The mystery of Dinah McNicol’s disappearance after a music festival in Liphook in 1991 was finally solved through a police investigation that linked her murder to serial killer Peter Tobin, a new BBC documentary has revealed.

Dinah, 18, was last seen hitchhiking home to Essex after attending the Torpedo Town festival in Liphook. For 16 years, her father, Ian McNicol, endured the agony of not knowing what had happened to her. When police discovered a second body behind a house previously occupied by Tobin in 2007, Ian crossed his fingers and said he hoped it was Dinah – so his family could finally have answers.

The BBC documentary The Hunt for Peter Tobin details how the murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk in Glasgow in 2006 led police to uncover Tobin’s violent past. A convicted sex offender, Tobin had been on the run when he attacked Angelika, hiding her body beneath a church floor. The brutality of the crime led detectives to suspect he had killed before.

Strathclyde Police launched Operation Anagram, a nationwide effort to connect Tobin to other unsolved cases. They soon realised he had lived in Bathgate, Scotland, when 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton went missing in 1991. A renewed forensic search found DNA evidence linking Tobin to Vicky’s disappearance, and in June 2007, police discovered a knife with Vicky’s DNA hidden in the attic of his former home.

The operation then connected Tobin to Dinah, whose cash card had been used in towns across south-east England after her disappearance. Police established that Tobin had been living in Margate at the time. Neighbours recalled “Scottish Pete” digging a deep hole in his garden around that period. When officers searched the property at 50 Irvine Drive in November 2007, they found Vicky’s remains – 15 years after she vanished.

Ian McNicol, who had spent years speaking to reporters in the hope of keeping his daughter’s case alive, was being interviewed when news broke that police had found a second body.

He told the BBC: “Please be Dinah and get us out of this misery.”

Hours later, police confirmed that the remains were his daughter’s.

Tobin had killed Vicky in Scotland, dismembered her body, and transported the remains 470 miles to Margate when he moved house. It is believed he murdered Dinah soon after picking her up near Liphook and buried her in his garden.

Vicky’s sister Lindsay Brown described the devastating impact of her disappearance on their family. Their mother, Jeanette, died just two years later, which relatives believe was from a broken heart.

Tobin was convicted of Vicky and Dinah’s murders, as well as Angelika’s, and was serving three life sentences when he died in 2022. The detectives investigating Tobin's past were certain he had other victims. They did all they could to find answers for other families, to no avail – Tobin took his secrets to the grave. No one came forward to claim his body, and his ashes were scattered at sea.

For Ian McNicol, knowing the truth about his daughter’s fate brought him some peace. He passed away in 2014.