Mother pleads guilty to baking her newborn baby to death in OVEN after claiming she mistook it for crib… now she has been handed disgracefully short sentence
A Missouri mother who shocked America by baking her newborn daughter to death in an oven will serve just 11 years behind bars for the nightmarish crime.
Mariah Thomas, 28, cut a plea deal on Tuesday, nearly three years after she was detained in Jackson County jail over for putting her one-month-old daughter Za’Riah Mae in a hot oven in February 2024.
On Tuesday, records show Thomas took a plea deal on lesser charges of endangering the welfare of a child leading to death, in exchange for prosecutors dropping murder charges.
The deal will see Thomas sentenced to 13 years in prison, minus the years of time she has already served in custody.
At the time of the baby’s death, a friend of Thomas’s told the Daily Mail that the infant was a ‘bubbly’ baby who was ‘smiling all the time.’
Mariah Thomas, 28, a Missouri mother who shocked America by baking her newborn daughter to death in an oven, admitted the crime on Tuesday
Thomas has been locked up in the Jackson County jail pending trial ever since her arrest for murder in February 2024
The horror was discovered in Thomas’s home in Kansas City by officers after they had been called by a witness, who was warned that ‘something was wrong with the baby and he needed to return home immediately’, according to Thomas’s probable cause statement.
On returning home, he immediately began to smell smoke and found Za’Riah dead in her crib, the probable cause document said.
Thomas told investigators that she accidentally mistook her daughter’s crib for a kitchen appliance, before realizing she had allegedly put the infant in the oven, per the probable cause document.
Police said they arrived to find the infant covered in burns, with her ‘blackened’ clothing melted onto her diaper and skin, the document said.
The one-month-old baby was described as a ‘bubbly’ baby who was ‘smiling all the time’
Thomas was said to have been mentally ill when she baked her baby to death in an oven
Police responded Thomas’s home (above) in Kansas City, Missouri and found the child deceased with severe burns
Za’Riah was discovered by police in a car seat inside her home with ‘apparent thermal injuries on various parts of a her body,’ the probable cause affidavit said.
She was wearing a bodysuit over a diaper which appeared to have melted onto it which was ‘very dirty, possibly burned.’
A charred baby blanket was also discovered and taken as evidence.
The Daily Mail has contacted Thomas’s public defender for comment.
