I am reading a book right now on Famous Hollywood murders/scandals. I am reading the Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor... I saw a show on cable about the murder that Implicated Mary Miles Minter's Mother as the murderer. but the premise of the motive was that Taylor was Gay and he turned down the advances of MMM... The book I'm reading portrays Taylor as a Pervert Lethario with scores of Women he has had sex with...Which is True? Was he Gay or Was he Straight?
Any info Appreciated.
Renowned Death Hag
Most all that I have read indicates he was indeed gay. There is a website devoted this case called "Taylorology" or some such, let me see if I can find it.Originally Posted by burgtwngrl
Renowned Death Hag
http://www.angelfire.com/az/Taylorology/
Talk about obssesed!
Strange because in the Book I am Reading "the hollywood Murder Case Book" and "hollywood Babylon" both portray Taylor as a very sexually active straight man who bedded many starlets Normand and Minter to name a few! Interesting!
Administrator
I never heard he was gay either..but maybe who knows.....I always though MM mother got someone to do it for her.....very shady case indeed....he was a handsome guy!
His birth name was William Cunningham Deane-Tanner. He got married after he immigrated to New York City from Ireland in 1890. He vanished from there in 1908 abandoning his wife and child. His brother Dennis vanished in 1912 also leaving his wife and children. His wife, who had divorced him and remarried, found out where he was a few later. He visited his daughter in and made her his legal heir in 1921 less than one year before his murder. I wonder if the police ever investigated his ex wife?
Last edited by Heavenly Tiger; 06-05-2008 at 09:56 AM. Reason: fix
I think I remember reading that his housekeeper was in truth his brother? or am I completely confused on that part ?
I don't believe Taylor was gay, though I would buy the possibility of him being bisexual. I believe the only evidence I have read that suggests he was bisexual would be the rumors that he would visit a "love cult," smoke opium and "enjoy the company of other men."
I absolutely believe that Mary Miles Minter, then 19, was having a sexual relationship with him, which her mother (the definition of a stage mother) did not like. Taylor did possess several love letters from her and at least one article of her lingerie (with her initials sewn on them). Later, Minter claimed Taylor turned down her advances... however the letters, which began to be exchanged 2 years prior to his death, suggest otherwise.
Renowned Death Hag
You hit it: Rather than always dealing in black & white, so many answers lie in the gray. In this case, TAYLOR was likely bi-sexual. Since he fathered a child and had been married he wasn't 100% gay.
Supposedly he had a manservant that was his brother. The brother was on the lam & had peroxided his hair in order to change his appearance. The brother/manservant vanished not long before the murder.
I believe that MMM' mother (Charlotte Shelby) was also rumored to have been romantically linked to the director.
One of the witnesses who lived in the same court said that they looked out the window right after they heard a 'bang' and that they saw someone quickly leaving TAYLOR'S bungalow. They said that the person was dressed like a man, but that the person walked away like a woman with 'quick little steps'; the inferrence being that it was a woman who tried to look lioke a guy in case she was seen. ( I believe that the individual who's account I mention was actress EDNA PURVIANCE. (Director) VIDOR wrote a book on the murder decades later and he named MMM' mama Charlotte Shelby as the likely murderer.)
TAYLOR
with
MMM
Charlotte Shelby
KELT' HOME FOR WAYWARD YOUTH-
Helping Young Men To Turn Around For Over Twenty Years !
I think the MOther did it. She was afraid it would ruin her kids career and therefore the free lunch would be over. I don't know how a guy can be gay and screwing half of the leading ladies in the town.
The nightdress they foiund didn't have MMM on it that was all bs. If you read the lower part of the story it tells us what evidence was real and what lies were told.
Apparently that lt or the head cop knew exactly who killed him because he got rid of the evidence.??
