A murderer has been blocked from speaking to the Press and Journal from his prison cell about the paper’s campaign to save Peterhead Prison.

Limbs-in-the-loch murderer William Beggs, one of Scotland’s most notorious killers, got in touch with the paper’s Peterhead office to try to set up an interview with a reporter.

It was arranged that the Press and Journal could visit Beggs at the jail last week but just hours before the meeting, governor Ian Gunn decided to block any media access to the killer, who was jailed last year for the murder of Ayrshire teenager Barry Wallace.

He had been transferred from Edinburgh’s Saughton Prison to Peterhead, home to 300 sex offenders, last month.

It had been agreed with the Scottish Prison Service that the Press and Journal would not report on anything Beggs discussed at the meeting and he had sent out a visitor’s pass to a reporter in preparation for the interview.

The inmate, serving life, is now understood to be seeking legal advice about the situation.

An prison service spokesman said: “Originally it had been planned to allow a reporter access to speak to Beggs, but not to use anything he said for journalistic purposes. But the governor decided it would be inappropriate to allow the meeting to go ahead.”

The Scottish Executive wants to close the prison because of the sheer cost of modernisation but momentum is growing in the campaign to keep it open.

Beggs has been on hunger strike in protest at being moved from Edinburgh. He says he does not have proper access to his solicitors in Peterhead, with whom he is putting together an appeal.

He was sentenced last October after a jury found him guilty of luring an 18-year-old man to his home in Kilmarnock, raping him, dismembering his body and dumping his limbs in Loch Lomond.

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