Missing persons cases involving small children are always difficult for everyone involved. Often times, it is those closest to the child that are responsible for their disappearance, and time is of the essence. According to FBI statistics, when a child goes missing, there is an 89% chance that they will be dead within 24 hours. Not only was this true for the victim in today’s story, but what he was finally recovered from is absolutely sickening.
Passion Unique Jeffrey was a vibrant young woman born on September 26, 2002. Her mother, Lita Denson, as well as her other immediate and extended family, were closely involved in her life. She was always seen with a smile on her face, whether it was at work at the local CVS or visiting friends. Her family described her as full of energy and how her eyes were a light every Christmas. She was short, standing barely at five feet. She was a bit of a makeup aficionado, always wanting to be presented well in public. A St. Petersburg, Florida native, she attended Bonito Middle School before graduating from Northeast High with honors, a feat made even more difficult by the recent birth of her son, Taylen Mosley.
Taylen was born on March 12, 2021, to Passion and father Thomas Mosley. He was a cute child who took after his father right from birth. He had brown hair, inquisitive large brown eyes, and he was playful and friendly with everyone. He loved the Toy Story movies and action figures. His mother would often call to video chat with him on her breaks at work, leading him to borrow family members’ phones to try to call her. He was truly a bundle of joy in the center of his mother’s world.
Thomas Mosley was Taylen’s father, but by at least some accounts, not heavily involved in the family’s life. Passion’s mother once referred to her as a single mom and was proud of how her daughter was thriving. Thomas was unemployed and had a minor criminal record, having once pled no contest to a charge of leaving the scene of a crash. David Mosley, his father, believed him to likely have some mental health issues that caused him to do things to harm himself as a teenager, but he was undiagnosed. Passion’s sister, Jamiah Faulk, told the police that Passion had described Thomas as crazy before, saying he wanted things his own way.
It was on Thomas’s 21st birthday, March 29, 2023, that a horrible incident unfolded. On the morning of the 29th, Jamiah received a video call from Passion and Taylen. They were at the doctor’s office due to Taylen having been sick for a few days. They talked about Passion’s plans for the day, with Passion telling her sister that they were going to go to the store to find a birthday cake and then to a different store to look for a gift. Passion seemed off to her sister, but when she was asked about it, Passion said that with Taylen being sick and not being able to sleep, she was a bit irritated. He had also thrown a tantrum at the store.
The afternoon birthday party went, by all accounts, fairly well, with the exception of Taylen still not feeling well. He spent most of the party sleeping in Passion’s room. It was a sunny, warm day in March. The party ended early, with some family members leaving around 5:00 p.m. as Passion’s younger brother had to get to track practice by 6:00 p.m. Passion’s family had already given Thomas his birthday present, which was a paint set. However, shortly after leaving, Passion texted her mother that Thomas didn’t want the paint set and that the family could use it. Her mother, Lita, recalled that Thomas was wearing a hoodie, jogging pants, and Gucci brand slides. Her daughter was wearing a Hot Wheels t-shirt with Taylen’s name on it.
The next day, Jamiah expected to be watching Taylen so that Passion could go work her regular shift. Jamiah woke up late that morning, realizing that Passion hadn’t brought Taylen. She tried to call her but didn’t get an answer. She called her mother. Lita also had not spoken to Passion that morning. Concerned, but not overly so, the two ladies went about their planned day. They asked Lita’s aunt if she could stop at Passion’s apartment to check on her. Their first stop of the day was at a local laundromat. While there, they received a call from the aunt saying that Passion was not answering the door, and that while she had checked with the apartment’s front office to see if they could go inside, they weren’t allowed in.
However, Passion’s car was in the parking lot, so next they called her work, who reported that they hadn’t seen or heard from her either. Learning that, they decided to go to Thomas’s house. Thomas lived with his parents, Renee and David Mosley, in St. Petersburg, along with a brother named Isaac. They thought maybe Passion and Taylen had gone there after the party, but when Lita and Jamiah arrived there, Thomas’s brother was sitting out front. When asked, he replied that he thought she was at work. Isaac then informed Lita that when Thomas came back home after the party the night before, his arm was cut up badly enough to immediately take him to the hospital.
