Grandmother recalls last time she saw Makavelii Leoni after mum pleads guilty to manslaughter

On September 20, 2018, Charlie Thomas was enjoying one of the rare occasions she got to spend with her 13-month-old grandson Makavelii Leoni. Four days later he was dead.

On September 20, 2018, Charlie Thomas was enjoying one of the rare occasions she got to spend with her 13-month-old grandson Makavelii Leoni.

Just before she bathed him for what would turn out to be the last time, she held him on her hip, and he looked up at her with one of those inquisitive looks that children cast about as they try to make sense of the world.

“He’s looking at me like he doesn’t really know my face. But he just knows, he can probably see his dad in me or something,” she said.

He smiled at his grandmother, and she, giving him a little kiss on the cheek and a kiss on the forehead, leant in close and whispered in his ear: “Even though I’m just getting to know you, I still love you”.

The memory dissolves into tears as she recounts it.

Four days later, “Maka”, a “perfect and beautiful and healthy” boy, would be dead from what police and toxicologists said was a methylamphetamine overdose.

His mother Lina Marie Daley on Tuesday pleaded guilty to manslaughter on what would have been the eve of her trial, sparing Charlie’s son and Maka’s dad Brendan and the rest of the family the trauma of having to give evidence in court.

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Regaining her composure, Mrs Thomas continued.

“This is going to sound weird but I feel good saying it, as painful as it is. Just because there’s that closure there … because it’s legally done. Guilty. That just changed everything for me,” she said.

It has been a whirlwind 48 hours for the Thomas family.

First there was the shock phone call from the child protection officer on Monday, who couldn’t get a hold of Brendan.

“You don’t have to go to court anymore, it’s over, she’s pleaded guilty,” Mrs Thomas recalled the officer telling her.

“I screamed and I cried, I was so excited as much as I was hurting. Finally, yes, it’s over, it’s over.”

Then, as she was talking to the officer on the phone, Brendan walked through the door – the first time he had been to his mother’s place in a month or two.

“I said Brendan, the officer is on speaker phone right now. It’s over, it’s over,” she said.

“He goes ‘what do you mean?’ I said it’s over, we don’t have to go to court, she’s pleaded guilty.”

Makavelii Leoni, with his mother Lina Marie Daley. Picture: Facebook

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“I saw his face in so much relief. I went from seeing him coming in the door with this pain and anguish with his work clothes on and a bit of concrete here and there to me telling him it’s over. My heart could breathe again … there is a massive sense of relief.”

Mrs Thomas and her daughter Emily on Tuesday listened in on Daley’s Supreme Court arraignment, and her “emotionless” pleas of guilty.

“What’s a shock to me is her answering to killing her child with no emotion,” Mrs Thomas said.

“To see that stone cold look, and not even a tear to wipe, who does that?”

As well as pleading guilty to manslaughter, Daley also pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking methylamphetamine and cannabis over an almost 12 month period between June 1, 2018, and May 25, 2019.

Daley’s defence barrister Joshua Treviño QC asked the court for his client’s sentence to be adjourned for six to eight weeks so that a pre-sentence report could be prepared by a psychologist.

Justice Jim Henry set October 18 as the date for Daley’s sentence.

Forensic police and plain clothes detectives investigating the death of Makavelii Leoni in 2018. Leoni's mother Lina Daley helps police with their investigations. Picture: Brendan Radke

During the December 2020 committal hearing, the court heard Makavelii was found unresponsive in a White Rock house in September 2018 where he had been staying with Daley, her partner Michael Yeatman and multiple members of his family.

Medical experts told the December hearing the high concentration of methylamphetamine within Makavelii’s system was the cause of his death.

Daley was originally also charged with torture and indecent treatment of a child, but the torture charge was downgraded to cruelty to a child under 16.

That charge has now been discontinued.

The indecent treatment charge, which allegedly related to an image located on Daley’s phone depicting the toddler with a sex toy, was dropped earlier in the year.

Originally published as Grandmother recalls last time she saw Makavelii Leoni after mum pleads guilty to manslaughter