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.