Saylor Hayes: 5-Year-Old Died in SC, Parents Arrested and Their Shady Past Becomes Exposed

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Saylor Hayes, the 5-year-old girl, found dead in South Carolina earlier this week.

John Hayes (0:05)

I need to look for her. I can't give her anything.

SPEAKER_3 (0:07)

She's gone in the water. Authorities say Saylor was nonverbal and had autism.

Jordan Hayes (0:11)

Wait, I'm just praying. I don't know, you know that she's somewhere.

SPEAKER_3 (0:14)

Saylor's parents failed to provide supervision.

John Hayes (0:17)

Police came back out, she's gone. I'm gonna split the cracker.

Annie Elise (0:25)

Hey, true crime besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Serialously.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all new episode of Serialously with me, your host, Annie Elise. Happy Monday. I hope you had a fantastic weekend. You know, you're kickstarting your week off on the right foot, especially because I'm probably about to ruin your entire day, which I hate to do it, but unfortunately, there usually is no other option given the nature of the content that we discuss, right? Now the case that I want to share with you today, it's one that's actually happening right now in real time.

And I briefly touched on it last week in Headline Highlights on Thursday, which I'm sure most of you know, but Headline Highlights is my Thursday show where I go through all of the headlines of true crime that's happening that week. And so I briefly touched on it, asked if you guys wanted the deep dive. You said you did. I have been researching this case like crazy, following it like crazy. So I have all of my notes right here. And I really just want to run you through the case itself, the timeline, because I think the timeline is actually the most imperative part of this entire situation and really get your feedback too. Because like I said, it is a case that is happening right now in real time. And new information is coming up pretty often. I wouldn't say every day, but relatively often. And so I would imagine we also will probably be doing an update together soon as well. But if you haven't guessed by now or, well, I mean, I guess you saw the title, so there's no guessing involved.

But it's the case of Saylor Hayes. Now, for those of you who maybe didn't listen to headline highlights last week and don't know even a tiny bit of backstory about this case, first of all, what are you doing? You should be listening to Monday and Thursday episodes, also Tuesday 10 to Life episodes. But let me give you a quick background. Like I said, I have all my notes right here, so I'm going to be referring to them throughout the episode. Bear with me.

It's not structured, it's not clean, but I wanted to get this episode out fast and just deliver as much of the backstory and information as I possibly could. So again, for those of you who are unfamiliar, let me give you the quick rundown before we get into the timeline, the details, the shady-ass TikToks and everything else that has transpired. So five-year-old Saylor Hayes had traveled with her family from Bristol, Virginia to a vacation rental in the Hagley estate area of Georgetown County near Poly Island. This is in South Carolina. Now, according to her parents, Saylor was non-verbal and autistic. She also really gravitated toward bodies of water. She just loved wandering off. She loved going towards the water. And she kind of had this history of what they call elopement, meaning that she had a known tendency to just wander away from her family, her caregivers, whoever she was with. Just, I don't know if you would call it fiercely independent, but you know, you could call it that. Just really loved doing her own thing, especially loved water. And there were even some TikToks that had been made in the past where her mother was posting videos just of how much she did love water, but that she wore safety precautionary bracelets and vests and things like that because she wasn't obviously a great swimmer. So basically when she disappeared back on August 30th of 2026, it immediately triggered a massive surge because everybody was wondering what happened to this five year old little girl? How did she just disappear? If she's autistic and nonverbal, clearly there should be, if not the parents, a caregiver with her the majority of the time. So like how would she have even had the opportunity to wander off? Like what's going on?

So not only did it spark a lot of interest and quite honestly, a lot of frustration as well, but it triggered a massive search, a search involving dozens of volunteers, multiple agencies, different law enforcement divisions, the sheriff's office, the fire department, people from all across the region. And like I said, the case quickly grabbed media attention. It was going viral all over social media. I would imagine even if you don't know the name Saylor Hayes immediately when I say it, if you are an avid Instagram user or TikTok user, chances are you probably saw one of the videos in the feed. More specifically, the video of the mother being talked to while she's on kind of like this dirt path gravel road by a vehicle. She's acting a little bizarre in my opinion, not really seeming all that worried about her missing five-year-old. And that video of course spread like wildfire. So not only was it the community, the region, the close knit area that was keeping an eye out for Saylor and even hearing about this case, but it very quickly went nationwide to where everybody was talking about it. Everybody was trying to help and hundreds of volunteers came together to start searching for Saylor. And also not for nothing, but also not just searching for her, but in a very real sense, trying to be a voice for her as well. Sadly though, it didn't have the ending that everybody had hoped for. And Saylor was recovered from the Waccamaw River the following morning. And while the community came together to mourn this precious, beautiful five-year-old little girl, people still couldn't help but wonder what really happened here. What was going on between the bizarre interviews, the weird circumstances surrounding her disappearance, or quote-unquote wandering off moment.