00:00:04
-On the 29th of September, 2006, police in Glasgow
made an horrific discovery under the floor
of a local church --
00:00:13
the mutilated body of 23-year-old student
Angelika Kluk, who'd been missing
for almost a week.
00:00:20
-She was put under there. He stabbed her,
and he raped her. He left her dead. -The last person seen
with Angelika
00:00:28
was 60-year-old church handyman
Peter Tobin, a man with a history
of violent sexual abuse.
00:00:35
-He's very reliant
on this superficial charm that he's developed
and that he rolls out
00:00:40
whenever he identifies a victim, and this will essentially
lead his victims to let their guard down.
00:00:46
-The investigation
into Angelika's murder would uncover
a series of shocking crimes
00:00:52
dating back as far
as the early 1990s. -Tobin defies
even my imagination. There is something about him
00:01:00
that sends a shiver
down my spine every time I think about him. -Peter Tobin had been unmasked
00:01:07
as one of the world's
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ It was a case
that spanned two decades.
00:01:34
By the time Peter Tobin
was found guilty of murdering teenage hitchhiker
Dinah McNicol in 2009,
00:01:41
he'd already been in prison
for two years. He was serving life sentences
for the murders of Angelika Kluk
00:01:48
and 15-year-old schoolgirl
Vicky Hamilton. The 63-year-old
serial killer and rapist
00:01:55
had buried all three girls
across a 15-year period -- one in Scotland, and two on the south coast
of England.
00:02:04
-Another awful discovery
at 50 Irvine Drive -- a body bag thought to contain
the remains of Dinah McNicol,
00:02:11
brought out from what was
the most ordinary of houses. It is no longer. -I think what sets
Tobin apart for me
00:02:21
is the sheer relentless
brutality of him. A man who genuinely paid
no attention whatever
00:02:33
to anything but his own
basest instinct. He did what he wanted
when he wanted, and could get away with it.
00:02:39
-Former Detective Superintendent
David Swindle from Strathclyde Police first came across Tobin
after the body of Angelika Kluk
00:02:48
was discovered
at St. Patrick's Church in Glasgow in 2006. The 23-year-old Polish student
had been missing for 5 days.
00:02:57
-Coming back to the church today
brings it all back to me -- the horrors, the horrors of
what must have happened here,
00:03:03
unbelievable. You could never imagine it -- a place of worship
desecrated by Peter Tobin
00:03:10
doing it to Angelika Kluk. -But when they arrested Tobin, police were convinced
this wasn't his first murder.
00:03:18
David set up Operation Anagram, a task force charged
with finding out more about the life and crimes
of Peter Tobin.
00:03:27
-When we looked at his life
in Operation Anagram, we found that he frequented
places like this --
00:03:33
churches,
religious establishment, homeless persons, hostels. How many people frequented
00:03:40
the places
that Tobin frequented? How many people did he meet that
were vulnerable at that time
00:03:48
that had no relatives
to report them missing? How many of these went missing
and were never reported missing,
00:03:52
that Tobin has killed? We'll never know.
Tobin knows the answer. -His story begins
over 70 years ago.
00:04:02
Peter Tobin was born
in Johnstone, Scotland, 13 miles east of Glasgow, on the 27th of August, 1946.
00:04:11
-He was part of this
postwar-baby-boom generation. He came from
quite a large family.
00:04:16
He was one of eight children. His dad worked
for the local council, and his mother was a housewife.
00:04:22
And by all accounts,
he was a bit of a wild child. -Some suggested he was violent
towards his siblings
00:04:29
and quickly developed
a habit of minor thefts and occasional burglary. -By the age of 7,
he was in reform school,
00:04:38
and that is something that
is quite significant here, because these places
where these boys went
00:04:44
were quite brutal
in terms of the regime, in terms of
the treatment by staff. Lots of children misbehaved,
00:04:52
lots of children
went off the rails, but I think you had to be
quite extreme to find yourself
in a reform school.
00:05:00
-As Tobin grew up,
this childish rebellion developed into an entirely
reckless disregard for the law.
00:05:08
-Now, as a young man,
Peter Tobin moved around a lot. He did a lot of low-skill jobs
and moved from place to place,
00:05:16
and he would often get involved
in property crime. He was convicted of
burglary and fraud.
00:05:22
So here is somebody who breaks
the law time and time again, and he's seemingly okay with it,
so he's crossed that boundary.
