Erin Taylor ////// 829

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On Friday, August 11, 2000,

Erin Rebecca Taylor told her best friend Bonnie Dowd that she had plans to meet a man immunissing over the weekend.

Days later, police were asking the good people of Marquette, Michigan, a small but absolutely beautiful city in the upper peninsula of Michigan, located on the shores of Lake Superior, for help.

The police put a small announcement in the paper that said, in part, woman missing.

Marquette police are seeking information about Erin Taylor, who's been missing for approximately a week, stating that Erin Taylor, who lived on Wright Street, was supposed to have met a person immunising on the previous Friday.

But she had never showed up.

Adding that since the supposed meetup, Erin has not returned to work and has not contacted any friends.

Erin Taylor is described in the newspaper's write-up as a Caucasian female, 5 foot 9 inches tall and weighing about 160 pounds.

She has red hair and green eyes.

Police did not have a description of her clothing.

Erin Taylor is 24 years old.

We have something that we want you to listen to.

It's short.

The audio quality is not the best, and these messages are now nearly 25 years old.

But here, you hear Erin's voice and a touch of her personality.

These are the last two messages that she left for her dear friend, Bonnie,

shortly before she went missing.

I'm going to give you a call for my family conductors.

Send Friday at 10:04 p.m.

No one

can for your home is probably

a mine or

this is True Crime Garage, and this is the still unsolved case of Aaron Taylor.

You heard Aaron's voice there.

You can hear her jokingly telling her friend, hey, woman, pick up the phone at the start of the messages.

And it was that very friend that reported Aaron missing.

Bonnie says that after several days, she decided to make the long drive to her friend's house.

Bonnie lives not terribly far away.

And we have to set this up here, Captain, by explaining to everyone that Erin is not from this area.

In fact, she moved to this area because of her friendship with Bonnie.

And so when she arrives in Marquette, Michigan, Bonnie is likely the only person that she knows.

And now she's been here for some time before she goes missing.

But Bonnie is like her lifeline.

She's like her anchor.

So she's regularly checking in with her dear friend, Bonnie.

And when Bonnie doesn't hear from her friend, she goes looking for her friend, Aaron Taylor.

She makes the drive out to Aaron Taylor's home, which is located at 1741 Wright Street.

Aaron's house was in a nice residential area.

This is a nice neighborhood with a lot of trees, and Wright Street appears to be the main street of this neighborhood.

Bonnie says when she arrived at Aaron's home, she was put on alert because there's no answer, and she's not heard from her dear friend for days.

Now, there are some reports out there that state that Bonnie had a key to the house, and she did not.

She absolutely did not have a key to the house.

What takes place here, Captain, is she's doing a little investigating work.

She's walking around the house, looking in the windows, trying to figure out where could her friend be.

When looking in the windows, she discovers that the cat is meowing and appears to be distraught.

She also finds an open window, so she decides to climb inside of the home.

She feeds the cat, puts some water down for the cat, and writes out a note for her friend saying, hey, I entered the home and I took care of the cat, and I'm just wondering where you are.

Yeah, a little strange to me that people bring up this idea that she had a key.

Why would she enter through a window if she had a key?

It Doesn't make any sense.

But because we have this,

it's unclear to me whether it was an open window or the window was just she was able to open up the window.

But either way, you have an unlocked window or open window.

She's nowhere to be found.

The cat's going a little crazy, so you have to feed the cat.

This is going to cause a lot of concern.

I think where the confusion lies within this case and the storytelling of this case is the news briefs at the time when Aaron is missing are just that.

They're very brief.

And I think over the years, because the case is drag on, and unfortunately,

we are still left with a lot of questions and not many answers, it's an unsolved case.

I think people have filled in some of the blanks over the years along the way.

I agree with you.

But Bonnie has stated that absolutely 100% she did not have a key to her friend's home.

Now, quickly, there was some news, right?

So Bonnie is going to be, she's going to facilitate making the Marquette City Police Department aware that her friend is missing and that she's concerned about her friend's whereabouts and what may have happened.

And quickly, there was more news and it wasn't good.

So this is just days later.

We have Detective Segert, who told the newspaper that foul play is suspected in the missing woman's case.

He said that foul play was a concern and worried that that might be the best explanation for why Aaron was missing.

And he had more information about the meeting that Erin told her friend about.

Okay, so this is the meeting that we referenced in the trailer.

She had told her friend that at some point that weekend, she was going to meet a man in Mussing, Michigan.

