Robert Black, the van driver accused of murdering schoolgirl Jennifer Cardy, has been unmasked as a triple child killer at his trial.
Black's history was revealed on Friday by the prosecution, who told the court how he was convicted in 1994 of murdering three girls in the 1980s.
The 64-year-old is standing trial for abducting and murdering nine-year-old Cardy in Northern Ireland in August 1981. The schoolgirl was kidnapped 30 years ago as she rode her bicycle to a friend's house in the County Antrim village of Ballinderry.
Her red bike was discovered near her home in a field beside a hedge, and her body was found six days later by two fisherman floating in a dam 10 miles from where she had last been seen. She had been sexually assaulted.
The defendant was working as a van driver at the time, delivering posters across the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland.
As Black, wearing a red jumper, sat impassively in the dock, the schoolgirl's parents Andy and Patricia watched from the public gallery.
The jury, sitting at Armagh Crown Court, heard how the defendant had also previously been convicted for the abduction and attempting abduction of two other young girls.
Black was finally caught in 1990 when he was arrested near Stow in Scotland. Police found a six-year-old girl in the back of his van. She was gagged and bound with a sleeping bag over her head. He pleaded guilty to the charge of her abduction but denied the murdering Susan Maxwell, 11, Sarah Harper, 10, and five-year-old Caroline Hogg.
The convicted killer was jailed in Newcastle after being found guilty on all counts. He is currently serving 10 life sentences in Wakefield Prison, West Yorkshire, and was first questioned about the murder of Cardy in May 2005.
Crown lawyer Toby Hedworth QC told the court that legal reasons had prevented Black's past from being disclosed in the first eight days of the high profile trial.
"But now the stage in the trial proceedings has been reached when I can tell you," he said.
The QC said Black's past crimes did not in themselves make him guilty of Jennifer's murder but claimed the striking similarities between the cases would prove it.
The trial continues.