Body camera shows Pammy Maye's confession to killing 5-year-old Darnell Taylor over snacks (2024)

As she lay in a hospital bed near Cleveland, Pammy Maye couldn't stay silent.

The 48-year-old, in excruciating detail and with little emotion, recounted to detectives how she suffocated 5-year-old Darnell Taylor, for whom Maye and her husband were the legal guardians, and placed his body in a sewage drain — all because she said the boy had eaten snacks in his bed.

"You should never take nobody's life," Maye told Columbus homicide detective Delbert Chapman. "If you take somebody's life, your life should be taken away. Why should I have the right to live?"

Body camera from a Brooklyn, Ohio, police officer, provided to The Dispatch in response to a public records request, captured Maye's confession.

Brooklyn police gave The Dispatch more than 30 videos from body cameras, but most of them are pixelated and the sound has been redacted. The police department said the videos are investigatory work products. Portions of some videos are visible until Maye is read her Miranda rights and then the video becomes pixelated, and the sound removed.

However, one video, from a female officer who is with Maye as she is checked out at a hospital near where she was found, shows Maye's entire interaction and confession.

Video shows Pammy Maye telling officers where Darnell Taylor's body is

Two days earlier, Maye had prompted an Amber Alert after she told her husband she had killed Taylor and he called 911.

Maye has been charged with aggravated murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse. She has entered a not guilty plea through her attorney to all the charges and remains in the Franklin County jail.

Maye's attorney, Sam Shamansky, has told Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Mark Serrott, who is overseeing the case, that he intends to argue Maye is not guilty by reason of insanity because of her mental state at the time she killed Darnell.

On Feb. 15, officers from the Brooklyn Police Department in northeast Ohio got a call from a local business where Maye had gone to use the phone. The officers who arrived read Maye her rights and then had her taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation.

Maye was wearing a coat, nightgown and plastic bags over her socks and up her legs, according to the video. She had no shoes.

While at the hospital, Maye was adamant about helping the officers, including waving off a nurse who said she needed to go get a test performed, saying speaking with the officers was more important.

The footage shows Maye helping Brooklyn police officers, one of whom had Google Maps pulled up on a laptop, locate the place where she had dumped 5-year-old Darnell Taylor's body.

Maye provided the officers with details, saying the area was near her parents' home, the house appeared gray and there was a swing set in a yard.

Hours later, Columbus police officers would find Darnell's body where Maye said it was — and in the same condition she described it.

Maye's confession: 'I want to tell the truth'

About 35 minutes into the video, Columbus homicide detective Delbert Chapman arrived at the hospital. He read Maye her rights, which she waived both verbally and through signing a form.

"I don't want to remain silent because I want to tell the truth," Maye told Chapman.

During the interview, Maye said at least five times that her actions were premeditated.

Maye said she had not consumed any alcohol or drugs, and the video appears to show her receiving IV fluids but no medications.

During the next 40 minutes, Maye told Chapman how she had used a black, 30-gallon trash compactor bag to suffocate Darnell.

"This was premeditated. I always own white trash bags, but I had one (compactor bag) left," Maye said. "I kept one for whatever reason. Of course, I don’t need one to take my son’s life."

When Chapman asked if Darnell fought her as she was putting the trash bag over him, she said "he's real submissive" because she's "real harsh" on him and "more of the alpha" than her husband.

"My husband was more into the cuddling and stuff. Me and my son really didn't have a relationship, it was more a distant relationship because of his behavior and stuff like that," Maye said. "He was tentative about me. I was harsh and strict on him about stuff. My husband was more the good parent."

Maye said she had decided to kill Darnell after he had gotten up in the middle of the night and gotten snacks, a granola bar and some peanut butter crackers, and was eating them in his bed. She told Chapman she was "triggered about the snacks and stuff."

She described going into the 5-year-old's room at 11:06 a.m. on Feb. 13, taking off a pull-up diaper Darnell was wearing and putting the trash bag over his entire body, starting with his head, before tying a double knot at his feet and leaving the room for about 10 minutes.

"He had said stuff, like 'Mommy' and then he said the f-word, but I wasn't paying attention. I didn't care. It was so sad," Maye said. "In 10 minutes, I knew he wasn't moving and plus the bag was heavy."

Maye said she then moved Darnell, still in the trash bag, to a front closet and put him in a child's sleeping bag that had handles on it. She left him in the front closet for more than 12 hours.

A Brooklyn officer asked Maye to clarify what she did, asking if she strangled Darnell.

"No, suffocate him. With a black bag," Maye responded.

"Then you put him in the closet right by the door?" the officer asked.

"I didn't know what to do with his body, but I didn't just want to leave him in the bed," Maye said.

Pammy Maye described dumping boy's body as 'short transaction'

When Maye's husband came home from work hours later at about 11 p.m. Feb. 13, Darnell's body was still in the front closet, Maye said. Her husband assumed the boy was asleep and didn't check on him, she said. A few hours later, around 1:30 a.m. on Feb. 14, she left her house to dump Darnell's body.

Maye described to detectives moving the 5-year-old's body to the trunk of her Jeep, then to the front seating area so that the process of dumping would be quicker. She put an old license plate over the vanity plate on her Jeep to make the vehicle less recognizable and then drove to the area near her parents' home.

"I seen that perfect place," Maye said. "It was a short transaction."

Maye said she pushed Darnell's body, in the sleeping bag, into the drain on Marsdale Avenue on the city's Southwest side, hearing a "thump" before driving back to her home on Reeb Avenue.

Maye told Chapman she had driven back around the block to pick up the old license plate, which had fallen off, and that she did not think she had her cellphone with her, but if she did, she had turned it off.

She said when she got back home, she got into bed with her husband and told him she had something serious to share. Maye told detectives she told her husband that his son wasn't there, at which point her husband called 911.

"The only reason I fled with my nightgown ... was because I didn't want the police to come and interrogate me," Maye said, adding that she wasn't scared of being arrested. "I wanted to tell my husband, and he wasn't hearing it. I wanted to confess it to my husband first."

Maye said she drove to the Cleveland area because it was a route she knew and decided to park the Jeep she was driving in the parking lot of an apartment complex. She said she left the vehicle unlocked so that nobody would break the windows out and so her husband could get the car back for his own use.

At the end of the interview, Maye told Chapman she knows God will forgive her for what she did.

"Regardless, I need to be punished," she said. "I love life and I wouldn't want nobody to execute me, but I understand everything. Why take somebody's life, especially a child that can't live a life? I know better, and I knew what I was doing."

bbruner@gannett.com