Peter Tobin

The subject today is that of Scottish serial killer Peter Tobin, killer of three known victims.  The question being asked by Professor David Wilson, criminologist at Birmingham University, is that have serial killers committed more murders than they have been convicted for.  Prof. Wilson has written a book about his conviction that the unsolved Glasgow murders attributed to "Bible John" were in fact, committed by a young Tobin.

    Tobin is alleged to have told his prison psychiatrist that he had committed forty eight murders during his life.  Whether this is true or not, would require a massive amount of detailed research by the Police into the life of Peter Tobin.  I believe that Tobin has committed many more serious offences than is credited to him.  He has a very serious issue with women standing up to him.  Plus, his violence and sadism has no boundaries.

    Prof. Wilson had highlighted the case of Jessie Earl, a Brighton girl who vanished in 1980, and whose skeleton was found, purely by chance, in 1989. The body was found deep in a copse.  Prof. Wilson established through his own investigation, that Tobin was living in the area at the the time Jessie disappeared.  She also fitted the criteria of what Tobins` later victims were, in looks and physical shape.  She had her hands bound with her brasserie.  Yet, astonishingly, this was not labelled a homicide by the Brighton Police, at the time.  It was only years later that it was reopened, but all the evidence had been destroyed.  God knows what people must think when they find a corpse, bound, and carefully hidden in a copse.  Obviously, it was a case of suicide or a natural death!!!

   Prof. Wilson presented his findings to his students, and one who was not convinced was a serving Police Officer.  He believed that the MO did not fit Tobin, in that the killer used a bra as a bind, and the body was not buried.  He did not consider that a bra can be a very handy tourniquet or bind, and that although the body was not buried, it was not discovered for NINE years, and only then, it was by sheer luck.  In that respect, it was as good as burial, and in retrospect, it remained hidden longer than the victims that Tobin buried in his Margate garden.