Original subtitles

[David Swindle] This is a horror story.

People sometimes think that as detectives,

you're not affected.

You are. You are.

I'll never forget this case.

18-year-old student Dinah McNicol disappeared.

Police officers making house-to-house inquiries

into Vicky Hamilton's disappearance.

[David] Girls vanished without a trace.

Families are still waiting for answers.

It's the not knowing

that is the worst part.

As each day goes past, I lose a bit more faith

that she's still alive.

[David] Operation Anagram was a search for the truth.

We owe it to victims and families.

I was obsessed to try and find out what happened to their loved ones.

Leave no stone unturned.

This is an individual who was mobile,

who was travelling the UK,

who was using false names.

Neighbours described him as quiet and charming.

He targets people that are vulnerable at that time.

He was obsessed by binding people up.

It was power and control, and sexual domination.

The horrors-- What he did to these young women,

absolutely unbelievable.

[reporter] Detectives in Glasgow are growing increasingly concerned

for a missing Polish student.

Angelika Kluk, who was on a working holiday in the city,

was last seen on Sunday.

Detectives are searching Angelika's room here at St. Patrick's,

looking for some clues which might shed light on her disappearance.

But clearly, as time passes,

fears grow for her well-being.

[Denis Curran] It was a Monday, and I went down to St. Patrick's,

and all the ladies that works in the church,

about four or five of them, were there.

They said, Angelika's missing.

All her stuff's here, but we don't know where she's went.

They were very, very concerned.

[David] When Angelika Kluk went missing,

I got a phone call from the Chief Constable...

regarding concerns for her safety.

She just disappeared.

Her passport, her personal belongings were there.

There's something not right about this case.

[Graham] Angelika was a student

and had come over to Glasgow for the summer

to work and earn some money

to assist with her studies.

It was clear Angelika was a young lady with a big future.

[David] She was a very intelligent young woman.

She spoke five languages.

She was working in St. Patrick's Church in Glasgow as a cleaner.

She had accommodation in the church.

It was a safe environment. It's a church.

And she was a trusting individual.

I'm 100% sure Angelika would never disappear.

Something like that never happened before, and...

She's just not like that. She's just too...

Too responsible and very thoughtful

towards other people to pull anything like that

without letting them know that she's all right.

[David] Angelika had family in Poland.

Her sister, Aneta, was also involved in trying to find her.

They were asking, "Where was she? Where had she gone?"

It was a big mystery.

So it became very quickly, within a day, high-profile.

So, this is the entrance to St. Patrick's Church.

It is quite an iconic building

which can be seen as you enter the city of Glasgow.

The church, at the time,

was used by many different groups.

All these groups were full of vulnerable people,

in particular, vulnerable females.

[Denis] St. Patrick's Church is a beautiful church.

Everybody was welcome, people with faith and people with no faith.

I used to run a charity, Loaves and Fishes, in St. Patrick's Church

and I helped to deal with people in need.

You've got your regulars,

but you always get strangers, new faces.

The whole idea of Loaves and Fishes was to make everybody welcome.

No questions asked.

Anyone who was using the church

around the time of Angelika's disappearance

had to be seen and had to be spoken to,

and their whereabouts at the time of the disappearance confirmed.

[Denis] Everybody connected to the church was interviewed by the police.

All the ladies that worked in the church,

Father Gerry, obviously.

Father Gerry was a guardian for this lassie

and she went missing.

I don't think any of the team found him overly cooperative.

I thought he picked his words carefully,

but there were a number of people who were of interest

at the early stages of the investigation.

Angelika had a relationship with a Martin Macaskill.

He had arrived back from holiday on the Saturday,

and he'd been trying to contact Angelika on the Sunday without success.

[Denis] It was a very bad atmosphere.

All sorts of things was getting flung about,

fingers are getting pointed at everybody.

[David] We interviewed Patrick McLaughlin, the church handyman.

He was also involved in the Loaves and Fishes,

providing support to homeless people who were at the church.

[Denis] He was just a volunteer.

He just turned up and started helping.

And with me,

he was always quiet,

never said much.

[David] He gives a statement saying,

"Angelika was my little apprentice."