[QUOTE]One of the witnesses who lived in the same court said that they looked out the window right after they heard a 'bang' and that they saw someone quickly leaving TAYLOR'S bungalow. They said that the person was dressed like a man, but that the person walked away like a woman with 'quick little steps'; the inferrence being that it was a woman who tried to look lioke a guy in case she was seen. ( I believe that the individual who's account I mention was actress EDNA PURVIANCE. (Director) VIDOR wrote a book on the murder decades later and he named MMM' mama Charlotte Shelby as the likely murderer.)
Faith Cole McLean, wife of Douglas McLean, was the witness you describe. Actually, she at first just described the person exiting Taylor's bungalow as a young man, and only after prompting did she add it "might" have been a woman dressed as a man.
The servant who robbed him months before the murder, Sands, was proven not to be Taylor's brother Denis Tanner, although Tanner did indeed disappear. Sands was an army deserter who eventually committed suicide.
The suggestions that Taylor was gay came about decades after his death, mainly because he associated with known gays like George Hopkins. While Vidor's book clearly indicates Charlotte Shelby (MMM's mother) was the killer, another book, Robert Giroux' "Deed of Death," postulates that a hit man, hired by drug dealers who catered to Taylor's friend Mabel Normand, did the job. FWIW I thought Giroux' book, though not nearly as entertaining as Vidor's, seems a bit more believable.
I think Charlotte Shelby was behind it...thanks for clearing alot of things up! I had also read that Sands was Taylor's brother Denis but I guess not. I wonder whatever happened to him?
It all sounds a bit cloak and dagger stuff, like the Thomas Ince case when he was shot aboard Hearst's yacht..........
Found this on YouTube. It's a 1980s interview by Connie Chung of William Cahill a detective on the Taylor murder case.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_esxi0qITY
I definitely believe Mary Miles Minter's mother Charlotte killed him. (Rumor is Charlotte thought he had impregnated MMM.) I believe he was primarily homosexual. There is a wonderful new book that uses the case as a basis for a novel. The Age of Dreaming by Nina Revoyr. I highly recommend it!
I've read in quite a few places that Margaret Gibson made a deathbed confession to his murder in the 60's.
I was just re-reading about it in "Dishing Hollywood". Margaret Gibson did make a dying confession that she killed him. It was discovered that she had met him when she was 16 and they had worked together but everything after that is merely suggestion. Some director went around to Mary Miles Minter when she was in her 60's asking questions (he wanted to do a movie about the murder) and she flipped out and said "My Mother killed everything I loved". Perhaps Charlotte Shelby (her Mother) did have the deed done.
The only thing I know for sure about this entire case is that it will NEVER be solved, although I do believe that Minters' mother did kill him.
He was not gay, that was fabricated many years after his death. Another Hollywood fantasy, just to make the whole thing more salacious...
Last edited by Curtis Radiohead; 06-27-2008 at 07:08 PM.
http://laist.com/2009/03/07/laistory...ond_taylor.php
LAistory: Who Killed William Desmond Taylor?
William Desmond TaylorWilliam Desmond Taylor lived the kind of life that would be tough to live today, in our era of numbers and cards and facial recognition software. In the end, he paid a steep price for that life and so did Hollywood. Maybe he even lived many lives.
He was an antiques dealer, panned for gold, he spent time in either the British or Canadian armies during World War I. He was from Ireland, but he easily morphed into a genteel English gentleman.
Not everything he did was so exciting. He was also an inveterate liar, a deadbeat dad who abandoned his family and a drifter. Like many who flocked to Hollywood in its scandal-free salad days, he invented himself every day.
William Desmond Taylor was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner on April 26 in Carlow, Ireland. The year is in dispute, though Wikipedia lists it as 1872. When he was 18, he emigrated to the U.S., settling in New York City, where he tried to be an actor and married Ethel May Harrison. He was occasionally subject to some sort of mental lapses where he would just disappear. There is a medical condition where this is known to happen, but it could have just been a clever cover up for his many affairs.
