JEFFERSON CITY, Missouri — For six days, Quatavia Givens stood alongside volunteers, canvassed neighborhoods, and gave interviews about a missing 4-year-old boy.
The whole time, she knew exactly where he was.
Darnell Gray, the boy she had been hired to babysit, was already dead. His body had been dumped in a wooded area of Jefferson City. Givens had put him there.
On Friday, Givens, 33, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, child abuse, and abandonment of a corpse. She was sentenced to life in prison.
The story she told did not add up
Givens reported Darnell missing on the morning of Oct. 25, 2018.
She told police that Darnell’s father, Kijuanis Gray, had asked her to watch his son at his Jefferson City home. She claimed the boy vanished sometime before 7 a.m.
But her story came with unusual details.
Givens said Darnell’s backpack, coat, hat, gloves, two juice boxes, and some cookies were also missing. She suggested he had either run away or been abducted.
Volunteer Kathy Mueller, who helped search for Darnell, immediately found the story suspicious.
“She had her story like planned out,” Mueller told local CBS affiliate KRCG. “Who counts juice boxes? Who checks their cabinet when their child or someone they’re caring for is gone?”
She ‘put on a show’ for six days
Givens did not just report Darnell missing — she became part of the search.
Local news footage captured her canvassing areas with other volunteers and giving on-camera interviews about his disappearance, acting every bit like a devastated caretaker desperate to find a lost child.
Mary Williams Coley, a member of Missouri Missing Volunteers who searched alongside Givens, said the performance was chilling to look back on.
“Looking back knowing that she was the one that hurt this baby — it just lets you know that this is a master manipulator,” Coley told KRCG in October 2019.
“She could’ve been on the soap operas because she put on a show.”
A father who trusted her
Darnell’s father, Kijuanis Gray, had moved from Chicago to Jefferson City a few years earlier looking for a better life.
He brought Darnell to Missouri just six months before the boy was killed. Darnell’s mother was still living in Chicago.
Gray said he had no reason to question leaving his son with Givens.
“I trusted her to watch him,” Gray told Chicago ABC affiliate WLS in November 2018. “I wasn’t expecting her to do this to him.”
He described Darnell as his only child.
“That’s my only child that I had,” he said. “My only child.”
What the autopsy revealed
When Darnell’s body was eventually found, investigators brought Givens in for questioning.
She admitted, according to her arrest affidavit, “I may have hit him wrong” — and acknowledged hiding his body.
An autopsy confirmed that Darnell died from blunt force trauma and smothering.
A GoFundMe set up following his death described it as coming at the “hand” of the babysitter entrusted with his care.
Givens will spend the rest of her life in prison.
Darnell Gray was 4 years old.
What do you think about this case? Share your thoughts in the comments — stories like Darnell’s deserve to be heard and remembered.
