Peter Tobin gets court date to fight length of murder sentence

SERIAL KILLER Peter Tobin has been given a new court date to contest the record sentence he was given for murdering schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton.

Tobin is currently serving three life sentences – but thinks judge Lord Emslie's order that he should not be eligible for parole before 2038 was too harsh.

His case was due to be heard by judges on 15 April but Tobin – who has a history of pulling sickies during trials – took ill just before his scheduled appearance at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.

Tobin, 63, was convicted after trial in Dundee in December 2008 of abducting 15-year-old Vicky in February 1991 as she waited for a bus to return to her home in Redding, Falkirk.

He took her to his Bathgate home where she was drugged, sexually abused and strangled.

Vicky's body, cut in two and wrapped in bin bags, was found buried in the garden of a house in Margate, Kent, where Tobin had also lived for a time.

After the jury's guilty verdict, Lord Emslie said Tobin should serve at least 30 years – the longest minimum sentence for a sex crime in Scotland.

The outcome of the appeal on 22 July will make no difference to Tobin.

Last year he was also jailed for life for the murder of teenager Dinah McNicol – whose body was also uncovered in the Margate Garden.

An English judge said then that Tobin should die behind bars.

Tobin is also serving a life term for raping and stabbing to death Polish student Angelika Kluk, 23, then hiding her mutilated body under the floor of a church in Anderston, Glasgow, in September 2006.