Cardy accused 'spied on girls'
Serial child killer Robert Black prowled crowded beaches hunting out opportunities to spy on and play with young girls, his latest murder trial has heard.
The notorious Scottish paedophile said he would join in building sand castles or digging holes in an effort to get close to the unsuspecting youngsters.
In police interview tapes played to the jury at Armagh Crown Court, the triple child murderer also revealed how he would park up on roadsides to watch girls from his delivery van, making up excuses to talk to them.
Black (aged 64) is on trial accused of abducting and murdering nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy in the North 30 years ago. He denies the charges.
In the interviews with detectives investigating Jennifer's case, Black also denied involvement in the three murders he was convicted of in 1994, suggesting there was a conspiracy against him.
But during some of those recorded exchanges in 1996 and 2005, the killer did concede he had a strong sexual interest in young girls and would actively seek them out.
Black showed no emotion from the dock as his sordid admissions were played to a silent court room.
Jennifer's parents Andy and Patricia and her older brother Philip listened from the public gallery.
Black told detectives he would introduce himself to groups of children on beaches.
"If they were burying each other in the sand I might join in or something like that," he said.
He said he would concoct a pretence for talking to the girls' parents to strike up a relationship.
"I would ask them to watch my watch and glasses while I went for a swim," he explained.
Black said he would often just look on from close by.
"I would just observe them as long as I could and then carry on walking along the beach keeping my eyes open for another opportunity," he said.
Black is accused of snatching Jennifer while she cycled along a quiet country road in Ballinderry, Co Antrim, on August 12, 1981. Her body was found six days later in a dam 15 miles away behind a roadside lay-by at Hillsborough, Co Down.
The Crown claim Black, a London-based dispatch driver, was in the North on the day Jennifer disappeared on a delivery run.
Under questioning by detectives, Black insisted he had no involvement. But he did admit he would often watch young girls from his van in the course of his work.
"I would look at her (a young girl) and try to guess what age she was, maybe I might park up for a couple of minutes and watch her," he said.
He added: "If she was walking a dog I would get out and stroke the dog or ask for directions."
Black told detectives he also fantasised about sexual encounters with girls aged between eight and 12, but claimed he never acted these scenarios out in reality.
In the tapes, played on the 14th day of his trial, Black told detectives that his lust for child pornography had taken him to shops in Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
The serial killer was caught red-handed in 1990 with a six-year-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.
In 1994 he was then convicted of three unsolved child murders in the 1980s - 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper (aged 10) from Morley, near Leeds - and a failed abduction bid in Nottingham in 1988.
