(Credit: Daily Record)
Richard recalls phoning William on the Sunday afternoon of December the 5th 1999. He said that he could hear that William was driving and the call lasted approximately 10 minutes. William sounded like he was in a cheery mood and bragged to Richard about a cute young man that he had made out with the night before.
At the same time that this phonecall was taking place, Barry Wallace's parents were wondering why he hadn't come home. They went through a list of Barry's friends and called them to see if he'd stayed the night at their house. Nobody knew where he was. The next morning after Barry hadn't shown up for work, they contacted the police to report him missing.
On the 6th of December 1999, whilst the search began to find out where Barry was. William Beggs had called his work at the call centre in Edinburgh (where he was working as an IT Technician) to say that he wouldn't be in due to feeling unwell.
As I mentioned in part one, the police divers were doing their training exercise in Loch Lomond as well on this day and had found human remains wrapped in black bin liners.
The next day (Tuesday the 7th of December), William Beggs went into work that morning for a couple of hours but left early, telling colleagues that he still wasn't feeling well. A neighbour would later recall seeing William dashing quickly out of his car and into his house before coming out again, jumping into the car and speeding off. He said that William seemed to be flustered and in a hurry, he also noted that the backseat of the car was full of bags.
William took a ferry from Troon to Belfast where he stayed with some relatives. It was during this time that he was said to have thrown the black bin liners containing Barry Wallace's remains into the sea. On the 10th of December he returned to Scotland but returned back to Belfast the following day. On the 12th of December he returned to Scotland taking the ferry from Belfast to Troon. He returned to work the next day and worked as normal up until the 17th of December.
Barry Wallace's severed head was found 10 days after he was reported missing and his other remains had been found. His father had the heartbreaking task of going to formally identify him. The police started questioning everyone who knew Barry and witnesses who had seen him on the early hours of the 5th of December 1999. They also examined Barry's remains to try and find out how he died. Their findings were horrific and they entered the details of the case onto their database to see if there was anyone who had committed a similar murder. William Beggs was highlighted very heavily on their database and he became their prime suspect.
Whilst William was driving home from work on the 17th of December he heard on the radio that the police were searching a house in Kilmarnock in relation to the murder of Barry Wallace. He heard his name mentioned and realised that the net was closing in on him. He quickly turned the car around and drove to Luton Airport, north of London where he bought a plane ticket for Jersey using the name ''William Frederick''.
On the same day a foot and lower leg were found washed up on the banks of Loch Lomond. A month later, police found a human torso in the same area of the Loch. All of the remains were wrapped in bin liners except for the torso and all of the remains belonged to Barry Wallace.
Once William Beggs arrived in Jersey, he bought a ticket to France and from there he travelled to Amsterdam.
Continued in part four
Please check out my other true crime posts:
- Rod Ferrell And The Kentucky Vampire Cult | Part One
- Rod Ferrell And The Kentucky Vampire Cult | Part Two
- Rod Ferrell And The Kentucky Vampire Cult | Part Two
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The sad part is with William's history with the police and courts it allowed him to stay ahead of them. I feel so bad for Barry's father that he had to identify him. Something like that seeing someone dead isn't something that can be erased from a mind, it seems to cloud other memories of the deceased. I know how hard that is to see a dead body like that, lucky for me the one I seen wasn't from a violent crime.
ReplyDeleteThis case reminds me of a cased featured on the show Shattered, where a man's son was killed and chopped up and thrown in a lake, and the police didn't want the parents to have to identify him, so the victim's girlfriend had to after she was kept in a box and raped by the murders. She mention that when she though of him she though of the pieces she seen of him. It was so sad.
The fact that the police released William's name on the radio, made no sense to me, why not pick him up first, and not tip him off? I wonder how he was able to get tickets in a name that wasn't really his actual name?
Thank you for the comment lovely! The case that you mentioned sounds horrific! I feel the same about Barry Wallace & Barry Oldham's families but the idea of having to identify your son't body, especially when you know some of the details of what happened to him, I just can't imagine. About the travel tickets, I was thinking about that and how he managed to get a job with a criminal record like that xxxx
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