Madeline Veronique Daly was 36 years old and under a court order when she decided to disappear with her son.
In December 2025, she took Basil, just 11 months old, out of Wyoming and crossed the border into New Mexico, defying the emergency custody order a judge had granted to the father, Jake Stoner. For weeks, police searched for her without a trace. They found her hiding in a mobile home near Silver City. When officers surrounded her, Daly killed her own son.
According to the police affidavit, she told investigators that the boy ‘would have been abused’ if she handed him over, and that killing him ‘was worth it’ so Jake could never have him. On August 24, 2026, she pleaded guilty to first-degree murder before the Sixth Judicial District Attorney’s Office of New Mexico. She faces life in prison, the maximum sentence under state law.
