Who Killed William Desmond Taylor? The Sensational Hollywood Murder Mystery That Continues To Baffle People Today.

Disapproving Dad

He had been born in Carlow, Ireland. Much about his life and death is in dispute including the year of his birth that has variously been given as 1866, 1872, or 1877. Sources are more in agreement about the month and day: April 26. He was the second of four children. His father, Kearns Deane-Tanner, was a major in the British Army. The family was affluent. Major Deane-Tanner was a strict disciplinarian with a hot temper who frequently clashed with young William.

William left home in his teens after quarreling with his father. Precisely what sparked the row that led to their estrangement is unclear. Some accounts say that Major Deane-Tanner was upset because of the adolescent’s relationships with women.

Other versions of the story say that the Major was so disappointed that his son failed the eye examinations for the Army that he threw the lad out of his home. This is a perplexing story since William did indeed have poor eyesight and it seems baffling that a father could turn against his son for something beyond his control. However, it is not impossible that the elder Deane-Tanner incorrectly believed that William had faked an eye condition to get out of the service and was outraged at what he perceived as cowardice.

After leaving the family home, William found work on the stage. It was 1890 when he managed to get a bit part in a production of Sir Charles Hawtrey’s The Private Secretary

Word got back to Kearns Deane-Tanner that his son was appearing in plays. The Major was furious because, like many of the day, he viewed the theater as something less than respectable. He decided that his son would no longer besmirch the family name and Major Deane-Tanner enrolled the budding actor in a place called Runnymede that was located across the ocean in Kansas. Runnymede was dedicated to turning young miscreants into gentlemen farmers.

William remained at Runnymede for a year and a half. There he picked up a strong interest in horses that would continue long after his stay at Runnymede became a distant memory.

Without a clear career goal in mind, William held a variety of jobs. He worked on a railroad, waited on tables, and did manual labor here and there. For a while, he trudged door-to-door soliciting subscriptions for magazines.

Eventually he found his way to New York City and the theater there. On December 7, 1901, he married Ethel May Harrison, a pretty blonde who acted under the nom de plume “Effie Hamilton.”

Unable to support his family as an actor, William left the stage to manage an antique store. After Ethel became pregnant, she abandoned paid work for full-time homemaking. William did quite well in the antique business. He was urbane, sophisticated, and had a reliable knowledge of antiques.

However, as the years went on, he was increasingly bothered by minor health problems and seemed uneasy and bored. He apparently tried to spice up his life with a series of casual affairs. That must not have worked because he then began to drink heavily.

It was on September 26, 1908 that William took the classic coward’s way out of an unhappy marriage. He requested underlings at his antique store to bring him $600 in cash. They did and he put $500 of it in an envelope and told them to give it to his wife.

With the remaining $100 in his pocket, he walked out of his wife and daughter’s lives without so much as a perfunctory explanation or apology.

Career switch

William shambled from state to state, once again a traveler working at odd jobs. For awhile, he panned for gold in Colorado and Alaska. Eventually, he got to San Francisco where the stage beckoned to him once again. Soon, he got into a closely related industry that was in its birth pangs: motion pictures.

Like so many others, he changed his name. Film director Allan Dwan is quoted in Sidney D. Kirkpatrick’s A Cast of Killers as saying, “Taylor’s name choice was brilliant. It sounded like someone from an English novel, the kind Hollywood liked making into films.”

At first, the renamed William Desmond Taylor got small parts in Westerns. Directors and producers saw that the handsome actor could do the job so he was given the starring role of Robert Wainwright, leader of a band of rebels, inCaptain Alvarez. His experience with horses at Runnymede must have helped him in making this movie since an article about the film called him “a wonder in the saddle.”

His ex-wife, Ethel May, happened to be in a theater with her daughter Ethel Daisy when his familiar face unexpectedly showed up on the screen. “That’s your daddy,” a startled Ethel May whispered to the younger Ethel.

Happily remarried, Ethel May did not use this opportunity to display the legendary “fury of the woman scorned.” Instead, she arranged for Ethel Daisy to correspond with, and eventually meet and develop a relationship with, her father.

As he grew older, Taylor believed he would do better behind the camera than in front of it. Hearing of an opening for a director at the Balboa studio, he applied for it and was hired. Balboa assigned him to direct The Awakening, a movie that was released in October 1914.

While making The Awakening, Taylor fell in love with the Neva Gerber, the actress who played the heroine. Neva was married but separated from her husband at the time. She was the mother of a small daughter. Like Taylor, her estranged husband was much older than herself. He did not want a divorce and, in those days when divorces were much more difficult to obtain, easily blocked his young wife’s attempts to get one.

