INSIDE SICK MIND OF SCOTS SERIAL KILLER
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SERIAL killer Robert Black described his torture of young girls as being like a theatre performance, it has been revealed.
Black made the chilling claim to a forensic psychiatrist who conducted a series of interviews with him in prison.
The murderer compared himself to an actor starring in a play when he carried out his shocking crimes.
Dr Richard Badcock said: “There were areas of his life that he was happy to talk about and areas of his life that he wasn’t.
“One thing he did say was he had no recollection of what happened to the victims … of whether they died or not.
“He said it was like a theatre. Like the curtains opening at the start of a play.
“What had gone on before the curtains opened he had no knowledge of.
“What happened after the curtains closed he had no recollection of – these were the areas where the girls were killed and the bodies disposed of.”
Delivery driver Black was convicted in 1994 of raping and murdering Susan Maxwell, 11, in 1982, fiveyear-old Caroline Hogg a year later and Sarah Harper, 10, in 1986.
In 2011, he was found guilty of the 1981 sexual assault and murder of Jennifer Cardy, nine. Black was found dead in his cell in Maghaberry prison in County Antrim in 2016 aged 68.
The experts concluded he could not have been “cured” and would have gone on to kill many more if he had not been caught.
Dr Badcock said of Black: “He was very unprepossessing physically, he was overweight, he was shy.
“He was not terribly intelligent but he had quite a lot of what you might think of as natural cunning.
“He didn’t have lots of opportunities for conversations so he was quite happy to talk about himself.”
A group of experts studied the Scot’s crimes for a series on some of the country’s worst killers called Making A Monster.
They concluded that he was driven to kill because of anger at the ill-treatment and abuse he suffered as a child.
Black, originally from Grangemouth, was brought up by foster parents and later spent time in care homes where it’s thought he was sexually abused.
In an audio recording of an interview conducted behind bars, self-pitying Black whined: “I remember one Christmas I didn’t get no Christmas presents because I had been bad.
“I got one present from somebody that lived out of town. It was a football.
“I can’t remember what I had done like, you know.
“She says ‘Santa Claus isn’t coming this year to you’. And he didn’t.”
Dr Badcock, who also conducted interviews with mass murderer GP Harold Shipman, said of Black: “Would he proudly describe himself as a serial killer? No, he would not.
“He would describe himself as the unfortunate victim of life. What he mostly wanted to get across was how badly he’d been treated at various stages of life.
“It’s certainly clear that something very traumatic happened to him at a very early age which he never discussed, presumably in the form of sexual abuse.
“It was something that so disturbed him that he shut himself off from it completely.”
Forensic psychologist Dr Eric Cullen said: “He couldn’t have been treated. This was in his nature. This was what he was.
“I don’t think he was retrievable and there’s no punishment sufficient to mark the magnitude of his crimes. He was beyond redemption.”
The Making A Monster episode featuring Black is on Crime+Investigation channel on February 24 at 9pm.
What Black wanted to get across was how badly he had been treated FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIST DR RICHARD BADCOCK