http://www.eveningnews24.co.uk/content/new...3A04%3A17%3A890

April: New hope in missing teen mystery


April Fabb, who went missing on April 8, 1969, aged 13.
STACIA BRIGGS
10 December 2007 11:03

Cold-case officers investigating the disappearance of a Norfolk teenager almost 40 years ago have promised her heartbroken family they have not given up the hunt for the truth.

The pledge comes as a leading officer in the case of April Fabb told how he hoped a new edition of his book on the case would lead to fresh information emerging.

The thirteen-year-old went missing on April 8, 1969 as she cycled from her home in Metton, near Cromer, to nearby Roughton. Her case is one of Britain's longest-running missing persons inquiries.

Former head of Norfolk CID Maurice Morson, who took on the case in 1983, hopes a new edition of his book April Fabb: The Lost Years will lead to fresh information as the investigation reaches its 40th anniversary. Police officers have stressed that until the mystery is solved, the case will remain open.

The publication of Mr Morson's book comes just weeks after police discovered the bodies of two teenagers, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, who went missing 16 years ago, buried in the back garden of a house once owned by convicted killer Peter Tobin.

Although April's family have been informed by police there is nothing to suggest any link between Tobin and the case, it has given hope that such mysteries can be solved.

In September, child killer Robert Black was questioned for a second time in connection with the murder in Northern Ireland of Jennifer Cardy, nine, who was cycling to a friend's house in August 1981 when she was abducted, sexually assaulted and murdered.

Black, who has admitted in interviews that he always targeted paper girls, or girls on bikes, has also been linked with the April Fabb case, although there is no evidence to suggest he was in Norfolk at the time of the teenager's disappearance.

Since the height of the Fabb police investigation, which was the largest Norfolk had ever witnessed, the Major Investigations Team has continued to receive regular tip-offs and leads.

“The case will only close if we discover the truth about what happened to April Fabb,” said Det Supt Chris Hobley, of the Major Investigations Team.

Information from April's file has been fed into the police's HOLMES 2 (Home Office Large Major Enquiry System) investigation management system, which helps forces around the country organise their major crime files.

Mr Morson said: “We need that crucial piece of information which will kick-start the case and solve the disappearance of April. Her family have borne this tragedy with incredible dignity and they deserve answers,” he said.

“Someone out there may know something vital. I would love for them to come forward and give the Fabb family closure. April's mother Olive is 87, and it would be a tragedy for her to never find out what happened to her daughter.”

If you have any information about the April Fabb case, contact Norfolk police on 0845 4564567.

For a two-page special report into the case and the new edition of the book, see today's Evening News

Have you got a crime story for the Evening News? Call crime reporter Peter Walsh on 01603 772439 or email peter.walsh@archant.co.uk

http://z13.invisionfree.com/PorchlightEuro...?showtopic=2716

April Fabb (April 8, 1969):
The shy 13-year-old set cycled off to her sister’s home in Roughton to give her brother-in-law a packet of cigarettes as a birthday present. It was only two miles from her home in Metton, but she never made it along the country lane. Between 2.06pm, when she was seen by a tractor driver, and 2.12pm, when her blue and white bike was found lying on its side in a field, she vanished. The mystery haunts the county to this day.

REMEMBERED – The memorial to April Fabb at her home.

Missing girl: police check unsolved 1969 file


By Dennis Johnson
Tuesday August 22, 1978
The Guardian


Police investigating the disappearance of 13-year-old Genette Tate in a Devon lane were alerted yesterday to strong similarities between her case and that of a Norfolk girl, April Fabb, nine years ago.
Norfolk police told the senior investigating officers in Devon yesterday that April, also aged 13, disappeared near the village of Melton, four miles from the north Norfolk coast, leaving her bicycle lying in a lane. No trace of her was ever found.