This man, Captain, is simply referred to as a male acquaintance.

And as the story goes, Aaron was going to meet him at the Mussing Hotel on the evening of August 11th.

That's a Friday.

Aaron Taylor lived alone.

The other part is Aaron didn't own a vehicle.

So it was very unclear to everyone how Aaron was going to make the trip to the hotel from her home.

It's about 50 minutes to an hour's drive, depending on which route you take.

Police do know who this male acquaintance is at this time in our investigation.

And in fact, prior to telling the newspaper about the man, who they'd never named, they had already spoken to this man.

The man was not from the area, and he said that he had planned to stay at the Mussing Hotel, but when he got there, he was told that there were no rooms available.

He also said that he called Erin and spoke with her while she was still still at her home, but she never showed up at the hotel.

Then he said he drove to Marquette, but never located Erin, so he decided to go home.

Another part of the story that I think mucks up

the overall understanding and comprehension of what was taking place or could have taken place that Friday, maybe even that Saturday, is it was reported early on that Erin left a baffling message on her friend's answering machine after midnight saying that she was still looking forward to meeting the man.

And in the newspaper, Captain, this is cited as August 11th.

And I think that, one, it's confusing because was it after midnight on that Friday?

So now you're actually into Saturday?

That would seem to make the most sense.

But further digging and as time drags on, one thing that we were able to sort out is that was just bad information.

That was early reporting and bad information.

She didn't call her friend after midnight on that Friday.

In fact, you heard the timestamp on the trailer, 10.04 p.m., August 11th, that Friday.

That is the last phone call made from Erin Taylor's home.

Police know this based off of the phone records.

This phone call is picked up by her friend Bonnie's answering machine.

And she still has that message to this day and provided the audio to us.

And we thank her for that.

Well, I think a couple of things that make this case a little more complicated is, like you said, Erin is basically new to this town.

So it doesn't, it's not like she has this huge social circle.

So when she, the only person to basically sound the alarms that something's off is her one close friend in that area.

And because she lives alone and because she's new to the area, Erin would communicate and try to meet people mainly through online message boards and things like that.

She loved to hang out on the computer.

She loved to chat and meet people on the computer.

And that was

how this meeting came about, that she was going to meet this man that she had been talking to online.

Now, do you find anything odd about this?

Because if I'm going to meet a lady at a hotel and we're picking a middle ground and she doesn't show up,

well, that's just it.

She didn't show up.

She's not interested or something came up.

Maybe I'll hear from her later.

Maybe she got cold feet, but I'm not going to drive to her town and look for her.

There's a lot of things about this case that I find.

strange.

There's a lot of things about the internet that I find to be strange.

So yeah, I think it's an easy leap for me to join you in your concern.

Erin Taylor was last seen by coworkers at 5 p.m.

that Friday, August 11th, 2000.

And as said, she lived alone and she did not have any family in the area.

We already talked about what takes place the following week.

We know that police have been made aware that this woman is missing.

We know that they've already started to talk to people that knew Erin.

And we already know that they have voiced their concern as well, telling the newspaper, we're looking for this missing woman and we think that foul play is involved.

We have reason to believe that foul play is why she is missing.

And this is where the bad news goes from bad to worse.

Police find a body on August 20th, 2000.

So this is nine days after Aaron went missing.

This is in Nagani.

Township, which is like 10 miles outside of Marquette where Aaron lives, about 12 miles southwest from Aaron's home.

And of course, police were suspicious that the body could be that of Aaron Taylor, but they couldn't be certain.

Here's what we know about the scene here, Captain.

A deputy on patrol on County Road 492 was checking on some off-road vehicle complaints.

when he found a badly decomposed body.

The way that this story goes is he's there checking on some other stuff, some very minor complaints.

And when he's there, he sees something that he thinks is large debris or possibly litter.

And so he goes over to pick it up.

And that's when he discovers the body.

What he saw was a blanket.

So whoever placed this body there took the time to cover it with a blanket.

The blanket is what caught his eye and drew his attention.

Now, do we know if this blanket belonged to her or not?

That's a great question.

We do not.

What we do know is that this is a snowmobile trail.

That's what it's typically used for.

It's about a mile or so, a mile and a half east of M35 of the M35 intersection.

The body at the time was described as having long brown hair, painted fingernails, and pierced ears.

The Marquette County undersheriff told the news that the condition of the body would require an autopsy to make an identification.

