by Chris Clark
The disappearance of Christine Markham is a case that in comparison to cases of other missing children has received little publicity in the forty-plus years since she went missing and I sincerely hope this book can help generate new lines of investigation and lead to Christine’s family and friends getting answers as to what happened to the little red-haired girl who played truant that day.
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The next case on Chris’s list is that of the disappearance of six-year-old Mary Boyle on 18 March 1977. The Garda (Republic of Ireland Police Force) along with the Royal Ulster Constabulary were both invited to bring their case files of any missing or murdered children to the July 1994 police conference held in Newcastle upon Tyne; the agenda of which was the exploration of the possibility that Robert Black could have committed other offences similar to the three child murders he had been convicted of two months earlier.
The RUC of course brought with them the Jennifer Cardy case, whilst the Garda brought Mary’s case and that of ten-year-old Bernadette Connolly who was abducted whilst out running an errand on her bicycle near Collooney village in County Sligo on 17 April 1970 and her body found in a bog fifteen miles away from her home four months later in August. The Garda quickly ruled out Black as a suspect in the Connolly case but thought that further investigation in relation to Mary Boyle was certainly warranted.
Chris has outlined a number of reasons as to why Black could remain a possible suspect in the Mary Boyle case and certain sections of the media have continued to link him to Mary’s disappearance after his conviction for the murder of Jennifer Cardy in 2011. A 2011 newspaper report claimed that in 2010 a witness had come forward, a woman claiming to have seen a man matching Black’s description speeding out of Cashelard in a white van on the day of Mary’s disappearance. This information was repeated in a further news report in January 2016 following his death.
In 2003 the Garda liaised with Devon and Cornwall Police and the PSNI in a meeting held in a hotel in Ballyshannon, County Donegal to discuss the similarities between the disappearance of Mary Boyle, the disappearance of Genette Tate and the murder of Jennifer Cardy, and the latest progress of each of their individual investigations into linking Robert Black with those crimes. The Garda reviewed Mary’s case in 2011 and the majority of parties involved in the Mary Boyle case agree sadly that little Mary was murdered and a number of different theories and scenarios have been discussed through the years.
The Garda after becoming aware of Black’s movements around County Donegal in the mid and late 1970s (his name having appeared on a Garda charge sheet for after-hours drinking in a pub in Annagry, County Donegal) requested to question him after reports from people that claimed to have met and subsequently socialised with the smiling, scruffy Scotsman with the soft-toned voice.
In November 2014 gardaí arrested and questioned a former Irish soldier and convicted child molester about Mary’s disappearance; however, the man denied any involvement and was subsequently released without charge. There remain two options as to what might have happened to Mary Boyle:
She was attacked and killed by someone from within the local area and near to where she was last seen alive on the hillside.
That on her return to the house she lost her sense of direction and made her way onto a local road where she was abducted by a travelling offender who came upon her by chance.
It is worth noting that in more recent developments Mary’s sister Ann and Margo O’Donnell, the singer and a distant cousin, with the support and help of journalists, retired gardaí and others, have publicly stated that they believe they know who murdered her and that it was somebody Mary knew and that the answer to what happened to her lies locally rather than involving someone from outside the locality. In October 2015 Mary’s sister Ann and Margo O’Donnell gave statements in a Garda station in Dublin relating to an individual whom they believe was responsible for killing Mary. Whatever ensues, we very much hope that the tragic mystery of Mary’s disappearance can be resolved.
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The next disappearance is one that has never been far away from the headlines. The abduction of thirteen-year-old Genette Tate on Saturday, 19 August 1978 has been linked with the name Robert Black ever since he was convicted of his first three child murders in 1994. Chris has laid out on Chapter 16 the details of Genette’s disappearance, the investigative aftermath and the reasons why Black always was and remains the prime suspect.
