A Finding in the Loch | Case Files: Dark Waters | Forensic Files

[audio logo] NARRATOR: Nestled between the Scottish highlands and lowlands is Loch Lomond.
With a surface area of 27.5 square miles and a depth of 502 feet. It's the largest inland stretch of water in Great Britain.
- And Loch Lomond is a lovely, remote location that thousands and thousands of people enjoy every weekend.
NARRATOR: It's also regularly used for training by police divers. - A police diving team must keep up their skills
at all times, and in order to do this, they must train somewhere deep or somewhere in flowing water,
no visibility. Different environments to practice their skills. - You know the water in Loch Lomond
is fairly cold all year round. As far as the diving team was concerned, we were in Loch Lomond on a regular basis,
quite a different variety of locations that we can find, from deep water to shallow water,
from really, really good clear water to quite poor visibility. [exciting music] NARRATOR: On a cold December morning,
police diving supervisor, Jeff Adams, was leading a dive team on a training exercise near Loch Lomond, Rowardennan Pier.
- This is Rowardennan, where it all began. Nothing much has changed from 25 years ago.
It was even colder than it is today. Snow, rain, high winds. It was quite a horrible day.
NARRATOR: Jeff was on the pier running the operation as his team entered the icy water.
JEFF ADAMS: We were just sending the divers out to make sure that they covered this large area.
It was purely by accident that the divers were sent to an area that they suddenly saw these two black bin bags.
Being inquisitive by nature and if you like by training, they went to have a look and see what was in these bags.
- The officer found an arm. He thought initially that the his colleagues on shore
were playing a practical joke on him. He thought it was a mannequin inside a black plastic bag.
Either that or he thought, maybe this is a test to see if I'm doing my search properly.
Either way, he came out of the water and held the arm aloft as if to say, yes, I've found it.
JEFF ADAMS: I was quite convinced that there was some kind of practical joke being played.
Very quickly, we realized it wasn't. NARRATOR: The discovery of a severed arm and part of a leg
meant the area was now a crime scene. Strathclyde police were called in. - I was a detective superintendent.
I was in charge of the Ayrshire area. It was all very early in the Monday morning.
It was an unusual crime in Scotland. And in fact, pretty much the UK for body parts
to be turning up in a local Loch. GILL WILLIAMS: Once they realized there was a crime scene there, the surface area
immediately around that point would have been sealed off from anyone else entering it, apart
from forensic people and the people that had to be there to investigate the crime.
You need to make sure that everything is intact and secure. So you put the body part into a polythene bag
and make sure that that is sealed up so that nothing can escape it. You don't want to lose anything, skin sloughing off
or anything else falling off the body. Once the limbs have been found, then they
would start resorting back to proper search techniques and search patterns to start looking for any more evidence
and to look for the rest of the body parts. NARRATOR: With just an arm and part of a leg to work from,
police turn to missing person records to shed light on who their victim might be.
Meanwhile, a specialist water team scoured the Loch using underwater cameras and
sonar equipment. JEFF ADAMS: Sonar, it's a very crude method. It can find things.
But what it can't do is say for definite that there's nothing there. So technology-wise, you really can't
beat the aspect of putting a police diver in to search it properly. [exciting music]
So recovery of the first two items would be roughly 15-20 metres off the corner of the pier
as we're looking at it. We continued the search later on and found another body part down
in this corner of the pier. SIMON BOXALL: Every body of water has a tide of some sort,
but it's too small to measure, and that's the case of Loch Lomond. Although it's the largest and surface area of any freshwater,
body of water on the UK mainland, it still doesn't have any measurable tidal flow.
So most likely, the limbs were actually put into the water near the pier. NARRATOR: By the 8 of December, divers
had recovered two hands, two arms, two lower legs, one thigh, and a foot. - The body might be of a slightly older male,
but they weren't sure and they were searching for further body parts. NARRATOR: And by now, the search had attracted
the attention of the press. NORMAN SILVESTER: At the time the newspaper I was working for, we got a tip off about the police
were searching for body parts. But the assumption was that this was possibly some sort of a gangland crime related incident,
that possibly some criminals had fallen out, one had been murdered and his body parts disposed of.