The identity, he said, is first and foremost, then manner and cause of death if possible.

Adding that this is an unwitnessed death and will consider it a homicide until proven otherwise.

So good for them.

That's exactly the route that they should be taking.

Yeah, that's kind of our motto.

But what do they find at the crime scene other than this blanket?

Is she clothed?

You know, do we find any other items around her?

Yes, the body that they found was clothed, badly decomposed.

And from my understanding, there were some clothing that was found near her, on her, or under the blanket.

That detail is a little unclear.

Yeah.

But the interesting part about this additional clothing that was found at the scene, it was folded up neatly.

So almost like

whoever placed this body there took the time to neatly cover her or the body with the blanket and also

took the time to fold up this additional clothing and leave it near the body.

Now, later, this is actually the next day, it was announced that the autopsy had failed to confirm the identity of the dead woman.

However, they were able to conclude that it was, in fact, a homicide, but they would not state publicly the cause of death or what evidence led them to that determination.

Aaron Taylor had been missing for nine days.

Later, we learned that the body was, in fact, that of Aaron Taylor.

They used dental records to confirm the identification.

Yeah, if I'm law enforcement, though, I want to know, we find her with clothes on.

Are these the clothes that she was seen by coworkers on Friday?

Because we don't know if she went missing Friday night or if she went missing Saturday.

Here's what we do know that we can put together is we know she was alive and well and at work on that Friday, left at the normal time at 5 p.m.

And we do know from her phone records and the answering machine messages that we just played in part

that she was active on her home phone right till 10 04 p.m that friday night after that there's no activity from aaron taylor so if we have phone records because sometimes you're just in the mood to chat And so maybe she called her friend and she didn't answer.

So she left a message.

So we have no record of her calling any individual after that.

That's correct.

That is believed by everybody to be the very last phone call that she made from her home, 10.04 p.m.

that Friday night.

So once they find her, she's been missing for nine days.

And I'm leaping ahead here, Captain, but there's no reason to wait for a lengthy reveal here.

Right.

Because even though in the moment, police didn't explain why they knew that it was a homicide, But later, we would learn that she had been killed by strangulation as a ligature.

The ligature that was used to kill her remained around the victim's neck when she was found.

And it looks like they were nearly convinced that it was her all along because everything was matching up.

Because one thing they did state, too, before they gave the positive identification, was they had said that the body they found that was located,

the victim had been dead for anywhere between seven to 10 days.

So this is the same amount of time, roughly, that Aaron's been unaccounted for.

Well, we have an area that's not heavily populated, so we probably don't have a lot of missing person reports.

And so you have this individual that you find in this field, and you go, well, this matches the description of a missing lady.

So good for her friend to not hesitate and to call law enforcement so then they can get down to again like law enforcement said you have to identify the victim and then you then you have to kind of work backwards from there but it's very strange to me that you're going to find a victim covered up in a blanket you're going to find items folded to me that seems like some organization there but then you have this murder victim with basically the murder weapon still around her neck.

You'd think that would have been removed.

Yeah.

Yeah, you'd think that it would have been removed.

The thing here, though, too, Captain, is at this time, when they are informing the public that they have positively ID'd the body as being that of Aaron Taylor, we start to learn a little bit more from law enforcement about the man that she was supposed to meet, right?

The male acquaintance, as they were referring to it in the past.

So they tell us that the man, the male acquaintance, was from Windsor, Ontario, and that the two had met on the internet.

They also stated that Aaron had also met a man from South Carolina via the internet.

Now, I want to state clearly here, when we say met a man from South Carolina, that may not mean that they ever physically met face to face, that they were just chatting online.

The police said openly to the public, this is 2000, this is not 1960, this is the year 2000.

The police said that they are, they being the man from South Carolina and the man from Windsor, Ontario, they are the only suspects that investigators have identified in the case to this point,

saying, quote, at this point, until they've been eliminated, they are considered a suspect, end quote.

And kudos to them.

I am so

beyond over this and tired of it where people are so damn hesitant to refer to somebody as a suspect.

They're not naming these guys by name, but good for them to just say, look, until they're eliminated, they're a suspect.

One of my favorite quotes was a detective that I had talked to years ago, and I had asked about suspects.

I said, how many suspects did you have?

He goes, when I arrive on a murder scene, everybody but my mother is a suspect.

So good for them for calling them what they should.

title them, a suspect, until they can be eliminated.

