Ella Margaret Gibson (September 14, 1894 – October 21, 1964) was an American stage and silent-film actress who had leading roles in Vitagraph Westerns, often opposite William Clifford.

An article in Variety the following year noted that the 19-year-old budding film star had purchased a cliffside bungalow overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica.

On November 2, 1923 (21 months after Taylor's murder), Gibson was arrested at her home at 2324 North Beachwood Drive, Los Angeles, California on federal felony charges involving an alleged nationwide blackmail and extortion ring.

Over the next six years, she worked sporadically in bit parts and minor supporting roles, but the industry's transition to sound film resulted in the end of Gibson's already thwarted career.

However, in a letter to her dated February 8, 1942, Elbert wrote "Do you remember, dearest, the morning of your first arrival in Singapore, seven sweet years ago, when I pushed all the boats out of the harbor so your ship could come in?"

With Europe overwhelmed by war and passage to South Africa and Australia threatened by German naval operations, she reluctantly returned without her spouse to Los Angeles and underwent surgery twice at Hollywood Hospital.

In 1949, Gibson moved to a small, sparsely furnished house at 6135 Glen Oak St. in the Hollywood Hills near Beachwood Village, close to where she had owned residential property during the 1920s.

Sensing that she was dying, a highly distraught Gibson—a recently converted Roman Catholic—asked for a priest and then confessed to neighbors the February 1, 1922, murder of Hollywood film director William Desmond Taylor.

[1] Gibson had apparently made similar remarks the previous evening while watching a local television program, Ralph Story's Los Angeles.

[citation needed] Gibson was in Los Angeles at the time of the murder, but her name never was mentioned during the investigation and no surviving documentation refers to any association between Taylor and her after 1914.

[5][6][7] Given her documented arrest record, Taylor's reportedly odd remarks in the weeks leading to his murder, and other circumstantial evidence, the inferred motive would have been related to blackmail in the wake of the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal, during which the private lives of most Hollywood celebrities easily could fall under highly sensationalized public scrutiny.