FOLLOWING the gruesome discovery of a second body in the garden of a house in Margate Kent, Essex Police are satisfied that it is the remains of 18-year-old Dinah McNicol. Dinah had been missing since August 5, 1991, after visiting a 'new age' music festival, which was held on land behind The Spaniard Inn in Bramshott Chase, just off the A3. The land then belonged to a Mrs Poland, who has since passed away. At the time local residents were outraged by the throbbing noise throughout the night which could be heard as far away as Haslemere. Dinah was last seen in Liphook on August 4, with a man she had befriended at the festival, before the pair hitched a ride with a man, in a car which has never been traced. The last sighting of Dinah McNicol alive was at junction 8 of the M25, near Reigate. After that she was never seen again until the remains of her body were discovered at a house, by police last week, which was formerly the home of 61-year old odd job man Peter Tobin. DNA results have now formally identified Dinah's body. Police have completed all excavations in the grounds, but will continue with their forensic examinations inside the house. Ian McNicol, Dinah's father, travelled earlier this week from his home in Tillingham, Essex, to the house at 50 Irvine Drive in Margate, 16 years after his daughter went missing, to finally put her memory to rest. Her father had no doubt that the body found was that of his daughter. When he emerged from the house, while police and forensic archaeologists continued to dig in the front garden, he walked slowly up the pavement, accompanied by a younger relative. "At last they've found her remains," he said, quietly. "I speak for the whole family when I say we can now put her to rest and grieve in our own time, which is what we've wanted to do for 16 years," McNicol said. He added, "I have been through death before. It just takes its normal process. But with a missing child and you don't know what's happened – that is 20 times worse. You can't grieve until you know." His wife, Dinah's mother, was killed in a car accident in 1980. Police forces right across the country are being asked to review their records for missing persons and unsolved cases "that match the profile of Peter Tobin", the handyman already charged with murdering 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton, the first teenager found at the Margate house.
