MJ Taylor: Oh, yes.
I was completely in the dark until I saw the death announcement in the Mercury News on Sunday. I’m one of the few people on the planet who still gets a newspaper delivered in the morning, one of the few who still enjoys turning the physical pages over coffee. I don’t usually read the death notices (I’m not that old, not yet) but I tend to flip through the various sections methodically. And a particularly large obit caught my eye. The photo alone was a quarter of a page. Then I saw the name. John Taylor.
I hadn’t known before then, how could I? John had called me Thursday morning, said he had to make one of his trips down to UCLA, there was an emergency case. He suggested I might want to visit friends in Oregon, I’d been talking about doing that for a while. But I decided I’d stay home, catch up with the house, work in the garden.
Samantha Adams: Did John often take off like that?
MJ Taylor: Of course, he had his hospital duties. Trips to conferences. His academic appointment down at UCLA. Nothing that struck me as unusual given the professional commitments of a man of his stature. Of course, now I feel like a fool. Bluebeard’s wife, finding the bloody chamber only after her vile husband has been apprehended.
Samantha Adams: So you hadn’t seen him for three days when you read the obituary?
MJ Taylor: Right. For two days he’d been dead, and I didn’t know, hadn’t felt it. I should have known; I have certain gifts in that direction, I could tell you stories. But no. I had thought it odd John didn’t call, didn’t return my calls to his cell phone since Friday. That was unusual. But not completely unprecedented, either. He was a bit of a free spirit, John. It was one of the things I loved about him.
Samantha Adams: What was your reaction when you read the obituary?
MJ Taylor: My first thought was, what a good-looking man! The handsomeness of the man in the photo caught my eye, not the fact that it was John. A young man sitting at a piano, his fine fingers poised to play what you knew from his smiling face would be a happy song. I remember thinking, how sad, this attractive man dead, then I saw the name, went back to the photo, and recognized John.
Samantha Adams: And that was how you found out about Deborah?
MJ Taylor: Yes. A beloved wife. Of course, they have to say that, but it still hit me, hard. And three grown children! I thought of John’s lack of warmth (hostility even) to my boys, which I attributed to his never having had a child himself. How wrong I was. My life blew up, then, sitting at my kitchen table. Just shattered.
10
Excerpt from Transcript
Police interview conducted
by telephone with Helen Richter,
May 19, 2013
[Preliminary introductions, explanations of processes and procedures]
Samantha Adams: Can you hear me okay? Sometimes our phone connections at the station house aren’t so great.
Helen Richter: Yes, I can hear you fine. Can you hear me?
Samantha Adams: Yes. And I’m supposed to inform you that I will be taping this telephone conversation. Is that all right?
Helen Richter: No problem.
Samantha Adams: Okay. I don’t want to take up more of your busy day than necessary, so let’s just jump into it. I guess my first question is how did John Taylor get away with it? I mean, having three wives? How could you not have suspected something?
Helen Richter: Isn’t that the question. The question everyone wants answered. How did he get away with it? [pause] It’s the elephant in the room at work. Some people manage to restrain themselves from asking. Most don’t. They seem to forget you’re one of the “its” being referred to. Meaning wives. And people have an almost clinical curiosity about the logistics. I suppose I can’t blame them. What did he tell you when he went away for long periods of time? Did he keep separate credit cards, bank accounts for each wife? Did he ever show up wearing something you didn’t recognize, or smelling of a strange scent? You wouldn’t believe the things people you barely know will come straight out and ask.
Samantha Adams: So, did he do any of those things? You have to admit, they’re the kinds of questions that immediately spring to mind.
Helen Richter: I still don’t know the answers myself; he did such a masterful job. Not of coming up with clever responses so much as erecting a kind of force field against them ever getting asked.
Samantha Adams: It must be hard.
Helen Richter: [pause] It is. [pause] You know, if your husband has an affair with another woman, you get a certain amount of sympathy. You see, there’s an acceptable social protocol for consoling the wives of middle-aged men who wander. But if your husband has another wife . . . well, we don’t exactly have a boilerplate for that. And people are lost without their boilerplate. They mostly lose control of their mouths. Ask a lot of stupid questions. And the most stinging of all is, How could you not have known?