According to the court documents, the defendant, later identified as 31-year-old Brandon, was sentenced to 20 to 50 years in a state correctional facility for the killing of his newborn daughter Kaylee. The father reportedly instructed his girlfriend, the victim’s mother, Taylor, on how to drown their newborn baby – immediately after she was born. Prosecutors said that the defendant reportedly coached his girlfriend on how to drown the child in the bathtub ‘to prevent police from finding meth in her system’. Taylor was sentenced to 35 to 50 years in prison during a hearing last week.
Taylor and Brandon also have a son together who was 2 years old at the time of their newborn’s death. Prosecutors said that Brandon reportedly ‘convinced Taylor that if authorities found out about her meth use, they would take her son away from her.’ “He convinced me that the only way out of this was to drown the baby in the bathtub,” she said. “He told me what to do and how to do it. When I tried to take my hands off her, he would put my hands back on her and encourage me to keep going. She died as a result.”
According to the court, Taylor reportedly said that she gave birth to a baby at her residence and that it had been buried at an undisclosed location. The woman also explained that she gave birth to a baby girl in the bathroom of their apartment located. She also said she asked Brandon for methamphetamine to help assuage the pain from giving birth and he provided her with the drugs. Her boyfriend then severed the umbilical cord with a pair of scissors and cut sections of the cord to be kept to remember the baby. Both parents then became nervous their neighbors would hear the baby crying and alert law enforcement.
They were scared that if law enforcement came to the home and found methamphetamine in the baby’s system they would lose custody of their 2-year-old son. Both parents then placed their newborn 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. Taylor told prosecutors that Brandon demonstrated to her how to do this. Once the baby was held under water, Brandon removed Kaylee 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. The baby’s body was never recovered.
