Parole Denials and Final Reflections

Hello there and welcome to Murder Must British. I'm Zach. Hey everyone, welcome. I'm Rachel.. Y. Yes, you are Ready funny. Ready to rock and roll for another episode. Yep. We're on episode thirty eight. Yeah onn the mainfedld Yeah We've got some bonus episodes on our Patreon, so Yeah, head over there and get we'll get to that. Yeah. Well, after the Inanity that was the Sir Howi Arms murder Yeah out in Wales We're headed off to Scotland this week. Amazing. I've never been to Scotland, you know. It does look beautiful from what I say online, Oh, yeah It's a nice place to go. It's one of those places where it You see pictures like, holy cow, that is really beautiful up there. Stunning stunning views Well, Let's not bore you. Let's get to the story here So before we begin, A small request from us If you'd like to support the show directly and unlock ad free episodes, bonus episodes, early access, Q and A's, and more You can join our Patreon community now. 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And You can also join us in the public Crypt chat, which is our free discord channel where you can talk about cases, share theories and read the latest news from the archive Your support helps the archive grow and ensures that no story is ever forgotten This episode contains discussion of sexual assault, dismemberment, and murder It also includes references to the recovery of human remains and details presented during the trial Some listeners may find the content distressing Listener disiscretion is strongly advised Gruesome this one But let's get to the story On a winter morning in Airshare A woman walked her dog along a quiet stretch of beach near Tun The tide had pulled something in. caaught at the line where the sea gives up What is carrying? plastic bag Pale against the sand ifting slightly in the wind She moved closer becausecause the dog wouldn't leave it alone bag had split. There was something inside. a shape that didn't belong there. She looked once, then turned away. unsure of what she'd seen A few minutes later She came back with someone else This time. They stayed William Fredrick Ian Beggs was born on the fourth of October of nineteen sixty three in Lurghan County Aar He was the eldest of five children And the family home outside Moira in County Down was described as respectable well regarded and closely tied to the local Baptist church He went on to attend friends schoolool in Lisbon. school where he spent seven years and left with nine O levels and two A levels So from the beginning, he did not look like someone on the margins. He came from a solid, structured, respectable background Yeah, that's when they to talk about nature and nurture About killers and that? Yeah. They're like, o, well, he had a bad, well, not everybody had a bad background. That's the thing, isn't it? A lot of, you know, people from that commit crimes, they don't always come from bad backgrounds. It's such a crazy stereotype to put that on to people like that are criminals and do these sorts of behaviours because it doesn't matter what background you have Yeah, there's plenty of people who grew up in a rough background and they became very successful. Exactly. Yeah. That image carried into adulthood as well He moved to England to study public administration at Tide Polytechnic in Middlesborough And while he was there, he got heavily involved in student politics He rose within the Federation of Cervative students moved in hard right circles and was also linked to Ian Paisley's Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign For a time He wasn't just a student with political opinions. He seemed to be somebody who thought politics or at least public life might actually be his future That's just kidd. I've actually, since I've got older, I've got into politics a lot more. A that apparently wasn't just in his head either He was even said to have been invited to down in straight. M Burns night supppper during the Thatchy years which gives you an idea of the kind of impression he could make Educated, articulate politically connected Somebody who could move through respectable spaces and look entirely at ease there That surface did not tell the full story. But In the late nineteen eighties, serious violence was already a part of his history In nineteen eighty seven, he was prosecuted in England over the death of twenty eight year old Barry Oldam Begs claim self defense. But he was convicted of murder. along with two counts of wounding The case also involved evidence that there had been an attempt to dismember Oldam's body Now, that murder conviction was later quashed on appeal But not because the court found no killing had taken place It was quashed because the murder charge had been wrongly tried alongside the wounding charges. Those two wounded convictions remained and there was no retrial. on the murder charge So the appeal turned on legal process not on some clean finding that nothing had happened. Wow So it was just a technicality of clyerical because they didn't like do for a trial a trial fuck up Yeah, and that's all it was to mess it up and then he's like, oh, just two wounding charges, spend a couple of years in prison or whatever. and that's it. That's mad,n't it where it didn't simply disappear from this history. After his release, he moved to Ayersire and for a short time worked as a housing officer Kil Marnak and Lden Council. But