David Ray Taylor Crime Spree: A Question of Parole (RG)

A question of parole

Convicted of killing a Eugene gas station attendant in 1977, David Ray Taylor served his time, completed his parole and seemed to be a functioning member of society. Now he faces a possible death sentence if convicted of murdering a 22-year-old Eugene man.

By Jack Moran

The Register-Guard

APPEARED IN PRINT: TUESDAY, AUG. 28, 2012, PAGE A1

---

David Ray Taylor

Convicted murderer David Ray Taylor convinced the state parole board 5½ years ago that he was no longer the dangerous criminal who had gone to prison in 1977 for fatally shooting a west Eugene gas station attendant.

“I feel a great sense of accomplishment for having built and maintained a healthy, happy and harmonious home and public life,” Taylor wrote to the board shortly before the three-member panel voted 2-1 in favor of discharging him from post-prison supervision in February 2007.

Taylor, 56, now faces a possible return to prison, and he potentially could be sentenced to death if he is convicted of murdering a 22-year-old Eugene man who went missing on Aug. 3.

The case has raised questions regarding the decisions that awarded total freedom to Taylor, who had several run-ins with the law between

2009 and earlier this month, when he was arrested in connection with the slaying of Celestino Gutierrez.

In response to a public records request from The Register-Guard, the state Department of Corrections released 78 pages of documents relating to Taylor’s time in prison and on parole. The documents show that the convicted killer appeared to be living a productive, crime-free life when the state board excused him from post-prison oversight.

He had married a Portland woman and worked as a silversmith. He attended the Gnostic Catholic Church and was involved with a Portland nonprofit agency that helps prison inmates transition back into society.

But two years after being taken off parole, he and his wife divorced, and his name again began to show up in police reports.

In November 2009, Taylor went back to jail after being convicted of strangling and assaulting a Madras woman.

He dodged a return to prison one year later, when a Deschutes County judge acquitted him of raping a 72-year-old woman who happened to be a former cellmate’s grandmother.

Taylor’s alleged criminal exploits have since escalated, culminating earlier this month with his arrest in connection with a series of violent robberies — including two armed, bank holdups in Lane County — and the mysterious killing of Gutierrez.

Authorities continue to investigate the murder case, which involves an allegation that Taylor and one of his two alleged accomplices mutilated the victim’s corpse.

Craig Prins, executive director of the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, said “it is incredibly rare” in Oregon for a convicted murderer to serve out a prison sentence, and then be implicated in another killing.

Murder in west Eugene

Taylor first went to prison at the age of 21 after pleading guilty in June 1977 to the shotgun slaying of Connie Roland, a college student who pumped gas at the former Franko service station at West 11th Avenue and Green Hill Road.

After arriving at the gas station and feigning engine trouble, Taylor pulled out a 12-gauge shotgun and forced Roland into his car, where she was robbed. Taylor then drove Roland, who was also 21, to a remote spot near Crow where he shot her in the back at close range.

A truck driver found Roland’s body the next day and called police. Investigators arrested Taylor and his then-girlfriend, Diane Ehrhardt, in connection with the murder after finding their car’s license plate number scrawled on Roland’s hand.

Ehrhardt, who was with Taylor when Roland was killed, also pleaded guilty to murder. She served 9½ years in prison before being granted parole in 1986. Ehrhardt died of heart failure in 2004 at the age of 48, according to her obituary.

Taylor and Ehrhardt were sentenced in the case long before Oregon voters in 1994 passed Measure 11, which required anyone convicted of murder to serve a minimum of 25 years before being eligible for parole.

Before Measure 11’s passage, many convicted murderers served less than 20 years behind bars for their crime. The death penalty in Oregon was repealed in 1964 and reinstated in 1978, one year after Taylor and Eharhardt murdered Roland.

Roland’s younger sister, Nebraska resident Carol Imus, said that when it came to Taylor’s punishment, nothing less than a true lifetime sentence would have satisfied her family.

“We would rather he had never been let out,” Imus said.

Parole requests denied

Prison records show that Taylor frequently found trouble during the first 13 years he spent incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. He was disciplined seven times between 1977 and 1990 for various rule violations.

The offenses included everything from loitering outside his cell and cursing at an officer to smuggling marijuana and amphetamines into the prison. In another case, a urine sample tested positive for those same drugs.

His case was first reviewed by the parole board in 1982, when they set his earliest possible release date for May 1993.

But between 1991 and 2000, the board repeatedly denied parole to Taylor. In each instance, board members cited a “severe emotional disturbance” that they felt would constitute a danger to the community if he were to be released.

In 2002, Taylor refused a psychological examination and declined to appear at a parole hearing. For that, the parole board deferred his release date indefinitely.

Two years later, at a board meeting on Aug. 18, 2004, the three-member panel voted 2-1 to release him from prison. While all three board members who examined a recent doctor’s report and diagnosis concluded that Taylor continued to be emotionally disturbed, just one member felt that condition would endanger “the health and safety of the community,” records indicate.

The records do not specify which board member voiced serious concerns about setting Taylor free at the time. Prison officials did not release specific information detailing any health diagnosis for Taylor.

Positive parole reviews

Upon his release, Taylor returned to his hometown of Eugene and was assigned a Lane County parole officer.

He moved to Portland in May 2005 and began reporting to a new parole officer, Phil Lehman, in Multnomah County.

Nineteen months later, in January 2007, Lehman asked the parole board to remove Taylor from post-prison supervision.

In a “request for discharge report,” Lehman noted that Taylor had met with a psychologist, gotten married and found work as a silversmith.

Taylor “has experienced no known negative police contacts, arrests or convictions since his release,” Lehman wrote. “(He) continues to demonstrate a strong sense of identity and spiritual purpose.”

