The Misery Machine - The Tragic Case of Zya Singleton

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

This week, Drewby and Yergy head to Philadelphia, PA, to discuss the case of 4-year-old Zya Singleton. On October 30th, 2019, emergency services responded to a home in Philadelphia's Fairmount neighborhood. Zya's guardian, Samiya Brown, claimed that the toddler had accidentally fallen out of a second-story window while playing with a cat. Zya was hospitalized in critical condition and tragically died from her injuries and a severe blood infection on November 3rd. Medical professionals and the city medical examiner quickly determined that the window-fall story was a lie. An autopsy revealed that Zya had endured years of horrific, systemic physical abuse. Her injuries included severe malnutrition, multiple broken bones, acid, cigarette, and thermal burns, human bite marks, as well as homemade stitches that Samiya had haphazardly sewn into Zya's skin, which ultimately led to sepsis. The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office described the tragedy as "potentially one of the worst cases of child abuse anyone has ever seen." Samiya was immediately arrested and denied bail. In May of 2022, she avoided a first-degree murder trial by pleading guilty to third-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child, and possessing an instrument of crime. Zya’s biological mother, Jasmine Singleton, had voluntarily given custody of Zya to Samiya, who was a family friend and married to her stepbrother, around two years prior to the murder. Jasmine did so because she lacked the immediate financial means to care for her daughter and wanted to prevent Zya from entering the formal foster care system.Support Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachineJoin Our Facebook Group: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachineOfficial Merch Store: https://miserymachine-shop.fourthwall.com/Instagram: miserymachinepodcastTwitter: misery_podcast#documentary #themiserymachine #truecrime 🚨 EDUCATIONAL, DOCUMENTARY, SCIENTIFIC, OR ARTISTIC CONTENT DISCLAIMER 🚨CONTENT WARNING: THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT A SENSITIVE TOPIC INVOLVING LOSS OF LIFE. WE'VE REMOVED ANY GRAPHIC CONTENT TO COMPLY WITH YOUTUBE'S GUIDELINES. WE AIM TO PROVIDE INFORMATIVE, FACTUAL JOURNALISM ON A TRAGIC EVENT IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST THAT DOES NOT DISMISS ITS SERIOUSNESS. ALL CLIPS ARE USED UNDER THE DOCTRINE OF FAIR USE FOR NEWS REPORTING AND ANALYSIS.Fair Use Disclaimer: "Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for 'fair use' for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."THE CONTENT IN THIS VIDEO IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, BASED ON BELIEVED RELIABLE SOURCES. THEY MAY NOT BE CURRENT OR FULLY ACCURATE. VIEWERS SHOULD DO THEIR OWN RESEARCH AND NOT SOLELY RELY ON THIS INFORMATION. WE'RE NOT LIABLE FOR ANY INACCURACIES OR OMISSIONS. WE DO NOT CONDONE, ENDORSE, OR ENCOURAGE ANY OF THE BEHAVIORS OR ACTIVITIES SHOWN. WE URGE EVERYONE TO ALWAYS ACT RESPONSIBLY AND WITHIN THE BOUNDS OF THE LAW.

Zaya Singleton was one of five children and grew up in Philadelphia. Her mother was Jasmine Singleton. Normally, this is the part where we tell you who somebody was. The school they went to, the cartoon they made their parents watch 40 times in a row. We do this every episode, but for Zaya, there is none of that info. By the end, you'll understand why. Her mother said, and I quote, Zaya was a good kid.

Zaya was a good baby. Her favorite thing to do was to suck on her blanket to go to sleep. She was a happy kid. Jasmine has also said Zaya was a quiet baby. That's the only testimony we have about who Zaya was. The last time Jasmine saw her daughter was September 27, 2017. Jasmine handed Zia over as an infant while she tried to get housing sorted out. Philadelphia's DHS had found her home unfit for her children, and she didn't want Zaya going into foster care, so she went to live with someone that she had known her whole life.

Samaya T. Brown was born on July 30, 1981. She was married to Jasmine's stepbrother, and Jasmine also described her as a god sister. Samaya had already been looking after Zaya. According to Jasmine, she was getting paid through child care information services or CCIS to work as a child care provider. Jasmine said, I asked her to keep Zaya until I could move, which she agreed to. Some sources have described it as an informal agreement backed by a notarized letter. Samaya had been the one taking care of Zaya since the day she was born. She lived in North Philadelphia and there were four other kids in the house, ages 2 to 13, who belonged to her. Then in 2017, Samaya moved. She did not tell Jasmine where she was going.

Jasmine said she spent the better part of a year looking for her daughter. The two of them had a falling out, and Samaya would not give Zaya back. On October 30th, 2019, at around half-past four in the afternoon, the Philadelphia police got a call about a person screaming at 1714 Folsom Street. When officers got inside, they found Samaya running cold water over Zaya. Samaya told them Zaya had fallen out of the second-story window, and that she had carried her into the bathroom to take care of her. Samaya told police she had come home to make sloppy Joes and saw Zaya in the bed

playing with a cat. Allegedly, according to Samaya, she was in the kitchen and heard the cat making sounds. So she went to the back of the property to find Zaya lying on the chairs in the backyard. When she picked her up, she saw Zaya's eyes rolling back into her head. She had a split lip, gashes on her head, and blood was everywhere. By the time police were standing in that bathroom, the injuries to Zia's face were catastrophic. Her lip and the nose especially. Medics took her to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and from there she was moved to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia because of how bad it was.

