Murder Plus: True Crime Stories From The Masters Of Detective Fiction

Over the years many of the most distinguished crime writers, of both fact and fiction, have attempted to crack the William Desmond Taylor case. Taylor was a big-time film director, and his 1922 murder remains one of Hollywood’s great unsolved mysteries. Some have implicated comedienne Mabel Normand, others have pointed the finger at Mary Miles Minter, a twenty-year-old rising starlet, or Taylor’s secretary, or Charlotte Shelby, Minter’s domineering mother. Enter Erle Stanley Gardner, an author uniquely suited to judiciously weigh the bizarre facts of this case. Gardner was a thriving attorney in Southern California for twenty years before embarking on a full-time literary career. His first stories appeared in Black Mask in 1923. The year 1932 saw the publication of his first Perry Mason book, The Case of the Velvet Claw, the beginning of a series that would become so big that by the time of his death in 1969, there were more than 100 million Mason books in print. If Gardner has never received the critical acclaim he deserves, it might in large measure be because of his books’ popularity. This is unfortunate. Not all but many, especially the early ones, were the perfect companion for bus or train, gripping, gritty, and action packed. Between novels, Gardner used to report on some of the most notorious murder cases of his day for the popular men’s adventure magazine True. That is where he published this account of the Taylor murder, and it remains to this day one of the finest and most even handed. His judgment? You’ll just have to keep reading to find out.

The Case of the Movie Murder

To those who are familiar with the psychology of Southern California, it will come as no surprise that when this section came to make its contribution to classic murder mysteries, it should bring forth a case which Hollywood itself could only label “super-colossal.”

The William Desmond Taylor case runs true to form throughout. Not only is the main thread of the plot so weird and bizarre as to challenge the credulity of the reader, but it is to be noted that it had its inception at a time when at least one of the witnesses described the weather as “unusual.”

On the night of February 1, 1922, William Desmond Taylor was seated in a rather modest, two-story, bungalow-court residence eating dinner. The hour was approximately 6:30.

At this particular time, there was much in vogue in Los Angeles the type of construction known as the “bungalow court.” Bungalows were constructed side by side, not fronting on the street but on a walk or driveway which ran the length of a deep lot. In this way it was possible to crowd productive rentals on every inch of a relatively deep lot.

The bungalows in the court where William Desmond Taylor lived had been largely rented by people who were connected with the motion-picture industry. While newspaper accounts present some conflict as to the exact location of some of the neighboring tenants, it would seem from a reading at this late date that Taylor’s bungalow was a double, and in the other side of this bungalow lived Edna Purviance, at the time Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady. The bungalow opposite was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Douglas MacLean.

It was a period of transition in the picture industry. The early days, when pictures floundered around with train robbers and bandits, had given way to the adaptation of drama. It was the era of increasing salaries, of the silent film with its dramatic subtitles. One of those most frequently used at the time has become immortalized, “Came the Dawn of a New Day.” This subtitle was usually shown with a background of drifting clouds, gradually lighting up, and accompanied by appropriate inspirational music on piano or organ.

William Desmond Taylor, while an important director, was working for what would today be considered a mere stipend in the industry; but at that time, he was in the big-money group.

The income tax of the period was at the rate of four percent and there were, even then, mumblings and grumblings on the manner in which the tax hogs were gathering around the trough in an orgy of wasteful spending. The point is mentioned because it appears that Taylor was in the process of performing a very disagreeable task. He was making out his income tax for the year 1921. His partially finished statement showed an income of $37,000.

Henry Peavey, Taylor’s colored houseman, announced that dinner was served, and the motion-picture director left his income-tax work to go to the table where a simple meal was served to a lonely bachelor.

This was the period in Hollywood’s development when it was unnecessary for the famous to stroll into the night spots and be photographed by reporters for the fan magazines.

Here was an important director dining alone at 6:30 in a relatively small bungalow court. The furnishings, however, were in exquisite taste. The bookcases were filled with books which were well chosen and well read. Such art objects as were in the room were those which could only have been selected by a connoisseur. These surroundings give us a clue to the man’s character. They indicate a modest, simple man with a large income living a simple, unassuming life.

So far there has been nothing to indicate that the life of this man is other than an open book. His associates see in him a grave, dignified, thoughtful executive. Yet he has vision and imagination. His face lights up with a kindly smile. He is a practical philosopher with something big-brotherly in his grave manner.

Adela Rogers St. John, one of the most articulate of the associates of film celebrities, and a famous writer in her own right, was later to say of him: “William D. Taylor was the sort of man that revived your faith in the sex... He was so steady, so consistent, so sure in his judgments, that he couldn’t turn out a bad piece of work.... He had a breadth of vision and a businesslike understanding of what the screen needed.”

