BDSM Mom Tortures Daughter and Lets Her Rot in Maggot Filled Closet
Taylor Rose Williams was born on February 12th, 2014, to Briana Shante Williams and Maurice Kate of Linden, Alabama. Taylor was a sweet little girl with black hair, usually kept in braids. Her big brown eyes twinkled out of every picture that she shone in. She often wore lots of pink and always had brightly colored bows, beads, or barrettes in her hair. Pictures of Taylor show that from a very young age, she enjoyed splashing around in the pool and cuddling with stuffed toys.
Taylor’s father, Maurice, attended Linden High School. He played football as a linebacker for the Linden Patriots before graduating in 2008 and playing three seasons for the Alabama State Hornets. After college, he eventually moved to Montgomery and became a truck driver. Taylor’s mother, Briana, was an honor student at Linden High School, where she was a homecoming queen and valedictorian for the class of 2010. She was a member of the FCCLA and the National Beta Club. She played the flute and was a majorette for her school’s marching band. She also got the Elite Lindenite Scholarship, a scholarship awarded to five high school seniors. After graduation, Briana planned to study mechanical engineering at Alabama A&M University in Huntsville. However, in November of 2012, she enlisted in the US Navy.
We don’t know for sure, but Maurice and Briana may have first met while they were in high school; after all, he played on the football team, and she was in the marching band. Whether they were high school sweethearts or simply knew each other from living in the same small town, we’re not sure. In any case, their daughter, Taylor, was born in 2014. Briana was stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2015, but our research couldn’t confirm if Taylor lived with her there. She may have stayed with relatives in Alabama while Briana was deployed.
In April of 2018, when Taylor was about 4 years old, she and her mother moved to Florida, where Briana had been stationed. She was now a Petty Officer at the Tactical Operations Center at NAS Jacksonville. By age 27, she had been deployed overseas twice and had earned nine awards for her service, including a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal and a National Defense Service Medal. Briana and Taylor lived at the Southside Villas apartment complex on Southside Boulevard in Jacksonville. They lived there for a while, and then in November of 2019, Briana moved to a new apartment 60 miles away on Ivy Road in the Brentwood neighborhood of Jacksonville.
Just a few days after the move, on Wednesday, November 6th, 2019, Briana called the police at about 7:20 in the morning. It was every parent’s worst nightmare: her child was missing. Briana had woken earlier that morning to discover that Taylor, now aged five, was gone and the back door was unlocked. Briana reported that she had last seen Taylor when she had checked on her daughter in bed at about midnight the night prior. Police body cam footage from the officer that responded showed Briana dressed in her military fatigues, crying and barely able to get the words out.
Authorities sprang into action. As you know, the first hours in the case of a missing child are vital. Whether she had just wandered off or had been abducted, the likelihood of finding Taylor alive would dwindle with every hour that passed. But an hour after the initial police call, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office put out a missing person’s report for 5-year-old Taylor. Later that morning, a Florida Amber Alert was issued for the missing girl, and a $4,000 reward was offered for any information that could help find her. She was described as 3 feet tall, weighing 50 lbs, with black hair and brown eyes. She had last been seen wearing purple and pink short-sleeve pajamas.
Over 300 members of the local sheriff’s office, the fire department, and other agencies swarmed over the Brentwood neighborhood. They scoured a one-square-mile area around the point last seen and knocked on over 600 doors in an effort to locate the missing girl. Officers searched on horseback, with K-9 units, and even tried an aerial drone to try to find any sign of little Taylor. By 12:30 in the afternoon on Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office also begun searching the area around Briana’s previous apartment on Southside Boulevard. That afternoon, investigators wearing chest-high waders searched through a small retention pond near the apartment complex. A dumpster was also removed from the apartment complex and searched for evidence. Most interestingly, a black car owned by Briana was seen being towed away as well.
Meanwhile, investigators were talking to Briana, trying to get a clear picture of the events leading up to Taylor’s disappearance. Briana told them that on October 31st, 2019, she had driven to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to pick up Taylor from her mother’s house. She explained that her mother had been taking care of Taylor during the month of October. Investigators asked about where Taylor had been going to daycare for the last few months. Briana told them that Taylor had been attending daycare at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station. She explained that when her work schedule changed, she pulled Taylor out of daycare and had been driving her back and forth to Alabama for her mother to take care of her.
