Jury hears competing accounts in Taylor murder trial [The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tenn.]

Nov. 30--Jurors were given sharply different accounts Tuesday of why a nurse shot her husband to death two years ago in their East Memphis apartment.

Prosecutors said Pamela Taylor intentionally shot Michael Taylor in the heart and in the back of the head because he took her off of his health insurance and was moving out to seek a divorce.

The defense said Taylor was abusive to his wife and was fueled with marijuana and steroids and threatening to kill her when he was shot to death the morning of Dec. 23, 2009, at their Madison Humphreys Center apartment near Interstate 240 and Walnut Grove.

"She'd seen him angry before, but this time things were different," said defense attorney Andre Wharton, adding that Taylor previously had threatened her with a screwdriver and once hit her in the head with a large phone book. "She feared for her life. Ms. Taylor acted in self defense."

Pamela Taylor, 39, is facing first-degree murder charges in Criminal Court and faces up to life in prison if convicted as charged. She is free on $150,000 bond.

The Taylors dated off and on at Kingsbury High School, where he played football and was a state champion pole vaulter in the late 1980s. She was pregnant with their daughter at graduation, but they drifted apart and married and divorced other people.

They stayed in touch, however, because of their daughter and eventually got back together around 2005 and were married for about two years before the shooting.

Michael Taylor, then 39, a maintenance supervisor for Fogelman Management Group, visited with his mother the night before the shooting.

"I said 'Please be careful, Michael, because she will kill you before she lets you leave her,' and that's exactly what she did," the mother, Diane Welch, testified, adding that she never knew her son to be violent. "For so many years she tried to get Mike back, and when she did she wasn't going to let him go."

Prosecutor Missy Branham told jurors that the day before the shooting Pamela Taylor pawned her jewelry and other items for $200 and purchased a .38-caliber pistol.

"She had the same gun the next morning hidden up the sleeve of her sweatshirt," Branham said. "She fires through the sleeve and into the heart of Mike Taylor. She planned this murder."

The trial before Judge Paula Skahan resumes today.

-- Lawrence Buser: (901) 529-2385

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