I Smothered Her Because She Was Not Sleeping | Makenna Rhodes

I Smothered Her Because She Was Not Sleeping | Makenna Rhodes

“A couple of words I’d use to describe me would be loving, caring, compassionate, outgoing.”

This is Makenna Rhodes, a dental hygiene major, an unlicensed babysitter, and a liar. Everything she claimed about herself in this video began to fall apart on June 26th, 2024, when her boyfriend called 911 and said this:

“My girlfriend is watching, uh, Tyler. We put her up for a nap. She is not breathing.”
“Are you with her now?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Is she awake?”
“She is not.”
“Is she breathing?”
“She is not. She’s turning purple.”

When investigators asked Makenna what happened that day, she told them the baby was crying and she doesn’t like to hear crying babies.

“I had taken her up to lay her down for a little bit.”
“Okay.”
“For 5 minutes, if that. It’s because I don’t like listening to them cry.”

Hi, my name is Christine, and today we’re talking about the case of 10-month-old Sylvie Zakovich, who is tragically no longer with us. But it’s important to remember her story, because before everything went wrong, Sylvie was just a happy, loving baby full of joy and on the verge of celebrating her first birthday. She deserved a life filled with love, not the cruelty she suffered at the hands of someone who was supposed to care for her.

Before anything went wrong, this was supposed to be an ordinary summer. For the Zakovich family, life revolved around the small, familiar routines that come with raising young children. Brandi and Blake Zakovich were raising their 10-month-old daughter, Sylvie Zakovich. Their days were shaped by the usual balancing act of parenthood, work, child care, bottles, naps, and the countless little moments that fill a family’s life.

Sylvie was a baby whose life had barely begun. At just 10 months old, she was still discovering the world one day at a time, completely dependent on the adults around her. Like every infant, she couldn’t explain what she needed. She could only cry, smile, laugh, and trust that the people caring for her would keep her safe.

Sylvie loved watching Ms. Rachel and Shrek. She knew how to use sign language to say “all done.” She was always smiling and laughing. At almost 10 months old, she had already tried 102 different foods. Her favorite foods were pizza, pickles, sweet peppers, avocado toast, and peanut butter banana pancakes. Her best friend was her cat, Morty. He made her laugh uncontrollably when he played with his toys.

Her face lit up when her daddy walked into a room. She loved being held and cuddled. She loved getting her pictures clicked with everyone around her. And like there are so many pictures of grandparents and relatives just clicking photos while feeding the baby. Even though she couldn’t speak, she used to try and talk in front of the camera and sometimes would just adorably end up laughing.

“You’re being funny. You need to go back to bed.”

She had the most angelic smile. She was so unbelievably sweet that I still can’t comprehend how anyone could think of doing anything to her other than love and protect her.

Brandi had studied social services and social work at Methodist College in Peoria and was married to Blake Zakovich. Friends and those who knew her described Brandi as compassionate and helpful, a woman who had chosen a profession centered on supporting others through difficult moments. She understood care not simply as a responsibility, but as something deeply personal. This detail would be painfully significant in the story. A woman whose life was built around protecting and helping others would soon find herself facing every parent’s worst nightmare.

At some point, Brandi and Blake decided they needed to get help, and that’s when they turned to Makenna Rhodes. Makenna was providing child care from her apartment in Pekin, where she babysat several children at a time, including Sylvie. This wasn’t a daycare discovered through a large company or a licensed child care center. It was the kind of home-based child care arrangement many families rely on every day. Brandi had connected with Rhodes after seeing that she was looking to babysit over the summer through community and social media connections.

Ironically, the two women also shared another connection. They had both attended the same college. There was a sense of familiarity there that naturally inspires trust. To Brandi, Rhodes wasn’t a stranger. She was someone from the local community who had made herself available to care for children.

Each morning, Sylvie would be dropped off before the workday began. She would have her bottle, spend time with the other children, be fed throughout the day, and eventually be put down for her nap. Rhodes was also caring for her own 3-month-old son and three other children at the apartment, creating the kind of busy environment common in many home-based child care settings.

The morning of June 26th, 2024, began like any other day. Around 7:30 a.m., Sylvie arrived at Rhodes’ apartment in Pekin. She was given a bottle soon after arriving, but when breakfast was offered, she refused to eat. As the morning went on, Rhodes later told that Sylvie became increasingly fussy and difficult to settle.

Rhodes explained that she tried multiple times to put the 10-month-old down for a nap, carrying her upstairs, laying her in the crib, and returning when her crying completely stopped. And there she saw something that will haunt her for the rest of her life.

