I am incredibly pleased to republish my father’s crime and history column which first appeared in Georgia’s Gainesville Times in the Fall of 1987. Many thanks to Shannon Casas, Editor in Chief at The Times.
Brief Bio:
E. Alexander Taylor, faced with being drafted by the military, hitchhiked along with a cousin and a buddy of the same age to Atlanta from north Georgia mountains. They drew straws as to which branch they’d join. As it turned out, my father, Alex, entered the Air Force that day. At the end his hitch — training as a bomber at MacDill AFB in Tampa, Florida under Gen. Paul Tibbets — his superiors thought him a perfect candidate for Tampa’s Police Department. Turns out, they were right.
He quickly excelled from Patrolman to Detective, ultimately taking the reins of TPD’s Criminal Intelligence Unit. There, he investigated all forms of organized crime, including Tampa’s infamous Mafia, led by Santo Trafficante. (BOLITA is concentric to this era). After the mob murder of a friend and colleague detective, Richard Cloud, Dad became friendly with several mentors at the FBI who encouraged him to continue his education. Shortly thereafter, Det. Sgt. Taylor graduated from the University of Tampa with a masters. Through the family’s grapevine, he scored a new job as professor of Sociology, Deviant Behavior, and Criminology at Brenau College, (now University) in Gainesville, Georgia — just a small hop from his ancestral home. For another decade or so, he instructed countless policemen and civvies in the often-cruel psychology to which law enforcement officers are frequently exposed.
Dad has innumerable stories to recount, but Prof. Taylor is also a lifelong student of history and possesses an uncanny 80 wpm skill on a manual typewriter. I must keep this short, but extracurricular activities, particularly his love for the outdoors and friendships with certain luminaries in that field, meant he soon found his way to the Gainesville Times as a part-time contributor, including his work with Ed Dodd of Mark Trail fame. Many Outdoors articles later, The Times took interest in his crime stories and history involving it, offering my father a regular Tuesday column. It ran from 1987 to 1994 and was regarded as a reader favorite.
Here’s his first:
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1987