00:05:29
He crossed that boundary
a long time ago, and I think,
for most of his life, he's constantly pushing that
further and further.
00:05:37
-At the age of 22,
Tobin began a relationship with 17-year-old
Margaret Mountney.
00:05:44
The pair were married
in August 1969, by which time they had relocated
from Glasgow to Brighton.
00:05:52
-It all seemed
to start rather well. He was incredibly charming.
He was incredibly attentive.
00:05:57
But it soon degenerated into
something altogether different. He would regularly beat her up
and lock her in the house.
00:06:04
He was cruel towards her pets. He actually decapitated
her pet puppy. -A number of the women who have
had relationships with Tobin
00:06:13
say that he can be very charming
for quite a long period until you'll find
that he becomes very violent.
00:06:19
The women who've known him
often talk about this ability to turn on a sixpence --
to suddenly become horrific
00:06:26
when, in fact, moments earlier, he was being perfectly nice
or charming. It is part of
Tobin's characteristic.
00:06:32
He is an evil man
hiding in plain sight. -He knows what
women want to hear, so he will use that charm
offensive in the early days,
00:06:41
but his true colors
will soon shine through, and by then, unfortunately,
it's too late.
00:06:46
He's really chipped away
at these women's confidence and their self-esteem, and they're very much
under his control.
00:06:53
-The troubled relationship
didn't last. After Tobin was sent to prison
for three years for burglary,
00:06:58
the couple divorced in 1971. After serving his sentence,
Tobin wed again in 1973,
00:07:06
but this marriage
was equally as violent, and by 1976, it was over. -Peter met his third wife,
Cathy Wilson, in 1986,
00:07:15
and there was
quite an age difference. She was 16 at the time,
and he was around 40,
00:07:20
so she was very young, she was very vulnerable,
she was very impressionable, and he turned on
the charm again,
00:07:26
and she moved in with him
very quickly, and they had a child together. -The couple were married
in Brighton in 1989,
00:07:34
and Tobin moved his young bride
and their son far away from her family to Bathgate
in West Lothian in 1990.
00:07:43
-Now, this relationship went
pretty much the same way as his other marriages had gone.
00:07:48
He was incredibly controlling.
He was incredibly abusive. He didn't like
her leaving the home.
00:07:54
He would make sure
that she didn't go out and didn't talk to anybody,
and she eventually fled.
00:08:00
She eventually
summoned up the courage to leave this relationship, and she only did that through
secretly saving up bus fare
00:08:06
for a very long time in order to travel to England
with her son. -Despite
their relationship ending,
00:08:13
45-year-old Tobin moved back
to the south of England in 1991 to be close to his young son.
00:08:20
He settled on Irvine Drive
in Margate, Kent. His next-door neighbor
at the time was Dave Martin.
00:08:26
-Well, the picture he painted
for the community was a nice, steady bloke --
no loud parties, no loud music.
00:08:36
He was not an annoyance
in any way. If you were stuck
or you had a problem, you only had to ask him,
and he'd give you a hand.
00:08:45
He'd help out. -But Dave soon saw
a sinister side to his friendly neighbor. -We'd be outside and a couple
young girls would walk past,
00:08:55
and he'd say,
"Cool. What about them?" And I would say,
"Don't be stupid, Pete. You're old enough
to be their father."
00:09:02
"Oh, yeah, yeah,"
and he'd laugh it off. -After two years in Margate, out of the blue,
Tobin moved on again.
00:09:10
-All of a sudden,
the house next door was empty, no ifs, no buts. I shrugged my shoulders
at the time.
00:09:19
I thought,
"Well, he's moved on." He was a little bit
on the weird side, anyway,
00:09:25
so I didn't give that
a lot of thought neither. -By 1993, Tobin was living
in a flat at Havant
00:09:33
on the south coast of England. His violent nature was about
to turn even more sinister.
00:09:38
On the 4th of August, 1993, Tobin was at home
with his 5-year-old son when two 14-year-old girls came
to visit one of his neighbors.
00:09:49
-They knocked on next door, and
discovered there was no one in. Tobin saw an opportunity,
00:09:55
invited the two girls to wait
in his flat with his son. After all, what could be
less threatening?
00:10:00
-As his 5-year-old son slept, Tobin drugged both girls using
a chemical called amitriptyline,
00:10:07
and sexually assaulted them
before leaving them for dead. -He'd subjected them to
quite a violent sexual assault,
00:10:14
and it was only when his son
interrupted this assault that it finished, essentially,
00:10:20
and Peter called his ex-wife claiming that he was having
a heart attack, and this was about 2:00
in the morning.
