piece of evidence. Teresa looked much younger than she actually was.
As a result of conversations with myself and the late Ray Wyre Black it indicated that he stalked his victims for lengthy periods of time before carrying out or attempting to carry out an abduction. According to Black he only moved when he felt it was safe. The first offence at Stow occurred after he had been following a child for some time. This was not the victim, however, but a girl called Mandy Wilson. For some unknown reason he moved his attention to the victim. On his own admission he had an unusual interest in pre-pubescent girls.
He also frequented swimming pools and indeed was employed at a swimming pool in London for some time …
Andrew went on in his communication to say that in his view Norfolk and Devon and Cornwall should connect the April Fabb and Genette Tate investigations with an overall SIO (Senior Investigating Officer) to examine evidence common to both cases.
In April 2015 I sent Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Devon and Cornwall a copy of Andrew Watt’s e-mails and I received a reply from Cambridgeshire stating that their Major Crime Unit had been in touch with Norfolk Cold Case and that they were now preparing a report in relation to the incident in St Neots involving Mrs Clark [Jeanne] and this information will be available for other forces who may be investigating Black.
During April 2015 I contacted Devon and Cornwall MIT (Major Incident Team) and outlined the Susan Maxwell case where Black’s own photographs had helped to place him on that Scottish run at the material time, and suggested, if not already done, that they do the same with regard to any Devon photographs taken by Black in 1978.
I was in touch with the Garda Siochána in early 2017 about the sightings of a white van reported in the Cashelard area at the time of Mary Boyle’s disappearance, and drew their attention to the high neck of Black’s jersey from a distance resembling a priest’s collar, as commented on by one of those who glimpsed the driver of a white van being driven at speed out of Cashelard.
On 13 January 2016 I was contacted by both the Sun and Daily Mirror newspapers and a double-page article appeared in both papers on Thursday, 14 January 2016. I reproduce the article (print version) by kind pe
rmission of the Mirror Group:
Evil Robert Black is feared to have murdered as many as 16 children in a monstrous 18-year spree – making him Britain’s most prolific child killer.
Distressing new evidence links a dozen more child murders across the UK and Europe to the pervert, who died aged 68 this week serving 12 life terms for killing four schoolgirls.
He always refused to co-operate with police about other killings and took his sick secrets to the grave.
But a cold-case expert said yesterday that an individual who knew Black said he ‘revealed information only a guilty man could have known’ about a number of other child murders.
If Black’s guilt is proven it would make him the most prolific serial child killer in modern British criminal history – slaughtering more than Moors murderers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who had five victims aged 10 to 17, as did Fred and Rose West.
Cold-case review expert Chris Clark, a former police Intelligence officer who worked on dozens of missing-child cases, said, ‘In my opinion, Black was the only real suspect in these cases and more. His psychopathic tendencies were constant, his lust for killing was endless.
Yesterday The Mirror told how police were just weeks from charging him with the 1978 murder of Genette Tate, 13, of Aylesbeare, Devon, when he died on Tuesday of natural causes.