This is what his family thought had happened in 1912, when Taylor vanished, turning up in Los Angeles, replete with his new name and English accent. (Taylor was not the only Tanner to pull this stunt; his brother vanished, abandoning his family as well.)
Henry PeavyWith a change of scene, Taylor’s acting career took off, but before long, he was directing. His first film was The Awakening in 1914. Before he returned to Britain in 1918 (where he joined the Royal Army Service Core (or possibly the Canadian army) to fight in World War I at the age of 46), he made more than fifty films, many starring greats of the age, including Mary Pickford, Constance Talmadge and George Beban. Even as things began to work out, he continued to lie. He told people he had once spent three months in jail for the woman he loved. He cast aspersions on the mental states of many of his high profile friends.
Taylor had his kindnesses as well. When his ex-wife tracked him down (or rather, saw him on a movie screen), he began a relationship with his daughter and made her his heir. When his brother’s family turned up on his doorstep penniless, he promised to pay them fifty dollars a month until his death. He was very worried about his friend, actress Mabel Normand, who was getting increasingly involved with drugs. He picked a fight with her drug dealers.
He got pretty lucky. But luck in this town can run out fast. Taylor was found dead in his Westlake Park bungalow on the morning of February 2, 1922. From the start, the investigation was a circus. Before the police arrived, a crowd of people descended on the place. A man who said he was a doctor examined the body, declaring that Taylor had died of a stomach hemorrhage. Had this “doctor” decided to turn the body over, he would have discovered the fatal bullet wound in Taylor’s back. Authorities never found the man. There are rumors that an entire troop of people from Paramount came through, removing objects that might have been key in the investigation, including ladies lingerie, all of Taylor’s illegal booze and any letters.
Some things were still evident. Taylor still had a two carat diamond ring, all the cash in his wallet and his pocket watch (among other things). However, there was evidence that Taylor had taken a substantial amount of money from his bank a few days before and that was never found.
Mary Miles MinterThere are probably more theories as to who killed Taylor than there are lives he lived. Among the suspects were both of his butlers. The first was a man named Edward Sands, who was working under an alias (and a fake cockney accent) who stole money from Taylor and ran off. Some people though that he killed him because he was his brother, Denis Deane-Tanner, bearing a grudge over a stolen fiancé. The other butler (who found Taylor prone on his living room floor) was Henry Peavy.
Peavy had been previously charged with indecent exposure, but this could have meant a number of things less pervy than the words connote - like gay cruising or having to resort to peeing al fresco after not being allowed in a whites only bathroom. Because of the charge, it’s been speculated that Peavy was Taylor’s lover, or was, perhaps procuring boys for him. One enterprising reporter decided he was guilty and took him to a cemetery where a co-conspirator jumped out from behind a gravestone in a sheet and accused him of the crime. Investigative reporting at its best!
A bevy of actresses were also accused, among them Taylor’s protégé, Mary Miles Minter, and her mother. Mary was sixteen, but she’d already been working for years at the behest of her showbiz mom, Charlotte Shelby. At 8, she was playing sixteen. She was in love with Taylor, and may have killed him out of jealousy. Her mother was a suspect because she may have been angry at him for having an affair (that was never confirmed) with her daughter. The ensuing scandal destroyed Minter’s career, but she never gave it a second thought because she hated being an actress anyway.
Mabel NormandAnother suspect was Mabel Normand, who may have been having an affair with Taylor. She was the last to see him alive the night before he died. She was known as the “female Charlie Chaplin.” She starred in a bunch of Keystone Kops films and did a few with Fatty Arbuckle as well. The police eventually declared her innocent, but there were still rumors that her former fiancé, Mac Sennett or her drug dealers had offed him.
There was a theory involving an old army buddy of Taylor’s, and even a hitman (which could have been anyone.) So soon after the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, people began to see Hollywood as a den of sin. The studios responded by putting morals clauses into their contracts. We were out of Eden.
