East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current, 1922-02-17
Noted Writer Finds Both Men
Had Women Admirers; As
sassin' Fury Tempted.
BY MARGERY REX,
!. international News Service Stnff
Corraenoadant

International NeTs Service Stnff.
Correspondent.
NEW YORK, Feb. 17.-It is easy
for the enemy of a man who lives Sc
cretly to murder him unseen.
In mysterious manner two men
who ate the secret bread of pleasure
and drank sweet stolen waters have
died by the fury of assassins still un-
known.
The career of William Desmond
Taylor. slain movie director. in life
and death paralleled that Of "Jim" Ell
well. so strangely shot down in his
New York home two years ago.
Each lived alone. and alone each
was attacked. From both Taylor and
lE1well, in their last moments. some
one fled.
Men who shun daylight are apt to
make themselves tempting targets for
marksmen in the dark.
Taylor's leave-taking of life was just
as mysterious as his inexplicable de-
Iparture in 1908 from his wife and
child and just as u~naccountable as his
change of name, for the dead man wa
known originally as William Cunning
ham Deane-Tanner.
Who Was Slayer?
Who could have arranged Taylor's
clandestine rendezvous with death?
Suspicion goes over the list of pos
sibilities. There is. for Nuisance. Ed
ward F. Sands, the dead mans valet
III nh rohhal hfa ~ 90 ~ ~ xfhA,, nnr
of the feminine stars says. Taylor vow.
ed to kill at sight. And there are the
linen who are interested in the womer
Taylor knew.
II Will one of the brilliant stars of that
glamorous world, whose little suns are
Cooper -Hewitts, shoot down to earth
and be obliterated in the tragedy?
Like his prototype Elwell. Taylor
was accorded by the opposite sex, bu'
cared for non constantly. In fact, i
is said he was Indifferent to live. II
teresting, travelled, well read, a bril-
liant talker and a discreet confidant
Taylor held the friendship of man,
women. Whether or not his relations
with them were sentimental cannot bt
determined at this time.
But why did he disappear in 100;
from a beautiful wife and daughter
from a host of friends and a gay so
clal circle?
Rover by Nature.
Rover by nature, William Deane
Tanner came to New York from Dub
lin in the late nineties. Movies wer,
unheard of then, and the young Irish
man did not dream of the magic Ian
tern which would create a life o
splendor for him and for thousands o
others.
He was interested in antiques ant
objects of art. He entered into tina
bushes smear Thirtieth street ant
Fifth avenue at q period when thii
neighborhood held many small shop
with fascinating wares when the Hol
land House was flourishing and flint
old homes and old fashioned apart
ment houses had not been superseded
by business.
"Florodora'' was then in her frs
filing. Among the pretty girls of that
first cast was Ethel May Harrison
They met and married in 1901.
Clubs, racetrack, treatres and gay
parties drew this restless individual
who because Of his addition to a life
of pleasure did not cause serious wor-
ry to his family when he disappeared
in 1908 for what his friends thought
would be a short time.
Waved Good Inv tn Wife.
At the Vanderbilt Cup Race that
year Taylor waved good-by to his wife
later sent to their apartment in the
Colonial Hote flor his clothes but re-
NAMED unheard from Until the movies
began to flash faces around the world.
In this way his friends knew that Tay-