A Tangled Web - Part 1 (Kevin James & George Taylor)

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Speaker 8 She knows there's no video. She knows there's no tape going.
She knows it's just me and her. And she says to me, you're never going to solve this.

Speaker 8 And I just looked at her and I said, I am going to solve this. And when I'm done, you're going to be in prison.

Speaker 4 I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.

Speaker 3 I'm Anasega Nicolazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction.

Speaker 4 And this is Anatomy of Murder.

Speaker 3 If you're a longtime listener of this show or just a true crime fan in general, you probably can't count the number of times you've heard how DNA or modern forensics have helped solve a crime or catch a killer.

Speaker 3 So it's sometimes hard to believe just how new most of this science really is.

Speaker 4 And you may be asking, what did investigators do before these techniques became so commonplace? I mean, fingerprinting has been around for most of the 20th century.

Speaker 4 But even when I started my law enforcement career in the 1980s, things like DNA profiling, GPS tracking, even doorbell cameras, they all sounded like stuff of science fiction.

Speaker 3 And the answer?

Speaker 3 What we often describe as old school detective work, gathering facts, building a timeline, and speaking with people, witnesses, sometimes over and over, until the potential lies are exposed and the truth shakes out.

Speaker 4 Because while the hard proof can often be revealed in a piece of science, at the heart of every crime is a story, an intricate web of human desires, fears, and frailties.

Speaker 8 And with just the right combination of patience, logic, and gut instinct, a good investigator can unravel that web and reconstruct a story that may have begun with a single dark thought but ended in murder this was truly detective work to me this is what an investigation should have been you know it wasn't send some dna swabs off send some foot impressions off it was myself and my partners working together and just keeping at it like every single day

Speaker 8 until we solved it.

Speaker 3 Retired detective Michelle Amacone worked in law enforcement for 29 years, 20 of which were spent as a homicide detective in Southern California.

Speaker 3 And it is no exaggeration to say that she was a trailblazer.

Speaker 8 When I went to homicide in 1994, I was the only female homicide detective in the whole county.

Speaker 4 In 1998, Michelle was a detective with the Sheriff's Office in Riverside County, an area that spans from greater Los Angeles to the Arizona border.

Speaker 4 And she was first on the call sheet on January 12th when a frantic 911 call came in just past 11 p.m. from a home in the Moreno Valley.

Speaker 9 Somebody broke into our house, but we heard gunshots. When did they bring in your house?

Speaker 3 The caller was a 12-year-old child. He and his mother were asleep in his bedroom when they were awakened by the sound of multiple gunshots from inside the house.

Speaker 4 Who's crying?

Speaker 10 My mommy.

Speaker 10 Who broke into your house? Here.

Speaker 10 Hello? Who broke into the house? I don't know who broke into the house. All I know is I think my husband is shot and I did not want to go look.

Speaker 10 I did not want to look.

Speaker 4 The boy's mother, Lisa James, believed the gunshots came from the bedroom where her husband had been sleeping. And as you can imagine, she feared the absolute worst.

Speaker 10 Okay, ma'am, we have several people on the way, okay?

Speaker 10 Yes. Okay, do not hang up the phone.

Speaker 3 Sheriff's deputies were the first to arrive. When they entered the primary bedroom, they were met with a horrific scene.

Speaker 3 Lisa's husband and the 12-year-old's father, Kevin James, was lying lifeless under blankets stained with a massive amount of blood.

Speaker 8 It was a call out. I was sleeping.
It was like, I don't know, two in the morning or something. The first responding deputies were already there.

Speaker 8 And the information that I had was that there was a lone male who had been shot three times in the head while he was sleeping. He was still in his bed.

Speaker 4 And while every detective is trained to keep an open mind, you can't help but start thinking about the most likely scenarios.

Speaker 8 The first things that ran through my mind were, you know, home invasion, the wife.

Speaker 8 And those were really my two main thoughts, I think, when I was heading to the scene was, okay, home invasion or, you know, the wife. The wife's the only one in the house.

Speaker 3 The James home was located in a middle-class neighborhood, not an area with a a particularly high crime rate.

Speaker 3 So with the arrival of police on the quiet suburban street, neighbors were understandably alarmed.

Speaker 8 That was your typical trapped home neighborhood. Pretty dense.
I mean, the houses were close together. It was raining that night.