that job didn't last He was dismissed after it emerged that he had lied on his CV and that the CV had actually been prepared while he was still in prison waiting on the outcome of the appeal evenven as he tried to rebuild Dishonesty was already there There's people in parliament now that have lied and, you know, on their CV's. AE? O Rachel Reeves? Whoops.' getting political now. careful Yeah. Well, then in nineteen ninety one, there was another conviction for serious violence He was sentenced to six years for assault. to severe injury perermanent disfigurement and danger of life That victim later identified as Brian McQuillan had met Begs in Glasgow and gone back with him to his flat and Kil Marnarch Once there, the night turned into a sustained knife attack Quillin only survived by escaping through a first floor window And years later, he publicly warned that Beggs was dangerous and said he believed he could do it again Well Bex was released in nineteen ninety four after serving part of that sentence And after that, he rebuilt the appearance of an ordinary, even respectable life in Scotland. He studied computing at Paisley University moved into postgraduate research and funded that through work at the Psyches schoolool center in Edinburgh By the late nineteen nineties, he was being described as a PhD student Research in technology in higher education while also tutoring and working in staff training So again, the public face of him was academic, settled, and productive So I'm just a PhD student, man. I'm all right. Iin't got nothing hiding in my past You want you need tutoring Pace Oh God. This is where the things were You just don't know who people are people say you can't judge a book by its cover. So you know, if somebody's coming across as quite an articulate, you know,, polite, you know, very respectable type person. unless you delve deeper into a friendship of some sort, you know, with them You're not going to actually know. you're just going to see the surface. So ye. And just like I've said with like Ted Bundy. He was charming. He was nice, he was good looking. peopleeople trusted him. He was, you know, And then he just ended up killing a bunch of people. And this is where people can hide behind all that fade. Y. They could put the mask on. Y. That respectable academic version of Bs existed alongside a very violent history evenven sticking only to what had been proved in court, The pattern was hard to ignore Serious violence across different years, in different places against men who were alone And yet by the late nineteen nineties, he was living at Dune Place in the Bellfield area of Kilmarnock. outwardly settled. and entirely ordinary on the surface As he was living there, like a man trying to stay invisible, reportedly had security light in and even a basic camera system watching the street outside his house Neighbourors described him as guarded, watchful and very aware of what was happening beyond his home front door He came across as someone who liked control, or at least liked knowing what was going on around him. Yeah, back then, that's you know, pretty high tech kind of Yeah They Well, yeah, he's got a camera system. It's not like nowadays where you got a ring doorbell and all that. like everybody's got one of them. then it makes you think, well why have you got such a you know, high security kind of systems and and cameras and, you know, what are you expecting to have coming out to your door or whatever. Yeah, veryery weird A bit strange And then on the other side of this story There was Barry Wallace. He was eighteen years old and living in Kulmarnic with his family He worked at Tesco where he was described as popular and easy to get along with His father later described him as quiet and shy a young man just beginning to find his place in adult life He thought about joining the Royal Navy before going into work instead And like a lot of people at eighteen, his future still felt open M Yeah, I think people are not really a hundred percent sure on what they want to do eighteen there's probablyenty a te, isn't it to kind of P pllenty of time to figure that out. you know, mayaybe spend a couple years just kind of working and seeing how just save up some money and then decide what year're where you want to take your life. Yeah Then on Saturday the fourth of deecember of nineteen ninety nine. Barry went to Tesco's Christmas staff party at the Fox Bar Hotel in Kilmanick Earlier that day, his parents had seen him while he was out shopping And later that evening, his father rang to make sure he had eaten before heading out Barry said that he might meet friends afterwards. and might not come home that night party he drank quite a bit B he was in good spirits point it still looked like an ordinary December night out. kind of evening, nobody around him would have had any reason to remember as the last normal one Berry left the Fox Bar hotel shortly after one in the morning By then, he had been drinking heavily, and people could see he was struggling He was unsteady on his feet, staggering even falling in the street Eventually some of the others from the staff party in and gave him a lift into Kilmarnck Town Center ipping him off near Marx and Spencer Even after that He still wanted to carry on with the night rather than go home. From that point on, he was exposed He was young drunk. it was the early hours and he was no longer with the people he had started the