By: Staff Writer
July 12, 2024
The Family of a missing Chicago woman in The Bahamas made an urgent plea for her as investigators in The Bahamas try to piece together her last whereabouts.
Taylor Casey was last seen on June 19, about two weeks into a monthlong yoga retreat on Paradise Island in Nassau. Her family and friends held a news conference in Chicago on Thursday, Casey’s 42nd birthday, demanding action from the federal government.
Colette Seymore, Casey’s mother, in a heartbreaking plea for helping finding Casey, said she “yearns,” for a call from Casey as she used to in the past.
Bahamian police have found Casey’s phone under 50-plus feet of water, and both Bahamian and U.S. authorities have been unsuccessful in getting information from it.
Police also said Monday that dogs picked up on a scent from the yoga tent during their search, but it ultimately did not lead to anything.
Seymore had traveled to the retreat after her daughter’s disappearance, but said her visit was “deeply unsettling.”
“I just felt like they didn’t care. They didn’t care at all,” Seymore said.
The family is calling on the FBI to step in, saying, without their support, they may never know what happened to her.
Casey also identifies a transgender, but local authorities are aware of that.
While foul play is not suspected in her disappearance yet, it was reported by NBC news that of the 321 murders of trans and gender-nonconforming people reported worldwide from Oct. 1, 2022, to Sept. 30, 2023, 74 percent were committed in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to a study by the LGBTQ advocacy group Transgender Europe. The study also found that 91% of the worldwide trans murder victims were trans women or female-presenting and that the majority were people of color.
In the Bahamas, consensual same-sex sexual activity is still partially banned, according to Human Dignity Trust, a global advocacy group for LGBTQ rights.
Casey had been participating in a yoga instructor program at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Retreat Bahamas when she disappeared. Police found her cellphone in the ocean nearby the retreat but have yet to recover her passport.