Article continues

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Yesterday 70 uniformed policemen and 50 detectives, helped by mounted police from Avon and Somerset and a team of divers, hunted in vain for a clue to what happened to Genette. Ponds and gravel pits were searched around the village of Aylesbeare, near Exmouth, where she lived.
But by last night police were left only with the evidence of Genette's bicycle, abandoned in a lane near the village, and the newspapers, intended for her delivery round, which were scattered in the roadway.

Detective Chief Superintendent Eric Rundle, deputy head of Devon and Cornwall CID, said that the police were growing more worried. "There are similarities between this case and that of April Fabb. Both girls disappeared at a holiday time. April was never found, but this case we are going to solve."

Detective Chief Superintendent Reginald Lester, head of Norfolk CID, said last night that April had disappeared at Easter, 1969, when the area was full of tourists and picnickers.

"We have no other evidence to connect the cases at the moment, but we shall be sending to Devon a card index containing thousands of names of people interviewed by us at that time.

"There is also a list of car numbers, taken by groups of children, near the scene of April's disappearance. All these will be cross-checked in Devon to see if anything links up."

At a press conference last night in the police "incident room" at Aylesbeare village hall, Genette's father, Mr John Tate, a 36-year-old sales representative, said he feared that she might have been abducted.

He appealed for her return, saying she was a normal, well-adjusted girl with no reason to run away. This, it seems, has been confirmed by those who knew her.

To his daughter he pleaded: "If you are able to do anything off your own bat, then please telephone us, go to a policeman or even write:" And to the public, he said: "Please keep looking. Keep your eyes open - and don't give up hope."

Genette's stepmother Mrs Violet Tate, aged 36, said: "There were no family rows and we can't even remember Genette losing her temper once. All we want is her back."

Her mother, Sheila Tate, aged 34, said: "She would not fall for the 'sweeties' trick. She was intelligent and knew well enough not to do this. We have never quarrelled over Genette at all and she comes to see me pretty regularly."

This morning police hope to reconstruct the circumstances of Genette's disappearance. She had ridden away round a corner from two friends who had stopped to talk to her. Minutes later they found her bicycle and spent some time calling her name.

April Fabb: Cold case cops continue search for answers

April Fabb - 40 years since she disappeared
BEN KENDALL

08 April 2009 08:36


Cold-case detectives have pledged that the search for answers will continue 40 years after Norfolk schoolgirl April Fabb disappeared without a trace.

April's family will today mark the anniversary of the 13-year-old's disappearance - privately. Despite the time that has passed, the pain of not knowing what happened to their beloved daughter still haunts her parents.

Floral tributes have been placed at a memorial plaque at Metton Church, near Cromer, in a demonstration of loved ones' determination to keep her memory alive.

Det Insp Andy Guy, who leads Norfolk police's cold-case team, said officers had visited the family in the build-up to the anniversary.

He added: “This case is never closed. This is still an active missing persons inquiry and we will continue to look for any developments which could help solve the case.

“These anniversaries tend to focus people's minds and can bring forward witnesses who for whatever reason have not spoken to us earlier. If anybody does have any informa-tion, we would urge them to contact police.

“We are in regular contact with the Fabb family and will inform them of any developments.”

On April 8, 1969, April had been cycling to her sister's home in Roughton to give her brother-in-law a birthday present. It was only two miles from her home in Metton but she never made it along the country lane. Between 2.06pm, when she was seen by a tractor driver, and 2.12pm, when her blue and white bike was found lying on its side in a field, she vanished.

Despite a massive manhunt, no trace was found. Detectives always suspected abduction but investiga-tions across the nation and even as far as Australia failed to find any clues, any culprit or convicted criminals who would admit to the snatching.

The Fabb family have described her as a “shy, sensitive lass” who loved animals and picking primroses in the nearby wood.

Although they did not wish to speak as they mourned the latest anniversary, mother Olive, who is now 89 years old, has previously spoken of how the pain will never go away. She said that every day she continued to wonder: “Where is April?”

Recalling the day she disappeared, Mrs Fabb said: “I cycled to where she was going and found she was not there. We called the police. I was so upset so numb.”