KEVIN BROWNE: This is extremely difficult to dismember a body. You can't do it with knives that you
usually keep in a kitchen. But somehow, there has to be some level of intention where they go out and buy various implements in order
to saw the body into parts. NARRATOR: Police were keeping an open mind. They also widened the search area.
JEFF ADAMS: Once we'd finished, we realized that we hadn't found all the body parts
to make up a human being. The next phase that you're trying to think right, if they're not here, where are they?
So you then have to look at any other possible sites, where someone could have access to presumably a vehicle
and be able to dump things in the water. NARRATOR: Officers and the police diving team
moved their search 7 miles south along Loch Lomond shoreline, to the quiet village of Balmaha.
- We were fairly confident that this would be a prime location for finding more because
of accessibility and remote area, very, very limited police presence. Conditions here underwater are quite different to what
we'd find at Rowardennan. Whereas Rowardennan is clear, quite sandy bottom here,
quite muddy, and very, very poor visibility which made the search of this area really quite difficult.
It's often asked if we do underwater lights and everything else, which obviously we did
have access to. It's effectively like putting your main beam on in the fog. Suddenly you can see absolutely nothing.
So unfortunately, you're down in the mud and you're working with your fingertips.
KEVIN BROWNE: Now, why a murderer would choose to dispose of a body in water instead of burying it on land?
Maybe due to the belief that they're less likely to be caught if the body parts or bodies dropped into water.
The offenders think that the body is likely to disappear or be eaten by fish. NORMAN SILVESTER: As it is developed,
it was a very fast moving story. I think people were very, very concerned. There was a kind of fear, an undercurrent.
NARRATOR: For police, the race was now on to capture an individual with clear sadistic tendencies.
JEFF ADAMS: On additional body parts, we found at Balmaha. You could see quite clearly that handcuffs had been used.
You're not used to seeing them having made such an impression on a human body, and particularly to put handcuffs
around someone's lower leg. - One of the things that comes to mind immediately when I think about somebody who's restrained
against their will with handcuffs is this need to dominate and control, and that being part of the sexual turn on for that person.
It's very rare to see situations where somebody is handcuffing somebody because they're wanting to kill them for money
or kill them for revenge. NARRATOR: By now, detectives had finished searching the missing person reports,
and had a possible name for their victim. But it's not one they or the press were expecting.
Detectives in Scotland are scouring missing persons lists, trying to identify the murder victim,
whose dismembered body parts have been found in Loch Lomond. Now, they have a possible name, Barry Wallace,
last seen the day before the body parts were discovered. [suspenseful music] - Barry Wallace was 18 years of age,
and he was going out for a Christmas night out with his friends and his colleagues
from a local supermarket in Kilmarnock. It had quite a lot to drink. He was last seen drunk walking about Kilmarnock
trying to get a taxi. He didn't arrive home. JOHN GEATES: He had no previous history of going missing.
He had no previous history of any involvement in criminality. He was a good lad.
His parents were concerned about where he was and when they hadn't come back late in the Sunday night
and then report for work in the Monday morning, he was reported as a missing person.
- Barry had disappeared into thin air. There was no back story. There was no family issues.
Just a normal teenager enjoying a Christmas night out and with his future ahead of him.
NARRATOR: 50 miles North of Kilmarnock, the police search of Loch Lomond continued.
GILL WILLIAMS: On land, you can easily mark out search areas because everything is visible.
Underwater, it's very, very different because the people on the surface can't see what's going on underneath.
You're looking at the distance out that the diver is from the bank. And so just by taking measurements
from the diver's lifeline as to how far out they are and how far along the search pattern they are,
you can actually log on your underwater plan exactly what areas have been searched.
You've also got to think if these limbs have been thrown into the water, how far
out can they have been thrown? How far out are they likely to have drifted? NARRATOR: Meanwhile, a pathologist
examined the recovered limbs for clues about the murder weapon and what tools might have been
used to dismember the body. RICHARD SHEPHERD: It is actually very hard indeed to dismember a body cleanly.
