Disappearance of Genette Tate

In August 2018, on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his daughter's disappearance, John Tate made a further plea for information about the case, saying, "I am not even 100% sure Black did it. I need proof that Black killed her." He said that his rapidly declining health meant that he could no longer make his annual trip from Manchester to Aylesbeare, and that his final wish was to give his daughter a dignified Christian burial and to be buried alongside her. He died in April 2020, aged 77, with the case still unsolved.

Devon and Cornwall Police reviewed the case in June 2014 in the hope of finding sufficient real evidence to prosecute Black. At the time of his death in January 2016, Devon and Cornwall Police were five weeks from submitting a file to the Crown Prosecution Service in which they sought a new decision on whether to prosecute him. The file was submitted in April 2016, and the Crown Prosecution Service said that due to Black's death, there would be no posthumous decision to charge him with Tate's murder.

The Crown Prosecution Service decided in August 2008 that insufficient evidence existed to charge Black with Tate's murder. After Black's conviction in 2011 for the murder of Jennifer Cardy in 1981, a spokesman for the Police Service of Northern Ireland commented on the "striking similarities" between the murder of Cardy and the disappearance of Tate.

Despite the police investigation and a search of the surrounding countryside involving thousands of volunteers, Tate's disappearance remains unexplained. In 2002, DNA belonging to Tate was found on one of her jumpers kept by her mother, which would allow her body to be identified if discovered. On the 25th anniversary of the case in 2003, Genette's parents both stated their belief that she is no longer alive. Police have amassed more than 20,000 index cards in a filing system related to the case, which is stored at the Devon and Cornwall Police headquarters in Exeter.

Robert Black, a serial killer convicted in 1994 for similar crimes involving the abduction and murder of young girls, was questioned by Devon and Cornwall Police in connection with the Tate case. During the course of his job as a long distance delivery van driver in the 1970s, Black had made deliveries in the Exeter area. In 1996, an eyewitness claimed to have seen a vehicle of the model Black is known to have driven in 1978 at Exeter Airport on the day of Genette's disappearance. The police inquiries were unable to establish that Black had been in Aylesbeare on the day of the disappearance.

The disappearance of Genette Tate is a missing person case in which a 13-year-old girl disappeared while delivering newspapers in Aylesbeare, Devon, England, on 19 August 1978. Despite extensive searches, Tate's body has not been found and the cause of her disappearance remains unknown.

Tate disappeared while delivering newspapers shortly after 3:30 p.m. (BST) on Saturday 19 August 1978. At approximately 3:28 p.m., two schoolfriends saw Tate walking along Withen Lane, pushing her bicycle. Tate had delivered fourteen newspapers by this point, and conversed briefly with her friends as they ascended the lane. At the top of the hill, Tate mounted her bicycle and rode ahead as her friends paused to read an article in the newspaper they had been given. She would not typically have performed this newspaper round, and had agreed to do the job for one week as the paper boy who normally did the round was on holiday. Tate was wearing a white cotton T-shirt with her name embroidered in red letters on the left shoulder, light brown trousers, and white plimsolls.

Genette Louise Tate was born in Taunton, Somerset, on 5 May 1965. She was the only child born to John and Sheila Tate. At the time of Genette's birth, the Tate family lived in the Taunton suburb of Wedlands. They relocated briefly to Cornwall before moving to Devon.