So here is a dignified, magnetic executive sitting down to dinner on this cold February night, his income-tax statement on his desk, his mind occupied with the destiny of the screen.

At about 6:45, Mabel Normand was driven up to the court by her chauffeur.

Mabel Normand was one of the most glamorous, colorful figures of the silent screen. It needs only a glance at the publicity given her to realize something of her dynamic character. For instance, it was mentioned at a somewhat later date that she simply couldn’t be bothered to set her watch backward and forward when, on a transcontinental train trip, she passed from one time zone to another. So she carried several watches with her, presumably set according to the different time zones. When she passed from one time zone into another, she disposed of the watch which was no longer accurate by the simple expedient of tossing it out of the window.

Under cold and careful appraisal, this story bears the unmistakable stamp of the press agent. Mabel Normand certainly was not traveling by day coach. Pullman windows of the period were double and of heavy glass. This was before air conditioning on the trains and, while the windows were frequently raised a few inches at the bottom, there were permanent, heavy, close-meshed screens to keep out as much of the dust as possible. But this watch-throwing episode is indicative of the period, of the thinking of the people, and of the star. The mere fact that this would have been considered good publicity at the time is interesting. Nowadays, if a star had the habit of tossing watches out of a train window merely because she couldn’t be bothered to set the hands forward or back, her public relations men would tear their hair in agony lest the idiosyncrasy be discovered and publicized. But in those days this was all a part of the temperament which one associated with a great actress.

On this night of February 1, 1922, Mabel Normand had been sitting in the back of her chauffeur-driven car eating peanuts and dropping the shells on the floor. As she left the car to call on Taylor, she instructed her chauffeur to clean up the car. Then she hurried through the cold chill of the early evening to the rear of the court and the bungalow occupied by the director.

Taylor was engaged in talking over the telephone when Mabel Normand was admitted by the houseman.

Mabel Normand visited with Taylor while the houseman served dessert to the director. Then apparently the houseman went out to visit with Miss Norman’s chauffeur, perhaps helping him to clean up the peanuts. His recollection is that he left around 7:30 and when he left, Miss Normand and Taylor were drinking cocktails.

There is an almost pastoral simplicity about the scene. The motion-picture director, having had his dessert served at around seven o’clock, is now engaged in drinking cocktails with Mabel Normand, who apparently must have dined before she arrived. Therefore the Normand stomach must have contained dinner, peanuts, and cocktail, ingested in that order. William Desmond Taylor, progressing from dinner to cocktails was spared the ordeal of the peanuts.

Now it appears that Taylor was very anxious that Mabel Normand should read a book. In some unaccountable manner an impression seems to have been created that this book was by Freud. There were, it seems, two books that Taylor was very anxious Miss Normand should read, and he had sent one of them over to her house that day. But the other was one for which he had asked her to call in person. On February 11th the newspapers were to contain a statement by Mabel Normand that this book was Rosmundy by Ethel M. Dell, and she is at a loss to understand how a rumor started that this was a book of Freud’s.

Did Miss Normand and Taylor discuss this book while they were chatting in the bungalow? It is worthy of note that while Taylor had sent one book over to Mabel Normand’s apartment that day, he had asked her to call for this book in person. Why?

And it was to develop, moreover, that when she left him at 7:45 it was understood he was to telephone her at nine o’clock and find out how she liked the book. Again, why?

Be that as it may, at 7:45 Mabel Normand says she left Taylor alone in his bungalow, and it is to be noted that according to the statements of both Mabel Normand and her chauffeur, Taylor escorted Miss Normand out to her car, a gallant gesture on the part of the director which may have cost him his life; for one of the police theories was that he left the door of his bungalow open while he was escorting Miss Normand and that a shadowy figure who had been lurking in the alley took advantage of this opportunity to slip into Taylor’s little bungalow.

Taylor, blissfully unconscious of what was so soon to happen, stood at the curb, watched the car drive away, turned and walked back to keep his appointment with death.

On the morning of February 2, 1922, Henry Peavey, the houseman, came to the house at 7:30 A.M. ready to begin his day’s work.

He opened the door and stood petrified at what he saw. The body of William Desmond Taylor lay stretched out on the floor, lying on its back with the feet toward the door. Over the legs was a chair which had overturned.

Henry Peavey ran out of the door, screaming that Mr. Taylor was dead. In his own words, “I turned and run out and yelled. And then I yelled some more.”

E. C. Jessurum, the proprietor of the bungalow court, responded to the alarm.

What happened after that is very much of a blur. Apparently, from the first newspaper reports, the police were promptly notified and immediately took charge in a routine manner. A physician appeared and diagnosed the death as from natural causes — apparently a hemorrhage of the stomach. The coroner’s office put in an appearance, and it was then found that Taylor had been shot by a .38 caliber revolver. The bullet, of ancient vintage and obsolete design, had entered the left side at about the place where the left elbow would have rested if the hands were hung normally at the side. The bullet had traveled upward until it lodged in the right-hand side of the neck just below the skin.

