Mom Fatally Shot 11-Month-Old Son in Face So Dad Could Never Have Custody: ‘Worth It’

Basil Stoner was killed on Dec. 23, 2025, in rural New Mexico. His mother, 36-year-old Madeline Veronique Daly, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder.

GoFundMe; 6th Judicial District Attorney's Office

NEED TO KNOW

Madeline Veronique Daly is accused of abducting her son in Wyoming and taking him to New Mexico despite a court order granting the father custody

Authorities in New Mexico pinned down Daly after a background check for her new job revealed a kidnapping warrant for her out of Wyoming

As officers waited to obtain a search warrant to enter the RV she was in, Daly fatally shot the boy

A woman has been convicted of killing her infant son after abducting him across state lines.

The child, 11-month-old Basil Stoner, was fatally shot inside an RV near Silver City, N.M., the 6th Judicial District Attorney’s Office said in a statement. Basil was not named in the statement but has since been identified in a GoFundMe set up for his father.

Basil’s mother, 36-year-old Madeline Veronique Daly, was arrested on Dec. 23, 2025 and initially charged with first-degree murder and child abuse, the attorney’s office said in January.

The investigation revealed Daly took Basil from Wyoming to New Mexico against a court order that had granted his father emergency custody, according to the statement.

On Dec. 23, Grant County Sheriff’s deputies responded to a rural property along a highway in New Mexico upon learning Daly had kidnapping charges against her in Wyoming. Officers located her at a bunkhouse and saw her run to a nearby RV.

As deputies surrounded the RV and waited to get a search warrant, they heard a gunshot inside the vehicle. They rushed in to see Daly had shot the child with a 9mm handgun.

In an affidavit obtained by Cowboy State Daily, investigators wrote that “medical staff worked on the child, but they were unable to save his life due to the gunshot wound to the face.”

Daly was reported to authorities after she applied for a job and the prospective employer ran a background check and learned she had a warrant out for kidnapping, the affidavit states, per the outlet.

After her arrest, per the affidavit, Daly told police she considered her act “worth it” if it ensured the boy’s father and paternal relatives would not have access to him.

She also said she believed Basil “would have been in danger and molested if she would have stepped out of that trailer” and that his father “never wanted anything to do with [him], financially, physically, emotionally ever,” investigators noted in the affidavit.

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Daly pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, the district attorney’s office said this week. She will be sentenced at a later date.

It wasn’t immediately clear what came of her child abuse or kidnapping charges.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

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