Yesterday a bunch a daffodils had been placed on her memorial stone which reads simply: “A child who disappeared from this parish in April 1969 of whom nothing has since been heard.”


http://new.edp24.co.uk/content/news/story....3A36%3A24%3A007

D J Taylor: The shadow that hangs over each of our sons and daughters

The consequences of what happened to Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman will never leave us. And how are we to explain it to our own children?


Sunday, 18 August 2002
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Here in East Anglia the world of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman seems uncomfortably close to hand. In fact it can be glimpsed immediately beyond the front door: those long, somnolent village streets, mouldering in the shadow of the church tower and the community centre; the whole caught up and rendered insignificant by the flat terrain and the immense East of England sky. The characteristic sight, out walking in the Fenland backroads, is the solitary figure outlined against the horizon, framed by the sun, the water and the acres of grain, vanishing silently into the middle distance.


Here in East Anglia the world of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman seems uncomfortably close to hand. In fact it can be glimpsed immediately beyond the front door: those long, somnolent village streets, mouldering in the shadow of the church tower and the community centre; the whole caught up and rendered insignificant by the flat terrain and the immense East of England sky. The characteristic sight, out walking in the Fenland backroads, is the solitary figure outlined against the horizon, framed by the sun, the water and the acres of grain, vanishing silently into the middle distance.

A single twitch on the thread, too, is enough to reawaken the spectres of one's own childhood. To anyone growing up in the eastern counties of this country 30 years ago the iconography of the missing child was everywhere. April Fabb was a Norfolk schoolgirl who vanished into thin air one afternoon leaving only a discarded bike. No trace of her was ever found, and her name, consequently, rang through my teenage years like a leper bell. Half a decade later I can remember walking in the deep woods near Cromer and finding a cast-off child's shoe in the undergrowth. Somebody's father instantly decided to take it to the nearest police station: that was April Fabb's legacy to Norfolk a quarter of a century ago.

It was impossible not to be reminded of the ghostly presence of April Fabb during the media feeding frenzy of the past 10 days: the TV camera stake-out beyond the cordoned-off wood in Newmarket where a jogger had heard screams and noted evidence of freshly turned soil; the fruitless quests for information cancelled out by time or by delay. Impossible not to be reminded, too, of the literature read in childhood and teendom: the M R James ghost story in which the purchaser of an antique print looks on, horrified, as a shadowy figure steals across its foreground to abduct a child from the country house behind; the scene in Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley in which a small girl is carried off and murdered on the Welsh mountainside (here primitive justice prevails – with the priest's connivance the guilty man is taken away and killed by the villagers.)

Before very long the Soham story had turned into a grand but infinitely sinister narrative, full of unexpected detours, plotlines that were never taken up, bit-parters shuffling on stage to deliver their cameos and then gracefully retire. The early witnesses who claimed to have seen the girls in the early hours of the morning following their disappearance, the taxi-driver alarmed by the green car, with its bobbing back-seat head, weaving erratical-ly before him – each in their own way moved the story on, carried it off into new and unimaginable territory, while leaving the underlying premise ominously unchanged.

A narrative, more to the point, in which we are all involved, whether we like it or not. Each day we felt drawn in a little more, as events unfurled, one by one. The disapperance, the pleas for help, the arrests, news of bodies found across the county border in another corner of East Anglia.

"What about the missing children?" my son Benjy, aged six, had wondered to his mother, before this discovery, at bedtime one night last week. Of all the things that one is regularly called upon to explain to one's children – the facts of life, suicide bombs in Jerusalem, aeroplanes falling out of the transatlantic sky – the revelation that there are certain adults stalking the planet with the sole aim of spiriting the defenceless away to hurt them is the one I am least anxious to impart. Carnage in a Middle Eastern marketplace, so-called holy wars – all this is somehow explicable in a way that the wall-eyed potential abductor brooding over the wheel of his car in some flyblown market town or on some back street corner is not. The psychology is too remote, too primordial: nothing to be grasped at; nothing tangible except the hurt.

