Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast #75: The Fatal Fling of Emily Beilby Kaye - Part Two (The Liar)23/9/2019
Nominated BEST TRUE-CRIME PODCAST at British Podcast Awards 2018, The Telegraph's Top Five True-Crime Podcasts and iTunes Top 25. Subscribe via iTunes, Spotify, Acast, Stitcher and all podcast platform.
Welcome to the Murder Mile UK True-Crime Podcast and audio guided walk of London's most infamous and often forgotten murder cases, set within one square mile of the West End.
EPISODE SEVENTY-FIVE:
On 2nd May 1924, Patrick Mahon was arrested after Police found a brown Gladstone bag in the left luggage kiosk of Waterloo Station containing a woman's bloodstained clothes and a ten inch cook's knife. But with Emily missing, very little evidence and her body destroyed, although her death looked accidental, the Police now had to prove that this was a murder.
THE LOCATION
As many photos of the case are copyright protected by greedy news organisations (and I don't want to be billed £300 for copyright infringement again), to view them, take a peek at my entirely legal social media accounts - Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
I've added the location of the left luggage kiosk at Waterloo Station is marked with a bright green !. It's at the bottom by 'Waterloo'. To use the map, simply click it. If you want to see the other murder maps, such as King's Cross and Paddington, you access them by clicking here.
I've also posted some photos to aid your "enjoyment" of the episode. These photos were taken by myself (copyright Murder Mile) or granted under Government License 3.0, where applicable. Sadly, as photo of Emily & Patrick are copyrighted, I can't post them here.
TRANSCRIPT:
Ep75: The Fatal Fling of Emily Beilby Kaye – Part Two (The Liar)
SCRIPT: Welcome to Murder Mile; a true-crime podcast and audio guided walk featuring many of London’s untold, unsolved and long-forgotten murders, all set within London’s West End. Today’s episode is about Emily Beilby Kaye; a sweet-natured lady who eloped with a lovable Irish rogue called Pat. Only Pat wasn’t what he seemed, and with Emily missing, very little evidence and her body destroyed, although her death looked accidental, the Police now had to prove that this was a murder. Murder Mile is researched using the original police files. It contains moments of satire, shock and grisly details, and as a dramatisation of the real events, it may also feature loud and realistic sounds, so that no matter where you listen to this podcast, you’ll feel like you’re actually there. My name is Michael, I am your tour-guide and this is Murder Mile. Episode 75: The Fatal Fling of Emily Beilby Kaye – Part Two (The Liar). Today I’m standing in Waterloo train station just off the South Bank of the River Thames; three bridges south west of the hanging of Roberto Calvi, two streets west of brutal attack on David Morley and one street south of the revenge attack on Sir Michael Francis O'Dwyer – coming soon to Murder Mile. Built in 1848, London Waterloo is UK’s busiest train station, serving one hundred million customers a year from the south of England and terminating at the West End. Rebuilt in 1922, with a baroque Portland stone entrance, stained glass windows, ornate friezes and its infamous four-faced clock, Waterloo’s 700 foot concourse is naturally illuminated by an expansive glass roof and cast iron arches. Sadly, most of its stunning architecture is lost amidst a nauseating sea of colourful adverts for caffeine-rich cow-tit drinks, a splat of mashed pig corpses in a ketchup bap, macerated baby chickens moulded into fun-sized fat-coated nuggets, the latest bum-numbing series you “must-see” or your life isn’t worth living (which “gets good around series three”) and – ironically - adverts for health insurance. Waterloo Station is like a little shopping complex, but back in its heyday, it was pretty much the same; a train station full of tea-shops, florists, newsstands and even a cinema. And yet, as many punters watched the latest newsreels, cartoons and thrillers, barely a few feet away in the left luggage kiosk on the south side of Waterloo station, a bloody murder mystery was unfolding. As it was here, on Friday 2nd May 1924, seventeen days after her disappearance, that the murderer of Emily Beilby Kaye would be caught… all the Police had to do now was to prove it (Interstitial). By the morning of Friday 2nd May, the Police knew that the brown Gladstone bag belonged to Jessie’s adulterous husband Pat; the torn clothes to his mistress Emily, the Cook’s knife tested positive for blood and the yellowy-brown fat proved to be human, and although they suspected something more sinister had happened, Chief Inspector Guy Savage had only circumstantial evidence of an illicit affair or a botched abortion… but nothing more. And now, both Pat and Emily were missing. But having stashed the Gladstone bag in the left luggage kiosk at Waterloo Station and kept the ticket, believing that he might return to collect it, the Police placed the bag back on the shelf, instructed his long-suffering wife Jessie to return the ticket to the pocket of his brown crumpled suit where she had first found it, and – with