"We were working together, painting,

some DIY, and she disappeared. I don't know where she is."

There wasn't anything to indicate she'd come to harm,

but there was a lot of unanswered questions.

Things developed very quickly.

[Graham] The day after Angelika was reported missing,

the police re-attended St. Patrick's Church

to obtain more detailed statements from the witnesses.

But when they looked for Pat McLaughlin, they couldn't find him.

Soon as the police had become involved,

Patrick McLaughlin disappeared.

[Graham] Then, the concern started to grow,

because it was becoming clear that Pat McLaughlin

was the last person to have been seen with Angelika.

[Denis] The police were looking for a description of Pat McLaughlin.

And I told them I had a photograph

and I gave them that.

We put that out in the media to try and trace him.

[Graham] Very, very quickly, the incident room was made aware

that a number of individuals had contacted the police.

They all had the same information.

[David] People came forward to say,

"That is not Patrick McLaughlin."

"That is a man called Peter Tobin, a missing sex offender."

That was massive.

Dangerous, dangerous person on the run.

[Elaine Ferguson] 23-year-old Angelika Kluk went missing on Monday.

She was last seen with a known sex offender.

[David] This is a horror story.

A missing sex offender with a false name. A young woman who's disappeared.

The media were all over us.

They were asking questions. "Where is she? Is she still with him?"

But we didn't know.

[Elaine] Mr. Tobin is considered a potential risk to members of the public.

Any person who sees this man is advised not to approach him.

[David] Peter Tobin was a danger to the public.

He had raped and tried to murder two young girls,

and he spent ten years in prison,

and he got out in 2004.

He was managed as a registered sex offender,

and it was during that period that he met Angelika Kluk

at St. Patrick's Church.

[Graham] While the investigation

was focused on the manhunt for Peter Tobin,

David Swindle wanted to revisit

the search of the church and its grounds.

[David] Because the circumstances have changed,

I told the search team, "I know it's a place of worship,

but Angelika could be there."

"Rip that place apart."

A specialized search team assisted by cadaver dogs

conducted a search of the church.

[David] They found a very small hatch,

and underneath there, covered in plastic sheeting,

was the body of Angelika Kluk.

When I met with Aneta Kluk, Angelika's sister,

and I told her that that was her sister that was there,

shock, horror.

You could never understand how they feel.

It was absolutely horrendous for her.

[Graham] You've got nothing but compassion for the family,

but what you've got to focus on is ensuring that you do

what the family needs you to do,

focus on your job and do it to the best of your ability.

[David] Now we have to prove beyond reasonable doubt

that Tobin has killed Angelika Kluk.

We need to secure as much evidence as we can,

particularly in relation to DNA.

[Carol Rogers] I got a phone call to say we found a body

underneath the floorboards of the church.

Because it looked to me like a sexually-motivated murder,

I wanted to examine her body without being moved.

As soon as you move that body, it could contaminate any potential trace evidence.

The entrance to the hatch was tiny.

Going down there, it was frightening.

I mean, I'm not claustrophobic,

but there was very little room for me to get down.

And then it was dark,

and you're looking up at the hatch thinking,

"I don't know if I'll get back out."

When I saw Angelika, there was an initial shock and horror

like any other person would feel,

seeing a young woman who had been clearly violently murdered.

She had what, to me, looked like stab injuries

to her chest,

and also, she'd been bound and gagged as well.

But then you've got to get into work mode

because you have one shot at it.

So, we worked through the night.

You feel a real responsibility to make sure

you capture every single bit of evidence

and make sure there's some sort of justice.

There's a lot of forensic evidence which felt very compelling.

We had DNA and semen on the jeans that matched Peter Tobin,

so we had links from Peter Tobin to Angelika's body.

But we had to establish where she was assaulted and murdered.

So the focus of the investigation moved to the garage workshop

where Angelika had last been seen alive.

It was a typical workshop.

It was full of tools, paint, bits of furniture, et cetera.

There was no obvious blood.

But then we started to look at the floor,

and my colleague noticed what looked like a small blood spot.

And then we started seeing more.

We carried out DNA profiling on those bloodstains

and it matched the DNA profile of Angelika Kluk.