evening with. Not long after being dropped off, he got into a brief drunken altercation with Graham Boes who knew him Punches were exchanged, Barry was knocked down It didn't become some major incident The two of them made up apparently shook hands and went their separate ways then around one thirty in the morning Barry was seen at the entrance of the Expo Nightclub. ' the last confirmed site in? him alive. Having having a little having a little weird altercation with. I mean, it happens. I'm sure like many of us have sort of been in that situation a bit drunk, you know, kind of like you take something that someone said in the wrong way and you're just because you're so drunk, you're a bit Get a bit As you say, get a bit lry. Yeah, get a bit lerry, get bit like aggressive in your verbal words and Yeah I did not on your shelf But They seem to have made up and as you do He just was like, Ohh, come on, I've gotta get home Well att around the same point Begggs was back in Kilmarnick after working in Edinburgh Driving through the same town center, Berry was still moving around on foot at some point Paths crossed We don't know exactly where that happened or exactly what was said can never really be filled in But we do know the outcome. Barry ended up in Begs's car and was taken back to the flat at Dune Pace Once he was inside the flag, The night changed completely Well inside, Barry was restrained with handcuffs on both his arms and legs He was already badly affected by alcohol and from there he was overpowered and subjected to a sustained sexual assault There was later evidence suggesting his arm had been punctured with a needle or at least something similar. points away from a brief chaotic struggle and towards a sustained attack built around restraint and control By the time it was over Barry Wallace was dead. Awesful. Muffle posossibly posossibly, I'd say The needle mark was he probably put injected in with something possibly Like some sort of sedated sedative. Yeah. somethingomet like that to just so he wasn't render him out out of control. Yeah. What was that? Is it GHB or something in it? but I don't know whether that's something that can they inject. I don't know maybe, but they just don't I just don't know. Yeah. It was a possibility, but You know, I mean, obviously it had a lot of alcohol anyway, so he wouldn't have been accomplishenters, but You know I Terrible. Yeah. What was done to Barry did not end with his death inside the same flat Barry's body was dismembered. cut into eight pieces What followed was not one rushed attempt at concealment It unfolded over days different parts of Barry's remains taken to different places in stages and even outwardly, Beggs was already starting to create that appearance of normality around it On the sixth of December, the morning after Barry was last seen He phoned his workplace and said that he was ill. and wouldn't be coming into work He appeared briefly the following day Then left again and produced a doctor's note to cover the rest of the week On the face of it, that looked ordinary enough kind of absence nobody would have noticed twice But behind that routine explanation the aftermath of the killing was still being handled inside the flat Crazy Some of Berry's remains were placed in Loch Lemon Not all of them The head was kept back for a couple of days then taken into the ferry route out of Trune and thrown into the sea This wasn't one journey for everything removed at once It was broken up over time. Then on the evening of the seventh of December Bags checked in at the Trune Ferry terminal for the crossing to Belfast taking his car onto the boat During that journey Berry's remains were thrown into the water Buty how I mean, it's one thing, you know dismembering a body, but carrying it about and, you know, disposing of it and Well I'm gonna to take a little trip over to Belfast, but I gota drop something off in the water while I'm on the way. That's crazy But then Iose, you know he's thinking well, if I scatter it You know? randomly in all sorts of different places. Yeah, it'll slow down the investigation if any of it's found or anything like that Well in the days that followed, bgs kept moving Inside the flat, changes were made Cpets were lifted, surfaces were covered Wallpaper and other materials were brought in as the rooms were altered around what had happened there. Outside the flat, the movement continued as well. car by ferry back and forth between Scotland and Northern Ireland Nothing was being left as it was Well, the investigation began on the morning of the sixth of December When police divers from Central Scotland police were out on Lo Lamon near Rordenan, Pier, for what was supposed to be a routine training exercise thenen One of them found two blank bin bags in the water At first He apparently thought it might have been some kind of practical joke or even part of the exercise itself It wasn't The bag contained a human hand and part of an arm The other contained a foot and part of a leg Training exercise ended immediately and the area became a crime scene And from that point on The search widened fast And at almost the same time back in Kilmarak Barry Wallace had not come home from the Tesco Christmas night out and had failed to show up for work By Monday evening, his father had gone to the police to report him missing. And that's the shocking part the speed of it Barry was last seen alive at around half past one