00:10:27
-He turned the gas on
in the flat and then proceeded to leave
with his son, presumably hoping that
they would die of asphyxiation
00:10:35
from the gas. -But the girls
regained consciousness and managed to escape
before calling the police.
00:10:42
Journalist Martin Brunt
remembers hearing about the sickening attack. -Two schoolgirls, 14 years old,
00:10:50
had been held prisoner
in a flat, had been plied with drink and
drugs, had been raped,
00:10:57
and then left in the flat
with the gas turned on, and whoever had done it had
effectively left them to die.
00:11:09
Very quickly, police announce that they were looking
for a man called Peter Tobin.
00:11:15
-40 days after the attack, and using the alias
"Peter Wilson," Tobin was found
and arrested in Brighton.
00:11:22
On May the 16th, 1994,
at Winchester Crown Court, he pleaded guilty to rape
and indecent assault,
00:11:30
and was sent to jail
for 14 years, but he served just 10,
and was released in 2004.
00:11:37
-He changed his name so he wouldn't appear in the
serious-sex-offenders register,
00:11:42
wouldn't set off
any alarm bells anywhere, and got a job as a church
handyman back in Glasgow.
00:11:48
-When a man
called Pat McLaughlin came looking for refuge
at St. Patrick's Church,
00:11:53
the priest and charity workers
who took him in had no idea
they were offering sanctuary
00:11:59
to a man who would commit
an act of absolute evil right under their very roof. Members of the local charity
group Loaves & Fishes,
00:12:08
Denis and Cathy Curran
remember the night McLaughlin came looking
for refuge. -I met Patrick McLaughlin
in May 2006.
00:12:18
It was a wild night, and he
came in for something to eat. He said he was homeless
and he had nothing to eat,
00:12:26
and we gave him food. -This was a really,
really terrible night. I've never seen that in my life.
00:12:32
We were just ready to go
when he came into the door, and he came in
and he said he was hungry,
00:12:37
and we said, "Right," but Father Gerry had told him
that anybody was frightened to go into the night
and nowhere to sleep,
00:12:44
they could sleep
inside the church. -Throughout his life, Tobin, who was born
and brought up a Catholic,
00:12:51
had a persistent connection
with the Catholic Church, and, at various points during
his periods on the run
00:12:56
or disappearing
or adopting false identities, took refuge in Catholic churches
and Catholic communities.
00:13:06
I think it was simply that that was somewhere
where he felt comfortable, where he knew
how to conduct himself,
00:13:12
where he could hide
in plain sight. He could conceal his true nature behind the facade
of a church handyman
00:13:23
or a member of
a Christian community, and that was a very safe way to conceal the reality
of what he wanted.
00:13:31
-To Tobin, nothing was sacred. He took advantage of
the open nature of the Currans
00:13:37
and the community
of St. Patrick's. -He was with us
maybe about six, seven weeks,
00:13:43
something like that. Then he started giving
Father Gerry a hand in the church, and he's doing
bits and pieces.
00:13:51
People don't understand, you can be with somebody
a full day, and you never spoke.
00:13:55
You know what I mean? People find that
hard to understand. There was nothing to --
It was a "yes" and "no."
00:14:01
That's what it was,
a "yes" and a "no." -Peter Tobin was an incredibly
manipulative individual.
00:14:07
He wasn't particularly
emotionally complex himself, but he had a really good
understanding
00:14:11
of other people's emotions. He knew what other people
needed to hear, and he used that
to get what he wanted.
00:14:18
-Cathy, however, had concern for the ominous stranger
who joined their community.
00:14:24
-I says to Denis there was
something far wrong with him. I wasn't too sure what it was,
but as far as I could understand
00:14:33
that the jigsaw
with Pat McLaughlin was not fitting together. There was something
not right there.
00:14:41
-But Tobin's next step
was more evil than any of them
could have predicted. Angelika Kluk was
a 23-year-old student
00:14:49
from Skoczow,
near Krakow, in Poland who was working as a cleaner
in St. Patrick's Church.
00:14:54
On the 24th of September 2006,
she disappeared. Denis broke the news
to his wife.
00:15:02
-He said, "That girl,
Angelika Kluk, we don't know where she is," and I went, "What do you mean?"
00:15:10
He said, "She's vanished.
