Peter Tobin

Peter Britton Tobin was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Scotland, on 27 August 1946, the youngest of eight children to Daniel and Marjorie Tobin. He had four older sisters and three older brothers. Tobin was a difficult child and in 1953, when he was seven years old, he was sent to an approved school. Tobin later served a sentence in a borstal and in 1970 was convicted and imprisoned in England for burglary and forgery. Tobin moved to Brighton, Sussex, England, where he married his seventeen-year-old girlfriend, Margaret Mountney, a clerk and typist, in August 1969. The couple separated after a year and Mountney divorced Tobin in 1971. In 1973, Tobin married a nurse, thirty-year-old Sylvia Jefferies. The couple had a son named Ian later that year and a daughter named Claire in 1975; she died soon after birth. This second marriage lasted until 1976, when Sylvia left with their son. Tobin had a relationship with Cathy Wilson; the couple married in 1989, with a son named Daniel born later that year. In 1990, they moved to Bathgate, West Lothian, Scotland. Wilson left Tobin in 1990 and moved back to Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, where she had grown up. All three wives later gave similar accounts of falling for a charming, well-dressed psychopath who turned violent and displayed sadistic behavior during their marriages. In May 1991, Tobin moved to Margate, Kent, and, in 1993, to Havant, Hampshire, to be near his son. ==Convictions==

