Mother murdered baby son to prevent ex-partner gaining shared custody

A New Mexico woman has admitted she killed her 11-month-old son because she could not bear the idea of sharing custody with the child’s father.

Madeline Veronique Daly, 36, pleaded guilty this week in the death of her infant son, Basil Daly, who was killed in December 2025. Prosecutors said the fatal shooting came weeks after Daly took the baby from his father’s home in Wyoming, despite a court order granting the father emergency custody.

After leaving Wyoming with the child, Daly traveled to a remote area near Grant City, New Mexico, where authorities say she attempted to stay out of sight in an RV at a trailer park. Basil’s father had already reported him missing, and law enforcement officers were searching for Daly on a kidnapping warrant.

According to a police affidavit, Daly told investigators she realized officers were closing in. She then shot Basil once in the face, killing him, authorities said.

Detective Lt. Jason Jordan of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office wrote in the affidavit that Daly later said killing her son was “worth it” if it meant preventing her former partner or his family from having custody of the baby.

“Even if the rest of life is worthless she would do it again just so to make sure that the (family) didn’t touch him,” Jordan stated in the court document.

The affidavit also said that when Daly was asked what she was thinking as she saw law enforcement approaching, she responded: “(The father) can’t get Basil.”

Investigators said Daly then attempted to shoot herself after killing the infant, but officers managed to overpower and disarm her before she could pull the trigger.

The 36-year-old was arrested at the scene and has been held without bail, before she took a plea deal this week on first-degree murder charges.

Daly now faces a life sentence following her guilty plea, and she will be formally sentenced at a later date. 

She lost custody of her son in November 2025 as a judge granted Basil’s father emergency custody, and she kidnapped the infant a short time later.

The boy’s father reported Basil missing on November 19, and said he had not seen his son for several weeks as Daly was resisting handing him over.

As cops sought Daly for several weeks, she was tracked to New Mexico after applying for a job in the state, and her warrant for kidnapping charges in Wyoming popped up during a background check.

According to her affidavit, Daly told deputies when she was arrested that she knew she broke the law by taking Basil, but believed she was keeping her son ‘safe’ from her former partner and his family.

She said that she decided to kidnap her son after losing custody of him, and she ‘was not going to allow her son to go back and forth from Nebraska to Wyoming twice a month’, police said. 

Police surrounded her trailer home in an unincorporated area near Silver City, New Mexico, and Daly later told cops that she ‘saw the sheriffs and knew my time was up.’

She told them that her ex ‘can’t get Basil’, and so she ‘said, F*** it, it’s worth a shot’, Jordan wrote in her affidavit. 

Deputies said they then heard a single gunshot from inside her RV, and paramedics found Basil inside with a ‘gunshot wound to the face.’ 

After the murder, she then told investigators that it was ‘worth it’ so long as the boy’s father wouldn’t have him.

She also alleged that Basil ‘would have been in danger and molested’ if he stayed with her former partner. 

She said the boy’s father ‘never wanted anything to do’ with their son, ‘financially, physically, emotionally ever.’