CID Officers lying in wait - a trap had been set to catch a killer. But who was Pat and why would he kill the woman he loved? Patrick Mahon was born on the 23rd September 1889 on Helena Street in West Derby (Liverpool), the fourth of six children to Henry, a wholesale draper and Amy, a housewife, with all of his siblings entering honest professions; one was a veterinary surgeon, one was a teacher and one was a priest. Raised in a middle class household in an affluent suburb in a prosperous booming city, with the Mahon family being big believers in hard-work, decency and the teachings of the Good Book, as dedicated church-goers, they were widely regarded as respectable, moral and honest. Just like Emily, Pat had a good upbringing and was given everything he would need to become a fine upstanding man, but - unlike Emily - his life wasn’t beset by tragedy, struggle or grief. Educated at St Mary’s Church of England school, although he was good at sports, active in the church and would later become a Sunday school teacher, being described as “bright but easily distracted”, Pat grappled with his religious beliefs - as if sins were so bad, why did breaking them feel so good? On the surface, Pat seemed like a handsome charmer, but being easily tempted by the devilish lure of goods, girls and gambling, and excited by the thrill of defying God, seeing these sins (not as life lessons but) as goals to getting whatever he desired, Pat had learned to lie, cheat and steal. After a few weeks as a shop assistant for H Young & Sons, Pat was dismissed having been suspected of theft. His next job as a clerk for a chocolatiers called Barker & Dobson lasted a few months, it is said he left for “personal reasons” but (having developed an insatiable addiction to betting on horseraces) it was no coincidence that after he left, the company’s finances were no longer a little bit light. Here he also stole the heart of a 23 year old typist called Jessie; a good Catholic girl with a solid work ethic and a romantic soul, but with Pat being incapable of telling the truth, whilst still living under the roofs of their respective parents, on 6th April 1910, at Pat’s request, they married in secret. And as his addiction got worse, so did the deceit. On 24th January 1911, after a few months working as a clerk for W G Taylor’s, an African art importer, Pat was arrested for forging cheques worth £123 (almost £6000 today), all under the aliases he used to cover-up his crimes, including Herbert Mahon, Pat Waller and Pat Derrick Pattison. Too cowardly to face the Police, Pat fled, left Jessie to pick up the pieces, and with Mr Taylor unwilling to prosecute Pat out of respect for his family, Pat’s father paid the balance of the missing money and after one month on the run, Patrick Mahon was bound over for one year at Liverpool City Police Court. As a convicted criminal, Pat’s dirty little secret was hushed-up by his family and having discovered that he was secretly married, his mother insisted they remarry, but the sanctity of marriage meant nothing to Pat, as all the while he posed as a single man, using his ill-gotten gains to woo his other women. By 1916, Pat was absent, broke and jobless but still juggling several women; so with Jessie left to raise their new-born baby alone, being too ashamed to admit her husband had also served a year in prison for stealing postal orders, when asked where he was, she would simply say “he’s in a sanatorium”. His parents and his long-suffering wife had put-up with so much, they had given him so many chances, but that year, unable to see beyond his greed, Patrick Mahon took one step closer to becoming a killer. On the night of Saturday 8th April 1916, seeing theft as easier than earning an honest wage, Pat broke into the unlit home of Herman Lange, manager of the London & Provincial Bank in Chertsey. Dressed in black and clutching a hammer he had wrapped in cloth to deaden the sound, Pat shimmied up a drain-pipe, cracked a hole in a first floor window, lifted a latch and crept inside. His plan was perfect. Except, having startled the sleeping housemaid, as she screamed and turned to flee, Pat panicked, hit her several times over the head with the hammer, rendering her unconscious and profusely bleeding. Only, Pat didn’t run… instead he waited. As with no signs of the Police, the house secluded, the maid still alive and his greed overpowering any rational thought, when she came to, he demanded she hand him the keys to the bank. He had hit the jackpot. But when he returned later the next day, with the Police lying in wait, Pat was arrested. On 27th June 1916, Patrick Mahon was sentenced to five years hard labour for burglary and the assault on Olive Wickens. And although his actions had severe ramifications for others, he showed no regrets for his victim, his family, his baby daughter or his wife - only for himself. Upon his conviction, his siblings disowned him, his mother sunk into depression and his father (it is said) died of shame. After four years in prison, Pat moved into 2 Pagoda Avenue to live with the only person who stuck by him – his long-suffering wife Jessie. Struggling to find work, to help her out, Jessie’s employer - Consols Automatic