Uncertain of what was going on but still not overly concerned, Lita returned to the laundromat and called the apartment complex, asking the front office if they could send someone to do a welfare check. The front office sent their maintenance man, named Armando Diez. He knocked first, then let himself into the apartment with a master key. He saw the bathroom door standing open with a woman laying on the ground. He later told investigators that he thought she had a gunshot wound to her head. Shocked and overwhelmed at what he had seen, Armando quickly looked for the child that Lita had told him about, but he was unable to find little Taylen. He subsequently left the apartment and called 911.
An officer interviewed Armando about what he discovered inside.
Armando Diez explained, “I’ve been doing this job for 30 years now and I say that in the 30 years I’ve been doing this I found maybe 35, 40 people because I worked with a lot of old people and they’ve all been natural. This is the first one since I’ve been here in Florida that I found. I’ve never seen a crime scene.”
The officer asked, “Yeah, wow. What did you see when you went up there?”
Armando Diez responded, “Well, there’s blood and bloody footprints all over the apartment. Yeah, I saw that when I went towards the bedroom, because my concern was the kid and her safety. I saw the bathroom door was closed, so I pushed the bathroom door open. She’s laying on the floor face down with her shorts down past her buttocks, her blouse is up to her neck, and she has a hole about the size of a silver dollar on the left side of her skull, between the ear and the skull right about here.”
The officer asked, “And you didn’t see any signs of the child, right?”
Armando Diez said, “No, I tried as I was backing out, I tried to look around the apartment. I did walk into the room, looked around the side of the bed, and I backed out of the apartment. And as I was walking out, I tried to look behind the sofa, but I didn’t want to, you know, contaminate too much in there, so I walked right out the door. But I didn’t see anything. I didn’t hear any noise coming from the baby.”
The officer noted, “They told me that the boyfriend is in the hospital.”
Armando Diez agreed, “Yeah.”
The officer continued, “Well, we’re trying to make contact with him and see what’s going on. And the neighbor downstairs stated that she heard them yelling and screaming.”
Another officer arrived, calling out to his colleague, “Hispanic male?”
The first officer confirmed, “Yes, right in there. They got blood coming off a trail right in there on the sidewalk there, okay.”
The second officer replied, “Okay.”
The first officer said, “Okay, I see it.”
The second officer responded, “Yeah, all right, okay. Come here, so okay, okay. So what you’re going to do is you’re going to direct this officer to make sure he stays 10-12 with him, right? Because he walked in.”
The first officer said, “Okay.”
The second officer called out, “Hey sir, would you mind moving that cruiser? Well, we got to block off that blood area because you’re cutting it off, but can you stay 10-12 with him? I’m going to go get rescue and stuff like that.”
The first officer answered, “Okay, yeah. He pronounced, so you want to get his information?”
The second officer agreed, “Okay, perfect. Thank you.”
The first officer confirmed with the medical personnel, “Okay, he’s pronounced? You already pronounced?”
The paramedic replied, “Pronounced, okay.”
The first officer asked, “What do you need to get?”
The paramedic answered, “Just need his run number, name, and the time you pronounced.”
The first officer said, “He’s got the time and my name.”
The paramedic responded, “Okay, thank you so much, sir.”
The first officer asked his colleague, “Did you confirm it?”
The colleague answered, “Confirmed.”
The first officer directed the units, “We’re locking this whole thing down. No one is coming in this area, so we need more units. I’m waiting for this, they didn’t send me the time. Do you have the run?”
The colleague answered, “Yeah, 14:44 is the time.”
The first officer repeated, “14:44, 3:05, hold on one second.”
The colleague said, “Okay, go ahead.”
The first officer recorded the details, “3:05, 2:58, hey, and your name, sir?”
The paramedic spelled, “B-O-I-C-E, Engine 13 Bravo.”
The first officer confirmed, “Okay, perfect. And it’s apartment 16, right? Building 36, all buildings?”
The paramedic replied, “Okay, all right, perfect. Thank you.”
The first officer turned back to Armando Diez, “Is there anything else that you saw or…”
Armando Diez clarified, “Yeah, so she’s face down. There’s a lot of, a lot of blood, and there’s also a knife that was on the counter.”
The officer asked, “Huh?”
Armando Diez repeated, “There was…”
The officer clarified, “Blood on the knife?”
Armando Diez confirmed, “Yes.”
The officer noted, “Okay, numerous injuries across the back and across the head.”
