Janis Taylor went missing in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1968. Her disappearance remains unsolved.
This article contains mention of murder and child abuse.
On January 8, 1968, 15-year-old Janis Taylor went missing in Concord, New Hampshire. She was last seen after school that day, waiting for a ride on a street corner. It’s unclear what happened to her after that—if she was picked up by the person she was waiting for, or if she was picked up by someone else. The Concord Police Department and New Hampshire Department of Justice consider her disappearance suspicious, as does her brother, John Taylor, who was 11 years old at the time.
John spoke with the Concord Monitor in 2022 about what he remembered from back then, and about what he and his family still hoped to uncover over 50 years later. “We want the truth and nothing to be sensationalized. We want you to know the basics of what happened. She did not leave home willingly, I can tell you that,” he said.
Knowing the basics of her case is, in many ways, a complicated goal to achieve. John said he didn’t remember any major headlines or extensive searches in 1968 to collect potential evidence or to find his sister. “I don’t know what type of investigation they had back then, but it did not seem to be thorough,” he told the Concord Monitor.
This lack of media coverage has also made it difficult now, as a journalist, to retrace the timeline of events in any concrete way. Speculating on what happened to Janis is an avenue of exploration that can be both helpful and harmful, depending on whether you’re trying to neutrally piece together the facts, or your perspective is being colored by your own personal ideas of what could have happened and why. Some theories seemingly have more merit than others, but all are based on assumptions alone due to a lack of physical evidence and a confession from anyone who may have been involved.
I don’t have a personal connection to Janis or her family, but I do care about investigating unsolved cases by laying the facts bare and exploring available theories in an unbiased way. I’m going to tell you what other people think may have taken place, and what was known about Janis at the time, in an effort to bring about renewed interest in her case. Someone, somewhere, knows what happened to her in 1968. In telling Janis’s story, in relaying the facts without sensationalizing them, we may be able to spark the memory or conscience of an individual who can answer her family’s questions and maybe give them some semblance of peace.
One potential theory involves her sister’s boyfriend at the time, Barry Bickford
In January 1968, Janis Taylor lived at several addresses in Concord, including 89 School Street, 176 N. State Street, and on Manchester Street at the Alosa Trailer Park. She was apparently returning to Alosa Trailer Park, where she lived with her sister-in-law, Judy Taylor, and Judy’s boyfriend, Barry Bickford, on the day of her disappearance. Some reports indicate that it was Bickford who was supposed to pick Janis up in front of Buddy’s Grocery, and that when he failed to show, she decided to walk home instead. A store clerk at Buddy’s at the time said he saw the teenager walk down Warren Avenue holding her school books. He seems to be the last person to have seen her alive, though these are some of the details that have been harder to corroborate during my research.
One thing that did come up repeatedly, though, was that Janis had recently confided in other family members that Bickford was physically abusing Judy’s two-year-old son, Richard—a fact that Janis’s brother, John Taylor, relayed to the Concord Monitor in 2022. Janis went missing on January 8. On January 12, Bickford was violent toward Richard again, and the toddler tragically died from his injuries four days later. In February 1968, Bickford was charged with second degree manslaughter in Richard’s death, and Judy was charged with being an accessory after the fact. Bickford was convicted of second degree manslaughter but only served 10 months for the crime. It’s unclear as to whether Judy was convicted of her charge.
Many online sleuths believe Bickford should have been a suspect in Janis’s disappearance, given this sequence of events. John told the Concord Monitor that neither he nor the police had any physical evidence tying Bickford to what happened to Janis, but that Bickford should have been questioned at the bare minimum. I was unable to confirm or deny whether Bickford had ever been a suspect, or whether police believed this to be a viable lead in 1968. After Bickford’s release from prison, he was not involved in any further public crimes.
Ted Bundy was questioned about Janis’s disappearance when he was on death row
Several years after Janis Taylor disappeared without a trace, one of her brothers, William Taylor, heard about the now-infamous serial killer Ted Bundy. Bundy was reportedly in Vermont around the time Janis went missing, and William contacted a private investigator to look into the possibility of Bundy being responsible for whatever may have happened to Janis. The investigator, alongside an FBI agent who was off-duty, reviewed Bundy’s credit card receipts from 1968, along with local gas stations he may have stopped at when he was traveling through Vermont and New Hampshire. Bundy stopped for gas in Loudon (roughly 10-15 miles away from Concord) two days before Janis disappeared.
