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[audio logo] NARRATOR: Nestled between the
Scottish highlands and lowlands is Loch Lomond.
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With a surface area
of 27.5 square miles and a depth of 502 feet. It's the largest inland stretch
of water in Great Britain.
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- And Loch Lomond is
a lovely, remote location that thousands and thousands
of people enjoy every weekend.
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NARRATOR: It's
also regularly used for training by police divers. - A police diving team
must keep up their skills
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at all times,
and in order to do this, they must train somewhere deep
or somewhere in flowing water,
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no visibility. Different environments
to practice their skills. - You know the water
in Loch Lomond
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is fairly cold all year round. As far as the diving
team was concerned, we were in Loch Lomond
on a regular basis,
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quite a different
variety of locations that we can find, from deep
water to shallow water,
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from really, really good clear
water to quite poor visibility. [exciting music] NARRATOR: On a cold
December morning,
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police diving
supervisor, Jeff Adams, was leading a dive
team on a training exercise near Loch
Lomond, Rowardennan Pier.
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- This is Rowardennan,
where it all began. Nothing much has changed
from 25 years ago.
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It was even colder
than it is today. Snow, rain, high winds. It was quite a horrible day.
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NARRATOR: Jeff was
on the pier running the operation as his team
entered the icy water.
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JEFF ADAMS: We
were just sending the divers out
to make sure that they covered this large area.
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It was purely by accident that
the divers were sent to an area that they suddenly saw
these two black bin bags.
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Being inquisitive by nature
and if you like by training, they went to have a look
and see what was in these bags.
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- The officer found an arm. He thought initially that
the his colleagues on shore
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were playing
a practical joke on him. He thought it was a mannequin
inside a black plastic bag.
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Either that or he
thought, maybe this is a test to see if I'm
doing my search properly.
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Either way, he came
out of the water and held the arm aloft as if
to say, yes, I've found it.
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JEFF ADAMS: I was
quite convinced that there was some kind
of practical joke being played.
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Very quickly, we
realized it wasn't. NARRATOR: The discovery of a
severed arm and part of a leg
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meant the area was
now a crime scene. Strathclyde police
were called in. - I was a detective
superintendent.
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I was in charge
of the Ayrshire area. It was all very early
in the Monday morning.
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It was an unusual
crime in Scotland. And in fact, pretty much
the UK for body parts
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to be turning up
in a local Loch. GILL WILLIAMS:
Once they realized there was a crime scene
there, the surface area
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immediately around that point
would have been sealed off from anyone else
entering it, apart
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from forensic people and the
people that had to be there to investigate the crime.
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You need to make
sure that everything is intact and secure. So you put the body part
into a polythene bag
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and make sure that
that is sealed up so that nothing can escape it. You don't want to lose
anything, skin sloughing off
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or anything else
falling off the body. Once the limbs have
been found, then they
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would start resorting back
to proper search techniques and search patterns to start
looking for any more evidence
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and to look for the rest
of the body parts. NARRATOR: With just an arm
and part of a leg to work from,
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police turn to missing
person records to shed light on who
their victim might be.
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Meanwhile,
a specialist water team scoured the Loch using
underwater cameras and
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sonar equipment. JEFF ADAMS: Sonar, it's
a very crude method. It can find things.
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But what it can't do
is say for definite that there's nothing there. So technology-wise,
you really can't
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beat the aspect of putting
a police diver in to search it properly. [exciting music]
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So recovery of the first
two items would be roughly 15-20 metres off
the corner of the pier
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as we're looking at it. We continued
the search later on and found another
body part down
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in this corner of the pier. SIMON BOXALL: Every body of
water has a tide of some sort,
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but it's too small
to measure, and that's the case of Loch Lomond. Although it's the largest and
surface area of any freshwater,
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body of water
on the UK mainland, it still doesn't have any
measurable tidal flow.
