Brandon Thoma appears in a mugshot (Webster County Sheriff’s Office)
An Iowa father accepted legal culpability for the death of his newborn baby girl – who police say was drowned in a bathtub just moments after her birth in November of last year – in a plea deal this week.
Brandon D. Thoma, 31, was initially charged with one count of murder in the first degree in December 2022. On Wednesday, he pleaded guilty to lesser charges of child endangerment resulting in death, and abuse of a corpse, according to Des Moines-based CBS affiliate KCCI.
The just-born girl was killed in order to stop law enforcement from finding out that she had methamphetamine in her system, the Webster County Sheriff’s Office alleged in an affidavit of probable cause previously obtained by Law&Crime.
Since the arrest of Thoma – and his now-former co-defendant, the baby’s mother, Taylor K. Blaha, 24, who is charged with first-degree murder – court records in the case have been sealed by Magistrate Sarah J. Livingston. The Iowa Courts public docket shows that additional search warrants in the case were filed as late as March.
The couple were arrested in early December 2022 for the murder of their baby Kayleen Lee Blaha, the Fort Dodge Police Department announced at the time. Thoma was also charged with abuse of a corpse.
In late November 2022, Blaha went to Unity Point Trinity Regional Medical Center where she met with an employee at the Iowa Department of Human Services, the affidavit says. The girl’s mother allegedly said that she “gave birth to a baby at her residence and that it had been buried at an undisclosed location.”
From the beginning, however, the couple did not want the girl – and allegedly said they planned on giving her away to Blaha’s sister.
“She stated that Thoma was in the bedroom of the apartment when she gave birth but that once the baby was born, he came into the bathroom and helped her get from where she was sitting on the toilet to a position sitting inside the bathtub with the baby,” the affidavit reads. “She advises the two named the baby Kayleen Lee Blaha and that she was born alive, crying, moving its arms and legs, and opening her eyes allowing Blaha to see that Kayleen had brown eyes.”
After that, the mother was apparently in extreme pain and was given methamphetamine by Thoma to help deal with the pain, after she asked him for it, Blaha allegedly told law enforcement. Thoma, she allegedly added, severed the girl’s umbilical cord with a pair of scissors and cut “sections of the cord” in order “to remember the baby.”
But then the girl wouldn’t stop crying, her mother said, leading to a fatal series of increasingly catastrophic thoughts.
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Blaha allegedly said she and Thoma feared police would be called by a neighbor because of the crying little girl; that police would discover the methamphetamine in her system, and that child welfare agents would take away the couple’s 2-year-old son.
“Blaha went on to explain that in order to stop the crying the two placed Kayleen in the bathtub, which was about half full of water, and placed both of their hands on the baby’s chest, forcing her underwater, ultimately killing her,” the affidavit states. “Blaha also explained that Thoma demonstrated to her how to do this. Blaha advised that once the baby was held under water, Thoma removed the baby from the bathtub and sat her outside of the tub before ultimately placing her in a plastic storage container, wrapping her in multiple layers of trash bags, and then placing her inside of a black backpack that he carried her out of the apartment in.”
Kayleen Lee Blaha was allegedly then thrown away – somewhere near the Kenyon Road Bridge across the Des Moines River.
Her body has never been recovered.
The piece of the girl’s umbilical cord allegedly kept as a keepsake was found in the couple’s apartment, investigators said.
Thoma is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 1. He faces a maximum of 60 years for the two charges, based on Iowa statutes.
In an email, the Webster County Clerk said the defendant’s plea agreement was not yet on file.
Law&Crime reached out to the Webster County Attorney for additional information on Thoma’s plea deal but no response was immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
Blaha, for her part, has pleaded not guilty to an extant charge of first-degree murder. Her trial is slated to begin Sept. 12.
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
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