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.