Background: The Grant County Detention Center in Silver City, New Mexico (Google Maps). Inset left: Madeline Daly (Grant County Sheriff’s Office). Inset right: Basil Stoner (GoFundMe).
A woman in New Mexico faces life in prison after authorities say she fatally shot her 11-month-old son after kidnapping him so that her ex-boyfriend would not get to be with him.
Madeline Daly, 36, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the death of her child, Basil Stoner, the 6th Judicial District Attorney’s Office in New Mexico announced on Wednesday.
Her conviction was the result of a plea agreement, the agency added, and the presiding judge said a separate sentencing hearing will be held as he wants additional time to review the case.
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Daly and Basil’s father were in a relationship until July 2024, when the woman “went on the run and tried to keep the location of where she was and where the baby was going to be born a secret,” according to a GoFundMe apparently posted on behalf of the man.
In the months before Basil was born on Jan. 8, 2025, the defendant would reportedly “randomly send text messages to [the father], telling him how he would never be a part of his child’s life.” She settled herself and her son down in “the small town of Ten Sleep, Wyoming, to finish her pregnancy” and the man managed to reconcile with her and “was able to be present for the birth of his son.”
But relations between the parents apparently soured again. Daly allegedly “refused to discuss the name of the child or even allow for the last name of Stoner to be placed on the birth certificate.” She “refused” to allow him to be in his son’s life, and the father turned to the courts, Cowboy State Daily reported.
Following a trial in Washakie County, Wyoming, in the fall of 2025, the father was given shared custody of Basil. He “was going to rapidly work to a schedule where he would have his son basically half of the time” and his first visits “went wonderfully,” the fundraiser states.
But again, Daly was accused of hiding Basil from his father. The man went to the courts, and he allegedly received a text message from Daly “calling him a deadbeat dad, telling him that she was already having his son start calling someone else daddy, and telling him, ‘awww you snitched.'”
When Daly failed to appear for a scheduled court hearing concerning visitation in October, the father was given temporary emergency custody, the newspaper reported. He would never see Basil again.
Daly reportedly fled and wound up in New Mexico. The DA’s office said a warrant was issued on kidnapping charges, but, according to the fundraiser, because authorities cited no evidence of “immediate, present danger to the child,” an Amber Alert was not posted.
Then came a tip from a witness. Someone reportedly said Daly was staying in an RV park near Silver City, New Mexico.
On Dec. 23, 2025, deputies with the Grant County Sheriff’s Office responded, and the suspect allegedly hid with her son in an RV near the bunkhouse where she had been living.
As deputies tried to negotiate with the mother, she is said to have taken a 9 mm gun, pointed it at her son’s face, and fired. Law enforcement subsequently detained her.
Deputies tried to save Basil, but he was pronounced dead.
His obituary says he was “a happy and alert child” who “was happiest outdoors and loved watching animals” and “really liked blueberries.”
Daly was adamant about keeping her son away from the father and his family, according to court documents obtained by the Wyoming-based newspaper. She alleged that Basil would have been in danger if “she would have stepped out of that trailer” and that the father “never wanted anything to do with Basil, financially, physically, emotionally ever.”
The DA’s office did not mention a scheduled date for the defendant’s sentencing.
The post Woman shoots 11-month-old son in the face with 9 mm so that his father would ‘never be a part of his child’s life’ first appeared on Law & Crime.
