Fran Taylor loved to dance and laugh and sing. She sewed and made baskets and hiked, and once volunteered to clean up wildlife following an oil spill.
“She was just really free,” Wendy Ryback, one of Taylor’s two daughters, said this week.
Fran Taylor was 64 years old – and six months into a retirement she’d been talking about for decades – when she was murdered inside her home on Blairsville’s Amy Lynn Drive. She was hit in the head more than 40 times with “some sort of sharp-edged object.”
Her husband, Robert, confessed to the crime Friday, authorities said.
“He did say he was responsible and apologized to the family for causing her death,” Union County District Attorney Jeff Langley said.
Robert Taylor pleaded guilty to a single count of malice murder on Friday, three days before his trial was scheduled to begin. In exchange for admitting his role in the Nov. 25, 2013, slaying, he received 27 years in prison – a sentence that, at age 68, essentially amounts to a life term.
Ryback said her mother grew up in Fredericksburg, Va., and met Robert Taylor about eight years prior to her death when they were both living in Tampa, Fla. While they were dating, he moved to the Blairsville cabin he already owned, and the couple made regular weekend trips to visit each other before reuniting in Georgia.
They were married for about three and a half years before Fran Taylor was killed.
On the night of his wife’s death, Robert Taylor called police and told them that she had fallen down the basement stairs. But Langley said that investigators knew quickly that her injuries were not consistent with a simple trip down 13 steps.
The medical examiner discovered more than 40 distinct head wounds, Langley said, and evidence of cleaned-up blood was reportedly found in the home’s living room and in Robert Taylor’s vehicle. Authorities can’t say for sure what the murder weapon was, but believe it may have been one of several “carpenter’s hatchets” found inside the home.
There was “discord” in the marriage, Langley said, and Robert Taylor had reportedly had an extramarital girlfriend for several years. Ryback said her mother had confronted Taylor about watching pornography about a month before her death, but it was unclear what may have triggered the fatal encounter.
“He took her from all of us,” Ryback said. “And it’s just not fair.”
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