A DNA sample from saliva collected off the ground outside a suspect’s home has matched the profile found underneath the fingernails of a young mother brutally murdered 36 years ago.
Last Thursday, police arrested James Holloman, 65, in Suffolk County, Massachusettes for the murder of 25-year-old Karen Taylor on May 27, 1988.
In the late afternoon that day, Taylor’s mother called to speak to her daughter. However, Taylor’s 3-year-old daughter answered the phone instead, telling her grandmother that her mother was asleep and she could not wake her up.
Concerned, Taylor’s mother rushed over, ultimately climbing though the window of her daughter’s first floor bedroom when she couldn’t gain access to the building. It was there she came upon a grisly scene.
Taylor was lying face down in a pool of blood, with 15 stab wounds to her chest, head and neck areas. At the scene, police recovered a gray sweatshirt and bra covered in blood, two cigarettes, and a paycheck made out to James Holloman the day before.
When Holloman was questioned by Boston Police days later, he claimed he had not seen Taylor in the week prior to her murder.
During the initial autopsy, fingernail scraping from Taylor’s right hand were taken, producing a full profile of a then-unknown male.
Still a suspect in 2023, Boston Police surveilled Holloman and collected a sample of his DNA after observing him spit on the ground outside his house. Subsequent forensic testing showed the DNA sample was a match to the unknown profile found beneath Taylor’s fingerprints.
Additionally, while testing revealed that most of the blood on the gray sweatshirt belonged to Taylor, forensic analysists found Holloman’s Y-STR profile on the sweatshirt’s sleeve. They also found his DNA on one of the cigarettes recovered from the 1988 crime scene.
Although he initially claimed to not see Taylor for weeks before her murder, Hollomon recently gave a statement to Boston Police indicating that he did see her the day of her death, but claims they did not have a physical altercation.
“This is an example of superb investigative work by detectives and prosecutors using modern criminology science, but most of all it's an opportunity for Karen Taylor's loved ones to see someone answer for her death after so many years of unanswered questions,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden in a statement.
Holloman was arraigned Friday and ordered held without bail. He will be back in court in late-October.