At the same time, if the abduction of children does terrible things to children generally – bringing them up short before the fact that some adults are not authority figures or role models but simply evil – it does something yet more marked to the community that surrounds them and of which they are a part. The reactions that an event like the case of Jessica Chapman and Holly Wells provokes in the people who observe it are difficult to separate out. How could they not be? On the one hand, a roster of generous impulses: police officers vowing to forswear their holidays until the case was solved; sympathy and solidarity; public figures appealing for information. On the other, the feeling of emotional ghouls crawling out of the woodwork on every side: the police, for example, reporting that 10,000 phone calls had been taken offering information (what on earth could 10,000 individual people have to say?); television reports of such asinine punctiliousness that one simply had to switch off; the usual tribe of people – this is, apparently, a feature of abduction cases – lining up to confess, mysteriously, to something that they didn't do.

Private horrors that are turned into public events by the media's transforming hand have a habit of bringing out the best and the worst in their onlookers, and the line between the two can be wafer-thin. How, one kept on wondering throughout the excavations and the wild goose chases, the rays of hope and the always returning gloom, were the Chapmans and the Wellses taking it? What, other than good nature, kept them from striking out at the next beetle-browed reporter or screaming at the next sonorous platitude? What did they say to one another over their cocoa after the media hordes had packed up and gone home? We shall never know, and if we have any decency we should not want to know.

At the heart of it all – and this perhaps explains the trouble we have in responding to it – lies something elemental: the parent, the child, the thing most precious wrenched away. Curiously, this is reinforced by the Fenland setting: that tight little world of closed communities, ingrown lives, familiar faces and – it turns out – something alien lurking at the core. It could be a novel by Dorothy L Sayers or PD James or a cancelled chapter from Graham Swift's Waterland.

Except that it is not being played out in fiction, but right here in front of an audience of millions. Rather than being invested with the glamour of the lone intelligence striking his way through a maze of clues to the story's core, its processes are simply prosaic, solvable through the painstaking sifting of evidence, teamwork, the vigilant face at the window.

Unlike fiction, too, its consequences, however indirectly or insidiously, will never leave us. Just as I can remember one part of my childhood in terms of things that were done to children – from the Aberfan mining disaster to the disappearance of April Fabb – so I suspect that Benjy, 30 years later, will find a small corner of his past occupied by Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. For him, and for a whole host of other children, the adult world – that scary highway of pretence, subterfuge and false smiles – starts here.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/comme...ers-640179.html

Robert Black
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Smaller | LargerBy Anna Gekoski
Recriminations



Once Black had been convicted the recriminations began. Everybody wanted to know why it had taken eight years for Black to be apprehended, three years longer even than it had taken to catch Peter Sutcliffe. Amazing one might think, considering Black's past. And unlike in the hunt for Sutcliffe computers in general, and HOLMES in particular, were used to track Black. Partly of course, the problem was that the murder investigations were not initially stored on one database which meant that information between cases could not be adequately cross-referenced. When all three cases were eventually conjoined on one database, by this time Black had already emerged as a suspect. Thus the effectiveness of the new system could not been tested.

However although one database would have been invaluable in data storage and comparison between the investigations, it probably would not have caught Black. HOLMES might well have played a vital part in catching Sutcliffe as one of the major downfalls of that investigation was that poor cross-referencing meant that when questioning Sutcliffe officers simply didn't realise that he had been interviewed several times before. If they had realised this there is little doubt that Sutcliffe would have emerged as a strong suspect. But the police had never interviewed Black in connection with the murders, he was simply not in the system as Sutcliffe was. Black was not in HOLMES for the Harper inquiry nor had his name cropped up in the Maxwell or Hogg inquiries. The single database would not have changed this.

