The murder of Emily Kaye
One private detective had a small but important role in catching a notorious 1920s killer
One of the most recent cases I've looked at in my role as presenter of the CBS Reality series Murder By The Sea is the murder of Emily Kaye. Emily was killed by her married lover, Patrick Mahon, in 1924, in a case that horrified Britain and led to Mahon's eventual execution.
Patrick Mahon, who killed his pregnant lover in 1924
The most fascinating aspect of this case for me, when I was researching it, was the involvement of Mahon's wife, Jessie. Jessie had her suspicions about her husband, and was not content with sitting back and letting him carry on with his affairs. Instead, she hired a private detective to investigate Patrick Mahon. That detective was John Beard.
Beard was born in Essex in 1871, the son of an agricultural labourer. Growing up in Upminster, he saw his family and friends working on the local farms and fields, but decided he was going to join the police instead. He duly joined the Metropolitan Police, becoming a constable in CID.
In 1900, John Beard married Kate Cocks, a builder's daughter, in Lambeth, and they settled in south London with their children. By 1911, John was a detective sergeant. He remained with the Met until May 1923, when he retired, and became a private detective; he had moved to Twickenham prior to leaving the police and continued to work from here.
Jessie Mahon commissioned John Beard in 1924, after suspecting her husband of having yet another affair. The pair travelled down to Eastbourne together to investigate. John Beard undertook his usual shadowing endeavours, tracking Mahon down and finding that he had indeed been staying with another woman.
Soon, he and Jessie discovered that Mahon had deposited a locked Gladstone bag in a locker at the rail station. Beard broke into it, and found a knife and clothing, both covered in blood. He informed police, who arranged an undercover operation to catch Mahon when he tried to retrieve the bag. It emerged that when his lover, Emily Kaye, had told him she was pregnant by him, he had killed and dismembered her.
John Beard was successful in this case, although he had the help of Mahon's wronged wife. It was just another case for him, and he would continue to make the news over the next decade for various other investigations he had conducted in the south-east. By 1939, he had retired, and was living quietly in Twickenham, where he died in 1950, aged 79.