There are other clues that point to his involvement. In 2012 John Tate, Genette’s father, revealed in a television documentary that he was passed forward information that suggested Black bought bacon sandwiches from a roadside café near to Aylesbeare, which is would indicate some knowledge of the area. John said he had passed this information forward to Devon and Cornwall Police.
In 2001 it was revealed that Black had been talking to a fellow prisoner in Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire and had implied that he knew what had happened to Genette. When the police were notified of this they arranged an interview with him but when it was put to him he clammed up once again and denied any knowledge of what happened to her. The officer, Retired Detective Chief Inspector of Cheshire Police Ken Lee who helped facilitate the interview explained in the Mail on Sunday in August 2001:
‘Out of conversations Black was suggesting he was responsible for Genette Tate’s murder. But as far as I can recall he did not make a direct admission. Once around the table Black was saying “I haven’t done it. I don’t know what you are talking about.” …’
Another clue was the conversations Black had with criminal researcher and sex crimes expert Ray Wyre in the early 1990s while he was awaiting trial for the Midlands Triangle murders. One conversation saw Black bring up Genette while as the transcript that follows (from his book The Murder of Childhood) shows he was careful not to utter Genette’s name and thereby incriminate himself.
Ray Wyre: ‘What was going on?’
Black: ‘I don’t know. Maybe … there was that paper girl that went missing. I don’t know where she was missing like, but it was all over the papers.’
Ray Wyre: ‘Tate?’
Black: ‘Yeah. That was her name, yeah. She disappeared. She never turned up.’
Ray Wyre: ‘Yeah.’
Black: ‘I suppose they’ve started thinking, How did he do it?’
Ray Wyre: ‘And how do you think he did it?’
Black: ‘Well, they found her bike, didn’t they? He obviously persuaded her to get off her bike, or grabbed her off the bike, one of the two. Then got her into the vehicle and took her away.’
It is a fascinating yet frightening exchange. On the surface Black is talking about a nationally well-known case of a missing child yet he is careful to make it seem that he barely knows anything at all about the case: he refers to Genette as ‘that paper girl’, ‘she’ or ‘her’. Black also never spoke the name of Jennifer Cardy during interviews with the RUC in 1996 or the PSNI in 2005. He could not say the names of these girls because to do so would, in his mind, be to incriminate himself. Black also alluded to the potential use of a ‘vehicle’ in Genette’s abduction, careful not to mention the word ‘van’. Listening to his words, there seems to be artificiality to them.
As Chris mentions in Chapter 16, a DNA profile of Genette was obtained in 2002 by forensic scientists from a jumper belonging to her that had been kept by her mother Sheila. This was compared with various items that had belonged to Robert Black to see if any trace of Genette’s DNA could be found on them; unfortunately, too long a time had passed for any vestige of her DNA to be discovered.
Despite this setback, there remain the many similarities between the disappearance of Genette Tate in 1978 (making Black the prime suspect), the disappearance of April Fabb in 1969 (making him a good suspect) and the abduction and murder of Jennifer Cardy in August 1981 (a crime for which he was convicted in 2011). To remind the reader:
All three victims had a similar profile: three pretty little girls all riding their bicycles when
they were abducted and taken away, with a vehicle involved.
All three girls were abducted in the afternoon between the hours of 1.30 p.m. and 3.30 p.m.
All three girls were abducted along rural roads, only half a mile, or slightly more, away from their homes in or on the edge of the three country villages they lived in.
All three victims were abducted during spells of good weather, Genette and Jennifer in the summertime (August) and April in the spring (April).
All three disappeared during the school holidays: Genette and Jennifer were off school for the summer, whilst April was off for the Easter holidays.
April’s and Jennifer’s bicycles were thrown into fields from the point of their roadside abduction. Genette’s bicycle was not thrown over the hedge but there are two logical explanations for this: a quick look of photographs taken back in August 1978 of Withen Lane from where Genette was snatched shows a very high hedge – the height of the hedge could have been at least part of the reason why Genette’s abductor abandoned it along with the scattered newspapers on the tarmac. Another reason could be the layout of Withen Lane itself, the winding nature of the road meaning that somebody could have come round the corner at any time– so a quick getaway would have been essential.