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So most likely, the limbs
were actually put into the water near the pier. NARRATOR: By the 8
of December, divers
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had recovered two hands,
two arms, two lower legs, one thigh, and a foot. - The body might be
of a slightly older male,
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but they weren't sure
and they were searching for further body parts. NARRATOR: And by now,
the search had attracted
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the attention of the press. NORMAN SILVESTER:
At the time the newspaper I was working for, we got
a tip off about the police
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were searching for body parts. But the assumption was
that this was possibly some sort of a gangland
crime related incident,
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that possibly some
criminals had fallen out, one had been murdered and his
body parts disposed of.
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KEVIN BROWNE: This is extremely
difficult to dismember a body. You can't do it
with knives that you
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usually keep in a kitchen. But somehow, there has to be
some level of intention where they go out and buy
various implements in order
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to saw the body into parts. NARRATOR: Police were
keeping an open mind. They also widened
the search area.
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JEFF ADAMS: Once
we'd finished, we realized that we hadn't
found all the body parts
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to make up a human being. The next phase
that you're trying to think right, if they're
not here, where are they?
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So you then have to look
at any other possible sites, where someone could have
access to presumably a vehicle
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and be able to dump
things in the water. NARRATOR: Officers
and the police diving team
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moved their search
7 miles south along Loch Lomond shoreline, to
the quiet village of Balmaha.
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- We were fairly
confident that this would be a prime location
for finding more because
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of accessibility
and remote area, very, very limited police presence. Conditions here underwater
are quite different to what
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we'd find at Rowardennan. Whereas Rowardennan is clear,
quite sandy bottom here,
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quite muddy,
and very, very poor visibility which made
the search of this area really quite difficult.
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It's often asked if we
do underwater lights and everything else,
which obviously we did
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have access to. It's effectively like putting
your main beam on in the fog. Suddenly you can see
absolutely nothing.
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So unfortunately,
you're down in the mud and you're working
with your fingertips.
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KEVIN BROWNE: Now,
why a murderer would choose to dispose
of a body in water instead of burying it on land?
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Maybe due to the belief
that they're less likely to be
caught if the body parts or bodies dropped into water.
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The offenders think that
the body is likely to disappear or be eaten by fish. NORMAN SILVESTER:
As it is developed,
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it was a very
fast moving story. I think people were
very, very concerned. There was a kind
of fear, an undercurrent.
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NARRATOR: For police,
the race was now on to capture an individual
with clear sadistic tendencies.
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JEFF ADAMS: On additional body
parts, we found at Balmaha. You could see quite clearly
that handcuffs had been used.
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You're not used to seeing them
having made such an impression on a human body, and
particularly to put handcuffs
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around someone's lower leg. - One of the things that
comes to mind immediately when I think about
somebody who's restrained
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against their will
with handcuffs is this need
to dominate and control, and that being part of the
sexual turn on for that person.
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It's very rare
to see situations where somebody is
handcuffing somebody because they're wanting
to kill them for money
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or kill them for revenge. NARRATOR: By now,
detectives had finished searching the missing
person reports,
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and had a possible
name for their victim. But it's not one they
or the press were expecting.
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Detectives in Scotland are
scouring missing persons lists, trying to identify
the murder victim,
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whose dismembered body parts
have been found in Loch Lomond. Now, they have a possible
name, Barry Wallace,
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last seen the day before
the body parts were discovered. [suspenseful music] - Barry Wallace was
18 years of age,
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and he was going out
for a Christmas night out with his friends
and his colleagues
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from a local supermarket
in Kilmarnock. It had quite a lot to drink. He was last seen drunk
walking about Kilmarnock
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trying to get a taxi. He didn't arrive home. JOHN GEATES: He had no previous
history of going missing.
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He had no previous history of
any involvement in criminality. He was a good lad.
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His parents were concerned
about where he was and when they hadn't come
back late in the Sunday night
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and then report for work
in the Monday morning, he was reported
as a missing person.
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- Barry had disappeared
into thin air. There was no back story. There was no family issues.
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Just a normal teenager enjoying
a Christmas night out and with his future ahead of him.
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NARRATOR: 50 miles North of
Kilmarnock, the police search of Loch Lomond continued.