So, at that point, we're confident

that's where the initial assault has taken place.

The forensic experts were starting to build a picture

of what happened to Angelika.

Tobin was working with Angelika in a garage,

and it was in there that he struck.

[Elaine] We had table legs that police had found

on the grounds outside the church.

On one of the table legs, within the grain of the wood,

we noticed tiny, tiny bloodstains,

and that blood matched Angelika Kluk.

[David] He hit her over the head with an oak table leg,

and bound her hands with cable ties.

He had put duct tape around her mouth.

He'd raped her.

Stabbed her multiple times in the chest,

and then dragged her into the church on a plastic sheeting,

and dumped her underneath the floor.

You can't comprehend the terror that she was going through as...

As he was attacking her.

It's horrific. Horrific.

The level of inhumanity...

used by Tobin,

what he did to Angelika, it just...

Abhors you.

[Denis] It was horrendous, really, you know.

to find out that when we were in on a Sunday night doing the meals,

I was standing on the trap door,

and there was a body underneath it.

That troubles me.

It turned the community upside down.

[Graham] It's now a homicide investigation,

and the manhunt for Peter Tobin

is now ramped up.

The interest from the media was huge.

Now, it was a real national story,

and we had all the pressure that comes with that.

We need to find this guy and find him quick.

[Nick Losseff] I was working as a neurologist

at the National Hospital for Neurology.

One weekend, I got a call about a patient called James Kelly.

So this patient had admitted himself, ostensibly with symptoms of a stroke.

He had also been recognized

by the relatives of the patient in the bed next to him

as the man wanted by the police in conjunction with a murder inquiry.

[David] A Metropolitan police officer went to the hospital

to check this out.

And he put on a nurse's uniform,

went in as a nurse, and spoke to the person in the hospital

and confirmed that it was Peter Tobin.

[Nick] He was very charming in the encounter,

but it was very clear that, actually, this was a fictitious illness.

He was clearly putting it on.

Now, most people, if you confront them

about a fictitious illness,

will get extremely cross with you.

But his response was very, very odd indeed.

He said to me, "Oh, well,

if that's what you say, Doctor, that must be right."

"I mean, you're the doctor after all."

Well, I found it quite chilling.

My internal reaction was that

this was a very psychopathic comment,

and I left the room and the police came and arrested him.

[David] So we had Tobin. He's caught.

But by this time in the investigation,

when I saw the injuries on Angelika Kluk,

how organized Tobin was,

and his cool, calm, collectiveness,

where he remained at the scene

and gave a statement and a false name to the police,

I thought, "He's 60,

this isn't the first time he's done something like this."

This guy has killed before.

I decided that we need to look

at Tobin's whole life history,

and that was when I started Operation Anagram.

I thought, I want to timeline everything about him,

where he had been,

and what had happened in an area where he had been,

to see if this is someone that has killed before.

David asked me to run a separate investigation,

sort of running parallel to the murder investigation.

[David] If it ever got out

that we were looking at Tobin as a potential serial killer,

that could have been adverse pretrial publicity.

So Operation Anagram was set up confidentially.

We started to quickly establish this is an individual who was mobile,

who was travelling the UK,

who was using false names.

He had different types of occupations,

and very quickly, we realized

this person's life is complicated.

Neighbours and people he knew described him

as quiet and charming.

That is how he can ingratiate himself,

get women to trust him.

We learned that he was committing serious sexual offences

against young females,

even as a teenager.

We found out that Tobin was married three times.

He also had a son.

[Graham] We were able to see a clear pattern from all three of his wives.

Initially, he was very charming,

and then as time went on, he would become controlling...

and violent towards them,

both physically and sexually.

[David] He shows all the classic serial killer traits.

He was obsessed by binding people up.

It was power, and control, and sexual domination.

Tobin was someone that loved

inflicting pain with him being in control.

[Graham] It quickly became clear that we needed the assistance

of other forces and records they held.

[David] We arranged for a huge conference

and heads from every police force in the UK came to that.

And we provided every police force

with information about Tobin.

Because at that time, there was lots of police forces in the UK

and they weren't always joined up.

