Springfield, Ohio, is about 25 miles northeast of Dayton in Clark County. Today, it’s a moderate-sized city with about 136,000 in population. But in the 1960s, it was smaller, closer to 60,000. Still, there were several murders in and around Springfield at that time. One of them was the brutal murder of a young mother and the beating of her 18-month-old son.
Who was Anita Taylor?
Those who knew Anita described her as beautiful and sweet. She was an attractive young woman who looked like a young Debra Messing. Born Anita Eileen Huffenberger on November 25, 1945, in Springfield, Ohio, to Marshall and Emma Huffenberger, Anita met William Larry Taylor when he moved to nearby South Charleston in 1962. He and Anita attended the same high school and soon began dating.
The couple graduated from Southeastern High School in 1963 and married the following year. In 1965, Anita gave birth to a son, Aaron Lee Taylor. The happy family rented a small 756-square-foot, two-bedroom, one-bath home at 415 Ludlow Avenue in Springfield.
Neighbors described the Taylors as a “nice family – a youthful, happy, on-the-go couple.” (Springfield News-Sun, October 30, 1966).
Anita dreamed of buying a home, but she and her husband needed more money.
She applied at Springfield Public Finance, along with 9 or so other women, some of which she knew from high school. She was definitely not the most qualified person for the position. There were other girls there with considerably more experience than she, and although severely overshadowed by the other applicants’ resumes, she was given the job. She was very happy to have acquired the work but couldn’t understand how she was selected over much more qualified candidates. The person that hired her, Mr. Elsworth Miller, would be her supervisor. Rumor has it that shortly after mom started with Springfield Finance, she noticed that her supervisor would follow her home each night to ‘make sure she got home O.K..’ She had mentioned this behavior to her mother on a number of occasions. –Aaron Taylor
Anita was in her second week of working at the company when the unthinkable happened.
The Murder of Anita Taylor
Anita, 20, returned home from work on October 28, 1966, and began doing laundry with her baby boy by her side. It was a routine night at home for the young wife and her baby. Larry, 21, had left home at 4 p.m. to go to his second-shift job at Robbins & Myers, Inc., a local industrial plant. Emma, Anita’s mother, arrived for a quick visit and left at 7 p.m.
Larry carpooled to work that night with Morton Smith and Eddie Bartley. At 1:50 a.m., Morton dropped Larry off. Anita always kept the doors locked while her husband worked. There were two front entrance doors. One led to the living room and the other to Larry and Anita’s bedroom. Larry first knocked on the living room storm door, but Anita never answered. He could hear the television on in the living room and thought he could hear moaning inside the bedroom. He forced open the outside bedroom door and went inside.
Larry found his wife in a pool of blood on the bedroom floor west of the bed, severely beaten and barely alive. Anita was nude from the shoulders down, her blouse and bra pulled up around her neck, and her shorts and underwear next to her. She tried to speak, but the blood in her airway made her words hard to understand.
Larry ran a block and a half to Bill’s Corner Cafe, 1640 Sheridan Avenue, where Morton went for a drink and asked for help.
“My wife’s been beaten and raped!” Larry cried. Morton and Bartley returned to Larry’s house with him and someone called the Springfield police.
The Springfield Fire Division Emergency Squad, consisting of Lt. Olds and Fireman Shook, arrived at the home a short time later and transported Anita and Aaron to Community Hospital as Aaron cried for his mother. Anita was pronounced dead on arrival on October 29, 1966.
Investigation
When Springfield police arrived at the couple’s home, they found no evidence of forced entry. The back door was open, and baby Aaron was in the crib in his bedroom, one leg broken and bruises covering his tiny body. His mother’s killer had placed him there after beating him.
Police retrieved a partial fingerprint from a light bulb on the back porch, suggesting the killer unscrewed the light. According to Aaron Taylor’s website, police took 27 packages of evidence from the house and sent them to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, where they remain.
The police were on a massive hunt for the killer. They believed Anita knew her assailant and that they entered the home sometime between 7:30 p.m. on October 28 and 1:30 a.m. on October 29.
The weapon used to beat Anita was likely a pop bottle, and the killer also used his hands and feet.
Clark County Coroner Dr. George P. Anderson determined Anita’s death was caused by aspiration of the blood into the lungs. The killer had crushed her throat with his foot and had left his shoe imprint on her face and neck. Police estimated the shoe was a man’s size 8-1/2 or 9 or a woman’s 10-1/2 or 11.
Investigators questioned numerous people and followed several leads, but they never found Anita’s killer. According to Aaron Taylor on his website, his father was ruled out as a suspect.
