Tobin victims search to resume

Police searching for victims of serial killer Peter Tobin will resume their hunt for clues at one of his former seaside homes next week.

Teams of officers and forensic archaeologists are taking a break this weekend from scouring the property at Marine Parade in Brighton, East Sussex.

Police scene guards will remain there until the teams return at 8am on Monday as detectives said the break would allow residents some respite from the operation.

It began last Monday, with a search at a second nearby property in Station Road, Portslade, where 63-year-old Scots handyman Tobin lived in the late 1980s.

It is believed he claimed more victims as he lived across Britain under different names and trawled the motorways for vulnerable female hitch-hikers.

Sussex Police detectives said the search teams analysed "literally every shovel full of earth or concrete" from the Portslade address during their nine days there.

Ground-penetrating radar was used to map out any unusual fluctuations in the ground within the garden and the property itself.

And officers using space harnesses braved precarious conditions to investigate a Victorian well in the garden which was excavated to a depth of 10ft.

A Victorian soak-away was also discovered in the basement of the property, but police announced the property was "unconnected to any criminality linked to Peter Tobin".

Tobin is serving three life sentences for killing Angelika Kluk, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol.

Due to illness, he missed another appearance at the Court of Appeal in Edinburgh this week to challenge his sentence for killing Vicky.

He was told last December he would die in jail after he was convicted of strangling 18-year-old Miss McNicol.

Tobin was already serving life terms for the murders of 15-year-old Vicky and Ms Kluk, 23.