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William
Frederick Ian BEGGS
A.K.A.: "Limbs-in-loch murderer"
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics:
Rape - Dismemberment
Number of victims: 2
Date of murders: 1987 / 1999
Date
of arrest:December 28, 1999 (in Amsterdam,
Netherlands)
Date of birth: 1961
Victims profile: Barry Oldham,
28 / Barry Wallace, 18
Method of murder: Slashing their throats
Location: Kilmarnock, Avrshire, Scotland, United Kingdom
Status: Sentenced to life in prison in 1987. Conviction
overturned on appeal. Released in 1994. Sentenced to life in prison on
October 12, 2001
Police have described a man jailed for life for murdering
a teenager and then dismembering his body as a "serial killer in
the making".
William Beggs was convicted - at the High Court in
Edinburgh on Friday - of murdering 18-year-old Barry Wallace after a
Christmas night out in 1999.
Beggs, 38 and originally from Northern Ireland, picked
up the teenager in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, took him back to his flat, also
in Kilmarnock, and sexually assaulted him.
Barry Wallace, who worked in a supermarket, was then
murdered by Beggs who dismembered his body, leaving the parts in Loch
Lomond and throwing his head into the sea off Troon.
After the High Court jury delivered their majority
verdict it was revealed Beggs was once cleared of a similar murder by
appeal court judges on a technicality.
Beggs was jailed in 1987 at Teeside Crown Court for
murdering a barman he met in a gay nightclub by slashing his throat,
only to have the conviction overturned by the Court of Appeal.
The Edinburgh court, on Friday, also learned that at
the same trial, Beggs was convicted of two charges of wounding and
sentenced to four months for each.
He was also jailed for six years in 1991 for slashing
the leg of a man who escaped by jumping through a glass window.
Trial judge Lord Osborne said: "Having regard to
the circumstances of the case, in particular the seriousness of the
appalling offences involved and having regard to your previous
convictions, the part of your sentence which must be specified is 20
years."
Beggs was also placed on the sex offenders' register
after the jury ruled that he had sexually assaulted Mr Wallace after
handcuffing him by the arms and legs.
Prior to sentencing advocate depute Alan Turnbull QC
described the slashing incident at Beggs' flat - the same flat Barry
Wallace was murdered in.
He said: "He (Beggs) assaulted a young man,
repeatedly cut him on the leg with a knife, caused him fear and alarm
such as to cause him to jump through a glass window of the first floor
at the house."
Mr Turnbull also said that Beggs' went through an
extradition process after he fled to Amsterdam in The Netherlands. He
eventually appeared in a Scottish court on 10 January 2001.
At the 1987 trial, Beggs insisted the killing of Barry
Oldham was self-defence.
The Crown applied to try him on a number of wounding
charges involving other men alongside the murder charge.
The judge at his trial, at Teesside Crown Court in
December 1987, allowed the application - but the Court of Appeal said he
was wrong to have done so.
At the appeal hearing in June 1989, the judges said:
"The prejudicial effect of these facts (on the charge of murder)
must have been enormous."
However the man who led that inquiry had no doubt
Beggs would strike again.
Retired detective chief superintendent Tony Fitzgerald,
the former head of North Yorkshire CID, said: "When we caught Beggs
all those years ago, we seriously thought we had caught a serial killer
in the making.
"We thought we were lucky because we had managed
to catch him after his first killing."
He was shocked when the conviction was overturned.
Mr Fitzgerald said: "When his conviction was
overturned on appeal, I remember I was quite aghast at what had happened
in the light of what we knew about this man."
Outside the courtroom today, friends and colleagues of
Mr Wallace, who had worked at the Tesco supermarket in Kilmarnock,
sobbed and hugged each other.
His parents, Ian, 51, Christine, 50, and brother Colin,
23, remained composed as the verdict was returned and throughout the
sentencing.
Defence counsel Donald Findlay QC said Beggs, who
showed no emotion as the sentence was handed down, was "not unmoved
or unaffected" by the events that led to his murder conviction.
He said: "It should not be thought that Mr Beggs
is unmoved or unaffected by the events that occurred in December 1999,
but to convey that, either to the court or indeed to anyone else, places
one in the danger of saying something that may seem to be trite."
