POLICE investigated allegations that schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton was sacrificed by a group of White Knights Templar.
The murder trial heard details today of the 16-year police investigation into her disappearance on the first day that Vicky's father, Michael Hamilton was in the High Court in Dundee listening to evidence.
He heard Detective Chief Inspector Keith
Anderson take jurors through the wide-ranging inquiry launched after the teenager vanished in 1991, and the subsequent police review of the case in 2006.
Peter Tobin, 62, denies abducting 15-year-old Vicky and drugging, indecently assaulting and murdering her.
He further denies concealing the body, cutting it up and burying the parts.
The court heard that a woman named Margaret Mulgrew told police that a man had admitted to killing Vicky.
Solicitor-general Frank Mulholland QC, prosecuting asked Mr Anderson whether the woman had made the claim to police.
Mr Anderson agreed that she had and that the claim had been part of a 2001 police inquiry involving 10 officers.
He said that Ms Mulgrew had made a number of allegations, including a claim that a Hugh Gunn told her he killed Vicky.
She said that he told her he had picked Vicky up in Bathgate, "whacked" her on the head, and then later buried her.
Mr Anderson also agreed that she told police Mr Gunn said he and a group of White Knights Templar sacrificed Vicky and cut her heart out while she was still alive, before burying her.
Mr Mulholland said: "Is there any evidence you are aware of that Vicky was sacrificed by a number of White Knights and her heart taken from her body?"
"No," replied Mr Anderson.
Mr Anderson then confirmed that an interview was carried out with Mr Gunn as well as an inquiry into his mental state.
Mr Mulholland said: "Was a report obtained from two psychiatrists who had been treating Mr Gunn for mental illness?"
"It was, yes," Mr Anderson said.
Donald Findlay QC, defending, later put it to the witness in cross-questioning: "What we have at this point in time, in terms of what Hugh Gunn is saying to Margaret Mulgrew, is an account which is, on the face of it, an admission by Hugh Gunn to being involved in the killing of Vicky Hamilton."
He continued: "Some of that admission is clearly bizarre.
"But there are other aspects of the things that he said which either, firstly, would appear to be true or at least potentially could be true."
The witness agreed.
Earlier Mr Anderson of Lothian and Borders Police, now retired, told the trial he was appointed as the senior investigating officer into the schoolgirl's disappearance when the case was looked at again in 2006.
He said in the initial inquiry in the months immediately after she vanished more than 6500 people were spoken to and just over 3000 statements were taken.
And he explained that a search of Bathgate and its surrounding area was widened as far afield as London and Aberdeen after Vicky's purse was found in Edinburgh city centre 11 days after she disappeared.
"It had quite a dramatic effect," he said of the purse find in the city's St Andrew Square.
He said officers looked into the possibility that Vicky had "moved on" from Edinburgh, given that the purse was discovered near the city's bus and railway stations.
The trial continues
The full article contains 575 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
