Robert L. Williams, a 38-year-old White man from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, was killed on July 15, 1985, in the Spring Brook area of Dunn County. Williams worked for a computer company and had become acquainted with Alvin Taylor, a traveling nightclub singer, after the two met in 1984. What initially appeared to be a friendship eventually became part of a series of killings that investigators later attributed to Taylor.
According to accounts of the investigation, Taylor developed the
delusional belief that Williams had killed someone and that something needed to be done about him. On July 15, Taylor shot Williams with a. 357 Magnum at or near the rural Spring Brook farmhouse Taylor was renting. Rather than report the death, Taylor concealed what he had done. He buried Williams behind the farmhouse and reportedly covered the remains with quicklime, leaving Williams hidden there while Taylor moved on with his life.
Williams remained buried for roughly two years. His remains were eventually discovered after another man who was renting the farmhouse came across the burial site and contacted authorities. The discovery transformed the property into a homicide investigation and provided police with evidence connecting Williams's disappearance and death to Taylor. Investigators would eventually have an even broader picture of Taylor's violence after another killing in Dunn County brought him directly under suspicion.
On March 28, 1987, Taylor shot and killed Timothy Hayden in Menomonie. During the Hayden investigation, evidence increasingly pointed toward Taylor, and investigators learned information connecting him with the firearm evidence and with the earlier Williams killing. Taylor was arrested on April 3, 1987, while attending Hayden's funeral in Portage and was held in the Dunn County Jail on substantial bail. After his arrest, Taylor admitted killing Williams as well as Hayden, James Severson of Eau Claire, and Daniel Lundgren. His statements described a deeply delusional belief system in which he believed he was receiving messages or instructions and was supposed to eliminate people he considered evil or dangerous.
Taylor was charged in Dunn County with first-degree murder in the deaths of Williams and Hayden. He entered pleas of not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. His mental condition became a central issue in the criminal proceedings, including litigation over whether prosecutors could obtain his previous psychiatric treatment records. Ultimately, Taylor was found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect on four first-degree murder charges arising from the deaths of Williams, Hayden, Severson and Lundgren. Therefore, there was no conventional murder conviction or prison sentence for Williams's killing. Instead, Taylor was committed indefinitely to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services and confined at Mendota Mental Health Institute. He separately entered a guilty or no-contest plea to an attempted-murder charge and received a prison sentence for that offense.
Taylor has repeatedly sought conditional release from his psychiatric commitment, but those efforts have generally been unsuccessful. As recently as 2026 he remained at Mendota Mental Health Institute and again petitioned for conditional release. An Eau Claire County judge authorized a jury proceeding to consider that request, while several pretrial motions filed by Taylor's defense were denied in June 2026. The available reporting through the summer of 2026 continued to describe him as confined at Mendota pending further proceedings. More than four decades after Williams was shot and secretly buried in Spring Brook, Taylor's admission and the subsequent court findings leave no publicly identified alternative suspect in Williams's killing.