Speaker 8 There was a large amount of people already gathered, neighbors, family members of Kevin James, the victim.

Speaker 4 Their shock and confusion was soon followed by the unmistakable dread of seeing crime scene tape and the arrival of a county coroner.

Speaker 8 The scene was taped off as usual, and the deputies walked us through the scene. So it was a two-story house.
You walk into a pretty big living room.

Speaker 8 There was nothing in the living room, kitchen, dining room, or anything. At least no evidence that anything happened down there as far as blood or disturbance or anything like that.

Speaker 3 So no immediate signs of a break-in, no broken glass, overturned furniture, or rummaged drawers. Nothing out of the ordinary, but in the primary bedroom, that was a different story.

Speaker 8 So when we walked in there, the bed was immediately to the right of the door. He was in bed.
He was laying on his right side, still covered up. He had like a couple blankets on him.

Speaker 8 There was a pillow laying next to his head and then a pillow under his head.

Speaker 8 And the pillow to the next to his head, a lot of blood on it, and you could tell that there were what appeared to be at the time, bullet holes in that pillow.

Speaker 4 There were three.40 caliber bullet casings recovered from beside the bed, but no gun left at the scene, which, however unlikely, considering the multiple shots, immediately ruled out death by suicide.

Speaker 8 When we took the blanket off of his head, it was clear that there were three gunshot wounds right in the temple area. They were very close to each other, a lot of blood.

Speaker 3 Not only were there no signs of a struggle, it appeared that Kevin had been shot point blank in the head, likely while he was still asleep.

Speaker 8 It was very execution style. He was on his right side.
His right hand, my memory is, was like under his head like you would sleep. And then the other arm was just like...

Speaker 8 His left arm was like thrown across his body. Like his position in bed looked very relaxed.

Speaker 4 And the last clue that Kevin was caught totally unaware is his eyes, not open in horror or recognition, but still closed.

Speaker 8 His eyes were shut. It just looked like he was sleeping.
I mean, until you got close to the bed and saw what was happening, it just looked like he was still asleep in bed.

Speaker 3 There were no signs that Kevin ever had a chance to defend himself or pose any threat at all to the shooter.

Speaker 3 So the theory that he might have surprised a home invader in the act of a robbery seemed unlikely.

Speaker 8 We did check the front door for any signs of forced entry. None.
Nothing looked like it had been touched. Stain in the kitchen.
TVs still, you know, where it appeared they belonged.

Speaker 8 You know, anything of value that you could immediately see just seemed to be in its place. And they also found, I want to say like $800,

Speaker 8 I believe, in Lisa's purse. So not a burglary, not a robbery.

Speaker 4 Kevin's murder had all of the markings of an intentional, targeted killing. So who was Kevin James and why would anyone want to kill him?

Speaker 8 So Kevin James, he was a mechanic. He and Lisa had been together for a long time.
Their oldest boy was 12, so it was over 12 years. And then they had a younger son, seven.
So he was a dad.

Speaker 8 He was a mechanic. From all accounts, a really nice guy.
Super nice, really friendly. Everybody in the neighborhood liked him.
He was just a really nice guy, according to everybody.

Speaker 3 By all accounts, Kevin was an easygoing family man with no enemies. And so far, the crime scene itself was not offering investigators any clues about who might have wanted him dead.

Speaker 8 Other than the shell casings, there is absolutely no physical evidence in the house. None.
I mean, we have the shell casings and we have Kevin's body. and the blood.
And that's about it.

Speaker 8 They're not seeing any like shoe impressions in the carpet, no mud tracked in, no, I mean, anything that you would, there's no, there's no forced entry. There's like a thing.

Speaker 4 But the one thing Michelle did have were witnesses because Kevin's wife, Lisa, and their two sons were all in the house.

Speaker 4 And their accounts of what they saw and heard would be critical in starting to piece together the tragic details of Kevin's murder.

Speaker 8 We were told that the deputies had spoken briefly with Lisa James, the wife, and she told them that she had been sleeping in her oldest son's room because she'd had lupus.

Speaker 8 Kevin James Sr., the victim, had a cold, flu kind of thing. So she didn't want to sleep with him that night because she didn't want to catch anything because her immune system was compromised.

