Background: The Grant County Detention Center in Silver City, New Mexico (Google Maps). Inset left: Madaline Daly (Grant County Sheriff”s Office). Inset right: Basil Daly (GoFundMe).
A mother is accused of fleeing authorities to New Mexico and fatally shooting her 11-month-old son so that his father would not get custody of him.
Madaline Daly, 35, stands charged with first-degree murder and abandonment of a child resulting in death, according to Grant County jail records reviewed by Law&Crime. She was arrested on Dec. 23 and remains in jail.
According to a GoFundMe posted on behalf of — and ostensibly with support from — the child’s father, Jake Stoner, the death of Basil Daly was the somber end of a nearly yearlong tale. Stoner and Daly were in a relationship until July 2024, when “Madeline Daly 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,” the fundraiser said.
In these months before Basil was born on Jan. 8, 2025, the defendant would allegedly “randomly send text messages to Mr. Stoner, telling him how he would never be a part of his child’s life.” She settled down in “the small town of Ten Sleep, Wyoming, to finish her pregnancy” and Stoner managed to reconcile with her and “was able to be present for the birth of his son.”
But relations between the parents soon 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 Stoner turned to the courts — a fact reported by Cowboy State Daily.
Following a trial in Washakie County, Wyoming, last fall, Stoner 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 reportedly declining to let her son see his father. Stoner appealed to the courts, and he allegedly received a text message from his former girlfriend “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, Stoner was given temporary emergency custody, the newspaper reported. The father would never see Basil again.
The suspect is believed to have fled — first west to Worland, Wyoming, and then south through Colorado into New Mexico. Stoner had hired a private investigator by this point to help find his son. A warrant was placed for Daly’s arrest, but, according to the fundraiser, because authorities cited no evidence of “immediate, present danger to the child,” an Amber Alert was not issued.
Someone contacted law enforcement and told them Daly was staying in an RV park near Silver City, New Mexico, per Cowboy State Daily. 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.
Daly was adamant about keeping her son away from Stoner 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 Stoner “never wanted anything to do with Basil, financially, physically, emotionally ever.”
She allegedly said she ran into the RV with her son because she “knew her time was up.”
Daly has reportedly been ordered to be held in custody as her case moves through the court system. Mark Abramson with the Grant County District Attorney’s Office warned that the risk of her fleeing was too high given that she had already done it.
“A mother absconded with her child from Wyoming, traveled around — we’re not sure where — but ended up here being confronted by law enforcement and chose to murder her child, her own child, with a 9 mm gun to the face,” he said.
Stoner, for his part, is lobbying for Amber Alerts to require “less stringent standards.”
“Jake believes that if the laws are changed to allow for an Amber Alert to be issued with less stringent standards, his son would be alive and safe,” the GoFundMe states.
