Serial killer Peter Tobin dies taking hopes of solving hundreds of murders with him to the grave

Serial killer Peter Tobin has died after falling ill in prison where he was serving three life sentences.

He was taken from HMP Edinburgh to hospital, thought to be the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, on Wednesday and subsequently died, sources said.

He was serving a life sentence for raping and murdering Polish student Angelika Kluk, 23, and hiding her body under the floor of a Glasgow church in 2006.

The killer, who was 76, was also serving life terms for the murders of 15-year-old schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton, of Redding, near Falkirk, in 1991, and 18-year-old Dinah McNicol the same year.

Their bodies were found 17 years later, buried in the garden of his former home in Margate, Kent.

Dinah went missing while hitch-hiking home from a music festival in Liphook, Hampshire. Vicky disappeared from a bus stop in Bathgate, West Lothian, while Angelika was working as a cleaner at a church in Anderston, Glasgow, when she vanished.

The murderer, rapist and paedophile was said to have been in “total denial” about his crimes and never admitted his guilt for the killings he carried out.

Detective Chief Superintendent Laura Thomson, head of major crime at Police Scotland, said after Tobin’s death was announced there had been “recent attempts to encourage him to do the right thing” and give police information about other crimes he may have committed.

Operation Anagram

Over the years, police have looked at hundreds of other unsolved murders to see if they could also be linked to Tobin.

That operation, codenamed Anagram, began in 2006 and was wound down in 2011.

Officers believe Tobin had at least 40 aliases and 150 cars during his life to hide his tracks as he targeted vulnerable women.

In 2010, two addresses in Sussex – Marine Parade in Brighton and Station Road in Portslade – both the Scottish murderer’s former homes, became the subject of police searches for more than a week.

As Anagram was postponed, Detective Superintendent David Swindle, of the then Strathclyde Police, who led the operation, voiced hope Tobin would give up his secrets before he died in prison.

But the killer has now taken those secrets with him to the grave.

Mr Swindle said: “Peter Tobin is totally evil. He has absolutely no respect for human life.”

Wife beater

Born in August 1946 in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, Tobin’s life of crime began after he was sent to a reform school at the age of seven.

In his teens and early twenties he served jail terms for burglary, forgery and conspiracy. Then, in 1994 he was jailed for 14 years for a sickening double sex attack on two schoolgirls.

Tobin had plied the teenagers with a cocktail of drugs and alcohol at his flat in Havant, Hampshire, before abusing them.

He went on the run, but was found after hiding in a Christian drop-in centre in Coventry under a false name.

Tobin was also a serial wife beater, with all three of his former spouses claiming he repeatedly and viciously attacked them.