Child serial killer Robert Black is to appeal against his latest convictions for kidnapping and murdering a schoolgirl in Northern Ireland.
The 64-year-old Scottish paedophile was found guilty last month of snatching Jennifer Cardy as she cycled to a friend's house in Ballinderry, Co Antrim in August 1981.
The former delivery driver, who was in the region on a work trip from London, murdered the nine-year-old before dumping her body in a dam close to a roadside lay-by. He then caught the overnight ferry back to England.
Following a six week trial, the jury at Armagh Crown Court delivered unanimous guilty verdicts on the counts of kidnap and murder after four hours and 15 minutes of deliberations.
It is understood the killer's legal team will submit appeal papers to the court authorities in Belfast within two weeks.
Already serving multiple life sentences in Wakefield prison in England, Black is due to be sentenced for Jennifer's kidnap and murder by judge Mr Justice Ronald Weatherup on December 8th.
Jennifer's murder was the fourth for which Black has been convicted.
In 1994, he was found guilty of three unsolved child murders in the 1980s - those of 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish Borders, five-year-old Caroline Hogg, from Edinburgh, and Sarah Harper, 10, from Morley, near Leeds - and a failed abduction bid in Nottingham in 1988.
His reign of terror was finally ended in 1990 when he was caught red-handed by police with a barely alive six-year-old girl hooded, bound, gagged and stuffed in a sleeping bag in the back of his van in the Scottish village of Stow. He had sexually assaulted her moments earlier.
Detectives in England are also reviewing the evidence against Black in connection with the case of missing 13-year-old Genette Tate, who was last seen in a rural lane in Aylesbeare, Devon, in 1978.