A mother who abducted her 11-month-old son later shot the infant in the face because she did not want the child’s father to gain custody, prosecutors said — allegedly telling investigators afterward that the killing had been “worth it.”
Madeline Veronique Daly, 36, was convicted this week in the death of baby Basil Stoner, who was killed inside an RV in rural New Mexico as law enforcement officers were closing in, according to prosecutors.
Authorities went to the RV after Daly allegedly took the boy across state lines in defiance of a court order that barred her from keeping him.
After shooting the child, Daly tried to use the gun on herself, but officers managed to restrain her before she could do so, according to an arrest affidavit cited by Cowboy State Daily.
Following her arrest, Daly told police she believed she had been protecting her son and said the child’s death was “worth it” if it prevented his father and paternal relatives from ever seeing him again, investigators said.
Daly had taken Basil from Wyoming to New Mexico despite an emergency custody order granting custody to the boy’s father, who told investigators he had not seen his son since Sept. 28.
The Grant County Sheriff’s Office located Daly at an RV park on Dec. 23 after she applied for a job near Silver City and a background check revealed an active arrest warrant.
Officers said they saw Daly run into an RV, then surrounded the vehicle while they waited for a warrant authorizing them to enter.
Then they heard a single gunshot and rushed in to see Daly had fatally shot Basil with a 9mm handgun in the face.
Daly told police that she kidnapped her own son because “she was not going to allow her (then) 8-month-old baby go back and forth from Nebraska to Wyoming twice a month,” according to the affidavit.
“When asked what went through her mind when she saw law enforcement walking up, she replied, ‘Jake can’t get Basil,’” police wrote in the document.
She also made unsubstantiated claims that Basil “would have been in danger and molested” if she got out of the trailer with him and that his father “never wanted anything to do with” the boy “financially, physically, emotionally ever.”
Daly pleaded guilty on Wednesday to first-degree murder.
She is facing the maximum sentence of life in prison, prosecutors said.