Later on, two peculiar points were noticed. One, that the body was lying neatly “laid out,” the limbs stretched out straight, the tie, collar, cuffs unrumpled — what was, apparently, a most unusual position for a corpse. There never was any explanation of this, if we can discount the statement of one of the officers, who said the deceased may have done this “in his death struggles.”

The second point, which developed a little later, was that the holes made by the bullet in the coat and vest did not match up. With the arms at the sides, the hole in the coat was considerably lower than the holes in the vest; and it was only when the left elbow was raised that the bullet holes came into juxtaposition.

It was because of this fact that the police promptly advanced the theory which, for the most part, they seem to have stuck with through thick and thin, that there was something in the nature of a holdup connected with the crime and preliminary to it, and that Taylor was standing with his hands up at the time he was shot.

Apparently the bullet was fired from a weapon held within a very few inches of the body.

Searching Taylor’s body, police found jewelry and money of over two thousand dollars in value. There were seventy-eight dollars in cash in his pocket, a two-carat diamond ring on his finger, and a platinum watch on his body. The watch had stopped at 7:21; and nearly three weeks after the murder, the police suddenly decided this might be a clue. On February 21st they rushed the watch to a jeweler to find out whether it had run down or had stopped because of the concussion of the fall of the body. The newspapers blazoned the shrewd but somewhat tardy idea of the police to the public.

On the twenty-second they carried the answer. The watch had run down.

On the desk was an open checkbook. Nearby was a pen. Also there was the half-completed income-tax blank previously mentioned.

Edna Purviance, Charlie Chaplin’s leading lady, and apparently a close friend of Mabel Normand’s, stated that while she knew William Desmond Taylor, the acquaintance was a casual, nodding acquaintance and that was all. She had noticed that there was light on in the Taylor side of the bungalow when she returned home somewhere around midnight on the night of the murder.

At sometime between 8:00 and 8:15 that evening Douglas MacLean, who occupied bungalow 406-B (Taylor occupied 404-B), noticing the “unusual” cold, went upstairs to get an electric stove. While there, he heard what he refers to as a “shattering report,” muffled, yet penetrating to every corner of the room.

His wife went to the door of 406-B and was just in time to see a figure emerge into the light from the Taylor bungalow. This figure paused on the porch, turned back toward the oblong of light from the half-opened door and stepped inside briefly, as though to say some word of farewell. He was smiling. Then he stepped back to the porch, quietly and normally closed the door, walked directly toward Mrs. MacLean for a few steps until he came to the opening between the houses, then turned, walked down between the two houses and vanished into the night.

In her first statement, Mrs. MacLean described this figure as being that of a man with a cap, and a muffler around his neck. She couldn’t be absolutely certain whether the man did or did not wear an overcoat. She was, however, sure of the cap. Then later on, she said that the figure might have been that of a woman instead of a man. A woman dressed in man’s clothing.

At approximately 7:55 P.M., however, Howard Fellows, who was driving Taylor’s automobile and who had been told to get in touch with Mr. Taylor that evening, called him on the telephone and received no answer. At 8:15 he went to the Taylor bungalow, rang the doorbell, and got no response. On the other hand, he stated that he had telephoned Taylor two or three times before 7:30 in the evening and had received no reply.

He put up Taylor’s automobile for the night and walked home. He was wearing a cap and a raincoat, and so far as he is concerned, he is satisfied he is the man Mrs. MacLean saw. But apparently he did not open the door nor was the door open when he was standing on the porch. So, if he was the man Mrs. MacLean saw, then she must be mistaken in her recollection of what the man did. Incidentally, it is to be noted that Mrs. MacLean apparently is not the type to be hypnotized by her own recollection. It was exceedingly cold and there is probably no doubt but what the figure wore an overcoat. A less scrupulous witness would have said she saw an overcoat. A less painstaking one would have visualized the fact that the man must have worn an overcoat, and so gradually built up the conviction that he was wearing one. Not so Mrs. MacLean. She is sure of the cap, she is fairly sure of the muffler, and there she stops being sure. A most commendable sign. But bear in mind that she is certain that she saw this figure on the porch step back to the lighted doorway. She saw him step out and “quietly and normally” close the door.

