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TALIL M. VANN hatched a detailed plan to avoid trial on sexual battery charges in Seminole County: Hire a hit man – communicating through secret code – to kill his adolescent victim plus the lead prosecutor and police detective on his case. The Altamonte Springs detective would be taken out with a pipe bomb strapped to a remote-controlled car, according to Vann’s written directions.

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But the killer Vann thought he had hired from inside the county jail turned out to be an undercover Seminole County sheriff’s deputy, tipped off by a confidential informant.

Now, Vann, 24, has been charged with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder – each punishable by life in prison – and one count of solicitation to tamper with a witness. Vann already faced life in prison for two counts of sexual battery of a child younger than 12 and one count of using of a child in a sexual performance, due to phone video he took of the rape.

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“At times like these, we are grateful for our close working relationship with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office,” said Assistant State Attorney Dan Faggard, who worked on the investigation and was not the target of the threat.  “We are especially grateful for the Sheriff’s Office’s excellent investigation in this case and its efforts to keep our prosecutors, law enforcement partners and vulnerable victims safe from dangerous predators like Vann.”

Sheriff’s investigators first learned in May of Vann’s plot to kill his victim, the assigned assistant state attorney, and the detective who arrested him, arrest records show.  He had asked a fellow inmate to arrange the attacks by someone on the outside, offering a BMW car he owned as payment.

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Intervening as that someone was an investigator from the sheriff’s Major Crimes Unit, who began receiving coded directions from Vann through the mail and jail email system. The phrase “birds are beautiful” meant kill the prosecutor, and “the sky was cloudy today” meant kill the detective.

Vann provided the “hit man” with the young victim’s personal information including phone numbers, date of birth, address, school, and social media accounts, arrest records show. Vann advised his operative to wear a disguise and long sleeves to hide his skin color while surveilling the detective.

A search of Vann’s jail cell uncovered written plans and codes he had devised.

Deputies arrested Vann on the new charges at the Seminole County jail. The State Attorney’s Office has asked that he continue to be held without bond.

Vann’s arraignment on the new charges will be Sept. 16.  

He has been assigned a different prosecutor for the new charges.

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