40 years after a North Miami Beach woman's murder, police say they found her killer

Milena Malaver, Miami Herald on Apr 26, 2025

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MIAMI — In June 1986, Shirley Brant was in her North Miami Beach office working as a real estate broker when she was shot in the face and killed. Now, nearly four decades after her murder, police say they have finally found her killer.

Jeffrey Taylor, 64, was jailed Friday in connection with Brant’s death. Authorities say new fingerprint technology helped them match Taylor’s prints to evidence collected at the scene, according to his arrest warrant.

On June 13, 1986, Brant was working at Brant Realty Corporation on Northeast 18th Avenue. She was talking on the phone with a friend while a coworker was nearby, entering data into a computer, according to police.

Police say two men walked into the second-story office. One of them, later identified as Taylor, demanded that Brant hang up the phone in what police called an attempted robbery. When Brant refused and began to scream, Taylor shot her in the face.

Brant’s last words were “don’t shoot,” according to a Miami Herald story at the time.

Police say Taylor pulled the phone receiver from the base of the landline and left it lying on the floor under Brant. Both men then fled.

Brant was taken to Parkway Regional Hospital but later died from her injuries. An autopsy confirmed she was killed by a single gunshot wound to the head.

At the time, investigators collected fingerprints from the scene, including from a phone found under Brant’s desk. However, for still unclear reasons, the prints were never entered into a fingerprint database, known as AFIS.

Brant’s family issued a $25,000 reward at the time for information leading to the arrest of the man who shot Brant with a small-caliber weapon, according to a 1986 Miami Herald story.

The case went cold until January 2023, when the North Miami Beach Police Department formed a Cold Case Unit to reopen unsolved murders. Investigators found the old fingerprints and submitted them for new testing. In March 2025, they got a match: Jeffrey Taylor.

Taylor is charged with second-degree murder with a firearm. Jail records show he is locked up at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center and was denied bond.

Brant’s death haunted her family, who remember her as a loving mother, wife and member of the community whose funeral was attended by 600 people.

“She was ahead of her time... breaking the glass ceiling, and she gave her money to philanthropy,” her son Ben Brant told reporters at a news conference outside the North Miami Beach Police headquarters on Friday.

Weeks after her death, her husband, Lawrence Brant, who ran a successful dental practice in North Miami Beach, started a fund to help stop handgun crime: The Shirley Brant Memorial Fund Against Handgun Crime.

“People have been calling up and saying, ‘What can I do?’ What they can do is they can vote for elected officials who want to do something about gun control,” Lawrence Brant told The Miami Herald in 1986.

That same year he also told the Herald: “Guns don’t kill people — people with guns kill people,” responding to the NRA’s slogan, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”

Lawrence Brant died in 2016.

“This arrest is a testament to the power of collaboration, determination, and never giving up,” North Miami Beach Police Chief Juan Pinillos said in a statement on Friday.