Sometimes there are marks associated with the cuts in the flesh that suggest it may be a serrated material.
Sometimes a chainsaw is used that leaves a different cutting impression. Sometimes a grinding wheel, once again,
a different impression. You'd be looking at both the soft tissues, the muscles and
the skin, but also any cuts through bone, which are much better at reproducing the implement that was used.
STUART FERGUSON: Parts of the bones were transported by road to specialists in England,
but all they could say was they were cut with a fine toothed saw. If we were hoping for maybe something more specific
that we could focus our part of the investigation on, but that just came to a dead end, unfortunately.
NARRATOR: Officers suspected missing person, Barry Wallace, was the victim whose body parts they had found,
but they still had no definite proof. Until the 15th of December and the most grisly discovery yet.
At a beachfront on Scotland's West Coast, more than 50 miles from Loch Lomond. - A lady had been walking her dog
and her dog had noticed two bags and was pulling at the bags, and when she went up,
she saw that there was a human head. - To the best of my recollection, it was just down near where the rocky area starts
and where you see the bits of seaweed lying and that kind of area there. SIMON BOXALL: Disposing of body at sea is tricky in many ways.
In some places, the tides are very weak or nonexistent. In other places, they're incredibly strong.
We can get flows in excess of 15 miles an hour in some places, which is phenomenal.
As the tide goes back and forth, so a body might go at great speed in one direction.
But 6.5 hours later, it comes back again. JOHN GEATES: We can only assume that it
was the temperature of the seawater that preserved of the head. RICHARD SHEPHERD: Being cold, of course,
is really important for us. It preserves the tissues, it preserves the cut marks,
it preserves evidence, and that's what we want. So if it's been out of the water in a warm environment
for two or three days before being deposited, that's gonna have a significant effect.
But if on the other hand, the individual has died and it's put quickly into water,
preservation is going to be much, much better. NARRATOR: In this case, the head was so well preserved,
it was even possible to confirm the victim's identity. - Unfortunately, it was Barry.
NARRATOR: It was a big step forward for investigators, but the coastal nature of the crime scene
put them under time pressure. GILL WILLIAMS: You've got access by the public along the beach, so you're going
to have to cordon it all off. You're then dealing with the tides. If the tide comes in, it's going
to bring in sea creatures that like fleshy parts of human bodies. You're wanting to get this skull recovered as quickly as
possible, photographed, bagged up and taken out of the way out of that environment
before the sea and everything that lives in it comes back in. JOHN GEATES: I knew I was going to have
to go and see his parents. The two of the nicest people I've ever met. One of the family liaison officers
took Barry's dad to Glasgow City mortuary to identify him. I think people were horrified.
I think they were absolutely stunned, shocked and horrified that an innocent boy, and he was,
could end up in this situation. Barry was had gone missing in the early hours of the Sunday morning.
And then the first body parts were found very early on the Monday morning. So whoever has done this has done it very quickly
and could well have done something like that before. KEVIN BROWNE: The offender would
be someone who would be callous, have no empathy for anyone, would be extremely selfish
and possibly impulsive. Now the police would then look to see who in the area had a criminal record, especially for violence.
- The main three that we were focusing on was dismemberment. - Initially, a check was made in the police computer system,
and there was a very short list of one person who had an MO of carrying out a dismemberment.
- We had a suspect right on our doorstep. NARRATOR: In a chilly Scottish Loch, police have found and identified the remains
of 18-year-old Barry Wallace. JOHN GEATES: As soon as the search was made, they realized that it was actually a human body parts.
The police in Scotland like wildfire because that's a very uncommon occurrence. This was absolutely horrific.
This was off the scale. NARRATOR: Now, they also have a suspect, a known local offender by the name
of William Frederick Beggs, a man with a violent past. NORMAN SILVESTER: Beggs had previously
stood trial for an incident in Kilmarnock eight years earlier, in 1991, where he had invited a gentleman back to his home.
They'd met in a gay bar in Glasgow, and this person had been given a drink that was drugged.
He fell unconscious and woke up to find Beggs attacking him with a knife and trying to cut him up or slash him.