Though there are still avid conspiracy theorists, most people haven’t heard of William Desmond Taylor, though his death contributed to the way our city and its premiere industry is still seen today. Most of his films are gone, vanished in the river of time. The theories are nearly all we have left and they are all deeply flawed, stories like the ones Taylor told himself and others. There’s only one thing that remains certain, in the midst of all the rumors, innuendo, lies and obfuscations, Taylor died as he lived, one foot in the mist.
LAistory is our series that takes us on a journey to what came before to help us understand where we are today.
Check out our other entries in the series:
Val Verde; Thelma Todd's Roadside Cafe; An eclectic house in Beverly Hills; Echo Park's Bonnie Brae House; Marineland of the Pacific; Grand Central Air Terminal; LA's Own Wrigley Field; How LA got its name; The wreck of the Dominator; The 1925 "Hollywood Subway."; The Pink Lady of Malibu; Lions Drag Strip; Disneyland...when it was cheap to get in; The ugliest building in the city; Union Station; Union Station's Fred Harvey Room; A Smelly Mystery at another train station; The Egyptian Theatre; Pilgrimage Bridge; The "It" Girl, Clara Bow; Elias J. "Lucky" Baldwin; Get Involved!; Houdini's House; Spanish Kitchen; The Platinum Blonde; Chutes Park; Fatty Arbuckle; The Brown Derby; Griffith Park; The Outpost Sign; Cross Roads of the World; Sowden House; Monkey Island ; Carthay Circle Theater; The Post-War House & the Home of Tomorrow; Dan the Miner; Tropical Ice Gardens
Okay, has anyone read A Cast Of Killers? this is the book that claims King Vidor had it all figured out. I found it at Value Village the other day and I'm curious to know what anyone thinks. I'm going to read it anyway, because that's just me, but I'm interested to know what you hags think.
I read it when it first came out a few years ago. I thought it was good. Interesting that Vidor investigated the murder as a hobby.
I've always been fascinated with his story. Does anyone know what is built on the site of his former home?
I have that book - it's fantastic. It really lets you into the "old" hollywood. I loved the stories about Mary Mile Minter and her mom that he wrote about!!
Renowned Death Hag
I always thought this story would make a great movie.
Then I remember when they make movies about old Hollywood, they end up like The Black Dahlia or Mommy Dearest.
And after I imagine them casting either Miley Cyrus or Hayden Panettiere as MMM I sob in the corner while tucked into the fetal position.
On second thought, this would make a horrible movie. They should remake "Where the Boys Are '84" instead.
And you just know they'd have to find a part for Angelina Jolie.......
I just finished the book, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone that wants to read it, but it's basically the same old same old with a crooked cop spin. Does a hell of a job of painting Charlotte Shelby as evil incarnate, suggesting that she faked her own death and offed her older daughter.
Sorry but this is incorrect.. Many a 100% gay man has been both married and has fathered children. One need not be bisexual to accomplish this feat.
Gay men frequently used to cave into social & familial pressure and marry a woman.. These marriages produced children in a great many cases. However, these men were not bisexual, nor straight.
Interesting youtube clip here - 12 silent celebrities connected with the murder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXCHAx_T-y8
Does anyone know if his home is still standing?
Renowned Death Hag
I read it years ago. Fascinating story.
This is one of those stories I just keep coming back to. It really has everything. I really wish I knew who did it, but it's never going to be solved.
Death Hag
There is a youtube video clip of Mary Miles Minter doing an audio interview in 1970. She described her visit to the mortuary to see William Desmond's body. She was talking about how he was her man and she claimed him and she wanted to die right then and there..Pretty heavy stuff
Renowned Death Hag
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpP9rF1KhLc
Renowned Death Hag
Renowned Death Hag
I think she was nuts.....
He couldn't swing both ways?
Death Hag
An interesting site with pictures and videos
http://losangelescoldcasecrimes.blog...roduction.html
Also could this be the interior of his house?
