More than a dozen individuals were eventually named as suspects by both the press and the police. Newspaper reports at the time were both overwhelmingly sensationalised and speculative, even fabricated, and the murder was used as the basis for much subsequent 'true crime' fiction. Suspects included Taylor's valet and cook Edward F. Sands, valet Henry Peavey who found Taylor's body, actress and Taylor's lover Mabel Normand, neighbour Faith Cole MacLean who might have mistaken Taylor for a burglar, general manager of Paramount Pictures Charles Eyton, child star and teen screen idol Mary Miles Minter, Minter's mother Charlotte Shelby and film actress Margaret Gibson. Gibson reportedly confessed to murdering Taylor shortly before she died in 1964.