Serial killer Peter Tobin will forever be associated with Dundee in death as in life.
Tobin’s trial in winter 2008 was the most high-profile case ever heard at the High Court in Dundee.
The five-week hearing saw the British media descend on the city.
And it finally ended the 17-year-old mystery of what happened to Falkirk schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton, whose siblings were overcome by emotion as they spoke to print and broadcast journalists moments after Tobin’s conviction.
Following his death, Vicky’s family said in a statement: “We would like to remind people of what we said outside Dundee High Court when he was finally found guilty of our sister’s murder.
“We no longer wish to talk about him…he does not deserve anymore of our family’s thoughts.
“We will not be celebrating any passing but instead we will be remembering Vicky, Angelika and Dinah along with any other victims, and we respectfully ask for others to do the same.”
The 15-year-old vanished in Bathgate in February 1991, while heading home from a weekend visiting her big sister in Livingston – her first bus ride on her own.
Vicky’s disappearance sparked one of Scotland’s biggest missing person inquiries.
Her remains were found, wrapped in plastic and concealed by a poured concrete cap, in a 6ft deep pit in the back garden of Tobin’s former home in Margate, Kent, in 2007.
Tobin, who died at the age of 76 on Saturday, was accused of abducting, sexually assaulting and murdering the 15-year-old on February 10 1991.
He lodged a special defence of alibi that between 5pm and midnight on February 10, he was in the Portsmouth area and then travelling from southern England to Scotland.
The trial was moved to Dundee to limit the chance jurors had any link to the victim’s family or Tobin himself.
It was not until its third week that jurors heard of a direct link between Vicky and Tobin, when a fingerprint analysis of one of the bin bags used to wrap her body produced four distinct prints, all of them a match for Tobin.
The next cornerstones of the crown case followed rapidly.
A knife with a piece of the schoolgirl’s skin was found in the loft of the house in Bathgate, where Tobin stayed at the time, and there was DNA evidence from her body that produced partial matches with her killer.
‘As I say I have never met her…’
The jury was played part of a lengthy video recorded interview police conducted with Tobin in Fraserburgh on July 21 2007.
At that stage, Tobin was told Lothian and Borders police were reopening their investigation into the disappearance of the teenager.
Detectives began the interview by showing Tobin a picture of Vicky, taken at Christmas and surrounded by presents.
Tobin replied: “Don’t know her.”
The detective asked: “Do you have anything you wish to say about the disappearance of Vicky Hamilton?” Tobin replied: “Nothing at all”.
Asked if he had ever met her, he said: “Not to my knowledge, no.” Asked if he thought he had ever been in her company, he said: “I haven’t got a clue, I don’t think so.”
Questioning then moved on to the time he spent in Bathgate, where Vicky had last been seen, and if he thought he might have spoken to her in Bathgate.
The detective asked: “You have never met Vicky whatsoever?”
Tobin said: “Don’t think so, no.
“Don’t know if I even sat next to her on a bus, train, anything, you know what I mean?”
Tobin was asked: “Can you try to remember where you were on February 10?”
He replied: “Just back and forward, like.
“If it was a weekend, I would have the wean with me, you know what I mean?”
Turning to the discovery of Vicky’s DNA on the knife, Tobin said his girlfriend was the only girl who had been in his house in Bathgate.
Asked how a piece of Vicky’s DNA came to be on the knife in the house, Tobin replied: “I can’t explain that.”
Confronted again with the claim that Vicky Hamilton’s DNA was on the knife, Tobin said: “I done nothing to her, I honestly don’t know, I have done nothing.
“I wasn’t there. I was picking my son up.
“I wasn’t in Scotland at that time, know what I mean?”
He said the detectives could check with his former wife and ask her.
Towards the end of the interview he was told he was no longer a suspect and was being arrested for the abduction of Vicky Hamilton.
He replied: “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t here. I was in England. I was on my way back up.”
A short time later he was formally charged and replied: “Like I said, I didn’t do it. I was not here or there, I was in England taking my son back as his mother always wanted him back every Sunday.”
Finally the officers said they had to ask him if there was any way he could assist in finding Vicky Hamilton.
He told them: “I can’t help you. As I say I have never met her.
“Never.”
He was asked if he had any knowledge of where she may be now.
He answered: “No.”
‘End their nightmare…’
As the trial of Tobin entered its fifth week, solicitor general Frank Mulholland QC rose to deliver his closing speech to the jury.
He suggested that it was clear from the evidence that Vicky did not catch the bus to Falkirk which began a 17-year nightmare for her parents.
“The Crown case is that Peter Tobin is the person responsible for this nightmare,” he said.
The defence closed its case without calling Tobin to the witness box.
In his address to the jury on the 21st day of the trial, Lord Emslie said: “This is a sad and harrowing case about a teenage girl who disappeared without trace from central Scotland in early 1991, and whose body eventually turned up in a garden grave more than 400 miles away in Kent last year.
“As human beings, our hearts inevitably go out to Vicky Hamilton and her family in their anguish.”
The jury took less than two-and-a-half hours to find him guilty, despite defence counsel Donald Findlay QC’s insistence that there was “not a single scrap of evidence” Tobin had met her when she was alive.
Calls of “Rot in Hell” and “Beast” resounded round the courtroom as he was led away.
Spontaneous applause broke out in the public benches as jurors rose from their seats and continued until they had left the court.
After the verdicts, Solicitor General Frank Mulholland QC told the court Tobin had a long history of offending, starting out as a petty thief and forger.
In May 2007 he was convicted at the High Court in Edinburgh of the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk at a Glasgow church the previous year.
Before that he had been convicted of rape and sexual assaults on a girl under the age of 16 at Portsmouth Crown Court in May 1994 and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.
He said he could not better the description of Vicky’s sister Sharon, who said in evidence the family had lived a “17-year nightmare”.
He added that he also felt it was important to provide the court with information about how the breakthrough that brought Tobin to trial for Vicky’s murder was achieved.
As part of the investigation into the Angelika Kluk case, now retired Detective Superintendent David Swindles of Strathclyde Police was researching addresses where Tobin had stayed and discovered he had been in Bathgate.
He remembered a girl had gone missing around the same time and passed the information to his colleague, Detective Chief Inspector Frank Anderson of Lothian and Borders Police.
It was acted upon and they were able to confirm Tobin had been at the Bathgate address at the time Vicky disappeared.
The investigation flowed from there.
The Solicitor General said: “The rest is history.”
Tobin was jailed for a minimum of 30 years for Vicky’s murder.
Lord Emslie branded Tobin “unfit to live in a decent society” following his conviction.
He is suspected of 11 more murders and the full extent of his crimes may never be known.
