The mother of a 1-year-old girl, whose remains were found abandoned inside a dresser in Indiana, will now face decades in prison due to her involvement in the child’s cruel death. On Friday, Marion County Circuit Judge Jennifer Prinz Harrison sentenced Madison Marshall to 25 years in a state correctional facility for the 2023 murder of young Oaklee Snow, as shown in court documents reviewed by Law&Crime.

Marshall, aged 25, reached an agreement with prosecutors in April, pleading guilty to a charge of neglect of a dependent resulting in death and another charge of neglect of a dependent by placing the child in a hazardous situation. She was sentenced to 25 years and two years, respectively, with these sentences to run concurrently, or at the same time.

As a condition of her plea deal, Madison cooperated with authorities and agreed to testify against her boyfriend, Roan Waters, during his trial for Oaklee’s murder. However, her testimony was not needed because Waters, 28, eventually pleaded guilty to three different counts of neglect of a dependent and was sentenced on Friday to 45 years in prison.

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“The fact that two adults who had the care of this child would let these things happen to her and do these things to her is just terrifying. And that’s why they’re going to the Department of Corrections. That’s why that 45-year number is important; it’s because it is as serious a crime as it gets. They were entrusted with the care of a 2-year-old baby and failed miserably, and it resulted in her death,” Dan Chicchini, the chief trial deputy for the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, said following the sentencing hearing, according to Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV.

As Law&Crime previously reported, in January 2023, Oaklee was taken from Oklahoma to Indianapolis along with her 7-month-old brother by Marshall and Waters. Both children were reported missing by the children’s father, Zachary Snow.

Snow told investigators with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office that Marshall and Waters took his boy and girl from their home on Jan. 19, 2023, without his permission before fleeing to Indiana, where they would be staying with Waters’ mother.

Somewhere along the way, however, and under still murky circumstances, the young girl was killed and her body was hidden.

While Oaklee’s 7-year-old sibling was eventually reunited with his father after being found abandoned in what authorities described as a “trap house,” common terminology for a house dedicated to illicit drug use, it would be months before Oaklee’s body was recovered.

A national search for the 2-foot-tall, 35-pound, blonde-haired and blue-eyed girl culminated in late April 2023 when Marshall, in custody, led authorities to an abandoned Morgantown house where Oaklee’s tortured and broken body had been stuffed into a dresser.

According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, Marshall told investigators Waters would regularly “whoop” Oaklee as a form of discipline for any perceived misbehavior, including “holding a fork wrong,” urinating in her diaper, and many other behaviors common to toddlers. On several occasions, the man also “choked her out.”

Marshall told investigators that Oaklee had stopped eating around Waters because “he regularly became aggressive with her when she would not eat at the pace that he wanted her to,” police said.

Marshall told detectives the fatal day was Feb. 9, 2023.

The girl’s mother said she heard Waters in the living room repeatedly yelling at Oaklee to bounce on an inflatable rubber ball with a handle. After the “fifth and loudest time that he yelled at her, Marshall went in to check on them and said she saw Waters “standing over Oaklee as she sat trying to bounce on the ball,” according to the affidavit.

Marshall said she saw Waters sit on the couch while she went back to the kitchen. Minutes later, the girl’s mother said she heard Waters scream for her daughter, adding that she “never heard [him] sound like that before.”

“She met him in the hallway as he held Oaklee in his arms,” the affidavit reads. “She saw that Oaklee was not moving. R. Waters continually repeated without prompting that he ‘didn’t do anything’ and that ‘it wasn’t [his] fault.’ He initially refused to let Marshall take Oaklee from him and stripped her of her clothes. Marshall could see Oaklee’s stomach and chest cavity extend as if she was trying to breathe air. However, she observed what appeared to be a mix of blood and spittle dripping from her mouth when she tried to exhale, which created a gurgling sound. Oaklee’s eyes remained closed throughout this time.”

The girl, by then, was likely dead or dying — but Waters would not allow the child’s mother to dial 911, Marshall told law enforcement. Instead, Waters wrapped Oaklee in a blanket and put her in the back of his car with Marshall, according to the affidavit. Marshall went on to tell police she opened the blanket to check on her daughter and found Oaklee had stopped trying to breathe — her lips had turned blue.

“Marshall felt her skin, which now seemed cool to the touch,” the affidavit goes on. “She could also no longer feel a heartbeat as she held her. Marshall pulled Oaklee’s eyelids back to further examine her but saw no movement or response in them. She held Oaklee’s hand before eventually climbing up to the front seat next to R. Waters.”

Said to be “hysterical and sobbing,” when leading investigators to the grim find, Marshall said she and Waters drove to the abandoned house together. There, her then-boyfriend took Oaklee’s body out of the car, entered the building through a window, and came out soon thereafter, alone.

Oaklee’s decomposed body was found in the dresser’s bottom drawer. Police said her left leg had been “clearly broken at the knee so that the left foot rested directly over her chest.”

In June 2023, the Morgan County Coroner’s Office determined the young girl died due to a “homicide of unspecified means.” A few months prior, Marshall and Waters were arrested in Colorado and extradited back to Marion County in the Hoosier State.