With this in mind, William wrote a letter to Bundy in January 1989 when the serial killer was on death row. In the letter, William asked Bundy if he was responsible for Janis’s disappearance and said, “Ted, cover all the bases because the mystery of redemption is not known by the human mind or heart. Only God knows.” Bundy apparently read the note an hour prior to his execution and was “so struck by that — he started to weep.” When Bundy’s lawyer and another witness then asked the man if he did abduct and murder Janis, he replied, “Absolutely no.” Bundy confirmed he never stopped in Concord in 1968 and only left the highway once for gas in Loudon, as previously discovered during the independent investigation. This was enough to satisfy William, because, “Why would he lie in his dying words?”
It’s unclear when Bundy committed his first murder, but his first definitively known murder didn’t occur until 1974, six years after Janis vanished.
A series of unsolved disappearances and murders took place around the same time in NH
In an effort to explore all potential theories related to the Janis Taylor case, I found several unsolved disappearances and murders from 1968 through the early 1970s that some believe could be connected. I want to emphasize that this idea is based solely on speculation, and that sometimes theorizing about potential serial killers does more harm than good when it comes to actually getting justice for these victims. I’m including the information here as a way of further relaying facts and to shed light on additional New Hampshire cold cases.
On June 11, 1968, Joanne Dunham went missing from Charlestown while walking from her home to a bus stop that morning. Her remains were found the following day, and she was reportedly asphyxiated. She was also 15 years old. Debra Horn was only 11 years old when she disappeared from Allenstown on January 29, 1969. Debra reportedly slipped, fell, and hit her head on a patch of ice when walking to school that morning and decided to forgo classes. She returned home to rest instead. Her father came home for lunch a few hours later and noticed his daughter was gone. Debra’s remains were found by teenagers in the trunk of an abandoned car in August 1969.
13-year-old Kathy Lynn Gloddy left her home in Franklin on November 21, 1971, to walk to Bell’s Variety Store to pick up snacks and ice cream. She brought her dog, Tasha, along. Tasha scratched at the family’s door hours later, scared and whimpering, and Kathy was nowhere to be seen. Her body was found the next day. She had been sexually assaulted and strangled. Kathleen Randall was 18 years old and attending Boston University in September 1972 when she went missing. A month later, her remains were discovered in Nashua at Yudicki Farm, located along Route 111-A.
Anne Psaradelis and Diane Compagna went missing in Merrimack on July 12, 1973. The two 15-year-old girls reportedly told their parents they were staying at each other’s house that evening. When they failed to materialize the next day, their families contacted the police, and they were all under the impression that Anne and Diane may have run away from home on their own accord. In September 1973, their bodies were found in the Candia woods near New Boston Road. An official cause of death was difficult to determine, though it’s believed they were both strangled.
Final details on Janis’s disappearance and who to contact with information
The Concord Police Department and the New Hampshire Department of Justice are still seeking assistance in Janis Taylor’s case. At the time of her disappearance, she was 5’3”, 110 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a white-and-gold suit, black nylons and shoes, a blue coat, and a white purse. Investigators are looking for information from anyone who lived or attended school in Concord, Manchester, and Warner in the 1960s who may have known Janis. Additionally, the departments are interested in speaking to anyone who may have been associated with her at Concord’s Rumford Press.
If you or anyone you know has information or insight into Janis’s case, please call or email Detective Paul Shaughnessy at the Concord Police Department at 603-230-4934 or PShaughnessy@Concordpolice.com. You may also contact Sergeant Matthew Koehler at the New Hampshire Cold Case Unit at 603-223-3648, or the Concord Police Department’s Crimeline at 603-226-3100.
It’s never too late to do the right thing. Whether you know anything about Janis, or one of the other girls whose cases remain unsolved, please consider coming forward with your information. No detail is too small or insignificant where justice and peace are concerned.