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GILL WILLIAMS: On land, you can
easily mark out search areas because everything is visible.
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Underwater, it's
very, very different because the people
on the surface can't see what's
going on underneath.
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You're looking
at the distance out that the diver
is from the bank. And so just by taking
measurements
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from the diver's lifeline
as to how far out they are and how far along the search
pattern they are,
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you can actually log
on your underwater plan exactly what areas
have been searched.
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You've also got to think
if these limbs have been thrown
into the water, how far
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out can they have been thrown? How far out are they
likely to have drifted? NARRATOR: Meanwhile,
a pathologist
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examined the recovered limbs
for clues about the murder weapon and what
tools might have been
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used to dismember the body. RICHARD SHEPHERD: It is
actually very hard indeed to dismember a body cleanly.
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Sometimes there are
marks associated with the cuts
in the flesh that suggest it may be a serrated material.
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Sometimes a chainsaw is used
that leaves a different cutting impression. Sometimes a grinding
wheel, once again,
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a different impression. You'd be looking at both the
soft tissues, the muscles and
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the skin, but also
any cuts through bone, which are much
better at reproducing the implement that was used.
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STUART FERGUSON:
Parts of the bones were transported by road
to specialists in England,
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but all they could
say was they were cut with a fine toothed saw. If we were hoping for maybe
something more specific
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that we could focus our part
of the investigation on, but that just came to a dead
end, unfortunately.
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NARRATOR: Officers suspected
missing person, Barry Wallace, was the victim whose body
parts they had found,
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but they still had
no definite proof. Until the 15th of December and
the most grisly discovery yet.
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At a beachfront
on Scotland's West Coast, more than 50 miles
from Loch Lomond. - A lady had been
walking her dog
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and her dog had
noticed two bags and was pulling at the bags,
and when she went up,
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she saw that there
was a human head. - To the best
of my recollection, it was just down near
where the rocky area starts
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and where you see
the bits of seaweed lying and that kind of area there. SIMON BOXALL: Disposing of body
at sea is tricky in many ways.
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In some places, the tides
are very weak or nonexistent. In other places, they're
incredibly strong.
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We can get flows in excess
of 15 miles an hour in some places,
which is phenomenal.
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As the tide goes
back and forth, so a body might go at great
speed in one direction.
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But 6.5 hours later,
it comes back again. JOHN GEATES: We can
only assume that it
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was the temperature
of the seawater that preserved of the head. RICHARD SHEPHERD:
Being cold, of course,
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is really important for us. It preserves the tissues,
it preserves the cut marks,
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it preserves evidence,
and that's what we want. So if it's been out of the
water in a warm environment
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for two or three days
before being deposited, that's gonna have
a significant effect.
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But if on the other hand,
the individual has died and it's put
quickly into water,
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preservation is going
to be much, much better. NARRATOR: In this case,
the head was so well preserved,
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it was even possible to confirm
the victim's identity. - Unfortunately, it was Barry.
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NARRATOR: It was a big step
forward for investigators, but the coastal nature
of the crime scene
00:18:14
put them under time pressure. GILL WILLIAMS:
You've got access by the public along
the beach, so you're going
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to have to cordon it all off. You're then dealing
with the tides. If the tide comes
in, it's going
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to bring in sea
creatures that like fleshy parts of human bodies. You're wanting to get this
skull recovered as quickly as
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possible, photographed,
bagged up and taken out of the way
out of that environment
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before the sea and everything
that lives in it comes back in. JOHN GEATES: I knew
I was going to have
00:18:55
to go and see his parents. The two of the nicest
people I've ever met. One of the family
liaison officers
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took Barry's dad to Glasgow
City mortuary to identify him. I think people were horrified.
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I think they were absolutely
stunned, shocked and horrified that an innocent
boy, and he was,
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could end up in this situation. Barry was had gone
missing in the early hours of the Sunday morning.
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And then the first body
parts were found very early on the Monday morning. So whoever has done this
has done it very quickly
00:19:54
and could well have done
something like that before. KEVIN BROWNE:
The offender would
00:20:01
be someone who would
be callous, have no empathy for anyone,
would be extremely selfish
00:20:07
and possibly impulsive. Now the police would then
look to see who in the area had a criminal record,
especially for violence.