First responders arrived at the scene and pronounced 20-year-old Passion Jeffrey dead at 2:44 p.m. Soon, an Amber Alert was issued for 2-year-old Taylen, who was described as being 2 feet tall, 30 pounds, having brown hair and brown eyes. He was last seen at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 29th. Passion had not been found until approximately 2:30 p.m. on Thursday, the 30th. This meant that any abductor had a long time to flee the area before police became involved. While police received several tips, none of them were found to be relevant.
During this time, police began to question neighbors, friends, and family members. While most of the neighbors didn’t recall seeing the family, one neighbor reported that she heard roughhousing from Passion’s apartment. She also reported hearing Taylen cry and Passion yelling, “Stop it.” This was sometime around 8:11 p.m. As far as anyone can tell, this is the last time anyone heard Passion or Taylen.
An officer spoke with other responders on the scene to verify the identity of people arriving at the complex.
The officer explained, “This is a lease agreement for the individual in that apartment, okay, so we’re just like verifying all that other information.”
A second officer replied, “Yeah, I got a Mosley, I got two Mosleys with me. The grandfather of the baby and the son of the grandfather, they both here, okay, but I don’t know. They said that the baby should be in there. Did we search for a baby?”
The first officer answered, “No, we’re holding the scene because we got to make sure that the baby’s okay. Let’s talk to the lieutenant. Hey Lou, they saying it’s this house here. They saying that the grandfather’s here with his son, and they said they came to do a welfare check, and the baby should be with the mother. So they don’t know. Did we search for a baby? Do we hear a baby crying or anything?”
The lieutenant asked, “Where’s the maintenance man?”
The first officer pointed, “The maintenance man’s back here. I got his name, that’s him.”
The lieutenant instructed, “Yeah, we need to make sure he doesn’t leave. Yeah, we need to hold on to him.”
The first officer agreed, “Okay, I got his ID. Apparently, I think he lives in this apartment complex. Stay with him, make sure, okay.”
The second officer muttered, “Okay, oh, yeah, he got his golf cart here.”
The first officer approached Armando Diez again to clarify how he entered the room, “So, did you check out that, oh no…”
Armando Diez explained his path, “So I walked around them and I took my finger, and when I pushed the bathroom door open, that’s when I saw her on the ground.”
The officer asked, “Did you hear a child? Did you…”
Armando Diez answered, “No, I tried to look for the kid. I tried to do a quick look to the bedroom and behind the sofa.”
The officer asked, “So you didn’t get to do anything, right? Okay, the girlfriend downstairs, was the front door open or did you open it?”
Armando Diez answered, “No, I opened it. You had to open it with a key. I put the key in and turned it. Now, if it was open, I don’t know, because I was so… but I didn’t realize that I put my hand on the…”
The officer’s radio crackled with a 10-12 complaint.
The officer told Armando, “Okay, yeah, we still, we need you to stay with us for a little while. It’s going to be a little while because we’re going to have detectives, investigators coming in. If you can…”
Armando Diez noted, “I actually live on the property.”
The officer emphasized, “Stay with us, like we don’t want to lose you, because we’re going to have to go over a lot of things. Yeah, the detectives need to talk to you, right? All right.”
Armando Diez asked, “I live right there, is it all right if I go talk to my wife? Because my wife is…”
The officer suggested, “Call her, just let her know. All right, yeah, we don’t want to… I don’t want to have you go. All right, I’m assuming the door was locked because the aunt was here, yeah, and she was banging on the door. And the young lady from underneath…”
The officers discussed checking for fingerprints.
One officer remarked, “The neighbor downstairs said that she heard last night a bunch of screaming and door slamming, and the baby, because she just actually texted the aunt because she’s been, you know…”
The other officer asked, “Which unit is that?”
The first officer answered, “36:15, the person who is right directly underneath.”
An investigator arrived on the scene as a blue Infinity drove up to the building.
The investigator asked an officer, “Did you come in and do a wellness check with him, or did you literally put your head in like this? Okay, I just need, you got identification here? Thank you, and you’re the supervisor?”
The property manager answered, “Yeah, I’m the community manager.”
The investigator said, “Okay, Armando, what’s your good phone number?”
The manager provided the contact details.
The investigator asked, “What’s his work number?”
The manager gave the office number.
