Notorious murderer Peter Tobin has had his ashes dumped at sea after nobody claimed his body.

The 76-year-old, who had buried two of his victims in the back garden of his Margate home, died last Saturday, October 8, handcuffed to a hospital bed while serving life sentences for the murders of three young women.

It has been revealed that the serial killer's funeral took place on Thursday evening without a service, in arrangements made by Edinburgh City Council as no relatives or next of kin came forward to claim his body.

A council spokesman said: "The remains of Peter Tobin were cremated in accordance with the requirements of Section 87 of the Burials and Cremation (Scotland) Act 2016.

“Ashes from the cremation were dispersed into the sea. The council’s thoughts are with the victims of his crimes and their loved ones.”

His cause of death is listed as "unascertained (pending investigations)", however the killer was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and the Sunday Mail reported that he was hospitalised after falling and breaking his hip in prison in late August, and had been refusing food and medication.

Tobin was jailed for life in 2007 for the rape and murder of Polish student Angelika Kluk, who disappeared in 2006 aged 23.

This investigation led police to his former home in Irvine Drive, Margate, where the remains of two teenagers missing since 1991, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, were found in black bin liners.

Vicky, aged just 15, disappeared on February 10, 1991, while waiting for a bus home to Redding, near Falkirk.

Dinah, 18, was a sixth-form student from Tillingham, Essex, who disappeared on August 5, 1991, while hitchhiking home from a music festival in Liphook, in Hampshire.

Tobin was given two additional life sentences when he was charged with their murders in 2008 and 2009, and he is believed to be linked to a number of other murders in Britain.

He was linked to missing Sussex teenager Louise Kay, who disappeared in June 1988, in the ITV series The Investigator: A British Crime Story, in 2018.

The 18-year-old was last seen driving towards Beachy Head from a night out in Eastbourne, East Sussex, close to where Tobin was living at the time.

After news of his death, Vicky's sister Lindsay, who was six at the time of her disappearance, told BBC Radio Scotland: "The only thing I feel (about Tobin’s death) is did he have more victims, and now he’s gone, are there other families out there that aren’t going to get that closure that we got because he is no longer around to tell (the) tale.

“If there has been other victims, and I know there’s speculation, they might not know what’s happened to their loved ones.

“I was hoping that he would maybe come out when he got diagnosed with cancer, that he would maybe come out and tell people what he did, if he did have any kind of remorse.”

Police attempted to encourage Tobin to assist with their investigations into his other potential victims before his death, but detective chief superintendent Laura Thompson, head of major crime at Police Scotland, said that these attempts were "unsuccessful".

Former detective superintendent David Swindle led the operation to establish the timeline of Tobin's killings after the murder of Angelika Kluk, and told the Mail on Sunday in 2016 he believed the serial killer had other victims.

He said: "There are definitely other people Tobin has killed and only he knows who they are.

"Tobin was a sadistic killer who was determined to take lives and conceal them for his pleasure."

The killer's ex-wife Cathy Wilson, 52, told the Sunday Mirror after his death: "He was a monster and there is a feeling of relief that he is now dead."

She added: "Everyone knows there were other victims, and he could have made all the difference in the world to grieving families who still don’t know for sure what happened to their loved ones.”

Tobin never helped the authorities with their investigations and when questioned by police, said that he did not care about the families of his victims.