This particular individual jumped out a window to escape Beggs, and he was found by a local resident, taken to hospital.
Beggs was arrested. NARRATOR: Beggs was sentenced to six years for the attack, and there was more.
He had also previously been imprisoned for the murder of a 28-year-old man in 1987, but the conviction
was quashed on appeal. STUART FERGUSON: They led the trail of murder with instances that Beggs had carried
out woundings of other men. And it was deemed that because they had led that, it was unfair and might have tainted the jury's
opinion of him as far as the murder is concerned, and the appeal was upheld and he was released.
NARRATOR: Beggs lawyers succeeded in their appeal. Under English law at the time, he
couldn't be retried for the same crime, so he was a free man. Beggs started a new life moving north to Scotland.
- We knew that he had been convicted of a murder in Teesside. We knew that he had got off with that murder
on a technicality. NARRATOR: But although the conviction was overturned, the details of that murder, for which Beggs
was the only suspect, were worryingly similar to the crime police were now investigating.
- There had been attempts to dismember the limbs. KEVIN BROWNE: Dismembering the bodies extremely,
a rare thing to happen after someone has killed someone. And in that particular case, there was an evidence that he
tried to dismember the body. And this case went to court. And due to a miscarriage of the court proceedings,
he successfully appealed and was out of prison after three years. - The officers who worked in Kilmarnock
were aware of his previous convictions, and they were keeping an eye out on him.
NARRATOR: Police didn't publicly name Beggs as a person of interest, but it wasn't long before the media
came to its own conclusions. - I isolate exploded as far as press-wise went because the press too had started
to find out about Beggs. NORMAN SILVESTER: The media was asking the question. You've got somebody in your doorstep
who's committed a similar crime, why aren't you arresting him? NARRATOR: The press's freedom to speculate
risked jeopardizing the entire police investigation and enabling Barry Wallace's murderer
to evade justice completely. STUART FERGUSON: Because he was only a suspect, they just printed what they wanted to.
It was a really difficult, challenging time for the family because there were things put in the papers likes of Beggs
head, Barry's head in his fridge. They were also printing things about Beggs previous incidents,
about his previous convictions, about his lifestyle. All that does is prejudice a future trial
because an individual's supposed to have a fair trial without any background or previous convictions being brought into public knowledge.
NARRATOR: The case was unsettling an entire community, so police wasted no time in putting together a timeline
which might offer more clues. - We already had a sequence of events in terms of Barry's last movements.
We then had to try and do the same thing with Beggs. We realized that same morning that Barry had been last seen
in the town center, Beggs would roughly be approaching Kilmarnock, and he would come in that same way
that Barry was walking and it would be around the same time. This is how they have actually been able to meet up.
NARRATOR: Tracing prime suspect, Beggs movements, hour by hour, day by day, police
made another key discovery. On December 7th, Beggs took a ferry from Troon on Scotland's west coast over to Northern Ireland.
- We believe that when he was taking the SeaCat from Troon to Ireland to see his parents, that that
was when he probably threw Barry's head off the side of the ferry. NARRATOR: Suspect Beggs may have
thought disposing of the head from a moving vessel would make it less likely to be found.
He was wrong. SIMON BOXALL: Does it make a difference that the head was dropped from a height from a ferry,
rather than placed in much lower? It makes no difference at all to the path of that head,
and it would still wash up on that beach. And we can demonstrate that here by taking an object,
placing it in gently to the surface of the ocean, and it goes along with the flow at a fairly steady rate.
And after 30 seconds, it reaches a point further down there. We can then repeat that, but this time,
rather than placing it in carefully, we're going to drop it from height. So we're dropping it from the deck, say, of a ferry.
It goes into the water, makes a splash, but actually very quickly it finds its level in the sea,
and it goes with exactly the same currents as it would have done had it been put
in the ocean at the surface. NARRATOR: Police widened their investigation from the coast
to the suspect's apartment in Kilmarnock. - We knew that if the murder had taken place
in that location in his home, then somewhere there had to be evidence and traces of Barry Wallace in that flat.