Now,

as stated, in due time, dental records would prove the the identity of Erin Taylor as being the body that was left in the woods and left there for several days, right?

We had that statement from police that we believe that not only was she dead, but also had been there for approximately seven to 10 days.

And very sad.

Erin was just 24 years old.

A kid.

Just 24 years old and really kind of striking it out on her own

for really the first time in her life.

But also to better her life.

Exactly.

Now, she was originally from Madison, Wisconsin.

Everybody.

And Marquette says that she was nice, she was funny, and she was a good employee.

She worked at a family care doctor's office at a medical center.

And as said, was last seen there at 5 p.m.

Friday, August 11th.

This got me.

This got me, though, Captain.

We mentioned that she lived alone.

She had her cat there to keep her company, but she had only moved into that house in June.

This is August.

She's only there like two months, and then she's murdered.

The first few weeks of school are in the books.

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It's because we're trash, my friend.

We're trash.

Hey, here in the garage, we like a little junk in the trunk.

Well, I do have a question about this because my concern is how far is Aaron found from any roadway?

Because to me, that would lead to some speculation on whether there's, and I'm not saying that there's multiple people involved in the murder, but there could be multiple people in the disposing of the body.

No, I think you're hitting on something that is

probably

what we're dealing with here.

And police have to be considering some of this as well.

So we listed her weight at 160 pounds, approximate.

Right.

And that's based off of the missing persons report and the request for information that the police gave in the newspaper.

So she's found, Captain, it's like 10, 12 miles-ish from her home.

Not far.

You can travel that with a car.

Very quickly.

And but what you are hitting on here is that she's not found in a ditch alongside the road.

No, she's found well off the road.

And this is, as reported, between a mile and a mile and a half off of the road.

Remember, the deputy was out there investigating

off-road activity, off-road complaints.

Right.

Now, there is a snowmobile trail there, but that's not a paved road, right?

That's used for snowmobile activity.

Yeah, and I don't know the lay of the land that well, but it is possible to drive a car

in a field, but I don't think there's any evidence of that.

I firmly believe that the deputy that was out there investigating that he took either a gravel road or drove off-road in his vehicle to get to this location where he eventually spots the blanket and then goes to find out.

He was just going to go pick it up because he thought it was debris.

Yeah, and for all the serial killers out there, you don't want to drive your vehicle out into the field because that might bring up some red flags and you might have some eyewitnesses to a van in the middle of a field.

This spot, best described as a wooded area.

The other thing here that I think is key and that police have pointed out several times is this, they consider this to be an area that you would have to be local or familiar with the area to decide to place that body in that location.

Yeah, this feels local, oakal.

And

there's some evidence to back up that statement because if, in fact, the body was there as long as they stated in the paper, seven to 10 days,

in fact, later we're going to learn that police believe that she

was in that spot for almost the entirety of the time that she was missing.

So it's a way of concealing the body, and it certainly worked for a period of time.

No, I totally agree.

And what's interesting there is if I'm law enforcement, which I should be law enforcement by now, they should give me like an honorary badge or something.

The hours are hell, man.

Yeah,

it's a tough life.

But if she goes missing either that Friday night or Saturday, then I can somewhat conclude that this individual that's responsible, unless he is reported missing from his work, he's somebody that probably works, and I'm saying man because most likely it is a man, but you go, well, then this individual probably works Monday through Friday, probably as a typical job.

Yes, and then on August 28th, police had this update for us.

Marquette Police say that they have cleared six possible suspects of any involvement in the death of Aaron Rebecca Taylor.

Police have not revealed the cause of death still at this point, but we now know that it's strangulation.

Among the people investigated and cleared, this is incredibly intriguing, was a man from Windsor, Ontario, said the police detective captain.

So let's call this male acquaintance.

Let's call him Mr.

Windsor, right?

They stated that the Canadian man was able to account for all of his travels.

He passed a polygraph examination and his story checked out.

Now, initially, I had all kinds of problems with this.

I'm like, how the heck could you clear him?

But it is their investigation.

It's their case.

They know it better than we do.

But it left so many things just kind of hanging there that still made the guy look very suspicious.

As the story goes, she's supposed to meet him at this Mussing hotel.

He says he makes the drive.

He gets there.

There's no room available.

He goes to Marquette to look for Erin, talks with her on the phone that Friday night.

Another part of his story is that he went to the Marquette library to use the internet.

Now, I find that to be believable, right?

If she doesn't show up and he can't get in touch with her, they met on the internet.

