Beau Felton

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Det. Beau Felton is a fictional homicide detective on the television drama series Homicide: Life on the Street portrayed by Daniel Baldwin for seasons 1-3.

Beau was a hardheaded tough guy from the Billytown area of Baltimore. Upon entering the Homicide unit, he was partnered with Det. Kay Howard. The two of them were friends, though they often stated there was no sexual tension between them at all. Beau cared for Kay a lot, but always thought of her as "just another detective."

Beau was married to Beth Felton, though by the beginning of series their marriage was on the rocks. They had two small children, a boy and a girl, whom Beau was very close to. Beth, who was emotionally unstable to begin with, eventually left Beau in the third season and prevented him from seeing the children as much as she could. About this time, Beau began an affair with Lt. Megan Russert, although she soon broke it off.

During a raid in the third season episode "The City That Bleeds", Felton was shot, along with Det. Howard and Det. Bolander. While Bolander had been shot in the head and Kay in the chest, the bullets that struck Beau grazed the neck and hit his leg, missing all major organs and arteries. Beau was the first to recover, though he carried a lot of the guilt over Kay being hit. He was the first to go back on duty, but his recovery coupled with Beth leaving him for good drove him to start drinking heavily. His police work suffered for it, and even Kay was disgusted with him after he lost crucial evidence for a "lost cause" case that Howard was assigned from the late Det. Crosetti's unsolved caseload. Lt. Giardello bluntly told him he had never been good enough for Homicide, even before he was shot.

Between the 3rd and 4th seasons, Felton is said to have gone to some kind of police/firefighters convention in New York--a convention that became quite rowdy and caused an uproar. Felton (and Bolander) were both suspended from duty for 22 weeks (a witty reference to the then-standard length of a network drama's TV season). This marked the last regular appearance of both characters: Bolander retired after his suspension and Beau quit the force.

Or it APPEARED that he had quit. At the end of season five, Beau is found dead in his house, a shotgun blast having destroyed most of his skull. Everyone initially expects a suicide, but the M.E. soon reveals that he had been shot in the back of the head with a pistol first, then shot in the face with the shotgun in an attempt to make it look like a suicide.

It was then revealed Felton had actually gone to work undercover for Internal Affairs (IAD), under the direction of Detective Stu Gharty, after he had specifically said he did NOT want to return to Homicide. Felton was helping the IAD and the FBI work on a massive auto theft ring--but there was a leak somewhere, and Felton was found out. He was personally murdered by the auto kingpin, who managed to evade capture. Beth Felton wanted nothing to do with Beau's funeral, so Kay and Megan had to make the arrangements. A memorial for Beau was established in the police headquarters.

The last "appearance" of Felton was in the later TV movie Homicide: Life Everlasting, where he and Detective Crosetti are seen in a kind of afterlife playing cards in the squad room and waiting for the next arrival.