Within two months of the murders, Taylor had spent about $21,000 but didn’t pay for his mother’s estate lawyer, court heard, Susan Clairmont writes.
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''Spending money makes
Richard Taylor feel better.
So, after his mother and stepfather were
burned alive and he became the
prime suspect in their homicides, Taylor
took the money he inherited and blew it.
“I was hurting, I was in a bad place,” he said Wednesday at his
murder trial. “I’d lost my mom. I was accused, or at least a suspect in her murder … Spending money made me feel a little better. We ate out more because I didn’t want to cook.”
Pause there for a moment.
This is a man accused of killing two people — people he says he loved — in the
most excruciating way. He is accused of doing it because he
wanted their money. He stood to inherit about $400,000. And he immediately began spending it at restaurants because he was so distraught over the murders that he was accused of committing.''
''But he didn’t pay for his mother’s estate lawyer. And within two months of the murders, he had spent all the money he had access to at the time — about $21,000, court heard.
“Mr. Taylor,” said assistant Crown attorney Mark Dean in cross-examination. “You can murder your own mother, but that was Chris Taylor’s mother too … And you were stealing from the funds she left for her boys to settle the debts related to her death.”
“Did I take some and use it for my own … spend it? Yes,” agreed Taylor.''
After the murders, when he was executor of Carla’s will, he lied to his brother and said he’d sent a cheque to the estate lawyer.
“It must have got lost in the mail,” he said at the time. While testifying he admitted “I lied to him about sending the money.”
“You decide you’re going to burn them alive while they sleep. You think: ‘That happens to people sometimes — house fires’ ... You think nobody’s going to believe a son would actually burn his mother to death.''
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