00:20:21
- The main three that we were
focusing on was dismemberment. - Initially, a check was made
in the police computer system,
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and there was a very
short list of one person who had an MO of
carrying out a dismemberment.
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- We had a suspect
right on our doorstep. NARRATOR: In a chilly
Scottish Loch, police have found
and identified the remains
00:20:55
of 18-year-old Barry Wallace. JOHN GEATES: As soon
as the search was made, they realized that it was
actually a human body parts.
00:21:06
The police in Scotland like
wildfire because that's a very uncommon occurrence. This was absolutely horrific.
00:21:15
This was off the scale. NARRATOR: Now, they
also have a suspect, a known local
offender by the name
00:21:23
of William Frederick Beggs,
a man with a violent past. NORMAN SILVESTER:
Beggs had previously
00:21:40
stood trial for an incident in
Kilmarnock eight years earlier, in 1991, where he had invited
a gentleman back to his home.
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They'd met in a gay
bar in Glasgow, and this person had been given
a drink that was drugged.
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He fell unconscious
and woke up to find Beggs attacking
him with a knife and trying to cut
him up or slash him.
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This particular
individual jumped out a window to escape
Beggs, and he was found by a local
resident, taken to hospital.
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Beggs was arrested. NARRATOR: Beggs was sentenced
to six years for the attack, and there was more.
00:22:25
He had also previously been
imprisoned for the murder of a 28-year-old man
in 1987, but the conviction
00:22:32
was quashed on appeal. STUART FERGUSON: They
led the trail of murder with instances that
Beggs had carried
00:22:39
out woundings of other men. And it was deemed
that because they had led that, it was unfair and
might have tainted the jury's
00:22:48
opinion of him as far
as the murder is concerned, and the appeal was upheld
and he was released.
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NARRATOR: Beggs lawyers
succeeded in their appeal. Under English law
at the time, he
00:23:01
couldn't be retried
for the same crime, so he was a free man. Beggs started a new life
moving north to Scotland.
00:23:12
- We knew that he
had been convicted of a murder in Teesside. We knew that he had got
off with that murder
00:23:18
on a technicality. NARRATOR: But although
the conviction was overturned, the details of that
murder, for which Beggs
00:23:24
was the only suspect, were
worryingly similar to the crime police were now investigating.
00:23:29
- There had been attempts
to dismember the limbs. KEVIN BROWNE: Dismembering
the bodies extremely,
00:23:37
a rare thing to happen after
someone has killed someone. And in that particular case,
there was an evidence that he
00:23:43
tried to dismember the body. And this case went to court. And due to a miscarriage
of the court proceedings,
00:23:53
he successfully appealed
and was out of prison after three years. - The officers who
worked in Kilmarnock
00:24:01
were aware of his
previous convictions, and they were keeping
an eye out on him.
00:24:09
NARRATOR: Police
didn't publicly name Beggs as a person
of interest, but it wasn't long
before the media
00:24:15
came to its own conclusions. - I isolate exploded
as far as press-wise went because the press
too had started
00:24:23
to find out about Beggs. NORMAN SILVESTER: The media
was asking the question. You've got somebody
in your doorstep
00:24:30
who's committed
a similar crime, why aren't you arresting him? NARRATOR: The press's
freedom to speculate
00:24:38
risked jeopardizing the entire
police investigation and enabling Barry
Wallace's murderer
00:24:45
to evade justice completely. STUART FERGUSON: Because he
was only a suspect, they just printed
what they wanted to.
00:24:54
It was a really difficult,
challenging time for the family because there were things put
in the papers likes of Beggs
00:25:06
head, Barry's head
in his fridge. They were also printing things
about Beggs previous incidents,
00:25:13
about his previous convictions,
about his lifestyle. All that does is
prejudice a future trial
00:25:21
because an individual's
supposed to have a fair trial
without any background or previous convictions being
brought into public knowledge.
