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Karl Taylor |
Jury rejects claim of ‘suicide’
Judge gives ‘manipulative and highly dangerous’ killer 30-year sentence
A killer who stabbed businesswoman Kate Beagley to death on Richmond Hill, to steal her car, has been jailed for life.
Old Bailey Judge Giles Forrester told the Covent Garden man: “I am satisfied this was a murder done for gain. You are arrogant, manipulative and highly dangerous.”
He sentenced personal fitness trainer Karl Taylor, 27, to a minimum of 30 years.
Taylor wrote a letter – described by the prosecution as “obscene” – to Ms Beagley’s family in which he confessed to her murder.
Later in court he added to their grief by claiming Ms Beagley, 32, was unhappy and took her own life before he could stop her.
Her first date with him ended in her horrific slaying in May last year. He stabbed her 31 times in the face, head and neck.
Ms Beagley, from Walton on Thames, worked for energy supplier Centrica. Her father, Alan, told the jury “She was caring, loving and generous with her money and her time. She was hard working and proud of her career. To me she was Kate the Magnificent.”
Mr Beagley said his daughter “dreamed of becoming a PA for a major company and hoped to settle down, get married and have children.”
Ms Beagley had met Taylor, 27, at the CC in Leicester Square where they chatted and danced and exchanged phone numbers. Within days she was lying dead at his feet on the grass near the Roebuck pub on Richmond Hill.
Taylor, of Bruce House, Kemble Street, took a six-inch kitchen knife with him on their date, hidden up his sleeve.
When Ms Beagley refused to hand over her car keys at knifepoint he stabbed her.
After piercing her windpipe so that she could not scream he bundled her body into the boot of her VW Golf and drove 40 miles to Hertfordshire.
There he stripped Ms Beagley in Oxhey Woods, a nature reserve near Watford, and left her in undergrowth.
Taylor returned to London, dumping her clothing on the M1 hard shoulder, and parked the Golf beside his own black BMW in Harlesden.
He gave her mobile phone to a friend who told the court he was acting as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He was shouting “rise and shine,” added Adrian Kargbo.
Seven months after his arrest Taylor came up with the story – rejected in two hours by the jury – that Ms Beagley committed suicide.
He was found with a noose about his neck in a cell at Wandsworth Prison. He confessed to warders that he had killed Ms Beagley but later in court claimed they were lying.
Taylor, a martial arts expert, briefly kept the murder weapon as a “souvenir” but then got rid of it, said prosecutor Peter Clark, QC. |
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