At around 10:30 a.m., a call was placed to 911, and emergency responders rushed to the apartment immediately. It was Makenna’s boyfriend, Tyrese, on the call.

“Pekin 911, what’s the address of the emergency?”
“Uh, 1200 Avenue.”
“Tell me exactly what happened.”
“Um, so, my girlfriend is watching, uh, Tyler. We put her up for a nap. She’s not breathing.”
“Are you with her now?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Is she awake?”
“She is not.”
“Is she breathing?”
“She is not. She’s turning purple.”
“All right, I’m sending you the paramedics to help you now. Stay on the line.”
“All right, thank you.”
“Are you right by the baby now?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Listen carefully. I want you to lay the baby flat on her back on the floor and remove anything from under her head, and then kneel next to the baby and look in the mouth for food or vomit. Let me know when you’ve got that done.”
“Look for food or, uh, food or vomit?”
“Yes. Kneel next to the baby and look in the mouth for food or vomit. Is there anything in the mouth?”
“Hold on, I’m looking. I do not see anything, sir.”
“I’m sorry, what? Are you there?”
“Yeah, I do not feel… I don’t hear anything. I think there was, like, there was vomit on her shirt.”
“Listen carefully, and I’ll tell you how to do chest compressions. I want you to make sure the baby is flat on her back on the floor. I want the chest to come all the way up between pumps. Count out loud so I can count with you, okay?”
“They’re here.”
“There’s an officer there?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, let them take over, okay?”

As the dispatcher instructed Tyrese to begin chest compressions, the first police officers and paramedics arrived at the apartment, taking over the resuscitation efforts almost immediately. Inside the home, the atmosphere was pure chaos. Paramedics rushed upstairs carrying emergency equipment while officers cleared a path through the narrow apartment. Everyone seemed to be speaking at once. Questions were flying in every direction.

Tyrese, visibly overwhelmed, tried to explain what had happened. He told officers that his girlfriend had put Sylvie down for a nap at around 10:30 that morning. The baby normally slept before waking up for lunch, but when Rhodes went upstairs to check on her, she wasn’t breathing.

“I don’t want to put words in your mouth or anything that, like, the sergeant has said. So, can you just kind of get and explain to me the timeline of events that would happen?”
“About 10:30, we took her… my girlfriend took her up to put her down for a nap. And she took her down for a nap in my son’s room.”
“Okay.”
“In his, uh, infant bed or whatever.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry, I’m just…”
“It’s okay.”
“…a lot going on. It’s just too much.”
“Yeah, absolutely.”
“So, when they did that, my girlfriend just went to check up on her…”
“Uh-huh.”
“…cause we didn’t hear anything. And usually, she wakes up at this time. She went up there, and she wasn’t breathing, nothing.”

He repeatedly told officers that it looked like the baby had choked, adding that he had no idea what had happened. As paramedics continued CPR upstairs, another heartbreaking scene was unfolding outside. Sylvie’s mother, Brandi, had rushed to the apartment after receiving the devastating phone call. She arrived rushing, desperate for answers, but officers stopped her before she could run inside. He explained that medical personnel were upstairs working, trying everything they could to save Sylvie’s life.

“Now, right now the medical personnel are upstairs working. We’re going to keep you out here. We don’t know exactly what’s going on. That’s awesome for coming here, but it was actually one of the paramedics that was giving the information… Yeah, we’ll stay here, and we’re going…”

Brandi stood just a few feet away, frozen in place, as first responders rushed through the house. Makenna tried to pull her into a hug, but Brandi pushed her away. Her eyes stayed locked on the chaos unfolding around her as she kept asking the same question: Is my daughter breathing? But no one could answer her, not yet.

The officer gently suggested she sit inside his air-conditioned patrol car while they worked. He promised to keep her updated, but then, only moments later, the front door of the house opened. Paramedics emerged carrying Sylvie on a stretcher, still working desperately to save her as they hurried toward the waiting ambulance. And at that point, Brandi completely broke down, unable to witness the state her baby was in.

“Oh my god. Oh my god. Put her on the stretcher. Oh my god.”

Even after the ambulance left, police remained at the apartment, preserving the scene and documenting everything exactly as they had found it. According to the initial observations, Sylvie had been found lying face down after what was believed to have been nearly a 2-hour nap. At that moment, however, no one knew whether they were looking at a tragic accident or something far more sinister.

