The 2015 killing of Charles Taylor in Montgomery County, Virginia

Hope Marvin had one thing she needed people to understand, and she said it plainly.

Rex loved his father.

Three weeks earlier, Rex’s father, Charles Taylor, had been killed in his own home in Montgomery County, Virginia. The woman charged with killing him was Rex’s widow. The reason she gave for it carried Rex’s name.

Marvin was Rex’s aunt. When she sat down with WSLS in April 2015, she did not argue about evidence or motive. She talked about her nephew.

“Rex wouldn’t of wanted his father to be killed,” she said. “He would not have wanted his father to be dead. Rex loved his father.”

Then she asked everyone to let him rest. That November, a jury convicted Rex’s widow of murder.

Sources for this section: 1, 3, 5

Den Hill Road

Charles Earnest Taylor was born on August 8, 1955. He was 59 when he died. He lived on Den Hill Road, in the Ellett area of Montgomery County.

His elderly father, Allen, lived with him and was bedridden. His son, Rex, was living with him too, in the last part of his life.

His obituary lists the people he left behind. His father. A brother in North Carolina. Two aunts in Christiansburg. Two grandchildren. Nieces and nephews. His mother, Ruth, had died before him, and so had a brother, James, and his son. The family kept the services private and asked that any gifts go to the cemetery at North Fork Baptist Church.

That is very nearly all the surviving record says about Charles. It doesn’t say what he did for work, what he cared about, or what his son remembered about him as a boy.

Sources for this section: 1, 3, 4, 8, 10

Rex

Rex died by suicide in August 2014. His family said he had struggled with depression.

He was married to Amanda Taylor, which made her Charles’s daughter-in-law. They had two small children.

After Rex died, Amanda blamed Charles. She accused him of causing Rex’s drug addiction, and she held him responsible for her husband’s death. Those were her accusations. Nothing in the public record shows that any of it was true.

Rex’s family saw it differently. In their telling, Rex was a young man who suffered from depression and who loved his father.

Sources for this section: 3, 4, 8

Easter presents

Amanda was 24. Sean Ball was 32.

On April 4, 2015, Ball drove her to Charles’s home. She had been there that morning, prosecutors said, to get money for her children’s Easter presents. She came back that evening.

She carried a bayonet, bought at a military store. Ball brought a tire iron. Charles’s father was in the house.

Charles was killed there, in his own home.

Sources for this section: 1, 4, 5, 6, 8

The photograph

Amanda posed for a photograph at the scene. At her trial, the lawyers argued over whether she took it herself or Ball did. The reporting never cleanly answered it.

Amanda sent it to a friend, who posted it on what was described in court as a serial killer website.

A scholarly account of the case traces it further. That same day, it says, the image went up on Amanda’s Tumblr blog and was sent to an online friend who ran a website about serial killers.

Sources for this section: 4, 5, 8

Interstate 40

Before they left, the two took money from Charles’s wallet, police said, and headed for North Carolina.

On Sunday, April 5, North Carolina troopers spotted Amanda’s car on Interstate 40. After a two-mile chase, they stopped it with spike strips and arrested her.

Ball was not with her.

Sources for this section: 1, 4

Milepost 386

Just after 7 p.m. that evening, a 911 caller reported an injured, unresponsive man at milepost 386 of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Investigators connected that call to Ball, who ended up in a North Carolina hospital with a life-threatening injury.

The Parkway’s chief ranger said the evidence pointed to Amanda, including a statement she gave to the Highway Patrol. Two days later, a federal grand jury in North Carolina indicted her on charges including attempted murder.

In a 2016 phone interview with WDBJ7, she said she shot him. He survived. The public record reviewed for this story doesn’t say how the federal case ended.

Sources for this section: 1, 2, 7

Let him rest

In her April interview with WSLS, Hope Marvin said she did not want Amanda getting any more attention. She said she thought it was about Amanda trying to make herself look good.

Then she talked about Rex again.

“They need to let him rest and quit talking about him,” she said. “He didn’t commit this crime.”

Sources for this section: 3

Twenty-five minutes

Amanda pleaded not guilty. At her trial, her own lawyers opened by conceding that she killed Charles Taylor.

On November 12, 2015, a Montgomery County jury deliberated for less than 25 minutes and found her guilty. She was sentenced to life in prison that same evening.

Sources for this section: 4, 5

Sixty years

On March 15, 2016, Sean Ball pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He was sentenced to 60 years, with 41 years and one month to serve, followed by 10 years of probation.

He admitted taking part, and he apologized to Charles’s family and to his own.

Sources for this section: 6

The appeal

In March 2017, the Virginia Court of Appeals upheld Amanda’s life sentence.

Sources for this section: 9