Background: Vicinity of the 3300 block of South County Road 60 Southwest near Greensburg, Indiana (Google Maps). Inset: Wyatt Taylor (Decatur County Jail).
An Indiana man is accused of fatally shooting his father at their residence, then leading the arriving deputies to his father’s body, stating, “He’s right there.”
Wyatt Taylor, aged 28, faces charges for the murder of Joshua Taylor, according to records from Decatur County Superior Court. The events began late Monday night into early Tuesday when Joshua Taylor’s brother received a concerning phone call.
“Should I do it or should I go to bed?” Wyatt Taylor inquired of his uncle, as reported in an affidavit reviewed by Law&Crime. Afterward, the uncle was unable to reach his brother, who was presumed to be home.
Shortly thereafter, Wyatt Taylor called his uncle again, “requesting a ride.” The uncle informed the Decatur County Sheriff’s Department that he “heard smoke alarms blaring during the call.”
The suspect refused to let his father speak on the phone and ended the call, according to the affidavit. When the uncle called back, asking once more to talk to his brother, Wyatt Taylor allegedly claimed his father was asleep. Asked about the alarms, he simply responded: “he was just cooking a pizza.”
The uncle asked a third time to speak with his 50-year-old brother, according to Indianapolis CW affiliate WISH, to no avail.
On Tuesday at 12:05 a.m., the uncle called 911 to request a wellness check at the home, located in the 3300 block of South County Road 60 Southwest outside Greensburg. The uncle “reported Wyatt to have a history of depression.”
Deputies responded within 15 minutes and were met by the suspect in his driveway, police said. He allegedly “re-asserted that he had cooked a pizza causing the smoke detectors to go off,” and that there was no need for help. The officers left.
The uncle, undeterred, asked officers to go back and check again. The deputies did, and about 20 minutes later, they were once again met by the suspect in the driveway. When they asked to speak with Joshua Taylor, “Wyatt told them that Joshua was sleeping,” according to the affidavit. Still, they were led into the home.
They entered a “first story bedroom with the door open and the lights off.” When Wyatt Taylor turned a light on, he allegedly looked in the direction of his dead father in bed, gestured toward him, and said, “He’s right there.”
Deputies confirmed the man to be dead, “noting head and neck gunshot wounds. They also noted multiple spent bullet casings in plain view in the bedroom,” the affidavit states. When one of the officers asked Wyatt Taylor if anyone else was home, he is said to have replied, “No sir, there’s not.”
“There’s nobody in the house sir,” he told the other deputy, the court document states, with it adding that the suspect admitted to having consumed alcohol that night. The officers searched the rest of the house to make sure it was safe, and then they launched an investigation into Joshua Taylor’s death.
Multiple spent bullet casings were found near Joshua Taylor’s body “in the bedding and wall” behind where he had been lying, the affidavit maintains. A smoke detector was also found “in the vicinity of where the shots are believed to have been fired,” it adds. Furthermore, while a cardboard box was later found, there was no evidence of any burnt pizza.
A firearm of the same caliber as the spent casings was located upstairs in the home, complete with an “empty magazine in the handgun that had the precise capacity as the number of spent casings.” Next to the firearm appeared to be Wyatt Taylor’s wallet, his hat, and a box of the same caliber ammunition.
The suspect was apprehended and taken to the county jail, where Decatur County Sheriff Bill Meyerrose and a detective interviewed him. After he was read his Miranda rights, Wyatt Taylor told them he had just moved back home from Utah two weeks ago. Then he spoke about his father.
Wyatt Taylor allegedly claimed his father had been “throwing up gang signs,” and the 28-year-old suspect said he feared for his life just days before. “He described his father as ‘bipolar toward [Wyatt]’, and ‘very suicidal’ and ‘belligerent,’ the court document states. The suspect later said he was “in fear of [his] life, extremely in fear of [his] life.”
On Wednesday, an autopsy was performed. “Multiple entry and exit wounds were found,” the affidavit states, and “the doctor was able to ascertain that multiple of the gunshot wounds caused fatal injury. It was determined that the preliminary cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the head and neck.”
A bullet found inside the body appeared to match the casings found at the home, and the total number of located spent bullets “precisely match[ed] the number of spent casings and the magazine capacity.”
Wyatt Taylor has a pretrial conference scheduled for Oct. 7. His jury trial is already scheduled to begin on Feb. 16 of next year.
