Death house cleared of belongings

Furniture has been removed and household items cleared

Furniture and carpets have been removed and the ground floor lifted at the house in Margate where the bodies of two teenage girls were found.

Police have completed their search of the ground floor, and will begin to examine the first floor on Monday.

The bodies of Vicky Hamilton, 15, and Dinah McNicol, 18, have been found at the property in Kent.

Police said they had no plans to demolish the house. Thanet council said discussions had yet to take place.

Council leader Sandy Ezekiel said the authority would be talking to local residents about the future of the house and added: "At the moment, everyone just feels for the families of the victims."

Earlier, special prayers were said at a church in the town for the community and the families affected.

Household items were cleared from the house in black bin bags, and furniture loaded into removal vans.

People are finding it hard to come to terms with it The Reverend Arthur Houston

A spokesman for the Essex force said the residents of the three-bedroom council house who have moved out, have been found alternative housing by the local authority.

Searches of the ground floor involved breaking up tiles and drilling through concrete, focusing on "anomalies" in the structure.

Occupier Ms Downing, 37, who moved into the property in Irvine Drive in 1995, has been at the house to help police with the investigation by pointing out structural alterations and changes made there.

'Lives disrupted'

The Reverend Arthur Houston, of Holy Trinity Church, said many people had been affected.

Before special prayers were said on Sunday morning, he said: "We're very concerned for the local neighbours here in this community that their lives have been so disrupted, especially the family who lived in the home."

He added that people in the town were saying words like "horrified, shocked and stunned", and he added: "It's one of those situations no-one could predict and people are finding it hard to come to terms with it."

Special prayers have been said in the town of Margate

The body of Miss Hamilton, 15, from Redding near Falkirk, was recovered on Monday, and the remains of Miss McNicol, from Essex, were found in the garden of the property on Friday. Peter Tobin, 61, has been charged with murdering Miss Hamilton.

Mr Tobin, who once lived in the property, was charged in Scotland with the 15-year-old's murder and appeared at Linlithgow Sheriff Court on Thursday.

Detectives have carried out house-to-house inquiries in the road and have appealed for any residents who lived in the area at the same time as Peter Tobin to get in touch with them.

It is thought a number of other murder cases are being re-examined in the light of the Margate discoveries.

These are believed to include the murder of Jessie Earl, who disappeared from Eastbourne in East Sussex in 1980 and was found dead nine years later, and the deaths of three women killed in Glasgow in the late 1960s by a man dubbed "Bible John".