Speaker 3 And so Lisa had fallen asleep in the same room of her 12-year-old son. but shortly before 11, she had woken up in a panic.

Speaker 8 She had also told deputies that when she was sleeping, what woke her up was she heard what she felt was someone breaking into the house through the slider in the master bedroom, and then she heard three gunshots.

Speaker 4 So let's talk crime scene. There had been no signs of forced entry on the first floor.
So the idea that the killer may have entered through the sliding door on the second floor was a possibility.

Speaker 4 But when they took a closer look, detectives again were stumped by the lack of evidence.

Speaker 8 No fingerprints, no handprints, nothing on it that would indicate that someone touched it. None.
It was clear that no one came in through that slider.

Speaker 3 Not only had no one come in through the sliding door, there was no sign anyone could have accessed the second floor at all.

Speaker 8 It was raining and their backyard had no grass. It was all all mud and they had a route wiler in the backyard.
So we went over and looked over the balcony. There's no ladder.

Speaker 8 There is nothing that you could have gotten up to the balcony and into the slider with that's still either attached to the balcony, leaning against the balcony or even laying in the yard.

Speaker 8 It's just mud. And the only prints in the mud are dog prints.
There's no footprints, nothing that would indicate that anyone came through there to get up to the balcony to go through the slider.

Speaker 8 So those were the two main red flags right there. Like no one came through that slider or the backyard.

Speaker 4 So Anastiga, let's be clear right here. These are really good observations that Michelle and her team made in the moment.
But at this point, they're just observations.

Speaker 4 I mean, there could have been other ways an intruder could have gotten into the home.

Speaker 3 But, you know, let's think about what Lisa says. Like, yes, on its face, it doesn't sound likely with the things that were observed by Michelle and the other investigators.

Speaker 3 But again, having seen it many times, I have to say that when people panic at times, they can lose that focus, especially after hearing gunshots. In a few moments, she realizes her husband is dead.

Speaker 3 Like, there is so much going on. At least temporarily, it could have been a blur, you know.
But here, there was another witness in the house that was able to give police his account of that night.

Speaker 3 And that was Lisa and Kevin's 12-year-old son. And as you can hear in the 911 call, he demonstrated remarkable composure and maturity when talking with the police.

Speaker 3 And that continued when he was interviewed by Michelle.

Speaker 8 He clearly was upset.

Speaker 8 And he had bits of crying and true crying and clearly was upset, but he really handled himself amazingly well and was able to talk to me and answer my questions and really stepped up.

Speaker 8 And like I said, really well spoken, really mature for 12 years old, I thought.

Speaker 4 Her son confirmed his mother's story that they were asleep in the bedroom when she woke up, saying she had heard strange sounds in the house.

Speaker 8 While they were sleeping, she woke him up and said that she thought she heard someone coming in the slider in the master bedroom and that someone was breaking into the house.

Speaker 8 She told him to get on the floor. He did.
She laid on top of him.

Speaker 3 Then they both heard the unmistakable sound of three gunshots in quick succession from inside the house.

Speaker 3 But while his mother's account ended with what she heard, this young boy was able to also tell police what he saw.

Speaker 8 He then began struggling because he wanted to get up and look out the window and see if he could see anyone coming or going.

Speaker 8 Lisa was holding him down on the floor and telling him, stay on the floor, stay on the floor. Don't get up.

Speaker 4 But the 12-year-old manages to get out from under his mother and ran to the bedroom window, which faced the front of the home.

Speaker 8 And he goes to the window, is looking over the front, and he sees a guy running from the direction of his front door across the lawn, getting into a car.

Speaker 8 He can't say for sure who this guy is, but he knows the car.

Speaker 3 The car was a distinctive 1965 Buick Riviera, a one-of-a-kind vintage car that was even customized to be heard from blocks around.

Speaker 4 And let me just add, he knew the owner as well. Everyone in the neighborhood knew that the Riviera belonged to a man named George Taylor who lived just down the street from the James's home.

Speaker 4 The victim's own son had provided what was potentially a huge break in the case.

Speaker 8 He knows George and he knows this car. And when I asked him, you know, could you say who it was for sure running out of the house?

Speaker 8 He said, could have been George, but he said, I can't 100% say who it was.

Speaker 3 But he was able to confirm that whoever he saw running from their house towards the car, he wasn't alone.