There were the usual stories of puzzling clues. Mysterious figures slithered through the pages of the newspapers. A streetcar conductor said a man who answered the description given by Mrs. MacLean had boarded a car on Maryland Street, at either 7:54 or 8:27 the night of the murder. He was about five feet ten inches, fairly well dressed, weighed about a hundred and sixty-five, had a cap of light color, and the conductor remembered that he wore something tan. He can’t remember where the man left the car. There was also a man who insisted that shortly before the murder he had been stopped on the street by someone who asked first for a fictitious address and then asked to know where William Desmond Taylor lived. The information was given. There were two men at a service station who remembered that shortly before six o’clock a man answering the description of the man seen by Mrs. Douglas MacLean had stopped at the service station and inquired where W. D. Taylor lived. The man was described as about twenty-six or twenty-seven, a hundred and sixty-five pounds, with dark suit and a light hat or cap. They directed him to the bungalow court and this was the last they saw of him.

A Mrs. C. F. Reddick, a neighbor, stated she was awakened by a shot or a backfire between one and two o’clock in the morning. Police fixed the time of death as between 7:40 and 8:15 P.M., Wednesday, February first.

At nine o’clock Mabel Normand had been lying in bed with her book, waiting in vain for William Desmond Taylor to call.

He had then been dead for approximately an hour.

It is to be noted that in the room where the body was found were three framed pictures of Mabel Normand. On February 18th there was publicity given to a locket with a photograph of Mabel Normand and bearing the inscription, “To my dearest.”

For a while the investigation followed routine lines. There was some indication that a mysterious man had stood back of Taylor bungalow waiting for an opportunity to slip in through the door. He was apparently someone who had reason to believe that by waiting in that position an opportunity would present itself — perhaps someone who knew that Taylor had or was going to have a woman visitor and that he would quite probably escort this woman out to her automobile. In any event, there was a litter of cigarette stubs indicating that someone had stood there waiting for some little time.

It is reported that there was a mysterious handkerchief bearing the letter “S” lying near the body. One of the police detectives picked this up and rather casually left it lying on a table. When he looked for it again, it had disappeared, and apparently has never been heard of since.

This ushers in the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t phase of the case. With bland, disarming casualness, “authorities” and others toss off statements which make the reader dizzy.

We may as well begin with the Mabel Normand letters. Apparently Mabel Normand’s first knowledge of what happened was when Edna Purviance (who, it will be remembered, occupied the other side of the William Desmond Taylor bungalow) telephoned her on the morning of February second and told her that Taylor was dead. Miss Normand seems to have gone directly to the bungalow and asked for certain letters and telegrams which she had sent to Taylor. She was very anxious to have them returned to her and said that she knew exactly where they were.

From a study of the newspapers it is not always easy to reconstruct exactly what happened and the order in which it happened. In the Los Angeles Examiner of February 10, 1922, it is stated that when Peavey found Taylor’s body, the first person he telephoned was Charles Eyton, manager of the Lasky Studios. Eyton and other picture people seem to have been on the scene nearly an hour before the police arrived. Some eight days after the murder a writer was to state boldly in the press, “The mad effort being made by the powers in the Hollywood motion picture colony to block the investigation will avail them nothing now that Woolwine has assumed command.” Woolwine, it is to be noted, was at the time the district attorney.

The day before that statement, a newspaper had printed that, “It is suspected that both of them [picture actresses] are revealing only half truths because the complete disclosure might affect their professional interests. And it also is suspected that pressure has been brought to bear on them from others in the industry not to make disclosures which would injuriously affect the sales value of their pictures.”

It is therefore understandable that against such a background we will find rumors and contradictions, naive explanations which fail to explain. Facts are to be glossed over with a smear of whitewash, evidence will vanish from under our noses.

But piecing together the facts solely from what the public was able to read in the press, we proceed to consider the rather remarkable history of these Normand letters.

In an interview on February 5th, Mabel Normand stated to a reporter, according to the published account, “I sought those letters and hoped to get them before they reached the scrutiny of others. I admit this, but it was for only one purpose — to prevent terms of affection from being misconstrued.”

However, on February 7th we find a published quotation from Miss Normand to this effect: “There have been insinuations made that I went to Mr. Taylor’s house after the inquest Saturday to seek some of my letters to him. That is grossly erroneous. I went to the bungalow at the request of the detectives and in their company and solely for the purpose of showing to them the exact location of the furniture as it was placed in the room before I left. It was to show how disordered the place had become after the intrusion of the murderer.”

In any event, it seems that Miss Normand arrived at the house and made a request for her letters and was given permission to take them. It is not clear from whom she made this request, exactly when it was made, or who gave her the permission. But she is reported to have said that she knew where they were and to have gone immediately to the top drawer in Taylor’s dresser in his upstairs bedroom.

The letters weren’t there.

Under date of February 7th it was stated in the press that it is believed a man of high position and influence in the motion-picture world may have taken the Mabel Normand letters, and perhaps others too, in order to protect the fortunes of actresses in whom he had a business interest.

