POLICE investigating the life of serial killer Peter Tobin have began searching the gardens of two properties, it has emerged.

The 63-year-old was told last December he would die in jail after he was convicted of killing Dinah McNicol, 18, of Tillingham near Maldon.

The former church handyman is also serving life for the murders of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton and Angelika Kluk, 23.

Detectives said information led them to Brighton where they are searching back gardens of housing association flats at in Marine Parade and two beauty shops with a flat above Station Road.

Specialist search teams arrived at the addresses where the triple murderer lived during the late 1980s.

Officers have been using ground penetrating radar to discover if any bodies or evidence may be buried at the homes.

Yesterday, Dinah’s father Ian, who still lives in Tillingham, said he had accepted Tobin would never tell him exactly what happened to Dinah.

He said: “I don’t think he will ever tell, he will take it to the grave with him because he is evil. I’m not going to ask him because I don’t think he will tell me.

“It’s not only the victims he made suffer but all the families of the victims.

The search is part of a nationwide investigation, dubbed Anagram, to see if Tobin is responsible for any more murders.

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.

A spokesman 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.

Miss McNicol vanished in August 1991 while hitchhiking to her home in Tillingham 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 Miss Kluk, a Polish student staying at a room in a Glasgow church, the previous year.