Photo: ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
A Delaware woman, identified as 31-year-old Kristie Haas, pleaded guilty this week to murdering his 3-year-old daughter and dumping her burned remains on a softball field.
Hass faces charges of abuse or neglect, abuse of a corpse and three counts of endangering the welfare of a child. Besides, Prosecutors recommend a 50-year prison sentence on the murder charge, suspended for non-custodial supervision after 30 years behind bars. The murder charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Prosecutors are recommending probation for the other charges and will drop several other felony and misdemeanor charges.
Superior Court Judge Noel Primos, at the request of lawyers, deferred the sentence until July 10, the date Haas’s trial was due to begin.
Prosecutor Kevin Smith said prosecutors recommend a Haas Mental Health Assessmentwho is being treated for bipolar disorder and depression.
The prosecution also recommended that Haas be prohibited from having contact with his other three children.
The girl’s body was found in September 2019 by a person walking a dog through Smyrna-Clayton Little Lass Fields, a softball park near Smyrna High School in central Delaware.
The victim, Emma, who lived with her parents and siblings less than a mile from the playing field, she had been dead for several weeks before her body was found.
Haas and her husband, Brandon Haas, the girl’s stepfather, were arrested in Pennsylvania in October 2020, more than a year after the girl’s body was found.
At first, both They were charged with felony child abuse, child endangerment and hindering prosecution related to Emma’s death..
Shortly thereafter, Haas was also charged with felony assault, abuse of a corpse, and reckless burning. And later the two murder charges were included.
The authorities claimed that the couple withheld food and medical care from Emma, furthermore, he subjected her and her siblings to torture or ill-treatment by forcing them to engage in excessive forced exercise and inappropriate physical discipline.
Brandon Haas’s trial is scheduled to begin on July 10. He faces more than 40 years in prison if he is found guilty on all counts.
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