Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: This is one of those cases that will always interest people.
Speaker 2: You want to be able to keep looking for new
Speaker 2: clues and new windows into these stories.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the host of the historical
Speaker 1: true crime podcast Tenfold War Wicked and the co host
Speaker 1: of the podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right. I've traveled
Speaker 1: around the world interviewing people for the show, and they
Speaker 1: are all excellent writers. They've had so many great true
Speaker 1: crime stories, and now we want to tell you those
Speaker 1: stories with details that have never been published. Tenfold War
Speaker 1: Wicked presents Wicked Words is about the choices that writers make,
Speaker 1: good and bad. It's a deep dive into the stories
Speaker 1: behind the stories. I love nineteen twenties Hollywood. It was
Speaker 1: full of glitz, glamour, controversy, and murder. William Mann's wonderful
Speaker 1: book Tinseltown, Murder, Morphine and Madness at the Dawn of
Speaker 1: Hollywood details the story of the mysterious unsolved murder of
Speaker 1: film director William Desmond Taylor. Did man solve Taylor's murder
Speaker 1: one hundred years later. Maybe, so this is nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: two Los Angeles set the scene for me, crime, politics, mobsters,
Speaker 1: what's happening between the Christian right and Hollywood at the
Speaker 1: time period. Everybody is side eyeing everyone else. It's very
Speaker 1: tension filled.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, in nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 2: this was the critical period in the development of the
Speaker 2: Hollywood studio system. So the movies were still only about
Speaker 2: ten years old, and yet they had become suddenly in
Speaker 2: the past decade, this huge money making enterprise. And everyone involved,
Speaker 2: all of the big weeks in the movie industry, the
Speaker 2: studio directors, the producers, the directors, the actors. They had
Speaker 2: all come from nothing. They were immigrants who had come
Speaker 2: here without any you know, without any money in their pockets.
Speaker 2: They had been chauffeurs and showgirls, and suddenly they were
Speaker 2: making more money than they ever dreamed of. So it
Speaker 2: seemed as if the good times would never end. And
Speaker 2: then these scandals began to happen. And this was a
Speaker 2: period of time where suddenly the stakes were so high
Speaker 2: and everybody understood that because the right wing had been
Speaker 2: complaining about movies since their inception, saying that they were
Speaker 2: destroying the morals of the youth. They were giving a
Speaker 2: wrong impression about what marriage and family meant. You know,
Speaker 2: in these early movies, women had a tremendous amount of agency,
Speaker 2: and women were making movies and they were directing movies.
Speaker 2: And this was a period of time where there was
Speaker 2: a lot of social change going on in the world
Speaker 2: and it made people nervous. After the war, After World
Speaker 2: War One, which was about the time the movies really
Speaker 2: took off as a big business, there was this clash
Speaker 2: in the country between traditional ways, religious ways, and a
Speaker 2: more secular understanding of the world. You know, Fitzgerald's comment was,
Speaker 2: you know, after the war, a generation found all gods
Speaker 2: were dead and faiths and man shaken. So there was
Speaker 2: a whole new world out there. This was a period
Speaker 2: of time two also where women get the right to vote.
Speaker 2: Society was changing and it made a lot of people nervous,
Speaker 2: and the movies were reflecting that change. So we saw
Speaker 2: a lot of attempts to censor movies, to get movie
Speaker 2: houses closed. In some cases, people who had brought about
Speaker 2: prohibition now turn their attention to the movie houses. So
Speaker 2: there was a considerable amount of tension around this suddenly big, huge,
Speaker 2: important moneymaker industry, and it was going to spill over
Speaker 2: into the larger culture as well.
Speaker 1: Where does William Desmond Taylor fit into this whole picture
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2: Well, by nineteen twenty two, William Desmond Taylor, who had
Speaker 2: started out as an actor, was one of the most
Speaker 2: important men in the business. He was a director for
Speaker 2: Famous Players Alaski, which was at the biggest movie studio
Speaker 2: in Hollywood and indeed the world. Within a few years
Speaker 2: it would become Paramount. So we understand that this is
Speaker 2: an organization that's still going, you know, that has been
Speaker 2: powerful for a very long time. And he was tapped
Speaker 2: by Adolph Sukor, who was the head of Paramount and
Speaker 2: the founder of Paramount, to in sense, be the defender
Speaker 2: of the industry. He was the one who was always
Speaker 2: sent out to speak against sense, against criticism, saying that
Speaker 2: you know, if we show destitution or vice in the films,
Speaker 2: it's not an attempt to sensationalize, but to show the
Speaker 2: problems of society. So you know, they took a grand
Speaker 2: tone to justify their money making movies about sex. But
Speaker 2: Taylor was the perfect person to do that. He was articulate,
Speaker 2: he had a very cultured Irish rogue, he was handsome,
Speaker 2: he was tall, and there was no scandal around his name.
Speaker 2: He was seen as upstanding. The industry leaned on him,
Speaker 2: depended on him to defend the industry and as well
Speaker 2: as he made very successful movies Tom Sawyer a series
Speaker 2: of films with Mary Miles Minter, so he was riding
Speaker 2: high in nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 1: My second book, American Sherlock, features that forensic scientist who
Speaker 1: did not work on this case, but he was the
Speaker 1: central character of the Fatty Arbuckle case. And for people
Speaker 1: who don't know, and Fatty Arbuckle in nineteen twenty one
Speaker 1: is an actor who's caught in a scandal because a
Speaker 1: woman who was an actress went to one of his
Speaker 1: parties at the Saint Francis Hotel and ends up dying
Speaker 1: and he goes on trial for manslaughter. But really the
Speaker 1: characters come out in that trial, right. You've got showgirls
Speaker 1: who are flipping their stories around, You've got people who
Speaker 1: really are framed as leezy Hollywood types. Does William Desmond
Speaker 1: Taylor fit into that world? Is he hanging out with
Speaker 1: all the showgirls. What's his reputation like in Hollywood?
