VICKY Hamilton's disappearance 17 years ago sparked one of Scotland's biggest missing person investigations.
A massive police hunt was launched for the 15-year-old schoolgirl, who was last seen eating chips at a bus stop in Bathgate, West Lothian, on February 10 1991.
The teenager was making her way back to her home in Redding, Falkirk, after spending the weekend with her sister in Livingston.
More than 7,000 potential witnesses were interviewed, 12,000 documents were seized and examined and 4,000 witness statements were taken as detectives tried to piece together what had happened to Vicky, but for years their inquiries failed to produce any major leads.
Ultimately it would be a high-profile case involving the brutal murder of another young woman which would give police the breakthrough they had been waiting for, resulting in the conviction of Vicky's killer, Peter Tobin.
A search of the itinerant drifter's former home in England would unearth the schoolgirl's remains buried in black bin liners in the back garden.
After the grim find, police and prosecutors would use a combination of forensic and circumstantial evidence to bring the case against the former handyman.
And, in a bizarre twist, it would be DNA belonging to Tobin's son which would eventually help convict him of the chilling crime.
Today's verdict brings to a close an exhaustive and lengthy inquiry, which at its height involved more than 30 police officers.
In the immediate weeks after Vicky's disappearance, detectives from Lothian and Borders and Central Scotland Police travelled as far afield as London and Aberdeen to chase up reported sightings.
The investigation team explored theories that Vicky had run away either within Britain or abroad. However this seemed unlikely, as she had only £20 in her bank account when she went missing.
Officers also checked with the Department of Work and Pensions, the General Registrar, the NHS, Inland Revenue, DVLA and Passport Agency. for any trace of the teenager, but all searches drew a blank.
On February 21 1991, Vicky's purse was found under a portable cabin near St Andrew Square bus station in Edinburgh.
Thanks to forensic advances in DNA profiling, this would later become a crucial piece of evidence.
Vicky's case featured on the BBC's Crimewatch programme, but by the summer of 1991 the circumstances of her disappearance remained a mystery and the investigation was scaled down.
Despite this the case files remained open, and on the first anniversary of the schoolgirl's disappearance police staged a reconstruction of her last movements.
More than a decade later, in 2006, Lothian and Borders Police announced a full review of the case and revealed it was now conducting a murder inquiry.
Detectives said they believed the schoolgirl had been abducted and killed and they hoped DNA tests on her purse would help snare the person responsible.
By this time – more than 15 years after Vicky was last seen – Peter Tobin had come to the attention of the inquiry team.
In May 2007 Tobin stood accused of murdering Polish student Angelika Kluk at a Glasgow church – a crime for which he was later
convicted and jailed for 21 years.
During his trial at the High Court in Edinburgh it emerged the 62-year-old – who raped and stabbed Angelika before burying her below church floorboards – had lived in Bathgate in 1991.
While gathering information for the Kluk case in 2006, Strathclyde Police officers made the potential link between Tobin and Vicky.
They passed the information on to Lothian and Borders Police and when detectives delved further into Tobin's past they discovered he had resided less than a mile from where the teenager was last seen alive.
In June 2007 officers began searching Tobin's former home in the town's Robertson Avenue.
Speaking at the time, Vicky's father, Michael Hamilton, said: "I'm coping okay, but this is getting frightening for me in a way that I'm hoping she is still alive but I don't know how I'm going to feel if they find her in the garden.
"It will be a disaster for me."
During the operation the house was stripped down to a bare shell, with wallpaper and floor coverings removed.
Police brought in a specially trained dog which could detect decades-old traces of blood.
Specialist radar equipment was used to assist in their search of the house and garden and police divers scoured a large pond nearby.
It was while carrying out a search of the loft that a knife was discovered.
This was found to bear a partial DNA profile which matched Vicky's.
The chances of the DNA coming from someone other than, and unrelated to, the 15-year-old, were one in more than a billion.
Meanwhile, tests on Vicky's purse found it was covered in the DNA of Tobin's son Daniel, who was a toddler in 1991.
Police believed that Daniel, who lived with Tobin's estranged wife Cathy Wilson in Portsmouth and was a toddler at the time of the schoolgirl's disappearance, had been in Tobin's custody in Scotland around the time Vicky went missing.
In July 2007 Tobin was cautioned at a police station in the north of Scotland.
Tobin, who would later be formally charged with Vicky's murder, told officers to "p*** off" when he was detained.
Casting the net wider, investigators now decided to examine any property connected to Tobin.
In October the inquiry moved to England and police searched a house in the Southsea area of Portsmouth.
The breakthrough detectives had been hoping for came in November 2007 during a search of 50 Irvine Drive in Margate, Kent, where Tobin had
also lived in 1991.
A body was discovered wrapped in black bin bags in a makeshift grave in the garden.
Fingerprints belonging to Tobin were found on one of the bags used to wrap the body.
It was later confirmed that they belonged to Vicky.
Post-mortem examination results revealed traces of amitriptyline in the schoolgirl's remains.
It would emerge in court that Tobin had been prescribed the anti-depressive, which has sedative side effects, before her disappearance.
On November 15 there were emotional and angry scenes outside Linlithgow Sheriff Court in West Lothian as Tobin was formally charged with Vicky's murder.
The conclusion of Tobin's trial brings to an end one of the longest-running investigations in Scottish legal history.
