Left: Madison Marshall. Inset: Oaklee Snow (Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department). Right: Roan Waters (Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office).
The mother of a 1-year-old girl whose remains were discovered abandoned inside a dresser in Indiana has taken a plea deal and will now cooperate with law enforcement, court records show.
Madison Marshall, 25, will plead guilty to one count each of neglect of a dependent resulting in death and neglect of a dependent for the death of Oaklee Snow.
In March 2023, the defendant was arrested in Harnett County, North Carolina, on myriad 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 plea agreement offered by the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office. The plea will be formalized during a change of plea hearing slated for May 1. Then, days later, she will likely testify against the man charged with her daughter’s murder.
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That man, Roan Waters, 27, is set to face a trial by jury 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 a dependent.
In January 2023, Oaklee, who was just shy of 2 years old at the time, was spirited away from Oklahoma to Indianapolis along with her 7-month-old brother. Prosecutors allege Marshall and Waters were the culprits. Both children were reported missing by the children’s father, Zachary Snow.
Snow told investigators with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office that Marshall and Waters took his boy and girl from their home on Jan. 19, 2023, without his permission before fleeing to Indiana where they would be staying with Waters’ mother.
Somewhere along the way, however, and under still murky circumstances, the young girl was killed and her body was hidden.
While the young boy was eventually reunited with his father after being found abandoned in what authorities described as a “trap house,” common terminology for house dedicated to illicit drug use, it would be months before Oaklee’s body was recovered.
A national search for the 2 foot tall, 35 pound, blonde-haired and blue-eyed girl culminated in late April 2023 when Marshall, in custody, led authorities to an abandoned Morgantown house where Oaklee’s tortured and broken body had been stuffed into a dresser.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, Marshall told investigators Waters would regularly “whoop” Oaklee as a form of discipline for any perceived misbehavior, including “holding a fork wrong,” urinating in her diaper, and many other behaviors common to toddlers. On several occasions, the man also allegedly “choked her out.”
She also apparently told investigators that Oaklee had stopped eating around Waters because “he regularly became aggressive with her when she would not eat at the pace that he wanted her to,” police said.
Marshall told detectives the fatal day was Feb. 9, 2023.
The girl’s mother said she heard Waters in the living room repeatedly yelling at Oaklee to bounce on an inflatable rubber ball with a handle. After the “fifth and loudest time that he yelled at her, Marshall went in to check on them and said she saw Waters “standing over Oaklee as she sat trying to bounce on the ball,” according to the affidavit.
Marshall said she saw Waters sit on the couch, while she went back to the kitchen. Minutes later, the girl’s mother said she heard Waters scream for her daughter – adding that she “never heard [him] sound like that before.”
“She met him in the hallway as he held Oaklee in his arms,” the affidavit reads. “She saw that Oaklee was not moving. R. Waters continually repeated 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 and stripped her of her clothes. Marshall could see Oaklee’s stomach and chest cavity extend as if she was trying to breathe air. However, she observed what appeared to be a mix of blood and spittle dripping from her mouth when she tried to exhale, which created a gurgling sound. Oaklee’s eyes remained closed throughout this time.”
The girl, by then, was likely dead or dying – but Waters allegedly would not allow the child’s mother to dial 911, Marshall told law enforcement. Instead, Waters wrapped Oaklee in a blanket and put her in the back of his car with Marshall, according to the affidavit. Marshall went on to tell police she opened the blanket to check on her daughter and found Oaklee had stopped trying to breathe – her lips had turned blue.
“Marshall felt her skin, which now seemed cool to the touch,” the affidavit goes on. “She could also no longer feel a heartbeat as she held her. Marshall pulled Oaklee’s eyelids back to further examine her but saw no movement or response in them. She held Oaklee’s hand before eventually climbing up to the front seat next to R. Waters.”
Said to be “hysterical and sobbing,” when leading investigators to the grim find, Marshall said she and Waters drove to the abandoned house together. There, her then-boyfriend took Oaklee’s body out of the car, entered the building through a window, and came out soon thereafter, alone.
Oaklee’s decomposed body was found in the dresser’s bottom drawer. Police said 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 due to a “homicide of unspecified means.” A few months prior, Marshall and Waters were arrested in Colorado and extradited back to Marion County in the Hoosier State.
Now, Marshall faces a sentence of 25 years behind bars for her cooperation on the neglect resulting in death charge. Prosecutors are also likely to push for a sentence of two years in prison for the remaining neglect charge – to be served concurrently, or at the same time, according to court documents obtained by Bedford, Indiana-based radio station WBIW.
Law&Crime reached out to the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office for additional details and comment on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
