After Vicky’s DNA had been found at the house, the cul-de-sac was closed off and forensic specialists went to work. All the furniture of the family of three then living there was removed and the house stripped to a bare shell. Meanwhile, the police dug up the back garden and removed the wallpaper and floorboards as they conducted a meticulous search of the premises. A specialist underwater team also searched a pond at the Boghead Nature Reserve, about 500 metres from the house.
The body was not found but, on 21 July 2007, Tobin was charged in connection with Vicky Hamilton’s disappearance. The search then moved south to Victoria Road North in Southsea, where Tobin lived later. Police set up a large white tent in the garden and were thought to be digging.
Nothing was found, but the police went on to search 50 Irvine Drive in Margate, another property Tobin had occupied after he left Bathgate. They dug up the garden looking as well for the body of Dinah McNicol, an 18-year-old sixth former who lived in Tillingham, Essex. She had been hitch-hiking home from a music festival in Hampshire with a boyfriend who got out at Junction 8 of the M25 near Reigate. She stayed in the car and was never seen again.
A body was found in the back garden at 50 Irvine Drive … but it was not Dinah’s. DNA tests proved that it was Vicky Hamilton’s body the police had unearthed. Her dismembered corpse was in plastic bin-bags that yielded Tobin’s fingerprints. ‘Intimate’ swabs found traces of what appeared to be semen. The DNA matched Tobin’s. A knife was then found in the loft at Robertson Avenue, that carried a tiny fragment of skin on its underside. This yielded a partial DNA match to Vicky. The chances that it had come from anyone else were one in a million.
The police continued digging up the garden at 50 Irvine Drive and, a week later, found the body of Dinah in a shallow grave just yards away from Vicky’s. Both bodies contain traces of amitriptyline. This would have made the girls drowsy and dizzy, and unable to defend themselves against rape. While Dinah’s green jacket and sleeveless vest were in place, her green trousers and knickers had been pulled down over her buttocks, indicating an attempted sexual assault.
There was a gag in her mouth and a ligature around her neck and the Home Office pathologist concluded that she had been strangled. While Vicky’s body had been cut in two, Dinah’s was bent double. A clothes line had been used to tie her neck to her ankles. Another cord coiled around her body. Her wrists were tied together with her leggings and her ankles were bound with her headscarf.
Again, Tobin’s fingerprints were found on the bin-bags and on the tape with which he’d sealed them. Tobin was charged with the murder of both young women.
Born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, on 27 August 1946, Tobin had a history of violent crime that stretched back over 40 years. He was sent to an approved school at the age of seven. He spent time in a young offenders’ institution before serving jail terms for burglary, forgery and conspiracy. He also spent his adult life preying on vulnerable women, inflicting pain and humiliation – not just to innocent strangers, but also to each of those who were unfortunate enough to become his three wives.
Outwardly, he was charming, affable and good-looking. His smart suits and flattery swept women off their feet. But after the relationship developed, it was a different story. Former wives and girlfriends described him as a monster who sought to take total control of their lives, isolating them from their friends and family while mocking them in front of his.
His first wife, clerk-typist Margaret Mackintosh, was 17 when she married him in Brighton in 1969. Some 40 years later, she still bore the scars of a knife attack that he made on her. Tobin had stabbed her around her vagina, leaving her bleeding heavily. The knife, he said, was ‘metal Tampax’. If it had not been for the prompt action of a neighbour, she would have died.
‘He raped me three or four times, enjoying my fear,’ she said. ‘When I put up a fight, I got a knife in my side. He left me to die on the bed. Luckily, the man living underneath saw the blood coming through the ceiling and got me to hospital.’
When she tried to leave him, he decapitated the puppy that he had bought for her. After a year, she ran off and they divorced in 1971.
Tobin met his second wife, Sylvia Jefferies, in 1973. She was then 30 and they married in a matter of weeks. They had a son and a daughter who died soon after birth. Sylvia said that she lived in a constant state of fear. ‘He’d whack me so hard it would send me flying across the room,’ she said. In 1976, she left with their son.