Speaker 2: Oh, he couldn't be farther away from that world. Okay,
Speaker 2: he liked our buckle. He did like our buckle. They
Speaker 2: had a great deal of respect for each other. But
Speaker 2: Taylor was known as a guy who went home after
Speaker 2: shooting the pictures and read books until the early evening
Speaker 2: and went to bed early. He was not somebody who
Speaker 2: was a part of that world. His best friend was
Speaker 2: Mabel Normand, who was a part of that world. Occasionally
Speaker 2: Mabel would drag him out to the Coconut grove to
Speaker 2: go dancing. But for the most part he was seen
Speaker 2: as very proper, very distinguished. You know, he had his cellar,
Speaker 2: you know his prohibition, but he did have his cellar
Speaker 2: was filled with bootleg liquor. But he wasn't known as
Speaker 2: a party person. He would not have been at a
Speaker 2: party like that.
Speaker 1: So no real active social life, love life, at least
Speaker 1: in that.
Speaker 2: Way, well not publicly. Taylor did have his secrets, and
Speaker 2: I like to say one of the things that makes
Speaker 2: this story so interesting is that the subcurrent to it
Speaker 2: is that that everybody had secrets, and those secrets would
Speaker 2: either kill you or save You, and Taylor came to
Speaker 2: Hollywood with some pretty big secrets. He had abandoned his
Speaker 2: wife and daughter. He had been working in retail in
Speaker 2: New York City and was bored, bored with his life, unhappy,
Speaker 2: so he joined a traveling acting company and a band
Speaker 2: in his family and had done so for about five
Speaker 2: years now living on his own, and now he's in
Speaker 2: Hollywood having made it big, and still hadn't reached out
Speaker 2: to his wife and daughter. So he had this secret
Speaker 2: he was carrying around. And part of the reason that
Speaker 2: I believed that he left his wife and also that
Speaker 2: he kept a very low profile in Hollywood, is I
Speaker 2: believe he was gay. He was almost certainly having a
Speaker 2: relationship with his set decorator, George Hopkins. Hopkins later wrote
Speaker 2: about this in some clarity and some detail in his
Speaker 2: unpublished memoir, and that would explain why Taylor wasn't down
Speaker 2: there partying with the rest of them. But he kind of,
Speaker 2: you know, stayed at home with some close friends, and
Speaker 2: that too, was a secret that he guarded very carefully.
Speaker 2: He was one of the most profitable film directors in
Speaker 2: Hollywood at the time, the only other one at Paramount
Speaker 2: who was more successful than he was, was Cecil B
Speaker 2: de Mill.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the scene where we are located
Speaker 1: when all of this happens in Los Angeles on February first,
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two.
Speaker 2: Taylor lived in a bungalow complex on Alvarado Court, which
Speaker 2: is right off of Alvarado Street. It was a courtyard
Speaker 2: with several other actors. Edna Purvyance lived there. She was,
Speaker 2: of course Charlie Chaplin's leading lady. Douglas McLain, who was
Speaker 2: a very popular actor also at Famous Players Laski lived there.
Speaker 2: So it was a group of movie people technicians who
Speaker 2: also lived there. It was very genteel. There wasn't a
Speaker 2: lot of parties. It was at that time. It was
Speaker 2: a very upscale neighborhood in Los Angeles, and he would
Speaker 2: entertain a few friends occasionally, Mabel Norman often. In fact,
Speaker 2: she was there the night he died. She was the
Speaker 2: last person to see him alive. But mostly, as I said,
Speaker 2: he would be found home sitting there reading books until
Speaker 2: late at night.
Speaker 1: And is that where all of the starts is that night?
Speaker 2: Yes, what actually happened? There's lots of speculation, but I
Speaker 2: should probably say what we know and what we know
Speaker 2: is is that on the morning of February second, it
Speaker 2: was a very cold morning, and unusually cold morning. There
Speaker 2: was frost on the grass. And Henry Peavee, who had
Speaker 2: mentioned as Taylor's valet, he arrived as usual at seven
Speaker 2: point thirty to start work, and he noticed as he
Speaker 2: was coming up the path that the lights were still
Speaker 2: on because the sun was just rising, so he could
Speaker 2: see that all the lights in the house were still on,
Speaker 2: which was very unusual. And then as he got closer,
Speaker 2: he saw that the door was ajar it was not
Speaker 2: pulled tight, which immediately set off alarms in PV's mind,
Speaker 2: and when he opened the door, he saw Taylor stretched
Speaker 2: out on the living room floor, clearly dead. Peev, who
Speaker 2: was could be a bit excitable, began to scream and
Speaker 2: run through the courtyard and waking everybody up, and the
Speaker 2: neighbors came over and went inside determined that the Taylor
Speaker 2: was dead, and at this point everyone thought he died
Speaker 2: of natural causes because there was no sign of foul play.
Speaker 2: He was just laying there fully dressed, and they felt, well,
Speaker 2: he must have had a heart attack or some other
Speaker 2: kind of seizure, and they said, well, we need to
Speaker 2: call the cops. And Peeve, who had by this point
Speaker 2: had kind of gotten his senses, he said, oh no,
Speaker 2: mister Taylor always said that if anything ever happened, you
Speaker 2: don't call the cops, you call the studio. And because
Speaker 2: of what we were talking about earlier, the stakes that
Speaker 2: were so high for the studios, even if somebody died
Speaker 2: of natural causes, before you let the press in, you
Speaker 2: had to make sure there was nothing in there in
Speaker 2: their belongings that I might embarrass the studio. So overcomes
Speaker 2: George Hopkins, who was most likely Taylor's companion romantic companion,
Speaker 2: and other people from the studio, and they went through
Speaker 2: Taylor's bungalow and carried off boxes and check books and
Speaker 2: diaries and everything they could find. So by that point
Speaker 2: it was okay to let the coroner in. And the
Speaker 2: coroner comes in and says, well, it looks like natural causes,
Speaker 2: but you know, we should turn the body over. And
Speaker 2: the studio director, who was there, a man named Charles Ititen,
Speaker 2: said no, no, no, we don't need to turn a
Speaker 2: body over. Let's just get him to the morgue. And
Speaker 2: the coroner insisted, and they turned him over and sure
Speaker 2: enough he was lying in a pool of blood and
Speaker 2: there was a bullet lodged in his neck. So now
Speaker 2: it's it's murder. And by this time the reporters are
Speaker 2: all outside, you know. And it's so interesting when I
Speaker 2: researched this period, unlike today, the reporters had access to
Speaker 2: crime scenes. They just walked in, you know, and they
Speaker 2: went through things on their own, and the police and
Speaker 2: everyone expected that. So there were reporters in there when
Speaker 2: the blood was found, and so containing this was no
Speaker 2: longer possible.
