In the course of its fifteen-year-run, the popular television series Unsolved Mysteries helped capture many of its profiled fugitives. William “Clay” Taylor was one of the more amazing apprehensions.

Wanted for murder in Florida, Taylor skipped on his bail in 1977 and became a ghost. It was not a forensic discovery or a mistake on the hired hit man’s part that led to his undoing. Instead, a viewer recognized his photo while watching the Unsolved Mysteries segment on his crime. Such occurrences were common, but this one was unique.

The viewer watched the Unsolved Mysteries episode when it was broadcast in 2016, over fourteen years after the series concluded, nearly twenty-six years after Clay Taylor was profiled on the show, and over thirty-five years after the last known photo of the fugitive was taken.

Thanks to the keen eye of a viewer who, by chance, stumbled upon the Unsolved Mysteries profile of Clay Taylor, a killer who had eluded authorities for nearly thirty-six years, was apprehended.

 

Clay Taylor

On the evening of January 9, 1977, four retired North-Central Florida couples had their weekly Saturday evening dinner together at the Holiday House Restaurant in Ocala, approximately seventy miles northwest of Orlando. The group had driven to the restaurant in two cars. They chatted for a while after finishing dinner and left the restaurant around 9:00 p.m.

As the group approached their vehicles, they noticed that one, a 1976 Buick sedan, had a flat tire. The men sent their wives home in the other car while they called a tow truck to pick up the damaged car. Twenty-five minutes later, after workers fitted the vehicle with a new tire, the men began the drive home.

The repaired Buick belonged to and was driven by sixty-four-year-old Walter Scott, a recently retired customs official with the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. His passengers were seventy-seven-year-old Eugene Bailey, seventy-three-year-old William Gilreath, and sixty-six-year-old William Harris.

While the men proceeded along United States Highway 27 approximately eighteen miles west of Ocala, another car pulled beside them on the left. From the front passenger side of the vehicle, a man wearing a ski mask fired three shots at driver Walter Scott, hitting him in the head. The car spun off the road into a wooded area where it crashed into some pine trees.

The second car stopped, and the shooter exited, waving his gun in the air. As he approached the Buick, the gunman told Harris and Gilreath to get out of the way as he fired three shots at close range at Eugene Bailey. The gunman then returned to his car, which sped away.

The two Williams ran to the highway and flagged down a trucker who summoned help. When paramedics and police arrived, Walter Scott was pronounced dead at the scene; a 12-gauge shotgun was the weapon used by the gunman in killing him.

Eugene Bailey was seriously wounded but still alive after being shot twice in the face and once in the abdomen. He was rushed to Munroe Memorial Hospital where doctors removed three bullets from a different weapon, a .32-caliber pistol.

                               Walter Scott                       Eugene Bailey

The bullets extracted from Eugene Bailey were matched to three .32 caliber shell casings found at the crime scene.

Also found was an appointment book that appeared to have been dropped by the gunman. Police were unable to trace it.

Crime Scene Photograph

Eugene Bailey ultimately recovered. It appeared as though he, not Walter Scott, had been the targeted victim. The retired realtor and civic leader was one of the area’s most prominent citizens, having served as mayor of nearby Williston from 1945-59.

Everyone police spoke to had nothing but kind words to say about Eugene, and no one could think of anyone who would want to harm him.

Eugene Was The Intended Target

The break in the case came three years later, in 1980, when the Florida Attorney General’s Office was contacted by authorities from Opelika, Alabama, three-hundred-thirty miles from Ocala. Maxine Peterson, a former city clerk in Belleview, Florida, ten miles southeast of Ocala, had been beaten by her live-in boyfriend, fifty-year-old Paul Allen, after overhearing a conversation between him and Ray Taylor regarding a crime they had committed in Florida. Taylor was a former city attorney of Williston, the town in which Eugene Bailey had served as mayor.

Maxine, who had also run unsuccessfully for the Maine House of Representatives in 1968,      said she had helped the men load guns into a boat shortly after the shootings of Walter Scott and Eugene Bailey, and that she and Allen had dumped them into Central Florida’s Withlacoochee River. Afraid to question her abusive boyfriend, she did not inquire as to why they were doing so.

Maxine took police to the location where she said the guns were thrown, an isolated cove approximately twenty-five miles from Ocala. Divers searched the river for two days but found nothing. Investigators, however, learned that three guns found in the river by a scuba diver in March 1977, two months after the shootings of Walter Scott and Eugene Bailey, were still in local police custody.

The guns were registered to the thirty-four-year-old Ray Taylor. He had reported them as stolen on January 15, 1977, six days before the attack. Ballistics tests revealed that two of the guns had been used in the shootings of Walter Scott and Eugene Bailey.

When police questioned Paul Allen, he initially denied any knowledge of the incident, saying his girlfriend was crazy. Eventually, however, he broke down and confessed his involvement, saying the shooting had been orchestrated by Ray Taylor. Allen confirmed his girlfriend’s account of disposing of the guns, saying Ray came to his home with the weapons approximately a week after the shootings and told him to dump them in the river. Allen did so and took his girlfriend, Maxine Peterson, as a lookout.