on Sunday morning And by Monday morning, body parts were already being recovered from Lch Lamond That is insanely fast. That is so fast. and this is where it comes up with preparation he must have been prepared for a time that he would be like be able to pick somebody up at some point. I have all my stuff prepared So once that opportunity arises that I can grab somebody I'm ready. It was very swift. Yeah, very swift. Very fast Over the days that followed, more remains were recovered from the lock and stages On the seventh of December, part of an arm with the hand still attached was recovered eighth of December, divers found part of a human leg and thigh Again neear Rorden and peier On the tenth of December, searches near Bel Maha brought up P of a lower leg with the foot attached. Oh grome So you just The police supp be going what is going on? This is so gruesome. They're like, whoa, like we're just finding parts everywhere. like what is going on here Then on the fifteenth of December, The sea gave something else back. Margaret Burley was walking her dog along Burassi Beach near Tune when her dog became fixated on something at the high tideline. There was a plastic bag there, split open And through the tear she could see what looked like a face. At first she didn't believe it was real and walked away But a short time later, she went back with a neighbor William Ald And when he moved the bag with a stick It became clear they were looking at It was a human head They covered it with a bread bin and called the police bag bore Scandinavian Saways markings which drew investigators toward the ferry route out of Trune Ionder where they got the bread bin From their own house. You might still From the neighbor. yeah. Yeah But still like brring a bread bin. But I would say theyre covering it up helped secure anything stop it being, you know water another dog coming along taking it away or whatever, but Yeah good old good old dogo. What a thing to find and come across, Do you know what I mean? So like terrifying and just gruesome Yeah you'd be'd be scared I'd be like,. There's some madmen around here like murdering people. might be a mad woman. Well, yeah, true. true On the eighth of january of two thousand. Almost three weeks later, a torso was recovered from man's bay About a mile and a half away from Baal Maha Postmortem, examination of the body parts showed linear marks on the wrists and ankles consistent. with handcuffs. along with other injuries inflicted before death That's so cool that they can figure that out. that like that those lines, those things are consistent with handcuffs. Yeah By then the separate discoveries had been tied together The remains recovered from Lo Leman were shown through DNA testing to belong to Barry Wallace Then, after the head was found in Virassi, Barry's father, Ian had to identify it Fom there The investigation turned fully back towards Barry's last known movements in Kill Marnick I don't man, I don't know been like just to go and identify just the head Yeah I mean awful. O awful. I would think that they would have like because the face would be When you go and identify, you're going they pull back the sheet, don't they? So they don't fully But just imagine I mean, I wonder if they would then make it feel like it was like a whole body, Do you know what I mean? Would they have possib body parts sort of laid out and then they just pull it Is hang I couldn't even imagine how to make it easier. yeah. Yeah way to make it for the family member that's going to identify Um you know, if you just see that there's like a little sheet covering this round object and they just pull that back and there's no bdy the rest of the body is going to make you kind of psychologically feel a bit in wed. Yeah That'd be awful. I would put some cushions underneath the sheet and make it seem like there's like a full body there. Just to make it easier for possible family members The detective started with the obvious places The town center, the taxi ranks, the route buried her tug after leaving the Fox Bar hotel. people who had been in Kilmanak Nooy veryery quickly bes became someone they could not ignore Part of that was his presence in Kilmanic. and his history of violence. Part of it was the method itself The dismemberment was so unusual that investigators were quickly drawn toward bgs because of the early Barry Oldam case in England where there had also been an attempt to dismember his body Good, you know, that they had that So well well is there anybody around here that does that has done something like this or History is a violent thesees. Yeah, it's pretty lucky sort of similarities. Yeah. ye. Well, and then the witness evidence started to add movement Sure One neighbor, John Patterson, later said that at about seven forty five in the evening on the seventh of December He saw Bgs drive up faster than usual run into the flat Stay there only briefly then come back out and drive away quickly. Patterson also said the car looked loaded in the back with items covered by a board or a sheet. On its own, it explained little alongside the rest of the case, became pretty significant. Yeah, you would think so. That's quite odd behaviour. So what' you hauling, boy? Yeah, what do you got in there? What are you doing it this time of Iight just, you know? And be And like he said, he was running away faster than he came in faster than usual, just ran in They ran back out. I think