(Pic credit: Caledonia/Daily Record)
As with part one, please be aware that some of the details mentioned in this post may be disturbing.
William Beggs:
William Frederick Ian Beggs was born in County Armagh, Northern Ireland in 1961. He was the eldest of five children and he came from a respectable family. Not much is known of his early years or his relationship with his family but someone who had gone to school with William had mentioned that he once tried to pull the trousers down of a young boy in a park. The boy's brother found out what had happened and confronted William about it, ending with William getting a beating from the boy's elder brother. After this incident, William kept himself to himself, he left school with nine O levels and two A levels and was said to have been a polite and well mannered student.
When he turned 19 he decided that he wanted to leave Ireland and study in England. He settled in the North East and attended Teeside Polytechnic where he studied Public Administration. He also became interested in politics, especially right wing. He became the regional chairman of The Federation Of Conservative Students and was once invited to 10 Downing street for a Burns supper with the British Prime Minister and he told friends that this fuelled his desire to become an MP.
Through his interest in right wing politics he had connections with The National Front and he was a heavy supporter of Ian Paisley's Anti-Gay campaign which was called Save Ulster From Sodomy. William was later expelled from The Federation Of Conservative Students over his extreme homophobic views. In 1985 he gave up his interest in politics and desire to become an MP and became interested in computers.
William Beggs first came to the attention of police when they were investigating a number of razor attacks on gay students in the Teeside area. In December 1986, William had attacked his roommate with an open razor. Four attacks involving open razors were reported to the police and William's name would regularly come up. He was also suspected of attacking a middle aged man with a knife. The man said that he had slept with William and was woken up in the middle of the night to find him stood over him, carving symbols into his thighs with a knife.
William was never prosecuted for the razor attacks or the attack on the middle aged man. Witnesses were too frightened to take the matter any further and didn't want to attend court.
On May the 27th of 1987, the body of a 28 year old man was found in woodlands in North Yorkshire. The man who was later identified as Barry Oldham, had his throat slit with his head almost decapitated. He had severe injuries on his body that indicated that someone had tried to dismember his legs and arms.
Barry was originally from Bolton and had been born there in 1958. He moved around quite a bit in his twenties and worked as a Barman in pubs and nightclubs. He had just moved down to Newcastle in that May of 1987. He was looking for work and a change of scenery. When he arrived at Newcastle Bus Station, he put his belongings in a locker and headed for the nearest gay nightclub. It is believed that is where he met William Beggs. Just hours after his attendance at this nightclub, his body was found.
During the investigation into Barry Oldham's murder, a female friend of William's said that he told her he was being investigated for Barry's murder. She asked him if he had done it to which he replied ''Yeah I did and you're next.''
William Beggs was found guilty of Barry Oldham's murder and the attempted dismemberment and disposal of his body. At Teeside Crown Court, William was sentenced to life imprisonment which he appealed. In a shocking miscarriage of justice, the appeal court made the decision two years later that William Beggs was to be released from prison due to an unfair trial. They argued that his past history of violence against men should not have been available to the jury and believed that this information had prejudiced his case. William spent just two years in prison for the gruesome murder of Barry Oldham.
The former head of Yorkshire CID, who was in charge of the investigation into William Beggs, couldn't believe that he had been set free. He said ''When we caught Beggs, we seriously thought we'd caught a serial killer in the making.''
William Beggs had a violent history against men. He would pick up men in gay nightclubs, take them home, have sex with them and at one point during the night he would attack them with knives or razors. A former lover of his said that William hated being homosexual and always got violent after sex.
He also loved to target straight young men who had been out drinking and would befriend them, promising them more drinks back at his place when the pubs and nightclubs closed. The young men, being too drunk and not in the best condition to make reasonable decisions, would go to William's house where he would sexually assault and attack them. Nobody knows for sure, how and if these men had managed to get away from William's house as they've never came forward. William bragged that he enjoyed targeting straight men because they would be least likely to report the incident to the police due to them feeling embarrassed or that they didn't want their family and friends knowing about it. Some people believe that some of the men may have been murdered by William.