At the hospital, doctors and emergency staff continued to put their best efforts to save Sylvie, but just 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital, 10-month-old Sylvie Zakovich was pronounced dead.

For investigators, one question now mattered more than any other. Exactly what had happened inside that house during the 2 hours before the 911 call? To answer it, detectives asked the only two adults who had been there that morning, Makenna Rhodes and Tyrese Lewis, to come to the police station and walk them through every moment leading up to Sylvie’s death.

The apartment was still crawling with officers when Makenna Rhodes and Tyrese Lewis were separated and driven to the police station. Only minutes earlier, she had received the news that Sylvie didn’t make it. Before the detective returned to the room, Rhodes was allowed to call her mother. In that moment, she sounded terrified, repeating that she was scared and asking her mother to stay on the phone until someone came back in.

“Hello.”
“Yeah. Hey, I just wanted to update you because we’re not supposed to be messaging here. And she didn’t make it. Okay. We’re at the police department, and I’m just really scared. I just feel horrible. I need to know… I don’t… I just don’t know what to do. She didn’t make it.”
“Huh?”
“She didn’t make it.”
“No, Kenna.”
“Did they say what caused it?”
“No.”
“Well, now what?”
“I don’t know. I’m just in this room by myself, and I don’t like it.”
“Oh, Kenna.”
“I’m just really scared.”
“Well, there was nothing you could do, Kenna.”
“You need to stay on the phone with me until somebody comes in.”
“All right.”

Rhodes asked her mother to stay on the phone until someone came back into the interview room, repeatedly saying she was scared.

Meanwhile, detectives had already begun reconstructing the timeline. The first person they spoke to was Rhodes’ boyfriend, Tyrese Lewis. Lewis looked visibly shaken. At this point, the detective wasn’t treating anyone as a suspect. Their only goal was to understand exactly what had happened inside that apartment that morning.

According to him, he hadn’t been watching Sylvie or feeding her. He said everything changed when Rhodes suddenly came running downstairs and told him that she thought Sylvie was dead. Those words immediately jolted him awake, and that’s when he jumped from his seat and ran upstairs to where the baby was.

“And Kenna came running downstairs and goes, ‘Daddy, I think she’s dead.’ And I’m like, ‘What?’ And then I jumped up, and I ran upstairs, and I saw her, and I called 911 right away.”
“When you first walked into the bedroom, what did you see?”
“When I seen… all I see was, um, I walk in, Sylvie’s in the crib, and it looks like Kenna flipped her to face her up to see if… to get her to wake. And that’s what I walked into. Her face was kind of purplish, but just, like, right there.”
“Laying face up in the crib.”
“Okay.”

When he entered the bedroom, Sylvie was already lying face up inside the crib. Her face had started turning purple. Without wasting another second, Tyrese told them that he called 911 immediately. Listening to Lewis, the timeline seemed straightforward. He wasn’t trying to explain why Sylvie had stopped breathing. He simply described his own actions after Rhodes called for help.

The detective continued asking questions. Had he seen Sylvie that morning? The answer was no, and he told the investigating officer that nothing seemed wrong up until the moment Rhodes came to him. The interview wasn’t confrontational, not yet. The investigator was simply gathering facts. Every time estimate mattered. Every small detail would later be compared against physical evidence and against Rhodes’s own account.

Now it was Rhodes’s turn. Watching this interview today, one thing immediately stands out. Not necessarily what Rhodes says, but what she chooses to focus on. People process trauma differently. Some become emotional. Some shut down completely. Others speak in an almost detached way as their brain struggles to process what’s happened. For that reason, investigators never assume guilt or innocence based solely on someone’s emotional response. Instead, they pay close attention to behavior, consistency, and detail.

And as Rhodes began speaking, the detective listened carefully. She told the detective that every morning at 7:00, Sylvie’s mom would drop her off. She explained that Sylvie had been upset almost from the moment she arrived that morning. She drank her bottle. But when Rhodes tried to make her eat breakfast, she refused and started crying. According to her account, she had been very fussy since morning. She wouldn’t settle.

Again and again, Rhodes returned to the same description. Sylvie was colicky. She was fussier than usual. She just wouldn’t sleep. It wasn’t mentioned once. It became the central theme of her interview.

“Um, Sylvie was crying. Yeah, she’s already pretty colicky.”
“Okay.”
“So, I just kind of figured that’s what it was.”
“That’s like the normal for her.”
“Acid reflux, yeah.”
“Okay. So, usually fussy is… is not like…”
“It’s not crazy out of the…”
“But it’s also like, as much as she was today, it wasn’t like normal at all for her.”
“Okay. She was more upset than normal.”
“Yeah. I had taken her up to lay her down for a little bit.”

