The Record’s new online series looks at Scotland’s Murder Homes and the cases behind the headlines that shocked the nation.
12:14, 13 Mar 2026
In 1991 Vicky Hamilton disappeared from a bus stop in Bathgate after a weekend with her sister in Livingston. The 15-year-old was travelling back to her mum’s house in Stirlingshire. Despite a huge inquiry and appeals by her distraught family no trace of the teenager was found.
Vicky Hamilton(Image: PA)
Unknown to Police Scotland, serial killer Peter Tobin was living in a house in Bathgate 10 miles away with his new bride and baby. Tobin, a violent sex offender, had moved into the unassuming semi-detached home on Robertson Avenue in the quiet West Lothian town.
Serial killer Peter Tobin(Image: PA)
It was there he murdered the teenager and buried her body in the garden.
Six weeks after Vicky disappeared, he moved to Kent, through a council house mutual exchange scheme. But a suspicious neighbour had spotted him digging a large hole in his back garden. Tobin claimed it was a sandpit for his son Daniel.
More than 15 years passed and by then Tobin had been released from prison after raping two teenage girls. On 24 September, 2006, he raped and murdered Angelika Kluk, 23, and hid her body under the floor of St Patrick’s Church in Glasgow.
Angelika Kluk(Image: PA)
On the run, Tobin was recognised in a hospital in London, and police were called in to make their arrest. The killer, aged 60, was sentenced to a minimum of 21 years in prison for the murder of Angelika. But the Lothian and Borders cold case team began to review missing person Vicky Hamilton after Tobin’s Bathgate links were pointed out.
The murder of Angelika was so ghoulish, detectives believed he must have killed before.
Strathclyde Police launched Operation Anagram, a nation wide investigation trying to link Tobin to unsolved cases around the UK.
In June 2007, his former Bathgate home was raided and the quiet residential street suddenly became national news. Inside they found a knife in the attic which bore traces of Vicky’s DNA.
New pictures reveal the forensic dig at Peter Tobin’s Bathgate home.
Copyright: Peter Faulding/Specialist Group International
Tobin�s house in Bathgate.
Pic 2 is the signature that shows Vicky�s body had been in the ground
Basement pic is his house in Portsmouth
FREE TO USE – UGC MSNR
CSI Peter Faulting, who was brought in to comb the home, found a large rockery that eventually revealed Vicky had been buried there before being moved by Tobin.
Peter said: “The first thing that caught my eye was the huge rockery in the back garden. It was an unusual feature. We removed it and police brought the cadaver dogs in.
“Twice they reacted to the ground underneath the rockery.
“Our radar had shown the ground had been disturbed. We excavated the whole garden and suspected Vicky had been placed under there for a number of months before being moved.”
A search began of his former property in Kent, and Vicky Hamilton’s remains were discovered under a concrete patio. Tobin had killed her in Bathgate, dismembered her body and taken her remains with him to England.
The body of 18-year-old Dinah McNicol was also found buried there.
Tobin was convicted of both of their murders. He died aged 76 chained to a hospital bed in Edinburgh, on October 8, 2022– three years after being diagnosed with cancer.
His ashes were never claimed and were later scattered at sea.
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