Alvin Taylor

Alvin Taylor is an American serial killer who murdered four friends and acquaintances across Wisconsin from 1985 to 1987. Deemed incompetent to stand trial for these crimes, he has been interned in a psychiatric institution and denied parole ever since being institutionalized.

Early life Very little is known about Taylor's early life. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he claimed that his parents were indifferent about raising him, often physically assaulted him in order to "discipline" him or left him to wander on the streets. Despite this, the young boy developed a passion for songwriting, meditation and psychotherapy. Beginning in the late 1960s, he tried to build a career as a musician and toured across the Northeastern United States as a soloist for little-known bands. Taylor is believed to have experienced his first psychotic break sometime in 1969, after going to a bar and supposedly overhearing that some men were planning to kill him - even after he left, he claimed that the people on the bus and the maid at a motel were also planning to do the same.

By the mid-1970s, he began to show signs of mental illness that affected him to the point where he was admitted to a hospital, where he was soon diagnosed with schizophrenia. Due to this diagnosis, Taylor spent most of the late 1970s until March 1987 in various psychiatric clinics. In 1980, he was also convicted of delivering crack cocaine in Medford and sentenced to four years imprisonment.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Taylor made a living as a singer and entertainer in nightclubs throughout Wisconsin and Bloomington, Minnesota, but experienced a sharp decline in his mental health.

Murders Taylor's first known victim was 38-year-old computer company employee Robert L. Williams, a friend he had met in 1984. Williams' remains were not found and exhumed until two years later, when a man who had rented the farmhouse accidentally came across the burial site and informed the police about it.

In the fall of 1986, Taylor attended the "Peace Child" musical in Eau Claire, whose goal was to improve relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. While working there, he befriended 27-year-old Timothy Hayden, a custodian for University of Wisconsin–Stout, who later moved in to live with him at the home that Hayden owned, in Menomonie. Lundgren was taken to a hospital after being found and given first aid, where he died 30 hours later. Following Taylor's testimony, on June 23, 1987, Lundgren's remains were exhumed and examined, with the forensic report determining that he had been shot three times in the head with a .38 caliber pistol - it remains unclear why this apparently went unnoticed by hospital staff. Due to this, Taylor was charged with this murder in early July 1987.

Police at one point also questioned Taylor about the murder of 59-year-old Sheldon Kliman, the owner of the Palace Theater in Spooner, who had been stabbed to death in June 1986. However, no charges were ever brought in this case, and he has been presumably cleared of suspicion. He seemingly expressed regret for what he had done and stated that he knew he was likely going to prison. On June 2, the court ordered that he be interned at the Mendota Mental Health Institution in Madison. Kucinski later told in an interview with the media that his client suffered from a severe mental illness and that communication with him during the trial was impossible, noting that he had never encountered such a case before in his legal practice. For this appeal to be successful, it would require approval from the prosecutors' offices in Dunn and Eau Claire Counties, but in September 2016, the Washington County Court denied the petition.