Boy, 10, tells Vicky trial: I didn't know about knife

Published on Tuesday 11 November 2008 22:34

A SCHOOLBOY who was not born at the time of teenager Vicky Hamilton's disappearance was called as a prosecution witness at the trial for her murder yesterday.

Jamie Dyet, ten, was one of a series of people who had lived in the same house as the accused, Peter Tobin, and who told the jury they knew nothing of a knife in its loft.

The boy and his parents were moved from the house in Robertson Avenue, Bathgate, West Lothian, last year, and put up in a hotel to allow police to search.

The prosecutor, Frank Mulholland, QC, the Solicitor-General for Scotland, asked Jamie whether he had ever been in the loft.

He replied: "A few times."

Mr Mulholland continued: "Ever remember seeing anything such as a knife?"

Jamie stated: "No."

Earlier in the trial at the High Court in Aberdeen, the jury heard that police searched the house in June last year. A 10in knife had been photographed in a narrow gap between a joist and a wall in the loft.

Yesterday, 14 witnesses who had lived there were asked about the knife and said they had not seen it until police showed it to them.

Tobin, 62, denies forcing or luring Vicky, 15, to his then home in Robertson Avenue in February 1991 and drugging her, sexually assaulting her and murdering her.

He is also accused of concealing the body, cutting it in two, transporting and burying the parts, which were found last year in Margate, Kent. The trial continues.