Fathers of Tobin’s victims plan to write to murderer

Oct 28 2010 by Alistair Watson, West Lothian Courier

THE fathers of two of serial killer Peter Tobin’s victims say they plan to write to the murderer behind bars.

Ian McNicol, whose daughter Dinah was murdered in 1991, had travelled to Scotland to support Vicky Hamilton’s dad Michael during what was expected to be Tobin’s appeal against his life sentence for the schoolgirl’s murder last week.

But after the appeal was dropped the pair went to Livingston’s Civic Centre on Friday to visit Solicitor General Frank Mulholland, who led Vicky’s murder trial in 2008.

Tobin, who was reported to have suffered a heart attack earlier in the week, has never given any reason for why he murdered the young girls.

Now the grieving dads say they want answers from the twisted killer about what happened to their daughters.

And while 71-year-old Ian, who lives in Essex, is up visiting Michael they plan to sit down and pen a letter to Tobin.

Michael, 60, told the Courier: “If I live to be 100 I will never get a visitation to speak to him in jail. So I wrote a letter to him asking him why he did what he did to my daughter.

“She was only 15 and he took her away from me.

“I sent it to Belmarsh Prison but I never got a reply.

“Now we will probably sit down together and write another letter and we are hoping it will upset him.

“I’m going to ask him why he never replied. We want to get some kind of reaction from him.

“Now he has dropped the appeal the case is over and done with now but it will never leave me. There’s always something going to come up to do with him.

“We’ve found out what happened to our daughters but there’s people out there who haven’t found their loved ones.

“I went 18 years without hearing anything and I feel sorry for those still waiting to find out.

“No one wants that knock on the door from the police but at least it gives you some kind of peace.”

Tobin was jailed for 30 years in December 2008 for murdering Vicky, 15, after she disappeared while waiting for a bus home from Bathgate, in February 1991.

He is also serving life terms for killing Dinah, 18, who vanished the same year and Polish student Angelika Kluk, 23, who was murdered in Glasgow four years ago.

The bodies of Vicky and Dinah were found buried in the garden of Tobin's former home in Margate, Kent, in November 2007.

Several properties across the country with links to Tobin have been searched for possible clues to other crimes he may have been involved in.

And now a garage once rented to the convicted serial killer has been dug up by police hunting for any further victims.

Officers using specialist search equipment examined the garage in Broadmere Avenue, Havant, Hampshire, as part of a national inquiry into the past activities of Tobin.

Michael added: “Tobin must have done more than three murders in his lifetime but if he dies tomorrow all the information goes with him.

“Operation Anagram which is looking into his past is still on-going. Anyone who knew Tobin in the past should contact the police immediately.”