Police investigating the life of serial killer Peter Tobin began searching the gardens of two properties today.
Specialist search teams arrived at addresses in Brighton where the triple murderer lived during the late 1980s.
Officers were using ground penetrating radar to discover if any bodies or evidence may be buried at the homes.
The search is part of a nationwide investigation, dubbed Anagram, to see if Tobin is responsible for any more murders.
Tobin (63), was told last December he would die in jail after he was convicted of strangling 18-year-old Dinah McNicol. The former church handyman was already serving life terms for the murders of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton and Angelika Kluk (23).
Tobin lived in Brighton for 20 years from the late 1960s, including in an eight-bedroom house with a patio garden in Dyke Road. Detectives said information led them to search the back gardens of housing association flats at Marine Parade and two beauty shops with a flat above at Station Road, Portslade.
They brought in members of the Home Office’s scientific support branch and officers from the Metropolitan Police. They were supported by experts from Sussex Police and archaeologists from University College London.
Detective Chief Inspector Nick Sloan, of Sussex Police, said officers must “satisfy themselves” that no crimes were committed at either property. “It does appear that Tobin was fairly active at those addresses at those times. As long as there are lines of inquiry, we will continue,” he said. “We have to consider the families of those who may have been one of his victims and it is imperative that they find closure. We will strive to achieve this.”
Police said substantial excavation would only take place if further evidence emerged that something may be buried in the gardens.
Police have vowed to leave “no stone unturned” as they launched the operation into Tobin’s past.
Detectives discovered the remains of Ms Hamilton and Ms McNicol buried in the garden of a house in Margate, Kent, where Tobin moved to in March 1991.
Ms McNicol vanished in August 1991 while hitchhiking to her home in Tillingham, Essex, after leaving a music festival in Liphook, Hampshire. Six months earlier, Vicky Hamilton disappeared while waiting for a bus close to Tobin’s then home in Bathgate, near Edinburgh.
In 2007, Tobin was convicted of killing Ms Kluk, a Polish student staying at a room in a Glasgow church, the previous year.
Police responsible for the Anagram inquiry are believed to have narrowed down their review of unsolved murders and disappearances linked to Tobin to nine cases.
These may include the murders of art student Jessie Earl (22), whose body was found in 1989, and Louise Kay (18), who disappeared in Eastbourne in 1989. Her body has never been found.
There are several other possible cases including law student Pamela Exall (22), who vanished in Norfolk in 1974, schoolgirl Patricia Morris (14), who went missing in Essex in 1980, and Suzanne Lawrence (14), last seen in Essex in 1979.
Other cases include the murders of three women in Glasgow in 1968 and 1969 and the deaths of schoolgirls Karen Hadaway (10), and Nicola Fellows, nine, in Brighton in October 1986.
Detectives attempted to speak to Tobin in prison about the latest developments but he refused to talk to them and they remain keen to unravel further details of his life, particularly where he lived in 1977 and 1978.
Police said Tobin used several aliases, mostly variations of the same name, during around two decades in Brighton from 1969 when he lived at homes in Dyke Road, Regency Square, Eastern Street and Chadborn Close.
The serial killer has lived in several other towns and cities, including Glasgow, Margate, Kent, and Havant, Hampshire. Police said he may have owned more than 100 vehicles and used 40 aliases.
PA