A mother’s Everglades nightmare lives forever

Shandelle Maycock woke up disoriented and bleeding on a bed of matted grass amid endless walls of towering sugarcane stalks.

She fingered a sticky gash on her right foot and winced. Her vision was still blurry from last night’s struggle, but she could make out a strip of water and cars passing on the other side. Where had he left her?

Memories flashed through her head: the big man choking her, throwing her in the trunk of his car, driving for what seemed like hundreds of miles.

Maycock, 22, stumbled to her feet and collapsed, too weak to walk. She prayed. She took a few steps and fell again.

Her thin frame was covered in bug bites and scratches but, barefoot and groggy, she finally made it to the road. She struggled to wave to get drivers’ attention.

She had to get help.

She kept thinking of her 5-year-old daughter.

The man had kidnapped them both. He had left Maycock for dead in the cane fields. But what had he done with her little girl? Where was Candy?

Hitching rides

Maycock liked being a receptionist, and her office wasn’t far from the small efficiency she rented. The job didn’t pay much, but she had learned to get by on almost nothing after her family kicked her out. They had been angry when she told them she was pregnant at 16 by a much older, married man.

Maycock named her daughter Quatisha, but called her Candy from the start. Maycock enrolled in a school for pregnant mothers and earned a high school diploma. Her job paid a meager salary, leaving nothing for extras, not even a car.

She often got a ride to pick up Candy from a caretaker’s house. Lately it had been Harrel Braddy, a nice man she had met through a friend. She sometimes went to church with his wife. Braddy, 49, also gave her rides to the store or the Laundromat.

But sometimes he showed up at her home unannounced. Once, Braddy playfully put his hand between her legs. She pulled a knife and he apologized, swearing it would never happen again. So Maycock forgave him. That was that, she thought.

Then, unexpectedly one Friday night, he pulled into her driveway, saying he had to talk to her. Candy slept as Maycock cleaned up around the house, hoping Braddy would leave soon. It had been a long week and she wanted some time alone. Finally, she asked him to leave, lying that she was expecting company.

Braddy bolted from the chair and grabbed Maycock in a chokehold. He pinned her to the floor and tightened his grip around her neck.

She tried to fight back, kicking and scratching -- but Braddy’s steel grip wouldn’t release. He was more than 6 feet tall, and the past 13 years of lifting weights in prison had given his arms machine-like strength.

Awaking in the car

The car was speeding along when Maycock awoke in the back seat. She rubbed her throbbing neck and saw Candy in the front next to Braddy. The girl was awake; she looked afraid.

“Maybe he’ll just let us go,” Maycock thought. But she worried he had other plans.

Braddy had been so enraged, so violent. She didn’t know he had only been out of prison about 17 months; he had served time for attempted murder, armed robbery and other charges.

Maycock had been certain Braddy was going to kill her on the floor of her home. Now she feared he was planning to kill her somewhere else -- and maybe her daughter. They had to escape.

She glanced out the window. They weren’t far from her neighborhood. It was after 11, and the road was almost empty.

Maycock reached into the front seat and grabbed Candy’s arm, struggling to pull the girl onto her lap.

She whispered her plan: They were going to jump.

“Don’t do it,” Braddy warned and pressed the accelerator.

“Mommy, Mommy, no,” Candy cried.

“Shhh. It’s OK,” Maycock said, clutching her daughter to her chest and opening the door. Candy’s protests rang in her ears as they lunged forward.

She tried to hang onto Candy, but the impact was hard. They flew apart, landing on the median. Blood trickled from a deep gash on Maycock’s right foot, and her collarbone ached.

“Mommy, Mommy,” Candy cried, limping toward her.

Braddy stopped the car and ran back to them, hustling Candy into the front seat again. He grabbed Maycock by the arm and shoved her toward the back door, then changed his mind.

Instead, he opened the trunk and forced her inside.

She heard Braddy tell Candy, “I’m gonna take y’all home.”

In the trunk’s blackness, as the car began to move, she prayed that might be true. “God, please don’t let me die,” she said. “Please keep my daughter safe. Please God.”

A long ride followed, and then the car stopped.

“Why are you doing this?” Maycock sobbed as Braddy opened the trunk.

“You used me,” he said.

“No, I just needed a ride.”

“I should kill you,” Braddy yelled. Then he wrapped his hands around her neck again and choked her until she stopped moving.

Now he had to figure out what to do with the child. The girl could identify him.

Alligator Alley

An avid hunter and fishermen, Braddy was familiar with the Everglades. He knew about its gators, brown water snakes and snail kites, and how they could make a body disappear.

He sped toward the highway called Alligator Alley.

He had laid brick on a toll plaza there. Just west of the toll plaza were bridges that dipped right into the gator-infested waters. They were sure to be deserted this time of night.