Taylor had joined the Gnostic Catholic Church — part of a fraternal organization that preaches the Law of Thelema, a mystical and religious system that is unrelated to mainline Roman Catholic beliefs — and served as a facility manager for the church’s temple in Portland.

Taylor also was closely involved with Phoenix Rising Transitions, a Portland nonprofit group that helps inmates adjust to living outside prison.

The parole board reviewed Lehman’s report along with letters from Taylor and four of his supporters, including his church’s bishop, Henry Hadeed.

On Feb. 14, 2007, the board issued Taylor a parole discharge certificate, which read in part that Taylor’s “final release is not incompatible with the parolee’s welfare or that of society.”

A divorce, then arrests

Harry Olsen, a Portland man with a criminal past who founded Phoenix Rising Transitions after he was paroled from the Salem prison in 1991, said Taylor helped him get the nonprofit organization established.

Olsen, 61, said he and Taylor bonded through a shared interest in religion. Both took on Sufi Muslim names while in prison.

Taylor was particularly fond of “esoteric types of literature, magical and mystical kind of things,” Olsen said.

Taylor at one point created a Web page that cites “37 years in the study and practice of occult sciences” as inspiring his work in silversmithing and jewelry design.

Olsen said he and Taylor drove taxis in Portland in 2007 and 2008 before their paths diverged.

“He dropped out of touch with me and what we were doing” with Phoenix, Olsen said.

Court records show Taylor and his wife divorced in 2009. Before that year was over, Taylor had been arrested in three separate criminal cases. One of them involved an assault on a Madras woman in Tillamook County. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Redmond police, meanwhile, charged Taylor with being a felon in possession of a restricted weapon, after finding a set of metal “knuckles” in his jacket pocket. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two days in jail in that case, which unfolded as police in Redmond investigated a far more serious accusation involving Taylor — the alleged rape of his former prison cellmate’s 72-year-old grandmother.

Not guilty of rape

The former cellmate, 38-year-old Redmond resident Eugene Reece, said he gave Taylor money and a place to stay after he learned his prison buddy was going through a divorce.

“I know him, and I trusted him,” Reece said of Taylor.

But that changed after Taylor was caught in bed with Reece’s grandmother. Police reports show that Taylor admitted having sex with the woman, who told investigators that she had trouble remembering what had happened during the encounter.

Police reports include a statement from a physician in Central Oregon who gave the woman a neuropsychiatric evaluation. The doctor, Mark Hughes, said he felt “that (Reece’s grandmother) does not have the capacity to make appropriate informed decisions in regard to her health, her finances and her living situation,” according to a police report.

Taylor disputed the first-degree rape allegation and waived his right to a jury trial. Deschutes County Judge Stephen Tiktin heard evidence in the case and found Taylor not guilty of the charge after a four-day trial in August 2010.

The charge of first-degree rape carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 8 years, 4 months upon conviction. Had Taylor been found guilty, he would still be in prison.

The prosecutor in the case, Jody Vaughan, declined to comment. Tiktin did not return a phone message regarding his verdict.

Redmond police Sgt. Jesse Petersen said investigators did all they could to show that Taylor had raped Reece’s grandmother.

“I definitely believe there was sufficient evidence to prove our case, and that evidence was presented to the judge during the trial,” Petersen said.

Reece, who testified against his former cellmate of seven years, said he purchased an elaborate home security system after Tiktin acquitted Taylor.

“This is a guy who I saw back down some of the biggest guys in (prison),” Reece said. “When I testified against him, I knew what I was doing. Afterward, I felt that I needed to be prepared to protect myself.”

An alleged crime spree

After resolving his legal issues in Central Oregon, Taylor returned to Eugene and moved into a home off Highway 99. A tavern near the house was the last place that Celestino Gutierrez was known to have been seen alive, according to a Eugene police log entry detailing the 22-year-old man’s disappearance on Aug. 3.

Taylor and two much-younger co-defendants — 22-year old AJ Scott Nelson and 18-year-old Mercedes Leeann Crabtree, both from Portland — are accused of kidnapping and robbing Gutierrez, then killing him.

Mercedes Crabtree

AJ Nelson

The trio allegedly used Gutierrez’s car to flee the scene of an Aug. 3 bank robbery in Mapleton, one of two bank heists that Taylor is accused of committing. The other robbery happened June 8 at a Siuslaw Bank branch in Creswell.

Spensir Lee Mourey

Toni Jean Baker

Taylor, meanwhile, is charged along with a 25-year-old Portland (Mourey - also involved - Toni Baker Crabtree's Aunt) resident in connection with an April home-invasion robbery in Lake Oswego.

Olsen, the founder of the inmate-centered nonprofit program in Portland, said “it looks like (Taylor) really stepped in it this time. I really don’t know what else to say, because he was doing well for a long time.

“We all change, but I wasn’t expecting something like this to happen to him,” Olsen said. “I certainly wouldn’t want to be in his spot right now.”

---

Taylor Timeline

1977: Taylor and Diane Ehrhardt are convicted of killing Constance Marie Roland, a west Eugene gas station attendant

1983-84: Taylor smuggles marijuana and amphetamines into prison and distributes drugs to other inmates

1986: Ehrhardt paroled after 9½ years in prison

1989: Taylor tests positive for marijuana and amphetamines while in prison

1991-2000: Taylor repeatedly denied parole

2004: Taylor released on parole after 27 years behind bars

2007: Taylor discharged from post-prison supervision

2009: Taylor is jailed in three separate cases, including alleged rape of former cellmate’s grandmother

2010: Taylor acquitted of rape charge in Deschutes County

2012: Taylor arrested in connection with several robberies and alleged murder of Eugene resident Celestino Gutierrez Jr.