A FORMER North-East student – dubbed the “limbs in the loch” killer – is to be quizzed by police over the 1987 murder of a croupier.

North Yorkshire Police have asked permission to re-interview William Beggs, in Peterhead Prison, Scotland, over the killing of Barry Oldham 24 years ago.

The move comes after Mr Oldham’s father, Albert, urged the force and the Crown Prosecution Service to review the case.

Mr Oldham, 81, said: “He’s never had justice. I don’t know how long I have left, but I’d like to know that Beggs is going to be punished for what he did to my son. I’d like to think it’s not too late.”

Beggs, 48, was jailed for life in 1987 for murdering Barry Oldham at his student flat in Princes Road, Middlesbrough.

Mr Oldham met Beggs, then a 23-year-old student at Teesside Polytechnic, at Rockshots gay nightclub in Newcastle on May, 11, 1987.

The next day, Mr Oldham’s body was found by a gamekeeper in woods near Stokesley, North Yorkshire. His throat had been cut and attempts had been made to dismember and decaptitate him.

A month later, Beggs, who moved to Middlesbrough in 1982 to study public administration, was charged with murder and wounding other men.

The trial at Teesside Crown Court heard Beggs, a leader of the polytechnic’s Students’ Union and the Federation of Conservative Students’ northern chairman, claimed the pair had gone camping on the North York Moors.

Beggs said he slashed Mr Oldham, from Bolton, with a razor blade in self defence after Mr Oldham made homosexual advances.

He was found guilty of murder and of previously wounding a flatmate and a fellow student at the polytechnic by cutting their legs while they slept.

The Court of Appeal overturned the convictions, ruling the trial judge should not have let the jury hear evidence of Beggs’ earlier attacks.

He was freed after serving 18 months in Pentonville, as he could then not be tried again for the offence under the double jeopardy rule. This rule was abolished in 2005 and a retrial is now possible.

Within six months of being released, Beggs was convicted for slashing a man with a razor, before being jailed for six years in 1991 for an attack on a man at his new home in Kilmarnock. In 2001, Beggs was found guilty of murdering supermarket worker Barry Wallace, 18, dismembering his body and dumping his limbs and torso in Loch Lomond and his head in the sea.

A North Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “Officers have not visited William Beggs in prison.

At this stage we do not wish to make any further comment