Cold case takes turn with arrest

PLACITAS, N.M. (KRQE) - The suspect in a Sandoval cold case found himself in trouble again, and investigators said Monday that could help their efforts to evenutally charge him.

James Taylor was arrested at his Des Moines, Iowa home in February after investigators said he called 911 to tell them he was armed, and that he had poured gasoline all over his home.

His current wife escaped unharmed.

Investigators with the Sandoval County Sheriff's Office said the arrest could help show his violent tendencies.

They're looking into his girlfriend's disappearance 14 years ago in Placitas.

Taylor claimed Lombard walked out and left him after they fought at their Placitas home.

For more than a decade, investigators believed it.

Until they got a call from Lombard's son, Tyler Anderson, who told KRQE News 13 that he believed Taylor killed his mother.

Investigators reopened the case last summer and found a trail of police reports the couple left behind.

In 1990, Lombard accused taylor of burning her on a stove.

Then in 1994, Taylor is accused of spraying chemicals in her face, then raping her.

Many times their children were witnesses.

It was enough to look question Taylor once again.

But then in April 1996 the abuse abruptly stopped when lombard went missing, and Taylor never reported that Lombard failed to return home.

It was enough for investigators to question Taylor once again and name him a suspect in her disappearance.

"We'd like to get it solved," John Roth said last year

Roth and the rest of the neighbors near the Taylor and Lombard's old home in Placitas watched as investigators searched the property last year after they'd learned Taylor dug a large hole next to his septic tank the day Lombard vanished.

But they found nothing.

Despite reports that Taylor's current wife claims he told her he would "kill her like he did Ann" and that he'd gotten rid of her body, police did not have enough to charge him.

Then this this year police in Des Moines, iowa arrested Taylor after a five-hour swat stand-off.

He eventually surrendered and was charged with arson and domestic abuse with a weapon.

Sandoval County Sheriff's investigators till believe he's behind Lombard's disappearance.

Taylor moved to Des Moines and remarried.

He and Lombard only lived in New Mexico for three weeks when Lombard went missing.

"Mom does not deserve to be remembered as a child abandoner," said Anderson. "She was a lot of things, she wasn't perfect, but she loved her children and she wouldn't have done that to us."