6-Year-Old Strangled To Death Hours After Being Abducted While Playing In Her Yard And She Was Inside Her Killer’s Home While Police Searched It
Cayce, South Carolina. February 10th, 2020 started out as a normal weekday for 6-year-old Faye Marie Swetlik. She came home from school that day, and then she went to play outside in her yard.
Faye’s mom Selena was inside of their house while Faye played outside close to their porch. Selena could hear Faye playing, but at around 4:20 that afternoon, she noticed everything was silent.
Concerned, Selena went into the yard to see why Faye was being quiet. The problem was, Selena couldn’t find her daughter anywhere.
Selena quickly set out to search the neighborhood for Faye, and she gathered up some of her neighbors to help.
The search yielded no signs of Faye, and at 4:55 p.m., Selena called 911 to report the little girl as missing.
Cayce Department of Public Safety; pictured above is Faye
The Cayce Department of Public Safety rushed to Selena’s house to investigate where Faye had gone.
A helicopter, K-9 search teams, and local firefighters were also brought in to help search the area that Faye had gone missing from.
Officers went house to house asking neighbors if they had seen Faye, but nobody had seen her.
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As the search continued, officers ended up at a townhouse located at Piccadilly Square. A man named Coty Taylor lived there along with his roommate.
Coty wasn’t home while officers first searched there 2 days after Faye went missing, and his roommate said he was out of the house working when Faye disappeared.
The roommate said it was alright for the officers to search their place, and authorities came across a black-colored laundry hamper underneath the stairs in the home.
At first, the laundry hamper didn’t seem suspicious, but in a follow-up search, it would turn out that evidence pointed to Faye having been in this laundry hamper….most likely while authorities had been searching the townhome.
Cayce Department of Public Safety; pictured above is Faye at school
The day after authorities first searched Coty’s townhome, they dug through the trash of the complex.
One of the garbage cans had a polka dot patterned rain boot that matched the rain boots Faye had been wearing when she went missing.
Inside the garbage can was also a knife, a brown-colored blanket, and a ladle that clearly had fresh dirt on it.
After authorities found the ladle with dirt on it, they decided to search the woods behind the townhome complex that Coty lived in, fearing the ladle had been used to bury Faye.
It didn’t take long into the search before the other polka dot boot that Faye had been wearing was found close to some dirt that looked to be freshly moved.
Upon looking closer, authorities could see that there sticking out of the dirt was part of Faye’s body.
When the dirt had been moved away, Faye was lying there with a white-colored trash bag tied around her neck.
An autopsy revealed that Faye’s cause of death was due to ligature strangulation from the trash bag tied to her neck.
Additionally, the coroner indicated she had been killed at 8 p.m. the day she went missing, and her body had only been buried for just a few hours before she was found.
Faye’s burial site was located 200 feet away from Coty’s place, and as soon as her body had been discovered, Coty was found dead with a neck wound and a bloody knife on his back patio.
His roommate found him and yelled out to nearby authorities. This was no coincidence that Coty was found dead at the exact same time Faye was found.
An autopsy report indicated that Coty took his own life, however, he never left behind a note for his reasoning.
In the aftermath of Coty’s death, authorities went back to look through his townhouse and discovered in his kitchen the same brand of trash bag that was tied around Faye’s neck.
They also found a receipt showing that Coty had purchased soil and gardening tools. Some of the soil was inside Coty’s place, and although it was of a 50-pound bag of soil, it was close to empty.
The receipt also showed Coty bought Pop-Tarts, and wrappers for those Pop-Tarts were found along in the same garbage can that Faye’s boot and the ladle were inside of.
When the ladle was DNA tested, the results came back indicating it had Faye’s DNA and Coty’s DNA on it.
Cayce Department of Public Safety; pictured above Faye smiles
When Coty’s roommate was asked if he had been acting strangely in the days leading up to him taking his own life, his roommate said he did think Coty did something bizarre.
Coty was spraying an odor eliminator all through their place after Faye disappeared. His roommate thought that he had gone out and bought it after authorities searched their place the first time.
Coty’s roommate thought he bought the odor eliminator to cover the smell of marijuana that he smoked, but he had never done something like that before.
By now, authorities zoned in on that black laundry hamper that belonged to Coty that had been seen under the stairs when they first searched his townhouse.
When this black laundry hamper was DNA tested, the inside of it came back as having a mix of Coty and Faye’s DNA. Faye’s body was most likely inside of that hamper while police had done their first walk-through.
Another thing that Coty’s roommate mentioned was that he really believed Coty had purchased the odor eliminator to cover up the smell of Faye’s body.
Coty’s roommate told authorities that he “had never smelled a dead person before but there was something not right.”
“This investigation was unable to determine if Faye Swetlik was abducted by force near her residence or was lured to 602 Piccadilly Square by Coty Taylor,” the Cayce Department of Public Safety said in a report.
“Coty Taylor asphyxiated Faye Swetlik within hours of abducting her. Faye Swetlik’s body was likely concealed at Coty Taylor’s residence (602 Piccadilly Square) until the morning of 2/13/2020.”
“On 2/13/2020, Coty Taylor moved Faye Swetlik’s body to the woods behind his residence and buried her remains in a shallow grave.”
“Law enforcement was unable to locate a suicide note or ascertain the specific reason(s) that Coty Taylor committed suicide.”
Since Coty is no longer alive, charges cannot be pressed against him for what he allegedly did to Faye.
“She made everyone believe in all things good again,” Faye’s obituary reads. “She left behind a world that loved her. May she forever sparkle.”
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