Saturday, October 22nd, 1988.
It's just after 10:00 AM in Little Rock, Arkansas, when police receive a panicked call from a woman named Esther Watts.
Esther says she was helping out her neighbors, Deborah and Roy Taylor, when she made an alarming discovery.
They had keys to each other's houses.
Um, Deborah was out of town, uh, in Texarkana with her brother.
Uh, she calls, uh, Ms. Watts and ask her to go over and check and see if she'd left the iron pressing machine on.
When she went over there to, to check the presser, she saw Roy laying on the, on the floor.
Neighbor sees he's unconscious, doesn't know whether he's dead or not, calls the fire department 'cause she didn't know what else to do, and then they called the police.
North Little Rock police patrolmen came to the house, and went in and saw that Mr. Taylor was obviously deceased.
It was very clear that from the initial examination that he had been shot multiple times.
The fact that the neighbor didn't initially notice the blood, I think is probably attributable to the shock.
At this point, he backs out of the home and of course calls it in as homicide.
He was in the National Guard, and that weekend he was getting ready to go to drill.
He had his fatigues, his boots with him.
Those were near the body.
He was dressed in underwear and a T-shirt.
Based on the examination of the body at the scene, it was determined that Roy Taylor had died earlier in the morning of October 22nd, or the very late evening of October 21st.
They did find three projectiles on the floor.
They appeared to be a .38 Special.
The lack of shell casings informs police what type of gun was likely used.
A revolver, once the projectile leaves, the casing stays in the gun, unlike a semi-automatic gun, which ejects the casings.
We didn't have a gun at the crime scene, so they searched the remaining portion of the house.
At the garage door, one major clue stands out to detectives.
It appeared to have been forced open.
There was some of the casing or molding was cracked and broken, and the, uh, lock was in a locked position.
Saturday, October 22nd, 1988.
It's just after 10:00 AM in Little Rock, Arkansas, when police receive a panicked call from a woman named Esther Watts.
Esther says she was helping out her neighbors, Deborah and Roy Taylor, when she made an alarming discovery.
They had keys to each other's houses.
Um, Deborah was out of town, uh, in Texarkana with her brother.
Uh, she calls, uh, Ms. Watts and ask her to go over and check and see if she'd left the iron pressing machine on.
When she went over there to, to check the presser, she saw Roy laying on the, on the floor.
Neighbor sees he's unconscious, doesn't know whether he's dead or not, calls the fire department 'cause she didn't know what else to do, and then they called the police.
North Little Rock police patrolmen came to the house, and went in and saw that Mr. Taylor was obviously deceased.
It was very clear that from the initial examination that he had been shot multiple times.
The fact that the neighbor didn't initially notice the blood, I think is probably attributable to the shock.
At this point, he backs out of the home and of course calls it in as homicide.
He was in the National Guard, and that weekend he was getting ready to go to drill.
He had his fatigues, his boots with him.
Those were near the body.
He was dressed in underwear and a T-shirt.
Based on the examination of the body at the scene, it was determined that Roy Taylor had died earlier in the morning of October 22nd, or the very late evening of October 21st.
They did find three projectiles on the floor.
They appeared to be a .38 Special.
The lack of shell casings informs police what type of gun was likely used.
A revolver, once the projectile leaves, the casing stays in the gun, unlike a semi-automatic gun, which ejects the casings.
We didn't have a gun at the crime scene, so they searched the remaining portion of the house.
At the garage door, one major clue stands out to detectives.
It appeared to have been forced open.
There was some of the casing or molding was cracked and broken, and the, uh, lock was in a locked position.
Every episode on Radar is fully transcribed, speaker-labeled, and rich with metadata. Here is a taste of this one. Try Radar for free to see the rest.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
All 10 segments — the transcript broken into labeled sections, every ad read marked
All 25 topics — jump to every other episode discussing the same subject
Every related episode — other shows Radar links to this one
No account is needed to search Radar.