Hollywood's Greatest Unsolved Murder: Who Shot William Desmond Taylor?

At seven-thirty in the morning on Thursday, February 2, 1922, a valet arrived at a bungalow in a quiet courtyard of apartments near Westlake Park in Los Angeles.

He let himself in. He found his employer lying on the floor of the living room.

The man on the floor was William Desmond Taylor, one of the most respected film directors in Hollywood.

Within a short time, the bungalow filled with people. Neighbors. Onlookers. A man who said he was a doctor bent over the body, looked it over, and announced that Taylor had died of a stomach hemorrhage.

Then he left. Nobody ever saw him again.

When investigators finally rolled the body over, they found a bullet wound in Taylor's back.

It would become the most famous murder in Hollywood history. And it has never been solved.

The director

In 1922, William Desmond Taylor was at the top of his profession.

He had acted in more than two dozen films, and then turned to directing. By 1922, he had directed close to sixty silent films, many of them for Famous Players-Lasky, the company that would become Paramount. He had directed some of the biggest stars of the era, including Mary Pickford.

He was handsome, elegant and well liked. He was respected by other directors, who had honored him with a banquet.

During the First World War, he had joined the Canadian army and served overseas, in France.

He was forty-nine years old.

The secret past

But William Desmond Taylor was not his real name.

He was born William Cunningham Deane-Tanner, on April 26, 1872, in Carlow, Ireland, into a well-off family.

In 1901, living in New York, he married. He and his wife had a daughter.

Then, in October 1908, he walked out. He disappeared from his life in New York, leaving his wife and daughter behind. His wife divorced him in 1912.

He spent years drifting through Canada, Alaska and the western United States, working with traveling acting companies. By about 1912, he had changed his name to William Desmond Taylor. And he built a new life in Hollywood.

Most of the people around him had no idea.

February 1, 1922

On the evening of Wednesday, February 1, 1922, Taylor had a visitor at his bungalow: Mabel Normand, one of the most popular comedy stars in silent films, and a close friend.

According to Normand, she left at about seven forty-five that evening, carrying a book Taylor had lent her. He walked her out to her car, and they blew kisses as her limousine drove away.

She was the last person known to see him alive.

Investigators later estimated that Taylor was killed at about seven-fifty. Just five minutes after she said she left.

The police questioned Normand at length. They ruled her out as a suspect, and most later writers agree.

The scene

When Taylor's valet found him the next morning, word spread quickly.

A crowd gathered inside the bungalow. That is almost impossible to imagine now, but in 1922, crime scene procedure was very different. People came in, walked around and looked.

The man who claimed to be a doctor declared that Taylor had died of a stomach hemorrhage. That stranger was never identified.

When doubts arose, investigators rolled the body over and found the real cause. Taylor had been shot in the back, apparently with a small-caliber pistol.

The gun was never found.

Because of how badly the scene was handled, and because of what many believe was corruption, much of the physical evidence was lost right away. More disappeared over the years.

Not a robbery

On Taylor's body, investigators found seventy-eight dollars in cash, a silver cigarette case, a pocket watch, a pocketknife, a locket with a photograph of Mabel Normand, and a two-carat diamond ring still on his finger.

Whoever shot him had not robbed him.

But there was one odd detail. The day before he died, Taylor had shown his accountant a large amount of cash. That money was never found.

The frenzy

The murder of William Desmond Taylor became the biggest newspaper story in the country.

It sold more newspapers in the United States than any story before it. Movie stars were involved. Secrets were exposed. Many of the newspaper reports were sensational, and many were simply made up.

It came at a terrible time for Hollywood. The early 1920s were already full of scandals. Editorials across the country attacked Hollywood as morally corrupt. Some called for it to be destroyed.

The studios were frightened. According to later accounts, an undersheriff told a reporter that the movie industry had been hurt, stars had been ruined, and stockholders had lost millions. The director King Vidor later said that a detective who worked the case told him that within a week, the police were ordered to "lay off."

The suspects

Over the years, investigators and writers have focused on a number of people. Nobody was ever charged. And no conclusive evidence has ever linked any one person to the crime.

Among them was a young actress who had written Taylor love letters, which were found in his bungalow. Reporters claimed the two had a relationship. Others who knew them said her feelings for him were not returned. Her letters were printed in the newspapers, and she was attacked in the press.

Her mother was the person most widely suspected over the years. Police found her statements evasive. Two Los Angeles district attorneys declined to prosecute her. Years later, one of her own daughters publicly accused her. But she was never charged, and the evidence was never considered strong enough to take to court.

Taylor's former valet was another focus. He had left Taylor's employment months before the murder. He had a criminal record. While Taylor was in Europe, he had forged checks in Taylor's name, wrecked his car, and later burgled the bungalow. After the murder, he was never seen again.

There were other theories too. One writer suggested Taylor had been killed by drug dealers, because he had offered to help authorities against people supplying drugs to someone he cared about. Another person was said to have confessed decades later, just before her own death. None of these has been proven.

The lost files

In about 1937, the Los Angeles district attorney concluded there was not enough evidence to indict anyone. He recommended that the remaining evidence and case files be kept permanently.

Those files then disappeared.

A few copies of police documents were made public in 2007. But much of the original investigation is simply gone.

What we still don't know

The murder of William Desmond Taylor helped change Hollywood. The scandals of that era pushed the studios to add morality clauses to stars' contracts, and to clean up their public image. The case inspired novels, films, and even part of the name of one of Hollywood's most famous characters: Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard.

But more than a hundred years later, it is still officially a cold case.

A respected director with a hidden past was shot in the back in his own home, five minutes after a friend drove away. A stranger called it natural causes and disappeared. A crowd walked through the evidence. The case files vanished. And nobody was ever arrested.

Who do you think killed William Desmond Taylor?