Taylor Wardlaw Case: Killing, Cover-Up, and Plea Deal

The Taylor Wardlaw case ended on March 24, 2024, when the Columbia, South Carolina woman pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter for shooting and killing her boyfriend, 26-year-old Terrell Sims, in December 2021 and then reporting him missing to police. She was sentenced to 20 years in prison, with an earliest possible release date in 2038.¹

The Killing on Ervin Street

Wardlaw and Sims had been together since 2018 and shared a child born in 2020. The relationship was violent. In 2020, nine months pregnant, Wardlaw called police and said Sims had held a gun to her belly and threatened to kill her. He was arrested and spent close to a year in jail. Wardlaw posted his bail herself in August 2021, on the condition that he not contact or live with her and that he wear a court-ordered ankle monitor. They were living together anyway on December 20, 2021, when, by her own later account, she shot him four times after an argument at their home on Ervin Street.¹

An autopsy confirmed four gunshot wounds, one of them to the back. Investigators concluded Wardlaw had acted out of anger over her belief that Sims was cheating, while she herself was planning to leave him for another man, Eddie “Youngsta” Brown.

The Cover-Up and False Missing-Person Report

Instead of calling for help, Wardlaw brought Brown in to help her dispose of the body. They removed Sims’s ankle monitor and threw it from a car window. Surveillance cameras caught them driving together between roughly 4:30 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Within 12 hours of the shooting, Wardlaw was at a pawn shop selling Sims’s gold mouth grill. Two days later, on December 22, she walked into the Columbia Police Department and reported him missing.²

She then acted the part. She called Sims’s twin sister, Marcella Sims Jacobs, crying and saying she “couldn’t function without Sims,” and sent texts about missing him.³ She organized a search party on social media while pointedly leaving Sims’s family out. His sister Rose Sims said Wardlaw kept pressuring her to stay quiet: “She kept telling me to calm down, ‘Don’t post nothing, don’t say nothing, you’re talking too much, you’re going to get me locked up.'”⁴

How Police Broke the Case

The ankle monitor gave investigators their opening. Its last signal pinged on Monticello Road in Columbia before the device went offline on December 21, and officers recovered the discarded monitor about a mile from a creek in that area. On January 5, 2022, they found Sims’s body partially submerged in the creek off Monticello Road. The Richland County Coroner confirmed his identity by autopsy the next day.⁵

Forensics filled in the rest. Wardlaw’s rental car had a bullet hole in the hood and blood in the trunk, and traces of Sims’s blood were found inside the couple’s home.¹ A friend of Wardlaw’s also came forward, telling police Wardlaw had confessed to her, saying, “I did it — I killed Terrell,” and describing how she had shot him four times after he hit her during an argument.

On January 6, 2022, Columbia police arrested Wardlaw, then 29, and charged her with murder and possession of a firearm during a violent crime. She was booked into the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.²

The Plea Deal and 20-Year Sentence

The Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office prosecuted the case. Just before trial was scheduled to begin in March 2024, Wardlaw took a plea. On March 24, 2024, she pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, a lesser charge than the original murder count, and prosecutors dismissed the firearm possession charge in exchange.⁴ The court sentenced her to 20 years, with 2038 as her earliest possible release date.

Rose Sims called the sentence a starting point rather than closure: “20 years ain’t enough for me, but I guess it’s a start. She has some time to think about what she did. Hopefully, I’m praying, when she gets out she’ll apologize or say she was sorry or explain the actual reason why.”⁴ Marcella Sims Jacobs, Sims’s twin, spoke about forgiveness: “I don’t hate her. I don’t have no hate in my heart. I can’t live like that, with hate in my heart. I have to forgive her.”³ Jacobs also started a GoFundMe campaign to support Sims’s four children.

Eddie Brown and a Related Family Court Matter

Eddie “Youngsta” Brown, who admitted helping Wardlaw move Sims’s body and cover up the evidence, was charged with accessory after the fact of murder. As of the most recent available reporting, his case remained pending and he had not been convicted.⁴

A separate matter, SCDSS v. Taylor Wardlaw, produced an unpublished opinion from the South Carolina Court of Appeals on November 25, 2024. Given the agency involved, it was likely a child welfare proceeding, but the nature and outcome were not detailed in available records.⁶

1
Oxygen. Taylor Wardlaw Pled Guilty to Murdering Terrell Sims
2
Columbia Police Department. Arrest Made in Missing Person Investigation
3
WIS. Family of Columbia Man Who Police Say Was Killed by His Girlfriend Speaks Out
4
WIS. Woman Charged in Boyfriend’s Murder Sentenced to 20 Years Following Guilty Plea
5
The State. Columbia Woman Charged With Murder After Reporting Boyfriend Missing
6
South Carolina Judicial Branch. Court of Appeals Unpublished Opinions