NOTORIOUS
Limbs-in-the-loch monster who never showed any remorse
THE severed head was discovered on a beach by a dog walker. The limbs were found by police more than 55 miles away.
The victim was a teenager who had gone missing after a works night out. The killer was a violent, bloodthirsty lecturer nicknamed “Fred West” due to his penchant for creepy behaviour.
Tragic Barry Wallace had fought hard for his life. But he was no match for sadistic William Beggs, who had handcuffed his hands and legs before sexually assaulting the 18-year-old.
Medical experts believe the supermarket worker had possibly died from shock as he was brutally assaulted.
Once Barry was dead, Beggs dismembered him. He disposed of the arms and legs in Loch Lomond and dumped the head from the Troon to Belfast ferry before it washed up on Barassie beach in Ayrshire.
So Beggs became known as the “limbsin-the-loch” killer but, unlike most serial killers, he wasn’t about to serve out his sentence quietly. Since his 2001 conviction for killing Barry, Beggs has refused to stay silent and has styled himself as a legal guru for himself and other inmates, fighting dozens of litigious procedures in court against the Scottish Prison Service.
Perhaps that interest in the legal system stemmed from the fact the man described as a “serial killer in the making” won his freedom from an earlier murder conviction on a technicality.
Emboldened by the victory, Beggs, now 57, has embarked on a series of court cases from behind bars, costing taxpayers £1million in legal aid.
Beggs, who was born in Northern Ireland, was drawn to right-wing politics in his teens. He even joined an anti-gay campaign led by the Rev Ian Paisley, then leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, but he was expelled by the UVF loyalist paramilitary group, which suspected his stance was just a facade.
As a student at Teesside Polytechnic he dabbled in politics, rising to become regional chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students. This led to him
being invited to a Burns Supper at Downing Street while Margaret Thatcher was prime minister – but politics lost its shine when the psychopath became angry over the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement.
In May 1987, the mutilated remains of a man were found by a gamekeeper near Cleveland Forest in north-east England.
The victim was a 28-year-old student from Aberdeen. His throat had been cut and attempts had been made to dismember his body at the elbows, knees and neck.
Barry Oldham had travelled to Newcastle to meet Beggs and the pair appeared to have a short relationship.
Within a month Beggs had been arrested and charged with the murder. He claimed he’d acted in self-defence after Barry had attacked him during a camping trip on the North York Moors.
Beggs was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. Two years later his conviction was overturned on appeal – after the trial judge had allowed evidence of previous attacks by Beggs to be heard by the jury. These included five assaults with a razor. He’d attacked a student who shared a room with him and also carved symbols into the thighs of a middle-aged gay man as he slept in Whitley Bay, Northumberland.
Beggs was never prosecuted for the attacks but he was well known to police.
Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Fitzgerald, 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.”
Freedom saw Beggs flee to Ayrshire, where he met a young church worker in a Glasgow club and attacked him with a razor at his flat in Kilmarnock in 1991. His victim jumped naked through a window to escape.
Beggs was jailed for six years but released after serving half his sentence.
Incredibly, he studied at Paisley University and became a lecturer in computer technology at De Montfort University’s Milton Keynes campus.
Barry Wallace, from Cumnock, Ayrshire, was described as “a shy, popular teenager” who was working as a supermarket shelf-stacker and contemplating ting a career in the Royal Navy.
On December 5, 1999, he joined colleagues for the shop’s Christmas party when he was last seen near a taxi rank in Kilmarnock on his way to meet friends at a nightclub. He never arrived.
Beggs lured him to his flat where he carried out his horrific attack.
Police raided the flat once they had d recovered the remains and found more e evidence of the gruesome killing, g, including bloodstains, body parts and d efforts at redecorating.
But Beggs had fled to Amsterdam. m. However, he couldn’t stay hidden for long and two weeks later he was detained by Dutch police and eventually ally extradited for trial.
Beggs has never shown any remorse rse for his crimes and prefers to spend end his time discovering ways to take on the authorities.
In 2014, it was revealed he had made ade 59 bids for legal aid in 14 years.
His latest bid is for freedom – but it is highly unlikely that’s a legal battle the killer will ever win.