A mother whose toddler’s body was found in a dresser drawer after the one-year-old girl had been thrown on the floor by her boyfriend will be spending 25 years in prison, while the boyfriend was sentenced to nearly twice that for his role in the child’s death.
Two years after the lifeless body of Oaklee Snow was found in the bottom drawer of a dresser in an abandoned home in Indiana, a Marion County judge issued the sentences Friday for Madison Marshall and boyfriend Roan Waters after the two took plea deals to avoid harsher penalties, Fox59 reported.
The little girl was found on April 21, 2023, in Morgan County after she was reported missing from her father’s home in Oklahoma. The toddler had been taken without her father’s permission by her mother along with Oaklee’s seven-month-old brother.
The police investigation reported Marshall took the children and moved to Indiana with her boyfriend Waters, where they lived in a “trap house” — slang for a house used by drug addicts.
The couple then abandoned the 7-month-old boy, police said.
After her arrest, Marshall told police what happened, as reported by the Blaze. Marshall said her boyfriend began yelling at Oaklee, ordering her “to bounce on a bouncy ball.” When Marshall went to investigate what was happening in the living room, she saw Waters “holding the child’s unresponsive body with blood and saliva dripping from her mouth.”
The couple then wrapped the child in a blanket, drove off, and eventually stashed her in the dresser in the abandoned home near Martinsville, about 27 miles south of Indianapolis, the IndyStar said.
Prompted by family members, authorities conducted a national search for the child. It ended in April when the couple was arrested, the mother began confessing and directed police to the location of the child’s body.
The Morgan County Coroner’s Office ruled this week that the toddler had died from homicide by “unspecified means,” also noting that her leg had been broken.
Marshall pleaded guilty to neglect of a dependent, resulting in the 25-year sentence.
Waters pleaded guilty to three counts: Neglect resulting in death, neglect placing a dependent in danger, and neglect involving abandonment or cruel confinement, which earned him 45 years in prison.
As part of the agreements, all other charges, including murder, were dropped.
“That 45 years is an important number because although he was not convicted of murder, it’s a sentence that murderers do serve,” Dan Cicchini, chief trial deputy at the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, told news outlets.
He added, “The fact that two adults who had the care of this child would let these things happen to her and do these things to her is just terrifying.”
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