It would be reasonable.

to believe that he decided, I'll go to a local free computer, log in, and send send her a couple of emails or an email and see if she replies and see, you know, where, why weren't we able to meet up?

Yeah, and I hope law enforcement did this, but you can go to the hotel and say, hey, did you have any rooms available?

They did.

They did.

And that's what they're saying here, that his story checks out.

He's able to account for all of his travels.

And we went back and we checked everything he said.

And what we're being told and what evidence we can find on that trail is all lining up up with of his activities that he told them and where he was and at what times.

So your comment, well, they did, meaning law enforcement did check the hotel and the hotel didn't have rooms available.

Correct.

Meaning that at least part of his story you can then confirm.

And the more parts of his story, hey, I went to this library because we met on the internet.

So

I figured that's my line of communication.

Well, they check he went to the library.

When you're able to do that multiple times within somebody's story, they become more believable.

Yes, so you're exactly right, Captain.

What we have here is: remember, he said he called her earlier that night on that Friday to speak with her.

Right.

Phone records.

He said we talked on the phone.

So he thinks everything is still going according to plan at that time.

The phone records back that up.

They check with the library.

And a lot of times, this is 2000.

You don't have to do this.

You may.

It's been forever since I've got on a computer at a library.

but when i used to let's say around this time 2000

where i live you would have to type in your library card number or you would have to get a temporary number from the front desk yeah so i'm guessing that somebody remembers him being there

or he had some kind of code that would identify it as being him.

I still, yeah, I still find it odd that he went to her city.

Yes.

Look, seems a little desperate to me.

This is why I thought we cannot eliminate him as a suspect because he seemed so set on getting to her, and it almost seemed to me like he was making up some events that would fill in some gaps of time.

But with law enforcement saying that we checked on his story and it checks out, here's what we don't get.

And they're purposely not giving us this.

I think everybody is quick to make the assumption that she was going to meet that man that night at the hotel in Mussling, which is about an hour away.

She has no way of getting there on her own.

We know that they had a phone call.

Part of the reason for playing

that audio during the trailer, as old as it is, I mean, it's poor quality due to its age.

And keep in mind, that was recorded on those tiny little cassette tapes that they would give you for your answering machine.

This wasn't anything that was digital.

They had those then, but this is not that type of machine that it was recorded on.

It's hard to hear.

You can't hear it in our bit because

the quality was so poor that we didn't play the entirety of the messages.

But if you listen to the 10:04 p.m.

call on that Friday night that police say is the last call coming out of her home that goes to her friend Bonnie's house, she says in that message, I just got off the phone with Luke.

He's not even to Mackinac yet.

Okay, so we learn that he's from Windsor.

We learn that he's from Windsor.

It's a very long drive from Windsor

to Mussing.

Oh, sorry, Munising.

And

it's still another hour from Munising out to Marquette.

All of this really starts to fall into place and make more sense when you hear that phone call.

Because at 10 p.m.

that night, she's telling her friend, there's no reason for her to lie to her friend.

It doesn't mean he's not lying to her.

He says, no, but what it does clue us into is I don't think she was supposed to meet him there at the hotel that night.

No,

I think that because she knew so few people in the area, she's not giving everybody and their cousin every bit of information.

It would not even be.

There would be no reason to.

So when you hear this, I'm supposed to meet this man at this hotel, hotel, I think a lot of people make the assumption that it was supposed to be that Friday night, and therefore he looks a lot more guilty than in reality what he is.

When talking to Bonnie, the story was her friend told her, I'm meeting this man in munising.

I'm going to spend some time camping with him that weekend.

He's driving up from Windsor.

It would make sense if he works a normal workday like most of us do, if he's getting off work at four or five o'clock, actually where he is, where he says he is almost to Mackinac at that timeframe where she's calling her friend saying, I just got off the phone with him.

He's not even a Mackinac yet.

That would line up perfectly.

It's a six-hour drive from Windsor to Munising.

What I think happened here, Captain, is I, and I looked up the hours of operation for the Marquette library because I know that in my neck of the woods, the libraries on Fridays close particularly early.

They're open in the evening hours during the week and sometimes even on a Saturday, but they're kind enough to let the workers get out of there at 5, 6 o'clock on Fridays.

So looking up the Marquette library, and of course I'm making an assumption here.

I can't back this up, but they close at 5 p.m.

If you start putting all those pieces together, it really creates a timeline for this unnamed guy.

