The twisted killer given £858,000 in legal aid for cases that make a mockery of justice
And – surprise surprise – it’s YOU who is having to pick up the bill
‘He is a dangerous man who should not be indulged’
IT was the most diabolical court decision that the senior detective had come across in a long and illustrious career. Even decades later, well into his retirement, the former CID chief still shook his head in bewilderment. Detective Chief Superintendent Tony Fitzgerald had led a team of more than 100 North Yorkshire Police officers in the hunt for Barry Oldham’s murderer, knowing they were looking either for a serial killer or one in the making.
It was obvious from the victim’s injuries – the slashed throat, the attempt at dismembering – that his killer had enjoyed the experience.
Yet, 18 months after William Beggs was jailed for life for the 1987 murder, his conviction was quashed on a legal technicality.
A wicked, highly dangerous predator walked free and moved to Scotland. ‘I was as dumbfounded then as I am now,’ said Mr Fitzgerald much later. ‘He is a serial attacker and God only knows how many people he has actually hurt over the years.’
Ulsterman Beggs’s success in overturning a seemingly watertight conviction has had appalling consequences. Firstly, Barry Wallace, the 18year-old Kilmarnock supermarket worker who ran into Beggs late one night in 1999, is dead, his body dismembered, the limbs dumped in Loch Lomond.
Secondly, his killer has become Scotland’s most notorious jail cell litigant, forever dreaming up new ways of picking legal holes in the system which incarcerates him. After all, it worked once. Indeed, horrifyingly, it has worked on several occasions.
This week Beggs won the latest stage of his battle to be allowed a laptop in his cell. The computer is to help him keep on top of all his other legal actions – which are funded, inevitably, by the taxpayer. Thus far the legal aid bill for this prisoner alone is £858,000 and Beggs shows no sign of running out of legal bones to pick with the authorities.
He has litigated over prisoners’ right to vote, warders reading his mail, loss of privileges when he has misbehaved, being locked up on his own, being in the ‘wrong’ prison, the police inquiry which resulted in his conviction, the denial of his freedom of information requests – he has even litigated over the delays in dealing with his litigation.
It would be galling enough, say prison sources, if Beggs were a harmless lag relieving the monotony of jail time with a litany of publicly funded legal actions.
But this is a killer whose crimes are imprinted indelibly on the communities where they took place. He is among the most notorious inmates in Scotland’s prison system – and he is making a mockery of it.
Few in Scotland had any inkling of Beggs’s background when he moved north at the beginning of the 1990s. But, just as Mr Fitzgerald feared, the attack on Barry Oldham was anything but a one-off.
A violent predator, Beggs picked up gay men at bars and clubs around Glasgow, took them back to his home in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, and cut them. One victim was Brian McQuillan, a 28-year-old Church of Scotland youth worker. Realising to his horror that Beggs was cutting his legs with a razor, he escaped by leaping naked through a first-floor window and lay writhing on the ground in agony until neighbours found him.
‘At first I thought he was biting me,’ he said. ‘So I grabbed his head and pushed it away. I will never forget his face as he looked up with this determined expression and continued to cut.’
Beggs was jailed for six years for that attack. True to form, he appealed, prompting a letter from Mr McQuillan to the authorities. He wrote: ‘The largest part of my anxiety and sorrow is for the parents and friends of Barry Oldham and, if [Beggs] is once again set free, most likely his next victim.’
He was back on the street in only three years. And, in December 1999, Barry Wallace became that victim.
Staggering through the streets of Kilmarnock, the worse for wear after a Christmas party, the teenager was abducted by Beggs who took him to his flat, handcuffed him and launched a vicious sexual attack. It was so brutal, said medical witnesses, that his victim may have died from the shock.
It was impossible to know, for Beggs set about dismembering the body in his flat, tying the limbs and torso in bin bags and throwing them into Loch Lomond. The head he stuffed in a plastic bag and threw over the side of the Troon to Belfast ferry.
When police divers on a training operation at Balmaha started finding severed body parts the infamous ‘limbs in the loch’ case was born. And when Strathclyde Police searched the national database for sex offenders considered capable of such barbarity, Beggs’s name was prominent on the list. But he had fled the country, making his way to Holland via London, Jersey and France. Later, he handed himself in to police in Amsterdam – and his battle to evade justice for a second murder was launched. It has never stopped.
He fought the extradition process, arguing he could never have a fair trial in Scotland because the murder was too notorious. Then, when found guilty of the murder in 2001, he appealed immediately.
Meanwhile, he began studying law from his cell, establishing a list of grounds for litigation which could keep the courts busy for years.
And, while he makes as much mischief as he can in Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison, back in Kilmarnock the flat where Beggs murdered Mr Wallace lies empty. Locals have claimed Beggs never sold the flat, which is now believed to be worth four times the £13,440 he paid for it in 1996.
Why is it, asks Barry Wallace’s father Ian, that his son’s killer can keep dipping into the public purse when he has assets of his own which could fund his obsessive litigating?
