
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 1, 1991                   TAG: 9102010651
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JACKSONVILLE, FLA.                                LENGTH: Short

DETECTIVE TELLS ABOUT SAILOR'S CONFESSION

A Jacksonville police detective told a jury Thursday that a former USS Stark sailor confessed to him that he killed a young Navy wife and her daughter in a fit of rage.

Police Sgt. J.D. Warren told the jury that in an Aug. 13, 1987, interview, Walter Thomas Taylor Jr. explained how he used a hammer to fatally beat Paula Smits, 21, and her 3-year-old daughter, Amanda, after Smits threatened to call police saying she was raped.

Warren testified Taylor told him Smits had been a willing sexual partner, but afterward became hysterical at the thought that her husband might find out.

"He said that he was scared, that he didn't know what to do, that she was going to make this accusation of rape," Warren told the jury during the third day of testimony in Taylor's first-degree murder trial. "He said he wanted to knock her out."

But Taylor's attorneys have contended that he was insane during the Aug. 8, 1987, killings in Jacksonville. Even when giving accounts to authorities in the days following the slayings, Taylor did not fully realize what had happened or why, the attorneys have argued.

by CNB