I think that's a good red flag someone being behaving a little bit more erratic than they normally are. Yeah But that same evening, Begs checked in at the Trun Ferry terminal for the cross into Belfast taken his call with him. Records placed him shortly before departure. place and those timings were specific Later evidence showed that he had bought the ticket at two fifty five that afternoon in at nine eighteen that night onlyn a little over ten minutes before sailing He travelled under a blue ribboned membership used by regular customers So this didn't look like some last minute scramble. it looked organized and already in motion Had a plan Yeah Well, the Farious movement began to line up with the geography of the case Pill Marnick Tune, Vassi, and the stretch of coast where something thrown overboard in Witnesses also describeed Begs traveling on ferry routes between Northern Ireland and Scotland in the days that followed including the return leg from Belfast to Stin rare on Sunday, the twelfth of December. Then came the search on Begs' flat on the seventeenth of December Inside the flat showed signs of alteration There had been attempts to clean and redecorate. The carpets had been disturbed Parts of the interior had been changed, but forensic teams still found more than twenty bloodstains inside that flat including a smear of Barry Wallace's blood on a kitchen knife cannot erase every single case of you know and I blood You know, you name it. Yep You just can't simply cannot. look at our previous case with Linda Spence. Yeah. They found that one drop and one fingerprint and that was it And that's all they need. you know, they don't need a great deal of it. They didn't even need twenty stay. They just need one. They just need to place this person here and that, you know And then they I mean had the knife was there. You're like That's one of the first things that you should have got rid of. Yeah, why didn't you chuck that in the sea where, you know Bonus layer Well, the days after Berry Vanish left their own trails as well On the tenth of December, Bgsat was identified at B andQ in Kilmarnick where records show paintbrushes, floor die and sandpaper being bought with a card in the name of M. I Forsythe The following day, another witness described wallpaper and curtain track being bought elsewhere using a check signed. Ian begs One by one. thoseose ordinary purchases stopped looking ordinary at all On the seventh of December he went to a department of Social Security office. DSS Office. to ask whether a pension book in the name of M.I Forsythe could still be used Some of the purchases linked to the flat were made using that alias too Yeah so he's got aliases and Shit yeah That's crazy Like said it's just all come to where he was prepared He weren't that prepared leaving the knife in his flat. Yeah True. That was a bit of an unpreparedness, you know. The actual item that you've used to dismember this person or stab them or Wh want to get rid of that murder weapon Exactly. Honestly. Well, by late December, police were ready to act A warrant was issued for Begs' arrest and H photograph was released But by then, He had already left Scotland and gone to the Netherlands One contemporary report said he fled after hearing about the investigation on the radio Another account said he traveled out through Jersey and France before reaching Amsterdam. using a false name and doctored passport doing the Oski He's like, right shit, they're fucking starting this investigation. I better get out of the country Well it was more probably more like It was it was getting so big in the news. Yeah And he's like, uh Probably not going be far behind. Far behind the news reports. I might need to get the fuck out of here Well, on the twenty eighth of deecember of nineteen ninety nine Beeggs went to a police station in Amsterdam with a lawyer and was arrested by the Dutch authorities But that did not mean that Scotland had had him yet. followed was a long extradition fight The Dutch courourt granted the request in april two thousand. But more appeals followed, stretching the process into the next year. It was not until January of two thousand one that the final decision was made and Begs was returned to Scotland under pololice escort That whole litigating thing and my appeals and stuff This is just start of it He is a smart guy Yeah that like you know We can't knock that part like he's very smart. Yeah And he's getting you to learn the law. So that's a little bit of foreshadowing there On the eleventh of january, two thousand one, he appeared at Kilmarnock's Sheriff Court and made no plea. By then, the investigation had done its work What had begun as a missing person's case, a diver's training exercise, and a grim discovery on a beach had now been drawn together into a single prosecution case. What remained now put it before a jury On the eighteenth of September of two thousand one. Beggs went on trial at the High Court in Edinburgh for the murder of Barry Wallace. Nearly two years had passed since Barry had vanished The case had to be laid out in court, witness by witness, photograph by photograph and piece by piece. And one of the big issues in core was that the medical evidence could not point to one neat single cause of death pathologists. could describe restraint assault and trauma But they could not isolate one specific injury and say, with certainty That was the fatal act possibility of