Speaker 8 There was a driver because this person running out of the house got into the passenger seat and the car took off. But he couldn't see the driver.
He couldn't see if anyone else was in the car.

Speaker 4 Within hours of that desperate 911 call, detectives had a strong personative interest in Kevin James's execution-style murder. But the investigation was far from over.

Speaker 3 This was just the first thread in a tangled web of lies, betrayal, manipulation, and murder.

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Speaker 4 In January of 1998 in Moreno Valley, California, Kevin James was shot three times in the head while he was sleeping in his own bed.

Speaker 8 Moments later, incredibly, his 12-year-old son spotted a man running from the house and getting into a car impossible not to recognize an enormous customized 1965 buick riviera and the car belongs to george taylor who is best friends with next door neighbor shelby harris and george is often at shelby's house and he knows George and he knows this car.

Speaker 4 This is obviously a huge break. And the priority for investigators is clearly to track down that car, its owner, George Taylor, and eventually anyone else who may have been in that car.

Speaker 3 But in the meantime, it was also important to find out from Kevin's wife, Lisa, if she knew any reason why this George Taylor would have wanted to kill her husband.

Speaker 3 Because apparently, George was not just a neighbor, but a friend of both Kevin and Lisa James. And so Michelle and her partner intended to find out the answer to that question.

Speaker 3 But this is where she ran into a bit of a roadblock.

Speaker 8 So we get to the neighbors and Lisa is sitting in a chair. She was kind of in this,

Speaker 8 what I can only describe as a catatonic state, where she was just staring straight ahead, sitting in a chair, and just staring straight ahead with this blank look on her face.

Speaker 8 And I kind of knelt down in front of her so I could get eye to eye. And I said, Lisa, she just kept staring.
Lisa, you know, this went on for a minute.

Speaker 8 And then she finally made eye contact, immediately started screaming and crying hysterically.

Speaker 4 There was a very good possibility that Lisa was in shock or that her emotions were just too overwhelming for her to be able to answer the questions.

Speaker 4 But Michelle's veteran instincts told her that there was something just a little bit off about Lisa's behavior.

Speaker 11 I get it.

Speaker 8 Everybody reacts differently. But the interesting thing was not a tear was coming out of her eyes during all this screaming and kind of crying hysterically.
My gut feeling at this point is no.

Speaker 8 She is acting how she's supposed to be acting. This isn't real

Speaker 8 trauma. This isn't real bereavement.
And I'd seen a lot and I know everybody reacts differently. It wasn't real to me.

Speaker 3 And like Michelle said, you never know how different people are going to react in high-stress moments.

Speaker 3 But when you've worked a lot of homicide cases, including those initial conversations with family, you sometimes just get that feeling and you have to trust that feeling or at least follow where it leads.

Speaker 4 Not only that, but it also makes Michelle question if Lisa's account of hearing the sliding door open, despite being no evidence at all that anyone came through the second floor, was more than just a mistake.

Speaker 4 Perhaps it was an attempt to mislead police.

Speaker 3 Which unfortunately also brings into question why Lisa was lying on top of her son and telling him not to get up. It was supposedly to keep him safe after hearing the gunshots, but was it?

Speaker 8 Lisa was holding him down on the floor and telling him, stay on the floor, stay on the floor. Don't get up.
Now, you could take that one of two ways.

Speaker 8 Is she being a protective mother, or does she not want him to see something?

Speaker 4 Now, there was no gun found at the scene, and it was clear that Lisa had not fired a weapon herself.

Speaker 4 But clearly, Michelle's suspicions are peaked that maybe she was involved in the shooting somehow, or at least withholding information.

Speaker 8 And so Detective Fernandez and I, he was my second, Detective Thompson stayed at the scene. And as we're walking outside, we both looked at each other and I immediately said, okay, she's involved.

Speaker 8 I knew there was a long way to go, but it immediately centered my focus on her.

Speaker 3 But in the meantime, thanks to Lisa's son, investigators did have another very real person of interest, the owner of that 65 Riviera that was seen speeding away from the scene.

Speaker 4 Lisa was able to eventually tell detectives that she did in fact know George Taylor, but she couldn't think of any reason George would have anything to do with the killing of her husband.

Speaker 4 And while they weren't close friends, they certainly weren't enemies.

