Kansas City woman accused of brutal killing of 6-year-old son pleads not guilty to charges
A Kansas City woman accused of killing her 6-year-old son in 2022 pleaded not guilty to a pair of charges Monday after she was found to be mentally fit to move forward with criminal proceedings.
A grand jury indicted Tasha Haefs, 37, last week on first-degree murder and armed criminal action charges in Jackson County Circuit Court, the same charges prosecutors filed against Haefs in 2022 for the alleged killing of her son, Karvel Stevens.
Proceedings had been paused as Haefs underwent a period of treatment under the supervision of Missouri’s Department of Mental Health, but the criminal case began moving forward again as Judge Jerri Zhang ruled April 19 that Haefs was competent to stand trial and ordered the case to proceed.
Haefs, who remained in custody of the Department of Mental Health at Fulton State Hospital on Monday, made a brief appearance by video conference as she entered her plea. Her next hearing was set for May 7.
Kansas City police were called to Haefs’ residence on Indiana Avenue on a disturbance call in February 2022 and during their response found the decapitated body of Haefs’ child, as well as Haefs, who had blood on her, and a pair of knives that also had blood on them. During an interview with investigators, Haefs identified the victim as her child and admitted to killing the boy in a bathtub, a detective wrote in a report.
At the time of the killing, relatives of Haefs told The Star she spent years working through drug addiction, depression and severe trauma.
