Sequence of 5 Slayings in Artesia Is Established

An aerospace worker, believed to be responsible for the slayings of five people at his Artesia home this week, initially killed his wife, his sister-in-law and his 6-year-old niece, then murdered his son and the son’s friend when the two men arrived at the house a few hours later, a sheriff’s investigator revealed Tuesday.

The staggered sequence of the vicious attacks helps explain one of the case’s nagging mysteries: How could Ronald L. Taylor have killed five people--apparently bludgeoning them all to death--while ensuring that none were able to run outside to safety. All of the slayings are believed to have happened during daylight hours Sunday.

After the killings, authorities say, Taylor committed suicide by jumping from a nearby freeway overpass.

“At this point, it appears that instead of confronting five individuals all at one time, that he only confronted the two men” after having killed the females, said Lt. Joe Brown, who heads the investigation for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

However, it remained unclear Tuesday why Taylor--described by neighbors, friends and co-workers as good-humored and a solid family man who lived a seemingly uneventful suburban life--would take such a violent turn. Investigators were still reluctant to comment on what pushed an evidently distraught Taylor to such a desperate act.

“We haven’t settled on any kind of a motive yet,” Brown said. “Of course, we’re interested in the ‘why’ because that helps us confirm the fact that he was the one who did it.”

Taylor was in debt, having filed for bankruptcy and having been forced into foreclosure on a Lakewood home in the past two years. And he and his son both worked in a Boeing plant in Huntington Beach where uncertainty about layoffs is a source of tension. But there is no evidence that any of those pressures contributed to Taylor’s rampage. Taylor had no known criminal record or history of mental illness.

Yet, despite not having identified a motive, Brown said investigators “don’t have any reason to believe” that anyone other than Taylor was responsible for the grisly killings that sent shock waves through Taylor’s quiet neighborhood in Artesia, 19 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles.

“The critical issue for us is, ‘Did he do it?’ ” Brown said. “And we’re satisfied he did.”

In the case of murder-suicides, experts say, it can sometimes be months before a motive is ascertained, if ever.

“With enough things going wrong and enough stress building up, there can be an . . . emotional break that in some cases can lead to harming other people,” said Ronald K. Barrett, a criminologist at Loyola Marymount University. “Research on the science of suicide is very difficult because we are always trying to figure out after the fact what the person was feeling, what they were thinking.”

Authorities say they do not believe that Taylor used a gun, though results of autopsies scheduled for today should give a clearer idea of what weapon or weapons were used. Officials said all five corpses showed signs of trauma to their upper bodies. Investigators found no gun or ballistic evidence at Taylor’s two-story home on Caine Drive.

But police did recover “some things in the house that may turn out to be his weapons,” said Brown, who declined to be more specific.

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Whatever Taylor used, police suspect that he killed his wife, Ruthie Taylor, 40, his sister-in-law, Mylissa Campbell, 29, and Campbell’s daughter, Jolissa Morales, 6, sometime during the daytime Sunday, probably in the afternoon. The bodies of the two women and the girl were found in two separate rooms at different ends of the home; the child was discovered with her mother.

Investigators have determined that Taylor’s son, Rick Taylor, 24, and his friend, Tomy Kang Jung, 24, were at the home of Jung’s mother in Cypress until shortly before 6:30 p.m Sunday. They presumably arrived at the Artesia house soon after and were quickly bludgeoned by Taylor, who then left the home and leaped to his death about 7 p.m. from an overpass of the nearby 605 Freeway, according to police.

With the exception of Jung, all of the victims lived with Taylor.

Police went to Taylor’s home at 11:30 p.m. Sunday to notify relatives of his death. When no one answered the front door, officers used keys found on Taylor to gain entry. They immediately encountered four bodies.

The fifth corpse, that of Taylor’s wife, was not discovered on a rear enclosed patio until almost six hours later, at 5:20 a.m. Investigators overlooked the back patio during their initial search of the property, Brown said, but the severity of the injuries meant Ruthie Taylor was “beyond help” by the time police arrived.

Early Tuesday, six grief-stricken friends and relatives, including Taylor’s adult daughter, arrived at the home. They filed slowly out of a maroon van and walked to the front door, but stopped short of entering, apparently held back by fear of what they might find inside.

Outside the home, people left flower bouquets and lighted votive candles.

“To Ruthie, Ron, Rick, Jolie, Missy, Tomy,” read one card, signed Candice Kahia. . “You were all loving kind people and will all be so very missed.”

At Elliott Elementary School in Artesia, where Taylor’s niece attended kindergarten, school psychologists moved on campus for crisis counseling.

To Taylor’s co-workers and close friends at the Boeing plant where he worked the last 13 years, reconciling the easygoing man they knew with the one accused of such monstrous crimes has been extremely difficult. (His son had worked at the plant since 1995.) The Ron Taylor remembered at Boeing was one who devoted weekends to barbecuing with his family, played on a softball team with co-workers, and made arts and crafts for sale at swap meets.

“His family was his whole life,” said Jerry Jones, who worked with Taylor for a decade. “That’s the shocker. This would have been the last guy on earth I’d ever thought would do this. I’ve been running this thing constantly through my mind. I still don’t believe he did it.”

Despite reports of Taylor’s financial problems, Jones and others are skeptical that money, job stress or concern about possible downsizing would have driven the friend they knew to murder his loved ones.

“Sure, this is a stressful job,” Jones said. “He’d work a lot of long hours, 10- to 12-hour days, but he’d be doing it for his family. I don’t think his debts had anything to do with it. We all get in debt and we all pull through. I just don’t understand what happened here.”

Times staff writer Tini Tran contributed to this report.