But this was an effort at doing that.

This is something that had never been done before.

And each police force reviewed

their outstanding missing people, unresolved murders, unresolved rapes,

and they fed it back to the Operation Anagram team.

The challenge for us with Operation Anagram was massive.

[Graham] There was huge amounts of information coming in.

Hundreds of missing persons

and unresolved female homicides.

And then we'd start looking at dates when these happened

and compare them with what we knew about Peter Tobin and his whereabouts.

[David] Operation Anagram took over my life.

You could call it an obsession.

I felt a responsibility for his potential victims.

Families are still waiting for answers.

[Graham] We looked at every case that was highlighted to us,

and then we prioritized ones that we thought, potentially,

that he could have been involved in.

[David] Operation Anagram found out

that Tobin lived in Robertson Avenue in Bathgate

in 1990, 1991.

[Graham] That was a real significant moment

because Bathgate

was where 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton went missing

in 1991.

She was the most famous missing person case

in Scotland at that time.

[reporter] Police officers making house-to-house inquiries in Bathgate

in their continuing hunt for clues

into Vicky Hamilton's disappearance.

[Tom] In 1991, I was the divisional commander

for the West Lothian area, including Bathgate.

Late on Sunday evening,

I got a call to say that there was a vulnerable girl

missing from the Bathgate area,

and her name was Vicky Hamilton.

As soon as you heard of a missing girl,

you took it seriously.

Vicky was 15.

That weekend, she'd been staying with her sister.

She was making her way home.

She arrived in Bathgate,

but because there was snow and ice on the ground,

the buses were all delayed.

So this is the bus stop on the left here.

This is where Vicky was last seen waiting at that bus stop.

It was a bitterly cold night,

so it would have been absolutely perishing for anybody waiting at that bus stop.

[man] We knew that she'd bought some chips from a local chip shop,

and so we knew that she'd come to Bathgate

and she was standing at the bus stop,

and then she disappeared.

Because of the cold weather and because of Vicky's nature,

right from the start, we identified this

as being a high-priority missing person.

It was hugely important that we searched

as quickly as we could

all the areas around about where she was last seen.

[reporter] Eighty officers, including this diving team in a berm in Bathgate,

are searching for any sign of Vicky.

It was the biggest missing person inquiry ever in Scotland.

Pictures of her in the media with her school blazer on.

It was a huge inquiry.

[Tom] As time goes on,

and you search the countryside, you search the town,

and you're getting nothing,

the more you're convinced that some evil has befallen her.

As each day goes past,

I lose a bit more faith that she's still alive.

I pray to God that she is. Erm...

[sighs] I just don't know what else to say. I mean, it's just...

It's completely baffling what's happened to her.

[Tom] It was dreadful for the family.

Every day for them was the same day, repeated.

It was a groundhog day,

because there was no closure for them.

As the years went on, the ghost of Vicky haunted Bathgate.

And every time you think about it, you question yourself,

"Had we missed something? Who had we missed?"

[reporter] Detectives investigating the disappearance

of the West Lothian schoolgirl, Vicky Hamilton,

could be on the verge of a major breakthrough in the case.

When we got that information that Tobin had lived in Bathgate

in the early '90s,

immediately, it didn't feel--

That would be a coincidence. That was significant.

Officers from that area and Operation Anagram

went to the house where he lived

and they conducted a methodical search.

[reporter] The house was stripped bare as police searched for anything

linked to the teenager.

[David] For Vicky's family,

not knowing what happened to her for all those years is horrendous.

They're living in hope.

You could never imagine what that's like.

[reporter] From what we're hearing,

it does sound like they found something significant,

something which has possibly taken them closer

to solving Vicky's disappearance.

In the loft, they found a knife.

And on that knife...

was the DNA of Vicky Hamilton.

[Graham] So that's huge. Peter Tobin killed Vicky Hamilton.

But there was a lot more work needed to be done.

We needed to try and identify...

where Vicky's body was.

Whole gardens were dug up.

I wanted to see a conclusion to it.

I was desperately keen to find her body for the family.

At least then,

we could put her to rest.

At least then, we'd know where she was.