There, staff asked Samaya about Zaya's injuries. She admitted she had put homemade green stitches into Zaya's scalp over two open wounds. Doctors examined Zaya and found that her injuries didn't match what Samaya had told police. On October 31st, detectives interviewed Jasmine. She told them that she had handed temporary guardianship to Samaya right after Zaya was born

while she was working on getting housing. She told them that in 2017, Samaya had moved without giving her the new address and that she had not seen her daughter since. Get your tickets now for the dog stars. It's no surprise how fast civilization can disappear. Go! A therapist.

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And Guy Peers. Arm up! The Dog Stars, directed by Ridley Scott. In theaters August 28th, get tickets now. Jasmine got to the hospital and could barely recognize her daughter. She said, you can't prepare no mom for what I walked in that room and saw. My baby's face was destroyed. All she had was eyes and a head that was taped up with burns on her body.

I walked into the room and walked out. Jasmine said Zaya was already brain dead, and on November 3rd, 2019, she was pronounced dead. She was only four years old. And then came the autopsy. Dr. Julia de la Garza, an assistant medical examiner for the city, found trauma all over Zaya's body. The injuries were at different stages of healing. She had opened wounds on her face and scalp and broken bones. There were burns on her left arm and her left thigh.

that looked like they had come from cigarettes and larger patches where the skin had been burned by scalding water. Homemade stitches and puncture wounds were found all over her body. She was also very malnourished. According to Dr. De La Garza, what killed Zia was sepsis and the complications that came with it, set off by blunt impact in thermal injuries. She ruled the manner of death, a homicide. Assistant District Attorney Chelsea Leitze took the case. She said Zaya was missing almost the entire part of her lip up through her nose.

That was a healing injury that was never treated by any doctor or hospital. She told reporters that Zia had broken bones in her arms that appear to be potentially from some kind of restraint. According to ADA Lightsey, there are wounds all over her body that appear to have been stitched and healed at different times, fully healed injuries. She was never taken to a hospital. This would have all been done at home. I honestly cannot count the injuries for you. There's more than I can say. She added that, I would not use the word care.

Brown ab-her, stitched her up, ab-or again, stitched her up. She burned her with some kind of scalding liquid and patched her up at home. Zaya's records showed she hadn't been to a hospital since April of 2016. Detectives came to believe she had been kept inside the house for years. The last known photograph of her was from October of 2017. ADA Lightsy said, I would say any average person would look at this and think this is potentially one of the worst cases of child that anyone's ever seen. I really believe she was sort of lost to all of us. No one knew what was happening in that house but the people in the house.

None of the other four children in that house were injured. The Department of Human Services removed them and placed them all with their fathers. Samaya Brand was arrested on November 12, 2019. The complaint was filed the following day. She was charged with first-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child in possession of an instrument of crime. Bale was denied on November 13th, and she was held at Riverside Correctional Facility. District Attorney Larry Krasner announced the charges that week. Of the charges, he said, that's not the truth.

The truth is that this child was killed and killed brutally and was for an extensive period of time. This is a horrific, heartbreaking case of a neglect and murder of an innocent, defenseless child. The preliminary hearing was on January 28th, 2020, in front of Judge William Austin Meehan Jr. Photographs of Zaya's body went up on a screen in the courtroom. People in the gallery gasped and sobbed. Samaya turned away and did not look at them herself. The medical examiner described burns, infected wounds, torn skin, and broken bones, and called it the avalanche that ended in sepsis. The swelling in Zia's brain became severe enough to crack her skull.

ADA Lightsy said, in thinking that that child was being attempted to be stitched at home, you know, stitches in a regular situation would hurt. So I can't imagine what that felt like. The defense asked the judge to knock the charge down to third-degree murder, arguing there was no premeditation. For an ADA Lightsey, I actually believe the intent is born out of weeks and weeks and weeks of not seeking true medical treatment. Judge Mehan ruled there was enough to send all three charges forward. but for whatever reason the case sat.

Between March of 2020 and May of 2022, it went on the calendar for a pretrial conference 16 times. Almost every one of them got pushed. Three separate times, Samaya filed her own motions asking the court to take her public defender off the case and give her a new lawyer. In January of 2022, Judge Lillian Ransom ordered a mental health evaluation.

On May 19th, 2022, Samaya pled guilty. Prosecutors withdrew the first-degree murder charge, and she entered an open guilty plea to third-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child and possession of an instrument of crime. An open guilty plea means pleading guilty with no agreed-upon sentence. The actual sentencing was to occur on July 26, 2022 in front of Judge Ransom. Prosecutors put the medical examiner back on the stand and entered the autopsy photographs. The Superior Court, reviewing that record later, said the evidence showed Zaya had been starved and tortured and kept from medical care she needed to stay alive over a long stretch of time.