Aerators Ltd - hired Pat as Sales Manager to oversee the company’s liquidation under Robertson Hill & Co. And it is there, in July 1923, that he would meet Emily Beilby Kaye. (Interstitials). From the first day they met, to her very last day alive, Pat lied to Emily. Lured by his chiselled good looks, dazzled by his roguish charm and amused by his cheeky banter, the smitten spinster knew him (not as Pat Mahon but) as Patrick Derrick Pattison, a pseudonym he used to sign false cheques, to hide his philandering ways and to mask his criminal convictions. By September, after a delightful day by the river, their first “intimacy” took place. It meant everything to Emily as the respectable lady gave up her body to the man she loved; but to a serial womaniser like Pat, she was just another notch on the bedpost, and as the desperately love-sick lady droned on-and-on about marriage, to keep her sweet, he told her his divorce was imminent, but in truth, it wasn’t. By Christmas, with Emily no longer employed by Robertson Hill & Co, they saw each other less and less. Which was fine by Pat, as growing ever needy, Emily’s talk of romance had become tiresome. Besides, he had been married before and it was all a bit of a bore, babies did nothing but wither his wild oats and why would he divorce his wife, when Jessie was the one he always ran to when it all went wrong? It was fun while it lasted but the affair was over. Pat didn’t love Emily… …but he did love her money. Blinded by his charm, the level-headed lady was strung along by the well-rehearsed spiel of a cash-strapped lothario, as the convicted fraudster coerced the usually frugal Emily to sell £400 worth of her shares under the ruse that they would start a new life together in South Africa via Paris. On 27th March 1924, as a weakened Emily recuperated from a suspected flu; her alleged lover trotted-out the tried-and-tested ploy of chilled champagne, twinkling stars and a sparkly ring, and having got down on bended knee, Pat proposed and Emily’s dream came true… but to Pat, a ring was just a ring, a pretty thing to pop on a finger, so having kept the receipt, he knew he would lose nothing. Only Emily wasn’t easily duped, as being a self-sufficient lady whose calmness had guided her through years of family tragedy – with Pat still not divorced and still without a passport - now more than ever, being two months pregnant and rightly suspicious that he was cheating on her with another woman, she needed to test his commitment by making them live as “husband and wife”. At her request, Pat rented a romantic little bungalow called The Officer's House in Pevensey Bay. It was perfect; for Emily, it meant long coastal walks and quiet nights by the fire. But for Pat – who viewed it under an alias, paid in cash and rented it for six weeks longer than he needed, having lied to the owners that his wife needed a quiet place to write - it was isolated, remote and private. And having told her lover about the impending birth of their baby - with that - her fate was sealed. On Saturday 12th April at 1pm, as Emily checked out of the Kenilworth Court Hotel, dragging behind her a large trunk which could soon contain the hacked-up bits of her dismembered corpse, a salesman at the Staines Kitchen Equipment Company made an entry in his log-book for a ‘ten inch cook's knife and a small meat-saw’, the buyer was Pat Mahon and it was dated three days before her death. On the 13th, they walked arm-in-arm on the shingle beach. On the 14th, Emily posted a letter to ‘Fizz’. And on the 15th, she waved to a passing butcher. After that, Emily was never seen alive again. The night of Tuesday 15th April was nasty, as a violent storm ripped through the heart of Pevensey Bay. Inside the bungalow, sat alone by the flickering fire-light, Emily ate the roast dinner, as once again, opposite hers, Pat’s plate remained untouched. His commitment to their relationship was as tested as her patience, as of the three days they had lived together, Pat had been gone for two. In a statement, Pat later claimed “She fumed and raved. Suddenly, in a fit of anger, she picked up a coal axe”. Only we know that’s not true, as being described as “one of the nicest girls you could ever hope to meet”, who was placid, sweet-natured and unflappable, Emily was never violent. “She threw it at me. It glanced off my shoulder”. But when Pat was examined by a doctor, he had no cuts or bruises to any part of his body. “It hit the bedroom door, breaking the shaft”. And although the Police found a small hand-axe with its handle split, tests confirmed it had been splintered by repetitive hard strikes, not a single blow, and on none of the doors was there an axe-wound. “I felt appalled at the fury she showed me and realised how strong she was”. Given her physical fitness, his lack of injuries and being a woman who could handle herself, the Police believed she didn’t die in a fight as he had suggested, but in a cowardly brutal attack from behind. “We struggled, fell over an easy chair and her head came into violent contact with the round coal cauldron”. And although, a leg on the cast iron cauldron was bent, the housekeeper confirmed this had happened one year prior. “She lay