An American woman has admitted kidnapping and murdering her 11-month-old son because she didn’t want the baby’s father to have custody.
Madeline Veronique Daly, 36, on Wednesday pleaded guilty to first-degree murder after shooting baby Basil Stoner in the chest and face inside an RV in rural New Mexico while fleeing police on December 23 last year.
Daly was on the run after snatching the child from Basil’s father, Jake Stoner, who had shared custody and said she had been preventing him from exercising his visitation rights. She is now facing life in prison.
After the murder, Daly was asked by police what was going through her mind when she shot Basil, and replied “Jake can’t get Basil”, Cowboy State Daily reported.
She also told police she thought the murder was “worth it” if it kept Mr Stoner and his family from getting custody, and that she kidnapped Basil months earlier because “she was not going to allow her [then] 8-month-old baby go back and forth from Nebraska to Wyoming twice a month”.
“Even if the rest of [her] life is worthless she would do it again just so to make sure that the [family] didn’t touch him,” Detective Lt. Jason Jordan of the Grant County Sheriff’s Office wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.
The affidavit also stated that Daly told police she tried to turn the gun on herself when officers stormed the RV after hearing the fatal gunshots, but “wasn’t fast enough killing herself”.
Police said that when investigators asked Daly why she killed her Basil, she “could not think of why or when she decided to shoot her son”.
She also made unsubstantiated claims that Basil “would have been in danger and molested” if she handed him over, and accused Mr Stoner of never wanting anything to do with his son “financially, physically, emotionally ever”.
Mr Stoner’s lawyer said at the time his client had sat by the phone for months waiting for news of his son, and had hoped they would be able to celebrate Christmas together.
An obituary for Basil said he was a “happy and alert child” who “never missed a thing”.
“Basil was happiest outdoors and loved watching animals and he really liked blueberries,” the obituary stated.
Header image: Left, Madeline Daly (Grant County Sheriff’s Office). Right, Basil Stoner (Sandoz Chapel of the Pines).