Mr Findlay added that Beggs' conviction for wounding
Mr McQuillan in 1991 was currently being considered by the Scottish
Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Beggs' catalogue of
violent crime
BBC News
Friday,
12 October, 2001
The darker details of William Beggs' past have been
largely obscured by the macabre nature of the evidence which emerged
during his trial for the murder of Kilmarnock teenager Barry Wallace.
When this is considered alongside other episodes in
Beggs' life over the past 12 years, a picture emerges of a violent man
with a penchant for preying on young men.
In the late 80s and early 90s Beggs spent time in
prison for one violent knife attack and a murder conviction which was
later quashed on appeal.
Chillingly, the murder involved an attempt to
dismember the body.
William Frederick Ian Beggs, 38, is originally from
Moira, County Down, Northern Ireland.
The first indications of his violent disposition
emerged in 1987 he was convicted of murdering Barry Oldham.
During the trial, the court was told that Beggs
picked up the 28-year-old student in a Newcastle nightclub.
He was then said to have killed Mr Oldham in his flat
after having sex.
In circumstances that would later be echoed in the
tragic murder of Barry Wallace, Beggs was said to have tried to cut off
Mr Oldham's head and legs before dumping his body on the North Yorkshire
Moors.
Beggs was given a life sentence for the murder but he
served less than two years.
In 1989 his conviction was quashed after appeal
judges criticised evidence led by the prosecution.
But he was back in prison two years later after being
convicted of slashing a gay man at his flat.
Beggs was released early from his six-year sentence
in 1994 for good behaviour and moved to Scotland some time later.
He worked as a computer consultant while studying for
a PhD at Paisley University and undertook some tutoring work.
It was during this time that Beggs' appetite for
violence surfaced again.
Several men told police that they suffered terrifying
ordeals during encounters with Beggs' during the late 90s but he managed
to avoid another conviction.
Beggs' catalogue of violent sex-related crime finally
came to an end on 12 October 2001 when he was convicted of murdering
Barry Wallace.
The life sentence handed down by Lord Osborne means
that he is unlikely to be free again unless any future appeals overturn
the conviction.
Slashing victim 'expected to die'
BBC News
Friday, 12 October, 2001
A man has told how he thought he was leaping to his
death as he jumped naked from the window of limbs-in-the-loch murderer
William Beggs' flat.
The attack on Brian McQuillan took place a decade ago
at Beggs' home in Kilmarnock - the same flat where teenager Barry
Wallace was murdered in 1999.
He was left with a number of slash wounds - and told
BBC Scotland's Frontline programme that he did not think he would get
out alive.
Beggs - who was sentenced to life imprisonment on
Friday for the murder of Mr Wallace - was jailed for six years for the
earlier attack.
Mr McQuillan said he woke up to find that he was
being slashed by Beggs, who he had met at a gay nightclub in Glasgow.
"The pain that I felt was something that I had never
experienced before," he recalled.
Mr McQuillan said that he leapt from the bed and
grabbed Beggs by the wrists.
"He (Beggs) was completely calm. He was a completely
different person from when I met him earlier," he said.
"His eyes were vacant. There was nothing there.
"All he kept saying was, 'Come back to bed.
Everything will be okay. Things will be over soon. You have made me do
this'.
"At that point I knew there was no way that I was
getting out of there alive."
He said that when he jumped through the window he
thought he was jumping to his death.
"I never expected that I would survive it," he added.
"It was not a concern to me, it was almost an
acceptance, this is the end but at least if I go this way then people
will know and this man will be caught."
Beggs was convicted on Friday of murdering Mr Wallace
after sexually assaulting him at his flat.
Beggs then dismembered his body, leaving the parts in
Loch Lomond and throwing his head into the sea off Troon.
After the verdict it was revealed that Beggs had been
cleared of murder by the appeal court on a technicality.
He was convicted in 1987 of murdering barman Barry
Oldham, 28, slashing his throat and mutilating his body.
However, he was freed by appeal court judges who
ruled that the trial judge had allowed the jury to hear evidence which
should not have been put to it.
