True Crime with Rachel Shannon
BARBARIC: Mom Couldn’t “Rehome” her Daughter, so She BURNED Her in a Fireplace?! / Maha Hobbs
Mon, 14 Apr 2025
In today’s episode, we explore one of the most disturbing true crime cases in recent memory — the horrifying story of Maha Hobbs. When Hobbs was unable to “rehome” her 11-year-old daughter, authorities allege she took a turn so dark, it defies comprehension.How does a parent reach this point? What warning signs were missed? And what do we know about the legal aftermath?Join us as we uncover the timeline, the investigation, and the emotional toll behind this tragic and deeply unsettling case.Trigger Warning: This episode contains discussions of child abuse and extreme violence. Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Chapter 1: What are the warning signs of a disturbed parent?
There are people out there who shouldn't even be allowed to have children. So many sick, disturbed individuals who don't deserve to have a child in their home.
Yet so often, these same people are the ones who go on to have those children. And instead of raising them in a kind, loving, and supportive home, they just decide that they don't want to be a parent anymore. And in this case, instead of taking the steps to do what's right, a mother chose to murder her toddler and treat her as if she was less than trash.
But on this channel, we strive to give a voice to the voiceless, those who were taken advantage of in the worst way possible. But before we get into the case, I want to remind you all that I will be attending CrimeCon in Nashville this year. And if you haven't gotten your tickets yet, you can get 10% off when you use code RACHELSHANNON at checkout.
The tickets are selling out super fast, so I encourage all of you to get your tickets while you still can. I would love to see as many of you there as possible. It's going to be so amazing to get to meet you guys face to face. Let me know in the comments if I will see you there. With that out of the way, I am here to tell you the devastating story of Maha Hobbs.
Chapter 2: What happened to Maha Hobbs?
Maha Lee Hobbs was born on November 15, 2017 to parents Alexis Nelson and Terrell Hobbs. Maha was described as a beautiful little girl from the moment she was born. She had tons of energy, she was happy, positive, and she was loved by absolutely everyone who met her.
There you go, baby. Yeah. You got play food. You got play food in your cup. Yeah. You got two more gifts over there. Want to open some more, boo-boo? Go pick it up. Thank you. Oh, my goodness. Thank you. there you go baby
At the time, Maha was living in Aurora, Colorado with her mother Alexis. Meanwhile, her father Terrell lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. I believe Terrell also has another daughter with a different woman, but he may have more children. I'm not completely sure. I also do know that Terrell works as a professional fighter.
I don't know the ins and outs of the relationship between Alexis and Terrell, but it appears that they were not together for long or at all after Maha was born. Unfortunately, I don't know all the details for where each family member lived or how long, though I believe Alexis's parents did live in Georgia.
And I do believe that Alexis and Terrell did live in Georgia at some point, and I believe that is where Maha was born. So I'm not sure exactly how long Maha and Alexis had been living in Colorado. I don't know when they moved there, if they had lived anywhere else before. I don't know how much family support they had before moving there.
I do believe Alexis was in school, so that might be why they moved to Colorado in the first place, but none of those details are really made available. What we do know is that Alexis was pretty much by herself in Colorado with all of her family living in a different state. Then, as we know, Terrell was also in another state, so she was raising Maha by herself.
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Chapter 3: What was the relationship like between Maha's parents?
It seemed that from the moment Alexis became pregnant, though, she wasn't sure what would happen with Maha. As I will mention in just a minute, Alexis wasn't in a good place when Maha was born. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to keep her. She was in school, she was living far away from everybody, and she didn't have the best financial situation.
But after giving birth to such a beautiful little girl, she decided to keep her. Now, according to Terrell, Maha and Alexis came to visit him in North Carolina when Maha was about two years old. After that, for the six months that followed, Terrell stayed in contact with Alexis and Maha via FaceTime. Terrell loved being able to see his daughter on FaceTime.
But after those six months, for the two years that followed, Alexis completely cut off contact with Terrell. She wouldn't call him and she wouldn't answer his attempts at contacting them. She wouldn't allow Maha to speak with her father any longer, so for two years, Terrell was not able to see or speak with Maha.
