Life for limbs-in-loch murderer

Barry Wallace's head was found on this beach

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.

William Beggs has been found guilty

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."

Barry Wallace was sexually assaulted by Beggs

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.

Limbs were found by police divers in Loch Lomond

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.

Barry Wallace was lured back to Beggs' flat

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.