The question is really why Black was not identified as a suspect at any stage. After Black's trial criticism was directed at Hector Clark from the media and, more distressingly, from other officers on the inquiry, particularly Detective Superintendent John Stainthorpe who had headed the Sarah Harper investigation. Stainthorpe's criticism was that Clark had defined his parameters too narrowly when looking at men with records for sexual offences as potential suspects. Clark had confined his search to men who had been convicted of serious sexual offences: the attempted or actual abduction, rape or murder of a child under 16. Black however, had been convicted of 'lewd and libidinous' behaviour - a charge which did not match the severity of the offence - with a seven-year-old girl in Scotland in 1967. Stainthorpe said that if Clark had included all sexual offences Black would have been a first-class suspect straight away, or at the very least would have been in the system: "Black should have been arrested years ago, with his history and convictions."

Clark was quick to defend himself to the press and public: "We just couldn't check on everybody," he said, "It would have overloaded the system to an unmanageable extent." He argued that criteria based on the most likely suspects had to be utilised, and given that the charges being investigated were for murder, looking at those offenders with convictions for more serious offences seemed the most sensible way to proceed.

However, when we look at research done into the backgrounds of serial killers we see that if they have any past convictions they are hardly ever serious and usually not sexual. John Christie, Ian Brady, Colin Ireland and Fred West had previous convictions for offences such as theft, fraud and breaking and entering. Peter Sutcliffe, Dennis Nilsen, Myra Hindley and Rose West had no criminal records at all before their convictions for murder. But Black was not just — or primarily - a serial killer, he was also a paedophile and unlike serial killers paedophiles often do have past convictions for sexual offences. These offences, however, may often be relatively minor. Thus if the investigation was to be centred around the creation of suspects based on previous form, Stainthorpe was right to say that even minor sexual offences needed to be included. But of course this was not a viable way to conduct the inquiry. In this sense, at least, Clark was right: the creation of a database with all sexual offences committed in the past 20 years on it, and the subsequent investigation of the offender, was not a task the inquiry could manage.

Just as the case of Peter Sutcliffe highlighted the need for a computer system such as HOLMES to replace the old manual system of data collation, the Black inquiry made apparent the need for a constantly updated national database of all sex offenders and killers. They needed a system such as the FBI's VICAP which can search its memory of sex offenders and their MO's to match the case under investigation. As John Stainthorpe said, "had Black been on a computerised criminal intelligence system, his name would have popped up like a cork out of a bottle." And it probably would have, provided that the types of offence initially fed into the computer were comprehensive and went far enough back in time.

In a case such as Sutcliffe's where the killer has committed no past sexual or violent offences, such a system would be of little use in the identification of possible suspects. In Black's case, however, the system would have had a two-fold usage. It would have identified Black as a man with convictions for sexual assaults on young girls, and also have unearthed offences which he may have perpetrated but had not yet been linked to.

As it was it emerged only after Black's trial that he was almost certainly responsible for more than the three murders for which he was convicted. A serial killer like Black having killed Susan in 1982 and Caroline in 1983, is highly unlikely to then leave a gap of three years before killing Sarah in 1986. And Susan was unlikely to have been his first victim. At the age of 17 Black had assaulted and left a seven-year- old girl for dead; his first murder was allegedly when he was 35. But the incident in 1967 hadn't left him full of remorse or regret: these were things he told Wyre that he knew he should, but could not, feel. When looking back on the event all he felt was lust. The image of that day reformed again and again in Black's fantasies, as he relived it and improved upon it until it was just right. The compulsion to re-enact and refine the experience in reality would have been too deep and over-powering to leave for almost 20 years.



Genette Tate


Suzanne Lawrence


Colette Aram


April Fabb


Christine Markham
(MEN Syndication)
In July 1994 a meeting was held in Newcastle to consider the possibility of Black's involvement in similar murders. As well as possible murders in France, Amsterdam, Ireland and Germany, there were up to ten unsolved abductions and murders in England which bore Black's MO: April Fabb who was abducted from her bicycle in Norfolk in 1969; nine-year-old Christine Markham who was snatched in Scunthorpe in 1973; 13-year-old Genette Tate who disappeared in Devon in 1978; 14-year-old Suzanne Lawrence who was found dead in Essex in 1979; 16-year-old Colette Aram who was found strangled and sexually assaulted in a field in Nottingham in 1983; 14-year-old Patsy Morris who was found dead near Heathrow in 1990; and Marion Crofts and Lisa Hession.

