A former Idaho police officer has been found guilty in the brutal 2017 beating and stabbing deaths of his parents in their home.
William “Willie” Taylor, 50, was convicted last week of the first-degree murder of his 76-year-old father, Paul Robert Taylor and the second-degree murder of his mother, Mary Jane Taylor, 77.
According to theIdaho Statesman, both victims had “baseball-sized” holes to their head.
Taylor, a former police officer and probation officer, was also convicted of two felony counts of failure to notify police of their deaths.
Taylor was found along with his dog in his father’s silver Dodge pickup truck with stolen license plates at a rest stop in Oregon a day after the murders, according to the affidavit.
Their credit card was also found in his wallet, theStatesmanreports.
William Taylor.Canyon County Jail
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At the time, Taylor admitted to Oregon police that he found his parents dead, “attempted to ‘clean them up’ and at one point tried to ‘roll them up and move them’” the affidavit states. But he denied having anything to do with the slayings.
During his trial, Taylor’s lawyer Ryan Dowell said Taylor “loved his parents. He had no reason to want any harm to come to them,” theIdaho Pressreports.
Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Ellie Somoza told the jury Taylor had recently lost his job, wrecked his vehicle and been arrested for DUI. He had been living with his parents for a year and a half before their deaths, theStatesmanreports.
Somoza told the jury that while Taylor was living under their roof, he wasn’t allowed to drink in their home or have his dog Gator there, and he was angry about those rules, according to theStatesman.
Somoza said that Taylor never called 911. Instead he called his ex-wife, who had been taking care of his dog, to let her know he was picking up his dog to bring it home.
Shortly after the murders, Taylor told his parents’ neighbors and friends that his parents had gone out of town.
“He spent the entire weekend living in his parents’ house with their dead bodies,” Somoza told jurors, the Statesman reports.
Sentencing is scheduled for July 9.
source: people.com
