Neighbour: 'Women were terrified of Tobin'

Dec 3 2008 by Andrew Newport, Paisley Daily Express

A GRANDAD who spent his boyhood years living next door to vicious murderer Peter Tobin in Renfrew last night told how women were left petrified by the weirdo.

Danny Shearer, 51, lived in the same Maitland Place tenement as Tobin for almost a decade – and insists he wasn’t surprised when his former neighbour was yesterday found guilty of the brutal slaying of missing teenager Vicky Hamilton.

He told the Paisley Daily Express: “Nothing surprises me about Tobin. He was such a weirdo.

“From the moment I met him, I always knew he wasn’t right.”

Barbaric Tobin first came under suspicion for the murder of 15-year-old Vicky after he was jailed for life last year for another horrific rape and murder.

That time, his victim was Polish student Angelika Kluk.

Tobin bludgeoned her to death by smashing her skull with a table leg, before dragging her dead or dying body through a graveyard at the Glasgow church where he was working as a handyman and dumping it under floorboards.

After being convicted of Angelika’s murder, cops began looking at various unsolved cases up and down the country and were soon led to Tobin’s former home in Margate, Kent.

It wasn’t long before Vicky’s dismembered remains were recovered from the garden.

Now, after a month-long trial at the High Court in Dundee, he has been found guilty of abducting the schoolgirl in Bathgate, West Lothian, on February 10, 1991, before murdering her, chopping her in two and burying her remains.

Today, the Paisley Daily Express can reveal that neighbours who lived beside him in Maitland Place long held suspicions over the young Tobin.

His mother Marjory was Welsh but moved to Renfrew during the Second World War to bring up her young family of two girls and three boys.

Tobin was born at the former Thornhill Hospital in Johnstone in 1946 and spent much of his formative years in Maitland Place.

He attended St James Primary in Renfrew before going on to the old St Aelred’s High School in Paisley.

However, Mr Shearer says the young Tobin was never popular with local kids – and even claimed young girls in the area were too scared to go near him.

“I never had anything to do with him and the girls in the close were absolutely terrified of him,” said Mr Shearer. “There were three girls who lived above me who just wouldn’t go near him.

“Tobin used to hang around the back door of the close and do all sorts of things. I was a lot younger than he was but I always remember people saying how strange he was.

“He never had a lot of mates and was a loner-type. I don’t ever remember even playing football with him.

“In my opinion, there was always something queer about him. It seemed like there was an ulterior motive to whatever he was doing.

“He was always up to something and he was very sly and sleekit, even at that young age.”

That suspicious behaviour even led to conflict between Tobin and the Shearer family.

“My big brother John gave Tobin a couple of doings,” said Mr Shearer. “I remember Tobin sitting out in the back yard playing a guitar. He was always being sleekit and hiding places.

“On one occasion, he was being weird and my brother told him to keep away from the lassies in our close. Tobin just said something cheeky back to him, so my brother gave him a doing.”

Tobin left the family home for a stint in the armed services – but he wasn’t there long.

“We moved into Maitland Place in the early 60s and Peter was there for about 10 years but he left to join the Army and went to Hong Kong,” said Mr Shearer. “I was told that he was soon kicked out on a dishonourable discharge.”

Tobin is thought to have moved about the UK for several years before reappearing in Paisley about four years ago.

He is now likely to die behind bars but, yesterday, Mr Shearer’s thoughts were with Vicky’s devastated father Michael.

Janette Hamilton, Vicky’s mother, died in 1993 without ever discovering what happened to her beloved child.

Mr Shearer said: “When I first heard Tobin was being quizzed in connection with Vicky’s case, I was horrified. I was chilled to the bone.

“I have kids and grandkids of my own and I hate to think about the agony Vicky’s loved ones must have suffered for all those years, not knowing where she was or what had happened to her.

“This whole experience must have been so heartbreaking for them.

“If I was the judge, I’d forget about jail and just let Vicky’s father Michael have Tobin alone for a while in a room. Let him have his own vengeance.”