Early and Personal Life
Tobin was born in Johnstone, Renfrewshire, the second of eight children. He was a difficult child and in 1953, aged seven, he was sent to an approved school. He later spent time in a young offender institution, and in 1970 was convicted and served jail terms in England for burglary and forgery.
In 1969, Tobin moved to Brighton, Sussex, with his 17-year-old girlfriend, Margaret Louise Robertson Mountney, a clerk and typist, whom he married on 6 August that year. They split after a year and she divorced him in 1971. In 1973 in Brighton, he married a local nurse, 30-year-old Sylvia Jefferies. They had a son and daughter, the latter of whom died soon after birth. This second, violent, marriage lasted until 1976, when she left with their son. Tobin then had a relationship with Cathy Wilson, who gave birth to a son in December 1987. Tobin married her in Brighton in 1989, when she was 17. In 1990, they moved to Bathgate, West Lothian. Wilson left Tobin in 1990 and moved back to Portsmouth, Hampshire, where she had grown up. All three later gave similar accounts of falling for a charming, well-dressed psychopath who turned violent and sadistic during their marriages. In May 1991, Tobin moved to Margate, Kent, and in 1993, to Havant, Hampshire, to be near his younger son.
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