WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 1956

Wednesday, January 25, 1956

HEADLINE: HE’S INCORRIGIBLE, SAYS FOSTER-FATHER OF MURDER SUSPECT

And incorrigible waste who has been in trouble since he was a prep school. It cost me more than $10,000 get them out of his scrapes until I put my foot down a few years ago.


Thus, James W. Taylor, 68, retired paving contractor characterized his foster son, James P. Taylor, 30, who is being held in connection with the Lindbergh kidnapping -- murder.


The elder Taylor, who was contacted at his Fort Lauderdale, Florida home last week by an Associated Press correspondents from the Minneapolis Star, said Taylor had visited there on November 26, the day after Lindbergh’s body was discovered, which was the first time he had seen his foster son in three years.


Despite his misgivings, the well to do contractor expressed doubts that young Taylor was involved in the Lindbergh case since he had been released from prison in Terre Haute, Indiana only two weeks before this affair in Thief River Falls, and I don’t think he would have had time to set it up.


Nevertheless, he is quoted by the Star as saying that his foster son will have to get out of this scrape the best he can, he knows now it is without my help.


He said James was born in Detroit as Ian Truett, and adopted by him and his wife now 58, when the boy was 2 ½ years old.


Taylor related how he had put the boy through public grade school in Detroit and financed him at exclusive Cranbrook pre-prep school in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan and Kiski prep school at Salisbury, Pennsylvania.


After graduating from prep school where he starred in football, basketball, and track he enlisted in the Navy in 1945. He was given a medical discharge seven months later the foster father told the Star, adding and I still don’t understand why.


Following this, the elder Taylor said, he financed his foster son at Miami University, North Carolina State Teachers College, and the University of Nevada.


Young Taylor had come to Fort Lauderdale to get clothes he had shipped there after his car theft conviction. His foster father said that he was well-dressed.


Taylor Sr. recalls his foster son remarking that “he had taken the wrap on that conviction and he had returned to Detroit to make them pay.”


Taylor said the suspect had been married at least four times that I know of, has several stepchildren, and his present wife lives in Pensacola, Florida.


Irving Nemerov, Taylor’s court appointed attorney, told the Minneapolis Star news man that Taylor was emotionally upset by his foster father’s statement, adding that Taylor holds no malice towards him and that he hopes his parents will visit him.

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