[suspenseful music] NARRATOR: A warrant was promptly issued for detectives to gain access, but
the press were already there. NORMAN SILVESTER: No, this was a high profile case.
So when the police went and raided the house, journalists knew about it. A lot of journalists were already
there when the police arrived. JOHN GEATES: When we got there, the flat was empty,
Beggs was not in. We assumed he was at his work. But we didn't know at that time where he worked.
So at that point, the house was sealed and the search started to take place. NARRATOR: And the media's fascination with the case
was about to cause a major problem. NORMAN SILVESTER: There was a radio broadcast that suspect
in the case of Barry Wallace. His house had been raided in Kilmarnock. Beggs at work, he hears this news broadcast,
realizes about him. He fled. He'd gone on the run. - That was very frustrating for us.
Very frustrating. NARRATOR: But on the 28th of December, wanted man Beggs made another unexpected move, handing
himself in to Dutch police. JOHN GEATES: And he did so with one of the top extradition
lawyers in Amsterdam. His lawyer made it clear that he was pleading that he was innocent,
and that he was not wanting to be extradited. NORMAN SILVESTER: The decision by Beggs handed himself
into Dutch police, created a major problem for the authorities. JOHN GEATES: The Netherlands was
one of the most difficult countries to be extradited from. And his plan was that we would never get him back.
JONI JOHNSTON: He is somebody who has studied the legal system, is committed to using it as much as possible to his advantage.
And he's been able to do that in the past, where one of his convictions was overturned on appeal.
NARRATOR: This time, though, Beggs scheme backfired. STUART FERGUSON: Back in those days,
you only had 110 days between when somebody was detained or arrested before trial started.
So the timescales were really, really tight. But because he was fighting extradition,
it allowed the inquiry team to carry out further more exhaustive investigations.
NARRATOR: Forensic officers returned to the wanted man's home and spent several weeks
gathering more evidence. STUART FERGUSON: The first significant findings were items of blood.
Those blood samples were examined, and they were then found to be Barry Wallace's blood.
NARRATOR: Detectives hoped Barry's remains would help provide a timeline for his murder.
But the dumping of the body in water made this challenging. - If a body's been recovered on land,
it's a lot easier to identify the time of death. Underwater, it does make it more difficult,
purely because of the way water reacts with the flesh of the body. Often with bodies that are recovered from the water,
the only real idea of how long the body's been there is because someone's seen the body go into the water.
NARRATOR: Police investigating the suspect's past tried to establish what might have motivated him to commit
such disturbing crimes. - So what we know about William Beggs is he's an intelligent man.
He has a degree. NORMAN SILVESTER: William Beggs was from a very respectable family in Northern Ireland.
Both his mother and father were pillars of the community, God-fearing, church going people.
Beggs had been brought up in that environment. NARRATOR: But being raised in a community where being gay
was stigmatized, suspected killer Beggs went to extreme lengths to conceal his own homosexuality.
JONI JOHNSTON: It would be incredibly confusing to have this religious indoctrination, which is telling you
that your natural preferences, your natural interests are sins and can result in some eternal damnation
or something like that. As a person grows up, it's not uncommon for that self-hatred
and that anger and confusion to begin to be directed outward. NARRATOR: In the case of wanted man, Beggs,
this took the form of attacks on men, which started at a young age. KEVIN BROWNE: The first record of Beggs committing violence
was when he knifed a teenager on a camping trip, when he was a young teenager himself.
There seemed to be the beginnings of what we could identify as a pattern in his behavior.
- In a whole history of cutting people in youth hostels, he was banned from youth hostels in the Balmaha area
for that very practice. NARRATOR: Detectives also appealed to the gay community for more information, and got an immediate response.
- People in that community started coming forward to speak with us because a lot of them were frightened of him.
- So the realization that this was a really dangerous man, it was a fiend. It was a monster.
We needed to get him behind bars for everyone's safety. NARRATOR: Police focused their efforts
on bringing suspect Beggs back from Amsterdam to Scotland. JOHN GEATES: We had to present a case that there
was a sufficiency of evidence for a trial to be held and for a conviction to be secured,
otherwise we would not be able to extradite them. NARRATOR: Then came news of a morbid breakthrough.
