Child killer to be questioned over unsolved murders

Gardaí are seeking to question convicted child killer Robert Howard about a series of unsolved murders of women, it emerged today.

Files on the cases were reopened following the conclusion of court proceedings in Britain and the North.

Detectives have requested permission to ask 61-year-old Howard, who is originally from Wolf Hill, Co Laois, about his movements in the 1980s and 1990s, when he travelled extensively throughout Ireland staying at more than a dozen addresses.

Howard is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of 14-year-old south London schoolgirl Hannah Williams, whose body he dumped at a disused cement works in Northfleet, Kent.

He was cleared of murdering 15-year-old Arlene Arkinson following a trial at Belfast Crown Court earlier this year, but her family said the jury in the case should have been told of Howard’s past before reaching their verdict.

At the height of the investigation into the disappearance of the schoolgirl in County Tyrone in 1994, police on both sides of the border had at least two meetings to discuss Howard’s possible involvement in a string of unsolved cases in the Republic involving women.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary officers who attended the meetings were Detective Chief Superintendent Eric Anderson, who would later lead the police probe into the 1998 Omagh bomb, and Detective Chief Superintendent Brian McVicar.

Gardaí was represented by two officers who were later forced to leave the force because of a corruption scandal in County Donegal.

Superintendent Kevin Lennon was dismissed from the Gardaí in October 2004 after a damning report by the Morris Tribunal into hoax weapons finds.

Chief Superintendent Denis Fitzpatrick quit after criticism by the tribunal of his failure to properly investigate the allegations against his officers.

At meetings on both sides of the border the officers exchanged notes on Howard but gardaí were particularly interested in similarities with cases in the Republic.

Gardaí kept a close watch on developments in the Arkinson case, meeting detectives from Northern Ireland in Dublin in March 2002.

Howard has been preying on young girls for five decades – drifting from community to community offering his services as a tradesman.

His first sex attack was in London in 1964 when he carried out a vile sex act on a six-year-old girl during a burglary. He was also convicted of attempted rape and aggravated burglary in Durham.

In 1974 he received a 10-year sentence for rape in Cork.

He was released after seven years in Mountjoy Prison in Dublin.

But as there was no sex offenders register to catalogue crimes from the 1970s, he was free to drift into communities and ingratiate himself with locals unaware of his past.

Detectives in the Republic have traced him to at least three addresses in Dublin and also in counties Wexford and Monaghan.

North of the border, he is believed to have lived in Newry, Co Down, Castlederg and Cookstown, Co Tyrone, where he was under 24-hour surveillance.

While living in Castlederg in 1994, Howard was accused of raping a 16-year-old girl. He insisted the sex was consensual and was given bail.

Around August 1994, while he was on bail, Arlene Arkinson disappeared and he was questioned by the RUC.

Much to the concern of detectives, Howard was convicted of a lesser charge in the case against him over the 16-year-old.

He received a three-year sentence, suspended for five years, for having unlawful sex with a girl under the age of 17.

The RUC tracked Howard as he left Castlederg for a new address in Cookstown.

They placed him under 24-hour surveillance, with a wiretap on his phone.

In 1995 Howard left for Scotland, where he managed to secure a council home in Drumchapel, near Glasgow.

However he was hounded out of the estate after his past was exposed by a newspaper, moving to a hostel in Bishopbriggs near East Dunbartonshire before moving to London and eventually Northfleet in Kent where he went on to murder 14-year-old Hannah Williams in 2001.

Detectives charged Howard with murdering Arlene Arkinson in May 2002 but just over three years later a jury found him not guilty.