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/thed...ge/2/#comments
Death Hag
warning: dead pic
site claims photo taken by coroner (scroll down)
http://lalalandhistory.blogspot.gr/2...d-william.html
Renowned Death Hag
That coroner's pic is creepy! Nice!
"We've had threads about guys fucking picnic tables, animals and dead bodies. Third boob ain't going to stop a damn thing." - cleanskull
Administrator
Death Hag
thank you!
Administrator
I just picked up A deed of death, about his murder, haven't started it yet.
I read CAST OF KILLERS! Excellent reading!
As usual according to King Vidor the Hollywood studios had their people go though the house to remove scandalous
evidence against William Desmond Taylor.
Love letters things like that.
King Vidor seemed to suggest that Charlotte Shelby paid out large sums of money to certain authorities (District Attorney?) to end any further investigation against her or her daughter. If my memory serves me right I remember
reading that Charlotte Shelby and her daughter left for Europe for awhile.
Death Hag
I think it was Margaret Gibson after much reading of the Taylorology site. Taylorology issues 84 and 85 published in 1999 and 2000 have some intriguing information, including thoughts from Ray Long, who heard her confession. It's a lot to read and not in the best Internet format, but worth it for anybody desperately curious about this case:
http://www.taylorology.com/issues/Taylor84.txt
http://www.taylorology.com/issues/Taylor85.txt
Meanwhile here's an easier-to-read summary from her Wikipedia page:
According to an account first published in 1999 by the widely cited newsletter Taylorology, on October 21, 1964, while still living in Hollywood, Gibson suffered a heart attack. Sensing that she was dying, a highly distraught Gibson—a recently converted Roman Catholic—asked for a priest and then confessed to neighbors the February 1, 1922 murder of Hollywood film director William Desmond Taylor.[1] She may have made statements about a motive but in 1999, the only surviving witness to this incident wrote that at the time, he was young, distracted by the immediate crisis of her heart attack, had no knowledge of who William Desmond Taylor was or what she was talking about. As a result, he could not remember many further details about what Gibson said as she lay dying on the kitchen floor of her small house. The witness did recall Gibson also said she had been "nearly caught" and had "fled the country".
Gibson had apparently made similar remarks once before during the early 1960s. While watching a local television program, Ralph Story's Los Angeles, which featured a short segment about the unsolved murder of Taylor 40 years earlier, Gibson "became hysterical and blurted out that she'd killed him and thought it was long forgotten".
In the aftermath of Taylor's murder newspapers had speculated wildly about possible suspects, and rumors circulated that his death was related to a blackmail attempt. Taylor's neighbor Faith MacLean likely saw the murderer leaving Taylor's bungalow, and said the person she made eye contact with (and who smiled at her) may have been a woman dressed as a man, in clothes which were "like my idea of a motion picture burglar".
During the spring and summer seasons of 1910 Gibson worked as a stage performer in Denver, Colorado at a vaudeville theater owned by Alex Pantages. That same June, Taylor also worked as an actor nearby on the same street at the Tabor Grand Theater. By the age of 18, she had appeared opposite William Desmond Taylor in four films for Vitagraph, including The Kiss. Gibson and Taylor both left Vitagraph in 1915 (Taylor was fired for unknown reasons).
Gibson was in Los Angeles at the time of the murder, but her name was never mentioned during the investigation and no surviving documentation refers to any association between her and Taylor after 1914. Soon after the murder, however, Gibson (using the name Patricia Palmer) got work in a number of films produced by Paramount-Lasky, Taylor's studio at the time of his death. Moreover, one of these films was among the last made by Mary Miles Minter, with whom Taylor had been involved romantically.
