The Trials

Unlike in his 1994 court appearance for child rape, Tobin would not admit his guilt. This meant that three families were put through the anxiety and cold legal ordeal of three trials.In May 2007 at Edinburgh High Court, he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years for the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk. He showed no remorse during the trial. But as he was led from the court, there was a glimpse of the rage inside him when he kicked out at photographers.

By 2008, he sat grey haired and hunched, dwarfed by his prison guards as he was tried for the abduction, rape and murder of Vicky Hamilton at Dundee High Court. Only one person was called as a witness, Caroline Dixon, a former girlfriend. She visibly shook in the presence of Tobin and as her legs buckled, she was invited to sit. The forensic evidence was damning, including a fragment of Vicky’s skin on the knife he hid in his loft at his Bathgate house. There were also the traces of anatryptaline, his tell-tale rape drug of choice. Finally, there were four clear fingerprint matches found inside the bag that held the dissected upper torso of Vicky.

It took the jury less than two and half hours to find him guilty after a month long trial.Vicky’s father shouted ‘rot in hell’. While the judge was unable to grant this wish, he made sure that Tobin would most likely die in a maximum security jail. Tobin would be 92 before he was eligible for release.

In 2009, and for the third time in three years, Peter Tobin was found guilty of murder.

This time it took the jury just 13 minutes to unanimously find him guilty of murdering Dinah McNicol. Indeed, the whole trial at Chelmsford Crown Court lasted a mere three days because Tobin’s defence offered no evidence. (Dinah’s father postponed heart surgery to attend the trial only for it to be suspended because Tobin said he was ill.)

A relative of one of his victims held up a note at his trial saying ‘May all your dreams be nightmares.” But Peter Tobin appears incapable of the remorse or regret necessary to trouble whatever little conscience he possesses. But Ian McNicol, Dinah’s 70 year old father, a widower, at least nodded when asked if his nightmare was over. He later took his daughter’s ashes to the same Essex beach where he had scattered those of his wife.

Tobin, who is now elderly, has been the victim of an attack in prison by another younger sexual predator.