Co Laois-born killer Robert Howard had long been suspected of murdering Arlene Arkinson before a coroner found him responsible for her death at the conclusion of an inquest in 2021.
He had been the last person she was spotted alive with after the 15-year-old Castlederg schoolgirl disappeared following a disco in Bundoran, Co Donegal, in August 1994.
Howard was initially arrested 46 days after her disappearance and questioned, but was released without charge.
It was not until 2002 that he was eventually charged with her murder, and his trial would begin in 2005.
He was acquitted of Arlene’s murder, but after the verdict shocking details emerged that had been kept from the jury to prevent prejudicing the trial.
Howard’s arrest in connection with Arlene in 2002 was not the only one he would face that year on suspicion of murdering a teenage girl.
He had also been arrested and charged with the murder of Hannah Williams, a 14-year-old from London who had disappeared after a shopping trip in Dartford, Kent a year previously.
Hannah’s body was found in March 2002 at a cement works in Kent.
In 2003, Howard was convicted of the rape and murder of Hannah and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Howard’s violent history of sex crimes was found to have stretched back decades, and it emerged he had previously served prison terms for rape.
Among his litany of horrific acts was a serious sexual assault on a six-year-old girl in 1965 when he was aged 21, committed during a burglary in London.
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In 1969 he was jailed for six years after attempting to rape a woman during the break-in of a house in Co Durham.
He was sentenced to 10 years for a later rape of a 58-year-old woman during another burglary.
At the time of Arlene Arkinson’s disappearance, Howard was on bail following arrest in connection with the serious sexual assault of another teenage girl in Castlederg, and pleaded pleaded guilty to unlawful carnal knowledge in 1994.
Gardaí also investigated Howard as a suspect in the murder of six missing girls, all aged between 17 and 26, who had disappeared in the Republic between 1993 and 1998, although he was eventually ruled out by investigators.
Following his jailing in 2003, Howard would never see freedom again, and remained in HMP Frankland until his death in 2015, which was the result of natural causes.
During the inquest into Arlene’s death, it was claimed Howard had been a police informer.
Former Kent Police Detective Chief Inspector Colin Murray, who led the investigation into the murder of Hannah Williams, later said he believed Howard was “a low level informant for the police or the security forces, free to roam in the Castlederg area and giving information”.