Man Who Killed Fellow Patient with Axe Freed from Custody, Jan. 19, 1924

Moore Freed from Custody. . . Killed Michael Traylor in Asheville Hospital

By the Associated Press

Asheville, N.C., Jan. 18—Robert Moore, held in jail here for several days charged with killing Michael Taylor, fellow patient at a local hospital, both being treated for mental trouble, was released from jail this afternoon and turned over to the veterans bureau, in an order signed by Judge Bis Ray in superior court.

Moore, accompanied by two attendants from Atlanta, left at 4 o’clock for the government hospital at Perryville, Md. A petition for his released, signed by Mrs. M.M. Hall, sister and guardian, of Chicago, recited that he was sent to the local hospital because he was demented and that he was “unjustly and unlawfully being detained and deprived of his liberty” and was “incapable of committing a crime.”

No denial was made that Moore killed Traylor, formerly a Richmond, Va., lawyer and world war officer, by striking him in the head with an axe, death resulting a few hours later.

From the front page of the Durham Morning Herald, Saturday, January 19, 1924. Murdered man’s last name Taylor on second reference and Traylor on first and third reference.