At least then we could start to...

To move on.

[David] But her body wasn't there.

Where was she?

We don't know.

There's one person who could tell us, and that was Tobin himself.

-[recorder beeps] -[man] Can you give me your name, please?

Peter Tobin.

[man] Do you have anything to say about the disappearance of Vicky Hamilton?

[Peter] Nothing at all.

[David] I arranged to get Tobin out of prison

to interview him about Vicky Hamilton.

Is there any way that you can assist us

in finding this girl now?

[Peter] No.

He is standing there, he's pushing on the desk,

and he's right in the faces of the officers.

He's trying to control the whole thing.

Her father doesn't know where she is. Her family. We don't know--

[Peter] Sorry, I can't help you.

As I say, I've never met her.

[Graham] We had to try everything

to just try and elicit a response from--

I said a few things to him,

hoping that he's gonna slip up.

It was the last throw of the dice.

I've got to say to you...

that you could assist us

You could assist us.

[Peter] I wouldn't assist you to cross a f*****g road...

if you had one leg and a f*****g hook up your arse

[Graham] You're not interested?

[Peter] No, I'm not interested.

[Graham] You're not interested in helping families who may have missed ones

that you might have information about?

[Peter] I couldn't give a f**k

The language he used...

He didn't care.

He absolutely didn't care.

He's denied any involvement,

so we were unable to find out what happened to Vicky.

By this time,

Tobin had garnered huge press attention.

He has been linked to many, many...

missing persons and outstanding murders by the media.

There was speculation that Peter Tobin killed women in the 1960s.

They said Tobin confessed to a prison shrink

that he killed 48 people.

He didn't say that. He didn't.

Tobin's in denial of everything.

But as far as I was concerned, I believe he's killed other people.

And we kept going with Operation Anagram.

At the other end of the UK in England, Hampshire,

there was another young girl that disappeared.

Essex police liaised with us regarding Dinah McNicol.

She had been at a music festival

and she was seen getting into a car.

A car driven by a Scottish man.

[reporter] Police in Hampshire are to carry out a search

at Liphook this week at the site of a pop concert.

It follows the disappearance of 18-year-old student,

Dinah McNicol from Essex.

[Daniel McNicol] Dinah was my younger sister.

She was a real force of nature.

She was only 4'10",

but she was a real bundle of energy, very intelligent,

and just really had a thirst for life.

At the time when she went missing,

Dinah had finished her exams,

so she was enjoying herself.

She had an opportunity to go to a festival with some friends.

She was due to come back on the Friday

to go to a party with me, with some of my friends,

and she didn't return.

Alarm bells started to ring.

You just know. You know that something's not right.

And it was completely out of character for Dinah not to get in contact.

There was a massive search for her.

[reporter] It'll take 100 police officers three days

to complete a methodical sweep

of 500 acres of scrubland,

which make up Bramshott Common.

Dinah's father, Ian, travelled from Essex

to watch the search begin.

I think my father took it the hardest.

It really sort of broke him as a man.

We knew, as a family, the chances are some harm had befallen her.

I've had to come to terms with that,

otherwise, I don't think I would be able to keep my own sanity.

It's the not knowing

that is... the worst part.

The case generated a lot of publicity at the time.

A friend that she'd met at the festival came forward

and said, "I was with her."

Thankfully, he was able to fill in

her last, sort of, movements from the festival.

They hitchhiked back together.

He got out of the vehicle on the M25

'cause he was going the opposite way,

and unfortunately, Dinah stayed in the vehicle.

He gave the police a description of the man who was in the car.

Said the guy had a Scottish accent.

By this time, every force was reviewing unsolved murders,

unsolved rapes,

or outstanding missing people.

Because of the description of the Scottish man and the car,

Essex police looked at the Dinah McNicol case again.

By this time, we knew that Peter Tobin

had an address at Irvine Drive in Margate when Dinah went missing.

We learned that Dinah's bank card

was used several times

after she was reported missing.

When you look at where that bank card was used

and the route from where he stayed in Margate,

to where his ex-wife Kathy and his son now resided,

those withdrawals were on that route.

Strong evidence.