death through shock was also raised So the Crown's case was not built around one blow One weapon or one exact second It was built around the argument that Berry had been subjected to a sustained attack inside the flat. and that attack ended in his death And the details of that violence were deeply unsettling Barry had been restrained with handcuffs and one forensic expert said the marks they left were the worst handcuff injuries she had ever seen The indictment also referred to his arm being punctured with a needle or something similar Those details pointed away from sudden loss of temper and towards something more controlled than that Restraint painain and force used over time on someone who was no longer in any position to get away. And at times the emotional force of the evidence in court was impossible to separate from the legal case being argued Jurors were shown a close up photograph of Barry Wallace's severed head as it had been found in Barassi Beach. and The reaction in court was immediate Two women on the jury burst into tears Another slump forward with her hands over her face Others were visibly shaken as the image stayed on screen and the circumstances of its discovery were described for a moment stopped feeling like a place of legal procedure and became something muchuch more raw than that It's got to be hard. I always think about the police you know, having to sort of see this stuff on a daily basis or you not daily basis, but you know, regular basis I don't You know, they can kind of desensitize themselves from things, you know, seeing things like that have to kind of compartmentalize ye. The juries, you know, they're just random civilians that you know, would probably never in their lifetime see something like that and just Can't even imagine I haven't been on a jery U but I can't imagine how I'm upsetting to see something like that you know, when you've never experienced different seeing stuff in movies and TV and stuff. it's like you you know in the back of your mind subconsciously It's fake. You know, but yeah, when it's the real deal and it's a real person and you they're telling you all about how this person was living their life and then you see their severed head on that is Yeah because obviously they explain like who this person was, you know, what their lifestyle was And I'm sureur jurors actually feel some sort of connection to that person. Yeah. you know, And it just it's just horrible. And they probably also think about, hey, what if this was my brother Yeah I did that, you know, or my son or something? you're like Gosh, that's And it just hits you. Yeah, I try to put myself in people's situations and think about how I would feel. if that was something close to me Um, you know It iss just shocking Margaret Burley, the woman who had found the head while walking her dog gave evidence in person and her testimony brought the case right back to that beach the split bag, the uncertainty, and then the awful moment when she realised what she was looking at Barry's father, Ian Wallace, also gave evidence and confirmed that he had been required to identify his son's severed head Those were the moments when the case stopped being about forensic terminology and became painfully human again Other witnesses helped deal with the physical logic of the case. One of them was a ferry captain who was asked whether something thrown from a vessel leaving Tune could later wash up near Barassi He was careful about it He did not present it as exact science But he said that on a flood tide, it could happen It wasn't the whole case But it gave the crown a practical explanation for how the sea could return what had been thrown into it The defence led by Donald Findley, QC did not really stand up and present the jury with a completely different story. of what had happened to Barry Wallace. Instead, the defense attacked the case at the points where it was most vulnerable There were arguments about pre trial publicity and objections were raised over the warrant used to search Beggs's flat So the defense case was less about saying, this is what really happened and more about pressing on what the jury should properly have been allowed to hear. and whether the crown had proved enough to cross that final line into guilt They got to do what they got to do as defense. That's a hard job, especially when you got so much evidence against you like other cases we'. Exactly.re they're going to have to take a line, you know, and if this is the only line that they can go down that's going to try to minimize I Well, this part can kind of see Because one of the contested parts of the case involved evidence linked to a man named Kenneth Petri He wasn't some stranger guessing from the sidelines He was described as someone who had known Ian Bggs casually for about two years in the statement attributed to him He said Bgs had spoken about preferring to pick up men in straight pubs rather than gay ones and about cruising in the early hours trying to find drunk young men in his car It was evidence the defense fought hard pressure Hm Also Kenness was deeceased So there was no They weren't allowed to cross examine him and put questions to him So there was really a really big part of like, hey Should this be added or not? Yeah, ye Is it relevant? and because obviously he wouldn't been able to be there to testify? And the defense wouldn't be able to question or say, well Ecounter his argument. Yeah, encountering