Missouri Quadruple Murderer Facing Execution

The state of Missouri is set to execute Leonard Taylor for the November 2004 murders of his girlfriend Angela Rowe and her three children.  Jim Salter of the Associated Press reports that Governor Mike Parson today declined to halt Taylor’s execution which is scheduled for tomorrow, February 7.  Taylor, a habitual felon with priors for dealing cocaine, fraud and forcible rape, continues to claim that he is innocent although he admitted the murders to his brother, who shared this with his girlfriend.  The brother has since recanted that testimony.  The victims were believed to have been murdered on November 22 or 23.  Their bodies were discovered on December 3, after Rowe had not shown up for work nor her children for school.  The mother was shot several times.  The 10 year old boy and 6-year-old girl were shot twice in the head.  The 5-year-old boy was shot once in the head.  On November 26, Taylor flew to California under an assumed name to visit his wife.  He was arrested three weeks later in Madisonville, Kentucky at the home of another girlfriend.   The facts are described in a 2009 Missouri Supreme Court decision on direct appeal.  UPDATE:  Taylor was executed without incident at 6:16 PM.

The evidence of Taylor’s guilt was substantial.  In addition to the confession to his brother, a witness saw him throw pistol down a sewer line the day he left town.  DNA evidence on his sunglasses matched the blood of the dead mother.  His conviction and death sentence have been upheld by three state courts, the federal district court and eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Lawyers for Taylor, the NAACP and over a dozen civil rights groups now claim that the medical examiner’s time-of-death estimate was wrong and that Taylor had already left town when his girlfriend and her children were murdered.  So far nobody is buying this.