Actually, he's named on the answering machine call.

We just chose not to play that portion of it.

So if all these things are lining up, I think what happened, he got to the hotel.

There was nowhere for him to stay.

He may have gone and stayed elsewhere because they were supposed to meet the next morning, not that night.

When he wakes up on Saturday, he's not able to get a hold of her.

He goes to the library.

She doesn't email him back.

He drives to her home and the doors are locked.

She's not there.

He's disappointed, probably feels like he's been stood up, and he turns around and he goes home.

And the police have all of that information, a paper trail to confirm all of that.

Well, what I'm going to be looking into if I'm law enforcement is who,

which one of her friends was going to drive her there.

Exactly.

And we don't think it was Bonnie because Bonnie said they never had that conversation.

Right.

And like we said, the one good thing and bad thing, I guess, for law enforcement is that she has a very small

social circle within this area.

It's going to be her small social circle that I think is going to lead to ultimately the prime and real suspects in this case.

This guy was just a hurdle.

This guy was just somebody that they had to look at, look at him, take a good, hard look at him.

They were able to move on and move past him.

And it wasn't just because of the polygraph test.

Now, we had mentioned the.

But I do hope that Mr.

Windsor found love and found a connection.

How could he not?

You saw the dedication.

Dedication.

Dedication.

He will drive the 10 hours to hang out with you.

Some women will find that creepy, and some women will find that adorable.

You just got to find, that's why the right person is out there for you.

Just remember that.

We had mentioned that she was also chatting with a guy from South Carolina.

They very quickly cleared him as well shortly after they cleared Mr.

Windsor because Mr.

South Carolina, they were able to prove that he never left South Carolina.

So

he does not make a

suspect.

He's not going to leave South Carolina's nice weather for Michigan's weather.

Come on.

I spoke with Bonnie a few times and she provided that audio for us.

And God bless Bonnie because she is the voice for Aaron Taylor.

Yeah.

Aaron Taylor's,

she wasn't from the area.

And I don't want to go too far into the background here, but these two really had a very strong kinship.

So

they met at a facility for battered women.

And as said, Aaron was from

both of them were from Wisconsin, but Bonnie's mother lived in or around Marquette.

And so her mother, she moved to that area to be closer to her mother, to be able to spend more time with her family.

For a period of time, Aaron went with her and lived and stayed at Bonnie's house.

And this was just really so she could get on her feet and kind of

get acclimated to the area.

Yeah, but these ladies were besties, right?

And so they lived together for roughly a year.

She got her job.

Aaron got her job.

She found a new place to live.

And a lot of things are happening very quickly for Aaron.

She's got a new place to live.

She's got a new job.

What's missing from this story is information that only Bonnie would be able to provide because a lot of this, some of this hasn't hit the news.

And Bonnie says that when she went to Aaron's home, she

taking a look around, she's like, oh, there was a struggle here.

Her words were something to the effect of, This looks like my friend was like involved in a struggle and was trying to get away from somebody.

She reported this.

Remember, that is where it comes from.

Police hadn't found a body yet, but they're already openly saying that we think foul play is suspected.

Right.

So that's making sense.

Now, here's the key.

Bonnie says that there was a couple, a local couple, that lived in the area that Aaron was good friends with, spent time with.

When she couldn't find her friend, at her friend's house, naturally, she thought, I better call them.

She calls them and speaks with the, I guess they're married.

I'm making

the wife, and the wife says, Oh, yeah, no, we haven't talked to her either.

Um, you know what?

It's only after Bonnie says, I'm going to call the police.

I'm calling Marquette police.

We got to get the police involved so we can find her.

The wife says, No, no, no, no, don't do that.

We'll call the police.

Let us call the police, which is strange.

Yes, because they, I believe they claim

it will be better coming from us.

Yes.

Why?

Who knows?

Now, it would be one thing if it's like, oh, you're looking for your friend.

Yes, call police.

Hey, and we're going to call police as well.

But this idea that it's better if it comes from us.

Wow, you uppity prick.

According to Bonnie.

Her and the couple had a meeting at the house and had a disagreement on what they believed they were seeing at the house.

Bonnie believes that this is a sign of a struggle, that it looked like her friend was trying to get away from someone.

The couple says, no, no, no, no, we think this is easily explainable.

And they said that they thought it would be best to clean up the house.

Again, something that you're not an expert.

One individual is saying, this looks strange to me.

If it doesn't look strange to you and you think you can explain this away, that's fine.