Tobin married again in 1989 at a Methodist church in Brighton. His third wife was Cathy Wilson, who, at 16, was more than 20 years his junior. They then moved to Bathgate in 1990, where he did odd jobs around the neighbourhood, usually fixing cars. They had a son, Daniel. But after two years of marriage, she found she had become a prisoner in her home. Tobin would not allow her to go outside.
‘He was violent on almost a daily basis,’ she said. ‘He would push me against walls or put his hands round my neck for the simplest of things. If he said something and I dared to speak back or answer him in a way he thought disrespectful, he would blow up. If I made dinner and he didn’t like it, he would throw the plate at me, telling me I was stupid.’
Realising that she had to escape, she waited until Tobin went out with a friend one night. ‘He’d taken my car keys, house keys, money, bank books and my driving licence with him but I had a stash of grocery money he didn’t know about,’ she said. ‘It was only £25 but it paid for a bus ticket to Brighton. Daniel and I had two hours sitting in a coach station and I was terrified he would find us and drag us back. I was literally sitting in the station crying with fear until the bus left.’
Soon after, Tobin was admitted to hospital after taking an overdose of the antidepressant amitriptyline and triazolam, which was prescribed to relieve his anxiety. He told doctors that he had tried to commit suicide because his wife and child had left him ‘without warning’.
On Friday, 8 February 1991, Vicky Hamilton had left home to spend the weekend with her older sister in Livingston. There was a lot to talk about; 15-year-old Vicky had just had a pregnancy test. It had been snowing and she could have asked her father to come and collect her. But she was at an age when she was determined to be independent. She would travel back to Redding on the Sunday evening and had to change buses at Bathgate.
When she alighted there, she was not sure where to catch her connection. She asked a young man who was eating chips for directions. He thought she was in the right place, but was not sure. So Vicky went to the chip shop and asked there.
The bus stop was down the street opposite the police station, she was told. The buses to Falkirk went every hour, on the hour. She bought a bag of chips and ate them sitting on a bench on the way. Then she confirmed that she was going the right way by asking a man on his way to the video store. Several people saw her at the bus stop, but she did not get on the bus when it arrived ten minutes later. She had simply vanished. The bus stop was right around the corner from Tobin’s house. Two years later, her mother died of a broken heart.
When Vicky Hamilton was reported missing, police scoured the neighbourhood. But they did not interview Tobin; he had only recently moved into the area and kept himself to himself.
It has not been established what he did with Vicky Hamilton after he raped and killed her. It is thought that he kept her body in the cupboard under the stairs, which caused a problem when an electrician came round to rewire the house. Tobin denied him access, and a violent argument ensued.
The knife he had used to cut up his young victim to make her concealment easier was already hidden in the loft. It had been tucked out of sight between the end wall and the last ceiling joist, behind some old bell jars and at least 15ft from the entrance hatch.
Tobin was calmer a few days after the electrician called when Cathy came to collect Daniel, who had been staying over the weekend. They subsequently moved to Hampshire.
Meanwhile, Tobin was trying to lay a false trail for the police. On 21 February, 11 days after Vic
ky had gone missing, Tobin went to Edinburgh, taking Vicky’s purse with him. It contained an identity card and numerous other things that would identify her, as well as her bus ticket from the 10 February, an address in London, a leaflet about oral contraception and a piece of paper with the word ‘Samaritans’ on it, along with a phone number. Tobin dropped it in the street near both the bus and railway stations. A passer-by soon spotted it and handed it in to the police. However, it was raining that day and the purse was barely wet, so they concluded it had not been on the pavement very long.
The purse was returned to Vicky’s family and the police began to widen their search. They took more than 3,000 statements and interviewed over 6,500 people as far away as London and Aberdeen. With the purse, Tobin had succeeded in shifting their attention from Bathgate, although later it would count against him. DNA belonging to his son was found on it.
As it was, the very next day, he was admitted to St John’s Hospital with abdominal pains. Clearly, the anxiety had been too much for him.
