window.dotcom = window.dotcom || { cmd: [] }; window.dotcom.ads = window.dotcom.ads || { resolves: {enabled: [], getAdTag: []}, enabled: () => new Promise(r => window.dotcom.ads.resolves.enabled.push(r)), getAdTag: () => new Promise(r => window.dotcom.ads.resolves.getAdTag.push(r)) }; setTimeout(() => { if(window.dotcom.ads.resolves){ window.dotcom.ads.resolves.enabled.forEach(r => r(false)); window.dotcom.ads.resolves.getAdTag.forEach(r => r("")); window.dotcom.ads.enabled = () => new Promise(r => r(false)); window.dotcom.ads.getAdTag = () => new Promise(r => r("")); console.error("NGAS load timeout"); } }, 5000)
Skip to content

'Please be Dinah': The heartbreaking wish of a missing girl's father

A BBC Scotland journalist has recalled the haunting moment the father of missing Dinah McNicol was told police had found a body in a garden.

Home Affairs correspondent David Cowan was in Ian McNicol's living room in Tillingham, Essex, in November 2007 when a colleague rang the bell to inform him of the grim discovery.

Days earlier the body of Vicky Hamilton – who went missing in Bathgate, West Lothian, in 1991 – was found in the grounds of convicted killer Peter Tobin's former home in Margate, Kent.

When asked about the latest development at the search site Mr McNicol gave a response that has stayed with Cowan.

He told him: "Please be Dinah."

The second body was later confirmed to be the teenager, who was 18 when she vanished in 1991, after hitchhiking home to Essex from a dance music festival in Hampshire.