Tara A. Sykes appearing in Escambia County Court in October 2024 (WALA).
A 37-year-old woman in Florida accused of using social media to convince a 10-year-old child to kill a newborn baby and the adults the children were living with at the time will spend less than a year behind bars after reaching a deal with prosecutors.
Tara Alexis Sykes, who had been facing the possibility of multiple life sentences, pleaded no contest to one count of child neglect without great bodily harm during a Jan. 22 hearing in Pensacola, records show. In exchange for her plea, prosecutors dropped two counts of principal to first-degree murder, one count of solicitation of first-degree murder, and one count of cruelty toward a child without great bodily harm.
First Judicial Circuit Judge Amy P. Brodersen subsequently ordered Sykes to serve 11 months and 30 days in a state correctional facility, court records show. However, she also credited Sykes with 462 days of time already served, meaning the entirety of her sentence has already been served.
As Law&Crime previously reported, deputies with the Escambia County Sheriff's Office on Oct. 17, 2024, received a call from the Gulf Coast Kid's House, a child advocacy center, regarding a 2-month-old child who had suffered "serious injuries after being dropped on the kitchen floor by a 10-year-old."
Investigators said they learned that Sykes and the 10-year-old communicated online using a popular gaming platform called Roblox, which also has a social media component that allows users to chat. In this case, authorities say that Sykes used the platform to instruct the 10-year-old on numerous ways to commit infanticide.
In a news release, the sheriff's office said Sykes "instructed the 10-year-old on various methods to kill the infant."
"Sykes instructed the 10-year-old to drown the infant in the bathtub, burn the infant with scalding water, and drop the infant on the floor to kill the infant," the agency said. "Additionally, Sykes had instructed the 10-year-old on how to kill the adults the 10-year-old was temporarily living with by cutting their throats with a knife while they slept and burning their house by dousing bed sheets with aerosol spray and setting them on fire."
Authorities said that the 10-year-old went so far as to douse sheets with the aerosol spray, but the child was ultimately "unable to carry out the instructions."
"I have been in Law Enforcement for over 40 years and have never seen anything quite like this," Sheriff Chip W. Simmons said in a statement following Sykes' arrest. "I am truly disturbed by the circumstances and the thought that anyone could think like this, let alone instruct these acts to be carried out. There is something really wrong with her."
However, a Roblox spokesperson reportedly told the Pensacola News Journal that an internal investigation into the allegations revealed that the messages exchanged between Sykes and the 10-year-old "did not contain the alleged instructions for violence that resulted in the arrest of Tara Alexis Sykes."
Sykes and her husband were arrested earlier in 2024 and charged with one count each of child neglect with endangerment for allegedly allowing a 20-year-old man who impregnated their 14-year-old daughter to live with them in their family home, court records reviewed by Law&Crime showed.
That case began on May 28, 2024, when deputies responded to the Sykes' home in the 3000 block of Robertson Road at the request of an investigator with the Department of Children and Families regarding a 14-year-old girl who was 31 weeks pregnant and appeared to be suffering from malnutrition.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Sykes and her husband both admitted they knew their daughter had been impregnated by a 20-year-old acquaintance of theirs and both parents failed to report the "known sexual battery" against their daughter. The parents also allegedly threatened to kill the 20-year-old if his grandmother did not pay them $10,000, which authorities say she did.
The 20-year-old, later identified as Kyle Myers, was never charged for impregnating the juvenile, but he did plead no contest to one count of sending a threat to kill or injure and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.
Sykes is currently scheduled to appear in court again on April 8, records show.
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