I was skimming through my news feeds today and spotted one “Man quizzed after dismembered body find“. A rush of adrenaline hit my heart and I was suddenly catapulted back to December 1999.
Working in the Student’s Union at Paisley University one Friday evening, I picked up the phone when it rang. It was J, a ‘life-time’ student who I’d known for years. He asked for someone specific, but they weren’t on duty and therefore not easily findable. “Turn on the TV”, he instructed me “they’re looking for Beggs for the murder of Barry Wallace – the limbs in the loch guy!”. “What?” I replied, stuck for words. I couldn’t grasp this – we knew Beggs as a slightly ‘creepy guy’ but how could he have coldy murdered and dismembered someone?
It was the last Friday night of the Autumn term, most people would be returning home in the next day or two. The Union was jammed, as I dived for one of the remotes and turned the TV over to a news channel. Sure enough, he was right – police were now looking for a man that I knew as a quiet post-grad student – in one of Scotland’s biggest and most macabre murder investigations. Friday evening and the university was closed, so the phone in the Student’s Union began ringing with press queries within the hour. I answered the phone numbly, repeating “no comment” over and over until after midnight.
We had all been monitoring the case in the papers, it was the biggest news in Scotland at the time. Police divers on a training exercise at Loch Lomond had found bin bags containing a severed forearm and leg. Further searching turned up the torso and missing limbs, but there was no sign of the head. Nine days later, a woman out walking her dog on the beach 60 miles away found a bag containing a human head – police later ascertained that it had been dropped from the Troon – Belfast ferry. The body showed signs of sexual assault.
Our interest in the case suddenly turned overnight from curious skimmers to reading every word in depth – this was now someone we had been acquainted with, spoken with. I’d had several close contacts with Beggs – I had been sitting on the Sports and Social committee that year and had been instrumental in rejecting the funding application for the ‘extreme sports’ club he wanted to start – I felt it was too much money for the benefit of too few students. He’d also given me a lift down to the ferry one evening earlier in the term – as a student we were always eager to save any cash when possible…
It turned out that he had been convicted of murder and mutilation in the past, but had his conviction overturned (on a technicality if my mind doesn’t fail me). He was then jailed again in 1991 for a brutal razor attack – the man he attacked jumped out a window in order to save his own life. How did we let a man with a record like this teach at our university, when most of the attacks involved younger men? More questions were raised than answers.
Beggs heard that police were looking for him when listening to the radio in his car. He immediately fled the country and an international manhunt was initiated. Two weeks later he walked into a police station in Amsterdam and gave himself up. He was refused bail and in autumn 2001 the trial eventually went to the Edinburgh High Court where Beggs was found guilty and jailed for life, with a recommendation to serve at least 20 years.
Kirsty Scott and Gerard Seenan for The Guardian wrote a clear, descriptive account of the case.
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