Anita’s vicious murder shocked the community, especially her neighbors.
Charles Herring, then 14, delivered newspapers to the Taylors. A week before the murders, he had asked Anita why she always kept the door locked. She told him she was worried about the series of strangulation murders in Cincinnati, later revealed to be committed by Posteal Laskey Jr., aka The Cincinnati Strangler.
Charles called Anita and Larry, “My best customers. They had me picked up three weeks in advance. She was a nice woman. I can’t believe it.” (Dayton Daily News, October 30, 1966)
The McGowan family lived next door to the Taylors. They said the Taylors were “a nice family, seemed like a couple of kids…we’d say ‘nice day’ and ‘hello’ and things like that but really didn’t know them.”
Martha Garey owned a grocery shop located across the street from the Taylor Home. “She was over here every day to shop. She would put her boy in the cart and wheel him around.”
The Springfield Fire Department’s Fire Station No. 6 was diagonal from the Taylor home. It is still there today. No one in the neighborhood saw or heard anything unusual.
Possible Suspects
Whoever killed Anita was cold enough to beat Aaron brutally yet did not kill him. Aaron wrote on his website that he believes he was the killer’s “bargaining chip.” They broke Aaron’s leg and beat him to get Anita to do what they wanted.
Elsworth Miller
Miller seems the obvious suspect because, as mentioned above, he followed Anita home each night after work “to make sure she got home O.K.” That suggests he had taken a liking to her. He knew where she lived and possibly knew Larry worked the second shift, which meant she and the baby were alone and defenseless at night. Unfortunately, I could not find any additional information on Miller.
John V. Lawrence
Lawrence did not know Anita, as far as I can tell. A 1966 article on Anita’s murder mentioned him and his crime but not his name. However, I found it in another newspaper article.
He was convicted in 1951 for the rape and robbery of a 20-year-old woman in January of that year. The crimes occurred one block east of the Taylor home. The young woman had been standing at a bus stop at Lexington and Ludlow Avenues when Lawrence dragged her to 360 Ludlow Ave and sexually assaulted her behind the home, then took off with her purse. She fled to 366 Ludlow Avenue for help afterward.
Lawrence was released by October 1959, when he got a ticket for disregarding a traffic signal. In the spring of 1966, he was arrested for burglary of an uninhabited building. On the day of Anita’s murder, a jury found him innocent in that case. Taylor, then 52, resided a half mile from the Taylor home at 1215 Mound Street and had a family. He died in 2003 at 88.
DNA Testing
Today’s investigators and Aaron Taylor are hoping advanced DNA technology will solve Anita’s murder.
DNA evidence was recovered and has undergone preliminary testing. The quality of the cataloging of the evidence was quite remarkable for 1966 standards. At that time there was no inclination of the technological advances that would be available some 30 years in the future. Results have been received, clearing my father as the assailant. Further testing is still being performed. –Aaron Taylor
Aftermath
After Anita’s murder and Aaron’s recovery, Larry and Aaron moved in with Anita’s parents, and eventually, the father and son moved into a place of their own. However, Larry struggled to take care of Aaron and asked Anita’s mother to raise the boy, and she did.
Aaron rarely saw his father after that. Larry married again and had three more children with his second wife, Pamela Huffman Taylor. He died in a motorcycle crash in 1977.
As Aaron entered adulthood, he had many questions surrounding his mother’s brutal murder and began his investigation that continues today.
Following his high school graduation, Aaron got a job driving a forklift at Champion Paper in Hamilton. Every weekend from 1983 to 2008, he returned home to see his grandmother.
He told Brooke Spurlock of the Springfield News-Sun in 2021: “I knew it was her only connection to her daughter. I kind of understand that role and what my existence meant to her, not just as her grandson, but as her grandson that sprung from her daughter that she lost,” Aaron said. His grandmother died in 2008 at age 99.
In 1996, Aaron received a shocking call from a stranger claiming he was Aaron’s half-brother, only nine months younger than him. Turns out, Larry had an affair.
Aaron states on his website that he and his brother attended rival high schools and played sports against one another, not knowing at the time they were siblings. They continue to have a good relationship. His brother never met Larry and only had learned about the identity of his father and Aaron when he was 18.
As of 2021, Aaron resided in Newport, Kentucky.
Sources
“Jury Acquits Man on Burglary Charge.” The Springfield Daily News. October 29, 1966.
“Rapist is Sought After Attack on 20-year-old Girl.” The Springfield Daily News. January 22, 1951.
Taylor, Aaron. “The Unsolved Murder of Anita Taylor.” Website. https://www.taylorcase.com/
