Glasgow Crime Stories: The arrest of Peter Tobin

It was Tuesday, September 26, 2006, and Polish holidaymaker Angelika Kluk hadn't been seen for more than 48 hours. 

It was a long enough period for Strathclyde Police to officially declare the 23-year-old a missing person. 

The bubbly languages student from Gdansk University had spent her summer working in Glasgow to fund her studies and had been staying at St Patrick's Church in the city's Anderston area since July. 

There she lived rent-free in a room in the chapel house in return for carrying out cleaning duties. 

Angelika was no stranger to Glasgow as it was her second summer vacationing in the city. 

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She had been due to return to university in Poland in early October and was last seen at around 2pm on the Sunday. 

Her anxious sister, Aneta, 28, who worked as a secretary in Glasgow, made a public appeal two days later for help in tracing her sibling. 

She said her father, family and friends were devastated by the disappearance. 

Posters featuring a picture of the missing student were put up across the city centre in shops and bars. 

What concerned police most was that all Angelika's most personal possessions had been left in her room at the church. 

They included her money, passport, clothes, laptop computer and flight tickets home. 

Her mobile phone had been switched off and all calls were being diverted to her voicemail. 

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Angela was described to police as a very conscientious and responsible person who would never disappear without informing friends and family. It seemed she had simply disappeared into thin air. 

However, the investigation took a dramatic turn towards the end of that same week. 

Detectives discovered that Angelika had spent part of the Sunday afternoon helping church handyman Pat McLaughlin paint a garage. 

However, McLaughlin had hidden his true identity from the trusting student and the parish priest. 

His real name was Peter Tobin who had been born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, in 1945 the youngest of eight siblings.  

He had four older sisters and three older brothers.  

Even as a child Tobin raised problems for the authorities and in 1953, aged seven, was sent to an approved school. 

Tobin later served time in a Borstal, a type of youth detention centre, and in 1970 was convicted and imprisoned in England for burglary and forgery. 

At one point as a young man he was said to have joined the French Foreign Legion but later deserted. 

In the late 1960's he moved to Brighton in the south of England  

There he married 17-year-old Margaret Mountney, a clerk and typist, in August 1969. 

A date that would later prove significant in another police murder inquiry. 

They separated after a year and she divorced him in 1971. In 1973 Tobin married a local nurse, 30-year-old Sylvia Jefferies.  

The couple had a son and a daughter, the latter dying soon after birth. This second marriage which was violent, lasted until 1976, when Sylvia left with their son.  

Tobin then had a relationship with a third woman Cathy Wilson. 

The couple married in 1987, with a son arriving later that year. 

Crucially in 1990, they moved to Bathgate, West Lothian. 

Wilson left Tobin that year and moved back to Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, where she had grown up. 

All three wives later gave similar accounts of falling for a charming, well-dressed psychopath who turned violent and displayed a sadistic streak during their marriages. In May 1991, Tobin moved to Margate, Kent, and, in 1993, to Havant, Hampshire, to be near his younger son. 

On August 4 1993, Tobin attacked two 14-year-old girls at his flat in Leigh Park, Havant, after they went to visit a neighbour who was not at home. 

They stopped at Tobin's flat and asked if they could wait there.  

After holding them at knife-point and forcing them to drink strong cider and vodka, Tobin sexually assaulted and raped the girls, stabbing one of them whilst his younger son was present. 

He then turned on the gas taps and left them for dead, but they both survived the attack.  

To avoid arrest, Tobin went into hiding and joined the Jesus Fellowship, a religious sect in Coventry, under a false name. He was later captured in Brighton after his blue Austin Metro car was found there. 

On May 18 1994, at Winchester Crown Court, Tobin entered a plea of guilty and received a fourteen-year prison sentence.  

After his release from prison in 2004 he moved to Paisley, not far from his hometown of Johnstone. 

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As Tobin was on the sex offenders'register he was supposed to keep the authorities up to date with his whereabouts. He initially checked in with police and notified them of two changes of address. 

But Tobin could not remain out of trouble for long. 

In October 2005 he was accused of attacking a 24-year-old woman with a knife in a flat in Brown Street, Paisley. 

The following month a warrant was issued for his arrest - but by this time he had gone to ground. No one knew where, particularly the police. Efforts were made to trace him but he seemed to have disappeared without trace. 

Less than a year later he would show up at St Patrick's with tragic consequences having adopted the Pat McLaughlin alias. 

Prior to Angelika's disappearance, Tobin had spent the previous six weeks working there as an unpaid handyman. 

