Serial killer Peter Tobin linked to seven rape victims

Women identified after Crimewatch appeal for information about Peter Tobin

Police have identified seven women they say were raped by the serial killer Peter Tobin.

The women were identified after an appeal for information in July, police said. Tobin is already serving three life sentences for the murders of Vicky Hamilton, 15, Dinah McNicol, 18, and Angelika Kluk, 23.

Giving an update on Crimewatch on BBC 1 last night, Detective Superintendent David Swindle of Strathclyde police, who is leading the UK-wide investigation into Tobin's past, said: "Since that last appeal we've identified seven women that have been raped by Peter Tobin and we've followed up thousands of lines of inquiry including the commencement of the excavations in Brighton and Hampshire.

"Unfortunately, we never found anything at these, but the search for the truth regarding what Tobin has done continues."

More than 700 people called in with information about Tobin after the Crimewatch appeal last July.

Swindle said he wanted to find three people who had met Tobin, including a married couple who were the only official witnesses to his first marriage in Brighton when he was 22. Tobin married Margaret Robertson, who was 18, in 1969.

Swindle said he wanted to speak to a Mr and Mrs Hardy, who lived in St Michael's Place, Brighton, at the time.

He said he also wanted to find a man called Paul "who we know Tobin was very, very friendly with". He is believed to have worked with Tobin in the mid-1980s.

"He's possibly called Paul Maguire," Swindle said. "He lived at the same place that Tobin worked at the seafront hotel in Brighton.

"They were very friendly. He was linked in to the biker scene and this guy Paul spoke about the French Foreign Legion. He's a close friend of Tobin."

Police set up Operation Anagram after the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk, a Polish student, at a Glasgow church in 2006.

They followed a trail to the garden of Tobin's former home in! Margate , Kent, where they unearthed the bodies of Dinah McNicol and Vicky Hamilton two years later.

Detectives are still piecing together information on Tobin's whereabouts to establish whether he can be linked to other crimes.

Last year searches were carried out by police at properties in Brighton, East Sussex. Officers ruled out any crimes linked to the serial killer at a seaside property where he used to live.

In October a garage in Broadmere Avenue, Havant, Hampshire, that had once been rented to Tobin was dug up but nothing suspicious was found.

Tobin was questioned by Edinburgh police in July about his suspected involvement in "serious sexual crimes".


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