Margate house body identified as McNicol

Dinah McNicol is seen in this undated handout photo made available by Essex Police November 16, 2007. Human remains found buried in the back garden of a house in Kent were those of McNicol, Essex police said on Tuesday.

LONDON (Reuters) - Human remains found buried in the back garden of a house in Kent were those of missing teenager Dinah McNicol, Essex police said on Tuesday.

Confirmation that the 18 year-old's remains had been buried at the house in Margate for 16 years came a day after the student's father, Ian McNicol, visited the scene in a bid to help his grief.

A police spokeswoman said DNA had helped the identification.

"Police believed that the clothing and jewellery found with the body were consistent with those owned by the 18 year-old and DNA samples have today confirmed it is her," she said.

"Dinah's family have been informed."

She said that a search inside the house was continuing and would probably last the rest of the week.

Dinah, of Tillingham, Essex, failed to return home after a music festival in Liphook, Hampshire, in the summer of 1991.

She was last seen hitching a lift with a man on the M25.

Neither the driver nor the car has ever been traced.

On Monday her father visited the scene and later told reporters the discovery of his daughter's body would help his family "put her to rest and grieve".

"I can speak for the whole family that we can now put her to rest and grieve in our own time," he said. "That is what we have really wanted for 16 years."

Last week, officers also found the body of Vicky Hamilton, 15, during an extensive search of the home's back garden.

She disappeared from Bathgate, West Lothian, in Scotland, also in 1991.

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

Reports said at least nine other properties linked to Tobin during the past 40 years could be searched.

They include properties in Hampshire, Brighton and Scotland.

(reporting by Andrew Hough, editing by Jeremy Lovell)