A 24-year-old Iowa mother was sentenced to 50 years in prison after admitting that she drowned her daughter in a bathtub minutes after a home delivery to hide the fact the infant had methamphetamine in her system, according to reports.
Taylor Blaha pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Friday and asked that she be sentenced at once. She must serve 70% of the sentence, which amounts to 35 years, before becoming eligible for parole.
31-year-old Brandon Thoma, Blaha’s boyfriend and the father of her two children, pleaded guilty last month to child endangerment resulting in death and abuse of a corpse.
Officials said Blaha and Thoma both held their newborn daughter underwater in a half-filled bathtub to stifle her cries, before stuffing her lifeless body into a backpack and discarding it in a wooded area. The baby’s remains were never recovered.
According to Blaha, she was using methamphetamine at the time of her delivery on Nov. 16, 2022, and both she and her boyfriend were afraid that if it became known to child services, they would have lost custody of their 2-year-old son.
The sordid tale began unfolding in April 2022, when Blaha told Thoma that she was pregnant with her second child fathered by him, according to court records.
Following her arrest, the young mom told police she and Thoma originally planned to have a family member adopt their daughter, because they had no intention of raising her together.
The couple’s cellphones were later found to contain online searches for how to induce a miscarriage, court documents stated.
Blaha said that when she went into labor in the bathroom of her apartment, she asked Thoma to give her methamphetamine to “ease” the pain.
Baby Kayleen was born alive, was moving her arms and legs and opened her eyes, allowing her mom to see that she had brown eyes.
Kayleen then began to cry, raising concerns with her parents that the sound would alert neighbors who would call the cops.
Blaha said she and her boyfriend did not want the Department of Child Services to take away their son, so they decided to drown the newborn.
According to Blaha, after cutting a section of the baby’s umbilical cord to keep as a memento, Thoma helped her position herself next to the tub and showed her how to submerge their baby by pushing down on her chest.
“When I tried to take my hands off her, he would put my hands back on her and encourage me to keep going,” Blaha read from a statement in court Friday. “She died as a result.”
Under questioning, Blaha and Thoma told detectives that they had swaddled their dead daughter in black garbage bags and stuffed her into a backpack.
Thoma was later caught on security video leaving the apartment with a backpack containing a large “rectangular object” and returning 20 minutes with an empty backpack, according to the documents.
Police learned of Kayleen’s death on November 22 and launched a search for her body, scouring wooded areas in Fort Dodge and near a landfill, but without success.
Blaha initially faced a charge of first-degree murder, to which she pleaded not guilty, but on Friday she agreed to plead guilty to the lesser count.
Thoma also had initially been charged with first-degree murder but accepted a plea deal that downgraded the charge against him. He is set to be sentenced September 1.
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