Limbs-in-the-loch murderer launches appeal 10 years on

Published on Tuesday 29 September 2009 22:22

AN APPEAL by limbs-in-the-loch killer William Beggs has begun, almost ten years after he murdered and dismembered a teenager.

Beggs, 45, who had fled abroad and had to be extradited to stand trial, was convicted in 2001 of murdering Barry Wallace, 18, in Kilmarnock.

Described as a "predatory homosexual", he was jailed for life and ordered to serve at least 20 years.

Although Beggs immediately lodged an intention to challenge the conviction, it has taken several years and a succession of court hearings to reach the stage of the full appeal. He has submitted several grounds for claiming he suffered a miscarriage of justice. Those include prejudicial pre-trial publicity and alleged irregularities in the extradition process and the warrant used by police to search his home.

The appeal, which began yesterday, is due to last two weeks, and the judges are expected to take some time after that to issue a decision.

Mr Wallace had been to a night out on 4 December, 1999, with colleagues from the Tesco store where he worked, and was being given a lift home by a manageress when he insisted on getting out of the car to go to a disco.

He was last seen wandering, drunk, in Kilmarnock town centre. Beggs and Mr Wallace were never seen together, but it was thought he lured the teenager to his home with the promise of more drink, and then handcuffed him and sexually assaulted him.

Mr Wallace was killed and Beggs cut up the body. The limbs and torso were dumped in Loch Lomond, and the head in the sea off the Ayrshire coast. It washed up on the beach at Barassie, near Troon.

A cause of death was never established, but pathologists believed Mr Wallace could have died of fright – a sudden rush of adrenalin disrupting the heart's rhythm – or been suffocated when he was held face down.

Beggs went to the Netherlands and it took more than a year of extradition hearings and appeals before he was returned to stand trial.

Yesterday, defence counsel, Chris Shead, highlighted the issue of pre-trial publicity at the opening of the appeal at the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh.

He said there had been an attempt by the defence in 2001 to stop the trial taking place when the publicity was branded a "feeding frenzy" and a "virulent and hostile press campaign".

The information given to the public by the media had included Beggs's previous convictions and the fact he was referred to as the "gay ripper."

Beggs was convicted at Teesside Crown Court in 1987 of two charges of unlawful wounding. He was also found guilty of murder and jailed for life, but the conviction was overturned on appeal.

Mr Shead said the appeal court had decided Beggs should stand trial, and the prejudice he might have suffered from publicity could be banished by directions to the jury to consider only evidence heard in court.

"There was material available on the internet that was highly prejudicial," said Mr Shead.

The hearing continues.