Speaker 1: Are they finding upon investigation that there are signs of
Speaker 1: a break in? Do they think immediately this is some
Speaker 1: sort of home invasion.
Speaker 2: No, there's no sign of a break in. The back
Speaker 2: door is still locked from the inside. So whoever came
Speaker 2: in came in through the front door, which was unlocked,
Speaker 2: and there was the place was not in shambles. The
Speaker 2: only thing that seemed out of place was there was
Speaker 2: a chair that was kind of a thwart tailor's leg.
Speaker 2: But other than that, the room was neat. He had
Speaker 2: his wristwatch, he had had some he had a ring
Speaker 2: that was not stolen. However, he did have a roll
Speaker 2: of cash was probably about five hundred dollars or more
Speaker 2: and that was gone. But if the killer was there
Speaker 2: to rob him, police immediately said, you know, well then
Speaker 2: why not take the ring, when I take the wristwatch?
Speaker 2: Why not go through the desks because there were other
Speaker 2: valuables there. So robbery even from the start was not
Speaker 2: seen as a motive.
Speaker 1: Are they dusting for fingerprints because we know that that
Speaker 1: was available, I know from Fatty Arbuckle that was very
Speaker 1: available in that time period.
Speaker 2: They certainly did. They certainly did. But you know, as
Speaker 2: I mentioned, by this point, by the time the cops
Speaker 2: actually did that, there were so many fingerprints across that
Speaker 2: There were the neighbor's fingerprints, there were the reporter's fingerprints,
Speaker 2: there were the cops fingerprints. It turned out to be useless.
Speaker 1: So is there a reaction from George Hopkins, who you
Speaker 1: believe was his partner in some way, or at least
Speaker 1: a romantic partner. Is there an emotional reaction or anything
Speaker 1: public happening?
Speaker 2: I wish we knew, I mean, because that's one of
Speaker 2: the great stories that you have to wonder about. In
Speaker 2: his memoir he did write how difficult it was for
Speaker 2: him to stand there and look down at this body
Speaker 2: of this man that he had loved, and not to
Speaker 2: be able to acknowledge it, not to be able to say,
Speaker 2: this man wasn't just my boss. Mabel Norman, however, who
Speaker 2: was Taylor's good friend and clearly knew about George, she did.
Speaker 2: At the funeral, George was sitting alone and Mabel did
Speaker 2: a gesture for him to come sit with her. So
Speaker 2: I think, you know, just those little bit details you
Speaker 2: begin to say perhaps there was some understanding what he
Speaker 2: might have been going through.
Speaker 1: So at this point, the studio has to admit that
Speaker 1: this is a murder, and they have no suspects, and
Speaker 1: there's no sign of a break in. It doesn't look random.
Speaker 1: The easy things to get which any robber would know
Speaker 1: what to do or have been left on the table
Speaker 1: except for some money. And the police say we have
Speaker 1: to investigate this. What is the dynamic between the police
Speaker 1: and their investigation and Zucker and these people who are
Speaker 1: the power players in Hollywood who have a lot to
Speaker 1: lose by this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, they have a tremendous amount to lose. At
Speaker 2: the very day that Taylor's murder is announced on the
Speaker 2: front page of the Los Angeles papers, it's sharing headlines
Speaker 2: with the Arbuckle case, which the jury is just you know,
Speaker 2: deadlocked for the second time. So at this point you
Speaker 2: see it in Zuker's action. Zuker's on a train. He's
Speaker 2: a peace based in New York. He's on a train
Speaker 2: out to Los Angeles. Almost immediately, this is crisis mode.
Speaker 2: This is really immediately the reformers, people like the Lord's
Speaker 2: Day Alliance, they're jumping all over saying, look, we need to,
Speaker 2: we need we need to you know, censor these this place.
Speaker 2: And they're finding allies with the federal government because the
Speaker 2: federal government had already been looking to regulate the new
Speaker 2: movies as violating antitrust laws. Paramount lows were buying up the theaters,
Speaker 2: and there were calls for regulation and government regulation of
Speaker 2: the movie industry. And so they find allies with the
Speaker 2: right wing religious and civics groups saying, yeah, let's regulate
Speaker 2: them for that, but also for their morality. So this
Speaker 2: is a moment where people like it Old Zukor and
Speaker 2: the others realized that all of this fortune that they
Speaker 2: had built up might come crashing down. So there's a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure from the studios on the police not
Speaker 2: to pursue this. Sometimes the police cooperate, other times they don't.
Speaker 2: I mean, the police in the tailor case sometimes get
Speaker 2: a bad wrap. I think they did the best they could,
Speaker 2: but the studio had gotten in there and taken away
Speaker 2: anything that might have given them a true lead on
Speaker 2: who might have done this.
Speaker 1: So they start to investigate, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: even police in the nineteen twenties would start to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: well we need to start with his inner circle, right,
Speaker 1: and they start investigating. Who do they start with? Are
Speaker 1: we starting with Mabel? Is that who we go with
Speaker 1: his closest friend besides George?