of it Bex himself did not go into the witness box to give evidence In the end, the case against him rested on the forensic evidence, the witnesses and the crown's account of what had happened. After seventeen days of evidence, the jury returned with a majority verdict on the twelfth of october of two thousand one William Beggs was guilty of Barry Wallace's murder That's cor as a majority verdict. There was Yeah att least one person that was like, I don't know Yeah. That's that's insane. All this evence that's crazy. Well sentencing followed before Lord Osborne, and he left no doubt how seriously he viewed it. He described the offenses as appalling and said the case was among most distressing he had encountered He also took Begs's previous convictions into account This was not a man arriving before the court without a violent history behind him The sentence was life imprisonment with a punishment part of twenty years backdated to the twenty eighth of december nineteen ninety nine. which is the date of his arrest in the Netherlands He was also placed on the sex offender's register And with that, the trial ended But the case itself didn't becausecause what followed was years of appeals, parole battles and continued public attention around Begs and what he had done Barry Wallace was laid to rest in Kilmarnick on the twenty ninth of february of two thousand eighty seven days after he was last seen alive His funeral was held in the town and he was buried at Grassy Yard Cemetery And by the time they were finally able to bury him They had already been through months of uncertainty, recoveries, identifications, and procedures Even after the murder investigation had taken shape There was nothing swift or clean about what they were put through Everything came in stages And so did the grief And even after Beggs was convicted, the case did not simply end there Over the years that followed, he kept trying to challenge both the conviction and the sentence He sought bail while appealing and was refused He later pursued a long appeal against conviction and by march of twenty ten, That had failed. In December that same year, the Supreme Court refused his attempt to take it further Then in twenty eleven He also failed in an effort to reduce the twenty year punishment part of his life sentence court was blunt about that one It said the procedure he had used was incompetent and that the argument itself was groundless. T Damn. What you used was incompetent. Yep. Get fucked. Yeah is their way of saying, Dude just just quit coming Quick coming back for appeal after appeal after appeal Well, he doesn't, because there was one ruling in his favor in twenty twelve. But it did not touch the conviction. The European Court of Human Rights awarded him four thousand eight hundred pounds because of the length of time his appeal process had taken That decision was about delay not about whether he had been wrong and convicted In fact, the court also held that his trial had been fair and treated his complaints about unfairness as inadmissible even where he won something Core outcome stayed the same Stay in jail But now he's got four thousand eight hundred on his commissary. Yeah. Saring me Patn continued From prison, Begs kept bringing legal actions, including attempts to get hold of police material connected to the original investigation CCTV footage, information about lines of inquiry, things like that. Those efforts were repeatedly rejected In twenty fourteen, the courourt of session uphold the refusal to disclose the material that he wanted from the police. Then in twenty twenty three Inner House again rejected his challenge to the Scottish Information Commissioner's decision to withhold further information Decade after decade, he kept litigating but the central position never shifted. Like I said, he just he won't he doesn't stop He's just not he's probably just fed himself full all this. Yeah. But then he's probably reading loads of la books in jail and he's like, right, what can I do? What can I He did all that reading, but the court still said, your argument was incompetent Terry, M Give it up, buddy Well, some of those later cases were not about the murder conviction at all But about his treatment in prison, In twenty fifteen, he did succeed in a human rights action after prison staff opened up confidential correspondence. Lady Stacy held that the Scottish Prison Service had breached his rights under Article eight of the European Convention. But even that got him very little in practice When he later asked for five thousand pounds in compensation That claim was refused. Oh nestly I mean, I get it, you know, that is true. they shouldn't be opening if it's like a letter from its lawyer or whatever. They shouldn't be touching any of that school private stuff but obviously they do open from You know, just people randomly sending them letters because you never know what's what's It could be sort coded messages. plotting an escape from jail and whatever The punishment part of Beggs's life sentence expired on the twenty eighth of december of twenty nineteen But he was not released In january of twenty twenty, the parole board for Scotland refused to direct his release, so he remained in custody When the board reviewed the case again in late twenty twenty three and early twenty twenty four, It heard evidence from a forensic psychologist prison and community social workers and from Begs himself