Another ruse was Taylor’s dog walking habit. To the people of Bramley, he was a responsible pet owner, providing exercise to his beloved pooches. But to John Taylor, those walks were scouting expeditions. He was looking for lone females, foolish enough to wander alone into one of the many remote areas that surrounded his home. On November 26, 2000, he found one.
Leanne Tiernan was just 16 years old on that chilly Sunday evening. A high school senior, she’d spent the day at a local mall getting in some early Christmas shopping with a friend, Sarah Whitehouse. The girls had shared a bus ride back to Bramley and had parted outside Sarah’s house. By then it was already dark and Sarah had asked if she should ask her mom to drive Leanne the rest of the way. Leanne had declined the offer. It was just a short walk, she’d said, and she’d make up time by taking a shortcut along Houghley Gill. That last revelation had bothered Sarah somewhat. Houghley Gill was an unlit path that ran through a heavily wooded park. But before she could protest, Leanne was already walking away.
Sharon Hawkhead had expected her daughter home by no later than 5:30. When Leanne hadn’t shown by that time, she assumed that she must have stopped off for a while at Sarah’s house. Sharon could understand that. She’d been young once. But as the minutes continued to tick away, she began to feel more and more anxious. Eventually, she went outside and stood on the sidewalk, looking down the road, hoping to see her daughter approaching. At 6:30 she gave in to her anxiety and phoned Sarah, only to receive the startling news that Leanne had left for home over an hour earlier. Sharon’s next call was to the police.
A search was launched that night, a search that morphed over the following days into the largest ever conducted in West Yorkshire. When simple mass of numbers on the ground failed to produce a result, Detective Superintendent Chris Gregg of the West Yorkshire Police tried a different tack. He staged a reconstruction of the walk Leanne would have made, with Leanne’s 19-year-old sister, Michelle, standing in for the missing girl. The video was then screened on every local network in the hope that it might jog someone’s memory. But although one witness came forward to report hearing a scream on the evening that Leanne disappeared, there were no tangible leads. One person of course, did know where Leanne was. But John Taylor was keeping that information to himself.
Over the weeks that followed, the search continued and even intensified, with hundreds of police officers involved, assisted by canine units. Officers conducted house to house inquiries; they searched woodland, canals, drainage shafts and wells. They even brought in divers and a helicopter. Nothing. Leanne Tiernan seemed to have fallen off the edge of the earth. Eventually, the search was scaled back, then abandoned entirely. It appeared that Leanne would never be found.
On Monday, August 20, 2001, a man was walking his dog in Lindley Woods, near the town of Otley, when he made a horrific discovery. A body lay in a hastily dug grave, only partially covered and imperfectly wrapped in a floral duvet cover. The dog walker went immediately for the police.
The site of the gruesome discovery was some 16 miles from the area where Leanne had disappeared eight months earlier, but the investigating officers knew instinctively that it was her. And so it proved. Inside the duvet cover, Leanne’s body had been wrapped in green garbage bags and secured with string. A black garbage bag was pulled over her head and held in place by a dog collar, which was drawn tightly around her neck. Her hands were bound together with cable ties and there was a scarf pulled tightly around her neck.
With the discovery of the body, the Tiernan inquiry immediately gained new impetus. An elderly couple came forward to report that they had seen a man carrying a heavy bundle into the woods days earlier. It was wrapped, they said, in a floral duvet cover. That piece of information tied in with the postmortem results which suggested that the degree of decomposition was not compatible with a corpse eight months dead. That seemed to indicate that Leanne’s remains had been somehow preserved, perhaps refrigerated. It also gave investigators hope that forensic evidence might still be retrievable.
On September 28, 2001, a day short of what would have been her 17th birthday, Leanne Tiernan’s grieving parents were finally able to lay their daughter to rest. The investigation into her death meanwhile, was gaining momentum. Hairs, both canine and human, had been found on the corpse and both had been sent for analysis, the latter providing a DNA profile that would form a basis for comparison should a suspect be arrested.