00:25:33
NARRATOR: The case was
unsettling an entire community, so police wasted no time
in putting together a timeline
00:25:40
which might offer more clues. - We already had a sequence
of events in terms of Barry's last movements.
00:25:50
We then had to try and do
the same thing with Beggs. We realized that same morning
that Barry had been last seen
00:25:59
in the town center,
Beggs would roughly be approaching Kilmarnock, and
he would come in that same way
00:26:05
that Barry was walking and it
would be around the same time. This is how they have
actually been able to meet up.
00:26:13
NARRATOR: Tracing prime
suspect, Beggs movements, hour by hour, day
by day, police
00:26:20
made another key discovery. On December 7th,
Beggs took a ferry from Troon on Scotland's west
coast over to Northern Ireland.
00:26:39
- We believe that when he was
taking the SeaCat from Troon to Ireland to see his
parents, that that
00:26:46
was when he probably
threw Barry's head off the side of the ferry. NARRATOR: Suspect
Beggs may have
00:26:55
thought disposing of the head
from a moving vessel would make it less likely to be found.
00:27:01
He was wrong. SIMON BOXALL: Does
it make a difference that the head was dropped
from a height from a ferry,
00:27:08
rather than placed
in much lower? It makes no difference at all
to the path of that head,
00:27:15
and it would still
wash up on that beach. And we can demonstrate that
here by taking an object,
00:27:21
placing it in gently
to the surface of the ocean, and it goes along with the flow
at a fairly steady rate.
00:27:27
And after 30
seconds, it reaches a point further down there. We can then repeat
that, but this time,
00:27:34
rather than placing
it in carefully, we're going to drop
it from height. So we're dropping it from
the deck, say, of a ferry.
00:27:40
It goes into the water,
makes a splash, but actually very quickly it
finds its level in the sea,
00:27:46
and it goes with exactly
the same currents as it would have
done had it been put
00:27:49
in the ocean at the surface. NARRATOR: Police widened their
investigation from the coast
00:27:56
to the suspect's
apartment in Kilmarnock. - We knew that if the murder
had taken place
00:28:05
in that location in his
home, then somewhere there had to be evidence and traces
of Barry Wallace in that flat.
00:28:15
[suspenseful music] NARRATOR: A warrant
was promptly issued for detectives
to gain access, but
00:28:29
the press were already there. NORMAN SILVESTER: No, this
was a high profile case.
00:28:36
So when the police went
and raided the house, journalists knew about it. A lot of journalists
were already
00:28:41
there when the police arrived. JOHN GEATES: When we got
there, the flat was empty,
00:28:48
Beggs was not in. We assumed he was at his work. But we didn't know at that
time where he worked.
00:28:55
So at that point,
the house was sealed and the search
started to take place. NARRATOR: And the media's
fascination with the case
00:29:04
was about to cause
a major problem. NORMAN SILVESTER: There was
a radio broadcast that suspect
00:29:10
in the case of Barry Wallace. His house had been
raided in Kilmarnock. Beggs at work, he hears
this news broadcast,
00:29:18
realizes about him. He fled. He'd gone on the run. - That was very
frustrating for us.
00:29:24
Very frustrating. NARRATOR: But on the 28th
of December, wanted man Beggs made another
unexpected move, handing
00:29:41
himself in to Dutch police. JOHN GEATES: And he did so with
one of the top extradition
00:29:46
lawyers in Amsterdam. His lawyer made
it clear that he was pleading that
he was innocent,
00:29:51
and that he was not
wanting to be extradited. NORMAN SILVESTER: The decision
by Beggs handed himself
00:29:56
into Dutch police,
created a major problem for the authorities. JOHN GEATES:
The Netherlands was
00:30:01
one of the most
difficult countries to be extradited from. And his plan was that we
would never get him back.
00:30:08
JONI JOHNSTON: He
is somebody who has studied
the legal system, is committed to using it as much
as possible to his advantage.
00:30:16
And he's been able
to do that in the past, where one of his convictions
was overturned on appeal.
