It was the news Michael Hamilton had waited for and yet never wanted to hear.

It was the news Michael Hamilton had waited for and yet never wanted to hear.

On November 12 2007, police searching the garden of a Kent home found the remains of his daughter Vicky.

The shock find brought to an end one of Scotland's biggest missing person hunts - and any hope her torn family had of seeing her smiling face again.

Instead it delivered new heartache to loved ones who had already suffered more than a decade of agony.

Sixteen years had passed since the 15-year-old disappeared on the way home from visiting her older sister Sharon in Livingston, West Lothian, for the first time.

The pair had spent the weekend chatting and window shopping before Vicky packed her bags to return to the family home in Redding, near Falkirk.

It was a cold day in February and her concerned mother Janette initially blamed the snowy weather for her delayed arrival.

But as time went on it became clear Vicky was not coming home.

Sharon Brown, 37, said her little sister had been apprehensive about having to change buses.

She said: "She asked me to repeat and repeat and repeat where she would get off the bus and get on the next bus.

"She was really, really nervous about the journey."

Ms Brown admitted she later had a "terrible feeling" something was wrong with Vicky.

But the eldest child went to try and comfort her mother.

"When I went into my mother's house the doctor was trying to sedate her," she said.

"She was really, really worried."

Janette and her estranged husband Michael gathered their strength to work alongside Lothian and Borders Police, issuing countless appeals for information.

But these and thousands of interviews and statements led detectives nowhere.

Neighbours in the tight-knit community offered the family what support they could, but having lost one child, Vicky's mother could not let her six-year-old twins Lindsay and Lee out of her sight.

She was said to have left presents under the tree for her missing daughter that Christmas.

The grieving mother even contacted psychics in a bid to find out what happened on her fatal trip home.

Then in 1993, less than two years after Vicky's disappearance, Janette passed away. She was only in her early 40s.

Although plagued by liver problems, relatives maintain she died of a broken heart.

A glimmer of hope would not arrive for another 13 agonising years when, in November 2006, police announced a cold case review.

Clues led detectives to search a house in Bathgate's Robertson Avenue, less than a mile from where Vicky was last seen, and Michael feared the result.

He said: "I don't know how I'm going to feel if they find her in the garden.

"It will be a disaster for me."

But it was a different house, one 500 miles away, that finally revealed the secrets of his daughter's disappearance.

It was a sombre scene that met the security van carrying Peter Tobin, the grey-haired man accused of Vicky's murder, to Linlithgow Sheriff Court three days later.

Pain etched on his face, Michael Hamilton led the killer to what he hoped would be justice in a slow, dignified walk ahead of the vehicle.

A statement read out before the hearing by Vicky's uncle Eric said of the girl's father: "He is happy that the long road is nearly at an end now.

"All we are wanting to do is to have peace, and to get on with putting Vicky where she belongs."

But his composure was shot when Tobin later appeared from the court, and he lunged in a fit of anger at the frail-looking suspect.

A crowd of around 50 members of the public that had lined the small side street joined Vicky's family in shouting abuse as Tobin was escorted back to custody.

The father's pain continued when Tobin finally went on trial. Once he was ruled out as a potential witness, Mr Hamilton was able to sit in court and listen to the evidence.

At one point, when the defence showed "sensitive" and "inappropriate" images of Vicky to the jury, it became too much to bear and he slipped out of the courtroom.

Redding Parish Church near Falkirk was packed as family and friends finally paid their last respects to Vicky on November 30.

Reverend Geoffrey Smart told the congregation: "All those years when hopes of Vicky's safe return amongst us caused such pain and suffering, worry and anxiety to her family and this community.

"Her family were robbed of seeing Vicky grow up as all their hopes and expectations for Vicky's future were taken from them."

Vicky's siblings Sharon, Lee and Lindsay each held a red rose for the funeral, also attended by her stepsisters Nicole and Kirsty and stepbrother Michael.

A pink flower was placed on her coffin by her father as it was lowered into its plot at New Grandsable Cemetery.

Sadly, the teenager's final goodbye could not unite a now divided family: the two sides were said to have attended separate wakes following the service.

But for Vicky at least, there was peace.