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As a cop turned private investigator, Taylor Wright was used to solving other people’s crimes.
But when the mom of one mysteriously vanished just as she was on the precipice of starting a new life, it left those closest to her grappling for answers.
Taylor disappeared in September of 2017 just as she was moving in with her girlfriend, school administrator Casandra Wallen, according to “The Necklace” episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered.
Wallen told police that Taylor went out to run errands with her close friend Ashley McArthur and never returned.
Taylor’s romance with Wallen had its share of troubles, and Taylor was just days away from a court date in an ongoing legal battle with her ex-husband. She had been ordered by a judge to produce $25,000 in cash at the hearing and, by all accounts, had been feeling mounting stress as the court date loomed.
Who was Taylor Wright?
Taylor developed a tough exterior, in part, because of her rough start in life. By the age of 13, she was in the foster care system. It wasn’t until she came across Nancy Murchison, a neighbor who eventually took her in, that her life began to get on track.
“She was just so pathetic looking, she had this wet, stringy hair and was small anyway, but she looked so frail and I don’t know what it was about her, but I just said you can come stay with us,” Murchison recalled.
Taylor lived with Murchison and her sons for most of her teenage years before meeting and falling in love with Jeff Wright, a Marine. Jeff told Dateline that he was attracted to her because she was different: smart, competitive, tough and still looked amazing in a dress.
“Our first date ended with us throwing knives at a dart board,” he said. “She liked to lift weights and flex her guns.”
While Jeff was away on combat tours, Taylor, who often wore a distinctive necklace with a bullet, became a police officer in Jacksonville, North Carolina.
“I thought she was an absolutely amazing person,” her best friend and supervising officer Barbara Evanson told Dateline. “Taylor was one of those people that she wanted to be friends with everybody.”
What happened to Jeff and Taylor Wright’s marriage?
In 2010, Taylor and Jeff welcomed their son Drake and as Jeff described it, Taylor was an “ideal mother” who devoted her time to caring for her young son.
But the couple’s relationship eventually began to crumble after moving to Florida. They officially decided to call it quits during a dinner on their 10th wedding anniversary. While Murchison said Taylor felt “betrayed” and surprised when Jeff announced he wanted a divorce, Jeff insisted he had wanted to make the marriage work and Taylor was “very directly saying I do not want to be with you anymore.”
Whatever the case, it quickly became the war of the roses as the couple battled over custody and money. On one occasion, Jeff called the police after one heated argument and Taylor—who had since left her job as a police officer—was arrested for battery. Although he later dropped the charges, the damage was done to her career and no police department would hire her.
Without a job or steady housing, Taylor reluctantly agreed to give Jeff full custody of their son.
Along with the feud over custody, Taylor also believed that a $100,000 settlement she received before the couple got married after she’d been in a bad car accident should go to her and not be divided as part of the marital assets. While they battled it out in court, a judge froze their assets, but Taylor somehow managed to withdraw the $100,000 anyway. The furious judge ordered her to come to court with a check for $25,000 to the next court hearing, scheduled just four days after she disappeared.
Taylor Wright gets new job, moves in with girlfriend
Amidst the ongoing legal battles, Taylor was attempting to start a new chapter in life. She began working as a private investigator and was moving in with her new girlfriend, Casandra Wallen, in September of 2017.
The beginning of the relationship had been plagued by Taylor’s occasional drug use and infidelity, but the pair were able to work through it and were committed to beginning a life together.
But the same weekend Taylor was moving into Wallen’s Pensacola, Florida home, she mysteriously vanished.
“My whole birthday weekend was moving her stuff, and helping her move. But I didn’t mind ‘cause it was, like, you know, I was really happy,” Wallen told detectives.
An emotional Wallen told investigators that Taylor left the home to go run errands with her friend and former CSI investigator Ashley McArthur. But when Taylor hadn’t returned hours later and missed a planned birthday dinner in Wallen’s honor, she began to worry.
McArthur insisted that Taylor had been stressed and emotional that day, breaking down twice in tears and said the pair went horseback riding at a family farm in Milton, Florida to calm her nerves. She said Taylor left her home around 4:30 p.m. after taking an Uber downtown to get a beer.