The investigator sighed, “I always look for so many alarming signs. I got you, this is like the worst one I’ve ever seen. Thank you for calling me, I appreciate it. You didn’t touch the body or anything?”
Armando Diez answered, “No, I didn’t touch the body or anything. As soon as I looked at her, you can tell she’s gone. She has a huge hole on the left-hand side, on the left-hand side. She’s face down, her pants are down past her buttocks, and her blouse is up to her neck.”
The investigator asked, “Are you going to go back or no? Was that related to the car?”
The officer answered, “There’s tons of footprints in there, bloody footprints.”
The investigator noted, “The caller, they called last night that the boyfriend apparently was in the hospital.”
The officer replied, “Yeah, I hear that’s related to the grandfather, to the boyfriend, because to the, not to her. Because the way he, the impression he gave me was like he didn’t even ask about the baby, about he thinks to be the grandfather but never asked about the kid. It’s like they were expecting it almost.”
The police continued to search Passion’s apartment for any evidence about who the assailant was and where Taylen might have been taken. The only piece of useful evidence found at the scene was a bleach bottle that was located under a bed. It was covered in blood, and it had a partial fingerprint on it. They also found blood stains on multiple items in the house: a black shirt, two pillows, a set of sheets, and finally, a red-handled kitchen knife.
Passion’s body had injuries to both of her hands, the left side of her head, the front side of her left leg, and her right upper arm. Using alternate light source scanning, they found blood on the palm of her left hand and face. She was wearing the same clothing that her family had seen her in the night before: a Hot Wheels printed t-shirt, shorts, and a necklace. Her shirt had been pulled up to her neck, and her shorts and underwear were pulled down below her buttocks. Autopsy reports would later reveal that she had been stabbed over 100 times, many of them in her back.
At the police station, Sergeant Martinez sat down with Passion’s mother, Lita Denson, to gather background information for the missing persons report.
Sergeant Martinez said, “What’s your name, Miss? Like I said, I’m Sergeant Martinez, there’s a lot going on right now, but we’re going to have to get some information from you, okay? Do you want to sit here? Yeah, you want to have a seat for me? Are you okay?”
Lita Denson wept, “Okay, it just don’t look right. It doesn’t look right.”
Sergeant Martinez comforted her, “Okay, but we’re still gathering information, okay, and we’re still trying to figure out everything that’s going on. So I don’t want to give you information that isn’t correct, okay?”
Lita Denson asked, “Y’all been in?”
Sergeant Martinez answered, “We’ve been in, but they’re still, they’re still trying to figure out everything that’s going on, okay? We want to make sure that all the people that are there are the people that they’re supposed to be, okay? Spell your name for me.”
Lita Denson answered, “Lita, L-A-K-I-T-A.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “Your last name?”
Lita Denson answered, “Denson, D-E-N-S-O-N.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “What’s your middle name?”
Lita Denson answered, “Marie Noel.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “Now, who is it that you were reporting missing?”
Lita Denson answered, “My daughter, Passion Jeffrey, and her son, Taylen Mosley.”
Sergeant Martinez clarified the spelling, “Jeffrey, J-E-F-F-R-E-Y?”
Lita Denson corrected, “J-E-F-F-E-R-Y, okay.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “What’s her date of birth?”
Lita Denson answered, “9-26-2001.”
Sergeant Martinez confirmed, “Okay, and it’s Passion, P-A-S-H-U-N?”
Lita Denson agreed, “Yes, she just moved out here in February. She moved here in February.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “What apartment?”
Lita Denson answered, “3616.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “When did you last hear from her?”
Lita Denson recalled, “Yesterday around 5:00. In between 1:00, I was on the phone with her between 1:00 and… I was out here at their house by 4:30 and everybody was normal. Only thing, the baby was asleep in the room with the door closed up a little bit.”
Sergeant Martinez summarized, “So you last saw her at 4:30 yesterday and everything was fine?”
Lita Denson replied, “4:30 up till 5:00.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “So 4:35, yes, everything was okay?”
Lita Denson confirmed, “Yes, she wasn’t concerned about anything, nothing was upsetting her. She was just upset about the birthday, about his birthday, the baby daddy’s birthday.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “Does the baby daddy live with her?”
Lita Denson explained, “No, he would just stay the night a couple times since March the 12th, since Tay just turned two years old, so he’s not generally… “
Sergeant Martinez asked, “What’s his name?”
