Apparently there is some confusion about the name on these pawn tickets. This may have been due to the fact that there were several pawn tickets and more than one burglary. In the 1936 interview previously referred to, Captain Winn is authority for the statement that at Fresno on the record of a pawnshop where the names of all borrowers were kept, there appeared “in handwriting that was readily identified by experts as that of Edward Sands, the name of ‘William Deane Tanner.’ ”
There is evidence that William Desmond Taylor felt very bitter toward his former secretary. Apparently when Taylor was asked by the police whether he would be willing to go to the trouble of having Sands extradited from another state, Taylor replied, “I would go to any trouble or expense to extradite him not only from a neighbouring state but from any country in the world. All I want is five minutes alone with him.”
In the Examiner of 4 February, Claire Windsor recalled a conversation she had had with Mr Taylor about a week before his death. Apparently that was only about a week after the mysterious burglary of Taylor’s house. And according to Miss Windsor, Taylor had said, “If I ever lay my hands on Sands I will kill him.”
There were, of course, the usual reports and rumours. Sands was reported to have been arrested in various parts of the country; he was called upon by the officials to appear and establish his innocence. He was even offered immunity by the district attorney if he would establish his innocence of the murder of William Desmond Taylor and furnish information which would assist the authorities in locating the actual murderer.
Sands made no move.
Since we have previously mentioned this 1936 newspaper story about Captain Winn’s impression of the case, we may as well incorporate some other things which were in that interview. For instance, Captain Winn’s statement, “From another source, a source that even now I do not wish to reveal, we learned that Sands, within twenty-four hours of the time of Taylor’s murder, had made the statement: ‘I came back to town to get that – – – Taylor.’ The same person who heard Sands make this rash threat emphatically declared that he again saw Sands—he could not be mistaken in his identification—within a block of the Alvarado court less than an hour before the fatal shot was fired.”
In this interview Captain Winn also takes up the claim that Edward Sands was none other than Dennis Gage Deane Tanner, the mysterious missing brother. “Clear, distinguishable photographs of Sands were virtually nonexistent,” Winn is reported to have declared. “Pictures of Dennis Deane Tanner were even scarcer, one faded print of the man being the only likeness ever turned up. It was hard to say that a similarity existed between the pictures of Sands and the faded print of Dennis Deane Tanner. But it was as hard to say they were dissimilar.
… Our investigation revealed that William Deane Tanner had made no less than three trips to Alaska in quest of gold, and that, on at least one of these trips, his brother, Dennis, accompanied him.”
A peculiar conflict developed in connection with the testimony of William Davis, Mabel Normand’s chauffeur. A moving-picture machinist, George F. Arto, insisted that either on the night of the murder or on the preceding night he saw Peavey talking to some man in the alley back of Taylor’s house. Two days after that statement, Arto was reported to have said that on the night of the murder a man other than Davis was talking with Peavey in front of the court where Taylor lived. Davis, Arto is reported to have said, was sitting in his (presumably Mabel Normand’s) car at the time. Davis and Peavey both denied this. For a time newspapers mentioned this conflict in the stories of witnesses, then seem to have let it drift into oblivion.
This was during a period of relative normalcy as far as the case is concerned. For a few days one could read the newspaper reports and forget that he was dealing with anything other than the usual mysterious murder. The Alice-in-Wonderland quality was apparently all finished.
Then of a sudden the whole case skyrocketed once more into fantasy.
There entered into the picture a motion-picture executive who told a story that could well have graced one of the pictures of the time.
It seems this person had employed Taylor some years before, and that during that time Taylor had told him of having been imprisoned in England for three years. Taylor was perfectly blameless. He had, it seems, been arrested while holding money in his hand which he wanted a woman to put back in the safe. The husband of this woman unexpectedly appeared upon the scene and accused Taylor of theft; and Taylor, like a gallant gentleman, had kept silent, protecting the good name of the woman at the expense of three years in jail.
There are elaborations of this story, some of them going to the extent of putting together a plot containing a wicked gambler, a scheming husband, a betrayed woman, the gallant Taylor, and at the dramatic moment, Taylor stepping forward to stand between the woman and disgrace, bowing his head in silence and going to jail for three years rather than do anything which would cast a reflection upon the character of the woman. It was typical of the silent drama of the time.
On the 24th, one Tom Green, an assistant United States Attorney, disclosed that Taylor had wanted him to “clean out” a certain place. Taylor, it seems, was protecting a woman from drugs. She was a woman who was paying $2,000 a week for dope.
The newspapers gravely published this story, with no explanation as to why no disclosure had been made earlier.
Two thousand dollars a week was a lot of dope.
Then suddenly came the weirdest development of all. A rancher living near Santa Ana, some forty-five miles from Los Angeles, announced that he had picked up two hitchhikers, rough characters, who confided to him that they had been in the Canadian Army where they had suffered under the harsh discipline of a captain whom they referred to as “Bill.”