One senior officer was quoted in the Express as saying, "We know he killed Genette Tate and April Fabb, and we believe that their bodies are buried somewhere in the Midlands Triangle." John Stainthorpe said that in his opinion there was an 80 percent likelihood of Black being involved in the disappearance of Genette. Inquiries into these murders have been re-opened. Had these abductions and murders been linked at the time to the cases of Susan, Caroline and Sarah, the police might have unearthed useful new leads. Had they had a national database Black might have been identified as a suspect. An enormous amount of fruitless work could have been averted, a quicker conclusion reached, and lives saved.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_...nations_11.html

The revenge of Smelly Robbie
Oct 19 2007 By Reg McKay

SMELLY ROBBIE! Smelly Robbie! Kids everywhere can be cruel. Just as they were in Grangemouth in the 1950s. If only they'd known who they were tormenting.

He was a strange kid, a loner and prone to aggressive outbursts. Everyone knew that he'd been given up by his mother and fostered by the Tulip family.

Kids weren't very kind to "orphans" in those days - another excuse to give him a bad time.

All his childhood, Robbie would be plagued by other kids. But he was going to wreak his terrible revenge one day on kids everywhere.

They had long forgotten Smelly Robbie in Grangemouth when they read their newspapers in autumn 1982.

Eleven-year-old Susan Maxwell had disappeared from her home in Coldstream on July 31 and was found 300 miles away. She had suffered great sexual indignities before being killed. Poor lassie, everyone agreed.

It was the type of crime that struck terror into every decent citizen. Someone had abducted young Susan and taken her to a place to rape and slaughter her.

A dread crime. It had to be stopped immediately.

In spite of enormous efforts by the cops, they had no leads in Susan's murder.

Almost a year later, five-year-old Caroline Hogg was abducted near her home in Portobello. She had been sexually assaulted, killed and dumped 300 miles away - but only 24 miles from where Susan had been found.

Alarms bells started screaming.

Posters of the two wee girls swamped Scotland. Every cop force and every parent in Scotland was on the alert.

When any young girl was reported missing, the road traffic cops would immediately start checking motors travelling south into England. No joy. Other young girls all over England had suffered the same fate as Susan and Caroline and almost 250,000 people had been interviewed in the national campaign to nab their killers. But were they linked?

To handle all the information being scooped up by different forces, a national database, CATCHEM, was created for the first time. Still no joy.

It took until 1990 for there to be a breakthrough and what a breakthrough it was.

A six-year-old girl was snatched from Stow in Selkirkshire.

The kidnap was witnessed by a passer-by and a policeman stopped his van. Beneath a pile of rags in the back, the terrified youngster was found, bound, gagged and hooded.

Another shock awaited the policeman who rescued her - it was his daughter.

Cops arrested the kidnapper - Robert Black, who as a kid in Grangemouth was known as Smelly Robbie.

Black had been put into care by his mother when he was just a baby. A kind couple called Tulip fostered him through difficult childhood years.

He was a loner, shy one minute and violent the next, with no reason, no warning.

Young Robert felt he should've been female, though even from an early age girls fascinated him sexually.

When Black was only 11, his foster mother died and he was moved to a children's home in Falkirk. Within months, he was caught sexually interfering with younger girls.

He was caught and punished, but that didn't stop him and he had to be moved between children's homes several times.

In 1962, having reached the then legal age of 15, he left school and got a delivery job in Greenock. Later in custody, Black admitted having sexually abused at least 40 children as he did his rounds. Nobody sussed what the delivery boy was up to.

His first conviction was for lewd and libidinous behaviour when he was 17. That involved abducting a young girl before sexually interfering with her. The pattern was set.