Public Administrator Frank Bryson claims that when his representatives arrived at the Taylor home Thursday morning, the room was filled with detectives, motion-picture people, and reporters, and the premises were swarming with them.

The Examiner of February 9, 1922, contains the following: “ ‘It is very evident,’ one of the officers said, ‘that someone who entered the house shortly after Taylor’s body was found made a thorough search and took all letters which Taylor had received from women, or men, which might aid in solving the mystery of his death.’ ”

Now then, surprise, surprise! On February 10th, Frank Bryson, the Public Administrator, stated that he had found the Normand letters concealed in Taylor’s apartment, “under a double lock.” Where were these letters between February 1st and February 9th? Is it possible that the officers searching the house did so in such a slipshod manner that these important letters, “under double lock,” were not discovered for a period of more than a week? “Under double lock” is slightly reminiscent of the subtitles of the period. Figuratively it is an expression which hints at impenetrable security. Taken literally it means two locks. There is no specific interpretation given of how it was used in the quoted statement.

On February 11th Mabel Normand’s attitude toward these letters discovered “under double lock” seems to have been almost casual. She is quoted as saying, “My letters to him — I would gladly set them before the world if the authorities care to do that. I have nothing to conceal... I have been charged with trying to recover those letters; with trying to conceal them. That is silly. If those letters are printed you will see that they are most of them casual...”

And on February 10, 1922, the district attorney, Thomas Lee Woolwine, stated that the Normand letters contained nothing helpful in the investigation. Another official who had read them said that they were not the burning missives which they had been imagined to be. Apparently these letters were returned to Miss Normand. On February 14th Miss Normand admitted that she now had the letters.

There seems to be no explanation as to why letters which had been “under double lock” in Taylor’s residence had been overlooked for a period of some eight days.

In fact, the William Desmond Taylor murder case as reported in the press has some of the Alice-in-Wonderland qualities which leave the thoughtful reader rubbing his eyes.

There is yet another letter to figure in the investigation. Police opening a book in the library some time after the murder noticed that a letter fell out. The letter had the crest of M.M.M. and read: “Dearest, I love you. I love you. I love you,” followed by several cross marks and one big cross mark and signed, “Yours always, Mary.”

On August 14, 1923, the press stated that Mary Miles Minter, declaring that the time had come to reveal the true relationship that existed between William Desmond Taylor and herself, had announced they were engaged at the time of Taylor’s death. She is also reported to have set forth her reasons why the engagement had not been disclosed immediately after the murder.

In fact one of the peculiar developments of this case is the manner in which important facts are to be published for the first time years later. In the press of March 26, 1926, four years after the crime, the public learned, apparently for the first time, that two “strands of blonde hair” found on the body of William Desmond Taylor were being safeguarded by the district attorney’s office and were forming the basis of a new probe for the slayer. And it is in May of 1936 that we find Captain Winn in a newspaper interview disclosing that in the toe of one of William Desmond Taylor’s riding boots were found a dozen fervent love letters written in a simple code, all signed “Mary.” These letters were described as the outpouring of a young girl’s heart to the man she obviously loved.

But this is no ordinary murder mystery. Probably no other murder case has existed in history where every feature was so touched with bizarre mystery.

William Desmond Taylor, the simple, kindly motion-picture director as Hollywood knew him, had managed to preserve the secret of his identity. But now that he had been murdered and an investigation was started into his background, it was disclosed that the famous director had a complex past filled with checkerboard patches of mystery that would have done credit to one of the movie plots of the period.

William Desmond Taylor, it developed, was really William Cunningham Deane Tanner. In 1908 William Deane Tanner had, it seemed, carried on a business in New York from which his share of the profits amounted to a cool twenty-five thousand dollars a year, and in those days that was a very considerable sum of money — particularly when one remembers that the income tax had not as yet been discovered and applied to our economic life.

For some undisclosed motive William Cunningham Deane Tanner, after having attended the Vanderbilt Cup Race in the fall of 1908, returned to New York, sent a message to a hotel where he evidently maintained a room asking to have clothing sent to him, drew five hundred dollars from his business, and vanished.

One minute here was a prosperous businessman with wealth at his fingertips and influential friends and connections. He had a charming wife, a beautiful daughter, an established business, a rosy future. The next moment he had vanished into thin air.

There follows a hiatus which has never been satisfactorily filled. There are rumors of this and that. Apparently he was in Alaska for a while. And it is certain that sometime along in 1917 he drifted into Hollywood where he became William Desmond Taylor and rapidly climbed the ladder of fame and influence.

But prior to that time, in 1912, his brother, Dennis Deane Tanner, also suddenly vanished into thin air, leaving a wife and two children.