00:30:22
NARRATOR: This time, though,
Beggs scheme backfired. STUART FERGUSON:
Back in those days,
00:30:29
you only had 110 days between
when somebody was detained or arrested before trial started.
00:30:36
So the timescales were
really, really tight. But because he was
fighting extradition,
00:30:43
it allowed the inquiry team
to carry out further more exhaustive investigations.
00:30:54
NARRATOR: Forensic
officers returned to the wanted man's home
and spent several weeks
00:30:59
gathering more evidence. STUART FERGUSON: The first
significant findings were items of blood.
00:31:06
Those blood samples
were examined, and they were then found
to be Barry Wallace's blood.
00:31:17
NARRATOR: Detectives
hoped Barry's remains would help provide
a timeline for his murder.
00:31:23
But the dumping of the body
in water made this challenging. - If a body's been
recovered on land,
00:31:35
it's a lot easier to identify
the time of death. Underwater, it does
make it more difficult,
00:31:42
purely because of the way
water reacts with the flesh of the body. Often with bodies that are
recovered from the water,
00:31:50
the only real idea of how
long the body's been there is because someone's seen
the body go into the water.
00:31:59
NARRATOR: Police investigating
the suspect's past tried to establish what might
have motivated him to commit
00:32:05
such disturbing crimes. - So what we know
about William Beggs is he's an intelligent man.
00:32:11
He has a degree. NORMAN SILVESTER: William Beggs
was from a very respectable family in Northern Ireland.
00:32:18
Both his mother
and father were pillars of the community, God-fearing,
church going people.
00:32:23
Beggs had been brought
up in that environment. NARRATOR: But being raised
in a community where being gay
00:32:29
was stigmatized,
suspected killer Beggs went to extreme
lengths to conceal his own homosexuality.
00:32:37
JONI JOHNSTON: It would be
incredibly confusing to have this religious indoctrination,
which is telling you
00:32:42
that your natural preferences,
your natural interests are sins and can result in some
eternal damnation
00:32:50
or something like that. As a person grows up, it's not
uncommon for that self-hatred
00:32:56
and that anger and confusion to
begin to be directed outward. NARRATOR: In the case
of wanted man, Beggs,
00:33:04
this took the form
of attacks on men, which started at a young age. KEVIN BROWNE: The first record
of Beggs committing violence
00:33:12
was when he knifed a teenager
on a camping trip, when he was a young teenager himself.
00:33:20
There seemed to be
the beginnings of what we could identify
as a pattern in his behavior.
00:33:28
- In a whole history of cutting
people in youth hostels, he was banned from youth
hostels in the Balmaha area
00:33:34
for that very practice. NARRATOR: Detectives also
appealed to the gay community for more information, and got
an immediate response.
00:33:43
- People in that community
started coming forward to speak with us because a lot
of them were frightened of him.
00:33:49
- So the realization that this
was a really dangerous man, it was a fiend. It was a monster.
00:33:56
We needed to get him behind
bars for everyone's safety. NARRATOR: Police
focused their efforts
00:34:09
on bringing suspect Beggs back
from Amsterdam to Scotland. JOHN GEATES: We had
to present a case that there
00:34:18
was a sufficiency of evidence
for a trial to be held and for a conviction
to be secured,
00:34:23
otherwise we would not be
able to extradite them. NARRATOR: Then came news
of a morbid breakthrough.
00:34:38
- So on the 8th of January,
Barry's torso had been found a mile and a half away
from Balmaha, where
00:34:45
his other body parts had been. GILL WILLIAMS:
The torso would have been dumped in that location.
00:34:56
You can drive quite closely
to it, in which case he could have then just
carried it to the water's edge
00:35:01
and put it into the water. NARRATOR: Police
had now recovered most of the victim's body.
00:35:13
GILL WILLIAMS: The fact
that the parts of the body were spread over 4
different locations,
00:35:19
it gives you an idea that
the offender was clearly trying to spread
the body parts around
00:35:25
to make it harder to find, and
he's gone to a lot of trouble to visit these places
to dispose of them.