Now, I know a lot of people will have their different opinions about Terrell and how involved he was in his daughter's life. I know a lot of people will say that he should have been a lot more involved, that him being involved could have prevented a lot of what happened. And I do agree. I know in retrospect, Terrell probably wishes that he could have been more involved in his daughter's life.
But I do just want to say for now, we don't know the entire history of the relationship between Terrell and Alexis. We don't know why she moved. We don't know why Terrell didn't move with them. I do believe that Terrell had his own family in North Carolina that he couldn't necessarily leave. So we don't know the entire history. I'm hoping more will come out eventually.
But for now, what we do know is that Terrell wasn't as involved in his daughter's life as maybe he should have been. But the things that happened to Maha are because of Alexis's actions. Now, Alexis's lack of communication with Terrell wasn't out of the ordinary for her.
Various members of Alexis's family all said that it was difficult to contact her and that she would often go a few weeks between calls or texts. In fact, when Alexis was pregnant with Maha, her family didn't even know. Like I said, Alexis wasn't sure if she was going to keep Maha, so she didn't feel the need to tell anybody that she was pregnant to begin with.
Alexis's mother, Ashia, said that on the day that Maha was born, she received a photo from Alexis via text with a message that read, quote, Meet Maha. She's 35 weeks, 5.2 pounds, born yesterday morning at 11.48 a.m. at 19.5 inches in length.
You would have known about her grant entrance sooner, but my original plan was to have her adopted by a family more suitable to provide for her without struggling. Though I still believe that open adoption is the best move for her to never need for anything and myself, so I may finish school, have a career with benefits, and my family nearby before starting a family,
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Chapter 4: What did the police find during the welfare check?
With all of this very sketchy information coming to light, police did canvass the entire apartment building and spoke with anyone who could have information regarding Maha's whereabouts. During this canvas, officers came into contact with a building maintenance worker, Nick, who said that he had been in Alexis's unit on May 5th for a biannual inspection.
So it doesn't seem like something that Alexis was really warned about. This was something that happened biannually. She probably knew the date that it was going to happen ahead of time, but probably forgot about it closer to when it was actually happening. Now on May 5th, this took place, I believe, when Alexis was not home.
When Nick entered the apartment, he found that the door to Maha's room was connected to the bathroom door on the opposite side of the hall, preventing it from opening. So basically, the bedroom door was shut and the bathroom door was connected to that shut bedroom door via a cord that was wrapped around the door handles so that the doors would not open.
On the other side of those doors, he heard the sound of a TV playing and it sounded like it was coming from Maha's room. Nick did cut the cord to get the door open, but when he tried entering the bedroom, the door was actually locked.
at that time alexis noticed that nick was in her apartment so she yelled at him through a baby monitor saying to get out of course after that he left the apartment clearly something concerning is going on in that apartment and nick was very off-put by this entire thing
You would think that if a mother truly loved her child but felt like giving her up for adoption was the best thing for the child, that she would have kept at least something to remember her by. A framed photo, one of her baby toys, a blanket, something, anything. But there was none of that. Clearly, Alexis wanted nothing to do with Maha, wanted no sign of her in that home or on her phone.
That was not the behavior of someone who loved and cherished her precious baby. After police initially confiscated Alexis's phone, the next thing they did was a more intensive forensic search of Alexis's cell phone. And of course, what they found was disturbing.
On Alexis's Google search history, officers found that on May 2nd, Alexis made searches for can you overdose from melatonin and can you overdose from Xanax. They then found multiple videos in her phone where Maha appeared to be saying goodbye to different family members. Again, as we stated earlier, Mercedes received one of those videos on May 3rd.
So, put two and two together, and it appears that Alexis was already planning on how she was going to kill Maha by overdosing her. Then, she had Maha take videos where she said goodbye to her family. With Maha, of course, not knowing that her own mother was about to end her life.
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Chapter 5: How did Alexis's family respond to her actions?
They noticed that the fireplace appeared to have been used recently, and in that fireplace, they found a bunch of stuff that had been burned.
and among their various findings they discovered multiple bone fragments as well as what appeared to be a rib and a scapula bone of course after finding these remains they were sent to the medical examiner's office to be examined and it was found that the bones are consistent with maha However, they do want to confirm their suspicions to be absolutely sure.
