The investigative trail ended with Jacqueline Reid pleading guilty and receiving concurrent 50-year sentences in a South Carolina courtroom.
BARNWELL, S.C. — A set of AirPods helped turn the search for a missing, nine-months-pregnant teenager toward the home of the woman who would eventually admit killing her. More than two years after 17-year-old Maylashia Hogg disappeared, Jacqueline Y. Reid pleaded guilty Aug. 20 to murder and causing the death of an unborn child during a violent crime. A judge sentenced Reid, 64, to 50 years on each count, with the prison terms running concurrently, according to local court reporting.
The sentence closed a case in which investigators assembled evidence through several different channels rather than relying on one discovery. Prosecutors said surveillance video established part of Hogg’s final known route, electronic tracking pointed detectives toward Reid’s address, a search located Hogg and her unborn daughter nearby, and later forensic testing placed Hogg’s DNA inside Reid’s home. Investigators also examined Reid’s medical treatment for a hand injury and statements she made after her arrest. Prosecutors ultimately acknowledged they could not explain why the killings occurred, but Reid’s guilty pleas eliminated the need for a jury to decide whether the accumulated evidence proved the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.
The investigation began as a missing-person case. Hogg was at the end of her pregnancy in February 2024 and had an induction approaching when relatives lost contact with her. Public appeals described the Barnwell teenager as nine months pregnant, and local authorities offered a reward for information about her whereabouts. Prosecutors later said surveillance video showed Hogg leaving her boyfriend’s home on Feb. 8 and walking past a park on the way toward her own residence. She never made it home. As the expected delivery approached and Hogg missed medical plans, concern grew among relatives who had been trying to determine where she had gone.
The electronic clue changed the direction of the search. Prosecutors said investigators tracked Hogg’s AirPods to Reid’s residence. Police then searched the area behind the house, where Hogg and her unborn child were found in a ditch. State authorities have said Hogg’s body was discovered Feb. 18, 2024. The precise reporting timeline varied in some early accounts, with different reports describing when she was formally listed as missing, but the central sequence is clear: Hogg vanished in early February, relatives and authorities searched for her, and she was found dead before the month was over, only a short distance from where investigators later focused much of their work.
The condition of the victims established that investigators were dealing with a homicide. Prosecutors said Hogg had been stabbed about 50 times. They also said the unborn child suffered fatal stab wounds and died in connection with the attack on Hogg. The publicly described injuries were severe, but authorities did not need to release every detail to establish the nature of the case. Once the bodies were found, the Barnwell Police Department requested assistance from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. SLED brought in personnel from its Special Victims Unit, forensic laboratory, crime-scene unit, behavioral science and computer-crimes operations, along with regional investigators and other state resources.
Forensic testing became another important part of the case. Reid told investigators that Hogg had never been inside her residence, prosecutors said. Testing later identified DNA matching Hogg at three locations in the house. The contradiction between Reid’s account and the physical evidence was one of several points prosecutors highlighted when they publicly described the case at a May 2026 bond hearing. Investigators who initially visited the property also saw rugs drying outside. Prosecutors said the rugs smelled of bleach. Neither fact alone explained exactly what happened, but together with the location of the bodies and the digital tracking data, the evidence strengthened the investigative focus on Reid.
Another piece of the timeline involved Reid herself. Prosecutors said she sought hospital care on Feb. 8 for a significant cut to the pinkie finger on her right hand. Investigators later obtained information from a jail call in which Reid told her boyfriend she had hurt the finger while preparing chicken. Her boyfriend questioned how the injury occurred because, according to the prosecution’s account of the call, Reid said she was holding a knife with her left hand. Prosecutors also cited later remarks in which Reid said she did not want to stay by herself at her home and commented on buzzards in the area. Those conversations were treated as evidence to be considered alongside the forensic and location data.
The investigative work continued for months after Hogg and her daughter were found. SLED established a dedicated tip line in March 2024, saying at the time that the inquiry remained active. The agency identified Hogg’s unborn daughter as a baby girl who was to be named Londyn Charity. Authorities did not immediately announce an arrest. That changed July 1, 2024, when SLED charged Reid with two counts of murder and booked her into the Barnwell County Detention Center. State officials said the case would be prosecuted by the 2nd Circuit Solicitor’s Office. Reid’s arrest shifted the case from an open homicide investigation into a criminal prosecution that would continue for more than two additional years.
As the prosecution moved forward, officials offered more detail about the relationship between Reid and Hogg. Hogg’s stepfather, Michael Sapp, told WRDW that Reid had been a family friend and had regularly been around the family. He said that while relatives were trying to locate Hogg, he asked Reid directly whether she had seen the teenager and that Reid denied having done so. Prosecutors later described friction between Reid and Hogg, but they did not provide a clear explanation for what prompted the killings. The fact that the two knew each other gave investigators context for their interactions, but it did not answer what became one of the case’s most persistent unanswered questions.
That question remained open at Reid’s May 2026 bond hearing. Solicitor Leigh Staggs told the court that prosecutors did not know the motive. By that point, however, the state had a substantial body of evidence it intended to use if the case reached trial. Reid was denied bond and remained in custody. The hearing gave the public its most detailed account to that point of the AirPods tracking, DNA findings, hand injury and jail conversations. It also demonstrated the difference between establishing a motive and building a criminal case: investigators said they could not explain the reason for the killings, but prosecutors maintained that the available evidence identified Reid as responsible.
Three months after that bond hearing, Reid changed the legal course of the case by pleading guilty. The Aug. 20 pleas covered Hogg’s murder and the death of her unborn child during the commission of a violent crime. Circuit Judge Walton J. McLeod imposed 50-year terms. WRDW reported that the sentences will be served concurrently, meaning both run at the same time rather than one after the other. The pleas made a trial unnecessary and transformed the prosecution’s allegations into admitted criminal responsibility. At 64, Reid faces a sentence long enough to keep her in state custody for decades.
The resolution also shows how the case developed from one small electronic lead into a much broader evidentiary record. Tracking data did not stand alone; it directed investigators toward a place where other evidence could be found and tested. Forensic results then challenged Reid’s account about whether Hogg had been in her home, while investigators used surveillance, medical records and recorded conversations to build a chronology. State and local agencies continued the work for months before making an arrest and for years before the guilty pleas. The motive remains unexplained in the available public record, but the criminal case itself ended with Reid accepting guilt and receiving concurrent 50-year prison sentences.
Author note: Last updated Sept. 29, 2026.