In 1914, a film directed by Taylor and starring Neva Gerber came out titled The Judge’s Wife. It told the story of a man’s sacrifice to save a lady’s reputation. Taylor apparently enjoyed romanticizing his own life for he was to tell people that he had served three years in prison to “protect the honor of a woman he loved.” There is no evidence to support his assertion.

Balboa went out of business in 1917. Taylor and Neva dissolved their engagement in 1919. The love affair had simply died so they parted as friends and continued to see each other on occasion with Taylor sometimes extending financial help to his former fiancée.

Allan Dwan was to say, “I gave Taylor his big break” because Dwan hired him at the American Film Company after Balboa went under. Dwan was something of a directorial kingmaker for he also helped jumpstart the early careers of both King Vidor and Victor Fleming.

The American Film Company was nicknamed the Flying “A.” Just before Taylor came on board, it had started a serial called The Diamond from the Sky. Mary Pickford did not want to play the heroine so the studio hired her sister Lottie. Unfortunately Lottie was not a dependable actress because she had a drinking problem. She was also pregnant although not yet showing when she began work on The Diamond from the Sky. The director of the serial, Jacques Jaccard, abandoned Flying “A” for Universal and William Desmond Taylor directed the remaining episodes ofThe Diamond in the Sky. He did an excellent job in finishing up the troubled project. The serial was a box-office smash and a grateful Flying “A” presented their new director with a two-carat diamond ring as a special gift of appreciation.

He would work for other studios and direct many films, some of which were bombs and others that were successful both critically and commercially. Favorite Players, Pallas, Morosco, Fox, Famous Players-Lasky, Select, Realart, and Paramount would all make use of Taylor’s directorial talents.

The actor turned director took a break from the glamorous Hollywood life in 1918. World War I was raging and Taylor wanted to do his bit for the Allies. Although the British Army had turned him down in his youth, he was allowed (depending on the source) into either it or its Canadian counterpart in middle age. However, the war would end before Taylor could see combat. He was honorably discharged in 1919.

Returning home, he directed the movies mentioned at the start of this story, Anne of the Green Gables and The Green Temptation, and met his tragic demise soon after the latter project.

Did butler #1 do it?

 

Right after the murder, police attention focused on the larcenous ex-valet, Edward Sands. Short and fat, ruddy complexioned with straight, slicked-back brown hair, Sands impressed those who met him as an easygoing, affable sort. He spoke with a Cockney accent and to Taylor, who was a native of Britain, having another Englishman around must have seemed a plus. Early on in his tenure, Taylor is said to have pronounced Sands “the most marvelous servant in the world.” Paramount art director George Hopkins said Sands seemed like “a Dickens character.” The 27-year-old man seemed to enjoy being a servant and once wrote to his employer, “I am your slave for life.”

However, Sands had a troubling history that Taylor apparently knew nothing about. He was not from Great Britain. The accent was phony. Records show that he had been born Edward Snyder in 1894 in Ohio. He had joined the Navy in 1911 when he was 17. He was court-martialed for embezzlement, convicted and sentenced to a year in a Navy prison. After being released from prison, he was dishonorably discharged.

Incredibly, the dishonorably discharged convicted thief re-enlisted in the Navy when World War I broke out. Even more amazingly, the Navy accepted him! He became a clerk in the New York Navy Yard. In January of 1919, in New London, Connecticut, he deserted.

This was a busy time for the young man. In February he enlisted in the Navy yet again but gave a false name. He called himself by the romantic sounding moniker “Edward FitzStrathmore.” Then, after another three months, he deserted yet again – only to join up with the army a little over a month after that! In May of 1919, Edward FitzStrathmore became a clerk in the finance department at the Columbus, Ohio Army Depot. This must have been a welcome assignment for him. He soon passed a forged check, then deserted the army in October.

In June 1921, Taylor sailed for England. He was recuperating from surgery and doctors advised that a vacation with a change of scenery would be a good idea. During his absence, a friend and colleague, playwright and novelist Edward Knoblock would stay in Taylor’s Alvarado Court home while Taylor would spend his vacation in a London apartment of Knobleck’s.

The director was concerned that Knoblock might want something during his stay and wished to make sure his friend was comfortable. So Taylor signed a blank check, handed it to Sands, and told him to use it if an emergency came up.

Bad move.

Sands filled the check in for $5,000 and cashed it. But that was only the beginning of his thefts. He forged his boss’s signature and cashed other checks. Shortly before Taylor’s expected return, Sands brought a large trunk into the house. He asked Knoblock for permission to take a week off for a honeymoon and the guest granted it.

