Elizabeth Taylor
Age 402 Nov 1964
Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada)
Strangled
Elizabeth's body was found beneath the outdoor stairway of a boarding house on the morning of 3rd November 1964. She is believed to have been killed late the previous day.
She was well-known locally as a 'female impersonator' and was dressed in women's clothing, complete with long red opera gloves, nylon stockings, high-heel shoes, a dress, and make-up.
A group of people were taken in for questioning but none of them were convicted.
Impersonator's murder most sordid of year (The Province, BC, CA, 1964-11-04)
The murder of female impersonator [Elizabeth] Taylor, 40, has been described by police as Vancouver's most sordid homicide of the year.
Taylor, better known in the Skid Road underworld as Elizabeth, was found strangled, with blood trickling from the side of [her] mouth and [her] neck contorted, under the outside stairway of 874 East Georgia.
[She] was dressed in women's clothes, high-heeled shoes still on [her] feet.
The house is a three-storey shabby frame dwelling belonging to G. H Snow of Vancouver. It consists of five greasy and rain soaked suites. The hallway and corridors are dark alleys with cobwebs the only adornment.
Taylor was not a resident in the house. The stairway under which [her] body was found faces the backyard. The stairway leads from the semi-attic third floor to a kind of wooden porch on the second floor, and thence to the ground level, ending outside the room of former caretaker Alex R. Laird.
An autopsy conducted Tuesday morning established that Taylor died in the early hours of Tuesday by strangulation.
Laird and three other residents interviewed — pensioner William Grant, 76, Mrs. Clementine Fosburg, 69, and a tall fair unidentified woman said they heard noises and banging from the attic aparment No. 5 during the night. They said a fight had been going on there for some time. But this was nothing unusual, they said.
All four locked and barricaded their doors as the din and the screams continued from upstairs. None ever considered calling the police.
The homicide squad under Det.-Sgt. Bill Porteous continued searching throughout the night for clues in connection with the murder.
Detectives are holding three men and a woman for questioning. Police said the four were so drunk when picked up that it was impossible to question them coherently.
Sgt Porteous told The Province the murder was not committed at the place where the body was found. He said Taylor was killed somewhere nearby, and then dumped under the staircase.
Taylor had a long record of convictions for a variety of minor crimes and had been released from Oakalla Prison recently.
Elizabeth's name was not included in the archive of historic TDoR cases collated by tdor.info.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-vancouver-sun-murder-of-transgender/74005257/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-province-murder-of-transgender-woman/74005748/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/nanaimo-daily-news-murder-of-transgender/75598968/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-province-trial-in-murder-of-transgen/75598999/
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-vancouver-sun-murder-of-transgender/75623456/