Lita Denson answered, “The baby daddy? Thomas.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “Do you know Thomas’s last name?”
Lita Denson answered, “Mosley, like the baby’s.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “Is he a white or black man?”
Lita Denson described, “He’s black with dreads.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “And he was there?”
Lita Denson replied, “Yeah, when I left, because I brought him glasses, shades like yours, socks. It was his birthday, right, and we ate ice cream with him.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “Do you know his birthday? Like, what day his birthday was?”
Lita Denson answered, “3-29. I don’t know, they’re looking for him, he’s 21. They’re coming, they’re coming, he’s 21.”
Sergeant Martinez noted, “Okay, so he just turned 21 yesterday, okay. What does your daughter look like?”
Lita Denson said, “She’s short, like your height, and her hair is like this, like that.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “The same color?”
Lita Denson answered, “No, it’s black. She’s just short, short like 5’1″.”
Sergeant Martinez asked, “What was she last wearing?”
Lita Denson remembered, “Brown tights and a t-shirt, a birthday shirt, Happy Birthday t-shirt, or ‘Two’ something like that. It says the orange and blue birthday shirt.”
Sergeant Martinez turned to another officer, “I’m going to let this officer take over real quick. He’s going to get some information. I’ve got her info, her phone number. This is the person she’s trying to report. She last saw her between 4:30 and 5:00. She was upset about the baby daddy’s birthday. That’s the baby daddy’s name. His birthday was the 29th. I started to get her description, so just get with her, okay?”
The second officer nodded, “I know, Mama, I’m going to go get some info for you.”
Lita Denson added, “I just heard her, I just heard her and the baby yesterday at 5:00 and below, because she was trying to buy Thomas something for his birthday. Yesterday was the baby daddy’s birthday, Thomas. It was his birthday.”
The officer asked, “Do you know if they were drinking or anything?”
Lita Denson answered, “I just know they were smoking.”
The officer clarified, “Smoking weed?”
Lita Denson confirmed, “Yeah, because I smoked with him yesterday, and while he opened up his gifts and they were sitting up on the couch, yeah. And then she, you know, we were eating ice cream and stuff, and I said, ‘Okay, I’m going to go,’ because my son had to run track. He had to go. Call your dad back because he’s worried. I’ve been having him on alert looking for them.”
The family later held a press conference to plead with the public for any information regarding Taylen’s whereabouts.
Lita Denson spoke to the cameras, “We just want to say that Taylen is a beautiful little boy, and he’s really loving and caring, and he’s just very sweet. And he’ll smile and laugh at anybody. And there’s Amber Alerts everywhere, everywhere, and you guys have seen them. I have people all over the country calling me about the Amber Alerts, so I’m asking everybody, if anybody, somebody saw something, please speak up. So if you know something, say something. Help us get Taylen back. Taylen lost his mommy, so he needs his family right now, so we ask for your help in finding him. Somebody knows, please, please speak up. Somebody knows something, somebody saw something. And Passion was just beautiful, loved to be with her family. We miss them.”
A reporter asked, “Does he have any nicknames?”
Lita Denson answered, “We call him Tay Tay, Tay Tay, Tay Tay.”
The reporter asked, “Does he answer to that?”
Lita Denson nodded, “Yes, he will answer. He answers to a lot of things. He’s, you know, very smart. He’s always calling his mom on his cell phone, yeah, always. They call each other all the time. She really loved Taylen, yeah. We don’t know, she always was there for Taylen. She calls on breaks, yep, and early in the morning, they FaceTime me early in the morning. We’re without words, you know. We just… we love Passion very much and we love Taylen, so we just… we’ve lost Passion, so we ask you guys to help us to find Taylen and to get him back. Please, please help, please.”
Next, the police began to check places where Taylen could possibly be. One of the first places was Desiree’s Private Daycare Services, which is a local, home-run daycare where Thomas’s mother said that Taylen had started going. Desiree Rents, the caretaker, stated that Taylen hadn’t been there in a week due to him being sick. Next, they went to Thomas’s family home to search for Taylen. With the approval of Thomas’s mother, the officer searched the house along with the backyard and a shed for the baby. No sign of the child’s presence was found. Police also checked with Donna Johnson, another person who watched Taylen sometimes, but she told the officers he hadn’t been there since the previous year.