Speaker 2: Yes? Absolutely, Mabel is the first suspect. She was there
Speaker 2: the night before investigators started asking around. There had been
Speaker 2: a quarrel between Mabel and Taylor that several people had witnessed,
Speaker 2: So why was she there that night? Henry Peavey had
Speaker 2: seen them quarreling before he left that for the night,
Speaker 2: so when he left, he had seen Mabel and Taylor quarreling,
Speaker 2: so he was very suspicious of Mabel. However, Mabel was
Speaker 2: quickly determined not to be a suspect. They did check
Speaker 2: her out. They searched her apartment. They found that her
Speaker 2: gun didn't match the bullet that had killed Taylor, but
Speaker 2: she remained, you know, a person of interest for other reasons.
Speaker 2: She had you know, everyone knew that she had recently
Speaker 2: gotten sober, she had gone to rehab, Taylor had helped
Speaker 2: pay for it for her, She had kicked the drug habit.
Speaker 2: You know, she had this pretty elaborate drug land connection
Speaker 2: that had infiltrated this movie studios, and Taylor had been
Speaker 2: working actually with the US attorney to ferret them out,
Speaker 2: to try to find these drug dealers and to get
Speaker 2: them out in the studio. So there was some thought
Speaker 2: within the LAPD that maybe, in fact, one of Mabel's
Speaker 2: drug contacts had killed Taylor as a sort of revenge
Speaker 2: or something. So Mabel, even though she was very quickly
Speaker 2: eliminated as a suspect, remained in the shadow of the
Speaker 2: investigation really for the next several years.
Speaker 1: Did they look at this and think based on interactions
Speaker 1: with gangsters, you know, knowing what they know about the
Speaker 1: level of professional hitman, did they think that this looked
Speaker 1: like a professional hit or a crime of passion? How
Speaker 1: are they categorizing this murder?
Speaker 2: Do you know some of the speculation was being done
Speaker 2: by the hearst newspapers. Of course, this is what we think,
Speaker 2: did it? You know, the police right from the beginning
Speaker 2: did not feel this was a mob hit because it
Speaker 2: didn't bury into the signs of that. It did seem
Speaker 2: like a crime of passion. Even the trajectory of the
Speaker 2: bullet through Taylor's body was interesting because it was fired
Speaker 2: into his lower right side and it traveled up through
Speaker 2: his body and got lodged in his neck, right behind
Speaker 2: his ear. So this is a very unusual trajectory for
Speaker 2: a bullet to go through a body. How would that
Speaker 2: have happened if it was, you know, a mob hit,
Speaker 2: which usually is pretty straightforward. It did seem like a
Speaker 2: crime of passion. Interestingly, all of the women in Taylor's life,
Speaker 2: Mabel is most frequent meeting, Lady Mary, Miles, Minter, were
Speaker 2: all about five foot two, So you know, it's conceivable
Speaker 2: to someone embracing Taylor, who was much shorter than he
Speaker 2: was he was six feet putting a gun in his side.
Speaker 2: That gun might have gone up to his neck. So
Speaker 2: it was pretty early unseen as most likely a crime
Speaker 2: of passion.
Speaker 1: What is the caliber of gun? What kind of weapon
Speaker 1: are we talking about? Is this a lady's handgun that
Speaker 1: can be concealed very easily.
Speaker 2: No, it was a thirty eight, an old model thirty eight,
Speaker 2: which is actually I think a significant detail has helped
Speaker 2: me when I came up with some possible solutions that
Speaker 2: it was an old model thirty eight and the bullets
Speaker 2: were soft nosed, and there was the ammunition was also old.
Speaker 2: It was not like the current the most current ammunition
Speaker 2: at the time. I'm not a gun expert, but I
Speaker 2: know that the police said, is there aren't a lot
Speaker 2: of these guns around? Is what they said.
Speaker 1: Is it associated with the military or the police, or
Speaker 1: would this be somebody's father who had it years ago?
Speaker 1: And it was taken out of.
Speaker 2: The It was used in the Spanish American War.
Speaker 1: So they have looked at Mabel and said she's got
Speaker 1: some connections to the underworld, but we're going to let
Speaker 1: it go for now. Who was the next person they
Speaker 1: focus on.
Speaker 2: The next one was Taylor's former valet, but a man
Speaker 2: by the name of Edward Sands. He had preceded Henry
Speaker 2: Peavey in the position, and Sans was a very good
Speaker 2: suspect and I think he still is a good suspect.
Speaker 2: He was working under an assumed name. He was using
Speaker 2: a fake Cockney accent. He was actually from Ohio.
Speaker 1: Wait, what right? Why did he do that? He just
Speaker 1: thought he'd get a job more easily if he's sounded English.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like yeah, valets are supposed to be English.
Speaker 1: I guess there you go.
Speaker 2: Well, he was always changing his name, always going around
Speaker 2: the country getting different jobs because he was always being fired,
Speaker 2: or when he was in the military he was in
Speaker 2: World War One, he was always being court martialed. So
Speaker 2: he had a lot of aliases throughout his career. And
Speaker 2: when he Taylor's employee, was while Taylor was away actually
Speaker 2: in New York making up with his wife and daughter.
Speaker 2: During that time, Sans took Taylor's car, smashed it up,
Speaker 2: drank all his liquor, and then stole jewelry and some clothing.
Speaker 2: So Sand seemed like a really good suspect, especially because
Speaker 2: it seemed as if in Taylor's last month he was
Speaker 2: being blackmailed. And Sand seemed like a good suspect because
Speaker 2: he actually knew that Taylor was not his employer's real
Speaker 2: last name. His real last name was Tanner. He was
Speaker 2: known as William Dean Tanner. Sans had discovered this, and
Speaker 2: so the blackmail notes that came to Taylor were addressed
Speaker 2: to William Dean Tanner. So if this was in fact
Speaker 2: San's doing this, he seems like a possible suspect, though
Speaker 2: it was never clear what his motive would be to
Speaker 2: kill him, unless it was somehow again a crime of passion,
Speaker 2: like give me some more money, I refuse, and he
Speaker 2: just shot him.