Even at that point, Makenna was trying to blame that little baby for what had happened. According to her, she first tried putting Sylvie down for a nap. That didn’t work, so she brought her downstairs again. She let her play with toys and tried comforting her.

Then she told the detective that around 10:30 that morning, she carried Sylvie upstairs for another attempt. She placed the little girl into her pink sleep sack. She turned on the fan because the room was warm. She laid her inside the crib, then she quietly walked downstairs.

“Just run me through, like, from the time that you woke up, just to the time that, like, we got called out, okay?”
“Sylvie was very fussy, so I was feeding her a bottle and trying to, like, calm her down. Then she started to fall asleep in my arms, so then I took her upstairs and laid her down. She was fussy, so I brought her back down. And then she played with some of her toys. She has a caddy there of toys. And about 10:30, she was still very fussy. So, I just kind of let her go. And at 10:30, I took her back upstairs and laid her down. And then, well, I put her in her pink sleep sack and then laid her down. And I turned the fan on for her ’cause it gets warm in there. And then, I went downstairs to start making lunch for everybody, which is what I was doing whenever I went upstairs to check on her.”

She told the detective that from that moment, a normal routine started and she started preparing lunch. She looked after the other children and even pumped breast milk for her own baby. She carried on with everything else happening inside the apartment.

Eventually, she remembered it was time to wake Sylvie. According to Rhodes, Sylvie’s mother preferred that she sleep for only about an hour. So, she walked upstairs expecting to wake a sleeping baby. Instead, she says she found Sylvie unresponsive. She immediately ran downstairs. She screamed for Lewis. She told him to call 911.

Up until this point, the detective was mostly listening without interrupting. Rhodes explained that earlier in the morning, she had briefly left Sylvie upstairs because she needed a moment away from the crying. She casually told the detective that the sound of a crying baby used to annoy her.

It’s a sentence that by itself isn’t unusual. Anyone who has cared for an infant knows how mentally exhausting constant crying can be. But it’s the way she said it that didn’t sound right. Because once again, it was like she was trying to put some blame on the baby.

“I had taken her up to lay her down for a little bit, only for 5 minutes if that, but because I don’t like listening to them cry.”

Whenever the officer asked Rhodes about the morning, her explanations repeatedly went back to Sylvie’s behavior. She was crying. She was fussier than normal. It’s almost as though the morning itself was being framed around how difficult the baby had been. The investigator took note of this particular detail.

As the interview continued, the officer started to narrow in on small but critical details. Who was downstairs? Who was upstairs? When did Lewis wake up? When did Rhodes pump? And when was Sylvie last seen alive? These are the kinds of details that seem minor in the moment, but can become decisive once they are measured against the physical evidence. These questions may sound insignificant, but homicide investigations are often solved through tiny inconsistencies rather than dramatic confessions.

And then, one answer changed everything. Almost casually, Rhodes explained that while she went upstairs to shower and pump, Tyrese Lewis had been downstairs with the children. She described leaving Sylvie behind with him.

And Lewis had told them something completely different. He insisted he hadn’t watched Sylvie. He insisted he hadn’t even seen her. According to him, the first time he laid eyes on Sylvie that day was when Rhodes ran downstairs screaming that she thought the baby was dead.

Now, the investigators weren’t looking at one timeline anymore. They were looking at two. One of them was lying. The detective quietly left Rhodes’ interview room without revealing what she had just said. She walked back toward Tyrese Lewis.

At this point, the detective was determined to uncover the mystery behind the cracks in their story. The moment the detective realized the stories didn’t match, the entire case shifted. Up to that point, the investigation still lived in that uneasy space between tragedy and suspicion. A baby is no more. Two adults had given statements, and on the surface, both stories sounded like something police might hear in a sudden child death case.

But now there was a problem. Rhodes said Tyrese had been with the children while she showered and pumped. Lewis had not seen Sylvie at all that morning. What exactly happened inside that apartment? Who was with Sylvie at each moment, and why were the stories already drifting apart?

The detective went back over everything, the 911 call, the timeline, and the movements of everyone in the home. They were no longer just asking what happened. They were asking what didn’t make sense, and then came another troubling detail.

