Police probe Tobin links to other murders

THE extent of Peter Tobin’s serial killings may never be known.

His nomadic lifestyle since the 1960s while his crimes went undetected have prompted police to trawl through scores of unresolved cases.

One intriguing clue made public by police yesterday is a collection of unclaimed women’s jewellery — pendants, broaches and necklace clasps — which Tobin kept at his home.

Detectives across Britain have been alerted to the likelihood that he could be behind many other crimes.

Over the past two years, police have attempted to pull together a detailed timeline of Tobin’s movements since leaving his hometown of Johnstone, Renfrewshire.

Before yesterday’s verdict, the 63-year-old had already been serving two life sentences for the murders of Vicky Hamilton, 15, and 23-year-old Polish student Angelika Kluk.

But privately officers in the operation, led by Sussex Police, say they would not be surprised if more killings came to light.

Robin Merrett, Assistant Chief Constable of Sussex Police, said the inquiry — which started in 2007 — would accelerate now the McNicol trial is over.

Cases detectives are believed to have examined include:

* The murders of three women in Glasgow in 1968 and 1969 — thought to have been victims of a mysterious figure nicknamed “Bible John”.

All three women were brunettes and all were wearing black dresses. They were assaulted and murdered after being picked up at the city’s Barrowlands dance hall.

Patricia Docker, 25, was killed in February 1968; Jemima McDonald, 32, was strangled in August 1969 and Helen Puttock, 29, was murdered in October 1969.

The killer earned his nickname after a taxi driver, who drove the murderer with his last victim, remembered him quoting the Bible.

Tobin was living in the city around this time. He would have been in his early 20s.

* Schoolgirls Karen Hadaway, 10, and Nicola Fellows, nine, were found strangled in Wild Park, Brighton, in October 1986.

Labourer Russell Bishop was charged with the murders but was acquitted after the prosecution admitted a series of errors in the presentation of forensic evidence at his trial in 1987.

Bishop was jailed for life in 1991 for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a seven-year-old girl from Brighton but has always denied killing Karen and Nicola.

Tobin lived in Brighton for 20 years from the late 1960s.

* Patsy Morris disappeared in London in 1980 aged 14. The teenager’s body was discovered in undergrowth on Hounslow Heath, south-west London, in mid-summer.

n* Art student Jessie Earl, 22, who disappeared from a bedsit in Eastbourne, East Sussex, in May 1980.

Her remains were found on a cliff near Beachy Head in 1989.

Police said they aimed to build a detailed picture of Tobin’s movements since the early 1960s in an attempt to establish whether he had killed anyone else.

Mr Merrett said one of his team’s first priorities was to trace the owners of jewellery found in Tobin’s possession, as officers released photographs of pendants, broaches and necklace clasps.