Speaker 1: But if you look at it, seems like sands whole
Speaker 1: motive throughout all of it is money, right, Why not
Speaker 1: just take the jewelry? Why not take the two or
Speaker 1: three extra steps? To me, doesn't make any sense. If
Speaker 1: this guy his whole motivation is money, right, and the
Speaker 1: trajectory is weird. It is weird. Maybe he would be
Speaker 1: on the ground and shooting up in self defense if
Speaker 1: there's an argument or m I don't know, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It could be. And he was shorter. I think he
Speaker 2: was only about five six. But he was a good suspect,
Speaker 2: but he didn't clinch it.
Speaker 1: Who's after him? Who's after Sands?
Speaker 2: Well, then come the most popular suspects, which would be
Speaker 2: Mary Miles Minter and her mother, Charlotte Shelby. Now Mary
Speaker 2: Miles Mintor was Taylor's leading lady in a number of
Speaker 2: very successful films. She had started as a star on
Speaker 2: the Broadway stage when she was about eleven and her
Speaker 2: mother was passing her office sixteen. You know, you look
Speaker 2: at her story now, especially through modernized and you realize
Speaker 2: how sexualized she was as such a young girl and
Speaker 2: the lasting damage that that did to her. She was
Speaker 2: always living in a sort of a fantasy world, and
Speaker 2: even as a movie star, she became very well known
Speaker 2: as being this sexy, kind of dangerous, maybe two young
Speaker 2: girl who was paired with much older men. Mary Miles
Speaker 2: Mintor was a popular suspect because the newspapers were really
Speaker 2: they were pushing this story along. The story stayed alive
Speaker 2: in the public imagination because of the fact that every
Speaker 2: day the Examiner and the Herald Express came out with
Speaker 2: huge headlines with latest clue in Taylor killing. And what
Speaker 2: better clue could there be than if it a all
Speaker 2: a sexy young woman, and so people thought, well, perhaps
Speaker 2: Mary did it, but why would Mary have done it?
Speaker 2: It became clear, it became revealed, and this is fact
Speaker 2: that Mary was in love with Taylor, absolutely smitten, and
Speaker 2: she was convinced that Taylor loved her too, because Taylor
Speaker 2: was very kind, He was very gracious to her, He
Speaker 2: didn't dismiss her the way some people did. She was
Speaker 2: convinced that he loved her, even though he said things
Speaker 2: to her like Mary, I am December and you are May.
Speaker 2: You know, there could be nothing between us. But Mary
Speaker 2: still had this dream, and it infuriated her mother, Charlotte Shelby,
Speaker 2: that Mary would be so dependent on this man, when,
Speaker 2: of course, Charlotte had been the one to control Mary's
Speaker 2: career ever since Mary was a little girl, and she
Speaker 2: didn't like other people coming in and putting other ideas
Speaker 2: into her daughter's head. So Charlotte was always very antagonistic
Speaker 2: towards Taylor, and in fact, at one point on the set,
Speaker 2: in front of witnesses, had threatened to kill him. She said,
Speaker 2: if you ever come near my daughter, I will kill you.
Speaker 2: She had a gun. People knew that she knew she
Speaker 2: had a gun. So Charlotte becomes perhaps the most popular suspect.
Speaker 2: Mary was a suspect to an extent. You know, she
Speaker 2: was short enough that if Taylor had her an embrace,
Speaker 2: you know, she could put the gun against his side,
Speaker 2: and that trajectory would make a lot of sense, and
Speaker 2: it does appear, at least from George hopkins memoir that
Speaker 2: Mary discovered that there may have been some kind of
Speaker 2: a relationship with Hopkins. She saw them at the opera
Speaker 2: and seemed to be very upset. But it was Charlotte
Speaker 2: who the lead detective on the case at King he
Speaker 2: was convinced that it was Charlotte Shelby. I think for
Speaker 2: a number of reasons. One, the district attorney at the time,
Speaker 2: Thomas Woolwine, was friends with Charlotte, and I believe that
Speaker 2: Woolwine knew that Charlotte was not guilty, but he knew
Speaker 2: that in some cases she was going to made to
Speaker 2: look guilty, so he discouraged his investigators from pursuing that line,
Speaker 2: and in doing so, that made a lot of the
Speaker 2: investigators suspicious. Why is the DA telling us not to
Speaker 2: look into Charlotte Shelby. But the other reason I think
Speaker 2: that Charlotte became such the popular suspect everyone in Hollywood
Speaker 2: started to say, well, you know, she must have done
Speaker 2: it is because she was a powerful woman in Hollywood
Speaker 2: when they didn't really accept powerful women in Hollywood. People
Speaker 2: have called her a monster for doing things that Adolf
Speaker 2: zook Or did all the time, and they called him
Speaker 2: ambitious or smart or crafty, they told they called Charlotte
Speaker 2: you know every other name under the book. Charlotte could
Speaker 2: have been a very powerful producer in Hollywood. She knew
Speaker 2: how to make movies, you know, how to sell movies.
Speaker 2: She was never given that opportunity because she was a woman.
Speaker 2: And so I believe that in many ways, her reputation
Speaker 2: in town as a woman who took no crap from anyone,
Speaker 2: who actually went head to head with Zuker at one
Speaker 2: point and demanded that Mary get a million dollars contract,
Speaker 2: and Super said, I've never paid a million dollar contract.
Speaker 2: And she said, well then you won't get married. And
Speaker 2: she won. Charlotte won. So actually, I have a lot
Speaker 2: of respect for Charlotte Shelby, even though she was probably
Speaker 2: hell to work with. But some were most of the
Speaker 2: men in Hollywood at the time, but they don't get
Speaker 2: these reputations. Yeah, So I think that's one of the
Speaker 2: reasons Charlotte became such a popular suspect.
