Why an Iowa Mother and Grandfather Were Just Sentenced for Their Roles in a Baby's Death By Christine Pelisek 11

An Iowa woman and her father were sentenced to 50 years in prison in connection with the death of her newborn baby, who was found in a roadside ditch stuffed in a garbage bag.

Megan Staude and her father Rodney Staude were both sentenced on Monday, Sept. 22 after pleading guilty to second-degree murder.

According to prosecutors, Megan, who worked as a housekeeper, gave birth in February 2023 at the Norwalk home she shared with her father.

Afterwards, she “put the baby in a box and let the baby sit there,” not spending any time with the newborn,” Warren County Attorney Douglas Eichholz tells PEOPLE.

Eichholz says Megan and her father decided “they can’t have the baby.”

According to Eichholz, the father and daughter placed the baby in a trash bag and then put the boy in the bed of a truck and drove outside of town, where they tossed the infant in a ditch.

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“Didn’t just go lay the baby down so that the baby could, you know, pass away,” says Eichholz, who notes the baby was found in a thicket about 20 feet from the road. “They threw the baby.”

Megan, whose colleagues suspected she was pregnant, then went back to work, where she faced questions from coworkers and gave “varying stories about what happened to the baby,” per Eichholz.

She said the baby was buried at a cemetery next to her mother, but when colleagues went to the cemetery and found her mother’s grave that found, “nothing was disturbed there,” Eichholz says, after which they went to the police.

Rodney ultimately confessed what they had done to police , directing them to where they threw the baby.

“They eventually had to bring in a cadaver dog to find the baby because it had snowed some more,” said Eichholz.

Megan and her father were charged with first-degree murder. She pleaded guilty in 2024, and her father pleaded guilty Monday, Sept. 22.

At the sentencing on Monday, Sept. 22, Judge Charles Sinnard addressed the father and daughter.

“There is no higher calling in life than that of a parent. That extends down the line to the rest of your family, to not only your child but your grandchildren,” he told Rodney before his daughter’s sentencing, per the Des Moines Register.

“Everyone has issues. But there are certain things in this life, regardless of the issues you’ve had to deal with, where you have to rise above those, and you have to do the right thing.”

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