One man did come forward though in 1991, he escaped by jumping through a glass window in William's bathroom. He'd met William previously that night in a gay club. William took him back to his house in Kilmarnock, Scotland where he was now living. The pair had sex and like so many times before in William's history, the man woke up in the middle of the night to find William trying to stab him with a knife. The man jumped up and tried to grab William by the wrists to stop him. William had a strange calmness to him and was completely different to the man he had met in the club hours before. He said that William had a vacant look in his eyes and said ''Come back to bed, everything will be ok. Things will be over soon. You've made me do this.''
The man ran as fast as he could towards the bathroom and jumped through the glass window from the first floor of the house. He felt certain that he was going to die but at that moment all he could think about was that he didn't want to die at the hands of this man and he wanted the neighbours to hear and see what was going on so that William Beggs would be caught. Luckily the man survived the jump and had minor injuries. The police were called, Beggs was arrested and was charged with attempted murder and sentenced to six years.
In another miscarriage of justice, William was released in 1994 after serving just three years of his six year sentence. He had been released due to good behaviour. William didn't have any remorse or sense of decency, he made it clear that he was moving back into his house in Kilmarnock despite the neighbours complaints.
Once he was back in his house and settled, he began studying computing and got a job as a computer consultant whilst he was working towards his PhD at Paisley University. He also did some tutoring and struck up a close friendship with a University lecturer named Richard Bash. Richard was also gay but there was no sexual relationship between the pair, they were just close friends.
Richard and William would often go on road trips around Scotland, especially Loch Lomond. Richard commented on how William seemed to know the area really well and was always the driver. He described the William that he knew as a fair man who would always pay his share whenever they ordered dinners or paid for petrol. As far as he was concerned, he thought that William was a model citizen and had no idea of his past or his violent tendencies towards men.
Continued in part three
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
Keep up to date with my latest posts on: @CaledonianTweet & Bloglovin
Check out my community page & promotional platform for bloggers on twitter: @TheBloggersPost
If you enjoy my content or I have helped promote/share your blog and you would like to say thanks, you can donate a coffee to me, if you like here!!
For all enquiries and collaborations, please contact: caledoniankblog@yahoo.co.uk
It's odd that someone like this always has signs, and how little or unconnected that they seem at the time, and the attack on the younger boy was probably one of the first one, and no one noticed or connected it to what William would become. His views seemed like a sign to me, but the big ones was the razor attacks and the attack on the middle aged man. I would have hoped the eye witness/victim would have been enough evidence. I think it's odd how hindsight is 20/20, and I don't think most family or friends would seen most of these signs as they happen and say future serial killer, in fact at the time they probably didn't see all events as they were or at all.
ReplyDeleteThe part about Barry Oldham was unbelievable (like I believe it but wow!). William admitted to it and then threaten to kill someone else, and there must have been DNA evidence to back it up, how can they ignore all that, it makes no sense to me at all. The former head of Yorkshire CID was right on the money when he said that quote for sure.
With William's history it makes me wonder if he was raised by religious extremist or a family who just said homosexuality or men that they deemed as anti-straight (non-masculine men). Since, the situation reminds me of similar cases where gay men were targeted by men who had that history. Like Omar Mateen who did the attack on the Orlando nightclub.
That was a miscarriage of justice, he should have never been released due to good behaviour, like it was a violent crime where he tried to kill, I don't understand why it was such as small sentence only six years!
William probably only friended Richard Bash to manipulate him and the situation, so that he could lie and say that I never did any of this and that he had a gay friend. :/
http://loveiszero.net
I love all your comments, Thank you! I agree with what you said about the possibility of certain views being forced on him from childhood. Not much is known about his family except that they were seen as respectable. He did really well at school and was smart so that was probably some sort of influence from his family xxxx
Delete