Margate 'house of horrors': Our nightmare by family who live in it now

The devastating chain of events began with a simple knock on her front door by a policeman on November 9.

Last night the family vowed never to return to the three-bedroom £135,000 terraced council home and are now living out of suitcases in a Margate hotel.

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Their furniture, carpet and other possessions have been put into storage as Thanet District Council seeks a new home for them.

For Nicola, her boyfriend Mark Drage and her four children, it would be impossible to go back to the house where the body of 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton was found in the children's sandpit and the corpse of 18-year-old Dinah McNicol lay under the patio.

Nicola, 37, a housewive, described the property as a "happy family home" and called the experience a "nightmare".

"I can only describe it as a nightmare that gets worse every day," she said in a statement.

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"We lived in the house for 12 years and had a happy family home. What they have found is awful; it has turned our family upside down. Moving out of our home has been traumatic.

"We feel enormous sympathy for Dinah's father and what he is going through, and we want to get the answers he needs.

"Since we moved out, the developments have been shocking for all of us."

The house is owned by Thanet District Council, which will foot the bill for any demolition work. Because of this the family will not receive any compensation.

A source on the council said the house would probably be pulled down.

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Council leader Sandy Ezekiel would only say the authority would be talking to local residents about the future of the house and added: "At the moment, everyone just feels for the families of the victims."

Yesterday police switched their search from the garden to the house, which will be slowly taken apart as specialist officers comb every inch of it looking for more bodies.

Nicola and her partner Mark Drage walked hand in hand through the house with detectives and structural engineers on Saturday, pointing out the alterations they had made over the years to help them in the search for bodies.

The garden, having giving up the secret of its two hidden bodies, is now a muddy mess with every blade of grass gone.

A team of detectives, forensic science experts and crime scene specialists are drilling through the scree and concrete foundations of the house, searching for further remains.

• Nineteen-year-old Daniel Wilson has described how he played in a sandpit at 50 Irvine Drive - while 15-year-old Vicky Hamilton's body was buried a few feet below.

Mr Wilson, now a business studies student, said: "Simply thinking about it leaves me feeling sick and cold."

He added: "I feel a lot of sadness and anger for Vicky and Dinah and their families. They must be going through hell."