Directed jury
The original trial judge, Sir Christopher Staughton,
told Frontline that he felt the Court of Appeal was wrong to overturn
his conviction.
"I would say that the way I directed the jury was
right.
"The Court of Appeal thought it was wrong and of
course what they say goes, but I think if one looks at the law as it now
is since the House of Lords decision, it is possible that I was right
after all.
"Killing is always deplorable and if people are let
out and turn out afterwards to have killed again then it is doubly
deplorable," he said.
A woman also told the BBC how Beggs had threatened to
kill her after Mr Oldham's death.
Former friend Carole Smith said that Beggs had told
her that he was suspected of murdering the barman.
"I just looked at him and said 'Did you?' It was
probably the stupidest thing I've ever said.
"He said 'Yes, and you're next'," she recalled.
Beggs trial: Timeline
BBC News
Friday, 12 October, 2001
William Beggs has been sentenced to life in prison at
the High Court in Edinburgh for the murder of Kilmarnock teenager Barry
Wallace in December 1999.
BBC News Online Scotland traces the two-year route to
trial and conviction.
5 December 1999: Barry Wallace fails to return
home after a works night out in Kilmarnock.
6 December 1999: Police divers on a training
course find human limbs in Loch Lomond, north of Glasgow. A full scale
search recovers more body parts in the days ahead.
15 December 1999: A human head is found on
Barassie Beach, near Troon, by a woman walking her dog.
21 December 1999: Police are granted a warrant
for the arrest of William Beggs.
23 December 1999 In a rare legal move the
Crown Office allows Strathclyde Police to issue a picture of William
Beggs.
28 December 1999: William Beggs is arrested in
the Netherlands after he walks into an Amsterdam Police station with a
lawyer.
30 December 1999: A Dutch lawyer representing
William Beggs says his client will fight extradition proceedings from
the Netherlands to Scotland.
9 January 2000: Police divers recover more
body parts, belonging to Barry Wallace, from Loch Lomond.
14 January 2000: The Crown Office confirms
that it has made a formal request to the Dutch authorities for the
extradition of William Beggs.
29 February 2000: Barry Wallace is laid to
rest at Grasards Cemetery in Kilmarnock - 87 days after he was last seen
alive.
28 March 2000: William Beggs' extradition
hearing opens in Amsterdam District Court of Justice.
11 April 2000: The Dutch court grants the
extradition of William Beggs to Scotland.
25 April 2000: Dutch lawyers acting for
William Beggs lodge an appeal, to the Supreme Court of the Netherlands,
against his extradition.
26 September 2000: The Dutch Supreme Court
rules that Beggs should be extradited but the decision is referred to
the country's justice minister.
15 November 2000: Dutch Justice Minister Benk
Korthals upholds the decision to extradite Beggs to Scotland.
22 November 2000: Beggs' legal team launch a
last ditch challenge to the extradition order in the Dutch Civil Courts.
They argue that media coverage in Scotland has jeopardised his chance of
a fair trial.
5 January 2001: The Dutch Court of Justice in
the Hague rules that Beggs must be extradited to Scotland to face trial
for the murder of Barry Wallace.
9 January 2001: Beggs is extradited to
Scotland. He arrives at Edinburgh Airport under police escort.
11 January 2001: Beggs appears in private at
Kilmarnock Sheriff Court. He makes no plea or declaration.
18 September 2001: Beggs goes on trial at the
High Court in Edinburgh for the murder of Barry Wallace.
12 October 2001: Beggs is convicted of
handcuffing, injuring, sexually assaulting and murdering Barry Wallace
before dismembering his body.
Gay
Serial Killer Denied Bid For Freedom
April 6, 2006
(London) A 42 year old man appealing his conviction for the killing and
dismemberment of a gay Scottish teen has been denied release while the
appeal is being heard.
William Beggs was sentenced to serve at least 20 years in prison for the
killing of Barry Wallace. His lawyers have cited nine grounds for
appeal, including sensational news coverage of the murder that the
attorney's say tainted the trial.
But at
the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday, Lord Eassie refused to release
Beggs on bail.