The phones. While the interviews were still happening, detectives noticed Rhodes and Lewis were texting each other from separate rooms. At first, it might have looked like two frightened people trying to process a nightmare. But when the investigator reviewed the messages more closely, the tone changed everything.

They were trying to align their stories before the detective could finish piecing the morning together. And once that became clear, the case stopped looking like a simple emergency call. It started looking like a cover story.

Forensic analysis later recovered more of those messages. The deleted texts showed Rhodes telling Lewis on what to say.

“We will take her phone. Tell her that’s as evidence.”
“All right. Um, we’re going to need your phone.”
“Yep. I’m good. Do I need to be worried or anything?”
“No, you’re okay. So, this is going to be evidence, just so you know. That’s why we’re taking your phone. So you’re aware, and my back camera was on.”

Just after 2:33 p.m., Makenna sends a message. “I told her you had Sylvie for 10 minutes.”

The response comes 2 minutes later. “I told her I didn’t have her or seen her today.”

But then, Makenna replies with a message that immediately raised eyebrows among investigators. “Just say you did.” She even suggests a specific explanation. “Playing with her toys.” A simple alibi. A story that could account for those missing 10 minutes.

The replies, however, don’t go as planned. “I’m not lying, Kenna. And I am okay.”

Yet, Makenna continues texting. “I said you were on your Xbox while she was down there.”

“You know, not at this point. I’ve been doing these cases for a while. The cases where people are communicating on, like, social media and texts and all that. No, that’s not what I was going to say. When people are trying to get their story straight, that’s when they have something to hide.”

That was the first major crack in the defense of whatever happened in that apartment, because when people start building a shared version of events in the middle of a death investigation, detectives start asking a very different question. What are they trying to hide?

While the detective untangled the interviews, the medical examiner was working on Sylvie’s body, and the findings did not point to an accident. Autopsy results showed abrasions inside the baby’s upper lip and frenulum, injuries that suggested pressure had been applied to her face. In other words, something had been pressed over her mouth and nose.

Now they were looking at evidence that someone may have physically obstructed her airway. The cause of death was ruled asphyxiation. Accident was no longer the leading explanation.

The more Rhodes and Lewis talked, the more the inconsistencies grew. At some point, the detective also tried to urge Lewis to reveal more details.

“You made a mistake by not being fully transparent and honest with me.”
“Yes.”
“It makes it look like you’re hiding stuff from me.”
“I swear.”
“If you were watching her and like an accident happened or something like that, I don’t want you to just completely… I can see how you would want to distance yourself.”

Rhodes kept returning to the same theme. Sylvie had been fussy, hard to settle, difficult to calm. She described the baby as colicky, as though her behavior alone explained what happened that morning. To the investigator, that detail started to feel less like context and more like motive being built in real time.

Rhodes also mentioned swaddling and the blanket used in the crib, but that explanation only raised more questions. Why was the baby found face down after a nap attempt? Why did the injuries suggest pressure to the face?

The detective also learned that another child previously in Rhodes’ care had suffered a broken arm with explanations that did not fully add up. That detail deepened the concern that this was not just a one-time mistake. By then, they were no longer asking only about one morning. They were asking what kind of caregiver Rhodes had been, and whether there had already been warning signs.

Three weeks later, Rhodes was brought back in for another extended interview. By then, the case had tightened. The digital evidence had been recovered. The autopsy had ruled out an accidental explanation, and the contradictions in the first statements were impossible to ignore.

This time Rhodes began to break. She admitted she had become overwhelmed and frustrated after trying multiple times to get Sylvie to sleep. She said she pressed a plush lovey over the baby’s face, forcing the pacifier into place. She said she held it there until Sylvie closed her eyes. She believed the baby had fallen asleep, but when she later realized what had actually happened, it was too late.

By the end of the investigation, the detective had assembled a case built on a series of hard facts. A 911 call from a panicked boyfriend, a baby found unresponsive and face down, two adults giving conflicting accounts, text messages showing they were trying to coordinate those accounts, autopsy findings showing pressure to the face, and finally a confession that matched the medical evidence.

Taken together, those pieces turned a tragic child death into a homicide investigation. And what made it even harder to process was how ordinary it had all started. A baby was dropped off for child care, a nap was attempted, frustration turned into violence, and a family’s life changed forever. Now, the only thing the family wanted was justice for their baby.

In the days after Makenna Rhodes was arrested, the case moved from the world of detectives and interviews into the quiet gravity of a courtroom. The courtroom in Tazewell County on July 23rd, 2024, felt heavy and still. The kind of silence that lingers even when the room is full of people, as if the air itself had nowhere to move.