stunned or dead. The next few seconds I cannot remember, except as a nightmare of horror for I saw blood begin to issue from Miss Kaye's head. I did my utmost to revive her”. Only he didn’t. Pat’s statement was a tissue of lies, and yet, the evidence told a different story… Having earlier stocked the cauldron full of coal and spent a short while chopping logs, Pat hid the axe in the bedroom. Seeing the notorious womaniser stumble home late, Emily calmly put an end to the relationship and - dressed in slippers, bloomers and a silk nightdress - she walked out of the bedroom to sleep somewhere else. For Pat, who wanted out, she had handed it him on a plate. It was fun while it lasted but the affair was over. Besides, Pat didn’t love Emily… …but he did love her money. And with the bungalow secluded, the axe in his fist and Emily’s back turned; as his greed overpowered any rational thought, just as he had with the banker’s housemaid – Olive Wickens - seeing her not as a human-being but as an obstacle to his money, with a single fast blow, Pat buried the axe in her head. Caught off-guard, as an intense pain shot into her brain, Emily staggered into the sitting room, dazed and blinded, her last steps marked by a bloody trickle. Only being physically strong she didn’t fall, so having learned from his attack on Olive (who had survived having been repeatedly beaten over the head with a hammer), Pat wasn’t going to make the same mistake with Emily, and having bludgeoned her skull so the bone caved in and the axe broke, Pat strangled Emily until her legs stopped twitching. “The struggle reduced me to exhaustion, and as the terrible position I was in flooded my brain, I was still so upset that I could not carry out my intention to decapitate the body”. When questioned by the Police, Pat perfectly played the part of the grieving lover whose fiancé had died in a tragic accident, only his tears weren’t real and his delay in her dismemberment had nothing to do with grief. Five days prior, on Thursday 10th April, whilst waiting for a train at Richmond Station, 32 year old Ethel Primrose Duncan met a handsome Irish rogue who (although he had a wife at home and a pregnant mistress in a hotel) he claimed to be an unhappily married and impending divorcee called Pat Waller. On Tuesday 15th April, as Emily cooked a romantic roast dinner for two, Pat dined with Ethel. Returning late to the love-nest with perfume on his suit, lipstick on his cheek and cheap whiskey on his breath, for Emily - this was the last straw. And yet, before she was even dead, Pat had already invited his new mistress to spend the following weekend with him in the secluded little cottage in Pevensey Bay. …all he needed was Emily out of the way. On Thursday 17th, Pat sent Ethel a telegram and a £4 money order to get a train ticket to Eastbourne. Anticipating a sexy weekend, to set a more romantic mood; he scrubbed the bloodied carpet, shoved Emily’s stuff in a box and – as she was too tall to dump in the trunk – he decapitated her cold corpse, his knee on her chest, sweating profusely, as his butcher’s meat saw ripped through skin, muscle and bone, severing her spine, and splitting her body into two arms, two legs, a torso and a head. Ethel stayed at the bungalow from Friday to Sunday; sleeping in a dead woman’s bed, spending a dead woman’s money, shagging a dead woman’s killer, and all just a few feet from the mangled stinking mess of his mistresses’ rotting flesh. Thankfully, Ethel had a cold so she smelled nothing. With the weekend’s fun done, over the next ten days, Pat disposed of the body of Emily Beilby Kaye. As a broad girl, even with her limbs sawn in half and her torso split in quarters, her bits were still too big to bin. So in the scullery’s bath, using the ten inch Cook’s knife, Pat sliced off her sagging muscles, the jagged blade tearing at her rancid meat, as a thick gloop of congealed blood, cartilage and sinew splashed up the cast iron bath and clogged the choking drain-pipe. On the stove, three two-gallon sauce-pans boiled hour-after-hour, as in a red bubbling liquid with a yellowy-brown curd on top, severed arms and hands were boiled down to bones, with a rough gristle sunk to the base of the pot, as the air hung with an unholy mix of old stew, hot fat and singed hair. On the fires, he burned her feet, neck, bits of spine, “the thigh bone also, it’s surprising what a fire will destroy”. And although - at some point - he must have loved her, “I burned the head in fire, it was finished in about three hours”; as he sat and watched his mistress’ face char and blacken until nothing was left but a skull. “I poked it, the fire poker went through her head”. And to sum-up how little his lover meant to him, “the next day I smashed up the skull and put the pieces in a bin”. By 28th April, almost two weeks after her murder, Pat still struggled to fully dispose of Emily’s body; in the trunk were two slabs of pelvis and her right upper chest, in her hat-box were twenty wrapped slivers of boiled flesh, and in a Huntley & Palmer’s biscuit tin were her lungs, heart, bowels, liver and intestines – all yet to be boiled, burned or binned. And with the bungalow sticky with blood, crawling with flies