How Antrim PSNI station was the setting for the crunch interview which helped snare evil child-killer

NEW light has been shed on the crunch interviews which snared evil childkiller Robert Black, when he was interrogated at Antrim PSNI station.

Warped van driver Robert Black assaulted and murdered at least four girls under 12 years old across the UK, and last week the case was featured in Channel 5’s new two-part series Child Snatcher: Manhunt.

His reign of terror led to parents being afraid to let their children out of their sights.

Former Met Police commander, Gary Copson, said: “When I grew up, we played in the street. Kids don’t play in the street anymore and one of the reasons I think was because Robert Black created a kind of terror that made parents afraid to have their children out of their sight.”

Black, was one of Britain’s worst serial child killers, sought out young girls to abduct, assault and murder between 1981 and 1986, including young Jennifer Cardy, who’s body was dumped in McKee’s Dam near Hillsborough after he abducted and assaulted her as she travelled to a friend’s house on her new bike.

As a delivery driver, his job allowed him to dump her bodies without any suspicion - but his penchant for hanging on to receipts led to his downfall.

His murder spree triggered one of the most extensive murder investigations for the 20th century. After he was arrested, even hardened police officers were stunned by what they discovered.

Mr Copson added: “I was on duty at Scotland Yard on the day he was arrested and had to brief the commissioner. I think the really frightening thing was the way in which he pootled along in his van back past the area to go and fill up the van with petrol.

“One of the first things he did after he had taken a child was go fill the van with petrol. And the reason he did that was because the receipt for the petrol was his souvenir. When his house was searched, they found a cache of souvenirs, many of which were petrol receipts which placed him in the crucial areas on the crucial days.”

Black’s confirmed victims were Susan Maxwell, who was 11 when she was abducted in 1982 near the border between Scotland and England. Her body was gagged and bound and she was found 250 miles away in Staffordshire.

The others were Caroline Hogg, aged five, Sarah Harper, aged 10, and Jennifer Cardy, aged nine.

Caroline’s body was found in a ditch off the M1 in Leicestershire and Sarah was found four weeks after she was abducted in the River Trent near Nottingham.

Robert Black died of a heart attack aged 68 in 2016 while serving a life sentence in Maghaberry Prison.

In a BBC Spotlight programme aired in 2016, former PSNI officer Pamela Simpson told how she coaxed crucial evidence out of Black and unknowingly he provided the police with enough to convict him for the 1981 murder of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy from Ballinderry.

Black was finally caught in Scotland in 1994 when a witness saw him pulling a six-year-old girl into his van. He was apprehended when he doubled back on his route. Former police officer Ian Turnbull was on duty that day and had pulled Black’s van over.

Returning to the road where Black’s capture unfolded, he said what he saw next was the most shocking moment of his life.

The young girl he found in the van, tied up in a sleeping bag and barely alive, was his own daughter.

Black was jailed for life for the crime. He went on to receive three more life sentences for three murders and in each case, refused to speak or cooperate with police - and when she met him at Antrim Police Station, Pamela Simpson said she did not expect him to cooperate with her, either.

“I think everyone was surprised at that because nobody knew before we went in to the interviews whether he was even going to talk at all,” she said.

The serious crime custody suite in Antrim was completely cleared for the three days of interviews in May 2005 in a strategy that had taken a year of planning. Black was the only prisoner and any planned arrests were rescheduled, as the whole station was taken over - all monitoring rooms and facilities were used.

The first interview was held on May 16 of that year - Jennifer's birthday. Black had been transported from prison in Wakefield in Yorkshire where he was already serving life for three child murders and other offences against young girls.

The old RUC had quizzed Black in 1996 but he had not revealed enough information to bring charges. Devon police investigating the 1978 disappearance of schoolgirl Genette Tate had interviewed Black first, but the PSNI heard and watched every second of it.

A clinical psychologist, formerly a Scottish detective who quizzed Black in 1990 was also watching. Onlookers noticed his dislike of the words 'murder' and ‘admit’ and the interrogators changed their language to tease out more information.

