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Slaying of beloved elderly woman mystifies Brooksville

 
A memorial card bears a photo of Jannie Taylor on her front porch, a favorite spot, holding a relative. The 81-year-old and two others were fatally shot at the Taylor home Aug. 29.
A memorial card bears a photo of Jannie Taylor on her front porch, a favorite spot, holding a relative. The 81-year-old and two others were fatally shot at the Taylor home Aug. 29.
Published Sept. 7, 2014

BROOKSVILLE

It was just after 9 o'clock Aug. 29 when Vickie Blount's niece called with the news that one of the victims of a shooting rampage in south Brooksville was Jannie Taylor.

Taylor was an 81-year-old, churchgoing woman whom Blount had known for nearly 40 years. She baked cakes and cooked picnic lunches for family and friends. She had called Blount three days earlier to check on how she was recovering from throat surgery. She even helped to raise the man charged with killing her.

"That's just the way she was. She cared about people," said Blount, 51, sitting on the porch of the house west of Brooksville where she had heard the news.

"I could not talk after I got that call. I just sat out here in this yard until about 11 or 12 o'clock, thinking why, why? Especially, why Miss Jannie?"

One answer is that Taylor lived in dangerous surroundings, in her daughter's small house with two drug-dealing grandsons. Also, police say, George Mason III, the Lutz man charged in the shootings, seemed "hell-bent" on killing everyone in sight.

Still, the puzzle remains, and people all over Brooksville shook their heads last week as they contemplated it:

How could a 42-year-old suspect — even one like Mason, with a reputation as a bully and history of violent crime — bring himself to shoot kind, beloved Jannie Taylor?

• • •

Taylor had lived in Hernando County since she was an infant and spent most of her life looking after relatives and fellow members of St. James Missionary Baptist Church.

She attended Sunday services at the tiny, wood-framed chapel west of Brooksville for more than 50 years, said Lois Hudson, 64, the daughter of the church's longtime pastor.

For church functions, Taylor baked cakes and sweet potato pies. On Labor Day or the Fourth of July, she sometimes surprised the Hudson family with a full meal to take to whatever gathering they planned to attend.

"She'd call up and say, 'I got something for you,' and it would be greens, and macaroni and cheese and fried chicken," Hudson said.

Taylor was always good about checking on sick friends, and in the two years since Hudson was left bedridden by a stroke, she called every few days.

"That's why this is so sad," Hudson said last week. "It's like we lost our mother all over again."

Taylor reared three stepsons in a house west of Brooksville, relatives said. Later, she brought up the three daughters she had with her husband, Donald. Later still, she helped care for her daughters' children, including the ones with whom she would later live: Ralph Peyton, 29, and Gabriel "Bo" Taylor, 33, who was often in the company of his half brother, Mason, who is accused of killing her.

"She fed (Mason). She looked after him," said Blount, whose mother lived next door to the Taylors.

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"She treated him as a grandson, and he called her Grandma."

• • •

Taylor, whose husband died in 1988, moved into a Habitat for Humanity home on Peach Street built 19 years ago for her only surviving daughter, Tracy.

It kept her close to her church and near friends and family who visited on the front porch, where she sat every evening.

"I saw her the day before she died," said her grandson, DeMario Mason, 24. "I said, 'Hey, Nanna Boo,' and she said, 'Hey, baby,' " and we just sat there talking about nothing. Just talking."

But close contact with her family was also a problem, said Brooksville police Chief George Turner.

Tracy Taylor's sons, Bo Taylor and Ralph Peyton, had multiple drug convictions. Police had searched the house for drugs in the past, Turner said, and after the shootings they found a pound of marijuana bagged for sale.

Charles Townsend, 70, lives next door and is the former father-in-law of Tarasha Townsend, 37, the girlfriend that George Mason is accused of killing. So many apparent drug buyers came and went from his neighbor's home that "it looked like a damn McDonald's," Charles Townsend said,

And Jannie Taylor, he said, lived there only because she had no other place to go.

"That old lady was scared."

• • •

None of the visitors was scarier than Mason, who lived in Lutz with his girlfriend and their daughters, but drove the 45 minutes north to Brooksville almost every day.

Mason served four prison sentences between 1992 and 2007 for crimes including sale of cocaine, battery on a law enforcement officer, fleeing law enforcement and possession of a firearm as a felon.

He is 6 feet 2 and weighs 240 pounds, "a weight-lifting man," said Willie Miller, 57, a relative of Mason's.

He is known for being aggressive in asking for money — which he always seemed to be short of, even though he drove a Jaguar — and even more aggressive about asking for the repayment of loans, said Anthony Erskine, a family friend of the Taylors'.

"You didn't want to owe him 50 cents."

DeMario Mason, who is gay, said George Mason, his first cousin on his father's side, was the only person "in my family who criticized me for being who I am. … He was always calling me 'f-----' and stuff."

And Charles Townsend said George Mason had recently threatened him because he suspected him of being a "snitch."

"He said, 'Old man, somebody's going to shoot you.' "

• • •

Mason had a violent history, but no one anticipated what Turner called one of the most horrific crimes in Brooksville history.

Police say Mason shot and killed Peyton and Jannie Taylor inside the house and wounded Bo Taylor, who then ran outside.

When Tarasha Townsend tried to stop Mason from chasing Bo Taylor, Mason shot and killed her on the side of Peach Street, police say. A few hundred yards south and east, near Main Street and Dr. M.L. King Jr. Boulevard, Mason shot and seriously injured Bo Taylor before Mason was accidentally struck by a passing truck.

Both Mason and Taylor were treated at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point in Hudson. Mason, who suffered multiple broken bones, was transferred last week to the Hernando County Detention Center, where he was being held without bond.

At first some people in Brooksville speculated that Jannie Taylor might have been killed by a stray bullet. But Turner, the police chief, said that was not the case. A preliminary autopsy showed that all the victims had been shot in the face.

• • •

It was easy to find the house on Peach Street last week. It was the one with black balloons tied to the mailbox, a table on the porch covered with wilted flowers, a poster taped to a window with photos of the victims and condolences written in black Sharpie.

Erskine, the Taylors' friend, cooked hamburgers and hot dogs in the bare sandy yard Wednesday night to raise money for Peyton's funeral.

People stopped by to share theories — most of them involving drugs or money — about what had set Mason off.

None of them, though, claimed to know what made him decide to shoot Jannie Taylor.

"She was sweet. She was kind. She was always nice," said her granddaughter Demetria Lee, 33, of Spring Hill.

"I don't understand why this nasty-a-- person would do this."