Allen also confirmed investigators’ suspicions that Eugene Bailey was the target and that Walter Scott was killed only because he was driving the car.

                                  Ray Taylor                        Paul Allen

Ray Taylor had served as Paul Allen’s attorney after Allen’s arrest for operating an unauthorized lottery and bingo games in Ocala in 1975. Allen was convicted and given three years’ probation. He then moved to Opelika, Alabama.

Allen said Ray Taylor contracted him to murder Eugene Bailey in October 1976, three months before the shooting. Multiple means were discussed as to how to carry out the crime, including having Allen break into the Baileys’ home, kill Eugene’s wife, Mary, and then murder Eugene when he arrived home; another rejected hit was shooting Eugene in the parking lot of a local restaurant or Elks Club. After Allen and Ray Taylor observed Eugene Bailey’s weekly dinner schedule, the “ambush” plan was decided upon.

Partners In Crime

Thirty-one-year-old Clay Taylor was identified by Paul Allen as the triggerman. Allen said Ray Taylor supplied his younger brother with the guns. According to Allen, Clay had slashed the tire on Walter Scott’s Buick as the four couples were eating at the Holiday House Restaurant on the evening of January 8, 1977. As the cohorts in crime hoped, the men had sent their wives on their way as they had a new tire fitted onto the car.

Allen said he and Clay lay in wait for the Buick along Route 27 in a Plymouth Duster belonging to Clay’s girlfriend, Patricia Randle. When the repaired Buick, driven by Walter Scott, drove past them approximately half-an-hour later, Allen followed them for approximately six miles before pulling to the left side of the car as if he were going to pass.

From the front passenger seat, Clay Taylor fired three shots at Walter Scott, killing him. After the car crashed, Allen pulled over and Clay, clad in a ski mask, exited the Plymouth and proceeded to shoot Eugene Bailey, with the intention of killing him.

Clay Taylor Is Fingered As The Triggerman

Paul Allen’s story was corroborated when it was determined the appointment book found at the crime scene belonged to Clay Taylor and had notes written from his girlfriend, Patricia Randle.

Patricia told police she and Clay were supposed to go to a Beach Boys concert that evening, but Clay never arrived.

No Clay

At the time of the shootings, Ray Taylor was $40,000 in debt and going through a divorce. Allen said the desperate lawyer saw the death of his most wealthy client as his lifeline.

Taylor was Eugene Bailey’s business attorney and had also once rented a law office from him. He presumed that if Bailey died, the family would appoint him as executor of his estimated $3-3.5 million estate from which he would collect at least $200,000 in legal fees.
Needing money and not content to wait for the seventy-seven-year-old Eugene Bailey to die of natural causes, Ray Taylor orchestrated the murder of the former mayor and enlisted the aid of his brother, Clay, and Paul Allen.

For doing his dirty work, Paul Allen said Ray Taylor promised to give him and Clay part of the money he made from Eugene Bailey’s estate. Unfortunately for them, it was Walter Scott who was killed and the marked man, Eugene Bailey, survived.

Ray Can’t Wait For Eugene

To Die Naturally

Shortly after the shooting, Ray Taylor moved to Dayton, Tennessee, where his fortunes turned. He eventually worked his way out of debt, was making a comfortable living as Rhea County prosecutor, and was even in the process of reconciling with his wife, Jane. His past, however, was about to catch up with him.

On May 20, 1980, both Ray and Clay Taylor were arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder. Ray was arrested at his law office in Dayton, while Clay was taken into custody at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio where he taught in Chattanooga.

The Taylors Are Charged

Paul Allen agreed to testify against Ray and Clay Taylor in exchange for immunity from prosecution for murder. He pled guilty to manslaughter and received fifteen years’ probation.

Allen Is Given Immunity

As a prosecutor, Ray Taylor had been applauded for putting several felons behind bars. In October 1980, he became one of them as he was convicted of first degree murder and aggravated battery.

In December, he was sentenced to life in prison plus twenty-five years.

Ray Taylor Is Convicted

One year later, Paul Allen died of a heart attack at age fifty-one.

Allen Dies

Ray Taylor’s conviction was vacated in 1987 following the discovery of misconduct by the state attorney and police in the form of judge shopping and scripting testimony.

He was charged again with murder, but a plea deal was reached as the trial date neared in 1990.  Taylor agreed to plead guilty to second degree murder in exchange for a sentence of twenty-five years with credit for time served, making him eligible for parole the following year. He was granted parole in October 1991.

Prosecutors stated they agreed to the plea and reduced sentence because several of their witnesses, principally Paul Allen, had died.

Ray Taylor Paroled

Prior to learning of the plot to kill him, Eugene Bailey thought highly of Ray Taylor and considered him a friend. Ray’s assumption was correct; Eugene had planned to name him as the executor of his estate.