And the police were rapidly closing in on that suspect. John Taylor was first mentioned as a person of interest when it was learned that he regularly hunted in Lindley Woods, where Leanne’s body had been found. Investigators had also been working on another potential lead, the dog collar that had been fastened around Leanne's neck. More than 100 pet shops and pet supply companies were contacted before detectives tracked down the distributor of that particular collar. The company supplied most of its goods via mail order and kept computerized records of its customers. One name on the list stood out - John Taylor.
Taylor was taken into custody on October 16 and brought to Leeds for questioning. In the meantime, a forensic team descended on his home and soon uncovered a wealth of evidence. First, there were pink carpet fibers, left behind in one of the rooms after Taylor had apparently ripped up the carpet. It was soon clear why he’d done so. The fibers matched those found on Leanne’s body. Then there were cable ties which matched those used to bind Leanne’s hands. These, as it turned out, were from a particular batch, made only for Taylor’s employer, Parcel Force. Then there were blood droplets, which would later be DNA matched to Leanne. Finally, there was the corpse of a small dog found buried in the garden with its skull shattered. This was the dog Taylor had been walking on the night Leanne disappeared. After reports began circulating of a man walking a dog in the same area, Taylor had apparently killed the unfortunate pooch, to prevent it being linked to him.
Piecing the evidence together, investigators reckoned that Taylor had been lurking around the area, looking for a potential victim, when he saw Leanne make the turn onto Houghley Gill. He’d followed along the unlit path, grabbed the unwary girl from behind and quickly subdued her. Then he’d gagged her and forced her back along the path, onto the road, and to his nearby house. There, Leanne had been subjected to an ordeal of sexual assault before he’d eventually strangled her to death. The body had then been stored in a freezer in Taylor’s home until he thought that it was safe to dispose of it. Or perhaps he’d kept it as a trophy. Such an act would not be unprecedented.
John Taylor was brought to trial at the Leeds Crown Court in June 2002. There, he told a far-fetched tale in which he admitted abducting Leanne but denied deliberately killing her. According to his bizarre version of events, Leanne had fallen off a bed at his house and banged her head, rendering her unconscious. Believing that she was dead, he had wrapped a scarf around her neck and used it to lift her from the floor. It was while doing so, he reasoned, that he must have accidentally strangled her. He’d then panicked and taken the body to Lindley Woods, where he’d buried it.
Unfortunately for Taylor, this unlikely sequence of events did not tally with the evidence. It was clear from the rate of decomposition that the corpse had been kept in deep freeze for some time and that Taylor had only buried it once he thought that the furor over the murder had died down. But he’d done such a shoddy job of disposal that the body had been discovered within days. Had he taken greater care, he might well have gotten away with murder.
As it was, even a deluded fantasist like John Taylor must have realized that the forensics in the case pointed the finger of guilt undisputedly at him. On July 8, Taylor’s defense attorney informed the court that his client wished to change his plea to guilty. The resulting sentence was 20 years to life, meaning that Taylor would have to serve 20 years before becoming eligible for parole. The expectation was that he’d spend the rest of his days behind bars.
West Yorkshire police, however, were determined to remove any possibility of early release
from the equation. Given the efficiency with which Taylor had abducted and murdered Leanne Tiernan, they were convinced that she had not been his first victim. An investigative team was therefore assigned to examine other unsolved sexual assaults in the area. It wasn’t long before that began to uncover some they matched the M.O.
On October 18, 1988, a 32-year-old woman was crossing Houghley Gill when she was accosted by a masked man, wielding a knife. He forced her to perform oral sex on him, then raped her before fleeing.
On March 1, 1989, a masked man broke into a home in Bramley where a 21-year-old woman was attending to her baby. Threatening violence to the child if she resisted, he forced the woman to undress, then instructed her to perform a sex act on him. He then bound and gagged her and then raped her.
