Pammy Maye appears on body cam footage from Feb. 16, 2024, confessing to suffocating Darnell Taylor, 5, seen in the inset. (Screenshot of Maye: WBNS; image of Taylor: Columbus Division of Police)
Speaking from a hospital bed, an Ohio woman told law enforcement that she suffocated a 5-year-old boy and dumped his body in a “manhole” because she caught him sneaking candy into bed, according to body cam footage obtained by local outlets like Cincinnati NBC affiliate WLWT and Columbus CBS affiliate WBNS.
Pammy Maye, 48, described herself as the disciplinarian between her and her husband, the legal guardians of young Darnell Taylor.
“[Darnell] was intimidated by me a lot of times because I was that alpha parent instead of my husband,” she said, briefly losing her words mid-statement during body cam dated Feb. 16.
Ohio authorities put out an Amber Alert on Darnell and Maye after the defendant’s husband reported them missing under disturbing circumstances.
“The caller stated his wife, 48-year old Pammy Maye woke him up and made statements that made him believe that their foster child, Darnell had been hurt,” cops in Columbus, Ohio, wrote on Feb. 14. “The caller stated Mrs. Maye abruptly left the residence in a 2015 Jeep Cherokee. The vehicle was located in Brooklyn, Ohio shortly before 6am, but Mrs. Maye and Darnell have not been located.”
Maye turned up the night of Feb. 15 at an envelope business, Cenveo, in the Cleveland-suburb of Brooklyn. An employee there called 911 after Maye reportedly appeared barefoot, distraught and she had been asking for her husband.
“Can you call my husband?” she said, her voice full of emotion, after the employee passed her the phone.
She soon wound up in a hospital bed, where law enforcement questioned her. As seen on video, Maye told investigators she killed the child because he snuck candy into his bed. She said she did not immediately act, but she planned on the killing, calling it “premeditated.”
She said that after the suffocation, she dumped the body into a “manhole.” Though the details were sketchy for investigators’ purposes, they were able to find Darnell that same day in a sewage drain in Franklin County.
At one point during the video, a nurse arrived and told the room about CT scans being ordered. Law enforcement asked for a little bit more time. Maye emphatically agreed.
“This is more important,” she said. “It ain’t about my concern. This is about my taking somebody’s life.”
She has pleaded not guilty to murder, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence. Her defense has signaled a plan to put up an insanity defense.
“We don’t consider her post arrest comments as dispositive of her mental state at the time of the commission of the offense,” her attorney, Sam Shamansky, said in a statement obtained by WBNS.
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