Investigators noted that there were some inconsistencies with Briana’s story. They looked into the records and quickly found that Taylor actually attended a daycare in Jacksonville called KinderCare until April 10th of 2019. After that, her last day attending daycare on the naval base was April 29th, with no daycare records for the last 6 months. Grandparents on both sides of Taylor’s family denied seeing her for over a year. Briana’s mother specifically said she had not been taking care of Taylor during the past year and said the last time she had seen Taylor was in January. Taylor’s father, Maurice, also confirmed it had been a while since he had seen his daughter.
When investigators pointed out the inconsistencies in Briana’s story, she stopped being cooperative with authorities. She was told that her mother denied seeing Taylor for months. Briana replied, “I’m over this. My mama would not say that. I just want my baby home. This has gone too far.” She declined to answer any more questions and refused to cooperate further. She remained in the interview room for a total of 11 hours while investigators searched for her daughter without her help. The next day, Briana returned to work on the naval base, where a colleague said she was sad. She was really sad, like someone had cried their last tear.
Briana’s sister said that she thought Briana had been seeing a new man for the last 6 months and that he might know something about Taylor’s disappearance. The sister said, “I’ve been trying not to think the worst. When you know that everything that’s been told is an absolute lie, you have no choice but to think the worst. I don’t believe in my heart that she has done anything to Taylor. It just feels like she knows what has happened to her, and it’s almost like she’s willing to take the fall for it, whatever it is.”
During the initial investigation, the police talked to a neighbor who also lived at the Southside Villas apartment complex. This witness, Carlos Johnson, explained that he worked a night shift, so he was usually home during the day. Due to his schedule and proximity to Briana’s apartment, he had become familiar with Briana, her daughter Taylor, their car, and Briana’s comings and goings throughout the day. Carlos told police that on more than one occasion, he had seen little Taylor alone wandering the apartment complex. He first noticed this on the morning of April 17th, 2019, a date he remembered clearly because he’d been on the phone wishing his mother a happy birthday.
He was sitting outside on his balcony talking on the phone when he saw Taylor wander up the stairs from the breezeway. She was wearing pink and purple pajamas and carrying a doll. He said to her, “Hey sweetie, what are you doing?” and she replied, “Looking for my mama.” He ended his call and took Taylor back to her apartment, number 205. Carlos told the police that he noticed that the inside of the apartment was cluttered with trash bags and boxes piled up. He made sure that Taylor locked the apartment from the inside before he left.
Carlos told police that he continued to observe Taylor home alone every other day and that she would wave to him from inside of her apartment. He noticed that she was always wearing the same pajamas and holding her doll. During these times, he noted that Briana’s car was not in the parking lot. He also told police that Briana routinely came home between 6:30 and 7:00 in the evening, carrying food that seemed to be just for one person. He observed Taylor outside the apartment again at least two more times in May of 2019, and the last time he saw Briana and Taylor together was May 21st, 2019. Carlos apparently asked Briana about Taylor’s whereabouts on a couple of occasions, and she told him that Taylor was in Alabama with her grandparents. Lastly, he told the investigators that he saw Briana getting ready to move out of her apartment in the last week of October 2019, and he did not see Taylor at all during that time.
That afternoon, Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams held a press conference. He revealed that although Briana had reported Taylor missing the day before, Taylor actually had not been seen for weeks. He asked for witnesses to contact police if they had seen the mother and daughter together in recent months. Investigators also wanted to know if anyone had seen Briana’s car traveling between her apartment in Jacksonville and her hometown in Alabama. Regarding Briana, he said, “We won’t take the steps to say she is a suspect. We do know that her daughter is missing. She was the last person to see her. We do not believe the daughter walked away.” He confirmed that Taylor’s relatives in Alabama had been cooperative and that other agencies in Alabama were also involved in the search for Taylor. He concluded that the searchers were still hoping to find Taylor alive.
Another witness came forward: a woman named Tiffany Nicole, who said she and her fiancé had answered a Craigslist ad to help Briana move from her old apartment to her new one on that previous Sunday. According to Tiffany, “It honestly looked like she had been recently evicted or something because it was not well-lived in. If there was a child there, there was old food all over the floor underneath the couches; there was trash everywhere.” Tiffany said she never saw Taylor, which she said she found strange. One of the items Tiffany said she helped move was a toddler bed. However, she said, “We never saw a child, we never heard a child, nothing. I was assuming the kid was in daycare or the child was with a friend so she could get her apartment cleaned out.” She also said that after they unloaded the boxes at the new apartment, Briana overpaid them for their help and didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to get back to the old apartment where she said her daughter was earlier.
