The mother of a 1-year-old girl whose remains were discovered abandoned inside a dresser in Indiana has accepted a plea deal and will now cooperate with law enforcement, according to court records.
Madison Marshall, 25, will plead guilty to one count of neglect resulting in death and neglect of a dependent for Oaklee Snow’s death.
In March 2023, the defendant was arrested in Harnett County, North Carolina, on a variety of charges, including neglect of a dependent resulting in death, neglect of a dependent resulting in serious injury, neglect of a dependent with endangerment, neglect of a dependent with abandonment, and two counts of assisting a criminal in a murder.
On April 25, Marshall accepted the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office’s plea agreement. The plea will be formalized at a change of plea hearing scheduled for May 1. Then, days later, she will most likely testify against the man charged with her daughter’s murder.
That man, Roan Waters, 27, is scheduled to face a jury trial on May 12 on charges of murder, neglect of a dependent resulting in death, neglect of a dependent resulting in serious injury, battery resulting in bodily injury to a person under 14, and neglect of dependent.
In January 2023, Oaklee, who was just shy of two years old at the time, was whisked away from Oklahoma to Indianapolis with her 7-month-old brother. Prosecutors claim Marshall and Waters were the perpetrators. Both children were reported missing by their father, Zachary Snow.
Snow told investigators with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office that Marshall and Waters took his son and daughter from their home without his permission on January 19, 2023, before fleeing to Indiana to stay with Waters’ mother.
However, somewhere along the way, and under still murky circumstances, the young girl was murdered and her body hidden.
While the young boy was eventually reunited with his father after being discovered abandoned in what authorities described as a “trap house,” a common term for a house dedicated to illicit drug use, Oaklee’s body would not be recovered for several months.
A national search for the 2 foot tall, 35 pound, blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl ended in late April 2023, when Marshall, who was in custody, led authorities to an abandoned Morgantown home where Oaklee’s tortured and broken body was stuffed into a dresser.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, Marshall told investigators that Waters would regularly “whoop” Oaklee as a form of discipline for any perceived misbehavior, such as “holding a fork wrong,” urinating in her diaper, and a variety of other common toddler behaviors. On several occasions, the man allegedly “choked her out.”
She also allegedly told investigators that Oaklee stopped eating around Waters because “he regularly became aggressive with her when she would not eat at the pace that he wanted her to,” according to police.
Marshall told detectives that the fatal day was February 9, 2023.
The girl’s mother stated that she overheard Waters repeatedly yelling at Oaklee to bounce on an inflatable rubber ball with a handle. Marshall went in to check on them after the “fifth and loudest time that he yelled at her,” and said she saw Waters “standing over Oaklee as she sat trying to bounce on the ball,” according to the affidavit.
Marshall stated that she saw Waters sit on the couch while she returned to the kitchen. Minutes later, the girl’s mother claimed she heard Waters scream for her daughter, adding that she had “never heard [him] sound like that before.”
“She met him in the hallway as he held Oaklee in his arms,” the affidavit states. “She noticed that Oaklee wasn’t moving. R. Waters repeatedly stated without prompting that he ‘didn’t do anything’ and that ‘it wasn’t [his] fault.’ He initially refused to let Marshall take Oaklee from him, stripping her naked.
Marshall could see Oaklee’s stomach and chest cavity expand, as if she were trying to breathe. However, when she tried to exhale, she noticed a mixture of blood and spittle dripping from her mouth, resulting in a gurgling sound. Oaklee’s eyes remained closed the entire time.
The girl was likely dead or dying at the time, but Waters allegedly refused to allow the child’s mother to call 911, according to Marshall. Instead, Waters wrapped Oaklee in a blanket and placed her in the back of his car with Marshall, according to the affidavit.
Marshall went on to tell police that she opened the blanket to check on her daughter and discovered Oaklee had stopped breathing – her lips had turned blue.
“Marshall felt her skin, which now seemed cool to the touch,” the affidavit continues. “She could no longer feel her heartbeat while holding her. Marshall pulled Oaklee’s eyelids back to examine her more closely, but they showed no movement or response. She took Oaklee’s hand and eventually climbed to the front seat next to R. Waters.”
Marshall, who was described as “hysterical and sobbing,” said she and Waters drove to the abandoned house together. Her then-boyfriend took Oaklee’s body from the car, entered the building through a window, and emerged shortly thereafter, alone.
Oaklee’s decomposed body was discovered in the dresser’s bottom drawer. Police stated that her left leg had been “clearly broken at the knee, so that the left foot rested directly over her chest.”
In June 2023, the Morgan County Coroner’s Office determined the young girl died as a result of a “homicide of unspecified means.” Marshall and Waters were arrested in Colorado a few months ago and extradited to Indiana’s Marion County.
Marshall now faces a 25-year prison sentence for her cooperation in the case of neglect resulting in death. According to court documents obtained by Bedford, Indiana-based radio station WBIW, prosecutors are also likely to seek a two-year prison sentence for the remaining neglect charge, which would be served concurrently or at the same time.
