Julie Taylor was getting ready for an early night when her daughter called her with the worst news imaginable.
The grandmother, 58, who worked early mornings in a café, remembered: “I answered but she screamed. She didn’t speak. She screamed, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead – they killed him and stabbed him to death.’ She even said who it was.”
Liam Taylor, 19, who was fondly nicknamed Fish, was slaughtered outside the Rose and Crown pub in Writtle, Essex, on January 31, 2020.
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(Image: Julie Taylor)
And in an exclusive interview with the Daily Star, Julie said the murder of Liam ‘destroyed’ her family, which she said had once been close.
She also revealed that the three killers have still shown no remorse and said how she has made it her obsession to save lives in the wake of the tragedy.
Speaking on the week Liam should have been celebrating his 24th birthday, Julie told us: “It has got worse. On the 16th of this month it will be the fifth birthday we will have missed. The first year you think ‘my god this is terrible’. The second year you think ‘that was worse than last year’ and by the third year I was distraught.
“Last year I thought ‘this is killing us’ and I decided – and if you knew me you wouldn’t believe I did it – but I went to a funfair and went on rides and drank a pink gin.
“It is now getting closer and it is really hitting and I am thinking I don’t know if I will even be able to go and see him this time. I think it is going to be too much.”
(Image: Julie Taylor)
The trio responsible for Liam’s murder were Ryan Filby, Daniel Daden and Louis Coglate. Filby and Daden, from Witham, were convicted of murder and wounding with intent and must serve a minimum of 21 years. Colgate, from Chelmsford, admitted murder and must serve at least 16 years.
They stabbed Liam and his pal, who survived, after an altercation earlier in the night – despite the victims not being involved in it.
And asked whether the killers had ever reached out to apologise, Julie said: “No, not at all. They do not care. There is no remorse at all and there has never been a ‘we are sorry’. There was nothing. Even on the day they were sentenced, one was like, ‘it is easy and I don’t give a f***’ kind of thing.”
She added: “We were a close family. What happened has destroyed us. We argue now when we didn’t argue before.”
Liam was described as a joker and had two siblings he cared greatly for. His father was not around, so he took on the mantle of being the man of the house.
(Image: Julie Taylor)
Julie said he was a bit of a mummy’s boy and preferred being at home with his mum, Michelle, as opposed to going to school.
He left education at 16 before eventually getting a roofing job and his grandmother said he had “really got his life together” and had a nice girlfriend before “everything went so wrong so quickly”.
And giving us an insight into Liam’s cheeky personality, she laughed: “He was so handsome and since he has been killed, I have realised that all the girls are still fighting over him. They still argue over him now, it is absolutely ridiculous. He was just very popular and he was the joker and he was the one who would always make you laugh and things like that. Just a really nice boy.
“But everything he did, he was an idiot. He wasn’t well behaved at school but he wasn’t naughty. The sort of things he would do is ride the pet sheep in the playground and things like that. He would climb out of a window if he didn’t want to do a lesson.
“But his teachers came to his funeral. He was just a joker and you couldn’t be angry with him because he would just make you laugh even when he did stupid things.”
(Image: Julie Taylor)
In the wake of the tragedy, Julie set up The Liam Taylor Legacy to fundraise for life-saving bleed control first aid kits.
They have been distributed in pubs and clubs and one bouncer was saved because of it after his throat was cut. And Julie said six people have avoided an early death because of them in the past 15 months.
“I just couldn’t let Liam be forgotten,” she told us. “But I can’t be proud of it. I have to stay humble and at first you think ‘my god, another kit has been used’ and you don’t want them to be used.
“You just want them sitting there and then in four years time they say it has gone out of date and can they have another one.
“I am not going to stop and it has become an obsession to keep getting them out. Essex County Council has just bought me 60 which is amazing. It has taken over my life and it is all I do – Liam’s work as I called it.”
And asked whether she had a final message for our readers, she spoke about the knife-crime epidemic.
(Image: Julie Taylor)
Julie, who now visits prisons to speak to inmates, said: “They just have to stop carrying knives. They have got to stop all this violence. They do not realise they get one life.
“It is not just the person they murdered… it is them as well. But it just doesn’t stop.”