Gibson's reported confession[3] does not conflict with the known historical record.[4][5][6] Given her documented arrest record along with Taylor's reportedly odd remarks in the weeks leading to his murder, the inferred motive would have been somehow related to blackmail in the wake of the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal, during which the private lives of most Hollywood celebrities could easily fall under highly sensationalized public scrutiny (the evening after Taylor's body was found, the Los Angeles Evening Herald carried news of Taylor's murder as a banner headline with an article about the ongoing Arbuckle trial immediately below).
All of the police files and physical evidence relating to Taylor's murder had disappeared by 1940, and aside from circumstantial evidence, no independent confirmation of Gibson's involvement in it has since emerged.[7] Margaret Gibson is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
Last edited by Gladiolus; 08-21-2013 at 11:37 PM. Reason: added images
Death Hag
Excerpt from an article by Ray Long (who heard Gibson's confession) for Taylorology issue 84:
My experience with the William Desmond Taylor escapade began in 1949. A very
kindly little old lady purchased a small house three doors down the street
from my parents' home. However, she was reclusive to the extreme. Despite
this, my mother, in her usual way with people, soon became fast friends with
the woman. We learned little except that her husband had been an oil company
executive who had been killed during the early stages of World War II. She
subsisted on his pension.
As I said, she was reclusive which is not at all unusual for residents of the
community. She seldom went out and only then to visit her doctor or the
veterinarian for her cat. She had no car. Groceries were brought to her by
the checker of the local market. She allowed vegetation to totally obscure
her small house although she kept it well watered and pruned. This would
continue for fifteen years and no one thought it the least bit unusual. It
was how she lived; so what; she wasn't bothering anyone.
One Wednesday afternoon, October 21, 1964, all of this would change. As was
my custom, I came by my parents' home around 4:30 in the afternoon. My
father was in Nevada at the time so I looked in on my mother. Arriving at
the house, I found no one around. However, there was some sort of ruckus at
the woman's house. I walked to her house and up the staircase to the rear
door. There laying on the floor was our neighbor obviously in a great deal
of pain with my mother hovering over her.
She had a heart attack. In that era before 911, my mother had called the
Hollywood Police ambulance. When she attempted to give them instructions on
how to get to the property, the officer brusquely replied "We know all that!"
Well they got hopelessly lost in the hills and took 45 minutes to arrive.
Meanwhile, our neighbor was highly agitated and obviously in a great deal of
pain. Apparently, she had just converted to Roman Catholicism and was deeply
concerned with the consequences of the hereafter. She wanted a priest, which
was impossible, and she wanted to confess her "sins." She then went on to
explain that she had been a silent screen actress. She further stated that
she had shot and killed a man by the name of William Desmond Taylor. And she
continued by saying that they nearly caught her and that she had to flee the
country. There were several other claims that she made which I simply don't
recall. Our only concern at the moment was in getting her immediate medical
attention. And besides, none of this made one bit of sense. This wasn't the
woman we knew for fifteen years. The idea that this kindly woman could take
a gun and shoot another human being was preposterous. The statement about
being a actress was equally unbelievable. It was obvious to me that she was
suffering under some pain-inspired delirium. At the time, I must confess my
total ignorance of the name William Desmond Taylor.
Sorry to say, our friend and neighbor never made it to the hospital, thanks,
in part, to an egotistical policeman who wouldn't accept directions. My
parents made arrangements through Callanan Mortuary for a Roman Catholic Mass
at Blessed Sacrament Church and internment at Calgary Cemetery in Culver
City. That was the end of that, or at least so we thought.
Several months would pass. Then, one afternoon, a letter arrived from an
attorney by the name of Andrew Monk. We had been named beneficiaries of the
late neighbor's estate, provided we met certain obligations of the estate.