An officer walked through the Mosley home, calling out to the occupants during the search.
The officer said, “I’ve seen him.”
The homeowner asked, “Did you need a flashlight?”
The officer replied, “Um, oh, what did you ask her? What did you ask for a second? Yeah, please. I appreciate the cooperation.”
The officer checked the back areas of the property, murmuring, “He’s like… thank you.”
Returning to the Mosley residence, Detectives Talbot and Bilbrey spoke to the family to try to get any more information from them that they could. They attempted to speak to Renee, but she didn’t want to speak to them without her husband and another son present. The Mosleys were told that Passion had been murdered. At this point, Renee asked the officers if she needed an attorney, which they thought was odd for her to ask. The officer further noted that the family appeared to be showing no emotion whatsoever, according to his account.
Mrs. Mosley told the officers that Thomas had been staying with Passion for the last three weeks. On the night of the 29th, Thomas had come home, and his father, David, had to let him into the house. Both parents stated that Thomas had multiple cuts on his arms. Thomas told his father that it was from a fight with a guy from Tampa, which David did not believe. David thought the wounds were possibly caused by Thomas himself, due to his son having previous mental health issues as a teenager.
While his mother was trying to help him with his cuts, his father went to move Thomas’s car into the yard. He had to place a bag over the seat of the vehicle because there was so much blood in the car from the injuries. Isaac, who was another sibling of Thomas, drove him to the hospital. During this interview, Renee Mosley gave the officers a video from her doorbell camera that showed Thomas coming home at 9:03 p.m. on the night of the 29th.
When the officers went to look at Thomas’s car, they saw blood on the exterior of the passenger side and more blood inside the car. Using the vehicle exception to the standard warrant process, they got David Mosley to unlock the vehicle and looked inside to see if Taylen was possibly in the car somewhere. While Taylen was not in the car, they did find a large-screen TV in the back seat. Detective Bilbrey called an officer at Passion’s apartment to ask about the TV and found that there was no television in the living room. The officers then found a baby blanket covered in blood in the front passenger seat. As such, the vehicle was towed to the police department to be forensically processed after a warrant was secured. Officers searched the car and found an older-style flip phone.
With news that Thomas had been taken to the hospital, officers went there to get any information he might have about Taylen. There, the officers were told that Thomas had been taken upstairs to the operating room for surgery on his hand and arms. Thomas was intubated and sedated at this point. An officer was placed in Thomas’s room so they could ask him questions as soon as he awoke. The officers then checked in with the emergency room for anything that Thomas may have brought with him. They were unable to find the clothing he came in with and were told it was common for them to be cut off and disposed of.
On the morning of the 31st, police began asking family members to come to the station for interviews and for any help they could offer in finding Taylen. One of the first was Isaac Mosley, who had taken Thomas to the hospital the night before. He spoke glowingly of his nephew, how he enjoyed spending time with him, and how much his whole family loved him. He spoke of Thomas being antisocial and that he didn’t respond well to criticism. Isaac discussed how excited Thomas was when he found out that Passion was pregnant and how she had spent a vast amount of time in the Mosley household. However, Thomas and Passion began to argue more frequently once she gave birth to Taylen.
When asked directly if he knew where Taylen was, Isaac said, “To be honest, since all of this stuff has come out, the only person that would know that would be Thomas.” He also said that his gut was telling him that Thomas knew where Taylen was.
Isaac then recounted what happened the night of the 29th from his perspective. He said he was in the living room when Thomas came in. Thomas was bleeding through a shirt that he had wrapped around his arm, and Isaac thought he had done it to himself. He asked Thomas what had happened multiple times but didn’t get a clear answer. When he removed the shirt, he saw that the cut was deep and still bleeding. He also noticed another cut on Thomas’s hand. Isaac recalled that his brother was wearing a dry-fit shirt, sweatpants, and Gucci slides. He wrapped Thomas’s arm and hand in a towel and drove him to St. Anthony’s Hospital.
Isaac stayed with his brother, waiting for their parents to arrive. When he spoke to his mother, she said she was going to check on Passion before coming to the hospital. She wanted to make sure that Thomas and Passion hadn’t had a physical altercation. Renee called Passion but didn’t get an answer. However, Renee soon realized that she didn’t know Passion’s actual apartment number, so she left and headed to the hospital.