Speaker 3 But there was one person that Michelle hoped might know a little bit more, and that was the woman George Taylor lived with, Lisa's close friend and neighbor, Shelby Harris.

Speaker 8 I asked the deputy to contact Shelby and bring her to the station because now we want to talk to her about George. And so Shelby is at the station, fully cooperative.

Speaker 4 Shelby Harris confirmed much of what Lisa said that Kevin had no enemies that she could think of and there was no beef between him and her roommate George Taylor that she was aware of.

Speaker 6 Did he have a gun with him today when you saw him or last night when you saw him?

Speaker 12 No.

Speaker 13 Didn't see him with the gun? I didn't see him with the gun.

Speaker 14 Did he mention Kevin at all?

Speaker 13 No.

Speaker 12 Any problems between him and Kevin that you know of? Arguments? No.

Speaker 3 Shelby also told police that she didn't know of any problems in Lisa and Kevin's marriage. Certainly nothing that would precipitate murder.

Speaker 11 You know Lisa fairly well?

Speaker 6 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 14 How did her and Kevin get along?

Speaker 6 Real good. They got along real good.

Speaker 14 So they had a good relationship?

Speaker 12 Yeah, always doing stuff with the kids.

Speaker 11 Any domestic problems at all?

Speaker 6 No.

Speaker 13 As far as I know, no.

Speaker 6 They were

Speaker 12 always doing stuff together, always doing stuff with the kids.

Speaker 6 You never heard of him, like, maybe abusing her spousal abuse type thing, hitting her or anything like that? Or shooting him?

Speaker 13 Devin's not like that.

Speaker 6 He's a pretty mild kind of guy.

Speaker 15 Yeah, he really is.

Speaker 13 He's real. He kind of drinks every now and then.
And most men, when they drink, they start getting real stupid.

Speaker 15 He's nothing like that.

Speaker 6 He's a real...

Speaker 6 He's a real good guy.

Speaker 8 She knew of no trouble in the marriage. They seemed like the happiest, happiest couple.
She's just shocked by this.

Speaker 8 George's car being there, well, she doesn't know about that, but George is her best friend and she can get George down to the station and she'll make that happen for us. We went over that.

Speaker 8 Oh, she was happy to help and she would get George down here to talk to us.

Speaker 4 According to Shelby, her friend George had a bit of a checkered past and present.

Speaker 4 While he had gotten into some trouble for selling drugs and was often seen running with a tough crowd, she described him more as a kind of wannabe.

Speaker 11 Was he selling weed?

Speaker 12 George thinks he sells weed.

Speaker 11 Okay. I mean, really, I mean, George thinks he's something he's really not.

Speaker 6 Okay.

Speaker 14 So he's got connections, or

Speaker 14 he thinks he has connections.

Speaker 12 He thinks he has connections.

Speaker 3 And so George Taylor was brought in for questioning, and he agreed to talk to Michelle and explain his whereabouts and his cars on the night of the murder.

Speaker 14 Now you obviously know why you're down here.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I want to know what's happening.

Speaker 4 Teller described his relationship with Kevin James as friendly and the two often bonding over their love of old cars.

Speaker 6 Our main thing was our love for old cars because he had the 67 barracuda. I always wanted a 65.
I always wanted a 65, but I didn't want an impala. I didn't want a Chevelle.

Speaker 6 I wanted something that nobody really has.

Speaker 6 And that Riviera just looked too nice.

Speaker 3 But then he went on to claim that on occasion, he would buy small quantities of marijuana from Kevin.

Speaker 6 All I know is he kept it in the garage. The garage was, he would shut the garage.
I'd wait outside. And then he'd open the garage back up and hand me what I hadn't had any cash.

Speaker 6 We'd sit there and, you know, for a little bit, talk about the cars, drink a beer, and then I'd be on my way.

Speaker 4 Clearly, selling marijuana is hardly hardly a capital offense, but if true, it does offer a hint of a possible motive. Because as we know, where drugs and cash are present, violence often follows.

Speaker 12 Ever been up to his room?

Speaker 13 Up to his kids' room?

Speaker 14 Never, ever?

Speaker 8 He kept wanting me to know that he was very gangster. And those are his words, that he was very gangster and he had some gangster times.

