A 25-year-old Casselberry man was sentenced to life in prison on July 27 after being convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old girl, recording the abuse, and later trying to hire a hitman from inside a county jail to kill the victim, prosecutor, and lead detective.
Circuit Judge David Dugan handed down two life terms to Talil M. Vann for capital sexual battery on a child under 12, alongside a 15-year sentence for using a child in a sexual performance. Seminole County prosecutors convicted Vann at a trial in June.
The investigation began in May 2024 when the victim reported receiving messages on Snapchat from someone claiming to be a girl at her school. Authorities said Vann created the persona to offer the girl money via Cash App in exchange for helping “catch her boyfriend cheating.”
Vann then went to the victim’s Altamonte Springs apartment complex posing as both the classmate and the boyfriend. Before walking outside to meet him, the victim snapped a photo of Vann standing in the parking lot wearing plaid pajama pants. Vann took the girl to a secluded area of the complex, coerced her into sexual acts, and recorded the assault on a phone.
An Altamonte Springs Police detective linked the Snapchat accounts back to Vann and recovered the videos from a phone. The footage showed the perpetrator wearing the same plaid pajama pants visible in the photo taken by the victim.
In 2025, while held at the Seminole County Jail on the sex charges, Vann attempted to orchestrate the deaths of the victim, the lead detective, and the original prosecutor in an effort to derail his trial. Vann asked a fellow inmate to arrange the killings through an outside contact, offering his own BMW automobile as payment. Written directions provided by Vann detailed a plot to assassinate the detective using a pipe bomb attached to a remote-controlled car.
A confidential informant alerted law enforcement to the scheme, leading an undercover deputy from the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office to pose as the hitman.
The State Attorney’s Office reassigned the case to senior prosecutors Stewart Stone, Domenick Leo, and Martine McCarthy. During the June trial, prosecutors introduced the evidence of the murder solicitation plot to demonstrate Vann’s consciousness of guilt regarding the underlying sexual battery charges.
“While no jury verdict can undo the harm inflicted upon the child victim, today’s sentence ensures that the defendant was held accountable and that the community is protected from further harm,” Assistant State Attorney Domenick Leo said following the sentencing.
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