JACKSON – A south Mississippi man was charged Monday with statutory rape in the 1978 sexual assault and slaying of his teenage daughter, and authorities said he could face more charges in the attack.
Biloxi Police Sgt. Chris De Back said William Andrew Taylor, 78, was charged with statutory rape after DNA linked him to semen found on his daughter’s body and other items in their home after the attack on July 11, 1978.
Sherri Taylor, 15, was found dead at her father’s mobile home at the Sea Sand Trailer Park in Biloxi on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She had been sexually assaulted and stabbed in the eyes, throat and chest. Her father told police at the time that he found her body after coming home from work.
De Back said police had long suspected that Sherri Taylor knew her attacker.
“An attack like that, where the eyes were stabbed, and she was also stabbed in the throat and chest, historically such an attack is done by someone close to them or intimate with the victim,” De Back said.
The DNA technology that police said connected William Taylor to the sexual assault was not available when the crime happened. De Back praised the initial investigators for preserving the evidence at a time when they couldn’t have known how valuable it would turn out to be so many years later. Investigators reopened the cold case in February.
The Biloxi Police Department said in a statement Monday that a search warrant was obtained for the father’s DNA based on “certain admissions” he made during the reopened investigation.
De Back said he could not release details about the alleged admissions.
“The investigation is still ongoing. We haven’t made an arrest in the murder yet and we don’t want to compromise that investigation,” he said.
Taylor was booked Monday at the Biloxi Police Department and taken to the Harrison County Jail, where he was being held on a $500,000 bond.
It wasn’t clear if he had hired a lawyer.
The Sun Herald newspaper interviewed William Taylor for a story in 1990 in which he said he didn’t know why his daughter was killed.
“It’s still a big question mark for me,” William Taylor told the paper. “But in the long run, the Lord will take care of it. I don’t have to see anybody croak. I don’t have to see anybody fry. The Lord has taken care of it.”
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