Judge Derek Asbury sat with the case file in front of him. Statements, forensic findings, and the recording of Makenna Rhodes’s own interview with detectives played back in full for the record. 21-year-old Rhodes was accused of suffocating a 10-month-old baby girl in her care to death in June.

According to prosecutors, Rhodes had grown frustrated when the baby wouldn’t settle down for a nap. She was fussy, she was crying, and she wouldn’t stop. Prosecutors alleged that in a moment of frustration, Rhodes pressed a pacifier into the baby’s mouth and held a small blanket against her face until she stopped crying and never woke up again.

“The Pekin babysitter accused of suffocating a 10-month-old baby appeared in the Tazewell County Courthouse this afternoon for her detention hearing. Good evening, I’m Lizzy Scales. Thank you for joining us, but with all the facts and some evidence, the judge needed a couple of days to consider where the 21-year-old will stay as she awaits her trial. Madison Porter was in the courtroom and shares the latest now on Makenna Rhodes.”

“Lizzy, given Rhodes’ history in Central Illinois that includes no previous criminal charges, her public defender is arguing she poses zero risk to the public as long as she stays away from children. Makenna Rhodes was arrested and charged with first-degree murder last Thursday after allegedly getting frustrated with the child and smothering her face with a pacifier and a small blanket. She was interrogated twice before being taken to jail. Prosecutors say the first time she picked up her phone and texted her boyfriend asking him to lie about what happened. The second time prosecutors say she admitted to the murder, but her public defender says the detective was experienced and misled her.”

“When you’re being accused of murdering a child and they’re saying you were overwhelmed, you were angry, and you say, ‘Yeah.’ You’re agreeing to that. You’re not saying, ‘No, I wasn’t overwhelmed. I wasn’t angry.’ And that’s important when considering the strength of the state’s case.”

“If Rhodes is released, she’d be under home confinement, wear an ankle monitor, and stay away from children under 18 years old, including her own 3-month-old son.”

Judge Asbury listened to all of it. He said the case in front of him was unusual for one specific reason. Rhodes had a 3-month-old son of her own. That child was younger than the victim, and like any infant that age, could just as easily become fussy and difficult in ways that might echo the exact circumstances.

“The biggest danger in the present case that makes this unique is that she has her own 3- or 4-month-old infant now. The child is younger than the victim in this case, and like any child this age, could easily become fussy and difficult, leading to potentially similar circumstances.”

Eventually, her 3-month-old baby was in the state’s custody, and even Tyrese was only allowed supervised visits of the baby. Rhodes’ mother, Tara, broke down when she learned of the arrest. Yet, in court, she promised to do anything required. Bar children from her home, supervise Makenna around the clock, and even enforce a no-contact order with her own grandson, because she could not accept that her daughter would intentionally harm a child.

Makenna’s twin sister, brother, uncle, and grandmother echoed that same conviction, offering their home and time to keep Makenna under strict watch if it meant she could come back to them. Four family members swore under oath that they would report Rhodes immediately if she violated any condition of her release. Their statements were deeply emotional, filled with loyalty and denial.

If released, the terms on the table were strict: home confinement, an ankle monitor, and a total ban on contact with anyone under 18, including her own son. But despite those efforts, the order was made. Rhodes was formally charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty at her arraignment. Her trial was set for October 7th, 2024, though because it was the case’s first trial date, both sides understood it was likely to move. She faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted. Rhodes’ defense appealed the detention ruling, arguing she had no prior criminal record and posed no real risk if kept away from children, with family members ready to enforce it.

In January 2025, the Fourth District Appellate Court disagreed, ruling that no supervision arrangement, ankle monitor, family oversight, or no-contact order could guarantee safety, especially given multiple generations living under one roof. The detention order stood. Rhodes remained in jail awaiting trial, not because a jury had convicted her, but because two courts agreed the risk of release was too high.

As of now, there’s no public verdict—just an arrest, a detention order, and an affirmed appeal, with the trial itself still ahead.

Before this was a case number, before there were judges and appellate panels and pre-trial release statutes, there was a baby girl, Sylvie Michelle Zakharevich. A 10-month-old who loved Ms. Rachel and Shrek, whose face lit up when her dad walked into a room.

She wasn’t just a headline. Sylvie was a child whose whole life fit inside 10 months and whose future was stolen in the space of a single, unforgivable moment.

This story ends not with a verdict we can quote, but with a promise that we say her name and remember her as more than a headline.