20/20 Britain's Most Notorious Crime Investigations (2026) s01e04 Episode Script

1
[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 fg road
if you had one leg
and a fg 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 fk
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.