The Final Cheerleading Trip

An 11-year-old girl named Addy Smith was found dead inside a Las Vegas hotel room in February, killed by her own mother during what was supposed to be a celebratory weekend at a cheerleading competition. The Clark County coroner's report, released months later, revealed disturbing new details: before the gunshots, Addy had been drugged. The girl's body contained lorazepam, a sedative, and the coroner described her as "very medicated at the time of the violence." Her mother, Tanya McKeegan, also had the drug in her system, along with antidepressants, insomnia medication, and cannabinoids. Three handwritten notes were found at the scene—one on the door warning of dead bodies inside, another stating that Addie was heavily medicated.

A Custody Battle Written Into Every Detail

What makes this story particularly unsettling is how much of it was foreseen and yet impossible to prevent. Addy's parents divorced in 2015, when she was just two years old, and the custody fight never stopped. In 2020, a Utah judge awarded sole custody to Addy's father after finding that Tanya had engaged in behavior "on the spectrum of parental alienation" and had committed "domestic abuse in the presence of the minor child." For a time, Tanya could only see her daughter under court-designated supervision.