Police spoke to him as part of the initial investigation, not realising his true identity or offending history. 

Tobin had been introduced to St Patrick's through the Loaves and Fishes street charity, which helped homeless people. 

He had volunteered to carry out some odd jobs and told volunteers he had been married and had three grown-up children. 

A few days after Angelika's disappearance detectives issued a photograph of Pat McLaughlin who was now on the run. 

They warned that he was a risk to the public and should not be approached. 

At the time Father Gerry Nugent, who was the priest at St Patrick's, spoke of the decision to hire Tobin. 

He said: "I thought by helping out around the church he was trying to make life better for himself. 

"He never asked for a penny, but I used to slip him a few bob for cigarettes now and then." 

The officer in charge of the investigation into Angelika's disappearance and the hunt for Tobin, Detective Superintendent David Swindle decided to carry out a second more detailed search of the church. 

On the Friday of that week Angelika's body was found hidden below a small wooden hatch in the floor of the church, close to the confessional. Her hands were tied and she was covered by a tarpaulin. 

She had suffered a "very violent death", with multiple stab wounds to the head and body. 

The hunt for Tobin was stepped up and he was discovered a few days later in a London hospital. 

When he was arrested he was wearing a T-shirt that had stains linking him to Angelika's murder. DNA found on the victim's body and fingerprints on the tarpaulin were also a positive match for him. 

One theory is that Tobin had hid her body with a view to taking it away at a later date and burying it. 

By this time a more detailed picture had also emerged of Tobin's background and history attacks on women. 

In March 2007 Tobin stood trial at the High Court in Edinburgh and found guilty six weeks later of raping and murdering Angelika. 

He was sentenced to life imprisonment, to serve a minimum of twenty-one years. 

During sentencing the trial Judge Lord Menzies told Tobin "In the course of my time in the law I have seen many bad men and I have heard evidence about many terrible crimes which have been committed but I have heard no case more tragic, more terrible than this one. 

"Any case of rape is serious. Any case of murder is serious. But what you did to Angelika Kluk was inhuman." 

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Angelika's sister shouted 'thank you' to the jurors after they delivered their verdict. 

In a statement released through Strathclyde Police, she later said: "My father and I are relieved that the man responsible for Angelika's death is now likely to spend the rest of his days behind bars. 

"We would both like to thank all of the Scottish public for their support during this horrific time." 

At the time Detective Supt Swindle praised Angelika's family for their handling of the ordeal adding: "I sincerely hope that they can now start to rebuild their lives and feel that justice has been done." 

In an unusual twist, the priest who had befriended both victim and killer was later given 100 hours city service after being found guilty of contempt of court when giving evidence at Tobin's trial. 

Father Nugent died in 2010 having resigned from his post at St Patrick's three years earlier. 

Following Tobin's arrest, Strathclyde Police launched Operation Anagram to trace his movements over the previous 40 years and his possible involvement in other unsolved murders. 

In June 2007, Tobin's old house in Bathgate was searched in connection with the disappearance of 15-year-old local schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton, who had gone missing on February 10, 1991. 

Another former home in Margate was searched and the bodies of Vicky Hamilton and a second missing woman Dinah McNicol found in the garden. 

In December 2008, Tobin was convicted of Vicky's murder at the High Court in Dundee where he was given a second life sentence. 

Dinah Nicol was just 18 when she was last seen on August 5, 1991, leaving a music festival in Liphook in Hampshire. 

She accepted a lift from Tobin and was never seen again. 

In December 2009 at Chelmsford Crown Court Tobin was found guilty of Dinah's murder and given a third life sentence. 

Tobin was now officially a serial killer. 

As part of their renewed inquiries, police were especially interested in tracing the owners of jewellery items found at his residences. Were they trophies of previous murders they wondered. 

One case Tobin has been linked to is the disappearance of 18-year-old Louise Kay from Beachy Head in Eastbourne in 1988. 

Louise was never seen again after telling a friend she was going to sleep in her car at Beachy Head after a night out.  

Operation Anagram established that Tobin was working in a hotel in Eastbourne at the time she disappeared, and learned that he was selling a small hand-painted car after she vanished. 

This was notable as Louise disappeared from her small Ford Fiesta car which had a distinctive gold colour with a white door, and this car has never been recovered or seen again since. 

Tobin had a history working with dealing cars for an auction company, and also had links to scrapyards. 

It is thought Tobin could have re-painted Louise's car and then sold it on to hide his crime. 

Louise had met a mysterious 'Scottish man' shortly before she disappeared, and it was known that he had given her money for petrol for her car. 

