Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
MONSTER’S DISOWNED
Black’s family can’t be found for inquest
A FAILURE to trace any relatives of child serial killer Robert Black may see his inquest proceed without family participation, a coroner said yesterday.
Nine months of efforts by the Coroner Service for Northern Ireland to find relations of the Scottish paedophile have come to nothing, a preliminary hearing in Belfast was told.
Black, who was convicted of four child murders but suspected of many more, died of heart disease in Maghaberry Prison, Co Antrim, in 2016 aged 68.
The loner paedophile from Grangemouth near Falkirk was a delivery driver who stalked the roads of the UK searching for victims.
Black was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea after prison authorities revealed no one wanted his remains.
An inquest is being held into his death to establish if there were any issues with the medical care he received while incarcerated.
It was initially believed some of his relations might live in Northern Ireland. Coroner Patrick Mcgurgan said: “We would all like next of kin to be involved in this inquest, I think it’s important.” He added the absence of a relation at the full hearing on December 3 might make it difficult to officially record some personal details about Black. Mr Mcgurgan said contacting the lawyers who represented the killer in the 2011 case could potentially aid efforts to trace his relatives.
The killer’s long reign of terror was ended in 1990 when he was caught red-handed by police with a barely alive six-yearold girl hooded, bound, gagged and stuffed in a sleeping bag in the back of his van in the Scottish village of Stow. In 2011, he was found guilty of the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy, from Ballinderry, Co Antrim.