All his adult life, Robert Black was an active sex abuser. He had only one serious adult relationship, with a young woman called Pamela Hodgkinson.

When she broke that off, he headed to London in 1972 and his career as a sexual predator was about to go big time.

Poster Dispatch and Storage knew nothing of Black's background when they hired him. He was a driver after all, not working with kids.

But he was working on his own, travelling all over the UK and the continent - it was the sexual predator's ideal job.

Cops reckon Black killed April Fabb, 13, in Norfolk in 1969. But as a driver they have tied him to another five murders of girls before he chanced upon young -- Susan Maxwell.

Yet the decision was made to try him only for the killing of Susan, Caroline and 10-year-old Sarah Harper, from Leeds.

Found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court on all three counts, including charges of abduction and murder, the judge understood who he was dealing with and sentenced Robert Black to 10 life sentences. He'll never leave prison alive.

Later that year, there was a secret conference in Newcastle of top cops from all over Europe. There was only one point on the agenda - Robert Black's MO.

By the end of the day, they had agreed Black had been responsible for 17 murders and one abduction. The spree stretched from Ireland via France to the Netherlands, though most of his killings had been in Scotland and England.

They made an approach to him. What had they to lose? He was going to die in jail anyway. He said nothing. Nothing at all.

Every year since, European forces have gathered together and examined other cases from Black's killing years, 1969 to 1993.

Every year they leave depressed, convinced that other names should be on his list.

Every year a delegation is sent to Black's cell. Every year, they go back to their hotel rooms and phone grieving parents all over Europe. Every year they have the same story to tell.

They wish they could help. But they can't now. Probably not ever.

Why? Black is not talking. Not a word. Not a murmur. As they tell the details, a smile flickers slowly into those dead eyes. A smile of pleasure and victory.

Black isn't talking. Smelly Robbie is having his revenge.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/special-...86908-19978472/

April Fabb


Background

April FABB was born on 22 April 1955 in Metton, Norfolk. She lived at 3 Council Houses, with her father Ernest, her mother Olive and her older sister. She had another older sister who lived with her husband on Cromer Road in Roughton.



Original Investigation

At about 1:40pm on Tuesday 8 April 1969, April left her home to visit her sister in Roughton. She had a packet of 10 cigarettes, 5 ½d and a handkerchief in the saddlebag of her bicycle. She was going to give the cigarettes to her brother in law for his birthday. She was wearing a wine coloured woollen skirt, a green jumper, a pair of long white socks and a pair of wooden soled sandals with red straps and brass buckles.

Roughton Road, Metton, where April was last seenShortly after leaving home she met two friends at the “Donkey Field” next to Harrison’s Farm on Cromer Road in Metton. After ten minutes she left stating she was on her way to her sister's. Just after 2pm, an employee at Harrison’s Farm saw April riding her cycle along Roughton Road, Metton in the direction of Roughton. This was the last known sighting of April.

At about 2:15pm Ordinance Survey workers in a van saw April’s bicycle lying in a field on the Metton to Roughton Road just a few hundred yards from where she was last seen. April had disappeared within a time frame of no longer than ten minutes.

Where April's bicycle was foundAt about 3pm the same day, a local man was driving his mother home when he saw April’s bicycle in the field. He took it to the Police House at Roughton where he handed it to the village PC. The cigarettes, money and handkerchief were still in the saddlebag.

It became apparent later that evening that April was missing when her mother realised she never reached her sister’s house in Roughton. By the following morning a full scale enquiry was under way.



A 2 - 3 mile area was searched and enquiries made with her family and friends. The enquiry was extremely thorough with 1971 statements taken and 419 House to House questionnaires completed.

Although numerous lines of enquiry were pursued April has never been seen since and a number of potential suspects have been eliminated as the result of the investigation.



Why has the case been looked at again?

