By Brian Smith

EVIL SERIAL sex killer Peter Tobin was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 30 years in jail, after a jury at the High Court in Dundee unanimously found him guilty yesterday of the murder of 15-year-old Falkirk schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton.

Gasps, sobs and cries of “Yes” from family and friends of the dead girl punctuated each announcement of the jury’s verdicts as they found him guilty, as charged, and unanimously guilty of both charges he faced.

Tobin (62), by contrast, betrayed no obvious emotion as he was found guilty and sentenced to life for the murder of a young girl for the second time in the past 18 months.

Calls of “Rot in Hell,” and “Beast” and “Goodbye from Vicky’s father,” resounded round the courtroom as he was led away to spend what will probably be the rest of his life behind bars. Tobin had denied abducting Vicky from the centre of Bathgate on February 10, 1991, drugging her, sexually assaulting her and murdering her.

He also denied attempting to defeat the ends of justice by concealing her body, bisecting it and taking her to Margate in the south of England, where he buried her in the back garden of the terraced house he had just moved to. Tobin also denied, as part of this charge, that he threw her purse under a portable building near the St Andrews Square bus station in Edinburgh in an attempt to make police think she had run away.

The jury was out for two and a half hours before returning their unanimous guilty verdicts.

After the verdicts, Solicitor General Frank Mulholland QC told the court Tobin had a long history of offending, starting out as a petty thief and forger.

In May last year he was convicted at the High Court in Edinburgh of the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk at a Glasgow church the previous year. Before that he had been convicted of rape and sexual assaults on a girl under the age of 16 at Portsmouth Crown Court in May 1994 and sentenced to 14 years imprisonment.

Mr Mulholland added that Tobin is due to stand trial in England next year for the murder of another young girl, whose remains were also found in the Margate garden where he buried Vicky.

Mr Mulholland said that, given the wide interest in the case, he wished to say something about the effect of Vicky’s disappearance on the Hamilton family.

“A huge effect, as my Lord would expect,” he told Judge Lord Emslie. “For 17 years the family did not know what had happened to a daughter, a sister.”

The finding of the purse suggested that she had run away and might still be alive. “The possibility she had run away caused the family distress, because they were searching their souls to see if they had done anything to make her run away.

“This had a detrimental effect, particularly on her mother, who died early in 1993, not knowing what had happened to her daughter.

“It has been a comfort to her family that she (Vicky) had now been laid to rest and they are able to visit her grave.”

He said he could not better the description of Vicky’s sister Sharon, who said in evidence the family had lived a “17-year nightmare.”

He said he also felt it was important to provide the court with information about how the breakthrough that brought Tobin to trial for Vicky’s murder was achieved.

As part of the investigation into the Angelika Kluk case, now retired Detective Superintendent David Swindles of Strathclyde Police was researching addresses where Tobin had stayed and discovered he had been in Bathgate.

He remembered a girl had gone missing around the same time and passed the information to his colleague, Detective Chief Inspector Frank Anderson of Lothian & Borders Police.

It was acted upon and they were able to confirm Tobin had been at the Bathgate address at the time Vicky disappeared. The investigation flowed from there and, the Solicitor General said, “The rest is history.”

Mr Mulholland paid tribute to the two officers who sparked the inquiry and the teams of police and forensic scientists who gathered the evidence presented over the past four and a half weeks of the trial.

Invited by the judge to enter a plea in mitigation, defence counsel Donald Findlay QC said, “It is, I believe, a cardinal principle that binds together our whole criminal justice system, that, if the State makes an allegation, it is their duty to prove it and it is the duty of people who have my responsibility to challenge the State and make sure the evidence is criticised and tested in every respect.

“The jury has made their decision and in these circumstances, there is nothing I can say.”

Lord Emslie thanked the jury for the care and attention they had paid during the 21 days of proceedings and complimented them on the way they had gone about their task.

Spontaneous applause broke out in the public benches as jurors rose from their seats and continued until they had left the court.