Speaker 1: Knowing that she had such an acerbic personality or sertive
Speaker 1: personality and made people uncomfortable, and she carried a gun
Speaker 1: do you think that William Desmond Taylor would have let
Speaker 1: her into his house if there are no signs of
Speaker 1: a break in, or is there any way she could
Speaker 1: have accessed the house without him a key or anything.
Speaker 2: Well, we do have a story that was reported to
Speaker 2: investigators that at one point she did go to Taylor's
Speaker 2: house and she did knock on his door. She did
Speaker 2: have a gun with her. She admitted having a gun
Speaker 2: with her. She didn't know where Mary was, and she
Speaker 2: assumed that she was at Taylor's house and Taylor did
Speaker 2: invite her in and he said, you can see she's
Speaker 2: not here. Charlotte left because she was frustrated not finding Mary.
Speaker 2: So I do believe he would have invited her in.
Speaker 2: My question always with Charlotte Shelby is what would she
Speaker 2: gain from killing Taylor. She was a woman who if
Speaker 2: she didn't like the way things were going, she had
Speaker 2: other ways of dealing with you. She would have gone
Speaker 2: to the top. She would have gone to Zuker and
Speaker 2: said what's going on with Taylor. I can't believe that
Speaker 2: simply a fear that he was somehow going to steal
Speaker 2: Mary away from her would prompt her into killing him,
Speaker 2: even if she did in a moment of passion. She
Speaker 2: had to know that it would destroy everything she had
Speaker 2: worked so hard to create. You know, if that were discovered,
Speaker 2: you know Mary's career would be ruined. Charlotte would be
Speaker 2: in jail. You know, she became a popular suspect, and
Speaker 2: for a very long time many people assumed that it
Speaker 2: was Charlotte Shelby. I just don't think her personality allows
Speaker 2: for it. She wasn't an impulsive person. She was very calculating,
Speaker 2: and to think that she kind of went over in
Speaker 2: a mad rage and shot Taylor dead just never convinced me.
Speaker 1: Is there no other forensic evidence in this case? There's
Speaker 1: no hair, there's nothing left behind, I mean anything that
Speaker 1: could have been tested, because there were some resources in
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two forensically that could have been used.
Speaker 2: Yes, there were. There was several strands of hair on
Speaker 2: the suit in which he was killed. They were never
Speaker 2: tested for whatever reason, until one of the newspaper reporters
Speaker 2: figured out, well, we can get copies of that hair,
Speaker 2: maybe we can find out ourselves. And so there was
Speaker 2: a surreptitious investigation which was carried out by I think
Speaker 2: a newsboy who has paid a few extra dollars to
Speaker 2: go in and get hairs from Mary's hair brush, in
Speaker 2: which then detective ed King compared to the hairs that
Speaker 2: were on the suit, and he claimed that they were
Speaker 2: the same. And so if Mary's hairs were on the
Speaker 2: lapel of his jacket, what does that mean. I still
Speaker 2: not sure what that proved. Because Mary did go to
Speaker 2: see Taylor the day before he died. She was distraw
Speaker 2: he hugged her. He hugged her, So what does that prove?
Speaker 2: But of course, somehow those hairs seemed to indict Charlotte
Speaker 2: Shelby even more, which makes no sense.
Speaker 1: You know, they knew so little in some ways, because
Speaker 1: this is the wild West of forensics, this time period
Speaker 1: that we're talking about, right, they knew so little. You know,
Speaker 1: when Oscar Heinrich got on the stand to talk about
Speaker 1: Fatty Arbuckle and the would be victim in this case,
Speaker 1: he said, see the hand prints, you can tell it's
Speaker 1: a man on top of a woman. This is the
Speaker 1: signs of a struggle, which is such right, yes, is
Speaker 1: so imperfect. And to then take a little bit of
Speaker 1: forensic information and say here is a narrative that goes
Speaker 1: with it was believable in the nineteen twenties, and we
Speaker 1: can't do that now now we know. But you can
Speaker 1: see that little bit of information which I think they
Speaker 1: would have only been able to determine the race of
Speaker 1: the person that was it. There was no I don't
Speaker 1: even know if they could tell the difference between male
Speaker 1: and female from what I remember in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: No, I think you're right, I mean, and I think
Speaker 2: that's why so much of this case, even from the
Speaker 2: very start, was all based on circumstantial evidence. And so
Speaker 2: what we're left with, and what I was left with
Speaker 2: in trying to make some sense of this, was to say, Okay,
Speaker 2: using this evidence, whether it's circumstantial or not, how much
Speaker 2: of it is easily disproven, how much of it contradicts itself,
Speaker 2: so we can eliminate it. And in fact, I think
Speaker 2: one of the things that I think is often overlooked
Speaker 2: or not considered all that important was there was one
Speaker 2: eyewitness to the killer that was Taylor's next door neighbor,
Speaker 2: Faith McLean. She was the wife of the actor Douglas McLain,
Speaker 2: and she remembers on the night of the shooting that
Speaker 2: she heard what she thought was a car backfire, and
Speaker 2: she looked out her front door window and directly across
Speaker 2: from her bungalow was Taylor's and she saw a man
Speaker 2: come out of Taylor's apartment. So this is immediately after
Speaker 2: the gunshot a man a man, and she said the
Speaker 2: man walked out of the apartment. She said he was
Speaker 2: wearing a hat pulled down over his face a little bit,
Speaker 2: so she couldn't get a clear views of his face,
Speaker 2: but she said he had a rather prominent nose. He
Speaker 2: looked like somebody they would call from Central Casting to
Speaker 2: play like a gangster. And she said he kind of
Speaker 2: nodded as he passed her, so he wasn't like he
Speaker 2: was rushing away. He kind of nodded. And then they
Speaker 2: said how tall was he? And she kind of and
Speaker 2: it turned out that she was saying he was about
Speaker 2: five six or five seven. As I said, Charlotte Shelby
Speaker 2: was five foot one. And this man was also heavy,
Speaker 2: he was stocky. If this was Charlotte Shelby, she would
Speaker 2: have had to put out a nose prosthetic. She would
Speaker 2: have had be walking on stilts and wearing padded clothes
Speaker 2: to disguise herself as a man. Because even with that evidence.