On Sunday, November 10th, the police in Demopolis, Alabama, confirmed that they were helping in the search for Taylor. Demopolis is about 16 miles from where Briana used to live in Linden. About 10 different agencies were involved in the investigation at this point, including the Alabama Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, and the NCIS. By Monday, the Jacksonville Sheriff announced that Briana was officially a person of interest. As we previously mentioned, one key item seized from Briana’s apartment complex was her car, a black 2017 Honda Accord.
Now armed with a search warrant, investigators used data recovery technology to access the GPS log files in the car’s navigation system. That data extraction gave investigators historical locations and movements of the vehicle, showing with almost pinpoint accuracy where Briana had driven the car in the last days and weeks leading up to Taylor’s disappearance. The movement of Briana’s car led investigators to a wooded area between the towns of Linden and Demopolis. They set up a perimeter and began a grid search of the area. It only took a few hours before they made a sad discovery. On Tuesday, the Demopolis Police Department reported that they had uncovered the remains of a child.
At the time, officials were waiting for forensic tests before confirming the identity of the body. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Taylor’s mother, Briana. However, just hours after the human remains were found, Briana was taken by helicopter from the Naval Air Station to a hospital. Video taken moments before by a fellow Navy member showed her riding in a car when the driver said, “You know now they’re saying that you’re a person of interest.” In response to this, Briana nods, covers her mouth, and then opens the car door to vomit. Then she passed out and became unconscious, which is when the driver tried to take her to the hospital. It seems that when she found out that her daughter’s body was located, she attempted to permanently remove herself from the suspect list by ingesting Arm & Hammer laundry detergent.
She was arrested and absentee booked while she remained in the hospital in critical condition. She was charged with two counts of felony child neglect and also charged with giving false information to the police. Her bond was set at $1.1 million. She was later moved from the hospital to the Duval County Jail. On November 25th, a DNA test confirmed the child’s body dug up in the forest outside Demopolis was indeed the remains of 5-year-old Taylor.
An autopsy report released later paints a terrible picture of Taylor’s condition. Her body was described as decomposed and skeletonized. Based on the decomposition, it seemed that Taylor had been dead for weeks or even months. Not all of her body was found—only parts of her head, ribs, and her longer bones. The deteriorated nature of the incomplete skeleton made it impossible to give definitive evidence of violence or the cause of death. However, the medical examiner stated the way the body was found was suspicious of homicide. A garbage bag and a shower curtain were wrapped around the body. The remains included a torn and dirty child’s shirt that read “Be You.” Investigators also found pieces of plastic, fabric, three kinds of rope, blue gloves, a knife, cardboard, wire, papers, and a Hawaiian Punch drink can. The report said that the state of the teeth and bone lesions found on the roof of Taylor’s mouth could be associated with anemia or interruption of normal bone growth due to disease, trauma, or nutritional deficiencies.
The search of Briana’s former apartment and her car uncovered yet more horrifying evidence. Investigators found the apartment in total disarray, crammed with 166 boxes and bags of garbage piled everywhere. There was a strong odor of urine, feces, and decomposition. Detectives found blood stains in six locations on the carpet and walls of Briana’s apartment that tested positive for Taylor’s DNA. They found many items of children’s clothing stained with feces. They also found cans for soup and fruit that had tiny holes cut in them, which seemed to be the way that Briana was feeding Taylor, if at all. Two birth certificates were found on the floor of the apartment as well.
A crime scene detective who searched the apartment noted feces stains on a bedroom carpet and inside a closet with lots of cleaning supplies, as well as a urine remover nearby. As for Briana’s new Brentwood apartment, he said it did not look like a child was living there. Based on the evidence found, investigators believed that Briana locked Taylor in the closet whenever she wasn’t around.
As for Briana’s car, the interior of the car was disheveled and full of clothing and other clutter. Investigators recovered more soiled clothing, fecal matter, dead maggots, and a variety of adult toys. By contrast, the trunk area was completely empty. There was a rubber liner on the bottom which seemed to have been recently cleaned, as an odor of chemical cleaner wafted from the trunk. However, a police cadaver dog gave a positive identification for human remains in the trunk and in the driver’s seat.