All her stuff is there. All her credit cards
and everything
00:15:15
are all up in the room,
but she's vanished." -Police scour the church
and grounds for evidence
00:15:24
and began interviewing
members of the community. They discovered that the
last person seen with Angelika
00:15:30
was the church handyman,
a man named Pat McLaughlin. Charity worker Denis
provided police
00:15:36
with a photograph of McLaughlin. -At 6:00, it went on
the evening news nationwide,
00:15:42
and within minutes, the phone line
was jammed to say, "That's not Pat McLaughlin.
That's Peter Tobin."
00:15:50
-Police now had
their main suspect. They quickly discovered
that Tobin had a violent past,
00:15:55
and the investigation
escalated at rapid speed. David Swindle was
the lead detective on the case.
00:16:03
-I became involved
in the investigation when it was established
that Peter Tobin,
00:16:11
a missing sex offender,
had been with Angelika Kluk. And soon after my involvement,
00:16:17
I arranged for the church
to be searched again by specialist officers
and specialist teams.
00:16:26
There's a garage
attached to the church, and that is where Peter Tobin
was with Angelika Kluk,
00:16:33
working on some woodwork. He called her
his "little apprentice." He actually was interviewed
by a police officer
00:16:41
when the missing-person report
was made, and he stayed there
for another day, and when the heat was on,
he left.
00:16:48
When he realized
it was being treated as a major investigation,
he left. This is someone that was cool
and calculated.
00:16:57
-Police launched a nationwide
search for Peter Tobin. -Mr. Tobin is considered
a potential risk
00:17:03
to members of the public. Any person who sees this man
is advised not to approach him.
00:17:10
-It was a name that sounded
all too familiar to crime journalist
Martin Brunt. -It was a shock to find
what had happened,
00:17:19
but what made it particularly
interesting for crime reporters who were covering the case
was that police were appealing
00:17:27
for a man called Peter Tobin,
and it rang bells. It took me and others back
to the days of 1993.
00:17:38
They didn't realize that he was,
in reality, Peter Tobin with a dreadful
history of sex crimes.
00:17:46
He was a man hiding in that
community under a false name, had duped the church authorities
to employ him as a handyman,
00:17:54
and, of course, they were
completely innocent of his background. -As the search for Angelika
intensified,
00:17:59
it became more and more likely
she wouldn't be found alive. -We did another search
of the church,
00:18:06
a really thorough search, because, by this time,
the parameters had changed. There was concern
for her safety.
00:18:14
-Five days after
her disappearance, on the 29th of September, 2006, police discovered
the body of Angelika Kluk
00:18:23
under the floorboards
of St. Patrick's Church. She had suffered
severe head injuries
00:18:28
and multiple stab wounds after being attacked
in the adjoining garage. -It was in there
just after the priest,
00:18:37
Father Gerry,
left on that Sunday. Within minutes of it, someone across the road
had heard a scream.
00:18:45
He hit her over the head
with a table leg -- There were splinters
in her head --
00:18:50
rendered her unconscious
or semiconscious, bound her hands with cable ties,
further assaulted her,
00:18:58
dragged her in a polythene sheet
into the church here and across the church and put her body under the floor
like a bag of rubbish.
00:19:11
She was put under there. He stabbed her, whether that
happened underneath here or whether it happened outside,
and he raped her.
00:19:18
He left her dead. -The British public was shocked to learn the truth of where
Angelika's body had been hidden
00:19:26
since her violent death. -This should've been
a day of worship here at St. Patrick's Church,
00:19:32
but instead, the building
remains a crime scene sealed off
and guarded by police.
00:19:37
And today brought the news
that the people who laid those floral tributes
were expecting but dreading --
00:19:43
that the body found hidden
underneath the floorboards here was indeed that of
the missing Polish student.
00:19:49
♪♪ -I think the discovery
of Angelika's body -- It was awful enough that a young woman had died
in those circumstances.
00:19:59
The fact that she was buried
under a church added some sense
of horror and drama
00:20:07
to the way people reacted to it. The fact that a suspect was somebody who had been
working at the church,
00:20:15
somebody who seemingly
had volunteered to be a handyman at the church,
didn't really make sense.
00:20:21
-DNA evidence on Angelika's body was confirmed as belonging
to Peter Tobin, and his fingerprints
were found on the tarpaulin
00:20:29
he used to wrap her in. -In forensic pathology, we have what's called
Locard's exchange principle.