Speaker 8 And that I didn't know anything about his life, but it was very dangerous for him to be at this police station. And his life could be on the line.

Speaker 3 According to Taylor, that was why he had not stayed at Shelby's that night as usual, and why his car might have been seen parked near Kevin's house on the night of his murder.

Speaker 8 There were some people out, a Mexican gang, out to steal George's car, and he had been followed that day. And he was afraid for himself and for Shelby.

Speaker 8 And so he and Shelby decided to go stay in a motel for the night. And according to Shelby, it was just her and George in the motel.
No one else was there.

Speaker 14 So you ran in and told Shelby about this third carjack or attempt carjacking.

Speaker 11 And whose suggestion was it to get a motel room?

Speaker 6 I don't know. I honestly don't remember.
At that time, my heart was beating so fast. I was so...

Speaker 11 And somebody says, let's go get a motel room.

Speaker 3 And you can just imagine as George is talking and giving all these details about where he was and with whom whom that Michelle is just taking it all in.

Speaker 3 Because like we've said, it's not always the truth that you expect to get from these interviews. Sometimes you're just gathering information that can either be corroborated or proven to be false.

Speaker 3 And for those of us that have worked in this line of work, we all know it can be just as valuable.

Speaker 4 Michelle went on to tell Taylor that Kevin's son had seen his car in front of their home at the time of the murder.

Speaker 8 How can he explain that? And he said, oh, yeah. at one point, he had been afraid that the Mexican gang had shown up at Shelby's anyway.

Speaker 8 And so he wanted to just go check Shelby's house and make sure nothing was going on at Shelby's house.

Speaker 4 And here is where we start to see the little inconsistencies with his story. And I'm sure Michelle was seeing them as well.
And they were raising all kinds of red flags.

Speaker 8 He's really trying to explain why his car is in front of Kevin James' house at the time of the shooting, and he's coming up with all kinds of stuff. Might have gone back a second time.

Speaker 8 He knows for sure he didn't go back to the motel right away. He went to the orange groves and slept for a while.
Didn't have a real explanation for that.

Speaker 8 Oh, he just went all over the place with where he was that night. And I want to say it was like a three-hour interview, and nothing was consistent.
from the beginning to the end.

Speaker 8 He changed his story two, three times. I mean, nothing was consistent.

Speaker 3 Things were not looking promising for George Taylor. His car was seen fleeing the scene of a murder.
He was clearly lying to police about where he was on the night of the murder.

Speaker 3 And while Michelle hadn't uncovered any reason why George might have targeted Kevin or any evidence yet that could put him at the scene, she also knew that there was a good chance that he was a flight risk, and she was wary to let him out of her sight.

Speaker 8 I actually arrest George that night.

Speaker 8 Now I know that I can hold him for 48 hours and then I know when he's getting out of jail and we can set up a surveillance and follow him and see where he goes and what he does.

Speaker 4 But before that, Michelle and her partner decided to take one more shot at getting him to talk, thinking that the murder charge hanging over him might convince him to play ball.

Speaker 8 Because I'm also thinking he knows that I think he's lying. I mean, we were clear in the interview.

Speaker 8 And if someone put him up to this, if he's the one who did it, if he was the one running out of the house, now give him a night to sleep on this.

Speaker 8 And maybe in the morning, he'll come to his senses and want to tell us what happened if other people are involved, which at this point is my theory.

Speaker 3 And so the detectives return the next day to pay George Taylor a visit in jail and give him another chance to come clean.

Speaker 8 But fairly quickly, he says, you know, I've already talked to an attorney and I think I should talk to him before I talk to you guys anymore. So we stop the interview.
Didn't know you had an attorney.

Speaker 8 Yeah. So we leave.
So that interview goes nowhere.

Speaker 4 But thanks to their first interview, they had locked him into a statement which included a pretty shaky alibi.

Speaker 4 And his time in custody gave them the time they needed to initiate surveillance on him as soon as he stepped out of jail.

Speaker 3 The idea here is to see where he goes, who he talks to, and whether he is making any efforts to cover his tracks. But it doesn't exactly go according to plan.

Speaker 8 We follow him. He goes directly to his mother's house, also lived in Marino Valley.
And we watch him go into the house. And we're sitting in a van outside, quite a ways down the cul-de-sac.