As remarked by Chris in Chapter 16, the geography of the area and the road network links are significant, especially when in relation to a travelling offender who liked to venture off motorways, like Black.
Aylesbeare, from where Genette was abducted, is near the M5 motorway, which is close to Exeter Airport; in 1996, as Chris mentions in Chapter 16, a woman came forward and claimed that on the day of Genette’s disappearance a man at the airport, whom she recognised years later as Robert Black, was leaning against a red Transit-style van watching her two children, and when he became aware of her presence he drove away quickly in his van. If this man at Exeter Airport was indeed Robert Black then he was clearly in the vicinity of Aylesbeare, displaying predatory behaviour, that day.
Ballinderry, from where Jennifer Cardy was abducted is near Northern Ireland’s M1, along which Black travelled towards Newry from Belfast once he was off the ferry, and then back again to the ferry, and the A26, which links to the A3 and A1, which was the road he followed when passing McKee’s Dam where Jennifer’s body was found.
Metton, the village from where April Fabb disappeared, was close to major routes such as the A148 road to King’s Lynn and the A10 to London, and, nearer to Roughton, the A140 Cromer-to-Norwich and the link road A11 to London. London of course being where Black was resident at the time.
The bodies of Genette Tate and April Fabb were never found. And while Jennifer Cardy’s body was found there are two possible explanations as to why this should be. First of all, the bodies of Jennifer Cardy, Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper, Black’s confirmed victims, were all found purely by chance by members of the public. There was an equal chance that their bodies would never have been found, especially in the case of the three ‘Midlands Triangle’ murders; it may just be by chance that the bodies of April Fabb and Genette Tate have not yet been discovered.
The second explanation could be that Black, for some reason, changed his MO in regard to the way he disposed of his victims. As is the case with April Fabb and Genette Tate, the bodies of the other earlier missing persons/abducted victims – for instance, Christine Markham or Suzanne Lawrence – have not been found. Assuming these are all the victims of an earlier series of crimes committed by Black, it might be that he was extra cautious in his earlier killing days to ensure the bodies would not be found – as they were in the post-1980 series of killings starting with the quick discovery of Jennifer Cardy’s body – and traced back to him. Certainly, in the later murders, of which Black was convicted, the effort to conceal the victim’s bodies wasn’t great – they were dumped publicly with nothing covering them, discarded and cast aside in the most undignified and callous way, to be found – or not – by chance. Perhaps he started to leave his victims where they could easily be found as a way of mocking the police, to show he was invincible and could not be caught. If this was so, it was an over-confidence that would see him caught red-handed in 1990.
Genette’s disappearance also bears similarities to the attempted abduction in 1971 of Jeanne Twigden, who, as we’ve seen, was stalked on a hot May Day afternoon after leaving an open-air swimming pool in St Neots, and nearly abducted as she rode home on her bicycle through the village of Great Paxton along the rural B104 road – which is adjacent to the A1 Great North Road that leads to London.
During 2003 PSNI and Devon and Cornwall detectives met in the West Country to discuss their joint investigations into Robert Black and the similarities between Genette Tate’s case and that of Jennifer Cardy. Devon and Cornwall Police discovered a payment record or wage statement that suggested Black was working the South Coast delivery run that week in August 1978, a run that took in a series of towns and cities within which lies the village of Aylesbeare. Frustratingly, however, this wage statement was not sufficient evidence as it did not specify that the bonus was for the South Coast Run – it could also be interpreted as meaning Black did the Scotland work run that week as the two trips had a similar payment bonus structure. Even though it was believed he was working the South Coast run that week, it was not enough to stand up in court.