And you can bet that the first item on the list was his fee! We also had to
come up with money for other bequests. Among those were Blessed Sacrament
Church on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Doctor William S. Hawkins along with
his assistant, Norton V. Stouffer, of Wayfarers Animal Hospital, 2024
Hyperion Avenue, in the Silver Lake area, Karlheinz Schueller, M.D. her
regular physician, Cornelia Pearson, the market clerk who brought her
groceries since she wouldn't allow herself to be seen in the Beachwood
Village and a stipend to care for her cat, Rajah. In return, we would
receive the woman's unencumbered home, furniture, and personal property. We
borrowed the money to cover these obligations and, roughly a year and a half
later, probate closed. Meanwhile, we had gained access to the property. On
entering her home, we discovered little of consequence as she obviously lived
at or below the poverty line. What little furniture was of no value.
However, there was a miniature case resembling a trunk. It contained a
bundle of letters along with many theatrical stills of a much younger woman.
Could she have been a silent screen actress? A quick check with the Motion
Picture Academy's Library revealed that there never had been a silent screen
performer by the name of Pat Lewis.
At this point, my mother made a further observation. Apparently she already
knew of Pat's possible involvement in the murder of William Desmond Taylor.
And she only came out with it after the fact. According to mom, Pat would
come by each evening to watch television. One evening, they were watching
"Ralph Story's Los Angeles." When Ralph did a whimsical piece on the William
Desmond Taylor murder, Pat became hysterical and blurted out that she'd
killed him and thought it was long forgotten. But mother never once said a
word to any of us about this incident.
In 1964, I had neither the time nor the initiative to pursue the matter any
further. So I simply took what few materials I'd accumulated and stashed
them away hoping someday to take them up again. There was, however, a clue
to her identity. Written across the face of one of the photos was the name
"Patricia Palmer."
Isn't hindsight wonderful? Looking back across thirty-five years, I now
believe everything that woman said during her last moments of life was the
absolute truth. From her letters and papers, from her filmography and from
the public records that still exist, she was very much the central player in
the drama which took the life of William Desmond Taylor. My most compelling
evidence is an intangible. One had to see that woman, in the throes of
death, confessing her transgressions and pleading for some sort of
ecclesiastical forgiveness. It was a very emotional event. In my ignorance
of the time, I didn't understand how emotional. The story of her escape is
far more dramatic yet she paid a terrible price for her transgression.
Last edited by Gladiolus; 08-20-2013 at 11:52 PM.
Regarding the posts about his house. It was demolished and there's a trashy-looking strip mall on the site now.
Renowned Death Hag
Where was his house? I know it was on Alvarado (I just happened to read about him in Hollywood Babylon) but do you know the cross street? I just wonder because I used to work a few blocks off Alvarado and wondered how close I was.
Renowned Death Hag
It appears his address was 404-B South Alvarado (the northeast corner of Alvarado & Maryland)
I found this site, it has a map of the supposed original location of the Apartments:
http://www.onthisveryspot.com/find/s...urt_Apartments
Also on Taylorology:
"At the time William Desmond Taylor met his tragic death, he resided in the exclusive Alvarado Court Apartments on South Alvarado Street, Los
Angeles. This court is composed of sixteen apartments, housed in eight two-story white stucco buildings, overlooking beautiful Westlake Park."
Was there a park near the area you worked?
Last edited by TheWrath of MadelineKahn; 01-31-2014 at 12:47 PM.
Renowned Death Hag
Holy crap, that is right by where I worked. I was on W Third St. about 3 or so blocks down from Alvarado, so only about 4 blocks from where his apartment was. I am not sure about Westlake Park but MacArthur Park was not to far down Alvarado. I'd occasionally take the subway to work at I got off at the MacArthur Park station, so I would have walked right by 404 Alvarado on my walk to work! I wish I would have known when I was out there. Thank you for the info!
I'm reading Cast of Killers right now. While I'm going to check out the Giroux book as well, it seems like there's a good case for Charlotte Shelby being the murderer. She sounds like a real piece of work.
Has anyone read any accounts of what WDT was like as a person? I mean, was he a dick and the type of person that someone would jump at the chance to kill? Or a nice guy who pissed off the wrong person? He looks so gentlemanly in the photos I've seen.
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