Strong suspicion.

[Graham] There was also door-to-door inquiries done

at Tobin's address in Margate,

and one of the neighbours said,

"I saw Tobin out in the back garden

and he was digging,

and he was digging quite deep."

And the neighbour had inquired of Tobin,

"What are you doing, Pete? Are you digging for Australia?"

To which Tobin had replied, "No,

he was digging a sand pit for his son."

So again, that was interesting,

because there was no sandpit at that address.

[reporter] The former home of Peter Tobin in Margate

is the centre of police investigations tonight.

Essex Police got a warrant

to search Tobin's house in Irvine Drive.

This is gonna sound very strange to somebody

who probably hasn't been in that situation,

but we were hoping that they would dig Dinah up.

If they could find Dinah for us,

then we would have Dinah back and we could...

bury her properly and say goodbye to her.

We were confident that we would find Dinah in that garden.

I remember getting a phone call,

and they told me that they'd found a body.

[reporter] Police believe they have found missing teenager, Dinah McNicol,

but are awaiting postmortem results.

[Graham] However, it was a surprise,

because it wasn't Dinah McNicol.

What? This is unbelievable.

[reporter] Police hunting for a missing Essex teenager

find human remains at a house once occupied by Peter Tobin.

The body and the personal effects have been identified as Vicky Hamilton,

who went missing in February, 1991,

from Bathgate in Scotland.

[Tom] I got a phone call to say, "You'll never guess...

We found Vicky."

I was surprised, but I was very pleased,

because at least, it was closure for the family.

It was not a mystery anymore.

[Graham] To think that Tobin would have transported Vicky's remains

hundreds and hundreds of miles from Bathgate to Margate,

to me, is astonishing.

[Tom] When you look at Tobin and you look at his method of operation,

this business of control is all-important.

And the best way to control the evidence is to take it with you.

It was very strange because we were looking for Dinah,

we'd hoped we'd find Dinah,

then all of a sudden, some other family has gone through the same situation

we'd been going through for however many years.

So for them, they'd found Vicky.

We still hadn't found Dinah,

but the police said, "We're going to carry on digging."

[♪ intriguing music playing]

[David] They kept digging through the night,

and they found Dinah in a grave nearby.

[reporter] Another awful discovery at Irvine Drive.

A body bag thought to contain the remains of Dinah McNicol.

[David] She had her hands tied behind her back.

She was raped. So was Vicky.

Tobin's DNA was all over these bodies.

His fingerprints were on the plastic sheetings,

so there was overwhelming evidence.

And to be able to find out

what happened to Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol all those years ago,

for me, was some sort of closure.

And for the families, at least they got their loved ones back.

[Ian McNicol] We can now put her to rest...

and grieve in our own time and--

Which is what we've really wanted for 16 years.

After the funeral, we took Dinah's ashes

to a small chapel on the Essex coast.

It's a spot that's very, sort of, special to us.

[dog barking]

We'd thought that we would never find her.

You know, 16 years is a long time.

I cannot fault the police in any way, shape or form.

The police have been superb.

Not every family gets to have the closure that we had.

But the thing with losing somebody when they're young is,

not so much the life they've lived, but the life they haven't lived.

Not being able to grow up into an adult,

the family that they would have had that they haven't had,

the fact they haven't met my daughters.

Dinah's life's been stolen, but it's also been stolen from our family.

Many times we thought this day would not come.

We are hoping we can now move on as a family

and start to remember Vicky as the loving sister she was

before she was so tragically and cruelly taken from us.

[David] In my 34 years in the police,

dealing with hundreds of murders,

for me, this is my proudest moment,

creating Operation Anagram

and getting justice for families.

[reporter] Peter Tobin, a convicted sex offender

and now a convicted murderer.

His anger overflowed as he was led from court this evening.

Tobin's reaction after he was convicted of the murder of Angelika Kluk,

where he kicked a camera man,

that showed what he was really about.

[Denis] His face was horrendous.

Evil.

Real evil.

[David] Peter Tobin was a serial killer.

He killed three people.

I'm convinced that Tobin has killed other people,

but we'll never know how many.

He's taken his secrets to the grave.