The first episode airs tonight on BBC Scotland…
In 1991, two seemingly unconnected teenagers go missing in different parts of the UK. Some 15 years later, the murder of a woman in Glasgow reveals a shocking link between all three cases.
In this two-part documentary series The Hunt for Peter Tobin, the programme highlights the police investigation which would eventually unmask a serial killer. On a snowy winter’s night, 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton failed to return to her home in Bathgate. Her case would become one of Scotland’s biggest missing persons investigations.
Lindsay Brown – Vicky’s younger sibling – was just six when her sister went missing. “Nobody knew what had happened to Vicky,” she recalls. “She had literally just vanished off the face of the earth. Back then, I knew that that was it. Life had changed forever.”
In the summer of the same year, Dinah McNicol from Chelmsford disappeared after hitchhiking home from a music festival in Kent.
Her distraught father, Ian, would turn to a new charity – The National Missing Persons Helpline – for help to find his 18-year-old daughter. Little did anyone realise how inextricably linked the Hamilton and McNicol families would become.
For over a decade, Vicky and Dinah’s missing persons investigations result in no real leads until 2006 when 23-year-old Polish student, Angelika Kluk, goes missing in Glasgow. Tragically, her body is found hidden under the floorboards of the church where she has a summer job in a case which shocked Scotland.
Police attention turns to church handyman Patrick McLaughlin. A nationwide police manhunt begins, and they quickly discover his true identity – convicted sex offender, Peter Tobin.
Tobin’s arrest would set in motion a remarkable series of events, pointing to his part in Vicky and Dinah’s disappearance. Featuring interviews with family members, detectives, forensic scientists, journalists and eyewitnesses, The Hunt for Peter Tobin charts the disappearances of three young women and the police investigation which followed, revealing the horrifying suspicion that a serial killer had been at large in the UK for decades.
In the second episode police detectives close in on murder suspect Peter Tobin, delving into his dark past, revealing the horrifying extent of his crimes. Following Tobin’s arrest for the murder of Angelika Kluk, the police launch ‘Operation Anagram’ – a covert investigation into his past to uncover whether he’s connected to other crimes. Overseen by Detective Superintendent David Swindle, Operation Anagram builds a picture of a serial domestic abuser who went on to become a violent sex offender.
“As soon as I saw what Tobin had done to Angelika I thought ‘He’s 60 years of age, this is not the first time he has killed,” recalls David. “We’ve got to look at this individual’s life.” In 2007, with Operation Anagram underway, the Angelika Kluk murder trial begins in Edinburgh. However, as the documentary highlights, salacious claims about her private life become front page news, much to the dismay of her heartbroken family.
Meanwhile, dogged detective work, combined with DNA and fingerprint analysis, uncovers dark secrets at Tobin’s former residences linking him to the missing persons cases of both Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol. The police investigation turns to Tobin’s old home in Bathgate and a house in Margate. What would be discovered there would horrify the nation and finally give Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol’s families answers about their missing loved ones.
The Hunt for Peter Tobin, BBC Scotland tonight at 10 pm. Both episodes are available on the iPlayer now.
