EXCITED to be riding her new bike, nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy said goodbye to mum Pat and whizzed off in the direction of a friend’s house, two miles up a country road.
It was the last the family saw of their precious little girl.
Just a few yards away from the family home in Ballinderry, County Antrim, Jennifer was snatched by serial killer Robert Black, who sexually assaulted her and strangled her before dumping her body in a dam 16 miles away.
The horrific crime, on August 12, 1981, was the first of four known murders by evil Black. But while he was eventually jailed for life in 1994 for the other three, it would be 30 years before Jennifer’s devastated family saw justice for their daughter.
For her dad Andy, who had treated his little girl to the bike days earlier so she could enjoy her school holidays, the pain of her loss is still present every day, 40 years on.