The wife of this brother subsequently secured a divorce. She moved to Southern California and while there saw a motion picture of some of the screen notables. Watching those flickering figures on the silver screen, she suddenly gripped the arms of her chair, leaned forward, and stared incredulously. The picture of William Cunningham Deane Tanner, her long-missing brother-in-law, was before her startled eyes. She saw the man’s familiar Figure, his gestures, his smile. And the man was William Desmond Taylor, the noted motion-picture director who was fast winning wealth and fame in the world’s motion-picture capital!

She immediately notified her sister-in-law, telling her what she had seen, and was calmly advised that this was no news as her sister-in-law knew it already. Yet apparently there had been no attempt made by Mrs. William Cunningham Deane Tanner to communicate with her husband.

Thereafter, to complicate the situation, the ex-Mrs. Dennis Deane Tanner went to William Desmond Taylor and accused him of being William Cunningham Deane Tanner who had disappeared in 1908. And the man who was her brother-in-law blandly asserted that the woman was suffering from a case of mistaken identity. Yet apparently he kept an eye on her and when her health broke down, he sent her every month an allowance which she received regularly up to the time of his murder — all of the time, however, insisting that this woman was a total stranger to him.

Nor is this all. As William Desmond Taylor had hurried through the chill of that early February evening to keep his appointment with death, he had in his pocket an assortment of keys which fitted no doors the police were ever able to discover. Moreover, in his bungalow, if we are to believe the testimony of his houseman, was a mysterious pink silk nightgown which was to figure prominently in the murder case.

No less an expert than Arthur B. Reeve, famous author of mystery stories of the time, is authority for the statement that Taylor’s employee (referring perhaps to Taylor’s former secretary, Edward F. Sands), doing a bit of amateur sleuthing on his own, made it a habit to take this silk nightgown from the bureau drawer where it was neatly folded, fold it over again and in a certain distinctive manner, then return it to the drawer. The next morning he would find that the folds of the nightgown had been changed, indicating that it had been worn and refolded. The amateur detective would unfold it, fold it once more in his distinctive manner, only to find that the next morning it had been used and refolded. Later on, everyone concerned is to minimize the importance of this nightgown. The houseman is to say he paid no attention to it; police are to push it out of the case as of no importance. Arthur Reeve doesn’t say where he got his information, and the press is to be very coy about the initials which may or may not have been embroidered on the garment.

There was much gossip around Hollywood as to those initials, and we find Miss Normand referring to the nightgown in the press as having initials on it. But the issue is confused by the manner in which the authorities shrug the matter off. As one of the papers said: “Little importance was attached to the pink silk nightgown found in the director’s apartments. This, it was learned, had been laundered only once or twice and bore no initials or other marks by which its ownership might be determined.”

Despite the fact that William Desmond Taylor was drawing an excellent salary, his money seemed to disappear into thin air. His bank accounts melted away as by magic.

On January 31st he is asserted to have gone to the bank and drawn $2500 in cash. And then the following day, the day of his death, he had reappeared at the bank and deposited $2500 in cash. No explanations offered, no subsequent reason found by police. Apparently on January 31st he had felt he would need $2500 in cash. The next day the need had passed and the money was returned to the bank. However, later on, after this withdrawal and deposit have been accepted as a fact of the case (and apparently the report originated from the public administrator who had taken charge of Taylor’s property after his death and certainly should have known), we are to find a sudden flurry of explanations and alibis. Taylor, it seems, was going to buy some diamonds. So, quite naturally, he went to the bank and withdrew this money. Then he changed his mind about the diamonds and so redeposited the money. Simple, just like that. Then, some two week after the murder, there is another puzzling statement to account for this mysterious withdrawal and deposit. This one really should win a prize. On February 15th the newspapers blandly asserted that although it had been stated that Taylor withdrew $2500 from the First National Bank on January 31st and made a deposit of that sum, or of $2350, on February 1st, it had been disclosed the day before (evidently February 14th) that he had not withdrawn any large sum from the bank within the last two weeks before his death.

Now you see it and now you don’t. These peculiar “reports” and the charming naivete of the police — a whole two weeks. Tut, tut!

On February 6th, Miss Normand is reported as having said that when she visited Taylor on the night of the murder, Peavey answered her ring at the doorbell and told her Mr. Taylor was telephoning. Not wanting to interrupt, Mabel Normand waited outside. When Taylor heard her voice, however, he hurriedly cut off his phone call and rushed to her.

Now notice what Miss Normand is reported to have said at that time about that telephone conversation. “If there is a possibility that the jealousy of another woman enters into the mystery, I feel certain that the phone call which he was receiving as I entered his apartment had something to do with it. Whoever it was calling him seemed intensely absorbed in what he had to say.”

