Operation Anagram closed net on beast
Operation Anagram was launched following Tobin’s arrest over the murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk in Glasgow in 2006.
It quickly led to the discovery of the bodies of teenagers Vicky Hamilton and Diana McNicol.
In June 2007, Tobin’s old house in Bathgate, West Lothian, was searched in connection with the disappearance of 15-year-old Falkirk girl Vicky, who went missing on February 10, 1991.
Another former home, in Margate, Kent, was searched and the bodies of Vicky and Dinah McNicol found in the garden.
In December 2008, Tobin was convicted of Vicky’s murder at the High Court in Dundee where he was given a second life term.
Dinah, 18, from Essex, was last seen on August 5, 1991, leaving a music festival in Liphook in Hampshire, having accepted a lift from Tobin.
In December 2009,
Tobin was found guilty at Chelmsford Crown Court of Dinah’s murder and given a third life sentence.
Operation Anagram had confirmed what police already feared, that Tobin was a serial killer.
By this time detectives across the UK were following up on nearly 1400 clues.
Anagram also linked Tobin to the 1988 disappearance of Louise Kay, 18, from Beachy Head, Sussex.
Another unsolved case linked to Tobin was the murder of 22-yearold Jessie Earl in 1980.
She had also disappeared from Eastbourne and her remains were found in 1989, concealed in dense shrubland at Beachy Head.
As with Louise, Tobin was living in the area at the time of her murder.
Though he was never charged, it is thought Jessie was a victim of Tobin. He was also investigated over the unsolved 1971 murder of Dorothea Meechan.
The 37-year-old was found strangled and dumped in bushes in Renfrew, near where Tobin lived at the time.
Richard Coubrough was convicted of killing Dorothea but always protested his innocence.
He was freed on bail in 2008 pending an appeal against conviction but died before it was heard.
David Swindle was the formidable detective who tirelessly led the investigation into Peter Tobin and unravelled his trail of murder.
Now that the serial killer is lying frail and ill in a hospital bed, Swindle holds on to a hope that clues about his other victims will now be disclosed.
But the retired detective superintendent with Strathclyde Police who caught Tobin doubts the evil murderer will show any humanity. Swindle, 67, has no doubt Tob in ha s k i l led multiple times.
He told the Sunday Mail: “Tobin is withholding information. He knows what he’s done. He def initely ki l led other people, I have no doubt about it.
“We hoped he’d never take his secrets to the grave and maybe he can find some sort of humanity to say what he’s done with other victims.
“I hate to say it but he might even be proud of it.”
After Tobin’s 2007 conviction for the rape and murder of 23-yearold Pol ish student Angelika Kluk, Swindle became convinced he had killed before.
His pol ice interviews, age and method of killing resulted in the creation of a unique taskforce called Operation Anagram, which looked at every aspect of the killer’s life.
A trai l of clues led Swindle’s team first to the home in West Lothian where Tobin had lived when Vicky Hamilton disappeared in 1991. Then to his former home at Irvine Drive in Margate, Kent, where he moved to in 1991.
In Margate forensic investigators unearthed the remains of two missing teenagers – Vicky Hamilton, 15, and Dinah McNicol, 18.
Swindle bel ieves Tobin’s tactic of targeting vulnerable women and