THE parents of a Northumberland schoolgirl killed by Robert Black have told of their sympathy for the family of his fourth child victim.
Scottish paedophile Black was convicted in 1994 of murdering 11-year-old Susan Maxwell and two other young girls.
Yesterday, he was handed a life sentence for the murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy in Northern Ireland 30 years ago.
Susan’s mother Liz Maxwell said she and husband Fordyce had been closely following the case from their home in Berwick.
“We have been listening to the family of Jennifer Cardy, and we are so impressed by their dignity,” she said. “Much of what they say very much echoes what we were feeling in 1994.
“The verdict must be a huge relief for the Cardy family after such a long time – they probably thought they would never see this day. Today should be all about Jennifer and her family.”
Susan was abducted on July 30, 1982, after she left her home in Cornhill-on-Tweed to play a game of tennis in Coldstream. Black raped and strangled her, and dumped her body by the side of a road near Uttoxeter, about 250 miles away in the Midlands.
Mrs Maxwell added: “Even though we thought we were braced for this court case, there has been a lot of distressing detail which has been very upsetting.
“We still miss our daughter every day, as the parents of Jennifer will miss her.”
The jury at Armagh Crown Court took just four hours and 15 minutes to return a guilty verdict on Black yesterday, after a high-profile five-week trial.
Black snatched Jennifer Cardy as she cycled to a friend’s house in the quiet Co Antrim village of Ballinderry on August 12, 1981.
Her body was found six days later in a dam behind a roadside lay-by 15 miles away at Hillsborough, Co Down.
Black showed no emotion when the verdicts were read out and Judge Mr Justice Ronald Weatherup sentenced him to life behind bars.
Black was previously jailed by Newcastle Crown Court for the murders of Susan, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper, 10, from Morley, near Leeds.
Black’s killing spree only 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 the back of his van in the Scottish village of Stow.
Now, it is thought prosecutors could be asked to review another schoolgirl’s disappearance. The serial killer has long been the prime suspect in the case of missing 13-year-old Genette Tate, who was last seen in Aylesbeare, Devon, in 1978.
Black has been questioned about her suspected abduction a number of times, but three years ago the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to charge him on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