On the twenty seventh of feebruary, twenty twenty four It refused release again concluding that the risk he posed could still not be managed safely in the community The position had not changed He remained in prison Begs challenge that decision too. C did. Coly did. See, it just keeps on going h he was he took it to the court of session But in July of twenty twenty five, not that long ago Lady Drummond refused the petition and held that the parole board had acted lawfully. She rejected his arguments, including points he raised about the Barry Oldam case. and about police evidence from the Wallace investigation by that stage Beggs was still in prison and his conviction for Barry Wallace's murder Still stood as of December of twenty twenty five He was being held at HMP Edinburgh Yeah, so what he's doing? They're twenty eight years He's like, right, I've done my time. That's his mindset is I've done my time twenty twenty years, sorry And then he's thinking right, now I'm going to really focus on trying to get out of here now. like going to the pro board and, you know, doing everything that he can to get out. Yeah. And it's like, you're going to get out when they say you are going to get out, dude, you know? Like when they feel that you are safe to be back out in the community. Yeah Before all the appeals and all the hearings all the prison litigation and parole arguments Barry Wallace He was eighteen He worked at Tescos, he went out with friends and moved through what should have been an ordinary December weekend without any reason to think his life was about to end Once a case gathers years of court rulings and legal language around it, the person at the center can start to disappear behind it. Mary Wallace should be remembered First, not as a case But as a person A quiet young man at the beginning of adult life with work, family, friends, and a future still ahead of him case that followed became notorious And its legal aftermath lasted for decades. The center of it. is still Barry Wallace and the life that was taken from him Definitely a young young lad, you know, life took far too soon Yeah And through no fault of his own, you know, it's just such a tragic story That was the story of The Limbs in the Lck and the murder of Barry Wallace Absolutely tragic case You know, just like like you just said eighteen year old just about to start adult life You I What could his life have been is now ve been able to have children and a family You know I Oh It' just you know, and then you got Bigs there fucking thinking he's smart and all this and still got caught idiot. Yeah. And then he's litigating through prison going I can get whenatever I can do this to. I mean who know, you know, maybe one day one of you know, he will get to the point where he may be released, but You know, how farsly The possibility is there because obviously he has done his He served his time. Yeah Whver they deem him to be fit to be back in. Your history. P' probably gonna do it again. Well me personally, I don't believe people change. I don't believe that H There's much rehabilitation. It's a rare thing for someone to get out of things especially with someone so serious, you know, serious crimes. I do think petty Petty crimes, say like if you're you know you're thieved from a shop or whatever you know, I think people can Do that You know, But when it comes to you've actually acted and done their committed a serious crime especially like this and he's not only killed this person, he's dismembered this person this young lad and If you're capable of doing something like that personersally in my opinion I don't think that you would ever be able to not do sort of severe nasty things. Yeah. I mean, I do look at examples like like former gang members and stuff that have done some net, you know, and once they've gotten older, like they're like, what the fuck was I doing you know, and they've they've lost a lot of their life to in and out of prison and stuff. Those guys and girls that they go out and say, don't do this. don't end up like me.'s those are the things, but it's rare. Yeah And at the end of the day, you can see that You know, they they are coming out and they are saying, you know, oh I was this way, you know and they're trying to make other people stop and think. a lot of people criminals that come out of prison, you know, after twenty eight years or whatever They don't do that. They don't come out and say, listen, you know, I want to kind of you know, work on Tenagers, people that are my age of when I committed this serious crime You know, they don't really know selves out there. we do have a c others We do have a we their path. We do have a casees down the line whereas guy just prison for a nasty murder whatever, they let him out and did it again. Yeah. So you're just like, well, I don't know. Mbe we should just keep these guys in prison. Yeah, definitely Well, that was that case and we hope that you enjoyed listening to it. Yes, thank you for listening. Definitely. If you'd like to support the work that we do here in the archive, please take a moment to follow the show and leave us a five star rate and it really helps others to discover the stories that we tell and it keeps that archive growing Sharing the podcast with someone who you know loves true crime also makes a huge difference. can also jump over to our Patreon. More true crime. Oh yeah. 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