- So on the 8th of January, Barry's torso had been found a mile and a half away from Balmaha, where
his other body parts had been. GILL WILLIAMS: The torso would have been dumped in that location.
You can drive quite closely to it, in which case he could have then just carried it to the water's edge
and put it into the water. NARRATOR: Police had now recovered most of the victim's body.
GILL WILLIAMS: The fact that the parts of the body were spread over 4 different locations,
it gives you an idea that the offender was clearly trying to spread the body parts around
to make it harder to find, and he's gone to a lot of trouble to visit these places to dispose of them.
- It took the torso to the mortuary where it was given a post-mortem examination.
RICHARD SHEPHERD: Clearly, deterioration would have progressed, there's no doubt at all.
And the torso containing the bowel is more prone to decomposition. But there is still plenty to see.
NARRATOR: Police had strong suspicions that Beggs could have drugged his victim.
- The torso is likely to give the best samples. Samples of blood remaining within the heart,
remaining within the major blood vessels, maybe some urine present within the bladder
or within the kidneys. These can then be analyzed for any drug residues. NARRATOR: But the post-mortem failed
to find drugs in the victim's system, despite a needle mark on an arm. The dismemberment also made it impossible to prove
a cause of death. RICHARD SHEPHERD: Things can be hidden, covered up, disturbed.
And the presumption is that something violent has happened. But the truth also is that we don't always know for certain.
And remember in a court of law, we have to be certain beyond reasonable doubt rather than just have a good guess.
NARRATOR: This was a serious blow to the extradition case. But what the pathologist uncovered next
would shock the entire team. The dismembered body of 18-year-old Barry Wallace, found in Loch Lomond has now undergone a post-mortem.
It revealed new and horrifying details. - We realized there was evidence of sexual assault.
RICHARD SHEPHERD: The pathologist can't actually talk about consent. But when we look at this type of injuries,
you can say the injuries were so severe that it's highly unlikely in someone without a known
masochistic tendency to be prepared to accept that degree of violence. Add that to the presence of handcuffs.
Add that to the presence of other injuries. And it really points very strongly to a very violent sexual assault as a component
of a violent overall assault. KEVIN BROWNE: William Beggs was gay. And the assumption is that perhaps his latest
victim may be homosexual. But in fact, he wasn't. Barry Wallace was a heterosexual.
Had Beggs had admitted he preferred to have the company of what he regarded as straight men,
and it appeared that his enjoyment came from forceful homosexual activity or rape of his victim.
JONI JOHNSTON: The fact that he chooses to go out and essentially troll for men who are not gay, I think,
does speak to this anger and this sadism. And this pleasure he might get in not only taking advantage
of young men who might be intoxicated, but young men who would find being sexually assaulted by a man particularly horrifying.
- At that point, we had to make Barry's parents aware. And I'd always told them I would speak to them.
I'd always told them I would tell the truth. And I don't think I had a more difficult conversation
in my entire police career. NARRATOR: After months of investigating, the extradition case against wanted man, Beggs, was granted.
But he appealed, and things ground to a halt yet again. JOHN GEATES: They appealed on the basis
that due to the press coverage, he could not receive a fair trial in Scotland. NARRATOR: If Beggs won that appeal,
the police's prime suspect would swerve justice altogether. - But eventually, they ruled that Beggs
could be sent back to Scotland or extradited back to Scotland. - And he was absolutely shocked.
[suspenseful music] NARRATOR: During the trial at Edinburgh high court, a picture emerged of what happened
to victim, Barry Wallace, in the final hours of his life. - I genuinely believe what happened
was that Beggs was coming into Kilmarnock, Barry Wallace was walking home. Beggs offered him a lift.
Barry was drunk. They've gone to Beggs flat. Beggs has given him something and he's passed out.
When Barry's been waking up, he is being sexually assaulted. And during that time as well, he had been handcuffed
and has been struggling so hard that he actually scraped two bones in his wrist.
It was described by a very senior police casualty surgeon as the worst handcuff injury he had ever witnessed.
