Cops were called to the jail after Beggs tested postive for the illicit substance.
William Beggs(Image: Daily Record)
Prison staff called in police to probe how two letters sent to ‘Limbs in the Loch’ murderer William Beggs tested positive for the illicit drug Ketamine. The news of the law enforcement investigation emerged in a legal document issued by a judge at the Court of Session on Wednesday.
Judge Lady Hood made the disclosure in her judgment about a recent case brought to Scotland’s highest civil court by Beggs, who is currently serving life for murdering Barry Wallace in 2001. Beggs – who has brought several actions to the court in recent years – raised an action against the Scottish Prison Service.
He claimed that between March to July 2025, staff at HMP Saughton in Edinburgh breached his human rights by how they handled pieces of correspondence sent to him there. The judgement tells of how two letters tested positive for Ketamine on April 2 2025.
Barry Wallace(Image: Police Scotland / SWNS)
Beggs said his human rights had been breached because prison staff didn’t tell him who had sent the letters or details of the testing results. Prison staff refused to disclose this information because the contaminated items became evidence in criminal investigations and handling had to be minimised.
Beggs also claimed that a letter from NHS Lothian Legal Policy was processed as ordinary mail and not confidential medical mail. He said this amounted to a breach of human rights. The court heard a letter sent from a solicitor had a small tear on the envelope and another piece of legal correspondence was unsealed.
This prompted Beggs to claim that staff failed to protect confidentiality. He also claimed his rights were breached because some of the mail sent to him during the time period was received late.
Beggs wanted Lady Hood to pass several legal orders to declare that the prison service acted unlawfully in how it dealt with his correspondence. However, Lady Hood rejected Beggs’s legal challenge and concluded that the prison services acted lawfully in how it dealt with the letters.
She wrote: “I shall therefore repel the petitioner’s first to seventh pleas-in-law and refuse the petition.”
He launched legal proceedings at Scotland’s highest civil court last year after prison staff refused to accept an Amazon delivery for him. The killer took the Scottish Prison Service to the Court of Session over an incident which happened at HMP Edinburgh in December 2024.
Delivery drivers for the online retailer attempted to drop off “personal items” for Beggs at the jail. However, staff refused to accept delivery. A legal opinion published by Court of Session judge Lady Hood on Thursday stated that Amazon weren’t an “approved supplier” at the prison.
This prompted Beggs to make a complaint to prison authorities and then launch a legal action against the prison. His objections lay with the prison’s policy on deliveries to inmates.
Beggs claimed that the jail’s policy on deliveries breached his human rights. The murderer believed that as he is an Irish citizen, he has a “protected characteristic” under the 2010 Equality Act of nationality.
His lawyers argued that prisoners of a different nationality – such as Beggs – are placed at a disadvantage by the prison service’s policy on deliveries. His legal team argued that such prisoners families are likely to live further away from the prison and might have to rely on sending deliveries to loved ones.
HMP Edinburgh at Saughton in Edinburgh.
The court heard that this meant that such prisoners are “prejudiced” by the policy and that it was unlawful. Lawyers for the prison service argued that the policy was lawful and that the action shouldn’t be upheld.
In a written judgment published by the court late last year Lady Hood upheld the arguments presented to her by the the SPS’s lawyer Michael Briggs. Beggs is serving life after he was convicted of murdering teenager Barry Wallace in October 2001 at the High Court in Glasgow.
Jurors heard how Mr Wallace had gone missing following a Christmas night out in his hometown of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. Jurors heard that Beggs took his victim to his flat in the town and subjected him to a serious sexual assault before murdering him and cutting up his body.
The killer dumped Mr Wallace’s limbs and torso in Loch Lomond and his head in the sea off the Ayrshire coast. Beggs then fled to the Netherlands. He was extradited back to Scotland in January 2001.
Since being convicted, Beggs who is thought to have been given almost £1 million in legal aid payments. Judge Lord Brodie once described him as being a “very experienced litigant”.
In the present action, it is revealed that Beggs wanted the prison service to pay his legal bill. Lady Hood also discloses that two pieces of correspondence which tested positive for Ketamine prompted a police probe.
She wrote: “On April 2 2025, two items of mail addressed to the petitioner were seized. There is no dispute that these were appropriately classed as items of general correspondence, and that one of the items was a letter from East Ayrshire Council.
“Both of the items tested positive for the illicit substance, ketamine. The petitioner was issued with two suspicious mail retention forms, which stated that both of the items of mail would be safely destroyed after the police investigation was complete.
“The petitioner was neither advised of the contents of the mail, nor provided with a copy.”
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Lawyers for the prison service argued that the prison service acted lawfully in the circumstances. They argued that in recent years, correspondence was used to smuggle illicit substances into Scottish jails and the service had an obligation to stop this.
They also argued that Beggs’s human rights hadn’t been breached in the other matters he complained about. Writing about the Ketamine discovery, Lady Hood wrote the prison service acted lawfully.
She wrote: “There was no dispute that in circumstances where the prison authorities tested and seized items of correspondence which had been sent to the prison for the petitioner’s attention, this engaged Article 8, ECHR. However, the Convention right is not framed as an absolute right.
“The petitioner took no issue with the legitimacy of the aim underlying the respondent’s regime for testing correspondence received for prisoners. Nor was there any dispute that items which tested positive for an illicit substance could not be given to a prisoner, and might ultimately be destroyed.
“The legal issue was therefore one of the proportionality of the respondent’s actions. With regard to the first of the petitioner’s concerns, I am satisfied that in the context of the Article 8 right, it was sufficient that the petitioner was informed that the reason for the seizure of the mail was that it had tested positive for an illicit substance.
“It was unclear what legitimate benefit could be derived by a prisoner knowing more detailed information as to testing which has been carried out. In all of these circumstances, there has been no breach of Article 8, ECHR, and the respondent has not acted unlawfully.
“The petitioner is not entitled to the declarator and interdict which he seeks in this regard.”
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