Once discharged, he decided to put some distance between himself and the scene of the crime and put in a request for a council swap on the grounds that his wife and son now lived on the south coast. An exchange was arranged with Peter and Hannah Hewitson, who lived in Margate. The move would take place on 22 March.
Tobin left some of his belongings with a neighbour, saying that there was not enough room in the back of his van to carry everything. When the Hewitsons arrived, they found 11 Robertson Avenue in a terrible state. They spent days cleaning the place with bleach to try and get rid of the sickly smell. Hannah’s sister Doris said, ‘When I helped her move to his house in Bathgate, the stench was overpowering. It smelled like someone had died there.’
Her husband Edward added, ‘He couldn’t get out of Bathgate fast enough. He crammed everything he owned into a van but the stuff never arrived in Margate.’
Meanwhile, Tobin arrived at 50 Irvine Drive with his secret cargo – the dismembered body of Vicky Hamilton, destined for a shallow grave in the back garden. Soon, she would be joined by another corpse.
On Saturday, 3 August 1991, Dinah McNicol met David Tremett at the Torpedo Town Festival in Liphook, Hampshire. It was a free festival whose location was only announced at the last minute to prevent the police from banning it. They spent most of the weekend together with her friends. Dinah was in party mood; she had just finished her A-levels at Chelmsford County High School for Girls. Things had not been easy after her mother had been killed in a car accident a few years earlier.
While Dinah’s friends headed off, she and David decided to stay on one more night. On Monday, they set off to hitch-hike back to their homes. At a service station near the M25, they were picked up by a scruffy man in a green hatchback. Though David, who sat in the back, thought the man was a little odd, he chatted away to Dinah in the front.
The driver stopped to let David out at the turn-off for Redhill where he lived. Worried about leaving Dinah alone with a strange man, he suggested she came with him. But she was eager to get home to Tillingham and said she would be OK.
Dinah’s father had been expecting her home on 5 August − she did not show up. Normally, when her plans changed, she would phone. There was no call. Then money began to disappear from her bank account. It was withdrawn in sums of up to £250 from cash machines along the south coast between Havant in Hampshire and Margate. After three weeks, her bank account was empty.
Tobin’s neighbour David Martin saw Tobin digging the hole when he looked over the garden fence. Tobin told Martin that he was digging his way to Australia, joking that it was cheaper than paying the £10 fare. Then he said he was actually digging a sandpit for his son who came to visit at weekends. When he filled it in, he told Martin that a social worker had visited and told him that the sandpit was too dangerous. There had been no such visit.
Nine months later, the disappearance of Dinah McNicol featured on the TV programme Crimewatch. She had been missing since she had parted from David Tremett. He went to the police in Redhill, only to discover that he was the last person to see her alive – apart from the driver of the hatchback. However, the search for Dinah progressed no further.
In 1993, the American rock band Soul Asylum released ‘Runaway Train’. The accompanying video included pictures of missing kids. The UK version featured Dinah McNicol and Vicky Hamilton.
Despite their acrimonious divorce, Cathy Wilson still allowed Tobin to have access to their son. Then, on 4 August 1993, when the five-year-old went to stay with his father, he walked into Tobin’s room and found two 14-year-old girls, one of them unconscious.
At that time, Tobin was living in a second-floor council flat in Leigh Park, Havant, so he could be closer to the child. The two girls had called to visit the woman next door, who was not in. They knocked on Tobin’s door and asked if they could wait there. Tobin knew one of the girls and assured her that the neighbour would not be long. Daniel was playing in another room and Tobin invited them in.
He plied them with cider and vodka. One of them passed out; the other was sick. When she tried to wake her friend, Tobin threatened her with a knife and said he would kill her if she kept on crying. He forced her at knifepoint to take a cocktail of pills and wine. When she tried to make a run for it, he grabbed her by the throat. In the ensuing struggle, she managed to stab him in the leg. Hearing the rumpus, Daniel came in. The girl begged him to get help, but Tobin ushered him out. Once the girl was unconscious, Tobin raped and sodomised her.
