By Michael Phillips | Father & Co.
Basil Stoner was 11 months old when his mother shot him rather than surrender him to his father under a court order. She had weeks to think about it first — weeks in which an emergency custody order existed while she kept him hidden and ultimately crossed state lines.
That gap is as much the story as the shooting is.
What the record shows
“Jake can’t get Basil.”
Madeline Veronique Daly, 36, and Jake Stoner had been fighting over custody of their son since before he was born. Stoner said the parents had shared custody following a Wyoming trial, though he said Daly continued resisting his parenting time. That October, Daly failed to appear for a hearing tied to her noncompliance, and a Washakie County judge granted Stoner temporary emergency custody. Stoner last saw his son on September 28 — he would never get the chance to exercise the custody a court had just given him.
Daly disappeared with the boy rather than comply, last seen in Wyoming on November 16. A felony warrant followed on custody-interference grounds, with nationwide extradition authorized. She was on the run for roughly five weeks.
It ended because Daly applied for a job near Silver City, New Mexico, and a routine background check flagged the outstanding Wyoming warrant. A deputy spotted her having breakfast with Basil at a local cafe that morning, not yet aware of the warrant. That afternoon, deputies went to a rural bunkhouse where she’d been staying; she ran for a nearby RV. Officers called for her to come out while a search warrant was sought — the RV’s owner wouldn’t let them in without one. Before the warrant arrived, they heard a gunshot.
Daly had shot her son and turned a 9mm handgun on herself; a detective got the weapon away from her before she could finish it. Basil died of his wound. Daly survived to be arrested.
What she told investigators afterward is the part that should unsettle anyone who works in family courts. She said she opposed Basil traveling twice a month between his father’s home in Nebraska and hers in Wyoming. She alleged that her son would have been endangered if she’d surrendered him — a claim court documents describe as unsubstantiated, and one that Stoner’s repeated legal efforts to see his son would seem to cut against. Her account of her thinking as officers closed in was blunt: “Jake can’t get Basil.” She told investigators the killing was worth it if it meant Stoner’s family would never see her son again.
On August 24, Daly pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in New Mexico’s Sixth Judicial District Court. The plea calls for a life sentence; under New Mexico law — which has no death penalty — that means she won’t be eligible for a parole hearing until she has served 30 years, and release even then isn’t guaranteed. A related child-abuse charge was dismissed. Judge Tom F. Stewart accepted the plea but deferred sentencing to review the case further.
Wyoming’s separate criminal case against Daly remains unresolved. The original Wyoming warrant was for felony interference with custody; New Mexico prosecutors have since described the outstanding matter as kidnapping. A spokesperson for the New Mexico district attorney’s office said Daly is expected to be turned over to Wyoming after completing her sentence there, and predicted that if convicted in Wyoming too, “she will end up spending the rest of her life in prison.”
The order that couldn’t reach her
Custody orders are only as strong as the machinery behind them, and that machinery has seams a determined parent can walk through. Interstate custody law gives courts mechanisms to recognize and enforce another state’s custody order — federal law requires states to give qualifying custody determinations interstate effect, and both Wyoming and New Mexico have adopted state-law procedures for jurisdiction and enforcement. What none of that does is make an order self-executing or locate a parent who has disappeared with a child. Once Daly was gone, Stoner had a court victory on paper, a national lookout alert, a missing-child entry, and eventually a felony warrant. None of it told anyone where Basil actually was.
“Once Daly was gone, Stoner had a court victory on paper, a national lookout alert, a missing-child entry, and eventually a felony warrant. None of it told anyone where Basil actually was.”
