Posted at 8:00 AM, July 19, 2025
TAMPA, Fla. (Court TV) — Prosecutors say text messages found on a teenager’s phone prove that she plotted to kill her baby, which was found wrapped in towels in a dumpster.
Brianna Moore is facing multiple charges after she allegedly killed her newborn baby shortly after delivery. (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office)
Brianna Moore faces several charges, including aggravated manslaughter of a child and child neglect with great bodily harm, after her newborn daughter was found in her dorm room trash can on the University of Tampa campus. Moore’s roommates told officers they heard the sound of a baby crying and saw blood in the bathroom, but Moore denied being pregnant and told officers the blood was from her period.
An autopsy determined the infant had fractured ribs and hemorrhaging in her lungs. The medical examiner ruled the cause of death asphyxia due to compression of the torso.
Moore was arrested in October 2024 and remains behind bars awaiting her trial, according to jail records. That trial, initially scheduled to begin on July 21, was postponed with no new date set.
New filings from the prosecution are offering insight into their case ahead of the trial, including a series of text messages Moore exchanged with a friend named Qasim. The messages, exchanged on Sept. 13, 2023, discuss what to do in the event of an unwanted pregnancy.
Moore: “hey man sometimes you need a plan c”
Quasim: “plan a was condoms
plan b was the pill
plan c was to kill thr [sic] kid”Moore: “plan c is my favorite”
In their motion asking a judge to allow the texts to be evidence in Moore’s trial, prosecutors said they “very clearly lay out a willingness to kill a baby if other means of contraception have failed.”
Moore’s defense filed a motion responding to the prosecution, arguing the texts were taken out of context and that a “fair reading of the text message thread reveals that Ms. Moore had a perfectly normal teenage conversation.”
Judge Thomas Palermo reserved ruling on the text motion as well as a second motion from the prosecution seeking to block the defense and its witnesses from using the term “cryptic pregnancy.”
A cryptic pregnancy, which is also termed “pregnancy denial,” happens when a person is unaware that they are pregnant, only to discover they are carrying a child late in the pregnancy or when they go into labor. The National Institutes of Health estimates there are 1600 cryptic pregnancies annually in the United States.
Prosecutors maintain that the defense would need an expert to testify to whether Moore had a cryptic pregnancy or not. Moore’s defense argues that it’s unnecessary because a cryptic pregnancy is not a psychiatric diagnosis, but rather “a complex phenomenon involving psychological, social and medical aspects.”
