Pammy Maye Murder Trial Opens in Columbus in Death of 5-Year-Old Darnell Taylor

The murder trial of Pammy Maye opened Monday in Franklin County Common Pleas Court, where prosecutors told jurors the Columbus foster mother admitted killing 5-year-old Darnell Taylor in February 2024, and her defense attorney answered that she was too mentally ill to understand what she had done. Maye, 51, faces aggravated murder, tampering with evidence and abuse of a corpse charges in a case that drew a statewide search when Darnell was reported missing and ended with his body found in a storm sewer.

Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Katherine Wolfe laid out the prosecution’s account in opening statements, telling the jury that Maye admitted she killed Darnell on Feb. 14, 2024, by slipping a garbage bag over his head while he lay in bed, tying it and walking away while he suffocated, according to The Columbus Dispatch’s reporting from the courtroom. Wolfe told the jury, per The Columbus Dispatch, that Maye returned about 10 minutes later, pulled the bag over the boy’s entire body, placed it in a sleeping bag and put his body inside the living room closet.

“This is a loss of life that never should’ve happened,” Wolfe told the jury, The Columbus Dispatch reported. “We ask ultimately that you listen to Darnell’s story,” she told the jury, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Prosecutors allege the concealment continued through the night: Wolfe said, per The Columbus Dispatch, that the evidence will show Maye switched the license plate on the Jeep Cherokee so it could not be traced, washed Darnell’s bedsheets, and dressed in dark clothing while moving his body from the backseat of the Jeep to the front seat.

Wolfe told jurors, according to The Columbus Dispatch, that when Maye’s husband, Jabrell Maye, returned home that night, Pammy Maye told him Darnell “was no longer there” and admitted killing him. Prosecutors say she then fled in the Jeep Cherokee, left Darnell’s body in a storm sewer, and drove north toward Cleveland before she was arrested in Brooklyn, a Cleveland suburb. The first witness prosecutors called was Nicole Zachariah, a former Columbus 911 dispatcher who took Jabrell Maye’s call that night; prosecutors played the 911 recording as she testified, and in it Jabrell Maye told the dispatcher, “She just woke me up and said he not here no more,” The Columbus Dispatch reported.

Darnell had come into the Mayes’ care in May 2023. According to The Columbus Dispatch, Pammy and Jabrell Maye were family friends of Darnell’s biological family, with whom the 5-year-old was unable to live, and were recommended as a temporary custody placement. That arrangement — a child placed with family friends who were then accused of killing him — has kept the case at the center of Ohio’s debate over kinship and informal custody placements since 2024.

The defense did not dispute the killing itself. Defense attorney Sam Shamansky is seeking a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, arguing Maye was in the throes of mental illness and unable to understand the wrongfulness of the act. “We’re talking about a woman who was deeply and profoundly mentally ill,” Shamansky told the jury, The Columbus Dispatch reported. “What I’m going to prove to you is the woman who committed this act was ill equipped to understand the wrongfulness of this act,” Shamansky told the jury, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

The trial arrives after Maye declined a plea offer this summer. The Columbus Dispatch reported that in July she was offered a deal requiring a guilty plea to aggravated murder and abuse of a corpse, with a potential sentence of life without parole or life with parole eligibility after 20, 25 or 30 years. She formally declined through Shamansky, and the case was set for the Nov. 9 trial in front of a Franklin County jury.

What we know — and what we’re still waiting on

What we know: the charges, the prosecution’s account as presented in opening statements, the defense’s insanity strategy, and the custody background are all now on the court record as reported by The Columbus Dispatch. What we are still waiting on: the full body of trial testimony, including what investigators and medical witnesses say about Darnell’s death and what mental-health experts say about Maye’s state of mind, and ultimately the jury’s verdict. Opening statements are arguments, not evidence, and nothing in them has been decided.

Testimony is expected to continue this week in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. If convicted of aggravated murder, Maye faces a potential life sentence. NewsForce247 will update this story as the trial proceeds and a verdict is reached.

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