John Taylor paused on the phone, more than once, before steadying himself and moving on.

The first time concerned his sister, Janis Taylor, who was back in the news last week after Concord Police and the Cold Case Unit announced it was looking into her disappearance 54 years ago.

She was 15 in 1968, a sophomore at Concord High, and that was hard for John to address. Janis has not been found, and no one’s been arrested.

“It was very turbulent,” John, age 11 when his sister vanished, said Friday from his home in San Diego. “I could not focus on school. The teacher was talking, and my mind was only wondering where Janis was.”

He paused and added, “I would come home from school, and my mom was crying all the time.”

Their mother, Lillian Taylor, lives in San Diego now as well. She’s 94, strong as steel, but John says recent events have taken their toll. Her son and John’s brother, Paul Taylor, suffered cardiac arrest early last month and died at the age of 77.

On Friday, her family, worried that stress was affecting her health, called for an ambulance and had Lillian taken to the hospital.

That wasn’t easy for John to talk about, either, requiring another pause or two to finish his thoughts.

“It’s been a rough morning,” he said.

Usually, bad news follows a timeline, then, at its conclusion, lingers in the background forever. In this case, the timeline, thus far, is endless.

As John noted, “It feels like that was when the trauma of the family began. A slow, sad wondering for all our lives and no answer, and it’s never been resolved.”

Bill and Lillian Taylor had nine children. The kids grew up in Warner and Manchester and Concord, went to school in those districts. John said his sister loved horses. She worked at a nearby stable, rode as often as she could.

Once the family moved here, police say she lived on North State Street, School Street and at the Alosa Trailer Park on Manchester Street, where Janis often babysat a little boy, a family member.

Here’s where John plays detective. His rapid stream of consciousness, explaining his theory of what happened to his sister, had obviously been discussed before.

Janis, according to John, had seen the little boy with bruises on his body. She confided in family members, John said, that she believed a man she had seen around, a man somehow connected to the family but not a relative, was responsible for the injuries. The boy, not yet 3, died at the hospital. John has no evidence tying the man to Janis’ disappearance, of course. All he says is to read the newspaper report from 1969.

Read the one that says the man was sentenced to one year in jail, with 10 months suspended, for pleading guilty to second-degree manslaughter in the death of the boy.

“He was accused of kicking (the victim) in the abdomen,” the Associated Press reported. “The boy died four days later.”

As for Janis’ disappearance, John recalls no search parties at the time, nor any big headlines. “I don’t know what type of investigation they had back then,” John said, “but it did not seem to be thorough.”

It’s back in the news. The Attorney General’s Office hopes someone recalls something that will help explain what happened to Janis. The Attorney General’s Office said the case is “considered suspicious.”

She was reported missing on Jan. 8, 1968, after waiting at a local corner in Concord for a ride home from school. Then, nothing.

Reached by email, Assistant Attorney General Susan Morrell withheld some details so as not to compromise the investigation, while balancing law enforcement’s need to publicize the matter. Perhaps someone knows something.

“We cannot discuss how the matter came to our attention or when, but can say that it has been investigated for a few years now, and investigators believe it is the right time to seek the public’s help in identifying anyone who knows anything about her at the time of her disappearance,” Morrell wrote.

Janis would be 69 years old. Calls to schools, libraries and historical societies in Warner and Concord suggested that her name and story lay beneath the surface, somehow forgotten by most individuals old enough to remember.

Janis is officially labeled deceased. Her name rang familiar to Rebecca Courser, the former director of the Warner Historical Society.

“I assume you’re calling to ask about Janis Taylor,” Courser said, opening our conversation. “She is a contemporary, about the same age as me, but I didn’t know her real well.”

Staff at Concord High made school yearbooks from 1967-69 available. Those yearbooks, however, published headshots of and information on seniors only. Nothing from the lower grade levels.

Initially, a lot of the information gathered for this story surfaced in the obit of Paul Taylor, who lived in Hudson and was 77 when he passed away unexpectedly from cardiac arrest, said his daughter, Alysa Mulligan of Pelham.

She wrote her father’s obit, saying that Paul, as well as Janis, were the children of Lillian Margeson, now 94, and the late Bill Taylor.

Paul graduated in 1965 from Simmonds High School in Warner, the predecessor to Kearsarge Regional High School. He could fix and build anything, labeled by Alysa as a self-taught electrician, plumber, painter and carpenter. His laugh was loud, his heart big, she wrote.

Alysa included in her father’s obit that he was predeceased by his sister Janis, simply because this occurred so long ago, yet the family has not totally accepted that as fact.

“A family in this situation will always have hope,” Alysa said.

Even after 54 years. The state’s Cold Case Unit is looking into this mystery, re-opening it years after coming up empty.

In fact, the AG’s announcement marked the first time law enforcement had sought the public’s help. Morrell confirmed that, writing in her email: “This is the first time we’ve released anything about this investigation, and CCU (Cold Case Unit) is in the process of getting her disappearance updated to its website.”

One of the reasons it took so long to reach out to the public was that in 2009, when the Cold Case Unit was created, a statewide index showing homicides or suspicious missing-person cases did not exist, Morrell explained.

“Periodically,” Morrell wrote, “departments, investigators or family members will uncover a matter which was not identified in 2009 when the unit was initially formed.

“Janis Taylor is one such matter.”

Still, Janis’ case had been investigated by authorities in the past. It’s unclear what – if any – new evidence has been uncovered recently that has piqued interest from investigators. One line in the AG’s release said Janis “was associated with people who worked at Rumford Press in Concord,” but the office did not explain why that might be significant.

“We cannot comment on the information obtained in the investigation to date or why the investigators determined that now was the right time to ask for the public’s assistance,” Morrell said.

But she’s asking. Janis is listed at 5 feet, 3 inches tall with brown eyes and long brown hair. She weighed 110 pounds.

Authorities need your help. They say call Concord Police Detective Paul Shaughnessy at 603-230-4934, or email him at PShaughnessy@Concordpolice.com if you have information that might crack the case.

Other options include calling the Concord Police Department Crimeline at 603-226-3100, or Sergeant Matthew Koehler of the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at 603-223-3648.

The Taylor family is waiting.

“We want the truth and nothing to be sensationalized,” John said. “We want you to know the basics of what happened. She did not leave home willingly, I can tell you that.”

]]>