Notorious serial killer Peter Tobin has died while serving life for the murder of three young women.

The twisted 73-year-old, who buried two of his victims in the back garden of his home in Margate, had been taken to hospital on Wednesday after becoming unwell.

News of his death broke this afternoon.

His death comes after a separate admission to hospital in January.

Tobin was behind bars for the killings of 23-year-old Angelika Kluk, schoolgirl Vicky Hamilton, 15, and student Dinah McNicol, 18, but is believed to have killed others and is linked to a number of unsolved deaths in Britain.

In 2007 he was jailed for life for the rape and murder of Polish student Angelika, which led police to follow a trail of clues to the garden of his former home in Irvine Drive, Margate, where they made the shocking discovery of the remains of the two missing teenagers in black bin liners.

Sixth-former Dinah, from Tillingham, Essex, had last been seen alive on August 5, 1991. She was hitchhiking home from a music festival in Liphook, Hants.

Vicky had vanished on February 10, 1991, while waiting for a bus home to Redding, near Falkirk.

Tobin was convicted of their murders in 2008 and 2009 and given two more life sentences.

Former detective superintendent David Swindle – who led Operation Anagram in the aftermath of Ms Kluk's murder – told the Mail on Sunday six years ago he believed Tobin had killed others.

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

"I live in hope that some day we will get the truth about what Tobin has done."

The killer had always failed to help authorities and when quizzed by police said he did not care about his victims' families.

In an episode of ITV's The Investigator: A British Crime Story, he was also linked with the disappearance of Sussex teenager Louise Kay, who went missing in June 1988.

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

Tobin was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and when news of his diagnosis became public Dan McNicol, brother of murdered Dinah, said he was pleased and "hopes he suffers".

The triple-murderer was not expected to survive Christmas and was said to have been "barely eating".

He was serving his sentences at Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison.