What to know about the killings of St. Petersburg boy and his mom
Thomas Mosley, the father of the 2-year-old missing St. Petersburg boy found Friday in the mouth of an alligator, was booked today at the Pinellas County Jail, records show.
He was charged Friday night with two counts of first-degree murder, according to jail records. They stem from the killings of Taylen Mosley and his mother, Pashun Jeffery, 20, whose body was discovered in her apartment Thursday.
The police investigation led authorities to Lake Maggiore, more than 13 miles from the apartment where his mother was found stabbed to death, near Dell Holmes Park off 22nd Street South. The cause of Taylen’s death was still under investigation Saturday pending an autopsy by the Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner’s Office.
Authorities on Saturday had been waiting for the boy’s father to be discharged from the hospital, where he went Wednesday with cuts to his arm and hand, according to a police spokesperson.
Here’s what else to know:
When did Taylen go missing?
Police said Taylen and his mother were last seen about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, the date of Thomas Mosley’s 21st birthday. At about 8:30 that night, a neighbor heard a noise from Jeffery’s apartment at Lincoln Shores, but police said Thursday that the sound wasn’t notable and it was not reported.
On Wednesday night, Thomas Mosley arrived at his mother’s home, police said, though they did not reveal how far that is from Jeffery’s apartment, where she’d only lived for about a month.
Thomas Mosley had been staying at Jeffery’s apartment for a few weeks prior to the killings, Yolanda Fernandez, a St. Petersburg police spokesperson, said Saturday.
The family first became worried about Jeffery when she couldn’t be reached. Later that day, a family member called the property manager at the Lincoln Shores apartment, at 11601 Fourth St. N, to check on Jeffery and her son.
The door was locked, police said, but the apartment staff member who went in found a “very violent crime scene.”
When was Thomas Mosley identified as a suspect?
Police on Friday morning publicly named Thomas Mosley as a “person of interest” in Jeffery’s stabbing death after he went to the hospital Wednesday night with cuts on his arms and hands.
Thomas Mosley had a minor juvenile record, Fernandez said, but there had been no calls for service at Jeffery’s apartment leading up to the murder.
How did police find Taylen?
The police investigation led them Friday to search for Taylen at Dell Holmes Park, on the northwest side of Lake Maggiore. The sprawling city park with trails, a fishing pier and putting green is south of downtown St. Petersburg and sits about a mile away from where Thomas Mosley’s address is listed in jail records.
When someone reported seeing something in an alligator’s mouth, police shot the animal to retrieve Taylen’s body, according to a police news release.
Police were unable to send a dive team into the lake because of alligators, Fernandez said.
“Nobody wanted this kind of an outcome,” Fernandez said.
