Serial killer Robert Black has been convicted of his fourth child murder.

The notorious Scottish paedophile was found guilty of kidnapping and murdering nine-year-old Jennifer Cardy in Northern Ireland 30 years ago.

The jury returned its verdict at Armagh Crown Court on Thursday on the second day of deliberation at the end of a high-profile five week trial.

The schoolgirl was snatched as she cycled to a friend's house in the quiet Co Antrim village of Ballinderry on August 12, 1981.

Her body was found six days later in a dam behind a roadside layby 15 miles away at Hillsborough, Co Down.

Judge Mr Justice Ronald Weatherup told Black: "You have been convicted by a jury of murder. There is only one sentence that will be imposed by law.

"That's the sentence of life imprisonment. Accordingly, I sentence you to life imprisonment."

Jennifer's mother Patricia sobbed quietly in the public gallery and was comforted by her husband Andy, but Black showed no emotion when the verdicts were read out.

In 1994, Black was convicted of three unsolved child murders in the 1980s - 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.

Black's killing 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.