Armed robber in fresh bid to clear name

A MAN locked up for the armed robbery of a postal van is still fighting to clear his name almost 30 years after he was convicted.

William Beck spent four years in prison after a jury found him guilty of the robbery involving a hammer in Livingston, West Lothian, in December 1981, when around £21,000 in cash was stolen from two postal workers.

The father of two has always maintained that he was 40 miles away in Glasgow when the incident took place.

He claims his conviction in March 1982, when he was 21, was based almost entirely on “unreliable” eyewitnesses.

Mr Beck, 50, and now living in Glasgow, claims only two of the five witnesses identified him in an identity parade.

Leave to appeal the conviction was refused in 1982.

The University of Bristol Innocence Project has now taken on Mr Beck’s case.