This evidence, whilst not conclusive, is interesting when considering witness statements – a report of a red or maroon car driving along that road, another witness’s report of seeing a red Transit-style van speeding out of Aylesbeare village shortly after Genette went missing, the eyewitness’s information in 1996 about the driver of a red van at Exeter Airport. Black was believed to have been driving a fire-engine-coloured Transit van in August 1978. When these are grouped together, it definitely appears likely Black was in the South Coast/East Devon area at the time. Geographical profiling can also link him to the crime. Black had five main work runs with PDS as a van driver and committed the murders of Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper while on the Scottish/Northern run and the murder of Jennifer Cardy while on the Midlands/Northern Ireland run. Therefore it makes sense that he may have committed similar crimes on his other work runs, including the South Coast run, which took in the area from where Genette disappeared, and the East Coast run, which covered Norfolk and Suffolk in East Anglia: in Chapter 13, Chris tells of the attempted abduction a young girl, Jeanne Twigden, in Norfolk in the mid-1970s after Black had started working for PDS (the disappearance of April Fabb occurred before then).
Over the years, Genette’s case file has grown so large that it has been kept in a twelve-foot-by-ten-foot document cage in the headquarters of Devon and Cornwall Police in Exeter. The paperwork involved includes 20,000 index cards in a filing system containing cross references and witness statements.
The initial 1978 search for Genette involved 7,000 volunteers from local holidaymakers to nuns to Royal Marines, who came to be known as ‘Genette’s army’ as they searched the fields, moorlands, hedges and roads near her Aylesbeare home. Divers searched every dam, drain, pond, river and sewer for miles around and there was nothing left uncovered during a search around Aylesbeare which covered a four-mile radius.
A £23,000 reward was raised by the local villagers for information leading to Genette being found while a local vicar set up a phone-line for those who wished to come forward with any information. But it was all to no avail. In spite of her body not being found and her killer never convicted in a court of law, to many, for the reasons given by Chris and myself. Black is the man responsible for Genette’s disappearance.
Even though Black died in January 2016, Devon and Cornwall Police still sent their case file to the Crown Prosecution Service, seeking permission to charge him with Genette’s abduction and murder, in an effort to bring closure and some form of relief to Genette’s family; however the CPS released a statement saying that they could not make a decision as they did not charge dead suspects
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Another case covered by Chris in Chapter 16 is that of Suzanne Lawrence and this also has potential links to Robert Black. As Chris explained, she was last seen, on 28 July 1979, at a funfair in Highbury Field in North London, only a mile and a half from where Black lived. It is also worth noting that Black abducted five-year-old Caroline Hogg from a funfair in Portobello, Edinburgh just four years after Suzanne disappeared.
Chris also mentions how Black talked about ‘a girl from Essex’ during a pub conversation in 1983 and as Suzanne was from Harold Hill in Essex it does seem likely that it was her he was referring to.
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In Europe, there were several cases that displayed similarities to those of which Black was convicted. Chris has already outlined the details of the murder on 20 June 1985 of Silke Garben in Detmold, Germany and the links that make Black a considerably strong suspect, not least the horrific vaginal injuries suffered by the child, comparable to those inflicted upon Sarah Harper whom Black murdered just under a year later.
The murders of ten-year-old Virginie Delmas on 9 May 1987 and Perrine Vigneron on 7 June 1987 have also been looked at in connection with Black and for good reason as Chris points out in Chapter 17. Robert Black was working and holidaying in a white van in the northern region of France over six weeks in the May/June period of 1987 when these girls were abducted and murdered.
Witnesses reported seeing a white van cruising through the area at the time the victims disappeared. The appearance of the items of clothing and shoes beside the victims in these cases is particularly significant bearing in mind that the shoes and underwear of Susan Maxwell were also found neatly arranged next to her remains. Both girls, Virginie and Perrine, were found miles away from their point of abduction and clearly a vehicle was involved.