Man guilty of Henrico slaying in 1998

On Nov. 18, 2009, at 2 p.m., a man named Illuminato Felciano Taylor called 911 in Henrico County.

"I committed a murder about, what is this — 2009? — 11 years ago," he said, his voice flat and empty of emotion. And when the operator asked who the victim was, Taylor said it was "Jones, Kevin Jones."

"I want you all to come pick me up," said Taylor, a talented basketball prospect at Highland Springs High School in 1991. He had served time in the past but for nothing more serious than weapon and drug violations.

On Wednesday, Taylor, who stands 6 feet 6 inches tall and is seriously mentally ill, was convicted of murder and a firearm charge in the death of Kevin Ramone Jones, 25, largely on the basis of that 911 call and a wealth of details Taylor provided Henrico detectives after his arrest.

Henrico Circuit Judge James S. Yoffy set a March 29 sentencing date for a man his teammates once called Lummi, now 36. Until his 911 call, he was never considered a suspect in Jones' death.

"Why did you call 911?" investigators repeatedly asked him. " 'Cause I'm tired," he said. "I mean things just ain't going right."

Living mostly on the streets, or with his dying grandmother, or in jail for much of the 11 years after the killing, Taylor put Henrico police in a strange predicament. They had to prove what Taylor had confessed. In interviews he grew increasingly resistant to talking, often shrugging his shoulders to answer or just grunting.

"We don't want to charge someone if they didn't do it," cold-case Detective Judy Berger pleaded, trying to get Taylor to open up.

Jones' body was found slumped on a sidewalk at the Woodman West apartment complex about 3:40 a.m. on Feb. 1, 1998. He had three bullet holes in his head. No witnesses came forward, and a woman who had been visited by Taylor and Jones and another man and who saw Jones' body from her window never called police.

"I was scared," she testified on Wednesday.

Taylor provided key evidence that could be checked out: He said he had been with Jones and another man, and he identified the woman whose apartment the three men visited.

But there were inconsistencies. Taylor erred in describing the location of the apartment in the complex and said he had shot Jones six times from behind.

"Do you think you might have missed?" a detective asked Taylor, knowing that Jones had only three wounds. And Taylor had grown seriously mentally ill in the years since the murder. He had to be restored to competency to stand trial.

Taylor said he tossed the gun into the James River as he drove over the "Dime Bridge," and he said that he killed Jones because Jones had robbed his grandmother's home on Delaware Avenue, taking a handgun, a pair of Nike Flavors and cash.

Why did Taylor wait so long to exact revenge against Jones, about two years, detectives asked.

"He was locked up," Taylor said. Records showed Jones was released from the state prison system in January 1998, two weeks before he died. He had served time for breaking and entering in a case unrelated to Taylor's grandmother.

Another man at the shooting scene is doing more than 100 years in prison and refused to testify.

Defense lawyer G. Russell Stone Jr. hinged his case on Taylor's severe mental illness, which began to manifest itself after the killing and, according to testimony from forensic psychologist Evan Nelson, created the possibility of delusional thinking on Taylor's part.

Nelson testified that Taylor could have been under the impression, as his thought processes diminished, that he carried out episodes in his life he had only witnessed or been told of.

And while Nelson said it also is possible that Taylor's recollections were genuine, Stone likened convicting Taylor to convicting a mentally ill man who claimed responsibility for President John F. Kennedy's assassination, using a combination of acquired knowledge and his actual presence in Dallas.

"That's not enough; this is a more complex case than that," Stone argued.

But Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Michael Gerrard and Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Cerullo argued that Taylor's specific details and his later reluctance to talk pointed to guilt.

Cerullo said that the weight of Taylor's comments to police were specific and factual rather than delusional or made up. And he pointed out that Taylor acknowledged using a .38 before ballistics evidence established the caliber of the weapon.

In a brief appearance on the witness stand, Taylor changed his story almost entirely. He denied any knowledge of Kevin Jones or of the people in the apartment at Woodman West. And he denied that he killed the man.

In the back of the courtroom, after Yoffy issued the guilty verdict, Jones' three daughters wept, after more than a decade of pain and not knowing who killed their father.

One of them, asking not to be named, has her father's name tattooed to her wrist. She said she will forever be saddened by her father's death, despite his criminal past and out-of-wedlock ways.

Jones paid close attention to his children and in many ways was a good father, she said.

Taylor's family will be able to visit him in prison, she said, but Jones' family can only visit his grave.