Sands left and never returned. When Taylor got back a variety of valuables were missing. The director’s auto was gone but later found, deserted and wrecked.

Taylor swore out a complaint against Sands on August 3, 1921 but the police were unable to locate him.

It is possible that the valet-turned-thief contacted his victim in December 1921. On Christmas Eve, Taylor received a letter along with two pawn tickets made out to “William C. Dene-Tanner.” The tickets were for Taylor’s diamond cuff links. The letter was brief and curious. “Dear Mr. Taylor,” it began, “So sorry to inconvenience you, even temporarily, also observe the lesson of the forced sale of assets. A merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.” It was signed “Alias Jimmie Valentine,” the title of an O. Henry story about a thief.

The police continued to search unsuccessfully for Sands after Taylor’s death. However, they never officially charged him with murder. There was, after all, no evidence to support such a charge. There was not even anything supporting the contention that Sands was in the vicinity at the time of the slaying. Moreover, Sands’ crimes had always been motivated by a desire for gain. If he were the killer, why would he have left behind the cash and valuables on the dead man? However, many believed then and still believe that Sands was the murderer.

Butler #2?

Early in the investigation, authorities cleared Taylor’s current valet, tall, muscular, and black Henry Peavey, of any involvement in the slaying. However, a reporter named Florabel Muir was convinced that he was the killer. Accepting racist stereotypes of blacks as childishly superstitious, she believed she could trick Peavey into a confession, getting justice for the dead man and a great scoop for herself. She enlisted two men, Frank Carson and Al Weinshank, in a plan. Muir went to Peavey and pretended that she did not know where in Hollywood Park Cemetery Taylor’s grave was located. Could he guide her to it in exchange for $10? Peavey said he would. Muir, Carson, and Peavey drove to the site.

When they got there, Weinshank, covered in a white sheet, appeared and shouted, “I am the ghost of William Desmond Taylor. You murdered me. Confess, Peavey!”

Peavey burst out laughing. Then, realizing what the trio had tried to do, he loudly and furiously denounced them all.

As it happened, Weinshank was one of the gangsters who died in the infamous St. Valentine’s Day massacre.

While the police were satisfied that Peavey had nothing to do with Taylor’s death, others beside Muir have thought he might have been the murderer. It is speculated that he and Taylor were having a gay affair and that Peavey may have killed his employer-lover in a fit of jealous rage.

When film director King Vidor researched this case for a movie he planned to make he began to wonder if Taylor was gay or at least bisexual. According to A Cast of Killers, there was at least one source who credited those rumors.

That source was art director George Hopkins, a gay man who had worked with Taylor. According to what Hopkins said, he was one of the people at the Alvarado Court bungalow that morning.

“Charlie Eyton called and said Bill was dead,” Hopkins remembered, “and to get there as fast as I could. I was the first one there from the studio. I didn’t even know Bill’d been murdered until I was already back at the studio. I just ran upstairs and gathered every scrap of paper I could find and got the hell out.”

“What were you looking for?” Vidor asked.

“I figured you already knew that, too,” Hopkins replied.

“Taylor slept with men.”

Hopkins indicated that Sands had blackmailed Taylor because of the director’s relations with men. Hopkins sprung a bombshell on Vidor with an unexpected question. “How do you know Peavey was homosexual?” Hopkins asked.

Vidor replied out that the butler had been arrested for soliciting, “Peavey was obviously homosexual or why would he be in a park soliciting young boys? . . . Unless he was soliciting them for Taylor!”

The story has Vidor making several unwarranted leaps. First he assumes on the basis of very little information that Taylor had gay affairs. Then he jumps from this possibility to that of the director’s having been interested in “young boys.” This is unfair to Taylor and to gay men as a group, the vast majority of whom are attracted to adult men not male minors.

Also, the charges against Peavey himself were rather vague. Indecent exposure could have been connected with gay cruising. Then again, as is speculated in Taylorology, in those segregated days it could even mean that the black man had been denied the use of a “whites only” restroom and was caught urinating behind a bush in the park.

Whether Taylor did or did not have gay relationships is not known with certainty. However, most of those who have investigated this baffling case agree that Peavey was not the killer of his employer. Peavey died in 1937. In 1930, he gave a press interview in which he is reported to have said that he believed that a famous actress and her mother murdered Taylor. They are not named but they do not have to be. Any reader with the slightest background in the case knew he was talking about silent film actress Mary Miles Minter and her mother Charlotte Shelby.