Peter Tobin expert: Police likely to find evidence of murders

Published on Tuesday 13 July 2010 18:50

A SENIOR criminologist who studied Peter Tobin has said he expects police to uncover evidence of further murders in their search of two gardens in Brighton.

• Officers use specialist equipment in garden search. Picture: PA

Professor David Wilson, professor of criminology at Birmingham City University and author of The Lost Serial Killer, which concluded Tobin was the infamous 1960s Glasgow murderer Bible John, believes it will link the serial killer to the death of art student Jessica Earl, 22.

Tobin, 63, has been convicted of the murders of Angelika Kluk, 23, Vicky Hamilton, 15, and Dinah McNicol, 18, but police believe he is guilty of more.

Officers are looking for evidence linking him to the disappearance of Louise Kay, 18, in 1988, and Ms Earl, 22, whose remains were found near Beachy Head, East Sussex, in 1989, nine years after she disappeared. Both went missing from nearby Eastbourne.

Prof Wilson said: "We know that Tobin was very adept at hiding the bodies of his victims after he killed them. He was an organised, commuting serial killer - he used a great deal of planning and was forensically aware.

"It seems perfectly logical to me that the police should move on cases that probably could be cleared up relatively quickly in terms of Tobin's involvement, and that to me would be Jessica Earl and Louise Kay.

"I do think that they will find something down there. My own view is that with Jessica Earl, because Tobin was such a trophy-taker from his victims, they will find something relating to her."

He was speaking as police extended their searches in Station Road, in Portslade, and Marine Parade, from the gardens to the interiors of Tobin's former homes.

Tobin lived in the Brighton area between 1969 and 1989, and both Ms Kay and Ms Earl were living in Eastbourne, where Tobin was working in a hotel in 1988.

Vicky Hamilton and Ms McNicol were found buried in the garden of another of his former homes in Margate, Kent, in 2007.

They were uncovered after Tobin had been jailed for the murder of Ms Kluk, a Polish student, whose body he hid under floorboards of a church in Glasgow, where he worked as a handyman, in 2006.

Speaking at the Portslade dig yesterday, Chief Inspector Laurence Taylor, of Sussex Police, said: "We are still searching and have extended our searching to the interior. We will be doing the interiors of both properties, both the ground floor and cellar areas.

|We are not going to go in and start digging.

It is just to check and satisfy ourselves that we are happy that there have been no disturbances to the floor."

Mr Taylor said the plans showed there was a "very deep" well and that specialists would need to be brought in to investigate it.

Former neighbours have told police that Tobin spent a lot of time in the basement of the home in Station Road doing DIY.

The communal outside area at the Marine Parade seafront address is more exposed, with dozens of windows looking down on to it, but as a handyman he would have had access to any storerooms or basements.

Police said they had received about 20 phone calls from members of the public offering information on Tobin since beginning the searches in Brighton.

Jessica's mother, Valerie Earl, 78, said she was keeping an "open mind" as to who killed Jessie, but would not be surprised if it was convicted triple killer Tobin.

Michael Hamilton, daughter of Vicky, also welcomed the searches yesterday, saying the tests under way at properties in Brighton could bring closure to the families of other murdered or missing girls.z