It was at least intimated that this “Bill” had been responsible for one of these men being “sent up.” Both hitchhikers avowed their intention of “getting” Captain Bill who was living in Los Angeles whither, apparently, they were making their way on a mission of vengeance. One of the hitchhikers happened to drop a gun. The Santa Ana rancher saw that it was a .38 caliber revolver.
To add to the importance of this clue, police now disclosed that they had received a letter from a former Army officer in London who stated that sometime after the Armistice was signed he was dining with Captain Taylor in a London hotel. As a stranger in the uniform of the Canadian Army crossed the dining hall, Taylor suddenly exclaimed, “There goes a man who is going to get me if it takes a thousand years to do it.” Taylor then went on to explain that he had reported and court-martialled this man for the theft of Army property. A description was contained in this letter to the police which tallied exactly with that given by the Santa Ana rancher of one of the hitchhikers, a man called “Spike.”
Apparently police had some reason to believe that these hitchhikers might be found at resorts near the Mexican border, and they immediately proceeded to comb Tijuana which is south of San Diego, and Mexicali which is just south of Calexico in the Imperial Valley.
Fortuituously enough, they located a man in a bar in Mexicali who was named Walter Kirby and who, at the time of his arrest, was reported to have been wearing a cap similar to that worn by the figure seen by Mrs MacLean leaving the Taylor bungalow. Moreover, this Kirby was reported to have been “positively identified” by the rancher who had picked up the hitchhikers as one of the men to whom he had given the ride. It was also reported that when Kirby’s room was searched, a pair of Army breeches was found with leggings to match and several .38 caliber bullets. It was asserted he had admitted serving in a Canadian regiment in which William Desmond Taylor was serving as captain. Moreover, detectives are reported to have said they recognized Kirby as a chauffeur known in Los Angeles as “Slim” and “Whitey” Kirby. Then it is asserted that he had worked for Taylor for one day and was acquainted with him.
A pretty good case one would say.
Twenty-four hours later, Kirby, questioned by police, seems to have produced an airtight a
libi. And then comes the most interesting and amusing sequence of all. The Santa Ana rancher, solemnly asserted the newspaper, “could not identify him positively as the man to whom he had given a ride in his car … He also said that the man arrested was many years younger than the one who had ridden in his car, as well as several inches shorter.”
This man Kirby, promptly released from custody however, seems destined to add another page to this chapter in the mystery. Early in May of 1922, two small boys who were out rabbit hunting in the swamp bottoms of New River, west of Calexico in the Imperial Valley, discovered Walter Kirby’s body.
This time the identification was positive.
Newspapers reported that shortly before his death Kirby had confided to a friend in Mexicali that someone was after him and would “end him quick.” Under a dateline of 2 May 1922, the newspapers posed the question whether Kirby died of an overdose of drug, exposure and lack of food, “or was he killed by means only known to the underworld of the border?”
It is to be noted in passing that it was asserted that Kirby was a drug addict. Habitual drug addicts, as any reader of mystery fiction well knows, are peculiarly vulnerable to murderous machinations. The drugs of underworld commerce are greatly diluted. It becomes only necessary to deliver to an habitual drug user a dose of “the pure quill” and the man, thinking he has his usual diluted dose, is conveniently removed from the scene of operations.
However, there is too much more to be written about the Taylor case to permit ourselves to be diverted over the death of Walter Kirby.
Incredible as it may seem to the reader, the fact seems to be clearly established that by the sixth of March, 1922, more than three hundred people in the United States alone had confessed to the murder of William Desmond Taylor, and there was one confession from Paris and one from England. These confessions were for the most part embellished with the most astounding detail, ranging from the plausible to the riduculous. One person who swore he was a friend of a certain motion-picture actress is reported as stating that he passed the Taylor bungalow on the night of the murder where he observed the director and this actress in a heated argument. Slipping into the house, he saw that Taylor had a gun, struggled with him to get possession of the gun and in the course of that struggle, shot him.
In addition to these confessions, there were solemn statements by “witnesses”. One convict “confessed” that he entered the Taylor bungalow for the purpose of burglarizing it; surprised by the unexpected appearance of Taylor, he hid in the only place which was available, to wit, behind the piano. And while he was hiding there, he witnessed a quarrel between Taylor and a woman who was dressed like a man, the quarrel culminating in the shooting of the director.
It is, indeed, some murder case which brings in confessions at the rate of virtually ten a day for thirty days.
But don’t think you’ve seen anything yet. These are just the preliminaries. The Taylor case was not allowed to die.
Seven years later, in December of 1929, Friend W. Richardson, ex-governor of the state of California, exploded a bombshell by announcing that he knew who had killed William Desmond Taylor, that he had positive proof that a motion-picture actress had committed the crime and that Asa Keyes, Los Angeles district attorney, had blocked the case. Asa Keyes, the ex-district attorney, promptly issued a denial and demanded to know, among other things, why the governor had not disclosed his information sooner. Richardson retorted that he had approached the Los Angeles grand jury and had been advised that there was nothing he could do because “Keyes would never prosecute the case.”