Rape, buggery and indecent assault of two girls On 4 August 1993, Tobin attacked two fourteen-year-old girls at his flat in Leigh Park in Havant, after they went to visit a neighbour who was not at home. They stopped at Tobin's flat and asked if they could wait there. After holding them at knife-point and forcing them to drink strong cider and vodka, Tobin sexually assaulted and raped the girls, stabbing one of them whilst his younger son was present. He then turned on the gas cooker without lighting it and left the girls for dead, but both survived the attack. To avoid arrest, Tobin went into hiding and joined the Jesus Fellowship, a religious sect in Coventry, under a false name. He was later captured in Brighton after his blue Austin Metro car was discovered there. On 18 May 1994, at Winchester Crown Court, Tobin entered a plea of guilty and received a fourteen-year prison sentence. In 2004, Tobin, aged 58, was released from prison and returned to Paisley in Renfrewshire. Kluk, a student from Poland, was staying at the presbytery of St Patrick's Church, where she worked as a cleaner to help finance her Scandinavian studies course at the University of Gdańsk. She was last seen alive in the company of Tobin on 24 September and is thought to have been attacked by him in the garage attached to the presbytery. Kluk was beaten, raped and stabbed, and her body was concealed in an underground chamber beneath the floor near the confessional of the church. Forensic evidence suggested that she was still alive when she was placed under the floorboards. The investigation was led by Detective Superintendent David Swindle of Strathclyde Police. Police found her body on 29 September, and Tobin was arrested in London shortly afterwards. He had been admitted to hospital under a false name and with a fictitious complaint. A six-week trial took place at the High Court of Justiciary in Edinburgh, between 23 March and 4 May 2007. The trial judge was Lord Menzies, the prosecution was led by Advocate Depute Dorothy Bain and the defence by Donald Findlay QC. Tobin was found guilty of raping and murdering Kluk and was sentenced to life imprisonment, to serve a minimum of twenty-one years. In sentencing Tobin, Judge Lord Menzies described him as "an evil man." Vicky Hamilton murder In June 2007, Tobin's former house in Bathgate was searched in connection with the disappearance of fifteen-year-old Vicky Hamilton, who was last seen on 10 February 1991 as she waited for a bus home to Redding, near Falkirk. Tobin is believed to have left Bathgate for Margate a few weeks after her disappearance. On 21 July 2007, Lothian and Borders Police announced that they had arrested a man but did not release his identity. The investigation later led to a forensic search of a house in Southsea in early October 2007, where Tobin is believed to have lived shortly after leaving Bathgate. On 14 November 2007, Lothian and Borders Police confirmed that human remains found in the back garden of 50 Irvine Drive, a house in Margate occupied by Tobin in 1991, were those of Hamilton. In November 2008, Tobin was tried at the High Court in Dundee for Hamilton's murder. He was again defended by Findlay, while the prosecution was led by the Solicitor General for Scotland, Frank Mulholland QC. The prosecution case went beyond the circumstantial evidence of Tobin having lived at the two houses in Bathgate and Margate in 1991 and included eyewitness testimony of suspicious behaviour by Tobin in Bathgate; evidence to destroy his alibi; and DNA and fingerprints left on a dagger found in his former house, on Hamilton's purse and on the sheeting in which her body was wrapped. After a month-long trial, Tobin was convicted of Hamilton's murder on 2 December 2008. When sentencing Tobin to life imprisonment, the judge said: You stand convicted of the truly evil abduction and murder of a vulnerable young girl in 1991 and thereafter of attempting to defeat the ends of justice in various ways over an extended period... Yet again you have shown yourself to be unfit to live in a decent society. It is hard for me to convey the loathing and revulsion that ordinary people will feel for what you have done... I fix the minimum period which you must spend in custody at 30 years. Had it been open to me I would have made that period run consecutive to the 21-year custodial period that you are already serving. On 11 December 2008, Tobin gave notice to court officials that he intended to appeal. The appeal was dropped in March 2009. Dinah McNicol murder Dinah McNicol, an eighteen-year-old sixth former from Tillingham, Essex, was last seen alive on 5 August 1991, hitchhiking home with a male friend from a music festival at Liphook in Hampshire. While hitchhiking, they accepted a lift from a man. McNicol's friend was dropped off at Junction 8 of the M25, near Reigate, while McNicol stayed in the car with the driver. She was never seen again. After her disappearance, regular withdrawals were made from her building society account at cash machines in Hampshire and Sussex. This was out of character for McNicol, who had told friends and family that she intended to use the money to travel or further her education. On 16 November 2007, a second body was found at 50 Irvine Drive in Margate, later confirmed by police to be that of McNicol. On 1 September 2008, the Crown Prosecution Service served a summons on Tobin's solicitors, accusing him of her murder. This new trial began in June 2009 but was postponed and the jury discharged in the following month after the judge ruled that Tobin was not fit to stand trial pending surgery. The case resumed on 14 December 2009 at Chelmsford Crown Court. On 16 December, after the defence had offered no evidence, a jury found Tobin guilty of McNicol's murder after deliberating for less than fifteen minutes, and Tobin subsequently received his third life sentence. ==Operation Anagram==