Speaker 2: Even with that evidence, people still said, oh, well, it
Speaker 2: was simply a man a woman dressed as a man.
Speaker 2: I don't know where they get that from, but because
Speaker 2: it makes literally it's very impractical when you think about that.
Speaker 1: Does this man fit the description of Edward Sands that
Speaker 1: we're talking about.
Speaker 2: In some ways? He did? And which why it makes
Speaker 2: this interesting because it was noted that he was about
Speaker 2: the same height as Edward Sands. The problem with that
Speaker 2: is is that even though he was in the dark,
Speaker 2: you couldn't see him that well. Faith McLean had seen
Speaker 2: Edward Sands for more than a year, every single day
Speaker 2: coming out of that same door, and she said it
Speaker 2: was not him, okay, And they said, well are you sure?
Speaker 2: She well, you know, how sure can I be?
Speaker 1: Okay? So we have this list of suspects and who
Speaker 1: are the police? We know the media really likes Charlotte Shelby,
Speaker 1: you know, who goes there in a fit of passion,
Speaker 1: arguing over her young daughter and shoots him and then
Speaker 1: goes because that's part of her personality and everybody fears her.
Speaker 1: Who do the police think is really involved here?
Speaker 2: It was divided. Many of the investigators did not give
Speaker 2: up on Sands. They believed Sans must have been involved,
Speaker 2: just because he was that kind of a character. Fairly
Speaker 2: early in the investigation, a body is found in Massachusetts
Speaker 2: that is identified as Sands, but never one hundred percent confirmation,
Speaker 2: and I think the newspapers pushed that this really was
Speaker 2: Sands so that they could continue the Charlotte Shelby marathon,
Speaker 2: whereas many of the police weren't one hundred percent convinced
Speaker 2: with that. But an awful lot of the cops did
Speaker 2: believe it was Charlotte, And I think what sense did
Speaker 2: for them was the fact that will Wind kept saying
Speaker 2: lay off of Charlotte Shelby. There are stories that will
Speaker 2: Whine or Charlotte Shelby were having an affair. That's possible,
Speaker 2: you know, they were friends, but the fact that he
Speaker 2: kept saying lay off them, I think really did motivate
Speaker 2: a lot of the investigators.
Speaker 1: Well, let me go through the list real quick, because
Speaker 1: I think you can add to it.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So we have Mabel Normand, who is the woman who
Speaker 1: was in recovery his really good friend. They had argued
Speaker 1: Charlotte Shelby because of her daughter, Mary Milesminter, who was
Speaker 1: a teenager who was in love with William Desmond Taylor.
Speaker 1: And then you've got Edward Sands, who was an assistant
Speaker 1: to him of Latte as you had mentioned. And I
Speaker 1: keep throwing, George Hopkins, I'm gonna let it go because
Speaker 1: I know you're convinced this is not I just kept thinking,
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that's if you're really looking at a
Speaker 1: crime of passion, you know, and this is a secret affair.
Speaker 1: This just seems like a no brainer. And they're in
Speaker 1: the studio system together. But it doesn't sound like that
Speaker 1: lines up with what you found. Is there anyone else?
Speaker 1: I think there might be one or two other people
Speaker 1: I'm missing.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of other minor figures who came through.
Speaker 2: There was one that Taylor had served in World War One.
Speaker 2: He was a British citizen, so he served with the
Speaker 2: Canadian Army, and apparently there was some conflict he had
Speaker 2: with one of his men, and the man vowed vengeance
Speaker 2: against him. So there was talk about that that there
Speaker 2: was somebody had returned from the war against him. Taylor's
Speaker 2: brother had briefly worked for him and then also disappeared.
Speaker 2: His brother also left his wife back in New York.
Speaker 2: But really the next suspect doesn't emerge for about forty years.
Speaker 2: That's actually how I got involved with this story. What
Speaker 2: happened in nineteen sixty four was there was an old
Speaker 2: woman in the Hollywood Hills who was friends with a
Speaker 2: family next door who always took her over meals. And
Speaker 2: one day she was having pains in her chest and
Speaker 2: began calling for help, and the teenage son of the
Speaker 2: family ran over to help her. He knew wh as
Speaker 2: missus Lewis, and she said that she needed a Catholic priest,
Speaker 2: that she needed to confess before she died. And he said,
Speaker 2: what do you want to confess? And she said, well,
Speaker 2: I killed William Desmond Taylor. Now lots of people had
Speaker 2: come forward over the last forty years saying they had
Speaker 2: killed William Desmond Taylor. He didn't even know who William
Speaker 2: Desmond Taylor was. This is nineteen sixty four. He's listening
Speaker 2: to the Beatles. He doesn't know who William Desmond Taylor is.
Speaker 2: But it turns out after she died and he went
Speaker 2: through her papers, that she was a movie star, had
Speaker 2: been a silent, silent actress, and her name at the
Speaker 2: time was Margaret Gibson. She later changed the name to
Speaker 2: Patricia Palmer. She would have been written off as just
Speaker 2: one more crazy person confessing to the murder, but the
Speaker 2: fact that she did so so late, when nobody even
Speaker 2: remembered the case was interesting. And I discovered her story
Speaker 2: on the website Taylor Ology, which was an amazing, wonderful
Speaker 2: collection of everything to do with the Taylor case, maintained
Speaker 2: aimed by a really remarkable man by the name of
Speaker 2: Bruce Long. Everything. You know. They were the inquest files,
Speaker 2: there were newspaper articles, and I, you know, at a
Speaker 2: period of time when I was not all that excited
Speaker 2: about a book I was working on, so at night
Speaker 2: I was doing this other research and I read the
Speaker 2: story of Margaret Gibson, and I said, what's going on?