NARRATOR: And the prosecution called one witness, who revealed a chilling detail of the timeline.
STUART FERGUSON: On the Sunday, Beggs made a phone call to one of his close friends
and said that he had picked up a young, sweet guy the night before. Now, when you look at the timeline,
it's more than likely that that's when he was at or near to Loch Lomond, either going to deposit Barry's remains or coming back from.
So it's chilling. NARRATOR: Then more forensic evidence emerged, tying Beggs to the crime.
STUART FERGUSON: When it was reported, Beggs had fled the country. He drove down to Luton airport, where his car
was eventually discovered. His car revealed blood as well. Barry's blood. NARRATOR: But the defense team claimed
the victim had consented to sex, and that the death was the consequence of a sex
game gone wrong between them. NORMAN SILVESTER: One of the arguments of the defense
had been that this wasn't a murder. It was a culpable homicide or manslaughter, it's known in other countries.
And that, of course, would have meant a lesser sentence. And there was a bit of a dramatic moment when
the jury came back to ask for some guidance from the judge on the difference between culpable
homicide and murder. And that led us to believe that there might be fight, there might be acquitted him of murder.
NARRATOR: The jury were given clarification, and the detail of the victim's injuries was read out.
Then the jury of 15 men and women retired to make their decision. - There was massive pressure to get a conviction, first and
foremost, for Barry's mom and dad and his brother, because they deserved that. We also wanted a conviction to prevent this
from ever happening again. NARRATOR: After a trial lasting nearly three weeks, William Frederick Beggs was found guilty of the murder
of Barry Wallace. - He was sentenced to life imprisonment. But the recommendation for the minimum custodial was 20 years.
NARRATOR: Under Scottish law, it meant Beggs wouldn't even be considered for parole
for two full decades. - My recollection that there wasn't a lot of reaction from Beggs, whether he
was resigned to the outcome. NARRATOR: But even with the killer behind bars, some questions still remained.
- I'm a firm believer that there are other victims. The initial search of the house took several days.
There were some carpets underlay and in floorboards, what I started to find was stains or blood, human blood,
male human blood, which was not identified and still have not been identified. NORMAN SILVESTER: They found blood samples
of 17 other males, which suggests that other men have been in that flat, other young men
had been attacked and possibly even murdered. STUART FERGUSON: Who else has been in that property that
has lost blood to that extent? JONI JOHNSTON: Not only would it be difficult for a male to come forward with sexual violence,
there's the whole issue of if this person is straight and they're raped by a gay man.
I think that it is unfortunately not uncommon for that person to wonder, why did this person choose me?
What does this say about my own sexuality? And then he's picking men who are much
less likely to come forward. So he is stacking the deck as much as possible in his favor.
JOHN GEATES: The impact this guy has had in the Wallace family is beyond belief.
But not just the Wallace family, other families in this country and in other countries.
He's been, in my opinion, a serial predator. With the family, while everyone was
pleased that there was a conviction, it didn't alter what they had gone through.
It didn't alter what had happened to Barry. And I think they have shown tremendous courage in the way
that they have continued their lives since then. [music playing]

Scottish police divers training in Loch Lomond make a chilling discovery: human body parts.

In this chilling true crime series, detectives, pathologists and police divers work together to decode complex crime scenes where victims' bodies are discovered in water.

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Brief Summary

The episode details the murder of Barry Wallace and the investigation leading to William Beggs' conviction.

Key points

Discovery of Body Parts. Divers accidentally find severed limbs in Loch Lomond, turning the area into a crime scene.
Identifying the Victim. Police identify the dismembered body parts as belonging to 18-year-old Barry Wallace.
Suspect Emerges. William Frederick Beggs, a man with a violent past, becomes the prime suspect in the case.
Media Frenzy. The press's presence complicates the police investigation into the murder case.
Suspect Goes on the Run. After hearing about the police raid, the suspect flees, complicating the investigation.
Major Breakthrough. The torso of the victim is discovered, providing crucial evidence for the case.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was even colder than it is today.

Jeff Adams reflects on the weather during the dive training.

2:31WatchMar 2, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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