This case has never been closed and is Norfolk’s most well known Missing Persons enquiry. Over the years since April disappeared, new information from the public has regularly been investigated. This case will never be officially closed until April’s location is discovered and any subsequent investigation has reached a conclusion.



Current Progress
In 1997 the Royal Air Force used thermal imaging cameras to locate ground disturbances since April’s disappearance, but nothing was found.
Following information supplied in 2009, in January 2010 the site of an old well was excavated in the locality from where April disappeared. Again the result was negative.
In 2010 a team of forensic anthropologists have started a project using GIS mapping technology to ascertain if it can help with locating April’s location. This project is likely to be long term and results are not expected in the near future.



Additional Information

The full circumstances of April Fabb's disappearance is documented in the book “THE LOST YEARS. The Story of April Fabb” by Maurice Morson (ISBN 978-0-9520192-6-8).



Contact details

Senior Investigating Officer: Detective Inspector Andy Guy
Cold Case manager: Mr Tony Deacon

Contact Tel: 01953 42 4520
Contact Fax: 01953 42 4542

Email: coldcaseteam@norfolk.pnn.police.uk

Alternatively you can contact Crimestoppers anonymously on: 0800 555 111.
http://www.norfolk.police.uk/newsevents/co.../aprilfabb.aspx

Police: No evidence to link child killer Robert Black to missing Norfolk girl April Fabb

PETER WALSH, Crime correspondent Friday, October 28, 2011
3:28 PM






Robert Black’s conviction for the murder of a fourth young girl has prompted fears he might be responsible for the deaths of at least 12 others, including a Norfolk teenager who went missing in 1969.


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Black, 64, who is already serving life for the deaths of Susan Maxwell, 11, Caroline Hogg, five, and Sarah Harper, 10, was found guilty of the 1981 killing of nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy in Ulster on Thursday.

The conviction has resulted in renewed speculation surrounding a number of other unsolved cases in the UK and Europe before his capture in 1990, which includes the disappearance of April Fabb.

The 13-year-old, who was born in Metton, Norfolk, left her home to visit her sister in Roughton at about 1.40pm on Tuesday, April 8 1969.

Just after 2pm, an employee at Harrison’s Farm saw April riding her cycle along Roughton Road, Metton in the direction of Roughton. This was the last known sighting of April whose bike was spotted lying in a field on the Metton to Roughton Road just a few hundred yards from where she was last seen.

The case is one of a number of investigations which has been looked at by Norfolk Constabulary’s cold case team, which was set up in August 2008 to investigate murders, missing people and serious sexual offences which have not yet been resolved.

Acting Detective Chief Inspector Andy Guy, a senior investigating officer with the team, said the link between Black and April Fabb had been looked at before.

He said: “We have reviewed this matter on several occasions over the years and there is no evidence to link Robert Black to the disappearance of April Fabb.”

But acting DCI Guy said cold cases were “always open” and “always ready to go again” should the necessary information come in. He added: “We have a cold case team that actively pursues any line of inquiry that comes in.”

Tony Deacon, a retired Norfolk detective and cold case manager, said it is likely there will always be speculation around Black in terms of April’s disappearance until the truth can be revealed - either through new evidence or the person responsible admitting it.

He said: “It will never go away because the circumstances surrounding April’s disappearance are similar to what he has now been convicted of.

“The answer lies with Black himself. We can’t ever exclude these people but we’ve got nothing to forensically link him because if there was the constabulary would be looking closely as to how it could take the April Fabb case forward.”

Although numerous lines of enquiry were pursued April has never been seen since April 8 1969 and a number of potential suspects have been eliminated as the result of the investigation.

The case, probably Norfolk’s most well known missing persons enquiry, will never be officially closed until April’s location is discovered and any subsequent investigation has reached a conclusion.

To view the cold cases log on to the website www.norfolk.police.uk, click on news and events and then cold cases.

Anyone with information about the case, or any of the other cold cases, should call 101 or email coldcaseteam@norfolk.pnn.police.uk
http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/crime/police_n..._fabb_1_1111637