Vicky accused 'in house swap weeks after she disappeared'

Published on Monday 10 November 2008 22:15

THE man accused of murdering Vicky Hamilton swapped the house where the schoolgirl was allegedly killed for a home in the south of England where her body was found 17 years later, a court heard yesterday.

Peter Tobin agreed a house exchange a few weeks after Vicky disappeared in 1991, and he gave up a tenancy in Bathgate, West Lothian, to take over a mid-terraced property in Margate, Kent, a jury at the High Court in Dundee was told.

The court heard that Tobin, 62, had been negotiating the swap before the date of the murder, to be nearer his family in England.

He denies forcing or luring Vicky to his then home in Robertson Avenue, Bathgate, on 10 February, 1991. It is alleged that there, or at some other unknown location, he drugged her, sexually assaulted her, compressed her neck and murdered her.

He pleads alibi, stating that he was in the Portsmouth area of the south of England and travelling to Scotland at the time Vicky went missing.

Tobin is further charged with concealing the body, cutting it in two and transporting and burying the parts. He also denies planting her purse in an attempt to mislead police into thinking she had run away from home. In earlier evidence, the jury was told body parts wrapped in layers of bin-liners were dug up in the back garden of a house in Irvine Drive, Margate, in November last year.

Yesterday, Janice Gray, 49, a letting officer, said the semi-detached, three-bedroom home in Bathgate had been owned by Scottish Homes, and records showed Peter Tobin and Cathy Wilson had taken over the tenancy in 1989. The following year, it was put into the name of Tobin alone.

Miss Gray agreed with Frank Mulholland, QC, prosecuting, that the swap had been agreed between the tenants to take effect on 21 March, 1991, a little more than a month after 10 February. She said some paperwork had been submitted before that date, carrying a date of 7 February, 1991.

Vicky had stayed the weekend with her sister in Livingston, West Lothian, and was making her way home to Redding, near Falkirk, on the evening of Sunday, 10 February, 1991, the court has heard.

Lynda Newman, 55, said she remembered the teenager going into Valente's chip shop in Bathgate town centre, asking where she would catch the bus to Falkirk. Mrs Newman said: "She was just an ordinary teenager …came in, got served and went out."

Catherine Bryce, 62, was waiting at traffic lights and began to move forward when a girl ran right in front of her. "I had to do an emergency stop. She was carrying what looked like a bag of chips," she said.

Hamish Watson, 43, a chef, said he found a purse under a portable building in St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, on 21 February.

"The ground was damp. It had been raining, but the purse was dry, which I thought was unusual. It did not look as though it had been there very long," he said.

The trial continues.