A 65-year-old man accused of stabbing a young mother 15 times back in 1988 hid behind a door as he was arraigned for her murder.

A Suffolk County grand jury on Thursday indicted James Holloman, of Dorchester, for murdering 25-year-old Karen Taylor in her Roxbury apartment 36 years ago. He was arrested that afternoon and pleaded not guilty to a charge of first-degree murder Friday morning in Suffolk Superior Court.

Investigators say they found Holloman’s paycheck next to Taylor’s body as well as DNA evidence of an unknown male who they say they matched to Holloman just last year.

“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,” Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement.

Clerk Magistrate Edward Curley ordered Holloman held without bail ahead of a pre-trial conference scheduled for Oct. 29 at 2 p.m. Prosecutor Lynn Feigenbaum had argued that while Holloman has no criminal record, he should be held without bail because of the serious charges and because he “faces a possible life sentence if convicted.”

Defense attorney Anthony Ellison said he had no problem with the arrangement for now and would argue bail and conditions at the next hearing.

The murder

Taylor’s own mother found her daughter lying face down in a pool of her own blood in the first-floor bedroom of her apartment at 37 Williams Street in Roxbury on the afternoon of May 27, 1988.

The mother, Mildred Canady, had called Taylor earlier in the day but the call was answered by Taylor’s then-3-year-old child. That child told Canady, according to Feigenbaum, that her mother was sleeping and that she couldn’t wake her up.

An autopsy showed Taylor had been stabbed 15 times to her chest, head and neck, according to the prosecution’s statement of the case filing. A bra covered in blood, a gray sweatshirt and two cigarettes were also found at the scene.

At least one of the cigarettes came back for an unknown male’s DNA, as did a spot of blood on the sweatshirt and scrapings from under Taylor’s fingernails on her right hand. But investigators couldn’t find a match for it until last year.

“In 2023, Boston Police detectives obtained a sample of the defendant’s DNA after observing him spit on the ground outside his house,” Feigenbaum said.

They took a sample of the spit and, they claim, it was a match to the evidence found at the scene.

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Defense attorney Ellison said following the hearing that he has doubts as to whether the sample was necessarily his client’s at all.

“What I understood is that they collected a DNA sample from the ground after he spit, and that’s how they claim,” he said with emphasis and a rise of the eyebrows, “to have matched all of this up.”

Feigenbaum did not indicate what kind of relationship, if any, existed between Holloman and Taylor.

Police questioned Holloman in June 1988 and he told them then, according to Feigenbaum, that he had not seen Taylor for weeks before she was murdered. That story allegedly changed in more recent questioning when he told police that he had seen her the day before she died, but that they had not had a physical altercation.

Defendant James Holloman, 65, of Dorchester hides behind the door guarded by a court officer during his arraignment at Suffolk Superior Court. (Libby O’Neill/Boston Herald)

Defense attorney Anthony Ellison appears in court for the arraignment of the defendant James Holloman at Suffolk Superior Court. (Libby O’Neill/Boston Herald)