Naturally the question arises, How did Mabel Normand know this person had called Taylor instead of Taylor having been the one to place the call? How could Mabel Normand, entering the room, and seeing Taylor hastily terminating a telephone conversation, know that the person at the other end of the line was intensely absorbed in what Taylor had to say?

Did Taylor tell her about this call during the visit which followed when he and Miss Normand were sitting there alone? Did Miss Normand’s naive statement show that she knew a great deal more about that call than she told police? It is an interesting field for speculation.

Let us digress at this point for just a moment to mention an article which appeared in the February 1, 1929, issue of Liberty in which Mr. Sidney Sutherland, the author, states that he had talked with Mabel Normand the year before (apparently 1928) about the Taylor murder. And at the time of this conversation she is reported to have said, “When I reached Bill’s open door, I heard a voice inside; he was using the telephone. So I walked around the flower beds for a few minutes until he had quit talking and hung up. Then I rang his bell. He came to the door, smiled, and held out both hands. ‘Hello, Mabel darling,’ he said. ‘I know what you’ve come for — two books I’ve just got for you.’ ”

Sometime after that fatal night, one of Taylor’s friends was to express it as his opinion that he was the one with whom Taylor was talking on the telephone at the time Mabel Normand arrived. But a cautious reader, thinking over those several statements of Miss Normand’s, will wonder what Taylor said to her about that telephone conversation during the period when they were seated side by side on the davenport sipping their cocktails. And why did Miss Normand apparently try to point out to the police the possible significance of that telephone conversation?

Moreover, William Desmond Taylor had been the victim of mysterious burglaries. In fact, only some two weeks before his death his place had been burglarized and someone had stolen some jewelry, also a large number of specially made cigarettes which the director had had tailored to his individual taste. Then pawn tickets in the name of William Dean Tanner had been placed in an envelope and mailed to William Desmond Taylor so that he could, by using his right name and paying the amount of the loan, redeem the jewelry which had been stolen from him.

Some six months or so prior to his death, Taylor had returned from a trip abroad and had accused his secretary, a man by the name of E. F. Sands, of forgery. Apparently the charge was that while Taylor was abroad, Sands had forged checks, charged bills for expensive lingerie and women’s clothing and had generally looted the apartment. At about this time Sands disappeared, vanishing into thin air, and has never since been located by the police although every effort has been made to find him.

Keep this man, Sands, in mind. On February 10th, newspapers asserted that a Denver man who “asked that his name be withheld” declared that Sands was none other than Taylor’s brother! This man was reported to have known both brothers well. Sands, it seems, was engaged to a beautiful girl and the older brother won the love of that girl. Years later the younger brother entered the office of this mysterious informant and tried to find out about the whereabouts of the older brother. This mysterious informant is reported to have said, “I will stake my life that when Sands is caught the mystery of Taylor’s murder will be cleared up and a number of events and elements in the man’s life which now seem obscure will be made plain. Revenge is the motive behind the murder of William Desmond Taylor.”

Mabel Normand’s testimony at the inquest, as reported in the Los Angeles Times of February 3rd, and which purports to give the gist of her statement, is that a certain “Edward Knoblock had Mr. Taylor’s house while Mr. Taylor was in Europe last summer, and that Mr. Taylor had Mr. Knoblock’s London house. Sands apparently stayed right along in Mr. Taylor’s service in Los Angeles, and also assisted Mr. Knoblock. Two or three days before Mr. Taylor was to arrive from London, Sands told Mr. Knoblock that he thought he would take two or three days leave of absence, but would be back again Sunday. He never showed up again. When Mr. Taylor arrived from London, he said he found that Sands had stolen everything, had forged his name to checks and had gone to Hamburgers and bought lingerie... A few weeks ago Mr. Taylor’s house was robbed again. Then from Stockton he kept getting anonymous letters, and he received a pawnbroker’s ticket, showing that things had been pawned in the name of a Mrs. Tennant, who is Mr. Taylor’s sister-in-law. The way Mr. Taylor knew it was really Sands was because he had always spelled Mrs. Tennant’s name wrong, and the wrong spelling was on the ticket. Mr. Taylor knew that Sands wasn’t out of California by this fact.” 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 neighboring state but from any country in the world. All I want is five minutes alone with him.”

In the Examiner of February 4th, 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 rumors. 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, as 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 two thousand dollars a week for dope.

The newspaper gravely published this story, with no explanation as to why no disclosure had been made earlier.

Two thousand dollars a week is 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 as 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-martialed 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.

Fortuitously 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 air-tight alibi. 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 May 2, 1922, the newspapers posed the questions 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 ridiculous. 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 witnesses 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 bring 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 paroled, 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 January 13, 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 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, here 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 Francisco 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, newspapers reporters instituted a search for Peavey and finally located him in Northern California. What happened next is reported in the press of January 8, 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 this 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, Mabel 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 March 9, 1924. On March 17th newspapers mentioned that Miss Normand had left the day before for New York. On April 16th 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 June 16th. On June 15th, 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 $5000 that he had put up as security that he would be on hand to testify.