Speaker 2: Who was she? And it turns out that I discovered
Speaker 2: was that she actually had made pictures with Taylor. She
Speaker 2: knew him, They had been on the road together in
Speaker 2: Colorado before he became a director, when they were both
Speaker 2: in repertory companies, and there were so many, so many
Speaker 2: parallels after his death. She had always been a b
Speaker 2: picture actress, never at a big studio, but right after
Speaker 2: his death she's hired by Paramount by Adel Zukor to
Speaker 2: co star with none other than Mary Miles Minter in
Speaker 2: a big budget Paramount film, the first really big budget
Speaker 2: film she ever did. And I said, Okay, there's something
Speaker 2: going on here, and so I began digging more. And
Speaker 2: it seemed that the reason she changed her name was
Speaker 2: that she was arrested was because of sex work that
Speaker 2: she had been doing in Little Tokyo back in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventeen or so, and so she had to change her name.
Speaker 2: There was too much going on about Margaret Gibson for
Speaker 2: me to just dismiss her story. Is that there's something here.
Speaker 2: I don't know if she killed them, it doesn't make
Speaker 2: sense because she was only five to one, so she
Speaker 2: doesn't fit the description of the killer either. But there's
Speaker 2: something here and that's what I spent most of my
Speaker 2: time researching.
Speaker 1: Okay, so where are we now in twenty twenty three
Speaker 1: where this has become an enduring mystery? People still talk
Speaker 1: about this case. I've read about it. So where do
Speaker 1: we stand now?
Speaker 2: I think that this is one of those cases that
Speaker 2: will always interest people, will always fascinate people. And just
Speaker 2: like Jack the Ripper, and just like so many of
Speaker 2: the Black Dahlia. We don't really want them solved. You
Speaker 2: want to be able to keep looking for new clues
Speaker 2: and new windows into these stories. So the solution that
Speaker 2: I came up with in my book Tinseltown was the
Speaker 2: only one that doesn't contradict the other available evidence, you know,
Speaker 2: the way that Charlotte Shelby does, or Edward Sands or
Speaker 2: Mabel Norman. But we can never prove it for sure.
Speaker 2: As you said, there is no forensic evidence, so you know,
Speaker 2: we can't find that unless you know, something remarkable was found.
Speaker 2: So where is it now? I think it's one of
Speaker 2: those great Hollywood stories that people tell and discuss and
Speaker 2: delve into. It is one of the great Hollywood stories.
Speaker 1: So what is the lesson learned here from this story?
Speaker 1: Do you think? I mean, what do we take away
Speaker 1: from all of this mess about this man who seemed
Speaker 1: to be doing a lot of good in an industry
Speaker 1: that was under fire and in some cases rightly. So
Speaker 1: you know, in a time period where this country was
Speaker 1: just in flux in every direction, and you can think
Speaker 1: of what did we learn from this?
Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you what Hollywood would learn from it.
Speaker 2: In the five years that I cover in my book
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty to nineteen twenty five, which is the height
Speaker 2: of the tailor scandal and also of the Arbuckle scandal
Speaker 2: and several other scandals of the period. We see Hollywood
Speaker 2: comingto being. So Hollywood as we know it didn't exist
Speaker 2: in nineteen twenty, but it was very much fully formed
Speaker 2: by nineteen twenty five. You know, the studio system was
Speaker 2: in place, a series of vertical integration. The studios owned
Speaker 2: movie theaters. There was a centralized top to bottom factory
Speaker 2: system to make movies, to distribute them, to publicize them,
Speaker 2: to show them, and that lasted until the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: And there was also a sense of what could be
Speaker 2: shown and what couldn't be shown, and how stars were
Speaker 2: supposed to interact with the public, and how they were
Speaker 2: supposed to behave, how women were supposed to behave, how
Speaker 2: men were supposed to behave, and that all came into
Speaker 2: shape in those first five years of the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: and without the scandals, I wonder, I wonder if we
Speaker 2: would have seen a different Hollywood and therefore a different
Speaker 2: America in many ways, because you know, Mary Pickford and
Speaker 2: Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin tried United Artists, which was
Speaker 2: a very different way of making movies. It wasn't a
Speaker 2: top down system, it wasn't a controlled vertical integration. It
Speaker 2: was about the artists having the say and what they
Speaker 2: do and how they make movies and what those movies
Speaker 2: are all about. And that system, while it continued in
Speaker 2: some ways, was overshadowed by the very business capitalist system
Speaker 2: that adol Zuker primarily set up in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: So what would have happened if the scandals didn't happen
Speaker 2: and artists and creative people continue to have greater sway
Speaker 2: in how movies are made and how they're sold. I
Speaker 2: don't know. But because the scandals happened, Hollywood needed that
Speaker 2: kind of control, needed that kind of rigid production schedule.
Speaker 2: This was the period of time in which the Hayes
Speaker 2: Code was established. Hayes was just coming in when Taylor
Speaker 2: was killed. You know, the series of codes were enacted
Speaker 2: throughout the nineteen twenties, and by nineteen thirty we get
Speaker 2: the Production Code, which is then enforced rigidly enforced by
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty four and is for the next forty years,
Speaker 2: and all of that dates back to these scandals Arbuckle, Taylor, Wallace, Reed,
Speaker 2: Mabel Norman, Olif Thomas, others in the early nineteen twenties.
Speaker 2: And if they hadn't happened, if Hollywood hadn't felt so
Speaker 2: threatened that so much was at stake, I wonder if
Speaker 2: the movies would have been different, and if the American
Speaker 2: conversation would have been different.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock. This has been and exactly
Speaker 1: write production. Our senior producer is Alexis Amrosi. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 1: Curtis Heath is our composer. Artwork by Nick Toga. Executive
Speaker 1: produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgariff and Danielle Kramer. Follow
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