00:20:36
That says that, when you
interact with another person, you leave something
of yourself on them
00:20:41
and you take something of them
away with you. Anyone who murders
another person,
00:20:45
who physically interacts
with them, they will leave trace evidence. They will leave DNA,
potentially fibers, hairs,
00:20:52
all sorts of things. -But Peter Tobin continued
to elude the authorities. Despite a nationwide search,
he disappeared into thin air.
00:21:03
-So, things were moving
very fast. We have the human remains
of a young woman who's been ferociously attacked.
00:21:10
Horrible, horrible scene
underneath the floorboards. Forensic examination is ongoing.
00:21:16
We knew by this time that
Peter Tobin had a history of violence, sexual crimes. He had been in prison.
He was a dangerous person.
00:21:27
Where was he? -David and his team wouldn't
have to wait long for an answer. In early October, just over
a week since Angelika's murder,
00:21:37
they received
a crucial breakthrough. Tobin had been spotted, this time using another alias,
James Kelly,
00:21:44
over 400 miles away. -We got a phone call
from the police in London that he had checked into
a hospital in a false name.
00:21:55
Someone had recognized him. A Metropolitan Police officer
went in there and confirmed his identity,
00:22:02
and I arranged for
a team of uniform officers to bring him back to Scotland. -On the 23rd of March, 2007,
00:22:14
the trial of 60-year-old
Peter Tobin began at Edinburgh High Court. He was charged with
the rape and murder
00:22:21
of 23-year-old student
Angelika Kluk. Tobin pleaded not guilty
and remained brazen throughout.
00:22:30
-We went to court. He was sitting with his lawyer,
and he gave me a big smile as if, "How you doing, pal?"
You know?
00:22:39
I just totally ignored that. -Six weeks later,
on the 4th of May, 2007, the jury took just four hours
to deliberate,
00:22:49
and Peter Tobin
was found guilty. Judge Lord Menzies described him
as an "evil man"
00:22:56
before sentencing him
to serve a minimum of 21 years. He was immediately sent
to Edinburgh Prison.
00:23:03
As he left court, he violently
lashed out at photographers. But David Swindle and his team
were convinced
00:23:12
there was still more
to the Tobin story. Throughout the trial, they'd
been building a massive dossier
00:23:18
on Tobin's past. -Do you get to 60
and you start killing? That was a question in my mind.
00:23:26
Has this individual
done it before? So I thought, "We need to look
at this individual's movements,
00:23:33
his background,
look back at his life." However, this was
a difficult thing, because if it ever got out that
we're looking at Peter Tobin
00:23:41
as a potential serial killer, that would've been prejudicial to the case that we're building
regarding Angelika,
00:23:50
so I set up
a very confidential operation called Operation Anagram, and that was working
in a back room,
00:23:58
and we never went overt. We never went out in the public
regarding that until he was convicted
of the murder of Angelika Kluk.
00:24:07
-The police faced
an almost impossible task, tracing backwards from
the culprit to the victims.
00:24:14
-It is very difficult
to analyze cold cases with really only rumor to go on if you don't have
a body or bodies,
00:24:23
if you don't know
who the victims were, if they could've been
missing persons or they could've been victims.
00:24:29
It's very difficult. -There was a team of officers
that I sent out to look at his connections
and where he lived,
00:24:36
and they came in excited,
saying, "He's got an address
in Bathgate," and the address in Bathgate
was at the same time
00:24:45
as a well-known missing person
who'd been so many years ago, Vicky Hamilton. -15-year-old Vicky Hamilton
had been last seen
00:24:53
on the 10th of February, 1991, waiting for a bus home
to Redding near Falkirk. Her case was considered to be
00:25:01
one of Scotland's biggest
missing-persons inquiries. -What are the chances
of an individual like that
00:25:08
being in the same area
at the same time when this really high-profile
missing person had disappeared?
00:25:17
So I contacted
Lothian and Borders Police, and they started looking
at their case again
00:25:23
and reviewing that case. -In June 2007, police began
to search Tobin's former home.
00:25:31
-As soon as he was convicted
for the murder of Angelika Kluk, they went overt,
and they searched the house
00:25:39
at Robertson Avenue in Bathgate, and they found potential
evidence that could link him.
00:25:44
It was a knife, a dagger. -But there was no evidence
of a body or human remains.
00:25:50
David Swindle and his team
needed to look further afield for the answers they wanted.
