KILMARNOCK MURDER FILES: THE GRUESOME SEX MURDER OF YOUNG BARRY WALLACE (SOLVED)

Murderer Beggs and the scene of his evil crimes in Kilmarnock.

Everyone knows the names of gay serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Neilson, but do you know the name of William Beggs? Probably not, because Beggs wasn't able to rack up the same high scores as those more famous killers, although his methods and inclinations were exactly the same – namely targeting young homosexual men for a mixture of sexual and homicidal reasons.

Beggs was born in Northern Ireland in 1961 and seems to have been a self-hating gay man. His parents were William  Beggs (snr.), a lecturer, and Winifred, a headmistress. As a teenager Beggs was drawn to so-called "right-wing politics" and even joined Ian Paisley's anti-gay campaign Save Ulster From Sodomy, but this was clearly a facade. The UVF suspected his true nature and expelled him.

He moved to the North East of England to study public administration at Teesside Polytechnic and dabbled in student politics, rising to the position of regional chairman for the Federation of Conservative Students. 

This even led to him being invited to Downing Street during the Prime Ministership of Margaret Thatcher. But his ambition to rise in politics was ended when, upset over the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985, he decided politics was not for him. Given his subsequent psychopathic behaviour I am a little surprised at his conclusion, as politics has more than its fair share of psychopaths.

Beggs first made headlines in 1987 when he murdered Barry Oldham, a 28-year-old student from Aberdeen. He had picked up Oldham at the sleazy Rockshots gay nightclub in Newcastle and the two seemed to have had a short relationship. When Oldham's body was found, his throat had been slashed and efforts had been made to cut off his limbs. Beggs' story was that he had acted in self-defence after Oldham had attacked him during a camping trip on the North York Moors.

This was an open-and-shut case and Beggs was easily convicted, but the conviction was overturned two years later on appeal for a legal technicality – the technicality being that the trial judge had "improperly" allowed evidence of previous violent attacks by Beggs to be heard by the jury. 

These previous attacks included five razor attacks, including one in December 1986, when Beggs attacked a student who shared a room with him, and an incident in Whitley Bay, North Tyneside, when he attacked a middle-aged gay man by carving symbols into his thighs as he slept (yes, he woke up as a consequence). Due to the unwillingness of the victims to attend court, presumably because of the gay stigma, Beggs was never prosecuted for these crimes, although the police knew all about them.

The fact that he was released on appeal, however, was to cost at least one man his life and to give Beggs a life-long interest in litigious procedures.

The police investigator who had caught Beggs later 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."

Yes, the law is quite literally an ass when it takes leave of common sense and acts like this.

After this lucky escape, Beggs moved to Ayrshire, where inevitably more bad things were to happen. 

In 1991 he met Brian McQuillan, another young gay man, at a gay club in Glasgow. This followed the pattern set by earlier attacks, with Beggs attacking him with a razor at his flat in Doon Place, Kilmarnock. McQuillan was lucky enough to escape alive, jumping naked through a glass window at the front of the house, and almost killing himself in the process.

Beggs was jailed for six years at the high court in Kilmarnock but released just three years later. His Kilmarnock neighbours understandably tried to have him evicted, but Beggs bought his council flat, making this impossible. He also installed security lights and a video camera so he could monitor the whole street and prevent attacks on his property.

Despite his criminal record he was able to then work for an Edinburgh call centre company and, later, after studying at Paisley University, become a lecturer in computer technology at De Montfort University's Milton Keynes campus. This means that he had plenty of free time and excuses to travel between these various places. The likelihood that he met and murdered other gay men or youths along the way cannot be discounted.

But now we come to the murder that finally saw him put behind bars for good.

Victim Wallace

His victim was 18-year-old Barry Wallace from Cumnock, described as "a shy, popular teenager," who was working as a supermarket shelf-stacker and contemplating a career in the Royal Navy. 

On December 4th, 1999, Wallace joined his colleagues for the shop Christmas party and drank heavily. He was last seen near a taxi depot in Kilmarnock on his way to meet friends at a nightclub, but he never arrived. 

Instead he was apparently lured back to Beggs' flat, where both his arms and legs were soon handcuffed. He was then punched in the face, stabbed in the arm with a needle and sexually assaulted so brutally that medical witnesses said the teenager may have died from shock. A forensic expert also testified that the injuries inflicted by the handcuffs were the worst she had ever seen, meaning that Wallace had done all he could to escape from his gruesome fate.

After taking his sick pleasure, Beggs now had to dispose of the body. The torso, as well as the detached arms and legs were dumped in Loch Lomond. Here, by a lucky chance, a police diver on a training exercise soon found a severed forearm and leg wrapped in a bin bag. This gave the case the name it is most commonly known by – "The Limbs in the Loch Murder."

Keeping Wallace's head for a couple of days longer, Beggs then took it with him on the Troon-to-Belfast ferry, dumping it in the sea.

On December 15th, however, Margaret Burley came across a plastic carrier bag on Barassie beach while walking her dog. Through a tear in the side, she could see a human head. It was that of young Barry Wallace, brought back to his native Ayrshire by the currents and tides.

Even the Scottish Police were able to put the pieces of this case together fairly quickly. Two days later they raided Begg's flat in Kilmarnock and they found more evidence, including bloodstains, body parts, and efforts at redecorating. But they were unable to find Beggs himself. He had stayed overnight in Edinburgh. It is not revealed where, but presumably at the home of a gay friend or pick up. Hearing of the investigation, he managed to flee to Amsterdam, where two weeks later he walked into a police station and was arrested.

He had apparently run out of options, or perhaps he thought he could not be extradited back to Scotland. But in September 2000, he was sent back to face justice, being found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. 

But even in jail, Beggs' evil knows no bounds. In 2014 it was revealed that he had made 59 bids for legal aid in 14 years – a rate of one every three months – costing the taxpayer around £1 million.

Whether Beggs killed other victims is an open question. When forensic experts examined his flat in Kilmarnock the blood of 17 men was discovered, leading police to suspect him in several unsolved murders. These include the murder of Derek Sheerin, 24, whose body was found in bushes in the East End of Glasgow in 1994; Colin Swiatek, 20, a student, whose body was found in the River Clyde in 1997, and Paul Christie, whose leg bones were washed up on a Largs beach in 2000.