The Hunt for Peter Tobin - Season 1

On a snowy night in winter 1991, 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton fails to arrive home. Her case becomes one of Scotland's biggest missing persons investigations. Posters of Vicky smiling in her school uniform appear nationwide, but her family are left distraught when no trace of Vicky can be found. In an emotional new interview, Vicky's sister Lindsay recalls her memories of that time and the horrendous strain it had upon her family. 

Several days after her disappearance, Vicky's purse is found near a bus station in Edinburgh, leading investigators to wonder whether she wants to be found at all. In the summer of the same year, 18-year-old Dinah McNicol disappears after hitchhiking home from a music festival in Kent, and her father turns to the National Missing Persons Helpline for help. The early 90s are a period of change for how missing people are investigated, and the new charity highlights the plight of Britain's missing people and their families. The programme also reveals that a video by American rock band Soul Asylum would also be used to help the search for both Dinah and Vicky. 

Kaye Adams, along with other journalists and TV presenters, describe how these cases of missing people started appearing on television programmes including popular 90s chat shows and Crimewatch, leading to wider public attention. Vicky and Dinah's missing persons investigations result in no real leads for over 15 years, until 23-year-old Angelika Kluk goes missing in Glasgow in 2006. At the time of her disappearance, the Polish student is living in the chapel house of a church in the city, where she has a summer job as a cleaner. After some days, her body is found hidden under the floorboards of the church, in a case which shocks Scotland. 

Forensic biologist Carol Rogers describes how she must crawl under the floorboards to collect vital DNA evidence from the bloody crime scene. Meanwhile, police search for the man Angelika was last seen with - a church handyman by the name of Patrick McLaughlin. 

The manhunt for Patrick McLaughlin becomes nationwide news, and he is tracked down to a hospital in London. We hear from the doctor who was treating Patrick when the police arrived at the scene. By then his true identity was known to the police - he was an on-the-run sex offender known as Peter Tobin. Tobin's arrest set in motion a remarkable series of events that lead to the horrifying suspicion that a serial killer had been roaming at large in the UK for decades. 

Part two of the documentary sees detectives close in on Peter Tobin. Following his arrest in connection with the murder of Angelika Kluk, Operation Anagram is launched. This covert investigation into Tobin's past aims to uncover whether he may be connected to other crimes. Overseen by detective superintendent David Swindle, the operation tracks down Tobin's ex-wives, and we hear about some of the horrific abuse that Tobin's first wife received at his hands. 

A picture develops of a serial domestic abuser who was never charged for his crimes. Sobering archive footage from the period reveals the extensive nature of domestic violence in the pre-1990s UK, which allowed dangerous men to persist within the perceived normality of violence against women. The groundbreaking Zero Tolerance campaign launches in Scotland, bringing the problem of domestic violence out of the shadows. 

In 2007, the murder of Angelika Kluk is a huge news story in Scotland. Salacious claims about her private life are splashed across the front pages, to the dismay of her family. Meanwhile, dogged detective work combined with DNA and fingerprint analysis uncovers dark secrets at Tobin's former residences. We hear from those closest to the story, including reporter Dave Cowan, who was at the scene when the true extent of Tobin's crimes becomes apparent. 

The man leading Operation Anagram, David Swindle, talks of the shock of discovering that Tobin lived in Bathgate in 1991 and that his house was only a few miles from where Vicky Hamilton had last been seen. With Tobin in jail and refusing to answer any questions about his life, the police begin to search his old home in Bathgate and his house in Margate. What would be discovered there would horrify the nation.