Dominick Taylor, pictured left in a mug shot after his 2020 arrest, right in a more recent jail mug shot (DuPage County State’s Attorney)
A 54-year-old “full-time” caregiver who pleaded guilty months ago to murdering his blind and “unable to walk” nephew in a bedroom at home west of Chicago in 2020 will have to serve the entirety of the resulting 50-year prison sentence, meaning he will have to live until he’s roughly 100 years old to see the outside of prison again, according to Illinois prosecutors.
Dominick Cedric Taylor in February admitted to first-degree murder in the death of 43-year-old Damian B. Scott, whom prosecutors in the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office said in a press release was the victim of a “particularly disturbing” slaying by strangulation at the hands of his uncle amid the “throes” of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Prosecutors said and Taylor conceded through his guilty plea that he murdered Scott on April 26, 2020, at a Bloomingdale residence where he lived with his wife and the victim, then took a series of steps to try and escape justice, leaving his spouse to find the victim dead in a bedroom.
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Taylor tried to evade detection by powering off his phone and, without his wife knowing, took out cash of his spouse’s account — and the “one-way Amtrak train ticket” from Chicago to Michigan that the defendant bought did not ultimately accomplish anything, even though Taylor later tried to fight extradition from the Wolverine State, prosecutors said.
Chillingly, the DuPage County Coroner’s Office’s findings on Scott’s death revealed “evidence” that the victim had been strangled before.
“Following a postmortem examination performed by the DuPage County Coroner’s Office, a deep tissue hemorrhage around the victim’s hyoid bone was identified, which is consistent with manual strangulation,” prosecutors said. “The exam also identified a healed fracture around the thyroid cartilage determined to be evidence of a prior strangulation.”
After the defendant was sentenced Thursday in Judge Brian Telander’s court, State’s Attorney Robert Berlin remarked that Taylor’s job “was to protect Damian’s life, not take it, as alleged in this case.”
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“What I find particularly disturbing in this case, however, is the fact that as Damian’s caretaker, Mr. Taylor was responsible for the safety and wellbeing of Damian,” Berlin said, adding that Scott was mentally disabled.
18th Judicial Circuit Court records reviewed by Law&Crime indicate that Taylor was given credit for time served, 1,515 days, which comes out to about four years.
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