The dumpster that had been emptied and searched outside of the apartment revealed school papers and cards with Taylor’s name on them. Investigators also found a stuffed teddy bear that said “Happy Birthday Taylor.” Alongside that were several pairs of girls’ clothing, soiled and bound together with feces. There were also more discarded adult toys located in the dumpster. Several friends and family members told police that Briana used to complain about her daughter hiding food and said she was punished with a timeout when that happened. A former coworker at the Navy base said that Briana was wild and dangerous with men and that she was into BDSM. Another coworker said that he had no one at work who even knew that Briana had a child. He said that the base would host multiple cookouts and family gatherings, but not once did Briana bring her daughter or even mention her existence. He said, “It was so eerie. After 2 years’ worth of time, I never knew she had a child until it came out in the news.”
Another neighbor, Petta Sweeney, later testified that she had previously seen Taylor with her mother and that she seemed like an average, ordinary little girl—nothing different or odd, happy. She also said that one night she could hear a little kid crying, but she never heard it again and stopped seeing the little girl in April. When she asked about Taylor, Briana simply said she was in Alabama. That’s also when Petta said she smelled something bad coming from the storage closet. She said, “It’s not like anything I smelled before… like a rotting smell.”
Further evidence was found when police investigators went through Briana’s cell phone records and calendar. She made three separate trips to Alabama on October 31st, November 1st, and November 2nd. On November 3rd, she was back in Jacksonville, and hours later she posted a Craigslist ad looking for help moving to Brentwood 3 days after that. When she reported Taylor missing from her new apartment, her phone records also showed that she called two different men during the time she was in Alabama. She also called her mother on October 31st. Her mother told investigators that Briana had called her that day to say if Briana’s captain happened to call, to say that Briana was at her mother’s apartment picking up Taylor. As we already know, Taylor hadn’t been to her grandmother’s house in months, but here was Briana trying to get her own mother to cover for her while she hid the evidence of her crimes.
Not everyone was convinced that Briana was guilty, however. A relative named Harold Rogers, whose sister is Briana’s great-aunt, said he had known her since she was young. He said, “Briana, as far as I’m concerned, is a beautiful person and a lovely person. I still trust her even though the stuff happened. She inspired me as a nice person, a young lady. She was always highly respectable, carried herself like a young lady and a homecoming queen that she was. How could a person so sweet, kind, and innocent end up in some trouble like this? It just doesn’t make sense at all.”
On January 8th, 2020, Briana made her first court appearance, where she pled not guilty to the charge of child neglect and lying to police. In March, new charges were filed against Briana. She could not be charged with homicide since the autopsy could not conclusively determine the cause of death. However, Briana was now charged with aggravated child abuse because she did willingly torture, maliciously punish, or willfully cage a child. She was also charged with evidence tampering because she destroyed or removed evidence and transported human remains with the purpose of impairing an investigation.
The evidence against Briana was described as voluminous material and included thousands of photographs and surveillance videos taken from over two dozen locations. Briana’s electronic footprint also included GPS tracking from her car, gas station receipts, Craigslist ads, and Google searches where Briana had looked up information on malnutrition. There were surveillance photos showing that she had visited two car washes on November 2nd and the 4th during that flurry of activity in the days before she reported her daughter missing. Hundreds of hours of police body cam footage were also released, including the initial video where she made the report of her missing. The tears she shed in that video may have initially seemed like proof of a mother desperate to locate her missing child. Now, in hindsight, they just show how deceptive Briana was when she lied to police knowing full well that her daughter was dead.
After the overwhelming amount of evidence was shared with the defense to review, Briana and her legal team opted to forgo a jury trial for her previous charges. Instead, she pled guilty to homicide on March 3rd, 2022, almost 3 years after Taylor’s neglected body was secretly buried in that remote wooded area. During her court statement, Briana accepted full responsibility for Taylor’s death, admitting that she lied and lied some more when she falsely reported her daughter missing. She admitted to the judge she was too scared to read her final statement, so a member of the defense read it aloud for her, and I quote:
“I knew what I did was wrong. I failed as a mother, a protector, and as a decent human being. I didn’t immediately call the police, and when I finally called, I lied and lied some more. I didn’t take any timely opportunity to right my wrongs. I apologize to everyone affected by this tragedy. I’m tormented and punished every day since losing my baby. I tried to escape the law. However, I’m not asking for any sympathy. I deserve everything I’ve received over the past approximately 3 years externally and internally. I lost the most important person in my life. I lost myself. I accept full responsibility for everything. I voluntarily pled up to murder. I blame no one but myself.”