Inasmuch as these disclosures came during the heat of a political campaign, it is easy to imagine the commotion which was aroused in the press.
Pressed for an amplification of his statement, ex-governor Richardson is reported to have said that he received his information from a Folsom convict now parolled, whose name he had “forgotten, and wouldn’t tell if he did remember it, because it would mean the man’s death.”
Newspaper reporters were not so reticent. They promptly decided that the source of the governor’s information was one Otis Hefner.
On 13 January 1930 one of the Los Angeles papers which seems to have been rather unsympathetic politically toward ex-governor Richardson has this to say: “Mr Hefner is the resourceful young man whose twice-told tales of what he knew about the murder of the Hollywood movie director created a big stew when former governor Friend W. Richardson threw it into the political pot several weeks ago. He did most of his talking in 1926, and was rewarded with a parole from Folsom. Now that he has been uprooted from his job and attempts to stage a comeback and support his little family, he would just as soon be left alone. But if Mr Fitts must have the facts, there is what Hefner says he will tell the Los Angeles district attorney: That most, if not all, he ever said about the case was hearsay with him; that he never stated to anybody he could identify a woman he once said he saw leave the Taylor bungalow on the night of the murder; that he does not know where Edward F. Sands, Taylor’s old valet, and now suspect in the case, is at the present time, and that the story he told Governor Richardson and saw published in San Fancisco newspapers in the last few days is the old tale which the Los Angeles authorities discarded as unworthy of consideration.”
With interest in the murder thus revived, newspaper reporters instituted a search for Peavey and finally located him in Northern California. What happened next is reported in the press of 8 January 1930, as follows: “Two long statements were forthcoming from Peavey during the day. As usual, they contradicted one another.
“In the first he declared flatly that a famous film actress killed the equally famous director—the same actress named by Hefner in his story Monday. He added that he would welcome a return to Los Angeles and an appearance before the grand jury, and that he had been silenced by the authorities and told ‘to get out of town’ shortly after the murder.
“But in his second statement, Peavey was not so certain. Later in the day, he declared that he had forgotten most of the details of the killing. He believed he knew who did the killing, but even of this he was not then altogether certain. And he didn’t desire a return to this city and least of all a call to appear before the grand jury.
“In both statements, however, he fixed the time of the murder at about 7:30 p.m. Peavey, found in the Negro quarters at Sacramento, explained that the case was ‘getting on my nerves’ and that he couldn’t remember distinctly that far back. A few hours earlier, however, he seemed to remember everything.”
The name of the motion-picture actress apparently referred to by Hefner and Peavey never found its way specifically into the columns of the press but was, perhaps, intended to be a political bombshell if one can judge from the reports of the time, and failed to have sufficient explosive force to cause the case to be reopened.
Down through the years, the red thread of mystery in the William Desmond Taylor murder case has wound its way in and out of the press. Various circumstances have “recalled the Taylor murder case.” And now and again incidental sidelights have appeared in the newspapers.
During the time when Asa Keyes was district attorney, there was a flare-up over two diaries which had apparently been taken from a safe-deposit box and found their way into the possession of the district attorney. There was quite a bit of newspaper comment about these diaries but the young woman who had authored them retained shrewd counsel who advised the district attorney that if any hint of their contents became public property, the district attorney would be held strictly accountable. Apparently the threat served as a sobering influence and while the newspapers hinted a bit here and there, no quotations, excerpts, or purported summary of the contents were ever published.
Those diaries, in connection with other things, caused Keyes to rush around the country making an investigation. Once more people were interrogated—and then the thing died down again.
As 1923 went out and 1924 was ushered in with a blare of noise and the usual celebrations, Mab
el Normand and Edna Purviance were at a New Year’s party.
Trying to unscramble all that happened at that party is like trying to follow the directions given by a well-meaning, you-can’t-miss-it friend for finding some house in a strange countryside.
Suffice it to say that one of the men at the party was shot by Mabel Normand’s chauffeur (not the same one she had employed at the time of the Taylor murder). For a while it was expected the victim would die. Then he recovered physically although the newspaper reported that his memory was “still sick.” The preliminary hearing on this case was scheduled to open on 19 March 1924. On 17 March newspapers mentioned that Miss Normand had left the day before for New York. On 16 April the district attorney’s office announced that it would not go to trial on a shooting charge against Miss Normand’s chauffeur without the presence of Mabel Normand. The trial was continued until 16 June. On 15 June, the newspapers stated that the grand jury was making an investigation, trying to find out how it happened that the victim of the shooting had succeeded in leaving the jurisdiction of the California courts and also taking with him the $5,000 that he had put up as security that he would be on hand to testify.
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes Page 47