00:25:56
-Anagram was about where Tobin
was, what happened in an area, what the victim, the person
that disappeared, looked like.
00:26:03
Was it his type of victim? Were they vulnerable
in any way at that time? I called it investigative
analysis of a serial killer.
00:26:11
-Tobin's transient lifestyle
made it very difficult for the team to work alone
on the operation.
00:26:18
-Tobin had spent his whole life
traveling about, and we found this out
very quickly,
00:26:23
so we had one connection,
which was Bathgate. We realized that he spent a lot
of time in Brighton and Margate.
00:26:30
I thought, "We need
to join this up," so Anagram became UK-wide and involved every single
police force in the UK,
00:26:40
and we set up this operation,
which is the best example of joined-up working
throughout the UK.
00:26:48
-David's team began to uncover
more potential victims. -We had another missing person
that was a potential link,
00:26:57
and that was Dinah McNicol. Dinah had been
at the Liphook festival, and she had been
with her then-boyfriend,
00:27:06
and they were looking
for a lift, and they got a lift
from an individual, a Scottish individual.
00:27:13
-But after the mysterious driver dropped off her boyfriend
in Surrey, 18-year-old Dinah
never made it home to Essex.
00:27:21
She was last seen
in early August 1991. -I think Peter Tobin is
quite an opportunistic offender
00:27:29
in that he will identify a
victim and then he will pounce. He's like a predator.
00:27:34
But all of the time
that this is going on, he's developing his offending. He's very reliant
on this superficial charm
00:27:41
that he's developed
and that he rolls out whenever he identifies a victim, so whether it's a hitchhiker
that he picks up on the road,
00:27:49
whether it's somebody who works
at the same location as he does, he will deploy this charm,
00:27:56
and this will essentially
lead his victims to let their guard down. -Police focused in
on one of Tobin's previous homes
00:28:04
in Margate, 50 Irvine Drive, where he'd lived in 1991. His former neighbor Dave Martin
00:28:12
remembers the day
the police knocked on his door. -The police turned up
in November 2007,
00:28:20
and they asked to speak
about Peter Tobin, so I told them what little
I knew at the time,
00:28:29
and then they said
something rather strange -- Had he done any gardening? Well, it made me smile
at the time
00:28:36
because that's the last thing
I've ever seen him do, gardening. Then I remembered the sandpit.
00:28:42
-Dave cast his mind back
16 years. -I noticed that Peter was
digging a hole next door,
00:28:51
so I leant over the fence,
and I said, "You going for Australia, Pete?" because the hole did seem
to be a bit deep.
00:29:00
"Oh", he said, "I'm building
a sandpit for my youngster when he comes up
on the weekends,"
00:29:06
so, anyway,
I thought no more of it, and he carried on. A couple of days later,
I looked over again,
00:29:13
and the sandpit
was all filled in, so next time I saw him, I said, "What happened
to your sandpit, Pete?"
00:29:21
"Oh," he said, "I wasn't allowed
to put one in, something to do
with regulations.
00:29:26
It was unsafe for the boy." So I said, "Well, I haven't
heard of that one," but I thought no more of it
at the time.
00:29:34
-It was exactly what the police
had been hoping to hear. Was it possible that,
for the last 16 years,
00:29:41
the bodies
of both Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol
had been buried in the back garden
of 50 Irvine Drive?
00:29:49
On November the 12th, Tim Mills, the senior investigating officer
on the Dinah McNicol case,
00:29:55
made the decision
to excavate the garden at Tobin's former home
in Irvine Drive, Margate,
00:30:02
convinced he would
discover her body. Specialist equipment, including ground-penetrating
radar, was brought in
00:30:09
as police underwent
their search. -People tend to think
that these crimes are committed
00:30:15
in very different locations. This was a very mundane,
matter-of-fact terraced house
00:30:23
on an estate in Margate. -It took just 24 hours before
the police found human remains.
00:30:30
-I can remember to this day
what I was doing when I got a telephone call
from Tim Wills
00:30:37
to say they had found
a body in the garden. I asked him,
"Was it Dinah McNicol?"
00:30:44
And he says, "No.
It's Vicky Hamilton." -Operation Anagram had uncovered exactly what they'd hoped
but also dreaded to find.
00:30:54
For Vicky's family,
a 16-year wait had been brought to a devastating end
in a back garden
00:31:00
over 450 miles from where
she'd last been seen. -Peter Tobin will have
walked this path.
