Accounts of Taylor's activities were used by then-presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, for his 1976 presidential campaign onwards, to illustrate his criticisms of social programs in the United States.

In census records and court testimony, her relatives gave varying information about her parentage but always identified her as "white".

Rumors in the family indicated that her father was black but Lydia White could have been convicted of a felony under Alabama's law against interracial relationships if she admitted this.

[8] Upon her return to Illinois, prosecutors opened a 31-count indictment against Taylor for fraud, perjury and bigamy, alleging that she had received welfare and Social Security checks under multiple names.

[7] Her attorney, R. Eugene Pincham, managed to delay the trial until March 1977, by which time the charges had been considerably reduced.

[2] Ronald Reagan, as a presidential candidate in 1976, regularly made claims about the welfare state being broken and repeatedly alluded to the Linda Taylor case, although he did not refer to her by name.

[3] At campaign rallies in January 1976 during the New Hampshire primary, Reagan claimed her income had been $150,000—equivalent to $803,000 in 2023—a year, a figure which was derived from a Chicago Tribune report.

[1][2] After he had lost the Republican nomination to Gerald Ford, Reagan said in an October radio broadcast that "her take is estimated at a million dollars", a claim which, according to her biographer Josh Levin, appears to be unsourced.

[12] Taylor is suspected of being the woman who posed as a nurse and abducted an infant, Paul Joseph Fronczak, from the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago in late April 1964.

When Loyd died in 1992, Taylor (under the alias Linda Lynch) was listed as his next of kin but claimed to be his granddaughter rather than his wife.