Police in Northern Ireland may be on the verge of a breakthrough in the hunt for the murderer of a schoolgirl 27 years ago.
Detectives who questioned convicted child killer Robert Black have submitted a file to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) in Belfast.
Nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy was grabbed as she cycled to a friend’s house near her home in Ballinderry, near Lisburn, Co Antrim, in Northern Ireland, in 1981.
Her body was found six days later by fishermen at a dam, just off the main Belfast-Dublin road near Hillsborough, Co Down.
Black (60) is in jail serving a minimum 35 years for the murders of three young girls in the 1980s. At the time he was working as a van driver delivering advertising posters across the UK.
A team of detectives headed by Chief Superintendent Raymond Murray questioned Black as far back as May 2005 about the Cardy killing and today a spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland confirmed a file on the case is now being studied by the PPS.
Black, a Scot who lived in London, is in Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire after being jailed in Newcastle in 1994 for the murders of Susan Maxwell (11) from Cornhill-on-Tweed, in July 1982, Caroline Hogg (5) from Edinburgh, in July 1983, and Sarah Harper (10) from Morley, near Leeds, in March 1986.
Police in Devon and Cornwall have also questioned him about the 1978 murder of Genette Tate (13) of Aylesbeare, Devon. She was abducted while doing a paper round on her bicycle.