By then it was 2.00am and he realised that a search of the flats might already be under way. He called Cathy, telling her to come and collect Daniel as he was having a heart attack. When she arrived, Tobin and Daniel were waiting at the bottom of the stairs with a bag full of things he wanted Daniel to have in case he never saw him again.
Once they were gone, Tobin went back upstairs and turned on the gas, then opened the window and escaped down the drainpipe. But his attempt to gas the victims failed. One of the girls awoke to find her jeans on the other side of the room and her knickers round her ankles. There was also a tie around her ankle and a bloody bandage around her wrist. Her friend was lying naked next to her. She fled and raised the alarm. Their ordeal had lasted 16 hours. The other girl was still unconscious when the police arrived.
A witness said that they had seen Tobin heading towards Brighton where he happened upon a group of day-trippers from the Jesus Fellowship in Warwickshire. Adopting his third wife’s maiden name, he told them that he was Peter Wilson and he was homeless. They invited him back to the secluded King’s House Centre, near Southam, where he found refuge. To pay for his keep, he did odd jobs around the place.
Members of the Jesus Fellowship became suspicious and, after a month, he was asked to leave. By then, he had disguised himself by growing a moustache. A few days after he left, one of the Fellowship was watching Crimewatch and saw a picture of the man they knew as Peter Wilson. He was arrested soon afterwards, back in Brighton.
At Winchester Crown Court, he pleaded guilty to the rape of one of the girls and the indecent assault of the other. The prosecutor, Anthony Davies, told the court, ‘Tobin treated the girls as cruelly as a cat would treat a mouse.’
The judge described the attack as ‘an appalling incident, I think the worst I have ever come across’.
On 18 May 1994, Tobin was sentenced to 14 years; he was released on licence after seven of them. Almost immediately, he breached the terms of the licence when he moved home without informing the police of his new address. When he was found, he was returned to prison for another three years and was put on the Sex Offenders Register when it was introduced in 2003.
After his release, Tobin returned to his native Scotland, to live in a home in Paisley. There he met 24-year-old Cheryl McLachlan. She was the girlfriend of a drinking buddy and he invited her back to his flat to watch a football match. She had visited him there before. This time, though, he was agitated. When she announced that she was leaving, he c
ame dashing out of the kitchen with a knife in his hand. He forced her to lie on the sofa and got on top of her.
Thinking that she was going to die, she fought him off. She caught him off balance and he fell to the floor. As she fled for the door, she yelled, ‘What the hell are you playing at? Put that knife down.’
He lunged at her again. This time she grabbed his wrist. In the struggle, the cushions were knocked off the sofa. Underneath, there was a tie and a belt. Plainly, Tobin had planned to tie her up, or strangle her.
Now full of adrenalin, she felt no pain when she grabbed the blade of the knife. Eluding his grasp again, she reached the door – to find it locked. So she turned to face her attacker.
‘Put that thing down and let me out of here,’ she said. ‘Or else.’
Curiously, this took the wind out of his sails. He apologised and said he was only joking.
‘I got carried away. I didn’t mean any harm. I’m just a daft old boy. I’ve near enough given myself a heart attack,’ said the 57-year-old, holding his heart.
Cheryl was not unsympathetic. He had complained of chest pain before and she found his medicine for him before leaving. She then went to the police. But when they arrived at Tobin’s flat, he had made a miraculous recovery and had left. A warrant was issued for his arrest, but the police failed to trace him.
Tobin then adopted the name Pat McLaughlin and again found refuge with a religious community – this time at St Patrick’s Church in Anderston. Under the ‘open doors policy’, they took him on as an odd-job man. There he befriended Angelika Kluk.
A devout Catholic, she was from the small town of Skoczów which is less than ten miles from the border with the Czech Republic. Money had been hard to come by in her family, so she intended to travel to Western Europe in search of a well-paid job to pay for her continued studies. While studying at Gdansk University, she had set her eyes on Scotland, reading books and articles about the country and studying pictures of the Highlands. It looked much like her homeland. And knowing the country’s history and traditions, she believed she would feel at home there. A language student, she was already fluent in English.
Bodies in the Back Garden--True Stories of Brutal Murders Close to Home Page 11