Speaker 8 His mom, Tina, comes out of the house and makes a beeline for the van.

Speaker 8 and starts pounding on the windows and telling us she knows we're the cops and she knows we're in there and oh my god and get out of here.

Speaker 4 Despite the strong lead, with no physical evidence placing Taylor at the scene, the case was in danger of stalling.

Speaker 8 I mean, we're two days in, we're 48 hours in, and I know that unless we get someone to talk, I don't think this is going anywhere.

Speaker 3 But two weeks after Kevin James' murder, the investigation took a very unexpected turn.

Speaker 8 And then February 2nd, I get a call from George's girlfriend and mother of his child, who tells me that George is missing.

Speaker 4 George Taylor had gone missing, which left two very real possibilities. He's either on the run or George Taylor is dead.

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Speaker 3 On the night Kevin James was murdered in bed, a 1965 Buick Riviera belonging to George Taylor was spotted in front of the house, making Taylor the prime suspect in Kevin's murder.

Speaker 4 But a month later, police had received word from Taylor's girlfriend that he had gone missing, which could mean he was in danger. or he was on the run.

Speaker 3 According to the girlfriend, Taylor was last seen leaving with two friends, Terrence Bledsoe and Joe Jensen, but she hadn't seen him since.

Speaker 8 Now these are new characters that we haven't heard about.

Speaker 8 So now we start getting information on Terrence Bledsoe and Joe Jensen, who live together, who are very, very good friends with George and Shelby. And the four of them hang out all the time together.

Speaker 8 at Shelby's house. So now, okay, let's talk to Terrence and Joe.

Speaker 4 So you remember when George Taylor's mom blew the cover of the surveillance fan by banging on the window and chasing them from her home.

Speaker 4 Well, now that her son is missing, she's become much more cooperative with police.

Speaker 3 And according to her, these so-called friends, Terrence and Joe, she knew they were trouble. But the person she feared the most was the person around whom the group seemed to gravitate, Shelby Harris.

Speaker 8 They are part of what Tina, George's mom, refers to as Shelby's gang. And so

Speaker 8 Tina is the one who puts George, Terrence, Joe, and Shelby as this little gang that are doing criminal activities together.

Speaker 4 There were rumors about guns, drug dealing, even bank robberies. But at this point, it was impossible to know what was real and what might have been exaggeration.

Speaker 8 George came in with all this bravado about being a gang member. And so I don't know if this is what his mom has picked up from him, what he's told her, or if it's actually true.

Speaker 8 But the one thing I do know is the four of these people are hanging out together and someone else was driving that car

Speaker 8 that took George away from Kevin's house. And so good possibility, it's Selby, Terrence, or Joe.
Now I've got two more people that are possibly involved.

Speaker 3 And now one of those people was missing. George Taylor's mother was convinced that something terrible had happened to her son.

Speaker 8 There was a time where Tina told me that George went to Florida for a year or so.

Speaker 8 She thought that might have had something to do with some criminal involvement, that he had to get out of California for a while.

Speaker 8 And so I kept saying to her, well, you know, maybe he's just left the state. And she was

Speaker 8 adamant. I'm telling you, Michelle, Selby had him killed.
Selby had him killed.

Speaker 4 So let's just set the table and say that Shelby had already talked to police and she was being cooperative.

Speaker 4 So Michelle had come up with some theories, and I could see two potential and opposite reasons. Being as cooperative as you can, you've got nothing to hide.

Speaker 4 So be open and forthright when answering questions. And number two, you know, it makes me think of the movie The Usual Suspects.

Speaker 4 And Jessica, at this point, with so many potential suspects being being involved in the case, maybe she was trying to get ahead and see if police would provide any information back to her, or even maybe she was looking for an opportunity to be the first one to get a deal.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I think I agree. Look, I mean, she definitely seems cooperative.
She's offering whatever info she has, so that goes against it.

Speaker 3 But again, like, as we know, like most things are possible, but if true that she was involved or behind it, it's puzzling. Why?

Speaker 3 And I think there we have to really think about, well, how could George's disappearance be connected to Kevin's murders?

Speaker 3 And just like you talked about there, these two distinct paths, I think here too, right? If he was involved, well, then he could be on the run and that would make perfect sense.

Speaker 3 You don't want to get caught and be held accountable.