Taylor was now linked via DNA to both of these rapes. He pleaded guilty to the charges, earning an additional 30 years in prison.
But even that might not be the full extent of Taylor’s criminal career. The police believe that he may have been involved in four more murders, those of Lindsey Jo Rimer, Deborah Wood, Rebecca Hall, and Yvonne Fitt. Fitt, in particular, matches the profile. Her body was interred in a shallow grave, just a few yards from where Leanne Tiernan was found.
The Barbecue Murders
Jim and Naomi Olive were a golden couple, she a one-time beauty queen, he a senior executive in the oil industry who was tipped for the very top. The couple lived an opulent lifestyle in Norfolk, Virginia, but if there was one thing missing from their lives it was a child. After receiving the devastating news that Naomi was unable to conceive, they decided to adopt. In 1959, they brought home a newborn baby girl who’d been given up at birth by her unwed mother. They named her Marlene and it wasn’t long before she was the center of their universe.
In 1962, Jim Olive accepted a job with Gulf Oil and moved his family to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Here the Olives enjoyed an even grander lifestyle, with a large villa and an army of servants. Marlene had grown to be a delightful toddler who had developed a close bond with her adoptive father. Her relationship with Naomi, though, was less congenial. Left alone for long periods of time due to her husband’s demanding work hours, Naomi Olive had taken to the bottle and was already showing the first signs of the mental illness that would plague her for the rest of her life. When she was drunk (which was often) she’d take out her frustrations on her daughter, screaming at her and taunting her about her real mother, who Naomi claimed had been a prostitute. This abuse continued as Marlene aged and eventually started arguing back. The relationship became increasingly fractious, mother and daughter were often at each other’s throats, with Jim having to step in and separate them.
Then, in 1973, Jim lost his job with Gulf Oil and announced to his family that they were moving back to the United States. To Marlene, now 13, it was a disaster. She’d spent most of her life in Ecuador and loved it there. She desperately wanted to stay. Everything she’d heard about the lifestyles of teens in the United States was negative. She was particularly concerned about the drug culture, fearful that she’d be sucked into it. She said as much to her father. He laughed it off. Marlene was a good girl who did well in school. He had no reason to believe that it would be any different when they returned home.
And so, in 1973, Jim Olive moved his family to affluent Marin County, California. He no longer had a fat corporate salary to rely on but to a go-getter like Jim that was a minor, and temporary, problem. He quickly acquired a partner and set up a business that offered consulting services. That of course, took up a serious chunk of his time. Perhaps that is why he appears to have been blissfully unaware of the deepening resentment between Naomi and Marlene.
And that resentment had now progressed to a point of no return with taunts and insults openly traded and altercations sometimes becoming physical. As a result, Marlene began spending more and more time away from the home. Inevitably, she fell in with a bad crowd, a group of teenaged girls known for their drug-taking and promiscuity. Soon the once-shy 14-year-old was experimenting with marijuana, cocaine and LSD, engaging in sex and skipping school to travel to rock concerts. She also developed an interest in the occult and would boast to friends that she was a member of the Church of Satan. That wasn’t the only story she made up. She boasted that she had appeared in a child porn movie while living in South America, and said that her father was an important man in the Ecuadorian drug trade. And her mode of dress had changed too. She dressed, quite frankly, like a streetwalker, her platform shoes and ultra-short skirts augmented by multi-colored hair and tons of make-up. At school, she gained a reputation for being “easy.” The fears she’d expressed to her father about leaving Ecuador appeared to have been a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Many kids of course, rebel during their teens, and some even go as far off the rails as Marlene Olive before self-correcting as they gain maturity. Marlene, an intelligent girl, might well have come to a similar realization as she matured. But in October 1974, an event occurred that would spin Marlene’s life off in an entirely different direction. That was the month that she met 19-year-old Chuck Riley.
