Netflix’s Manhunt: The Child Snatcher has shot up the UK’s most-watched list, detailing a case that spanned multiple police forces, years of fear, and a predator who used an ordinary job and van to hide in plain sight.
The two-part documentary revisits the UK-wide hunt for Robert Black, featuring interviews with investigators and victims’ families.
This is the true story of Robert Black, a serial killer who targeted young girls around the UK as he travelled as part of his work as a delivery driver, moving from place to place.
Who was Robert Black the murderer?
Robert Black was a Scottish-born delivery driver for a London-based poster company, which saw him travel widely across the UK – a fact that helped him evade capture for so long. According to the BBC, he had a long criminal record for sexually abusing young girls dating back to his teens, and he became known as a predatory paedophile who abducted, assaulted and murdered children.
Timeline-wise, the crimes that led to his convictions span the 1980s, but the breakthrough didn’t come until 1990. He was convicted of murdering four girls: Jennifer Cardy (aged 9) from County Antrim, Susan Maxwell (11-years-old) from Northumberland, Caroline Hogg (just 5) from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper (aged 10) from Leeds.
Cardy was abducted in 1981 while cycling to a friend’s house near her home in Ballinderry, County Antrim. She was sexually assaulted and her body was later dumped in a dam. Believed to be his first known victim, Cardy became Black’s last conviction in 2011.
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The other murders followed across different parts of the UK – an element that, as Manhunt underlines, complicated the investigation because the cases crossed police-force boundaries.
Black was finally caught in 1990, after a member of the public witnessed him attempting to kidnap another child. That report led to police stopping Black’s van and discovering a six-year-old girl inside, bound and gagged, who was rescued. The arrest effectively ended the UK-wide manhunt and gave detectives the opening they needed to connect him to earlier unsolved cases.
What happened to Robert Black after he was caught?
Black was arrested in 1990 after police stopped his van and found a six-year-old girl bound and gagged in the back. She had been kidnapped from a village in the Scottish Borders and was rescued, an intervention that also opened the door to linking Black to earlier cases.
In 1994, he was convicted of the murders of Susan Maxwell, Caroline Hogg and Sarah Harper and given life sentences. In 2011, he was also found guilty of murdering Jennifer Cardy.
The BBC reports that Black never accepted guilt and never showed remorse. At sentencing, even his barrister reportedly offered no mitigation.
Black died aged 68 in Maghaberry prison in Northern Ireland in January 2016, of natural causes and, as the Manchester Evening News notes, police later revealed they were weeks away from charging him over the 1978 murder of Genette Tate, another missing girl, when he died.
Det Supt Paul Burgan said: "Early indications from the Crown Prosecution Service is that it was probable that we would have charged Robert Black with Genette's murder. We were very close to a decision by the CPS."