The chauffeur was acquitted.

All in all, Hollywood’s contribution to murder mysteries at a time when the silent film was at the zenith of its popularity, is fully in keeping with what one might expect — a murder mystery which is “super-colossal.”

At this late date it is impossible to “solve” the William Desmond Taylor murder case from the facts as presented by the press. It is, however, interesting to speculate upon lines which the police inquiry could have taken some years ago. In the first place, it seems to me that the police theory of a “stick-up” has several very big holes in it.

Let us suppose a man did slip through the door and commanded Taylor to raise his hands. The movie director complied — then why shoot him? If a man is perpetrating a robbery and the victim raises his hands, the next move is for the robber to go through his clothes and take his personal possessions. The use of firearms is resorted to when the victim refuses to comply with the order to stick up his hands. Moreover, apparently robbery was not the motive because of the money and jewelry found on the director’s body.

It occurs to me that the police have either overlooked or deliberately failed to emphasize a far more logical theory than this stick-up hypothesis.

There was a checkbook on the desk, a fountain pen, also the income-tax statement. When a person is writing, if he is right-handed, he rests his left elbow on the desk and slightly turns his body. That would have the effect of raising the coat just about the amount that would be required to match up the bullet holes in Taylor’s coat and vest.

Let us assume, therefore, that Taylor was writing at the time he was shot.

What was he writing?

Obviously it was not a check. He may have offered to write a check, but the person who shot him didn’t want a check. He wanted something else in writing.

If William Desmond Taylor had refused to write a check, the checkbook wouldn’t have been there on the desk with the fountain pen nearby. If he had written a check, then it was to the interest of the person receiving that check to see that Taylor lived long enough for the check to be cashed. A man’s checking account is frozen by his bank immediately upon notification of his death.

It seems to me, therefore, that some person wanted, and quite probably obtained, a written statement from Taylor. Once that statement had been properly written out and signed, the person had no further use for Taylor and probably through a desire for vengeance, or else with the idea of sealing his lips, pulled the trigger of a gun which had been surreptitiously placed against the side of the director’s body.

It is interesting to speculate whether some woman may not have been concealed in the upstairs portion of the house at the time the shot was fired. The presence of a pink silk nightgown indicates that at some time previously women, or at any rate one woman, had been there.

Notice the manner in which the body had been “laid out.”

If the person in an upstairs bedroom had heard voices below, followed by the sound of a shot, and then the noise made by a body falling to the floor, then the opening and closing of a door... Perhaps, after ten or fifteen minutes of agonized waiting this person tiptoed down the stairs and found the body of the director sprawled on the floor. It is quite possible that this woman, before slipping out into the concealment of the night, would have bent over the lifeless body, wept a few tears, and arranged the clothing as neatly as possible.

The most interesting lead of all was offered by Mabel Normand in her comments about the telephone conversation. Quite obviously she was trying to impress upon the police that in her opinion this telephone conversation had some probable bearing upon the death of the director. It is almost certain that this was no mere casual conversation and that Taylor discussed it with her while they were talking together. How else could Mabel Normand have known that the person had called Taylor, not vice versa? How did she know that the person at the other end of the wire was very interested in what Taylor was saying? And why was her subsequent recollection of the telephone conversation so widely at variance with her original statements to the press?

Is it possible the police failed to appreciate the significance of Miss Normand’s statement, or did Miss Normand, after thinking things over, decide that she had gone too far and that it would be better to forget all she might have been told about that telephone conversation?

It is to be borne in mind that the police were undoubtedly subjected to great pressure at the time. They were also confused by confessions which were arriving at the rate of ten a day for a period of thirty days. That’s an average of better than one an hour for each hour of the working day.

One thing is certain, no dyed-in-the-wool mystery fan would have let Miss Normand’s significant statement about the telephone conversation pass unnoticed. And I think most really intelligent mystery readers would have given an interpretation other than the stick-up hypothesis to the fact that the course of the bullet indicated the left shoulder had been raised at the time of death.

As time passes, it becomes less possible that the case will ever be solved by the police. Yet there is an interesting field for speculation in the fact that police have fingerprints of Edward Sands. It is becoming more and more common nowadays for all classes of people to be fingerprinted and the prints passed on to the F.B.I. Imagine what a furor there will be if some day the F.B.I., making a routine check of some fingerprint, comes upon that of the missing secretary of the murdered motion-picture director. That is a very distinct possibility, one which may once more bring the case into the limelight. So one can hardly write the murder of William Desmond Taylor off the books — not yet.