During Briana’s sentencing hearing, her defense team asked that Briana serve the minimum sentence of 20 and a half years. They presented veteran psychologist Ernest Bordini as their only witness. He had begun evaluating Briana with interviews and by reviewing the police reports. He said that Briana was clearly emotionally charged as well as anxious and depressed and showed signs of schizophrenia and mood disorders. He said Briana’s past included an overdose when she was younger as well as eating and diet issues since childhood. She also lived through SA trauma (that we’re not allowed to talk about on YouTube). According to Bordini, no one could say when Taylor had died; that Briana had found her daughter cold, slumped over, and unmoving in the closet. He said she could not go back to the apartment for a period of time, she continued to have self-canceling thoughts, and wanted to have her buried. She came up with this idea of wanting to bury her next to her grandfather. He said that Briana put her dead daughter inside of a container since it was easier to get her out of the apartment and so neighbors would not notice. She drove to Demopolis with her daughter’s corpse in the car but could not find her grandfather’s grave and finally put the body where she thought she could find it again. Her plan was to go back, get her daughter’s body, and bury it with her grandfather.
Circuit Court Judge Kevin Blazs was tasked with sentencing Briana for the homicide of her daughter. Before sentencing, the judge reread much of the evidence, including Briana’s school and Navy records and clinical psychological reports. He also looked at Taylor’s autopsy report as well as evidence of what Briana did after the death and desecration of the body. Afterwards, he said, “The victim was not valued from the time of conception by either her father or mother. Her mother suffered from an eating disorder; the father complained the victim was not properly fed. The defendant then removed the victim from child care about 4 months prior to the victim’s death. Taylor remained home alone and unprovided for throughout that time period.”
While he found her lack of a past criminal record unusual and her Navy background outstanding, the judge said there were too many other unresolved issues. He said he did take the psychological evaluation into consideration but pointed out that there was no evidence of food in either of Briana’s apartments. He said that although the autopsy could not definitively give a cause of death, he could infer from the evidence that Taylor had been starved to death. In the months leading up to Taylor’s death, Briana had made no significant purchases of groceries during that period of time. He said, “She then lied to law enforcement repeatedly over the course of the investigation in order to conceal what she had done, which was to transport the body out of state and dispose of the body. This court construes as the consciousness of guilt.”
On Tuesday, September 20th, 2022, the judge sentenced Briana to life in prison for the second-degree homicide of 5-year-old Taylor. She was credited with 1,043 days time served awaiting sentencing. She was transferred to the Florida Department of Corrections and then to the Women’s Assessment Center in Ocala, where inmates typically stay for weeks of screening before they are assigned to a prison. State Attorney Melissa Nelson reflected on Briana’s life sentence, saying, quote, “Briana Williams’ elaborate lies initially concealed her terrible crime in the murder of her innocent daughter. The dogged work by law enforcement and prosecutors brought the truth to light and ultimately justice was served for Taylor.”
A candlelight vigil in Jacksonville was held for Taylor on November 23rd, 2019, a couple of weeks after her body was found. The event was hosted by Safe Haven, a group committed to protecting children from abuse. Community members and a detective working on the case held candles and lit a Christmas tree to honor Taylor. Safe Haven CEO Kathy Swafford said, “Our philosophy is we don’t want a child just to be a number when they’re killed. We want the child to be remembered by their name. It’s become personal to me because these children didn’t get to live to their potential. We don’t know what they could have been—doctors, lawyers, dentists—we don’t know because they didn’t get that chance.”
Another vigil was held the same night at Losco Park in Mandarin. Attendees could make a monetary donation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Taylor’s honor. Mourners were also encouraged to bring toys to donate to Toys for Tots, called “Toys for Taylor.” That evening, one girl donated her own stuffed animal, saying, “I brought it for Taylor because I think when she goes to heaven, she needs some toys.”
A memorial headstone was placed near the location where Taylor’s body was found. It reads: “In loving memory. Safe in the arms of God. Taylor Rose Williams. February 12th, 2014 to October 2019. Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God. Matthew 5:8.” Taylor has no other gravestone, and we were unable to find any obituary. Unlike many of the other cases we’ve covered, there are no memorial walks, scholarship funds, or parks named in her honor. There is only this sad, lonely stone marking the location where Taylor’s remains were abandoned in the woods.
This spot is just down the road from Linden High School, where a decade before her mother graduated the top of her class with a promising future. If she had been allowed to live, Taylor would be 10 years old today, a bright young girl getting ready to head to high school herself in just a few years. She too may have become homecoming queen or valedictorian someday. Instead, her story was cut short by the person who should have loved her the most.
