The mother of a 1-year-old girl whose remains were discovered abandoned inside a dresser in Indiana faces decades in prison for her role in the toddler’s brutal death.
Marion County Circuit Judge Jennifer Prinz Harrison sentenced Madison Marshall to 25 years in a state prison for the 2023 murder of young Oaklee Snow, according to court records reviewed by Law&Crime.
Marshall, 25, reached an agreement with prosecutors in April and pleaded guilty to one count of neglect of a dependent resulting in death and one count of neglect of a dependent by putting the dependent in danger, which contributed to her daughter’s death.
She was sentenced to 25 years and two years, with the terms running concurrently, or at the same time.
As part of her plea agreement, Madison cooperated with authorities and agreed to testify against her boyfriend, Roan Waters, in his trial for Oaklee’s murder.
Waters, 28, eventually pleaded guilty to three counts of neglect of a dependent and was sentenced to 45 years in prison on Friday, so her testimony was unnecessary.
“It’s terrifying that two adults who cared for this child would allow these things to happen to her. That’s why they’re heading to the Department of Correction.
That is why the 45-year sentence is so significant: it is the most serious crime possible. “They were entrusted with the care of a two-year-old baby and failed miserably, resulting in her death,” Dan Chicchini, the chief trial deputy for the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, told Indianapolis ABC affiliate WRTV after the sentencing hearing.
As previously reported by Law&Crime, in January 2023, Marshall and Waters transported Oaklee from Oklahoma to Indianapolis with her 7-month-old brother. Both children were reported missing by their father, Zachary Snow.
Snow told investigators with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office that on Jan. 19, 2023, Marshall and Waters took his son and daughter from their home without his permission 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 Oaklee’s 7-year-old brother was eventually reunited with his father after being discovered abandoned in what authorities described as a “trap house,” which is common terminology for a house dedicated to illegal drug use, Oaklee’s body would not be recovered for 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. Several times, the man “choked her out.”
Marshall 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 claimed she saw Waters sit on the couch as she returned to the kitchen. Minutes later, the girl’s mother stated that she heard Waters scream for her daughter and 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 most likely dead or dying by that point, but Waters refused to let the child’s mother 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.”
The Morgan County Coroner’s Office determined in June 2023 that the young girl died as a result of “homicide by unspecified means.” Marshall and Waters were arrested in Colorado a few months ago and extradited to Indiana’s Marion County.
