A harrowing Channel 5 true crime show about a child serial killer from the 1980s has landed at number one on Netflix.
The two-episode docuseries, Manhunt: The Child Snatcher, first came out in 2023 and follows the ‘harrowing crimes and lengthy police pursuit of 1980s serial killer Robert Black, who targeted children across the UK’.
It includes first-hand testimonies from those directly affected and involved in this haunting case which eventually saw killer and child sexual assaulter Robert Black (who died in 2016) convicted of four child murders, and suspected of more.
The murders took place over the course of a decade, launching a large scale police investigation in the UK to try and track down the culprit.
Black was able to remain undetected for years due to his career as a delivery driver, meaning he was able to abduct children and ferry them across the country in his van without suspicion.
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In 1990, he was caught while attempting to abduct a six-year-old from the Scottish village of Stow, who was found hooded, bound, gagged and stuffed in a sleeping bag.
Police were ultimately able to connect the dots between this incident and prior murders.
Four years later, in 1994 he was convicted of the murders of two Scottish girls 11-year-old Susan Maxwell in 1982 and five-year-old Caroline Hogg in 1983; and Sarah Harper, 10, from Leeds in 1986.
Two decades on, in 2011, he was also found guilty of murdering nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy from Ballinderry, Northern Ireland in 1981.
Jailed in Northern Ireland’s Maghaberry Prison for life, he died of heart disease aged 68.
At the time of his death Devon and Cornwall Police revealed that they were just weeks away from charging him with another murder, this time of 13-year-old Genette Tate, who disappeared in 1978.
The several-year long hunt is recounted in the Channel 5 documentary which has surged to number one on Netflix.
Manhunt: The Child Snatcher is streaming on Netflix now.
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