When Braddy stopped at the bridge near Mile Marker 34, a choir of crickets and frogs roared. Fish plopped in the water. Lily pads rustled.

Something was lurking there.

Braddy threw Candy onto the rocks with a thud.

As he drove away, the child -- her skull fractured -- lay unconscious but still alive.

In police custody

Less than 24 hours later, Braddy was in police custody. Across the interrogation room, homicide detectives stared at him and he stared back. It had already been a long night.

Braddy broke the silence this time.

“Moses was an adulterer and John who was Jesus’ relative was a murderer,” he said. “But that didn’t make them bad men.”

Braddy denied he had picked up Shandelle and Candy Maycock the previous night.

Det. Fernando Suco stood mute. His mind raged with questions: Was Candy still alive? How long could a 5-year-old survive on her own?

Through the night, Suco and Det. Otis Chambers took turns, peppering the suspect with questions, getting no answers. Braddy rested his head on the table during breaks.

But he held to his story: He had been home all night. His family was out.

But other Miami-Dade detectives had talked to Cyteria Braddy: Their stories didn’t match. She and the children had been home all night, she said; her husband wasn’t there.

Strange noises coming from the carport had awakened her before dawn, she said. Her husband was cleaning a rental car. The washing machine was humming.

Another officer had driven a few hours north to the hospital, where a disoriented Maycock was recovering. She told him what Braddy had done.

Nearly 50 searchers were now swarming the area where he had left her -- the cane fields and an adjacent dirt road and drainage canal -- confident that Candy had to be somewhere nearby.

But the girl was in a different county, miles away.

Suco and his crew were exhausted. They headed to a McDonald’s for breakfast, leaving Braddy alone in the room.

Fourteen years earlier, Braddy had choked a Miami-Dade courthouse guard, fracturing the man’s larynx. He had handcuffed the guard to a holding cell, then bolted. Captured, he had disarmed two deputies at the hospital where they had taken him and escaped again. He was gone more than a month before being caught in Georgia.

Now, Braddy stood on the chair, his shoes off. He pressed his hands against the air-conditioning grate. He had bent the metal grate nearly in half when Suco opened the door. Braddy jumped to the floor. Busted.

“I’ll take you to her,” Braddy said.

Search for the girl

Among the searchers at the cane field, Braddy swore again he had left the girl here with her mother. “I could see her in my headlights when I was pulling away,” Braddy said.

Investigators worked on Braddy, but he stuck to his story. Hours passed.

Finally Det. Pat Diaz took over, sharing part of his sandwich with Braddy. “I’ve been down this road before,” he told Braddy, remembering another missing-child case. “She’s not here, is she?”

There was no telling why Braddy finally decided to tell the truth.

“No, she’s not,” Braddy said. He had left Candy in the swamp off Alligator Alley.

It was now late afternoon. The girl had been missing for nearly 40 hours.

A horrifying discovery

The unmarked patrol car swept past the toll plaza on Alligator Alley, stopping near Mile Marker 34.

“Check under the lily pads. I left her out here. She was alive,” Braddy said.

But he had not left the girl at the bridge but off a boat ramp about half a mile away.

“I truly believe he was trying to give enough time so the little girl would disappear,” Suco said. “In his mind: no body, no charges.”

The search spanned several miles before investigators had to quit for the night. Canine units, divers and helicopters would be mobilized in the morning.

But about 7 a.m., they got a call: A fisherman had found Candy’s body in the water.

Long legal battle

Maycock sobbed on her bed, tears streaking past cuts on her face.

Her only child gone.

“I want justice for us,” she said then. But justice would take nearly nine years.

Braddy fired attorney after attorney, then represented himself, then got more attorneys.

He finally walked into court for trial in July.

Called to testify, Maycock sobbed when asked how old her daughter was. Recounting the night for the jury, she felt a familiar ache creeping through her collarbone. She remembered his hands wrapped around her neck.

The jury deliberated just two hours before finding Braddy guilty of seven charges, including first-degree murder, attempted murder and kidnapping. A judge sentenced him to death this month.

Memories remain

Today, a photo collage of Candy is the only decoration on the bare white walls of the room Maycock rents: Pictures of the girl getting a bath, dressed in a bunny suit for Halloween, smiling for her school photo.

“I have to talk to a tombstone,” Maycock says. “I can’t ever see her smile. She can’t ever give me grandkids.”

She hasn’t married, but dreams of having a family. She always wanted three children.

“He took away the only person that I knew really loved me besides God.”

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This story is based on interviews with Shandelle Maycock, Dets. Greg Smith and Fernando Suco and Assistant State Atty. Abbe Rifkin; and on court comments and testimony.