They did run a DNA test, but we don't yet know the results of that DNA test yet. It's been about eight months at this point, so I don't know when we will know. But the police say that they are highly confident that these remains will belong to five-year-old Maha.
As the investigation continued, we... prepared and secured several warrants and a search warrant was executed at the apartment. Sadly, last night, as you know, our little beautiful little girl that if you see that little picture of We believe that we actually found her. We found remains that we believed to be that of a young child.
And unfortunately, because of the conditions of those remains, a positive identification could not be made. Here are these cases involving little children. I know it impacts our investigators. I know it impacts our community. And so myself and Chief Hildebrand actually responded to the scene last night. And I can just tell you,
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Chapter 6: What legal actions were taken against Alexis?
It was tough to see our cops that had to find that little angel in the condition they found her in. We're highly confident that this is going to end up being our missing child.
It is clear to investigators that Alexis was simply tired of being a mother and she didn't want Maha around anymore. So instead of reaching out to Terrell and seeing if he would take her or her parents or actually setting her up for adoption, She murdered her and burned her remains to try and cover for her actions. Then she hid those remains alongside all of Maha's toys and other belongings.
As of right now, we don't know her official cause of death and I don't know if we will ever know due to the fact that the remains were destroyed by a fire. But from those Google searches, we can reasonably deduce that she was probably overdosed on something.
But because we don't have the DNA test results back at this time, Alexis Nelson has been arrested and charged only with child abuse, tampering with a deceased human body, and tampering with physical evidence, and making false statements to police. She was given a bond of $2 million, which she has not posted. So she is currently awaiting a trial in jail.
Investigators have said that they are confident that murder charges will soon come. So as of right now, that is all we know about this case. As I stated, police are confident that those remains belong to Maha and that she was murdered by her own mother. I know that this is a more recent and ongoing case, but as soon as I saw this one, I knew I had to cover it.
It's just so devastating that a mother can look at her baby and make the conscious decision to take her life. Then, when she's dead, she burned her baby's body like it was nothing. Maha deserved so, so much more." She deserved a mother who loved her. She deserved to live her life and grow up knowing that she was loved by everyone around her.
Instead, she got a mother who wanted to give her away from the moment she found out she was pregnant. But instead of doing what was right and giving Maha to a family that would love and cherish her... she kept her. And instead of raising her and giving her the life she deserved, she took her life after five short years. And afterwards, she treated her like trash.
I cannot fathom why, again, she did not just reach out to Terrell. She didn't reach out to her parents and see if anybody else could take her. Because if those around her knew that it was this or that,
her being in the arms of a loving caring person then I'm sure someone would have taken her I'm sure someone would have given her the life that she deserved but instead Alexis just decided I don't really want to be a mom anymore I'm sick of this so she most likely overdosed her own daughter and then burned her remains in a fireplace that is the most horrendous way I've ever heard of a parent treating their child's remains
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Chapter 7: What is the emotional impact of this case?
If there's a lot of information that comes out, I will just make an entirely new video, or if not, I will just update the description box below or do a pinned comment or something like that. I am so curious to know if there was any history of abuse or neglect. Was CPS ever called on the family? Did Maha ever go to school like preschool? Were there ever any red flags?
I don't even know if Alexis worked and if she did, who took care of Maha while she was gone. I also want to know more about the relationship between Terrell and Alexis. Was Terrell just a father who didn't want to take care of Maha and so he just wasn't around?
Or did Alexis take Maha and moved against Terrell's will and he didn't really know what else to do because he does have his own daughter in North Carolina? There is so much here that we don't know and I do really hope we find out more as this case progresses. Unfortunately, there has not been any new reporting on this case since it first happened.
The most recent article I've been able to find was from July or August of 2023. So I hope that after the DNA comes back as belonging to Maha, there is some more movements and more updates in this case. And of course, when that happens, you will all be the first to know. But that is all I have for today's video. And now I want to know what you all think. Why do you think this happened?
Do you think Alexis really thought that police would believe her insane story? Do you think that there will be a trial and do you think we'll find out more about the family dynamics? Let's discuss this and any other thoughts that you have in the comments below. If you liked this video, please make sure to go ahead and leave this video a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel.
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