00:31:08
It leads to what was
his backyard. There are police search teams
there now, and several large holes
they've been digging.
00:31:17
The blue tarpaulin covers
the shallow grave where they found 15-year-old
Vicky Hamilton's body.
00:31:24
-When you learn that they'd made
that kind of progress, you're filled with, I suppose,
a sense of sadness,
00:31:31
perhaps relief for the families, and, of course,
it threw out the prospect of another trial of Peter Tobin.
00:31:38
-Tobin was immediately charged
with Vicky Hamilton's murder, but the police had yet to finish
their excavation
00:31:45
of his former home. -We came here to search
for the remains of Dinah McNicol
or any physical evidence
00:31:51
which might link her
disappearance to that house, and that's what
we will continue to do.
00:31:56
-And they wouldn't
have to wait long. On the 16th of November, a second body was found
in the garden,
00:32:03
which was indeed that of
18-year-old Dinah McNicol. -The two victims that were found
00:32:10
were essentially
skeletal remains. That causes a great deal of
difficulty for the pathologists.
00:32:17
Obviously, we have
no skin to look at for bruises or stab wounds. We have no organs to look at
for injury or disease.
00:32:25
But if you do have two bodies clandestinely buried
in the same place, it's certainly
a very big indicator
00:32:32
that these are not
two natural deaths. -When they started
to bring the bodies out,
00:32:40
I was sick, because I had
no idea whatsoever that anything like that
had gone on.
00:32:47
Nobody had a clue that
anything like that had gone on. It was just unbelievable.
00:32:53
-Tobin's fingerprints were found on the bin bags
used to wrap Dinah's body, and postmortem examinations
00:32:59
found traces
of the drug amitriptyline in both Dinah
and Vicky Hamilton -- the same drug Tobin used
on the two teenage girls
00:33:07
he'd attacked in 1993. -One of the things
that's always of value in a forensic-pathological
investigation is toxicology.
00:33:18
Has this person taken drugs, either deliberately
or by accident? Have they been sedated
by somebody else?
00:33:26
All of this can give you answers to things that have happened
with them, and particularly
if you have something
00:33:32
like a sample of liver
or muscle available, then if those drugs
are in the system
00:33:37
at the time somebody died,
they will still be identifiable weeks, months, potentially
even years or later.
00:33:46
-Tobin first stood trial
for the murder of Vicky Hamilton on the 2nd of December, 2008,
at the High Court in Dundee.
00:33:53
He was found guilty. Judge Lord Emslie added
another 30 years to his sentence and told Tobin
he considered his crimes
00:34:02
the most evil and horrific acts that any human being
could commit. Seven months later,
on the 23rd of June, 2009,
00:34:11
Tobin was in court once more, charged with the murder
of 18-year-old Dinah McNicol,
00:34:17
but it was postponed, and the jury discharged
on the 7th of July as the judge,
Mr. Justice Calvert-Smith,
00:34:24
ruled Tobin was not fit to
stand trial due to ill health. -Peter Tobin has a habit
00:34:30
of feigning illness
all of the time, and it's quite obvious to me
why he's doing this.
00:34:36
As a psychopath,
he likes playing with people. He likes pushing their buttons. He likes to be the puppet master
that's pulling the strings,
00:34:43
and he knows that when he claims
that he has chest pains or he's having a heart attack,
00:34:48
that prison authorities need
to react to that, they need to respond,
and I think he quite enjoys
00:34:53
watching people running around
after him and pandering to him. I think he finds it
quite entertaining.
00:34:59
-On the 14th of December, Tobin's trial
for Dinah's murder resumed at Chelmsford Crown Court.
00:35:06
William Clegg QC
was prosecuting. -Well, all murder cases are
traumatic for obvious reasons,
00:35:13
but this one particularly so because the family
had absolutely no idea what had happened to their child
for nearly 20 years,
00:35:25
so there was a great deal
of emotional tension in court. The family were there
throughout the trial
00:35:32
and behaved with great dignity
and composure throughout it. -During the trial,
even more revelations came out
00:35:41
about Tobin's callous nature. -She had been left some money
by her mother, who had died prematurely,
and there was some £2,000 of it
00:35:54
in her account
at the time of her death. After her murder,
Tobin had withdrawn that money
00:36:00
from a number of banks
on the south coast, banks that were situated
comparatively near to addresses
00:36:07
that he had a connection with, and therefore, there was yet
a further connection.
