Killer may have no family at his inquest
SERIAL KILLER Robert Black may see his inquest proceed without family participation, a coroner has said.
Nine months of efforts by the Coroner Service for Northern Ireland to find relations of the late Scottish paedophile have come to nothing, corner Patrick McGurgan was told yesterday.
Black, convicted of four child murders including Morley schoolgirl Sarah Harper but suspected of many more, died of heart disease in a Northern Ireland prison in 2016, aged 68.
The paedophile from Grangemouth, near Falkirk, was a delivery driver who stalked the roads searching for victims. He was cremated and his ashes scattered at sea because 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. At a hearing in Belfast, a lawyer for the Coroners Service spoke about efforts to find relations to participate in the inquest.
“Efforts are being made by an investigating officer but they can’t be traced,” he said.
In 1994, Black was found guilty of three child murders in the 1980s, those of Susan Maxwell, 11, from the Scottish Borders, Caroline Hogg, five, 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, Co Antrim.
His full inquest is scheduled to start in the week commencing Monday December 3 in Armagh.