Church Where Evil Came to Stay, Evening Times, December 3, 2008

Church Where Evil Came to Stay

Evening Times

December 3, 2008

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/display.var.2472405.0.church_where_evil_came_to_stay.php

IN September 2006, Peter Tobin's evil deeds thrust the Roman Catholic parish of St Patrick's in Anderston into the national spotlight in the most horrific way.

The body of Polish student Angelika Kluk was found - bound and gagged - in an underground chamber close to the confessional box.

She'd been raped and brutally murdered by Tobin who, posing as handyman Pat McLaughlin, had been welcomed with open arms by the church community.

The murder of Angelika Kluk stunned the church

A sense of shock and disbelief set in; Angelika had been a popular addition to the life of the church since her arrival from Poland that summer.

Many who attended Mass in the red sandstone chapel felt their place of worship had been violated in the most shocking way. But incredibly, worse was to come.

During Tobin's trial last year, it emerged that their parish priest Father Gerry Nugent had been an alcoholic who said had conducted a sexual affair with Angelika.

She had also taken a married lover, 40-year old Martin Macaskill.

The heart was knocked out of the parish. The chapel was closed for almost a year and Father Nugent resigned after being convicted of contempt of court.

FATHER NUGENT said he had an affair with Angelika

But a sense of "normality" has now returned.

Canon Robert Hill, drafted in as the new parish priest, said a "healing process" had taken place to allow church members to come to terms with what had happened.

He said: "Every single day, although people are not named, we pray for the living and the dead.

"It is right that Angelika, as someone who played a significant part in the life of the parish, is remembered. We remember the anniversary only in the sense that we remember all people round about the time of their death."There are many people who have died in different ways and painful circumstances. One death is as tragic as another."

Canon Hill said there was no way the church could ever forget the gruesome events of two years ago, and no attempt had been made to airbrush them from the parish history.

But he said Angelika's sister, Aneta, let it be known she did not want to retain a connection with the church - and that had been respected.

He added: "I would stress we are not trying to move away from the past.

"What we are doing is taking what we have experienced, living with it and moving forward. You will never forget it happened, never forget the people - but life goes on.

"That is exactly what is happening here. We have managed to re-establish parish life and have a healthy number of people inquiring about becoming church members."

When Canon Hill, who is also priest at St Charles Parish in North Kelvinside, was appointed to St Patrick's, he found a congregation with no church and still in shock.

He added: "There was a fear that the church being closed meant it would not open again.

St Patrick's, Anderston

"Initially, what we were trying to do was see as many people as possible and reassure them because they were all going to different parishes.

"It was a question of me reassuring them that their church would reopen and dealing with the fear that came up.

"Nobody had any experience before - thankfully - of reopening a church under those circumstances.

"Technically the church was not desecrated. The murder had happened outside the church property, so it was not a re- consecration ceremony.

"We had a three-day period of prayer followed by the opening on August 26, 2007.

"The theme was one of healing, hope and trying to move forward."

The church is now well on the way to recovering from the trauma, and there are Sunday morning congregations of between 150 and 170.

Canon Hill said: "A large number of the local people have now come back and it is great to see people coming here from further afield.

"The healing process is about finding a way of getting on with life and that is what we are doing.

"Things have gone so well for us since the reopening. I can only put it down to tremendous goodwill and the prayers of so many people.

"It has come from people who had to do with the church, from other denominations - and from people with no religious background."

Could he be Bible John serial killer of 1960s?

PETER TOBIN

PETER TOBIN may yet find himself a place in the UK's serial killer hall of shame - alongside monsters like Fred West and Peter Sutcliffe.

And there's still a belief he could be the notorious Bible John, who murdered three woman in Glasgow in the late 1960s.

There's a marked similarity between his mugshot and the Bible John identikit.

Tobin has now been found guilty of two horrific murders - Vicky Hamilton and Angelika Kluk.

And in 1992 he drugged and raped a teenage girl and sexually assaulted her friend at a flat in Havant, Hampshire.

Police forces across the country are linking Tobin with a series of unsolved killings and disappearances of women and his "death toll" could conceivably reach double figures.

Horror attacks of violent sex fiend

Peter Britton Tobin was born in Johnstone in August 1946 - the youngest of eight children - and spent some of his childhood in Renfrew.

By the age of seven he was sent to a reform school and in his teenage years served time for burglary, forgery and conspiracy.

But those crimes were nothing compared to the sexual depravity and the extreme violence and viciousness that characterised his later attacks on women.

In 1993 he was jailed for 14 years for the rape and sexual assault of two teenage girls in his flat in Hampshire after plying them with alcohol.

Three of Tobin's wives also gave graphic accounts of how they were treated at his hands during their time with him.

His first was Margaret Mountney, who says she was forced into marriage after he kidnapped her.

She was raped three times, knifed in the side and left to die. Margaret was saved only because her neighbour downstairs noticed blood seeping through the ceiling. She spent weeks in hospital.

Tobin's second wife, Sylvia Jefferies, was a 30-year-old nurse when she met him in 1973 in Brighton.

She said he tried to strangle her during their three-year marriage.

At the age of 40, Tobin married Cathy Wilson, who was just 16 at the time. They moved back to Scotland in 1990 to live in Bathgate, where their son Daniel was born.

A year after the move Vicky Hamilton disappeared.

Cathy claimed violence marred their relationship and forced her to flee back to England with their son.