Just before 8 p.m., Wallen got a text message from Taylor’s phone that read: “I’ll call you later. I’m not angry with you and I should have called but I just needed to think I am trying to get my life organized and on track.”
The message struck Wallen as odd, especially since the couple were in the middle of moving in together.
Close to midnight, McArthur said she received a message of her own from Taylor.
“I’m ok,” the text read. “I just need some time to think the move and court is very stressful. I need a few days to myself. Everything is Ok. I am not doing anything bad.”
But as the days stretched on and no one had heard from Taylor, detectives began to wonder whether something happened to her. During a search of Wallen’s home, they found an uncashed $19,000 cashier’s check.
Detectives took a hard look at Wallen, who had reported her girlfriend missing, but she was “very cooperative” and willingly handed over all her electronics, according to Pensacola Police Department Detective Chad Willhite.
“Casandra wasn’t trying to hide anything,” he said.
They also looked into Jeff, but he was hundreds of miles away in North Carolina at the time of the disappearance.
Although her job as a private investigator could have put her in danger, authorities weren’t able to find any evidence to suggest someone she’d run into on the job had caused her any harm. That led authorities to take a closer look at the last person who’d seen her alive, her close friend McArthur.
McArthur insisted that Taylor left her home the day she disappeared around 4:30 p.m.
“I don’t believe Taylor’s been harmed,” she told detectives. “I think Taylor’s doing what Taylor does.”
But detectives could find no record of an Uber, Lyft or taxi ever being called to McArthur’s address that afternoon.
Their suspicions deepened when they discovered that although McArthur told authorities the two friends had gone horseback riding in Milton that day, McArthur’s cell phone records revealed she had actually been miles away in Cantonment, Florida at a rural property owned by her aunt and uncle.
Detectives were able to get a search warrant for the farm property, her home and business about six weeks after Taylor disappeared and brought McArthur in for questioning at the same time a team of detectives was searching the wooded farm property with a special K-9 unit.
McArthur continued to deny having anything to do with her friend’s death, but just ten minutes after authorities let her leave the interrogation room, the team at the farm discovered a portion of a skull sticking out of the ground, encased in concrete and potting soil. When they carefully excavated the skeletal remains, they also found Taylor’s distinctive bullet necklace, removing any doubt that they were Taylor’s remains.
“They found what appeared to be a gunshot wound in the back of the skull,” Pensacola Police Detective Jeff Brown said, adding that Taylor had likely been taken by surprise by her friend.
McArthur was arrested as investigators continued to dive into her past. They learned that she ran a family business with her parents that rented jukeboxes and pool tables to area bars. The company then split the profits from the rentals with the bar owners, but McArthur had been skimming money from the business and shortchanging bar owners.
To try to cover her tracks, prosecutors alleged that McArthur had deliberately set a fire at the business to destroy any records.
After Taylor took that $100,000 from the disputed funds with her ex-husband, she’d given McArthur some of it to hide. Together, they put $34,000 into a joint bank account, but McArthur had begun spending the money almost immediately to pay for extravagant gifts for a man she was having a secret affair with. When Taylor needed the money back to bring it to court, authorities believe McArthur panicked and killed her.
Was Ashley McArthur convicted?
McArthur was first brought to trial on fraud, racketeering and arson charges for the business-related crimes. While she was found guilty of fraud and racketeering, she was acquitted of the more circumstantial arson charges.
Assistant State Attorney Bridgette Meyers Jensen was worried jurors could respond the same way to the circumstantial murder charges. Authorities had not been able to find any DNA to link McArthur to the crime.
Yet in court, they presented the cell phone records, financial records, surveillance footage showing McArthur buying concrete and potting soil the day after Taylor disappeared and called three of McArthur’s friends to the stand, who testified that she’d told them she planned to buy cocaine to sneak into Taylor’s beer to cause a fatal overdose. The morning of the murder, McArthur was seen purchasing a beer for Taylor at a convenience store, but one of the friends would testify that McArthur told her Taylor spit the beer out because it tasted funny, forcing her to use a gun instead.
Prosecutors presented enough evidence for a jury to convict McArthur of first-degree murder. She was sentenced to life with a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years.
Although the conviction brought a measure of justice, Taylor’s loved ones have never been the same.
“In so many ways I feel that I was robbed, you know, I love her and miss her and that will never stop,” Murchison said.
