Court seeks relatives of dead serial killer

A CORONER is seeking to trace relatives of serial killer Robert Black to establish if they want to participate in his inquest.

Scottish-born Black, who was convicted of four child murders but suspected of many more, died of heart disease in a Northern Ireland prison.

The delivery driver, who was 68 and from Falkirk, stalked the roads of the UK searching for victims.

At a preliminary hearing in Belfast, Coroner Patrick McGurgan said relatives should be offered the chance to give evidence.

“I think all efforts need to be made to trace the next of kin,” he said.

The Coroners Service said he believed some relations may live in Northern Ireland.

Mr McGurgan suggested lawyers who represented Black in trials prior to his death might be able to help. “It’s important that the family are given every opportunity to participate in this inquest,” he said.

Black was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea after prison authorities in Northern Ireland revealed no-one wanted his remains.

The killer’s long reign of terror was ended in 1990 when he was caught red-handed by police with a barely alive six-year-old girl hooded, bound, gagged and stuffed in a sleeping bag in his van in Stow, Midlothian.

In 1994, Black was found guilty of three child murders in the 1980s – those of 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper, 10, from Morley, near Leeds. In 2011, he was found guilty of the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy, from Ballinderry, Antrim.