Leave it for law enforcement to look into, you idiot.

A person that wants to find their friend would do that.

Yeah, somebody that's trying to cover something up might want to clean up the scene.

So, unfortunately, clean the scene, they do.

But the police going off of the word of the good friend Bonnie, that's why they're saying we think some foul play was involved here.

But the line has not been drawn to this couple just yet.

As we know, publicly, the police were stating they needed they were talking to Mr.

Windsor, and they still needed to talk to Mr.

South Carolina, and those two are suspects.

But behind the scenes, we learn about this cleaning of the small house.

We learn about another interesting tidbit where Bonnie says that

one of the two pulled a notebook.

So Erin had a book bag that was sitting by the front door.

Now, what was in the book bag?

Was the book bag packed up so she could go on this camping trip on Saturday with Mr.

Windsor?

Right.

Who knows?

Or was it just something she took to and from work?

But regardless, according to Bonnie's story, that one member of the couple pulled out a notebook, kind of thumbed through it and said, oh, there's nothing here,

and put it back or appeared to put it back in the book bag.

And later, when Bonnie was at the home of her friend with law enforcement, now the home's all cleaned up.

And she said, all of a sudden, magically, that notebook is gone.

Yeah, and think about that for a second.

So you don't know this couple and you go and they

make this odd statement of, oh, well, we'll call police.

It'll look better coming from us.

Well, that's strange.

Now we're at the house and we're disagreeing on what we're seeing.

They take it upon themselves to clean it up.

And then you see this individual thumbing through a notebook.

Okay, law enforcement gets there.

Here's the book bag.

Hey, law enforcement, what do you think?

Did you find anything in the notebook?

What notebook?

Then in September, we are getting different information from police with another request for help.

So,

this is potential witness sought by police is the headline, and it states in part: Marquette police are seeking what they describe as potential witnesses, plural, in connection to the death of Aaron Taylor of Marquette.

What they're saying is that

the area, the spot where the body was later located,

the request is Marquette.

Detectives are looking for an adult male and female who were parked in a blue or light blue four-wheel drive vehicle near where Taylor's body was found around noon on August 12th.

Which is the Saturday.

The Saturday, that's correct.

Stating publicly they are potential witnesses.

They were definitely pulled off on the side of the road.

They were seen by passing motorists.

Gotcha.

Yep, four-wheel drive vehicle, blue or light blue four-wheel drive vehicle.

Now,

they're calling them witnesses.

Very smart.

You're hoping that they come forward and start talking to you.

I don't know what conversations this couple and the police were having behind the scenes, but what we do know that is up front and center a few days later is they start referring to these people less as as witnesses and more as suspects.

And this is because

they really did their due diligence here, Captain.

They went through and they tracked the possible routes that one would take from Aaron's home out to where the body was found.

Now, we wouldn't learn this in 2000.

We would learn this many, many years later because police over the years had a lot of holdback information and a lot of stuff that they were keeping to themselves.

Later, years later, they would tell us that their theory is that Erin Taylor, unfortunately, was killed inside her home and then transported to where she was eventually found.

So they go through and they find all the possible routes and then they go and they start checking with all of the businesses.

This is 2000, right?

So it's not 1960.

They get some evidence, videotape evidence of a vehicle matching that description that is seen on camera, which would be the route from Aaron's home out to where her body was found.

Right.

In the window of time that's in question.

By the way, these two people who police know who they are because Bonnie knows who they are, they're acting suspiciously.

They own a vehicle that looks a lot like that.

It's a man and a woman who were seen in a vehicle very similar on the side of the road around the time that the body could have been placed there.

This is going to lead to a search warrant.

They're able to get a search warrant, and so they are going to be looking at a property that is owned by this couple.

They serve search warrants on two houses, a vehicle, and a 10-acre parcel with a garage.

But

it doesn't have a podcast studio in the garage.

Nor does it have two idiots sitting in that garage just looking at each other, drinking beer, and talking constantly.

Well, we can't confirm that.

Who knows?

We're not for sure, but there is no podcast studio.

Correct.

Correct.

Correct.

That is confirmation of such.

Now, also, there's a religious connection here, right?

The couple is Jehovah's Witness, and Aaron was

Jehovah's Witness, but she wasn't practicing as much, but was getting back into it.

That's correct.

And

that is the connection between victim and now two people that are being publicly labeled as suspects.

I want to give a quick shout out here to

so this is obviously a Michigan case, but there's a great podcast.