There was another seam. Basil never got an AMBER Alert. Under Wyoming’s criteria — which mirror federal guidelines — law enforcement has to believe, among other requirements, that an abducted child faces imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death before the system activates. Sheriff Austin Brookwell said at the time his office didn’t have information showing that: “We do not have information indicating that Basil is in immediate danger.” Stoner’s attorney argued publicly, while the boy was still missing, that the threshold should be lower in parental cases, noting how rarely AMBER Alerts are issued against a parent at all. Weeks later, Daly killed Basil. Wyoming was one of 19 states or jurisdictions that issued no AMBER Alerts at all in 2024, according to Justice Department data — a fact a Hot Springs County party resolution invoked this January in calling on lawmakers to loosen the threshold for cases involving a parent.
“Weeks later, Daly killed Basil.”
What finally located Basil wasn’t the alert system designed to rapidly mobilize the public when a child is believed to be in grave danger — authorities concluded he didn’t meet that threshold. It was an unrelated employer’s background check surfacing a weeks-old warrant. That’s not a knock on the deputies who ultimately responded and got a gun away from a woman who had a child’s blood on her hands and a weapon at her own head. It’s a question about everything upstream of that morning: a system that had every formal signal of urgency — an emergency order, a felony warrant, a missing child — and still had no better mechanism than luck to find him during the weeks that followed.
The pattern underneath the case
Strip away the state lines, and the psychology is familiar to anyone who covers family court: a parent who treats the other parent’s relationship with their own child as something to defeat rather than accommodate. Before she fled, Daly reportedly told Stoner she was already teaching Basil to call another man “daddy” and called him a “deadbeat” for asking a court to enforce his visitation. She continued asserting Stoner was dangerous while simultaneously refusing to comply with the court’s order granting him custody.
“The lesson isn’t that obstruction always ends in a killing. It’s that the systems meant to enforce urgency need to be built for the cases where the danger turns out to be real.”
Most cases involving parental obstruction never end in violence. Far more often they look like withheld parenting time, repeated noncompliance, efforts to marginalize the other parent, and sometimes allegations that courts must sort out as substantiated, mistaken, or strategic — work family courts do imperfectly every day, with much less scrutiny than a homicide brings. This case is the extreme tail of that same distribution, not a separate phenomenon. The lesson isn’t that obstruction always ends in a killing. It’s that when a parent’s rhetoric shifts from “I don’t want to share him” to “no one else can have him,” and a court has already found enough urgency to grant emergency relief, the systems meant to enforce that urgency — alert thresholds included — need to be built for the cases where the danger turns out to be real.
“Jake Stoner did what the system asks: he went to court, won relief, and reported the violation.”
Jake Stoner did what the system asks: he went to court, won relief, and reported the violation. It still wasn’t enough to get his son back before it was too late.
Sources: This account draws on reporting from Cowboy State Daily, including affidavit material and on-the-record statements from Washakie County Sheriff Austin Brookwell and Stoner’s attorney, Christopher King, across multiple stories published between November 2025 and August 2026; a press release from the Sixth Judicial District Attorney’s Office in Silver City, New Mexico; coverage from Grant County Beat; and a GoFundMe fundraiser organized by King on Stoner’s behalf, used here only for the AMBER Alert advocacy, which is attributed to Stoner’s side rather than treated as independently verified. Cowboy State Daily’s own reporting is inconsistent on the exact date Basil was reported missing (Nov. 16 in one story, Nov. 19 in another); this piece uses the last-confirmed-sighting date, on which all versions agree, and a separately reported “just over five weeks” timeframe rather than resolve that discrepancy. Sentencing had not yet occurred as of publication.
Keep Father & Co. Free
Father & Co. exists to support parents navigating separation, custody, and systems that are often confusing, isolating, or overwhelming. This work is grounded in lived experience, careful research, and respect for the real stakes families face.
If this article helped you feel less alone, better informed, or more grounded, reader support helps keep these resources free and available to others who need them.
Need help reviewing or organizing court or formal documents?
Father & Co. offers non-legal document review and organization for people representing themselves. This includes clarity, structure, neutral tone, and timeline organization — not legal advice or representation.
Have a story, experience, or resource to share?
Submissions are reviewed with care and discretion. We respect privacy and handle sensitive information responsibly.
Discover more from Fatherand.Co
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