Another unsolved case that was linked to Tobin by Operation Anagram was the murder of 22-year-old Jessie Earl in 1980 

Jessie had also disappeared from Eastbourne, and her remains were found in 1989 concealed in dense shrubland on Beachy Head, the same place Louise Kay had vanished from in 1988.  

Her own bra had been tied around her hands to restrain her. 

As with Kay, Tobin was living in the area at the time of her murder. 

Though he was never charged it is believed that that Jessie was a likely victim of Tobin. 

Tobin was also investigated over the unsolved 1971 murder of Dorothea Meechan by the Operation Anagram team 

The 37-year-old was found strangled and dumped in bushes in Renfrew, close to where Tobin lived at the time, and former neighbours in the area were interviewed by police. 

Richard Coubrough was convicted of killing Dorothea but always protested his innocence 

He was freed in 2008 on bail pending an appeal against conviction but died before it was heard. 

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In 2010 Operation Anagram had narrowed their investigation down to nine unsolved murders and disappearances. 

It was wound down in June 2011, having failed to identify any more victims. 

Tobin is currently in Saughton Prison in Edinburgh where he is said to be reclusive and rarely ventures out of his cell. 

Over the years there have been claims the 74-year-old is also the notoriously elusive killer dubbed Bible John said to have murdered three young women in Glasgow in 1968 and 1969. 

The link began to be made after he was convicted of Angelika Kluk's murder. 

Patricia Docker,  25, Jemima McDonald, 32, and Helen Puttock, 29, were all killed after spending the evening in the Barrowand Ballroom in Glasgow then meeting a stranger who took them home. 

All three were found murdered close to their homes in Glasgow. 

Patricia in Langside in February, 1968, Patricia in Bridgeton n August 1968 and Helen two months later in Scotstoun 

After Angelika's conviction women came forward to say they met Tobin in the ballroom before the murders.  

There are similarities between photographs of Tobin and a photofit issued by police at the time. 

There are also similarities with the three unsolved murders and others that he has been convicted of.  

Tobin would also have been in his mid 20's, the right age group for the killer.  

The Bible John tag stems from the evidence of Jeannie Langford, who was the third victim's older sister. 

She shared a taxi with the suspect and her sister from the Barrowland Ballroom to their homes in Scotstoun. 

They had all met there earlier that evening and agreed to share a taxi home. 

During the journey the suspect made a number of Biblical references. 

A false name the stranger gave to both women in the taxi was similar to a pseudonym used by Tobin. 

Retired police chief Joe Jackson worked on the Patricia Docker case as a young detective and was later called into the Helen Puttock investigation.  

By this time a linked inquiry had been set up at Partick Police Office in Glasgow to look at both murders and that of Jemima McDonald 

Mr Jackson, now 81, immediately suspected Tobin after he was arrested for Angelika Kluk's killing at St Patricks Church. 

Mr Jackson who retired in 1992 at the rank of Detective Supt and also brought serial killer Angus Sinclair to justice, said: "After I saw his photograph for the first time, I thought, 'This is as near to Bible John as you are going to get'."  

Respected criminologist Professor David Wilson has said in the past that he strongly believes Peter Tobin is Bible John. 

The Scot first became interested in Tobin after he was convicted of murdering Angelika.  

In an interview in 2019, the academic said: "Peter Tobin absolutely killed some of the women in the Bible John sequence. 

"The only doubt is if he killed all three."  

In the summer of 2021 one newspaper reported comments from an unnamed prisoner at Saughton Prison who claimed that Tobin had told him that he was not Bible John, though he admitted killing other women. 

However, there is no doubt that Tobin claimed more victims. 

He has reportedly boasted to fellow prisoners over the years of having murdered between 10 and 48 women, 

However, Mr Swindle, who spent 34 years with Strathclyde police, told the recent BBC Scotland documentary The Hunt for Bible John that he found no connection between Tobin and the three murders during Operation Anagram. 

He added: "Victims deserve answers. We researched any potential links between Peter Tobin and the so-called Bible John. Peter Tobin, for the first two murders, was in Brighton. 

"He got married in Brighton on August 6, 1969, ten days before the murder of Jemima MacDonald.  

"The artist's impression that was compiled shows the suspect had red hair. We had photographs of Peter Tobin in the Sixties and Tobin's hair is not like that. 

"There was DNA found on Helen Puttock's tights. One thing for sure is that DNA is not Peter Tobin's, because Peter Tobin's profile has been compared against it.  

"There is nothing to indicate that Peter Tobin was involved in these cases."