Speaking at his home this week, Mr Wallace said: ‘He is just trying to get what he can, and they are pandering to him.’
In fairness to the prison authorities, there appears no enthusiasm on their part for giving Beggs an easy ride – more often than not it is them he is taking to court.
But how do his cases get off the ground? The answer, it seems, is by bombarding the Scottish Legal Aid Board with as many applications as possible in the hope that some will fly. Since he was jailed in 2001 there have been more than 60,
His shameless legal troublemaking has prompted universal condemnation. It is abhorrent, say politicians of all colours, that a convicted murderer should ruthlessly exploit human rights legislation for his own ends while showing not a shred of remorse for his victim.
‘This is a dangerous individual who, frankly, should not be indulged any more,’ said Scottish Conservative justice spokesman Douglas Ross.
Yet, year after year, he continues to be indulged. Indeed, it is now only five more years until the 20-year ‘punishment part’ of Beggs’s life tariff is up. Will the focus of the litigation then turn to getting himself released, many wonder?
It is not for the Scottish Legal Aid Board to comment on the moral fibre of those seeking public funds to fight their court battles.
A spokesman said: ‘Anyone, regardless of their background or criminal record, may be eligible for civil legal assistance on matters of Scots law if they meet certain statutory tests, including that there is a legal basis to their case.
‘Legal aid in Scotland doesn’t work on a quota system that limits someone’s access to legal assistance but instead each case is considered using strict statutory tests. Mr Beggs has been successful in legally aided civil cases, including where the courts found that his rights had been breached.’
Often Beggs has had several actions running simultaneously. Within months of his incarceration he was claiming his human rights had been breached by being locked in a cell on his own in Saughton while on remand. He was also appealing against his conviction and litigating over the fact he had been placed in Peterhead Prison in Aberdeenshire – where the worst sex offenders were held – rather than near his lawyer in Central Scotland.
After a few more years in Peterhead, Beggs was reported to have become the ringleader of a group of prisoners claiming their human rights had been breached in being denied the vote. This has yet to be resolved. By 2010, Beggs
‘Tries to get what he can, and they’re pandering to him’
was demanding police hand over CCTV footage of Barry Wallace as he attempted to investigate the police investigation into the murder.
It took three judges at the highest court in the land, the Court of Session, to tell him he was not having the tapes.
Other claims have been more successful. In 2012, Beggs pocketed a £4,800 payout from the European Court of Human Rights after it ruled his appeal against conviction had taken too long to be heard.
Ironically, a ‘substantial proportion’ of the delays had been caused by the prisoner himself. ‘However,’ ruled the European Court, ‘there were also periods of inactivity where the courts had failed to take steps to progress matters of their own motion and this led the court to find a violation of the right to trial within a reasonable time’.
As for the appeal itself, it was thrown out with the contempt it deserved.
Another ‘success’ emerged a year later. Beggs had persuaded a court to remove his name from the sex offenders’ register after it was revealed a clerk had wrongly filled out a form saying Beggs was convicted of rape as well as murder.
In fact, he was convicted of a single charge of murder that included sexual violence.
Exploiting the error allowed him to stop attending jail rehabilitation programmes and dramatically reduced the restrictions and monitoring he would be subjected to on his release.
‘It’s totally bizarre that William Beggs is not on the sex offenders’ register,’ said criminology professor David Wilson at the time.
‘There’s no doubt his crime had a sexual element. His crime implies particular criminological and pathological behaviours which are of the most severe kind.’
A further victory followed last year as judge Lady Stacey ruled that Beggs’s human rights had been breached again – this time by prison staff at HMP Glenochil, in Clackmannanshire, and at Saughton who had opened his mail.
There was uproar when she described Beggs as ‘a victim’.
And yet, on paper, the breach of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights – his right ‘to respect for his private and family life, his home and correspondence’ – made him one.
John Muir, who campaigns for victims’ rights, surely spoke for many when he said: ‘We should be saying to Beggs, “You have taken this man’s life and robbed him of his future. You will get nothing”.’
Now it seems Beggs may have been ‘victimised’ again – by his old adversaries the prison warders.
Lord Malcolm has ruled that it is not unreasonable for Beggs to have a laptop in his cell and that the prison governor should meet the murderer to discuss a way forward.
The judge remarked: ‘He is only the second prisoner to make such a request, the other having been granted permission.
‘To all this can be added the comment that the petitioner would appear to be recognised as unusual in respect of the number of legal proceedings pursued and the prolixity of his letter-writing activities.’
The ultimate irony, perhaps, is that judge Sir Christopher Staughton’s handling of the Barry Oldham murder trial turns out to have been impeccable after all.
Beggs was freed by the Court of Appeal which ruled the judge was wrong to allow Beggs to face further charges in the same trial of wounding other men in similar circumstances.
The House of Lords later altered the law to reflect that Sir Christopher’s approach was entirely right.
But it was too late. And Beggs has caused mayhem and misery ever since.