Serial child killer Robert Black has died in prison.
The Scottish-born sex attacker died in non-suspicious circumstances in Maghaberry high security jail in Northern Ireland.
The 68-year-old from Falkirk was serving multiple life sentences for the murders of four schoolgirls in the 1980s and a number of other crimes.
Black was a delivery driver who stalked the roads of the UK searching for victims.
His reign of terror was 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. He had sexually assaulted her moments earlier.
After being caught Black insisted that was his only “slip” the only time he ever kidnapped a young girl in his van.
Of course, that was a lie. Four murder convictions followed.
Once in custody detectives were able to link the predator to a series of unsolved crimes in the previous decade.
In 1994, Black was found guilty of three child murders in the 1980s those of 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper, 10, from Morley, near Leeds as well as a failed abduction bid in Nottingham in 1988.
In 2011, he was found guilty of the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy, from Ballinderry, Co Antrim.
He was also suspected of involvement in other killings and unexplained disappearances.
He had long been the prime suspect in the case of missing 13-year-old Genette Tate, who was last seen on a rural lane in Aylesbeare, Devon, in 1978.
No trace of the newspaper delivery girl has ever been found. All that remained at the scene were her bike and scattered papers.
A Northern Ireland Prison Service spokeswoman said: “The Prison Service has confirmed that a 68-year-old prisoner has died at Maghaberry Prison. While this is not being treated as suspicious, the Prison Service has informed the PSNI, coroner and prisoner ombudsman. It would not be appropriate to comment further at this time.”
Black was born in 1947 near Falkirk to single mother Jesse Hunter Black, a factory worker who put her son up to be fostered within weeks.
The couple that took him in the Tulips were in their fifties and lived in Kinlochleven in the West Highlands.
Within 11 years both had died, and Black was placed in a children’s home back in Falkirk.
When he turned 15, Black left the home and moved to Greenock.