and oozing with hot pots of human fat, with close to a thousand bone fragments in the fire’s ash-pan, it was all an absolute mess, but (being due back at work) Pat had to go home. Planning to return, Pat packed his brown Gladstone bag; he wrapped the Cook’s knife in the bloomers, twenty more slivers of boiled flesh parcelled-up in the nightdress and stashed inside the tennis satchel to disguise the smell, and “I threw them out of the train between Eastbourne and Waterloo”. That same day, at the left luggage kiosk in Waterloo Station, having handed in his bag, Pat was given ticket number J2415, which he placed inside the pocket of his crumpled brown suit. And that night, at home, as he kissed his wife and child, he grinned with delight, as once again he had defied God. Only, with the trap having been set, this would be his last sin of Patrick Mahon. (End) On Friday 2nd May 1924 at 8:40pm, having bought a return ticket to Eastbourne, Pat collected the brown Gladstone bag and was apprehended by PC Mark Thompson, but he wasn’t arrested, as at that point the Police didn’t know if a crime had even been committed - all they had was the bag. Interviewed at Kensington Road Police Station, when he was shown its contents, Pat remained cool, claiming it was meat for his dogs. But Chief Inspector Guy Savage refused to accept his lies, and after an hour of cunning silence, Pat broke and said “I suppose you know everything. I'll tell you the truth". And although his statement was a tissue of lies, the evidence inside the bungalow spoke volumes. According to the Home Office pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the body was destroyed beyond all recognition, but having trawled through sauce-pans of bloodied gloop, bins of sliced-up bits and even the clogged drain-pipe of the bath, he matched the victim’s blood group, hair colour, height, weight, shoe size, sex, age and month of her pregnancy to the missing woman called Emily Beilby Kaye, having painstakingly recreated her skull from hundreds of smashed bits of bone in the fire’s ash. And so, even without a body, the Police could prove not only that was this wasn’t an accident, but this was a murder. On 8th July 1924, at Lewes Assizes, Patrick Mahon pleaded “not guilty” and stuck to his story that Emily’s death was a tragic accident having hit her head on the coal scuttle. But faced with overwhelming evidence and the jury appalled not just at his callous acts but also by the affair he had engaged in with Ethel Duncan between the day of the death and the dismemberment, having been found guilty of the murder of Emily Beilby Kaye, on Wednesday 3rd September 1924 at 9am, Patrick Mahon was executed at Wandsworth Prison. The liar, cheat, thief and womaniser had almost got away with the perfect murder… almost, had it not been for his bag, a ticket and the suspicions of his wife. OUTRO: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for listening to Murder Mile. That was the concluding part of The Fatal Fling of Emily Beilby Kaye. For all of Mickey’s bona-fide Belgian Bun munching pals, there’s more sweet treats after the break, but before that, here’s my recommended podcasts of the week. (PROMO) A huge thank you goes out to my new Patreon supporters, who are Vivia Boe, Georgia Harris and Diane Low, I thank you, with an extra thank you to the patrons who have even increased their pledge to get extra goodies like early and ad-free episodes and even a Murder Mile mug. Ooh. Plus special thank you’s to Tom & Nicola Rainsley-Hughes for the lovely card and the wedding seeds which I have planted in my Murder Mile plant pot and thank you to Emma Thorpe, who I met at the Generation Why / They Walk Among Us meet-up, for sending me the lovely nice email. Murder Mile was researched, written & performed by myself, with the main musical themes written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Thank you for listening and sleep well.
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Credits: The Murder Mile true-crime podcast was researched, written and recorded by Michael J Buchanan-Dunne, with the sounds recorded on location (where possible), and the music written and performed by Erik Stein & Jon Boux of Cult With No Name. Additional music was written and performed as used under the Creative Common Agreement 4.0.
The music featured in this episode include:
Sounds (not created by myself):
Sources: This case was researched using the original declassified police investigation files from the National Archives.
Michael J Buchanan-Dunne is a writer, crime historian, podcaster and tour-guide who runs Murder Mile Walks, a guided tor of Soho’s most notorious murder cases, hailed as “one of the top ten curious, quirky, unusual and different things to do in London”, nominated "one of the best true-crime podcasts at the British podcast Awards 2018", and featuring 12 murderers, including 3 serial killers, across 15 locations, totaling 50 deaths, over just a one mile walk
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AuthorMichael J Buchanan-Dunne is a crime writer, podcaster of Murder Mile UK True Crime and creator of true-crime TV series. Archives
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