We've referenced them before, the Already Gone podcast with Nina Instead.

She does a fantastic job and

really is

very great at all of these Michigan cases, especially the cold ones, especially the unsolved ones.

And one thing that was revealed on her show, I couldn't find it anywhere else, but Nina does such great work that I'm on board with what what she's saying here regarding the searches it was stated on her show that they found a all of the newspaper clippings of the death now now keep in mind if let's pretend for a moment let's forget about them being suspects in the eyes of the police right it it might not be completely weird or strange that if hey if we're friends and my friend was killed yes i'm i'm cutting out the newspaper articles or i'm saving them right they also found some some photos of Aaron that she had given them

during their friendship, some notes that she had written them during their friendship.

But a lot of what they are telling police, they don't look to be overly cooperative.

They are finding these items at the home.

Beyond that, anything of evidentiary value to Aaron's case has never been mentioned before.

Well, they don't have alibis other than each other.

They don't have an an alibi.

So these two individuals look suspicious.

The thing that makes me think they look very suspicious is the eyewitness that can place two individuals, male and female, plus this vehicle that matches the vehicle that they have.

My problem with this

couple being suspects is

what's their motive?

And we know what their tie is as far as friendship goes, but

we don't have anybody saying that there was a fair going on or anything weird like that.

So this case is cold.

And I think probably what happened with law enforcement is they took this case very serious.

They did their due diligence.

They went, made these searches.

Yes, some of the items are strange,

but but you can explain those away.

My question then would be, did they offer to give them a polygraph test?

And I just just, I don't think they found enough evidence, but

and that becomes a problem because, one,

you got a crime scene.

The crime scene would be her house and the dumping ground.

But during this search, you would think that they would have found something as far as evidence in their vehicle.

Yes, you would have hoped that they would have found something.

But keep in mind,

they are at an advantage because they, in a way, are steering some of the ship.

They clean the apartment, sorry, they clean the house, and they may have stolen a notebook that may have had incriminating evidence in it as well.

They had time on their side while police were looking at Mr.

Windsor and Mr.

South Carolina and really and had no

they had a missing persons case, not a homicide case for nine days.

In that time, this couple, now referred to as suspects,

had nine days to start cleaning things up and hiding evidence and getting rid of evidence and distancing themselves from both of those crime scenes.

And also being able to control their emotions because of that time frame

or that time period that elapsed, you can get under control.

So maybe you don't break under questioning.

And I'm with you.

I'm always looking for motive.

We have said it on the show show plenty of times, though, in certain cases, that motive is something that is very hard to determine in some cases.

Does Aaron's friend have any thought on?

I'm sure she's got a lot of thoughts on possible motive.

What they are, I do not know.

But I will say this.

When you take a case to court, you don't have to prove motive.

Right.

That's not why you are there.

You are presenting evidence to

prove guilt.

But the problem is the evidence that we see, I don't think there's enough to bring charges against them.

No, because

that notebook, who's to say it ever existed other than Bonnie?

Right.

The videotape, the picture, the image of this vehicle that looks like theirs traveling the route in the time in question from Aaron's home to where the body was found.

Well,

that's just a piece, a tiny little piece of the evidence, but they can't look at that footage and say, okay, the two people in there, we can identify who those two people absolutely are.

They can't.

The witness that's seen them near the location where Aaron is eventually found can't ID them other than I saw a man and a woman, and here's what the vehicle looked like.

So police, unfortunately, are on record stating.

The same thing that the captain was stating, that this

they're not so happy to call it a cold case, and I don't blame them.

As we've seen and talked about today, they did everything they could do to try to figure out who is responsible for ending this young woman's life.

But they've stated publicly that they have suspects.

And I like that they say suspects because that's an easy way for the rest of us to go.

They never moved off of these two.

No.

Never moved off of these two.

We have suspects.

We just don't have the evidence yet to take anybody to trial.

And when one of them has passed away, the man has passed away.

See, I would think that if there was two that were still alive and that lived for a long time, that maybe one of them would confess or say something odd to somebody.

But when one of them has passed away, now you only have one gatekeeper of the truth.

Anybody with any information at all regarding the still unsolved murder of aaron taylor is asked to call the marquette police department and their number is 906-228-0400

Want to thank everybody for joining us here in the garage each and every week.

Make sure you go to truecrimegarage.com and sign up on the mailing list.

And until next week, be good, be kind, and don't litter.

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