Taylor Morris Teaford

Early life Taylor Teaford was born on June 18, 1935, in North Fork, California and was raised by his grandmother due to his parents' separation. Of American Indian descent, he was afflicted with polio at the age of 13 which caused him to walk with a limp to his right leg. Teaford dropped out of school in the ninth grade; his criminal record began as a juvenile, when he was charged with theft and reckless driving at the Fresno County Juvenile Court. He was also imprisoned in 1957 on a rape charge and in 1955 for burglary.

Criminal history Murder of Pearl Teaford On the evening of July 18, 1967, 39-year-old Charles Culpepper was driving with his mother in North Fork, California when Teaford's 26-year-old injured sister, Cheri Macintosh, flagged them down and told them that her brother was trying to kill her. Charles got out of his vehicle before being fired at six times with a handgun. Despite being hit once in his right arm, Charles managed to get Teaford's sister into his car and they drove off to a local county hospital. According to Macintosh, Teaford had been drinking heavily before getting into an extreme rage and shooting to death his 72-year-old grandmother, Pearl Morris Teaford, with a .22 calibre pistol at around midnight.

Murder of the Alameda County Jane Doe Morgue photograph of the currently unidentified female Teaford was accused of killing in 1969. An unidentified white woman entered Room 15 of the St. Louis Hotel located on 7th Street in Oakland, California, which is now the site of the North Alameda County Jail, with a man later identified by witnesses as Teaford on October 2, 1969. He beat her and then strangled her with an article of her own clothing. She was discovered deceased 24-hours-later. The victim died from blunt force trauma and is speculated to have been a prostitute. In 1972, Teaford was charged with the murder. The victim remains unidentified and is known only as the "Alameda County Jane Doe".

The Crew Cut Killer Six months prior to the death of the Jane Doe on April 10, 1969, a body of a dead woman was found on a dirt road located beside the Oakland Estuary. The victim's head and face had been crushed with a 30-pound slab of concrete and she was later identified by fingerprints as 22-year-old sex worker Judith Lattaker. Four months later on August 3, 1969, the body of 27-year-old Alma Fay Dorough was recovered from Berkeley Aquatic Park. She had been beaten and stabbed to death and also had a criminal record for prostitution. Authorities linked the two murders with the subsequent homicide of the unidentified woman in October and dubbed the suspected perpetrator as "The Crew Cut Killer". When Teaford was identified as a prime suspect in the murder of the Jane Doe, he was also established as a person of interest in the unsolved deaths of Lattaker and Dorough.