In fact, Simpson’s colleague in the interview room, Detective Sergeant Patrick McAnespie, hardly spoke at all.

Her tactic was to encourage him to talk about his sexual fantasies about young girls, hoping he would incriminate himself. Black, who spoke in a soft Scottish accent, appeared to be happy to open up.

Recordings revealed that Black stated, in a casual manner: “I’m not exactly proud of the way I feel towards young girls. There’s a part of me that knows I’m wrong, knows that it's wrong, that I shouldn’t be doing things like that. I shouldn’t even be thinking things like that, but there's the other part that says ‘you like it, go on’.”

Simpson, who had 12 years of experience dealing with sex abuse victims, struggled not to react.

“You learn not to show shock, not to show horror and not to show emotion when listening to things like that,” she explained.

“That’s exactly what I did when I was speaking to Robert Black. It was extremely difficult.”

The cop who reopened the investigation in June 2002, Detective Superintendent Raymond Murray, led the probe for nine years.

He spoke on the new Channel 5 show about how Black opened up to his colleague and appeared to be describing a fantasy, but his literal depictions of houses and landmarks along the road he was driving sounded very like the place where Jennifer Cardy was last seen alive.

Mr Murray described how the interview at Antrim Police Station took place over three days and took up 21 interview tapes.

Wily Simpson presented Black, who had questioned why there was ‘always a woman and a man’ interviewing him, with a 1981 road atlas, and he began tracing his old routes with his finger.

Collaborating with other police forces and using ferry timetables and, tragically, the time at which Jennifer’s watch was found stopped on her body after she entered the water, they were able to place Black at the scene.

“I’d be driving along and see a young girl.” he said in one interview.

“I’d get out and try to persuade her to get into the van and take her somewhere quiet,

He recalled how a young girl once appeared close to his van. She was crying and had lost her mother.

Black told the police how there was no-one around and it would have been ‘easy’ for him to have bundled the little girl into his van, but that instead he took her by the hand and walked her back to her mother.

Police believed that these ‘fantasies’ actually related to Jennifer’s abduction and after three days of questioning, Black appeared to realise he’d said too much.

And his description of a quiet country road sweeping down a hill and turning round to the left, flanked by high hedges and with one house set back from the road, was almost a perfect description of the spot on the Crumlin Road in Ballinderry where Jennifer Cardy was snatched.

With no DNA evidence linking him to the crime, the PSNI interviews proved to be vital in securing his 2011 conviction.

Police believe Black may be responsible for up to 12 other murders. The families have never recovered the bodies or received justice.

Further links

But the hulking behemoth of Antrim’s heavily fortified police station is not the only local link to the depraved killer.

The undertakers who handled the cremation of the notorious criminal are also based in the town - and had their premises attacked for handling the pervert’s body.

Three windows were smashed at funeral directors Bairds of Antrim.

The local firm had only agreed to handle the paedophile's funeral, at the request of the Northern Ireland Prison Service.

The prison authorities had struggled to find any undertakers to handle the funeral arrangements after nobody came forward to claim the remains.

A secret funeral for Black took place at Roselawn Crematorium.

The Presbyterian chaplain of Maghaberry Prison, Rev Rodney Cameron, carried out the six-minute service, 17 days after the Scottish inmate’s death in the jail.

A spokeswoman for Bairds said at the time: “We can confirm that over the weekend some damage was caused to three windows at the front of the funeral home and we are currently liaising with the police on this matter.”

The attack was condemned and there were calls for those behind it to be brought to justice. It is understood the dead killer’s body was taken directly from the mortuary to the crematorium in a service vehicle, not a ceremonial vehicle, and was not in the undertaker's care at any time. The cost of Black’s funeral was said to be £1,000. Former Justice Minister Edwin Poots said Bairds was just doing its job.

“Many people are asked to do jobs they don’t want to do but nonetheless they have a role,” he said.

“There should be no attacks on the undertakers. They must be free to carry out their business without fear of attack.”