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Peter Tobin Is Found Guilty of Murdering 15-Year-Old Vicky Hamilton, Who Vanished in Bathgate in 1991

A jury at the High Court in Dundee was unanimous. Tobin, already serving life for murdering Angelika Kluk, was ordered to serve at least 30 years.

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Illustration of a group of people and a van on a steep cobbled street of stone buildings in a Scottish city. Not an actual scene from the case.

Vicky Hamilton, 15, vanished on the evening of February 10, 1991, while waiting in Bathgate, West Lothian, for a bus home to Redding, near Falkirk. On December 2, 2008, Peter Tobin, 62, was found guilty of abducting and murdering her.

The jury at the High Court in Dundee reached a unanimous verdict after a month-long trial, and Tobin was jailed for life with a minimum of 30 years. Judge Lord Emslie called him "unfit to live in a decent society." Prosecutor Frank Mulholland QC, Scotland's solicitor general, described the murder as "a barbaric act." Vicky's remains had been found in a shallow grave in the garden of Tobin's former home in Margate, Kent. The jury heard that DNA matching the profile of Tobin's son was found on her purse, which turned up in Edinburgh 11 days after she vanished, and that a knife bearing a piece of her skin was found in the loft of his former home in Bathgate.

Tobin was already serving life for the 2006 rape and murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk in a Glasgow church. After the verdict, police forces across Britain said they were re-examining unsolved cases in light of his conviction. Tobin lodged a notice of intention to appeal in December 2008 but did not file grounds, and the appeal against conviction lapsed in March 2009.

InTheNews reported that Tobin was sentenced at "Dundee crown court," while The Herald reported that he was convicted at the High Court in Dundee.

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