00:35:36
- It took the torso to the
mortuary where it was given a post-mortem examination.
00:35:47
RICHARD SHEPHERD:
Clearly, deterioration would have progressed,
there's no doubt at all.
00:35:51
And the torso
containing the bowel is more prone to decomposition. But there is still
plenty to see.
00:35:59
NARRATOR: Police had strong
suspicions that Beggs could have drugged his victim.
00:36:06
- The torso is likely
to give the best samples. Samples of blood remaining
within the heart,
00:36:13
remaining within
the major blood vessels, maybe some urine present
within the bladder
00:36:18
or within the kidneys. These can then be analyzed
for any drug residues. NARRATOR:
But the post-mortem failed
00:36:26
to find drugs
in the victim's system, despite a needle
mark on an arm. The dismemberment also
made it impossible to prove
00:36:35
a cause of death. RICHARD SHEPHERD: Things can be
hidden, covered up, disturbed.
00:36:41
And the presumption is that
something violent has happened. But the truth also is that we
don't always know for certain.
00:36:50
And remember
in a court of law, we have to be certain
beyond reasonable doubt rather than just
have a good guess.
00:37:01
NARRATOR: This was a serious
blow to the extradition case. But what the pathologist
uncovered next
00:37:08
would shock the entire team. The dismembered body
of 18-year-old Barry Wallace, found in Loch Lomond has
now undergone a post-mortem.
00:37:22
It revealed new
and horrifying details. - We realized there was
evidence of sexual assault.
00:37:33
RICHARD SHEPHERD:
The pathologist can't actually talk about consent. But when we look at this
type of injuries,
00:37:39
you can say the injuries
were so severe that it's highly unlikely
in someone without a known
00:37:46
masochistic tendency
to be prepared to accept that degree of violence. Add that to the presence
of handcuffs.
00:37:54
Add that to the presence
of other injuries. And it really
points very strongly to a very violent sexual
assault as a component
00:38:03
of a violent overall assault. KEVIN BROWNE: William
Beggs was gay. And the assumption is
that perhaps his latest
00:38:15
victim may be homosexual. But in fact, he wasn't. Barry Wallace was
a heterosexual.
00:38:21
Had Beggs had
admitted he preferred to have the company of what
he regarded as straight men,
00:38:31
and it appeared
that his enjoyment came from forceful homosexual
activity or rape of his victim.
00:38:42
JONI JOHNSTON: The fact
that he chooses to go out and essentially troll for men
who are not gay, I think,
00:38:51
does speak to this
anger and this sadism. And this pleasure he might get
in not only taking advantage
00:38:58
of young men who
might be intoxicated, but young men who
would find being sexually assaulted by a man
particularly horrifying.
00:39:09
- At that point, we had
to make Barry's parents aware. And I'd always told them
I would speak to them.
00:39:16
I'd always told them I
would tell the truth. And I don't think I had
a more difficult conversation
00:39:22
in my entire police career. NARRATOR: After months
of investigating, the extradition case against
wanted man, Beggs, was granted.
00:39:39
But he appealed, and things
ground to a halt yet again. JOHN GEATES: They
appealed on the basis
00:39:46
that due to the press
coverage, he could not receive a fair trial in Scotland. NARRATOR: If Beggs
won that appeal,
00:39:56
the police's prime
suspect would swerve justice altogether. - But eventually,
they ruled that Beggs
00:40:07
could be sent back to Scotland
or extradited back to Scotland. - And he was
absolutely shocked.
00:40:13
[suspenseful music] NARRATOR: During the trial
at Edinburgh high court, a picture emerged
of what happened
00:40:29
to victim, Barry Wallace,
in the final hours of his life. - I genuinely
believe what happened
00:40:36
was that Beggs was
coming into Kilmarnock, Barry Wallace was walking home. Beggs offered him a lift.
00:40:44
Barry was drunk. They've gone to Beggs flat. Beggs has given him something
and he's passed out.
