Killer gets life for 'limbs in loch' case

A predatory homosexual described by police as a "serial killer in the making" was convicted on Friday of dismembering a teenager in what became known as the "limbs in the loch" murder.

As William Beggs was sentenced to life in prison, with a recommendation that he serve at least 20 years, news emerged that he had already been convicted of murder 14 years earlier but had been released on appeal.

The 38-year-old man, from Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, was found guilty by a majority verdict at the High Court in Edinburgh of sexually assaulting and killing Barry Wallace, 18, also from Kilmarnock, in December 1999.

Beggs killed Mr Wallace after luring the heterosexual teenager back to his flat after a chance meeting in the street as the youth left a Christmas party in the early hours of 5 December 1999. Once in the flat, Beggs handcuffed the teenager, sexually assaulted and then killed him before cutting up the body.

He tried to dispose of the limbs by throwing them in Loch Lomond, where they were discovered by police divers on a training exercise the next day. Mr Wallace's head was found nine weeks later washed up on a beach 60 miles away near Troon, Ayrshire.

Police quickly identified Beggs as a suspect only to find that he had fled to the Netherlands, where he later gave himself up and was extradited to Scotland to stand trial.

Speaking at a news conference in Glasgow, the victim's father, Ian Wallace, said: "Our Barry was a normal, healthy, fun-loving teenager whose only mistake in this whole sordid episode was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and fall prey to this monster, a mistake which cost him his life."

Beggs, originally from Co Armagh, in Northern Ireland, was convicted of killing a barman he picked up in a Newcastle gay club in 1987, and jailed for life. But he was freed two years later when the Court of Appeal ruled that evidence of previous razor attacks by Beggs on young men should not have been presented to the jury.

After his conviction was quashed, Beggs moved to Scotland, where he was jailed for six years for slashing a gay man he had picked up in a club. Despite being described as "a danger to the public", Beggs was released early in 1994 after serving only half his sentence.