Speaker 3 But, you know, if he's not on the run, but he still committed the crime,

Speaker 3 could it be that someone was seeking retribution? We know that that happens. People don't want to leave it to the police.
And sometimes they want to get revenge on their own.

Speaker 3 Or maybe if he did it, I don't know, maybe he wasn't alone.

Speaker 4 and this way people could or someone could forever keep him quiet so up to this point has Michelle been able to develop a real criminal conspiracy here and you know we can look at the fact or even raise the question was the disappearance even connected to Kevin's murder and to be able to establish that

Speaker 4 they would have to begin with their search for George Taylor.

Speaker 4 Investigators did set their sights on tracking down two of the men last seen with with him, but on the morning of February 10th, Joe Jensen beat them to the punch.

Speaker 8 I get a phone call from Joe, who just would go by Joe. It was by telephone, wasn't coming to the station, wasn't giving me any other information other than his name was Joe.

Speaker 9 I don't even want to get involved in nothing.

Speaker 8 I understand you don't want to, but you kind of are.

Speaker 8 He knew nothing, you know, run everything by him on the phone. He knows nothing.
He doesn't doesn't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, he hung out with Shelby and George, but not that much.

Speaker 8 And it just really went kind of nowhere.

Speaker 8 Did George ever talk about having problems with Kevin or anything like that? Wanting him dead or threatening him in any way?

Speaker 9 I have not known George like that.

Speaker 3 However, Joe's buddy, Terence Bledsoe, proved to be a little more forthcoming.

Speaker 14 Well, like I told you on the phone, there's two different areas I need to talk to you about. Okay.
One being the night that Kevin was shot and the other being now George has come up missing.

Speaker 4 According to Blitzo, he, Joe, and Shelby and George were all in the motel room on the night of Kevin's murder, but claim that after a night of partying, he fell asleep and never left the room.

Speaker 11 So you read about this shooting the next day in the paper.

Speaker 13 Did you ever talk to Shelby about it and ask her, hey, you know, what happened or anything like that?

Speaker 15 When I went to ask her, she didn't you know she didn't talk about it anything else about it who did it or who she thinks did it or no she didn't say anything but i remember she's saying man she's like now who am i going to get to work on my car i remember that

Speaker 2 you know

Speaker 15 you know that was you know that was about it

Speaker 3 He also claimed he knew nothing about the disappearance of his buddy George Taylor. But as it turned out, his location would not be a mystery for much longer.

Speaker 8 And so then also on the 10th, deputies respond out to the very east end of Moreno Valley to a dead body that's found.

Speaker 4 The body of an unidentified man had been dragged and dumped in a remote part of Moreno Valley.

Speaker 8 David Fernandez says, so, you know, you booked George. Did he have any tattoos or any identifying? Because the victim is face down.
We can't see his face.

Speaker 8 So I said he had a tattoo of a great big genie on his back. And so Fernandez says, we got George.

Speaker 8 george taylor had been shot once in the back of the head george is laying on his stomach his hands are out fully extended and above his head his legs are fully extended behind him and kind of not straight down like kind of in a triangle right from his body i mean it looks like he was dragged there and then left exactly how he had been dragged there and laid The lack of blood at the scene supports the theory that Taylor was killed in another location and his body was dumped in this remote part of the desert.

Speaker 3 A forensic examination would reveal that Taylor was likely killed by a.40 caliber handgun, the same caliber weapon that killed Kevin James.

Speaker 4 So the main suspect in the murder of Kevin James was dead. Both men executed with gunshots to the head and very possibly, by the very same person.

Speaker 3 All detectives could do was keep pulling the thread thread and see what unraveled and we'll unravel the rest of this story in part two so be sure to listen on the next anatomy of murder so when you found out about george did you uh when i that's when i found out about him i got really scared i got really scared what'd you think then i was thinking okay george is dead

Speaker 6 you know what i'm saying

Speaker 16 and

Speaker 6 Okay, who's next? That's what I was thinking.

Speaker 12 But you knew deep down, somewhere deep down inside yourself, this isn't some stranger who walked in your house and killed Kim.

Speaker 3 Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder. Anatomy of Murder is an audio Chuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media.

Speaker 4 Ashley Flowers is executive producer.

Speaker 3 This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa and Phil Jean-Grande.

Speaker 3 So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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