Serial killer Peter Tobin is seen chained to a bed in hospital as his victims' families beg for information.
Now ridden by cancer he broke his hip in a fall and has turned down food and medication.
The 76-year-old is carrying out whole life term in jail for Angelika Kluk, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol's murders and is now frail and wasting away.
He is also suspected of dozens of other killings and families have pleaded with him to come clean about his victims.
The Daily Record reported how Nicola Stork, whose teenage sister Louise Kay disappeared from Eastbourne in 1988 is strongly believed to be another of Tobin’s victims.
Nicola said: “I don’t want Tobin to die because it means we might never know but I’ve got no sympathy if he’s in pain.
“If he dies without giving us information about Louise, then it probably means we’ll never know what happened to her or where she is.
“I hope he will confess something or the police can go and speak to him to get it out of him.”
Louise, 18, vanished after saying she was going to sleep in her car on Beachy Head near Eastbourne in June 1988.
Neither her or her car have been found.
The police officer who caught the killer and later led the task force Operation Anagram looking into his other crimes established Tobin was working in a hotel in Eastbourne at the time Louise disappeared.
He later learned he was selling a small hand-painted car after she vanished.
The small Ford Fiesta, which had a distinctive gold colour with a white door, was never found or seen again.
Tobin had history working with dealing cars for an auction company and also had links to scrapyards.
It is thought he could have re-painted Louise’s car and then sold it on to hide his crime.
Louise had met a mysterious Scottish man shortly before she disappeared and had given her money for petrol for her car.
Nicola, 56, who sells vintage furniture, said: “We’ve never known what happened to her – it is so sad. I wish Tobin would confess and give up these secrets.
“It might lead police to find something that can link to his DNA or Louise’s remains being found but there’s never been anything.
“My dad is still around and is in his 80s so it would be so important for him to know what happened.”
The sister of Vicky Hamilton, meanwhile, said that police should dig up the garden of every home Tobin has ever lived in.
Sharon Crozier yesterday said the loved ones of the victims of the serial killer, whose modus operandi was to bury his victims, should get the truth before it is too late.
Tobin abducted 15-year-old Vicky as she waited for a bus after visiting elder sister Sharon in Bathgate, West Lothian, on February 10 1991.
Mum-of-two Sharon, 51, said: “I feel blessed that we got Vicki back. It sounds a very strange thing to say but I am. But we were lucky.
“We were able to bring her home and, no matter how terrible the details surrounding her death were, we got closure. We know what happened.
“These poor families who believe that Tobin killed their loved one deserve that too.
The elderly parents of art student Jessie Earl, 22, whose body was found in 1989 after she went missing in 1980 also believe Tobin is their daughter’s killer.
Jessie, a 22-year-old art student, disappeared in 1980 and her body was found in undergrowth at Beachy Head, near Eastbourne, nine years later.
In May this year after a hard-fought campaign by her parents John and Valerie, who are in their 90s, a coroner ruled she was murdered.
Even after her naked body was found with her bra tied in a knot that could have bound her hands, detectives insisted it had been suicide and a coroner at the time recorded an open verdict.
Her family believe Tobin is responsible as, two weeks before she vanished, Jessie told her mother she had met a Scottish man on the land where she was later found.
Speaking after May’s verdict, mum Valerie said: “For us, this is a triumph because it means that Jessie has got justice.”
“It’s something that we have come to accept. We have to carry on with life but we never give up hope and keep her memory alive.”
Tobin, who was born in Johnstone and grew up in Renfrewshire, is under constant guard in hospital.
He had emergency surgery but is too sick to be returned to his cell at HMP Edinburgh.
A photograph taken last week, is the first in 14 years of the notorious serial killer.
Tobin is said to be “frail, weak and at death’s door”.
A source said: “That’s been said about him before but he seems to hang on.
“To the unsuspecting eye, he’s just a sick old man in hospital but the killer’s face is still there.”
Retired detective superintendent David Swindle, who caught Tobin and led the task force looking at his other crimes, said: “If there’s any humanity there, Tobin will give up the secrets of what happened to these other victims.
“There won’t be any sympathy for him being in pain but, if indeed he is dying, it’s the least he could do for these families.”
The 67-year-old is convinced the serial killer has other secrets he has not divulged and has no doubt Tobin has killed multiple times.
He said: “Tobin is withholding information. He knows what he’s done. He definitely killed other people, I have no doubt about it.
Operation Anagram looked at hundreds of unsolved murders with any links to Tobin and eventually narrowed it down to nine.
Dan McNicol, brother of Dinah who was murdered by Tobin in Essex in 1991, said: “He needs to give up these secrets for the sake of his other victims but he’ll probably take them to the grave.
“I hope he’s suffering in pain.”
Asked about Tobin, a Scottish Prison Service spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on individuals in our care."
