William Desmond Taylor bungalow (site) (Los Angeles, California)

 house, historical layer / disappeared object, bungalow

William Desmond Taylor was a very popular director for Paramount in the late 1910s and early 1920s. The bungalow court, at 404-414 S. Alvardo St., was where Taylor live when he was murdered the evening of February 1, 1922. Taylor's bungalow was at 404B.

This was one of a series of scandals that plagued Hollywood during the period, which also included the rape trial of comic Roscoe Arbuckle, and the overdoes death of matinee idol Wallace Reid, and the drug scandal of popular comedienne Mable Normand (who was closely tied to Taylor, as a lover).

The Taylor murder was never solved, and the investigation was bungled by Paramount executives who ransacked the bungalow before police arrived, looking for things that might shed him in a negative light. It was also plagued by ineptitude in the police department and corruption prosecutor's office.

Contemporaneous director, King Vidor, conducted his own decades long investigation, the results of which weren't released until after his death and are chronicled in the book "A Cast of Killers" by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick. Vidor interviewed many people, including young actress, Mary Miles Minter, second only to Mary Pickford in popularity at the time, Minter's career was ruined by the scandal, as there was ample evidence that she was Taylor's lover, in spite of being only a teenager. One of the murder suspects was Charlotte Shelby, Mary's mother. Mary confirmed to Vidor, many decades later, that her mother was, in fact, the murderer..

The murder is still an open case with the LAPD.