Cops: Rapist Returned To Crime Scene

By DAVE RACHER, Daily News Staff Writer
Posted: February 28, 1986

The old adage that a criminal always returns to the scene of the crime proved to be the undoing of a 41-year-old paroled killer who was convicted by a jury yesterday of a Nov. 3, 1984, rape.

Harry Taylor, of 19th Street near Fairmount Avenue, was arrested five weeks after the rape of a 26-year-old mother of two in her Northern Liberties home when the victim spotted him walking behind her home.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph McGettigan said Taylor's "foolish mistake" of returning to the scene of the rape did him in.

Taylor was released from prison in 1980 after serving eight years of an 8- to-20-year term for a 1972 stabbing murder of a Philadelphia woman, according to police.

McGettigan said Taylor broke into the rape victim's home shortly after 4 a.m. and found her asleep on a living room sofa. After the attack, McGettigan said, Taylor threatened to kill the woman if she told anyone about the rape.

McGettigan said that when the victim saw Taylor at the rear of her home five weeks later, she told a male relative, who chased Taylor through the neighborhood.

Later that morning, according to the prosecutor, police arrested Taylor as he was again walking near the victim's home.

Taylor was convicted of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault and terroristic threats.

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