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Second body found at house

Pa
Friday 16 November 2007 10:21 EST

Police searching the former home of the man charged with murdering schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton discovered a second body today.

The remains were found at the house where handyman Peter Tobin once lived in Margate, Kent.

Police discovered Vicky's body in the garden of the property on Monday but they continued the search for another missing teenager, Dinah McNicol.

Detective Superintendent Tim Wills from Essex Police said the girl's family have been told of today's find and post mortem tests will now be carried out on the remains.

An Essex Police spokeswoman said: "There has been a significant development at the site in Margate. Further human remains have been discovered and a post mortem is being arranged.

"The McNicol family have been informed but there is no indication at this stage of the identity of the remains."

Tobin, 61, appeared at Linlithgow Sheriff Court yesterday charged with Vicky's murder.

The discovery came after police resumed their painstaking search of Tobin's former home this morning.

Around two-thirds of the groundwork had already been completed and today the patio was being lifted and the ground underneath excavated, Essex Police said.

Areas of concrete floor inside the house were also being drilled and any abnormalities or other areas shown up by radar were being examined, a spokeswoman said.

Vicky was 15 when she disappeared 16 years ago in Bathgate, West Lothian, close to where Tobin was living at the time.

She was last seen alive in February 1991, eating a bag of chips at a bus stop while waiting for a bus to take her to her home in Redding, near Falkirk in Scotland.

The disappearance sparked one of Scotland's biggest missing person inquiries and the case was reopened last November as a murder investigation.

Her mother Janette died in 1993 without knowing her daughter's fate.

After finding Vicky's remains, police pledged to carry on the search of the house until they were sure there were no other remains inside.

They said the remains of Ms McNicol could still be inside.

The 18-year-old vanished 16 years ago after attending a music festival in Liphook, Hampshire.

Police said she was last seen alone in a car with an unknown man on the M25 in Surrey. They think she hitched a lift after leaving the festival.

Dinah's father Ian McNicol, 68, of Tillingham, Essex, said after the discovery of the first body that he thought his daughter could still be at the house.

He said: "I know the police have said it's not Dinah's remains they found, but I still think she could be there.

"They are going to continue to rip up the garden. It won't be the end of the search.

Detectives reopened their inquiry into Ms McNicol's death last week after information led them to the Margate house.

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