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Phone Call Helps Crack Case of National Guardsman Murdered at Home: "Who Did This?"
Conspirators said, "You need to buy a black dress," was the code phrase to signify that 41-year-old father Roy Taylor was dead.
An out-of-town killer with a mountain of motives would become the prime suspect when an Arkansas father was found shot to death in his home.
It began on Saturday, October 22, 1988, when Debra Taylor — then visiting her brother in Texarkana, Texas — called her neighbor and asked her to let herself into her Little Rock, Arkansas home, fearing she’d left the iron plugged in. When the neighbor went inside shortly after 10:00 a.m., she found Debra Taylor’s husband, Roy Taylor, 41, dead on the living room floor.
It appeared to detectives that Roy Taylor was getting ready to report for his weekend duties in the National Guard, as his boots and folded fatigues were neatly placed on the couch. Authorities soon determined that Roy sustained three gunshot wounds from a .38 special revolver at close range, possibly when interrupting a burglary. However, nothing of value was taken from the home.
Outside, North Little Rock detectives found the garage door had been locked before someone broke it down.
“It was not a break-in, but a break-out,” defense attorney Mark Cambiano told Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen.
According to prosecutor Lloyd King, investigators determined someone tried to stage the crime scene.
“This is a pretty clear indication that the damage had occurred after Roy’s death by their killer trying to make it look like a forced entry into the home,” said King. “The big question for law enforcement is, ‘Who did this?’”
What to know about Roy and Debra Taylor
Roy Taylor was raised in a tight-knit household in the small Arkansas town of Belleville, about 100 miles northeast of Little Rock. His first of three wives, Brenda Taylor, told Snapped producers that Roy Taylor was a handsome and loving man, but “he just couldn’t stay in one place.”
“I don’t know any other way to put this except that he loved women,” said Brenda Taylor.
Brenda and Roy Taylor divorced in 1973, though the father lived just one mile away and maintained a close relationship with their two children. Roy Taylor would marry and divorce once more before meeting the future Debra Taylor in his late 20s.
Debra Taylor, then 19, worked at a nursing home where Roy Taylor, then 28, visited his aunt, and the pair hit it off right away and married in 1977. Together, they had two sons and later adopted a little girl, creating what King would call “the American dream family.”
The couple ran a successful pool installation business and lived in a nice Little Rock home, living what was described as the picture-perfect life.
“Roy was the guy that did all the work,” King told Snapped. “He’d work out in the field with the homes and servicing, while Debra stayed at the office and was essentially the office manager for the business.”
At the time of Roy Taylor’s death, Debra and the couple’s children were some 150 miles away in Texarkana, Texas, to visit her brother, something the brother later confirmed with authorities. Looking into Roy Taylor’s background, family friends said the victim was “a ladies’ man,” according to King.
“He was screwing around everywhere.” said the prosecutor. “He installed more than pools.”
North Little Rock police interviewed one of Roy Taylor’s paramours, who was then engaged to marry another man. Both the girlfriend and her fiancé, however, had alibis around the time Roy Taylor was shot to death in his home.
However, red flags were raised when investigators sifted through the married couple’s finances. Roy Taylor had a life insurance policy worth $200,000, plus another $50,000 policy with the National Guard. Just months before the homicide, he increased the policy by another $300,000, according to Cambiano.
Suspicions grew when loved ones made a note of Debra Taylor attending her husband’s funeral with family friend Henry Price, and it seemed to some that they were more than just friends.
“People indicated that Debra did not appear to be a grieving widow to any degree,” King told Snapped.
Who is Henry Price?
Henry Price was a years-long friend to the Taylors, and according to his ex-wife, Sherry Price Landreth, he earned extra cash by working on pool motors for the married couple’s business. Sherry Price Landreth referred to Roy Taylor as “very nice [and] kind,” but said Debra Taylor was “sneaky” and “conniving.”
Sherry Price Landreth told Snapped that she learned on Oct. 1, 1988, just weeks before the murder, that her husband and Debra Taylor were having an affair.
“I heard her on the phone. She called and said, ‘The coast was clear,’ and he was supposed to go over to her house,” Sherry Price Landreth told Snapped. “I asked him to make a choice between me and the children or her. And he chose her and left.”
Following Roy Taylor’s funeral, police surveilled the lovers and photographed them at a La Quinta Inn in what appeared to be a romantic rendezvous.
King said there were “numerous calls” between Debra Taylor and Henry Price in the days leading up to the murder. But there was one “very short” call placed from the Taylor home on the morning of Roy Taylor’s death to Debra Taylor’s brother’s Texarkana home.
This placed Debra Taylor and Henry Price at the top of detectives’ suspect list.
Investigators solve the murder of Roy Taylor
Henry Price sat with police and confessed to fatally shooting Roy Taylor once confronted with the motel photographs. He said he killed his former employer because Debra Taylor alleged he was physically abusing her.
“She also had Henry believing that Roy had found out about them and Roy was out to kill him,” former Jacksonville Chief of Police Gary Sipes told Snapped.
Price said he and Debra Taylor hatched a plan to kill Roy Taylor. He admitted that after Debra Taylor took the kids to Texarkana, he parked behind the Little Rock home, used a key to gain entry through the back door, and shot the victim to death as he got ready to leave for the National Guard.
He also admitted to using the house phone to call Debra Taylor in Texas.
“On a prearranged plan with Debra, he calls her at her brother’s house, and the code to let her know that Roy was dead was, ‘You need to buy a black dress,’” said King. “That was his way of letting Debra know that he had killed Roy.”
Price told authorities that he disassembled the gun — which he’d stolen from his brother — and threw it away in the Arkansas River.
Eventually, both Henry Price and Debra Taylor were arrested on charges of capital murder. Although the case was largely circumstantial, prosecutors believed they could prove that Debra Taylor had enough motive to want her husband dead.
“I think she knew Roy was screwing around on her and that she was not happy,” said King. “And that in order to leave Roy, keep the children, and have a comfortable way of life, she needed the insurance policies; she needed a house; and she needed the proceeds of the pool company.”
Prosecutors like King painted Price as a “naïve” and “socially awkward” character who fell for Debra Taylor’s web of deceit. As part of a plea deal that would have him sentenced to 40 years behind bars, Price agreed to testify against the widow.
In the end, Debra Taylor was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“I did absolutely adore him,” Brenda Taylor said of her late ex-husband. “I think about the way he left here, and I don’t care what kind of man you are, nobody deserves to die the way he did.”
Debra Taylor is serving her life sentence at the McPherson Women’s Unit at the Arkansas Department of Corrections.
Henry Price was paroled in 2000 after serving 12 years of his 40-year sentence.
Watch all-new episodes of Snapped, airing Sundays at 6/5c on Oxygen.
