A 24-year-old Maryland woman who starved her baby to death and threw the girl’s body into a dumpster pleaded guilty by reason of insanity on Monday.

       Kiearra Tolson, who is schizophrenic and had come to believe her 14-month-old was a demonic snake who controlled the weather, was determined to be “not criminally responsible” — Maryland’s version of the insanity plea — for the 2020 killing. She will be committed to a locked psychiatric hospital until being deemed no longer a danger to others, Montgomery County Circuit Judge David Boynton said Monday.

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       “It could be for a short time,” the judge said. “It could be for a very long time.”

       Tolson had earlier told detectives she starved her child, Blair Niles, over 3？ weeks in her apartment before placing her body in a blue pillowcase, placing the pillowcase in three garbage bags and disposing of the body in a dumpster.

       Blair’s body has never been found.

       “She needs help,” Tolson’s close friend, Laytay Dahn, said Monday. “No one in their right mind would do what she did.”

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       The case against Tolson began July 8, 2020, when she arrived at a front door of an apartment in Beltsville. It was Dahn who answered and was immediately surprised Blair wasn’t with her. Dahn recalled the conversation she had with Tolson that night, a confession that mirrors what she told detectives.

       “Where is my goddaughter?” Dahn said she asked Tolson.

       “Oh, I starved her,” Tolson responded.

       “Where is she?” Dahn asked.

       “In the trash,” Tolson said.

       Tolson even offered to take Dahn to the dumpster where she disposed of the body in the county’s White Oak area. Dahn declined and instead called the police.

       To Dahn, the conversation with her friend was at once awful and unthinkable. The two young mothers had grown close and bonded over their similar-age children. Dahn has twin girls.

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       “I saw her around Blair. I saw how good-spirited she was. I saw how she loved that little girl,” Dahn said.

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       She attributed what Tolson did to her halting her schizophrenia medicine. After stopping the medication, Tolson also started drinking too much, Dahn said.

       After Dahn called the police, officers picked up Tolson.

       “She told detectives that she had starved her daughter, Blair Niles, over an approximately 3？-week period of time … because a psychic and voices told her to do so,” prosecutors said in a court presentation Monday.

       Tolson also told detectives that her child was a demonic snake who controlled the weather and that the only way she would “get the weather back” was to starve her, according to prosecutors.

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       She said she had dumped the body into a dumpster at her complex three weeks earlier. By the time authorities learned about Blair, who police had initially reported was 15 months old when she died, weeks’ worth of trash in the dumpster had been dumped in a landfill.

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       There was no indication a real psychic ever gave such instructions. No one else was arrested in the case.

       Detectives searched Tolson’s apartment, where they found a used diaper that appeared to have been that way “for an extended period," according to prosecutors, adding that “further search of the residence revealed almost no food in the cabinets or refrigerator.”

       Detectives also noticed two pillows — one with a blue pillowcase and the other with no pillowcase.

       Maryland woman accused of starving her toddler to death and throwing body into dumpster

       Detectives also spoke with Blair’s father, who told them he had not seen or had contact with Tolson or his daughter since a brief phone call on April 17, 2020, according to prosecutors.

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       Under Maryland law, people can be deemed not criminally responsible if they essentially didn’t understand that what they were doing was wrong. More specifically, the law reads: “A defendant is not criminally responsible for criminal conduct if, at the time of that conduct, the defendant, because of a mental disorder or mental retardation, lacks substantial capacity to: 1) appreciate the criminality of that conduct, or 2) conform that conduct to the requirements of law.”

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       Tolson did not speak at Monday’s hearing, other than answering questions from Boynton designed to confirm she knew the consequences of her plea and definitively wanted to enter it. “Yes, your honor,” she repeatedly said softly.

       Tolson spoke via closed-circuit video from the Clifton T. Perkins Hospital Center, Maryland’s most secure psychiatric hospital. Officials there are expected to conduct a danger assessment of her in the coming months, which will help determine how long she will stay.

       Dahn said in an interview Monday that the outcome of the case was appropriate: “I know she regrets what she did. It’s just tragic.”

       Dahn said she often thinks about Blair and how she died.

       “I pray for that little girl,” she said. “I pray that God was with her in her moments of suffering.”