The court also said Samaya had tried to dodge responsibility by lying to police. ADA Lightsy argued that in each instance, Samaya made a choice not to seek care for Zaya. The defense asked for leniency. Her lawyer argued that Samaya had a difficult childhood and was trying to be a boy. better person. Judge Ransom sentenced her to 20 to 40 years on the third-degree murder count and 10 to 20 years on the child endangerment count to be served back to back. She gave no extra time on the weapons count. Added together, that comes to 30 to 60 years in state prison. She was also ordered to pay $4,500 in restitution to the victim's compensation assistance program in mandatory court costs.

Judge Ransom said her aim was to limit the chance that Samaya would ever be around other children again. Samaya offered an apology in court, but Jasmine walked out during it. She said nothing about the words I'm sorry that were coming out of her mouth was sincere. I trusted her with my kid and there's no logic for what you can do to a four-year-old. It's hard and it hurts every day. Describing what she saw at the hospital, Jasmine said, when I got there, what I saw, it was unexplainable. she didn't have a face.

November 30th, 20203, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania sent the case back for resentencing after Samaya's lawyer appealed. Not because 30 to 60 years was too long, but because Judge Ransom hadn't said on the record that she had read the pre-sentence report. The resentencing got scheduled and pushed back over and over through the first half of 2024.

June 27th, Judge Ransom handed down the exact same sentence she had given two years earlier. This time she made sure her reasons were on the record. She pointed to the breadth of the injuries to the fact that Samaya never sought medical attention for Zaya to her position as the child's legal guardian into the fact that she did not feed her. She also pointed to the gap between how Samaya treated her own biological children compared to how she treated Zaya. There was one more thing.

Samaya had acknowledged that she was able to get medical treatment for her own disabled biological daughter every two weeks. Judge Ransom said Samaya acted with a wicked heart when she caused the death of this child. She added one condition that had not been in the 2022 sentence, that Samaya engaged in both mental health and drug treatment. The defense asked for reconsideration, but Judge Ransom denied it on July 11, 2024. They appealed again. But on August 5, 2025, the Superior Court affirmed the sentence. The court found the sentence was Judge Ransom's call to make and rejected the argument that she had leaned on factors that she shouldn't have. As of the most recent court records, Samaya Brown is at the

state correctional institution at Cambridge Springs. It is a minimum security facility for women, many of whom are nearing release. In September of 2025, Samaya asked the court for transcripts and for permission to proceed as a pauper. This means asking the court to waive fees because you can't afford them. She filed again that December asking for popper status and for her counsel to be removed. On November 19th, 2019, the Francisville Civic Association held a candlelit vigil on the block where Zaya had been living. More than a dozen people came out. Darling Serulo helped organize it. She said, it's a little girl. I think there's a certain level of innocence. Everybody feels horrible about what happened. The fact that it happened right here and nobody knew it's really hard.

When neighbor said, we're all hurting. You go through the thoughts and the emotions of, Should I have done more? Should I have known more? Could I have helped? Jasmine spoke to the crowd. She said, Thank you guys for doing this. I am Zaya's mother. I blame myself to be honest. I deal with this every day, but no one will understand the pain that I go through every day, knowing that I will never see my daughter again. I want to know why you did this to my kid. Because at the end of the day, that was my daughter.

She has brothers and sisters out here that never see her again. At the press conference a week earlier, D.A. Krasner had said, as a community of 1.6 million people, every one of us has a responsibility to protect our children, and that means we have a responsibility to report when we are afraid that they may be coming to some sort of harm. At the time, the charges were filed, it was not clear whether DHS had ever run a background check on Samaya or whether anyone had checked on Zaya at all. In fact, we couldn't find an answer to either question in anything published sent. But Zaya's name has come up since, and the bigger fight over how Philadelphia looks after its children.

In 2022, the news outlet Billy Penn brought up her death while reporting on a proposed state law. The bill would have capped what child welfare agencies could be made to pay out when sued in such cases. Billy Penn wrote that caseworkers failed to monitor her well-being after she was moved from her mother to a new guardian. The Philadelphia Obituary Project is a volunteer group that writes obituary. for people killed in the city so that homicide victims are more than a name and an address. They opened a page for Zaya on November 5th, 2019. It's still a placeholder. There's a photograph in a line asking anyone with information about her to get in touch.

No obituary has ever been written on it. Jasmine told reporters she was going to have Zaya cremated. She said that the funeral will be held on Wednesday, November 20th, 2019, in the only section of the city. We couldn't find any coverage confirming it happened, and no source named the church or the funeral home. There's no headstone we could find and no find a grave page. There's no place we can point you to, nowhere to bring flowers.

What we have is four sentences from her mother. She said that Zaya was a good kid. Zaya was a good baby. Her favorite thing to do was to suck on her blanket and go to sleep. She was a happy kid.