The next day, Isaac received a call from Passion’s mother asking if he had seen either Passion or Taylen, because Passion wasn’t answering her phone. Having noticed that Thomas didn’t have his phone the night before, he searched Thomas’s car for it. He saw a Paw Patrol blanket covered in blood that he knew belonged to Taylen, but he didn’t see a phone.
Later that day, Thomas came out of surgery. When police spoke to him, they told Thomas that they were just trying to find Taylen.
Thomas responded by saying, “You need to be out there looking for my son, cracker, instead of in here bothering me.”
He professed no knowledge of where Taylen was and became belligerent, threatening and cursing at the officers. At the same time, more officers were reviewing the footage from the hospital security system. They observed Thomas and his brother arriving at the hospital, and later David Mosley, his father, leaving the hospital carrying a St. Anthony’s property bag.
In the early hours of March 31st, police received phone call records and location data for Passion’s phone. The last ping showing for her phone was at Dell Holmes Park in St. Petersburg at around 8:57 p.m. on March 29th. There were no further hits on her phone past this point. At 6:00 p.m. on the 31st, searches for Taylen began at Dell Holmes Park. They used drones, dogs, as well as people searching on foot for him.
During the search, a young man named Liddell Golden came up to an officer and changed the course of the investigation. He told them, “I don’t know if I’m seeing things, but I think there is a baby in an alligator’s mouth.”
Liddell took the officer to where he thought he had seen the alligator, in a small canal that connected Lake Maggiore to another smaller lake. There, Officer Lance Cha saw an alligator that had an object in its mouth. As he got closer to the alligator, he could clearly see the body of a small child. Officer Cha passed this information over the radio, at which point officers and agents from multiple outfits swarmed the location. A single shot was fired to kill the alligator, which caused it to drop the child. Then, Officer Dustin Webster positively identified the dead toddler as Taylen Mosley. The child had several minor wounds from the alligator’s teeth, and his left arm had been torn completely from his body. The autopsy report later showed that Taylen had been drowned.
An officer at the canal edge spoke quietly over his radio to confirm the details.
The officer asked, “Do we know for sure if it’s…”
The dispatcher replied, “I think so, Sergeant. I mean, if Mia is coming, I’m assuming it is. They said they saw, they saw something in the mouth of a gator, so something looked like a body. They said the gator was down.”
That night, police executed a warrant for the Mosley household. They recovered video footage from their security system, security cameras themselves, multiple cell phones, and they confiscated a set of Gucci slides with possible blood on them. Thomas Mosley was arrested on March 31st at 10:00 p.m. on two counts of Murder in the First Degree for Passion Jeffrey and his son, Taylen Mosley. He was appointed a public defender and held at no bond.
The trial has been delayed so far due to the mental health issues exhibited by Mr. Mosley, who was found incompetent to stand trial on the 1st of August, 2024. There are some questions between the experts about whether he is actually suffering from mental health issues, specifically major depression, or if he is malingering, otherwise simply known as faking his illness. For the moment, Thomas is being held at the Florida State Hospital in Chattahoochee. The next scheduled court hearing is set for August 1st, 2025. Since he has not gone to trial yet, Thomas is considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
Soon after Taylen was reported missing, his family started a GoFundMe to raise funds for the search. It, unfortunately, was converted to a fund for funeral costs for Taylen and Passion. Passion’s mother and her great aunt, Theodosia Brickhouse, thanked the many donors and well-wishers who helped them through this difficult time. The fundraiser collected $47,782 of its $50,000 goal.
In preparation for the memorial services, Passion’s family ran into an issue with the release of Taylen’s body. Thomas Mosley, as the father of Taylen, was the person to whom the body needed to be released, even though he was the accused. Now, we saw this same situation happen during our coverage of the Ethan Belcher case in Detroit. Ethan was left to decay in the county morgue as his mother was in police custody and his biological father stopped communicating with his family and the authorities. Taylen’s family and local activists advocated for new legislation. In April of 2024, a law passed to allow a different next of kin in situations involving criminal acts.
Passion Jeffrey and Taylen Mosley received a homegoing ceremony on Friday, April 7th, at the First Baptist Church of St. Petersburg. It was a moving ceremony focused on their lives and the unfairness of them leaving so soon. They were laid to rest together at the Woodlawn Memory Gardens.
