William Desmond Taylor

Case background and investigation

William Desmond Taylor was a prominent director of the silent era. According to the University of Southern California's regional history archive, he was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner in Ireland on April 26, 1872, came to the United States in 1890, and ran an antiques business in New York before abruptly leaving his wife and daughter in 1908. He later took the name Taylor, entered films, directed more than forty pictures and served as president of the Motion Picture Directors Association.

On the evening of February 1, 1922, actress Mabel Normand visited Taylor at his bungalow in the Alvarado Court Apartments in the Westlake district of Los Angeles. By her account she left at about 7:45 p.m. with a book he had given her, and he walked her to her waiting car. The next morning, February 2, Taylor's employee Henry Peavey arrived for work and found him dead on the floor. He had been shot once in the back with a small-caliber handgun.

The USC archive records that neighbors reported hearing a shot during the night, and that inquest witnesses described seeing a dark-haired man leaving the bungalow. Accounts of the case agree that the scene was compromised before detectives took control of it: EBSCO's summary says neighbors and at least one studio representative removed or disturbed items in the house, and IrishCentral describes studio figures going through Taylor's belongings.

Investigators and newspapers considered a wide range of people. Among those discussed in press coverage and later books were Taylor's former valet Edward Sands, who had a record for forgery and embezzlement and could not be located after the killing; Normand; actress Mary Miles Minter, whose letters were found in the house; and Minter's mother, Charlotte Shelby. None of them was charged, and no evidence was ever produced that conclusively tied any individual to the shooting.

Another theory raised at the time, noted by the USC archive, was that Taylor had been targeted because he had sought help from federal authorities against drug dealers supplying Normand. Decades later, a claim emerged that former actress Margaret Gibson had confessed to the killing shortly before her death in 1964; this has not been verified.

The murder followed closely on the Arbuckle trials and contributed to pressure on the film industry to regulate itself, with Will Hays taking charge of the studios' new trade association in 1922. Taylor was buried at what is now Hollywood Forever Cemetery. No one was ever arrested or tried, and the case is still regarded as an unsolved homicide.