Had Ray Taylor waited, he could have legally collected from the estate. Eugene Bailey died of a stroke at age eighty-three in 1983, six years after the attempt on his life.

Eugene Dies

Ray Taylor had twice been convicted, but the younger Taylor brother’s day in court would not come until over thirty-six years after the shootings.

After his arrest, Clay Taylor was released on a $20,000 personal recognizance bond on the condition that he return to Ocala, Florida, to stand trial. He instead took flight and became one of Florida’s most wanted fugitives.

As the years passed, a few sightings of Taylor deemed credible filtered in: he was supposedly seen at a bar in New Jersey, spotted by an undercover cop in Maryland, and reported to have assumed the identity of a dead FBI agent in Tampa, only one-hundred miles from Ocala.

The FBI for a time believed Clay Taylor had fled to Brazil with a false passport under the alias Michael Ferris Cauley. Like all of the other reported sightings, however, it proved to be a dead end.

Clay Gets Away

Clay Taylor was first profiled on Unsolved Mysteries in September 1990, and the episode was re-broadcast multiple times over the years. Several possible sightings were reported, but none produced anything substantive to the fugitive’s whereabouts.

The original Unsolved Mysteries ended in 2002. In 2016, a woman in Reidsville, North Carolina, was channel surfing and came upon an episode of the show. While watching the segment on Clay Taylor, she was shocked to see that an age enhancement of the longtime fugitive accused of murder bore a resemblance to her neighbor, Jay Manion, whom she had known for over thirty years. Though it seemed a long shot, she called the police. She described a scar on her neighbor’s knee matching one known to be on Clay Taylor.

When questioned, Jay Manion denied being Clay Taylor, but fingerprints confirmed he was the long-sought fugitive. At the time of his arrest on July 28, 2016, he was sixty-seven-years-old.

Old Clay                       Young Clay

Clay Taylor, under the name Jay Manion, was living with a woman named Sheryl Apple Manion, whom he presented as his wife. Investigators, however, could find no marriage record for them. The couple had owned a wallpapering business in Greensboro, twenty-five miles south of Reidsville, but the business had failed several years prior. Sheryl was determined not to have known about her husband’s past and true identity.

Authorities determined that Taylor, under the name Jay Manion, first applied for a North Carolina driver’s license and had registered to vote in the Tar Heel State in December 1980, only six months after fleeing Florida. The social security number he was using was found to have been issued to a girl who had been born in 1990. Acquaintances say he never signed his name to legal documents, and it was learned he had not filed for social security benefits despite being old enough to do so.

“Jay” Is Clay

The home “Jay” and Sheryl lived in was in Sheryl’s name only. The couple had lived there since at least 2002.

The Home Of “Jay Manion”

In January 2018, Clay Taylor was convicted of second-degree murder with a firearm and of aggravated battery with a firearm in the 1977 murder of Walter Scott and the attempted murder of Eugene Bailey.

Two months later, he was sentenced to life in prison, with a three-year mandatory minimum sentence for the murder. He was also sentenced to fifteen years for aggravated battery. The sentences will run concurrently.

Bad Day For Clay

Later in 2018, Clay’s seventy-three-year-old Ray Taylor was charged as an accessory after the fact in sheltering his wanted brother.

In April 2019, Ray was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

Ray Is In Trouble Again

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/191139495/walter-harry-scott/photo#

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/25414144/eugene-theon-bailey

Debra Jones, Eugene Bailey’s granddaughter, saw Ray Taylor standing along the side of the road near the vicinity of the crime scene the day after the shooting. He told her that his car had broken down nearby. At the time, Debra assumed he was curious about what had occurred. She now believes the man who was later convicted of trying to kill her grandfather was likely looking for the appointment book left at the scene by his brother.

A November 1987 Tampa Tribune article says Ray Taylor was also charged with the murder of his first wife, Merrilee. On August 14, 1967, a year-and-a-half after they wed, Merrilee drowned in Harbour Island, South Carolina; Ray claimed she fell through a hole in a pier. Her death was originally ruled an accident, but the article says murder charges were filed against Ray Taylor in South Carolina shortly after the murder charges were refiled against him in Florida. I have not been able to find any more information about the death of Merrilee Taylor.

Was Ray Involved In Another Murder?

William Gilreath, one of the passengers in the car, was uninjured in the ambush. His wife, Katherine, however, suffered a heart attack after learning of the incident. She ultimately made a full recovery.

William, a public school superintendent, died in 1992 at age eighty-nine.  Katherine died in 1985 at age seventy-six.

William and Katherine Gilreath

SOURCES:

• Chattanooga Times Free Press
• Florida Times-Union
• FBI
• Greensboro News and Record
• Miami Herald
• Ocala Star Banner
• Orlando Sun Sentinel
• Tampa Tribune
• The Tennessean
• Unsolved Mysteries