Peter Tobin Exposed in Book by Ex Wife
Cathy Wilson has written a book abut her life with serial killer Peter Tobin called Escape From Evil.
She was 16 when they met and 17 when they married. An excerpt has been released by The Sun and it looks like a horror movie come true.
I DON’T know if it was when Peter killed Daniel’s guinea pigs for nibbling the wallpaper that finally did it.
Or if it was the next time he body-checked me into the wall, or the time after that when he hit me across the dining room, then fell to his knees and begged forgiveness
All I know is that at some point I finally woke up.
I was depressed, I was bruised from his fists, I was lonely and, worst of all, I was scared to be in the same room as my own husband.
Following him into the bathroom, I said: “Peter, I’m not happy. I want a divorce.”
He smiled and nodded. Then his face changed. Without a word, he barged past me and ran across the landing to Daniel’s room.
He reappeared carrying our son. Holding a confused Daniel at arms’ length over the staircase, he said: “I’m only going to say this once. If you leave me, I will f***ing hunt you down and kill you. And then I’ll kill the kid.”
Screaming hysterically I said: “Okay, you win. I’ll stay. I promise.” He considered it for a second, nodded and swung Daniel over to me. Then he skipped downstairs as calmly as if he were being called for breakfast.
Everything got worse after that. I was under 24-hour surveillance. He confiscated my car and purse, so I couldn’t go out or do anything.
If he went out he locked every door and window and took my house keys, so I was a prisoner in my own home.
Daniel saw me thrown to the floor if Peter’s dinner was late, smacked across the mouth if I spoke out of turn and crushed under his weight against the wall if there was a single toy out of place.
One night I put Daniel to bed and did my usual thing of snuggling up next to him.
Usually I’d sleep through the night but this time I woke to hear voices downstairs, so I went to investigate. Peter was there with a slim, young blonde who he introduced as Lisa. I said: “What’s she doing here? It’s late.” Peter glared at me. “That’s none of your business. F*** off back to bed.”
I did as I was told, then heard the noises of Peter having sex — and a woman screaming.
A few nights later Lisa arrived before I’d put Daniel down. Peter told me to get rid of him and come back. When I came downstairs I froze in the doorway. They were already having sex. Peter saw me and said: “Come in and watch. You might learn something.”
She was squealing, begging him to stop, but he didn’t listen. I turned towards the stairs but Peter had other ideas. My gown and nightclothes were ripped off me and then it began. The more I cried and begged him to stop, the more he seemed to enjoy it. In the past Peter had always been quick to express his regrets, but a day or two after this latest attack I realized he hadn’t apologized.
Just 48 hours after raping me in my own lounge, it was as if he’d forgotten the whole episode.
Over the next weeks and months, there were several new faces in the house — sometimes Lisa, sometimes other girls my age or younger.
Sometimes I was forced to watch them, sometimes they were forced to watch me being subjected to Peter’s violent fantasies.
I began to plan my escape. I had my secret bag of 10ps, scrounged and found, and I had my plan. I just needed the opportunity.
Then one afternoon Peter told me: “I’m going to a car auction. I’ll be an hour and a half.”
And he forgot to lock the door. I flew round the house, grabbing clothes, toys, essentials — as much as I could stuff into a holdall.
Then I grabbed Daniel and ran as fast as I could to the bus stop. After a ride and a long walk we arrived at Glasgow’s coach station.
It was nine hours to London Victoria. Nine hours of staring out of the coach window, paranoid that every set of headlights overtaking us would be Peter’s van, dreading each pit stop in case he stepped on.
But Cathy’s escape succeeded, though Tobin soon contacted her via her grandparents in Portsmouth, Hants. Reluctantly she allowed him contact with his son — and he promptly abducted Daniel back to Bathgate. She flew north and had to agree to submit to Tobin’s perversions once more to lure him and Daniel back down south, where he set up home in Margate, Kent. Cathy continues:
At weekends Peter began to spend whole days with Daniel and me and when he offered to have him for sleepovers, I agreed. He even impressed me by making Daniel a sandpit in the garden.
Even so, it was a relief when Peter found a two-bedroom council flat in Leigh Park in Havant, Hants. He and I then split childcare duties and for a year it was fine.
Then he began phoning me in the middle of the night, claiming he was having a heart attack and had called an ambulance, and that I needed to collect Daniel.
The morning after the fourth time it happened, in 1993, I had a call from Havant police. Peter Tobin, they said, had lured two 14-year-old girls back to his flat, where he had plied them with cider and vodka then violently raped them.
I later learned they had knocked on his door and he had invited them in while they waited for a neighbour to return. He even suggested they could play with Daniel, which put them at ease. And so began 16 hours of torture.
Peter had beaten them, tied them up then turned on the gas and left them to die. He’d jumped in his blue Metro and driven away, just after handing my son over to me.
Fortunately, one of the girls had got free and called for help. Peter was found and jailed for 14 years.
He was freed in 2004, then in 2006 he was arrested for the murder of a young Polish girl called Angelika Kluk in Glasgow.
In November 2007 police found a dismembered body, this time under the sandpit in the garden of Peter’s old home in Margate. Yet again, he had used his son to put his victim at her ease.
DNA tests established the body was that of a young girl from Scotland, Vicky Hamilton, who had gone missing in the Bathgate area in February 1991.
Perhaps she normally wouldn’t have accepted a lift from a stranger but it was snowing and seeing the man’s young son next to him must have reassured her. If it was Daniel in the van, it must have been the weekend Peter had abducted him.
The police were confident he did not see anything happen between Peter and Vicky, but he must have been in the house with the girl’s dead body. And when I flew up on my rescue mission, so must I.
When police in Margate dug up Peter’s sandpit, it was in the hunt for young hitchhiker Dinah McNicol who, they concluded, had been picked up by Peter on the A3 out of Hampshire in August 1991.
The child’s booster seat in the back of the car would have pushed any fears out of the 18-year-old’s mind but she was not seen again until her body was dug up 16 years later in the same Margate garden.
It made me sick that Daniel and I were the reason Peter had been on the A3 that day.
Adapted by MARTIN PHILLIPS from Escape From Evil by Cathy Wilson with Jeff Hudson, published by Pan Macmillan. To order a copy for £6.64, call 0845 271 2136 or go to thesunbookshop.co.uk.
Even in this small excerpt you can see how he manipulated people and how important control is. This is common in serial killers not just Tobin. You can see how the people in his life are just there as tools, things to help him get what he wants.
I hope that Daniel is getting help, extensive counseling. I can only imagine the guilt, confusion and fear that has to have developed in him.
I have not read the book yet but I do plan on it.
Real Life Monsters 