SERIAL child killer Robert Black was likely to have been charged with the murder of English schoolgirl Genette Tate within weeks, police have said.
The Scottish-born sex attacker (68) died of natural causes in Maghaberry jail in Co Antrim on Tuesday.
He was serving multiple life sentences for the murders of four schoolgirls in the 1980s, including the killing of nine-year-old Co Antrim girl Jennifer Cardy, and several other crimes.
There was speculation he was also linked to the unsolved disappearance of Donegal girl Mary Boyle who vanished 39 years ago, aged six. However her twin sister Ann Doherty yesterday dismissed the claims and said they were inaccurate.
Black, a delivery driver who stalked the roads of the UK searching for victims, has long been suspected of murdering 13-year-old Genette, who vanished from a rural lane in Aylesbeare, Devon, in August 1978. Her body has never been found.
Detective Superintendent Paul Burgan, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said Black was "weeks" away from probably being charged with Genette's murder.
"We were in the process of submitting a full evidential file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which would have been submitted in February of this year," he said.
"In earlier indications, the CPS has said that in all probability, we would have charged Robert Black with Genette's abduction and murder.
"We were waiting for a final charging decision from them when the file went to them."
Mr Burgan said that he expected the charging decision from the CPS to come in "weeks rather than months".
The force will still submit the file to the CPS for a charging decision for Genette's family, he added.
Black was caught in 1990 when he was found by police with a six-year-old girl bound and gagged in a sleeping bag in the back of his van in the Scottish village of Stow.
In 1994, Black was found guilty of the murders of Scottish girls Susan Maxwell (11) and five-year-old Caroline Hogg, 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 Jennifer Cardy.
