COLUMBUS, Ohio — Police body-camera video released this week shows the moment when Pammy Maye confessed to detectives about killing 5-year-old Darnell Taylor in February.
Maye, who was Darnell’s legal guardian, is charged with aggravated murder, abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence in his death. The boy was at the center of a statewide AMBER Alert issued on Feb. 14 until his body was found two days later inside a sewage drain on Marsdale Avenue in Franklin County.
Police located Maye in the Cleveland suburb of Brooklyn on Feb. 15 where authorities had previously found her abandoned car. She was taken to a nearby hospital to be evaluated.
While at the hospital, detectives asked her if there was a chance that Darnell was alive.
“No, there isn’t. And I did it,” Maye said from a hospital bed.
In the body-camera video released by the Brooklyn Police Department, Maye is heard saying she killed Darnell in his room and later hid the body in a closet in another part of the house for several hours.
Maye made references in the video to being upset with Darnell for eating snacks in his bed. She also said he was previously in trouble for using profanity.
Maye describes in detail to detectives how she suffocated Darnell.
When Maye’s husband came home from work, she said he went to bed assuming Darnell was asleep. Two hours after her husband went to bed, Maye said she placed Darnell’s body into her Jeep and began searching for a place to take it.
Maye told detectives that she put an old license plate over the vanity plate on her vehicle to make it less recognizable before driving near her parents’ home.
She found a sewage drain on Marsdale Avenue and pushed Darnell’s body into it.
When Maye arrived back at her house, she got into bed with her husband and told him she had something serious to say.
Maye’s husband called 911 around 3 a.m. and reported that his wife told him Darnell was no longer alive. The husband said he had searched the home before calling police and did not find the boy.
Maye told detectives she urged him to not call because she wanted to first explain to him what happened.
According to court records, Maye held her hand over her husband’s mouth when he tried to make the 911 call, saying she “had a plan.”
Maye told detectives she drove to Interstate 71 North toward Cleveland because it was a route she knew to travel.
"The only reason I fled in the nightgown was because I didn't want the police to come and interrogate me and I wanted to tell my husband and he wasn't listening," Maye said.
Maye has pleaded not guilty and her attorney, Sam Shamansky, said she was competent to stand trial. According to Shamansky, Maye will likely change her plea to not guilty by insanity.
Shamansky told 10TV that he hasn't seen the police body-camera video, but said, "we don’t consider her post-arrest comments as dispositive of her mental state at the time of the commission of the offense."
Maye is scheduled to make another court appearance on April 25.