Operation Anagram was a nationwide police investigation into Tobin's life and movements. The investigation started in 2006, after his first murder conviction, led by Detective Superintendent Swindle of Strathclyde Police, and increased in intensity in December 2009 after Tobin's third conviction. It aimed to prove Tobin's possible involvement in thirteen unsolved murders, including the three victims of the unidentified serial killer Bible John. Through the HOLMES 2 database, police forces across the UK were involved in the operation, investigating the possibility of Tobin's connection to dozens of murders and disappearances of teenage girls and young women. Tobin is reported to have claimed forty-eight victims in boasts made in prison. In 2009, police released photographs of the thirty-two pieces of jewelry that they found which were in Tobin's possession between 1991 and 2006, which authorities believed to be mementoes Tobin collected of his crimes. In July 2010, it was reported that officers working on Anagram had narrowed their review down to nine unsolved murders and disappearances. The operation was wound down in June 2011, having failed to identify any more victims. Louise Kay investigation Tobin was linked to the disappearance of eighteen-year-old Louise Kay from Beachy Head in Eastbourne in 1988. Kay was never seen again after telling a friend she was going to sleep in her car at Beachy Head after an evening with friends, something she had done previously. Swindle stated in 2018 that he believes that Tobin killed Kay. Earl was known to have been nervous about a man she had met while previously out walking, and had described meeting a middle-aged Scottish man near the same spot where her body was found. Shortly after the discovery of Earl's body became public knowledge in 1989, Tobin abruptly moved to Bathgate with his wife and child, suggesting he had an underlying reason to suddenly leave the area. • 21-year-old Pamela Exall vanished on 30 August 1974 after going for a late-night walk on a beach near Snettisham. Because Tobin holidayed in Norfolk, police contacted his former wives to attempt to establish when and where he had visited the area, but police found no links and have ruled out a connection to Exall's disappearance or any other case in Norfolk. • On 30 March 1979, 17-year-old Yvette Anne Watson went missing from the David Rice Hospital mental health unit in Norwich where she was being treated for depression. She has not been seen since. In 2009, Norfolk Police said it had investigated the possibility that Watson may have been a victim of Tobin, but found no links. However, excerpts from Watson's diary include an entry on 20 March 1978, a year before she vanished, which made a reference to a "Mr Tobin." • On 26 February 1980, 20-year-old Elizabeth McCabe was found strangled to death in Templeton Woods, Dundee. Her murder was included in a list of cases that Mark Williams-Thomas believed Tobin could not be ruled out from on a 2018 episode of his documentary series The Investigator: A British Crime Story. In 2011, there was media speculation that her murder could be linked to Tobin, and Morris' father said he believed Tobin could be responsible. Her bloodstained silver Alfa Romeo was found four days later. • 18-year-old mother of one, Nicola Payne disappeared on 14 December 1991 while walking to her parents' house in Coventry. Tobin was known to have spent time in Coventry in the early nineties when hiding with a religious sect while on the run from police. • 15-year-old Helen Gorrie left her house on 30July 1992 at night to meet a man called "John" and was later found murdered in a nearby community centre in Horndean in Hampshire. She had been strangled and smothered with her own clothing. Gorrie's murder was included on Williams-Thomas's list of cases; he felt Tobin could not be ruled out. After Corcoran's acquittal, police said they had no plans to re-open the murder investigation. • 35-year-old mother of three, Jennifer Kiely, who suffered from mental health issues and who may have been homeless, was stabbed sixteen times and found burned in a beach shelter in Eastbourne on 22 January 2005. Tobin was linked to the case as he had connections to the town, but hospital records show that he was being treated in Renfrewshire in the days leading up to the murder and was only discharged on the day of, which would appear to rule him out of the attack. ==Bible John speculation==

Tobin's convictions led to speculation in the late 2000s that he was Bible John, an unidentified serial killer who murdered three young women in Glasgow in the 1960s: Patricia Docker, 25; Jemima McDonald, 32; and Helen Puttock, 29. It had been alleged that Tobin reacted violently to his victims' menstruation, something that has long been suspected as the motive behind the Bible John murders. Tobin has since been eliminated as a suspect by police. He was still living in Brighton at the time of the third murder, meaning he would have had to travel without his wife's knowledge to Glasgow and back to have committed the murder of Puttock, Bible John's third victim. Although DNA had been used to rule out a previous suspect, detectives initially believed that a DNA link to Tobin would be unlikely due to a deterioration of the samples through poor storage. The police also have a record of a bite mark that was found on Puttock's body, which they can cross-check with Tobin's dental records, as had been done with John McInnes when he was exhumed and subsequently eliminated as a suspect in 1996. Also, contemporary photos of Tobin showed he did not have red hair like Bible John was described to have had. ==Illness and death==

On 9 August 2012, Tobin was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary after suffering chest pains and a suspected heart attack at HM Prison Edinburgh. In February 2016, Tobin was hospitalised again following a suspected stroke. In 2019 he was reported to be "frail" and suffering from cancer. Tobin died at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on 8 October 2022, aged 76. His body was subsequently cremated and on 16 October 2022, his ashes were scattered at sea after no relatives or next of kin claimed his body. ==See also==