Police find nothing inside of Margate house

LONDON (Reuters) - Detectives on Sunday searched the interior of a house in Kent after finding, buried in the garden, the remains of two teenage girls who went missing 16 years ago.

Specialist officers, including forensic archaeologists, examined the ground floor of the house in Margate to see if there were any "surface anomalies", police said.

Last week, officers found the body of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton and that of another girl who they believe to be Dinah McNicol, during an extensive search of the garden.

"We have now almost finished the groundwork of the property which has involved drilling down through concrete. There have not been any further finds..." an Essex Police spokeswoman said.

"We are now focusing our attention on the remainder of the house and tomorrow a forensic examination will begin."

The first remains to be found, in a sandpit in the garden, were those of Hamilton, who disappeared from Bathgate, West Lothian in Scotland, in February 1991.

Handyman Peter Tobin, 61, said by media to have once owned the house, has appeared in a Scottish court accused of murdering her.

Police continued to search the house as part of an investigation into other unsolved cases of missing girls. McNicol was 18 when she vanished after failing to return to her home in Essex after leaving a music festival at Liphook, Hampshire, in August 1991.

The family living at the house put their furniture into storage on Sunday before moving into a new home.

Nicola Downing, who has lived in the house for 12 years, said in a statement that the events were a "nightmare that seems to get worse every day ... What they are finding there is just awful and it has turned our family life upside down."

The discovery of the bodies has reminded many of the remains of nine murdered women and girls found over a decade ago at the home of Fred and Rosemary West, dubbed "The House of Horrors".

Fred West was charged with 12 murders but later committed suicide. His wife was convicted of 10 murders in 1995.