Man who caught killer Black dies
A FORMER detective who led Britain’s biggest manhunt to find paedophile serial killer Robert Black has died aged 86.
Hector Clark, who died on April 5, led an investigation believed to have been one of the most costly of the 20th century which involved six police forces.
Prolific serial killer Black raped and murdered schoolgirls in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland from 1981 until he was caught in 1990.
The Scottish delivery driver was convicted of four murders but is believed to have been responsible for more. He died in 2016 while serving 13 life sentences.
Mr Clark was remembered by colleagues as determined to get to grips with computers to avoid the failings which occurred in the Yorkshire Ripper investigation.
He died in a nursing home in Whitley Bay, Northumberland, where he had overseen around 70 murder investigations as Northumbria Police Assistant Chief Constable. Mr Clark then became Deputy Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders Police in 1984.
Black was caught when he tried to abduct a six-year-old girl in Stow, Selkirkshire. Although there was no direct evidence, Mr Clark believed he was the killer.
Paying tribute to Mr Clark, former colleague Tom Wood said: ‘He had great leadership and took a personal approach.
‘He never wrote a letter or made a phone call where he could meet a person face-to-face. He was very good at delegating and had confidence in people.
‘He was incredibly sharp-witted. He was very good at observing, he was shrewd, a good communicator and was made to be a detective. He was a natural.
‘Hector did an excellent job of managing that case through its dark times. There were long periods of time where there was no progress, and there was tremendous pressure. ‘What he and his team did, painstakingly, was build a circumstantial case which proved compelling in court, but the complexity is difficult to overstate. It was like an enormous jigsaw puzzle, but carefully picked through and assembled. ‘It really did take someone special to coordinate it all.’