Chuck was your typical teenaged loser, a pudgy high school dropout who’d never had a girlfriend and was, in fact, still a virgin when he met Marlene. No one in her circle would have paid him the slightest bit of attention except for one thing. Chuck was a drug dealer who drew his clientele mainly from the local teens. That was how he met Marlene and after that first meeting came to the conclusion that he was madly in love with her.
Marlene, at first, spurned Chuck’s clumsy advances. He was overweight and awkward and despite having some street cred as a drug dealer, he was considered a joke by most of the “cool” kids that she hung out with. But eventually, after several months, his persistence wore her down and she agreed to go out with him. Maybe it was the free drugs he gave her access to, or perhaps it was the expensive gifts he showered her with. Whatever the case, she must have soon realized that Chuck was a blank canvas, someone that she could manipulate to her will. Shortly after she allowed him to have sex with her, the 15-year-old Marlene began pushing the sexually naïve Chuck to more and more extreme limits. Once she ordered him to take explicit photos of her which she said she was going to send to Penthouse magazine; then she made him don a leather mask and other S&M gear and whip her; on another occasion, she masturbated herself with a loaded .22 pistol that he owned; taking things even further, she once urinated on his face while several of her friends stood watching. If Chuck ever wavered, she reminded him that she’d cast a witchcraft spell on him which made him her slave. Apparently he believed her.
Chuck’s relationship with Marlene had a distinct impact on his personality. Whereas before he’d been a jovial loser, eager to please and the butt of all jokes, he now was more assertive, less cordial, not as accommodating. He lost weight and began dressing more fashionably, he started carrying a gun around. To Marlene’s parents though, he was just the kind of positive influence she needed in her life. Around them, he was always polite and respectful. Jim and Naomi happily gave their blessing to the relationship. Little did they know that their daughter had already begun nagging her boyfriend to murder them.
By now, Marlene’s relationship with Naomi had devolved into all-out warfare. And the close bond she’d once enjoyed with Jim had also deteriorated. She blamed him for not backing her up in her fights against Naomi. Things finally came to a head in March 1975, when Chuck and Marlene were arrested for shoplifting. No charges were brought but Jim Olive had finally had enough. He told Marlene that he was going to send her away to school and forbade her from seeing Chuck again. She of course, disobeyed him and continued meeting with Chuck in secret. During those meetings, she told him that he was going to lose her if he did not do something soon. She encouraged him to find a hitman to get rid of her parents, adding that he could take over Jim’s supposed South American drug empire once he was gone. She also issued her usual threats. If Chuck did not get rid of her parents she was going to break up with hi
m.
Chuck Riley was placed in an impossible position. He loved Marlene with all his heart and could not imagine his life without her. He’d once attempted suicide when she’d told him that she was ending her relationship with him. Now, he stood to lose her again. On Saturday, June 21, 1975, he decided to act.
Chuck had been doing acid for several days and on the day in question he was so spaced out that he was barely able to walk. Several people saw him that morning, shuffling through the affluent Terra Linda neighborhood on his way to the Olive house. What they would not have seen was the gun tucked into his waistband under his shirt.
Marlene and her father were not at home when Chuck arrived, so he entered through an unlocked door and headed for an upstairs bedroom where Naomi lay asleep in a drunken stupor. On route, Chuck had picked up a hammer that he found on a sideboard and now he lifted it, held it above his head for a brief moment and then brought it down with all his might.
The blow was delivered with such force that the hammerhead actually penetrated Naomi’s skull and became lodged in her brain cavity. Chuck had to press down with his hand on her head in order to wriggle it free. Then he raised it again and brought it down, then again. And still, Naomi wasn’t dead. She lay on the bed with her skull a bloody mess of bone shards, blood and brain matter. An odd gurgling sound issued from her throat. It was then that Chuck heard the sound of a vehicle drawing to a stop outside. Jim and Marlene were back.
Murder Most Vile Volume 12: 18 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Murder Books) Page 9
