Child killer quizzed over 1981 murder

Ian Graham

Black was jailed in 1994 and is serving 10 life sentences for the abduction and murder of three young girls and the abduction of a 15-year-old girl.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland said a 58-year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of murder and that he was being questioned about the murder of Jennifer Cardy in 1981.

Police sources confirmed the man was Black, and that he had been flown to the North from Wakefield Prison in Yorkshire.

Northern police officers investigating the murder have for years been working in tandem with Devon and Cornwall police officers probing the disappearance of 13-year-old Genette Tate, who vanished from a country lane near her home in east Devon in 1978.

Last month Black was questioned and technically bailed back into prison custody by police from the south-west of England force who had travelled to a Yorkshire police station to question him.

There are close similarities in the murder of Jennifer Cardy and disappearance of Genette Tate.

Jennifer, from Ballinderry, Co Antrim, was snatched as she was cycling to a friend’s home on August 12 1981.

Her red bicycle was discovered in a field beside a hedge, near her home, and her body was found six days later by two fishermen at McKee’s Dam a few miles away near Hillsborough, Co Down.

Genette disappeared from Within Lane, near Aylesbeare in Devon on August 29, 1978, while delivering copies of a local newspaper.

Her bicycle was found, undamaged, lying in the lane by two girls who had been walking towards the village with Genette just minutes before.

The teenager’s body was never found and the case subsequently became Britain’s longest missing person inquiry.