A suspect is scheduled to be arraigned on Friday after fingernail scrapings led to his arrest in connection to a decades-old murder case of a woman in Boston.
James Holloman, 65, was arrested by the Boston Police fugitive unit Thursday after being indicted earlier in the death of 25-year-old Karen Taylor in Roxbury.
On May 27, 1988, Taylor's mother called her daughter, and her three-year-old granddaughter answered the phone to say her mother was sleeping and she couldn't wake her up.
When Taylor's mother arrived at the apartment complex, she went around the back of the building and crawled through the window of her daughter's first-floor bedroom, where she found Taylor lying face-down in a pool of blood, according to WCVB.
Taylor had been stabbed 15 times and suffered wounds to her chest, head, and neck area.
"Found near her body was the paycheck of James Holloman, distributed to him the day before," said Assistant District Attorney Lynn Feigenbum.
Forensic testing on the fingernail scrapings from Taylor's right hand produced a full profile of an unknown man.
"In 2023, Boston police detectives obtained a sample of the defendant's DNA after observing him spit on the ground outside his house. This sample was a match to the unknown profile found underneath Miss Taylor's fingernails," Feigenbum added.
Holloman's DNA profile was also found on a bloody sweatshirt near Taylor's body, as well as a cigarette found in her bedroom.
"What I understood is that they collected the DNA sample from the ground after he spit, and that's how they claim to have matched all this up," commented Holloman's defense attorney, Anthony Robert.
Holloman was arraigned Friday in Suffolk Superior Court on a first-degree murder charge and is being held without bail.
He's due to return to court next month.