00:40:51
When Barry's been waking up,
he is being sexually assaulted. And during that time as well,
he had been handcuffed
00:40:58
and has been struggling so hard
that he actually scraped two bones in his wrist.
00:41:06
It was described by a very
senior police casualty surgeon as the worst handcuff injury
he had ever witnessed.
00:41:13
NARRATOR:
And the prosecution called one witness, who
revealed a chilling detail of the timeline.
00:41:20
STUART FERGUSON:
On the Sunday, Beggs made a phone call to one
of his close friends
00:41:27
and said that he had picked up
a young, sweet guy the night before. Now, when you look
at the timeline,
00:41:37
it's more than
likely that that's when he was at or near
to Loch Lomond, either going to deposit Barry's
remains or coming back from.
00:41:48
So it's chilling. NARRATOR: Then more
forensic evidence emerged, tying Beggs to the crime.
00:41:56
STUART FERGUSON:
When it was reported, Beggs had fled the country. He drove down to Luton
airport, where his car
00:42:02
was eventually discovered. His car revealed blood as well. Barry's blood. NARRATOR: But the defense
team claimed
00:42:13
the victim had
consented to sex, and that the death was
the consequence of a sex
00:42:18
game gone wrong between them. NORMAN SILVESTER: One
of the arguments of the defense
00:42:25
had been that this
wasn't a murder. It was a culpable
homicide or manslaughter, it's known in other countries.
00:42:33
And that, of course, would
have meant a lesser sentence. And there was a bit
of a dramatic moment when
00:42:38
the jury came back
to ask for some guidance from the judge on the
difference between culpable
00:42:43
homicide and murder. And that led us to believe
that there might be fight, there might be
acquitted him of murder.
00:42:52
NARRATOR: The jury were
given clarification, and the detail of the victim's
injuries was read out.
00:42:58
Then the jury
of 15 men and women retired to make their decision. - There was massive pressure
to get a conviction, first and
00:43:08
foremost, for Barry's mom
and dad and his brother, because they deserved that. We also wanted a conviction
to prevent this
00:43:16
from ever happening again. NARRATOR: After a trial
lasting nearly three weeks, William Frederick Beggs was
found guilty of the murder
00:43:32
of Barry Wallace. - He was sentenced
to life imprisonment. But the recommendation for the
minimum custodial was 20 years.
00:43:46
NARRATOR: Under
Scottish law, it meant Beggs wouldn't even
be considered for parole
00:43:52
for two full decades. - My recollection
that there wasn't a lot of reaction
from Beggs, whether he
00:44:00
was resigned to the outcome. NARRATOR: But even with
the killer behind bars, some questions still remained.
00:44:09
- I'm a firm believer that
there are other victims. The initial search
of the house took several days.
00:44:17
There were some carpets
underlay and in floorboards, what I started to find was
stains or blood, human blood,
00:44:25
male human blood, which
was not identified and still have not
been identified. NORMAN SILVESTER: They
found blood samples
00:44:35
of 17 other males, which
suggests that other men have been in that flat,
other young men
00:44:41
had been attacked
and possibly even murdered. STUART FERGUSON: Who else has
been in that property that
00:44:47
has lost blood to that extent? JONI JOHNSTON:
Not only would it be difficult for a male to come
forward with sexual violence,
00:44:57
there's the whole issue
of if this person is straight and they're raped by a gay man.
00:45:03
I think that it
is unfortunately not uncommon for that
person to wonder, why did this person choose me?
00:45:10
What does this say
about my own sexuality? And then he's picking
men who are much
00:45:14
less likely to come forward. So he is stacking the deck as
much as possible in his favor.
00:45:21
JOHN GEATES:
The impact this guy has had in the Wallace
family is beyond belief.
00:45:27
But not just
the Wallace family, other families in this country
and in other countries.
00:45:35
He's been, in my opinion,
a serial predator. With the family,
while everyone was
00:45:44
pleased that there
was a conviction, it didn't alter what
they had gone through.
00:45:51
It didn't alter what
had happened to Barry. And I think they have shown
tremendous courage in the way
00:45:59
that they have continued
their lives since then. [music playing]