00:36:12
-Dave Martin took to the stand to testify against
his former neighbor. -He was sticking his thumbs up
and saying, "Are you okay, Dave?
00:36:20
I haven't seen you
in a long time," which was a little
on the shocking side to me
00:36:25
because I really didn't
want to know him. It was as if he wasn't taking any of the proceedings
seriously.
00:36:32
-The defense offered no
arguments against the evidence, and the trial lasted
a mere three days.
00:36:38
The jury deliberated
for a brief 15 minutes before returning their decision. Tobin was guilty yet again.
00:36:46
-Well, to be honest, it
was a very easy case to state. The evidence against him
was overwhelming.
00:36:52
One had to use just an element
of common sense to appreciate what would be the chances
of a stranger burying a body
00:37:00
that they had presumably
murdered in a random garden, selecting one that just happened
to be one that another murderer
00:37:08
had already
buried somebody else. -On the 16th of December, 2009,
Judge Mr. Justice Calvert-Smith
00:37:16
handed Tobin
another life sentence, his third in total, with a recommendation
that life means life.
00:37:23
In July 2010, it was reported that officers working
on Operation Anagram have narrowed their review down
00:37:30
to nine unsolved cases
of murder and disappearance. Despite claiming
to have killed more women,
00:37:37
Tobin has so far refused
to cooperate with the police. -Peter Tobin has no respect.
A man of no humanity.
00:37:48
He will talk. He's been interviewed by police
officers involved in Anagram, but he'll talk about himself
00:37:55
because this is an individual
that loves himself. He doesn't care
about anyone else,
00:38:02
so he gets a gratification -- whatever gratification he has
had -- killing people.
00:38:06
He's a sad, sad individual who's taken probably
more lives than we know. -What sets Tobin apart,
also, for me
00:38:17
is that he's taken some pride
in gloating in the wake of his imprisonment
that he's killed 48 women
00:38:25
and then saying,
"But you've got to prove it." No proof of those extra killings
has ever been brought forward,
00:38:32
but a number
of high-ranking officers, particularly in Scotland,
are absolutely convinced
00:38:37
that Tobin has killed
many more women, but they don't know which ones,
and they don't know where.
00:38:42
-In June 2011, the failure
to identify more victims led to Operation Anagram
being wound down.
00:38:51
-I am proud of what I did
as regards Peter Tobin and forming Operation Anagram
to search for the truth.
00:38:59
I left the police in 2011,
but I'll never forget that. I'll never forget
the Tobin case,
00:39:07
and in my mind,
I always live in hope that we will find out
the truth someday. That's why it's important
that we have programs like this.
00:39:18
People like Tobin
and other killers should never be forgotten about. -I think Peter Tobin
definitely killed more people
00:39:27
than he's been convicted
of killing. Somebody like him
doesn't just stop offending
00:39:33
for any lengthy period of time. I think there are victims
that we don't know about.
00:39:38
I think he was
incredibly careful with some of the people
that he targeted. -Peter Tobin's crimes spread
far and wide across the UK
00:39:46
and left a lasting effect
on the people he met. -Tobin is an evil man. He's got no respect,
no compassion.
00:39:58
Peter Tobin, the only thing
he's worried about is Peter Tobin. -People say,
"You want him to die?"
00:40:03
I said, "I don't
want him to die. I want him to live a long time and every day be filled
with fear, real fear.
00:40:12
That's what I want for him," because what he done to people,
it's horrendous. -I think Peter Tobin is evil,
always was and always will be,
00:40:22
and that's
my honest opinion of it, and I think he's done more
than people realize.
00:40:29
-The sense that
he knows something that the rest of us don't gives succor
to Tobin's vast arrogance,
00:40:39
but to be honest
and to be clear, there is a level
of depravity in him which I fear knows very,
very few boundaries.
00:40:46
He's a genuinely terrifying man, and I hope that he spends
the rest of his life firmly behind bars.
00:40:57
-Peter Tobin is evil,
is horrible. 34 years in the police, I have never dealt
with such an evil individual.
00:41:07
-Tobin's insatiable need
to cause pain and suffering knows no bounds. He's proved to be toxic
to anyone he's met
00:41:14
or any community he's entered. He is a dangerous
sexual predator who callously ended the life
of at least three young women.
00:41:23
We may never know if there are
more victims of Peter Tobin, but we can be sure that
his lifelong incarceration
00:41:29
means there will
certainly be no more. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