LONDON - Police investigating whether a convicted sex killer might be responsible for a series of unsolved murders say they have identified a body found at a house in Kent.
Lothian and Borders Police said the remains were those of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton, who disappeared from Bathgate, West
Lothian, in 1991.
The identification came as part of a nationwide police investigation into jailed sex killer Peter Tobin.
Newspaper reports said he is suspected of murdering up to 11 girls.
Police said an unnamed man had been arrested and charged with Hamilton's disappearance in July.
Media reports said the house in Margate where the remains were found once belonged to Tobin, a 61-year-old handyman who was jailed in May for the rape and murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk. Her body was found under the floor of a Glasgow church.
Assistant Chief Constable of Hampshire Police Steve Watts is conducting a "scoping exercise" on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers homicide working group looking into Tobin's movements.
"He's written to all 43 police forces in England and Wales asking them to assist in that piece of work," a Hampshire Police spokeswoman said.
"So police forces are basically looking through their outstanding cases and seeing if there is any reason amongst them to be concerned with those in relation to Peter Tobin."
Detectives had been investigating whether the remains found at the house were those of another teenager, Dinah McNicol.
She was 18 when she vanished after failing to return to her home in Essex after a music festival in Liphook in Hampshire, in the summer of 1991.
She was last seen hitching a lift with a man on the M25 motorway. Neither the driver nor the car has ever been traced.
Essex Police said they would continue searching the house for another week.
"I do not intend to leave the house until I am fully satisfied that there are not any other human remains at the site," said Detective Superintendent Tim Wills.
-REUTERS
