Oaklee Mae Snow (Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department)
Mysteries still abound in the death of an Oklahoma toddler whose tiny body was hidden in a drawer earlier this year.
Oaklee Mae Snow, a 1-year-old who went missing in January, died due to a “homicide of unspecified means,” the Morgan County Coroner’s Office determined after recently completing her autopsy.
The conclusion likely raises as many or more questions as it answers. The child’s death was presumed to result from a homicide once she was recovered from inside a dresser on April 21, the sad if not surprising culmination of a months-long national search.
Snow, described as being about 2 feet tall and weighing 35 pounds with blonde hair and blue eyes, was first reported missing on Jan. 19 and was believed to be traveling to Indianapolis with her mother, Madison Marshall, the Indianapolis Police Department said in early March – issuing an update about her discovery and death in late April.
Snow was just shy of 2 when she died.
Marshall and her boyfriend, Roan Waters, have been arrested and charged in the girl’s abduction and death.
“As parents, we have a duty to protect our children,” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said in a press release announcing the charges. “Not only did these two individuals fail to live up to that responsibility, but the allegations in the probable cause affidavit indicate that Oaklee suffered a horrific death and an abandonment that diminished the dignity that any child deserves.”
Marshall faces charges of neglect of a dependent resulting in death, neglect of a dependent resulting in serious injury, assisting a criminal in a murder, neglect of a dependent – endangerment, and neglect of a dependent – abandonment. Her trial is set to begin on July 10.
Waters faces 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. His trial is set for Oct. 2.
“This case is one of the most challenging cases for a community and for our investigators,” Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Chief Randal Taylor said in the press release.
According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Law&Crime, Marshall told investigators that Water 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, Waters also allegedly “choked her out.”
Marshall 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.
After being taken into custody for abandonment, Marshall implicated her boyfriend in her daughter’s death. She was said to be “hysterical and sobbing” when she finally led investigators to the badly decomposed body of a toddler at the bottom of a dresser in Morgantown, Indiana.
According to the Indianapolis Star, the coroner on Wednesday determined the remains were a 99.9% match for Snow.
Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.
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