Distressed family and friends of Taylor Casey, a Chicago woman who disappeared while at a yoga retreat in the Bahamas, begged for her return and joined LGBTQ+ advocates Thursday in calling for more attention and resources for the case.
Casey, who is a Black trans woman, was reported missing June 19 and was last seen at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat in Paradise Island, Nassau. Her friends and family gathered at a news conference Thursday on Casey’s 42nd birthday, both celebrating her and pleading for more progress in the case.
“Taylor should be here to celebrate her birthday, and she’s not,” said Kennedy Bartley, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s managing deputy for external affairs.
Colette Seymore, Casey’s mother, choked up and cried at the microphone as supporters wearing shirts reading #FindTaylorCasey and showing a photo of Casey stood behind her.
“When I cry, I cry so hard I have to hold my eyes in because I feel every blood vessel in them is going to burst,” Seymore said.
Seymore said the authorities in the Bahamas haven’t taken her daughter’s case seriously, acting “nonchalant” about it. Seymore and a longtime friend of Casey’s, Emily Williams, visited the Bahamas about a week after Casey went missing to try to move the case along.
“We went to the Bahamas to get answers. We left with more questions,” Williams said. “They want us to believe she left of her own volition.”
Williams said the Royal Bahamas Police Force has come up with nothing after using scent dogs and divers in the search. The only movement has come from finding Casey’s phone because her niece tracked it, she said. Seymore said the yoga ashram Casey was visiting has not put up missing-persons posters or allowed her to talk to the woman who told her of Casey’s disappearance.
Casey’s disappearance has left her family and friends reeling.
Williams and Casey met through mutual friends more than 15 years ago and bonded over Chicago house music and dancing. The Chosen Few DJs Festival is Saturday, and the two have gone annually for almost 10 years, Williams said.
“I’m missing her this year, I’m missing that event because it’s so much fun every year, we all bonded,” Williams said. “I’m missing her support, her love. Sometimes when you’ve been friends for 15 years, that’s longer than a lot of marriages. ... I just miss being with my friend.”
Casey has been involved in the Lighthouse Church of Chicago, a predominantly Black and LGBTQ+ church in Lincoln Park, pastor Marcus Payne II said. She also advocated for homeless LGBTQ+ youth and was deeply involved in queer activism.
“Taylor curates community,” said Precious Brady-Davis, a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner and trans activist. “Her heart has been dedicated to homeless LGBTQ youth and uplifting the marginalized.”
The speakers at the news conference urged local, state and federal officials to pressure the Bahamian forces and the State Department to involve the FBI in the search. The FBI has an observer in the Bahamas but isn’t involved in the investigation because they haven’t been invited by the Bahamian police, Williams said.
Casey’s case highlights an issue long known in communities of color and LGBTQ+ communities — cases of missing Black trans women often fall through the cracks, rarely attracting the attention and resources of other cases.
“I was approached yesterday, and somebody asked me, ‘Channyn, what are your thoughts when Taylor went missing?’” said Channyn Lynne Parker, executive director at the LGBTQ+ organization Brave Space Alliance. “And my thoughts were, ‘Again? Here we are again.’”
In Chicago, most murders of transgender women go unsolved. The police department solved 14% of murders of transgender women between 2010 and 2021 compared to the national average of 50%.
Historically, the Chicago Police Department has recorded a low clearance rate for all homicide cases, and even when murders are “solved,” that doesn’t necessarily mean anyone is arrested, according to a Sun-Times analysis of 2021 data.
For that year, the department reported a “clearance rate” of just over 50% for all murders, a nearly two-decade high, but half of those cleared cases were closed with no charges being filed, the Sun-Times found.
Parker said when Black trans women disappear, “we continue to send a resounding message across the waters globally, locally and nationally that Black women do not matter, that Black trans women do not matter.”
“But we’re here to say right now emphatically, resoundingly and loudly that we reject that. Black women matter, Black trans women matter.”
