John Jefferson
Macie Marie Silvey (Redding Police Department). Rylee Marie Silvey (Dignity Memorial).
A California woman has been sentenced to 33 years to life in prison for poisoning her daughter with prescription medication and watching her suffer inside a car, according to Shasta County prosecutors.
As previously reported, Macie Marie Silvey was charged with murder in the first degree and kidnapping. She pleaded guilty as charged in May.
In an email to Law&Crime, prosecutors declined to name the victim because she was a juvenile. Other outlets have named her as “Riley,” though an obituary matching details of the case name the child as Rylee Marie Silvey.
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According to cops in Redding, law enforcement and emergency medical personnel on Jan. 5, 2023, were dispatched to the intersection of Deschutes Road at State Highway 44 in Shasta County regarding an unresponsive 2-year-old girl in a vehicle.
Fire and medical personnel arrived and took her by ambulance to a hospital, but she died that evening, authorities said. A pathologist reportedly determined there were seven to 15 different prescription drugs in the child’s system.
Investigators considered her death suspicious and Redding police took over the case, ultimately arresting Silvey in August 2023 after determining she gave her child multiple prescription pills on purpose.
“Detectives worked tirelessly over the last seven months and determined that on the day of the child’s death, the 2-year-old was deliberately provided as well as given access to prescription medication with criminal intent by her mother, Macie Marie Silvey, 21 years of Redding,” they wrote at the time of Silvey’s arrest. “Despite knowing her child had consumed multiple medications and was displaying symptoms of overdosage, Silvey drove the child to a rural area of Shasta County and prevented her from receiving emergency medical aid for multiple hours.”
Authorities say Silvey at first claimed that her daughter opened medication bottles in the home, but when faced with a request to take a lie-detector test, the defendant tried to fake suicide. She left behind a note, absconded without her phone, got another phone number under another name, and got a fake ID, authorities told the Record Searchlight.
When investigators tracked her down, she told them differing stories about how her daughter wound up with the medication. For example, she told authorities that she left open the medication bottles, stolen from her mother. Silvey said she had been depressed because the child’s father had been jailed, and he did not speak to their daughter during Christmas.
The child’s grandfathers mourned her death in statements to the court on Thursday.
“When I found out that she died, I really can’t express the anguish I felt,” paternal grandfather John Harrison said, according to The Record Searchlight. “Macie, what you did was monstrous. I will never understand why you did it. She never got to grow up. Macie, you have a lot to atone for.”
And there was the maternal grandfather, Todd Silvey, who described losing both his daughter and granddaughter.
“It pains me,” he said. “There’s no win when she goes to prison. We’ll have nothing. It’s a lose-lose situation.”
“The person that murdered our granddaughter is not the same person who grew up with us,” Todd Silvey said.
Macie Silvey reportedly did not provide the court the motive.
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