Inside The Murders Of Joseph And Gail Bailey, The Utah Couple Killed By Their Own Daughter

Just after 7 p.m. on June 18, 2024, gunshots rang out inside a house near Chinook Drive in Washington City, Utah. By the time police arrived, a married couple lay dead in their own home, and the person who had shot them was gone.

The victims were Joseph Bailey, 70, and his wife Gail, 69. The shooter was their 28-year-old daughter, Mia Bailey, who would spend the night hiding in the desert brush while a helicopter circled overhead and residents of two nearby neighborhoods were told to stay inside.

The court case that followed took 18 months. By the end of it, her own brothers were asking a judge to keep her in prison and, in the same breath, to remember that she was sick.

The Night Mia Bailey Came To Her Parents' Home

Washington City sits right beside St. George, in the far southwestern corner of Utah.

On that Tuesday evening, a neighbor's security camera recorded a Kia Soul pulling up outside the Bailey home, according to KSL.com. Mia Bailey was behind the wheel. She had a handgun with her.

According to a police affidavit described by KSL, Bailey said she entered the house and shot her mother almost at once. Her father heard the shots and walked toward her. She shot him in the head, and he fell.

She then went downstairs for a while. When she came back up, she fired again. She told investigators that she shot her father a second time in the head to be sure he was dead, then walked back to her mother and did the same. Joseph Bailey had been shot twice. Gail Bailey had been shot four times.

There were two other people in the house. One of Bailey's brothers had locked himself in a bedroom with his wife. Bailey fired through the door.

The affidavit recorded what she said about that shot: her brother "was not her main target, but she would not have been sad had the gunshot killed him."

The bullet did not hit him. He got out of the house and called 911 from a neighbor's home, according to news reports. By then, his sister had driven away.

An All-Night Manhunt Across St. George

Officers from the Washington City Police Department, the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the Utah Department of Public Safety spent the night looking for her. A helicopter searched from the air until morning.

At about 1 a.m. on June 19, Bailey was reportedly seen near Horseman Park holding a handgun to her own head before she walked off into the brush, according to ABC4 Utah. Police sent out a shelter-in-place alert. People living in the Bloomington Hills and Fort Pierce neighborhoods of St. George were asked to stay indoors, and many of them did so for most of the next day.

Around 8 a.m., police received a report that Bailey might be hiding in some bushes in an open field near the city's new temple. Witnesses told KSL that she gave herself up at about 10:30 a.m. without a struggle.

In her police interview, Bailey did not deny anything. She said she had gone to the house intending to kill her parents, and that she had kept shooting after they collapsed to make sure they were dead.

"I would do it again. I hate them."Mia Bailey, to detectives, as recorded in a police affidavit

On June 21, 2024, prosecutors filed 10 felony charges against her, ABC4 reported. They included two counts of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder for the shot fired at her brother, and aggravated burglary. The Washington County Attorney's Office said early on that it would not seek the death penalty.

Ten Days Out Of The Hospital

Nobody ever disputed who killed Joseph and Gail Bailey. What the lawyers argued about for the next year and a half was Mia's mental state.

Her defense attorney, Ryan Stout, later told the court that Bailey had checked herself into a hospital for "paranoia, delusions and hallucinations." She was discharged after three days. She killed her parents 10 days after that, Stout said, according to KSL's report of the hearing.

Stout said Bailey had been diagnosed with autism, psychosis, schizophrenia, ADHD and OCD, and that she functioned "at the cognitive and emotional level of a young child," the Salt Lake Tribune reported, as cited by People. Those were the defense's descriptions, offered in argument for a lighter sentence.

Court records also show that Bailey, who is transgender, had legally changed her name in 2023. At her sentencing, her brother Dustin told the judge he believed the hormone treatment she was prescribed had acted as "an accelerant" on her instability. "We support LGBTQ rights fully," he added. "This has nothing to do with identity." That was the family's view, and no court finding in the reporting on the case confirms it.

The case dragged. St. George News reported that a judge ordered a competency evaluation after Bailey asked in court to be given the death penalty. In October 2024, while she was held at the Purgatory Correctional Facility, she reportedly struck one corrections officer in the face and kicked another in the knee.

A judge did not find her competent to stand trial until October 2025. Prosecutors offered a plea agreement at the same time.

On November 6, 2025, Mia Bailey pleaded "guilty and mentally ill" to two counts of aggravated murder and one count of aggravated assault. Fifth District Judge Keith Barnes accepted the plea after prosecutors assured him that the family was, in his words, "on board."

"Accountability Does Not Require Us To Deny Your Illness"

The sentencing took place in St. George on December 19, 2025. Several members of the Bailey family addressed the court about what they had lost.

Dustin Bailey told the court that his parents' lives should be defined by how they lived and not by how they died. He described them as hard-working and loving, and he spoke about his mother's patience with Mia.

"When Mia struggled, Gail's response was not frustration or withdrawal. It was persistence."Dustin Bailey, at his sister's sentencing

He said the family missed the ordinary moments most: sitting on the porch, talking on the phone. Judge Barnes also read a statement from one of the couple's granddaughters, who remembered watching sunsets with them.

Then Dustin turned to his sister. "Accountability does not require us to deny your illness," he said. He asked the judge for consecutive sentences but argued against life without parole, which he called "abandonment disguised as severity."

Another brother, Corey, was less certain. "I don't feel like there can be any true justice in something like this," he said. He told the court the family had lost both parents and, in many ways, a sibling too. What was best for everyone, he said, was probably for Mia to stay in prison for as long as possible.

Bailey's attorney read a statement on her behalf. In it she said she had caused "great pain and regret," and that she had not been in a stable state of mind. "If only I had gotten help, this would have been preventable," she wrote. She said she was "sincerely deeply sorry."

The Sentence

"All of us feel for the victims in this case," Judge Barnes said. Then he spoke to Bailey directly: "Your acts on that day were very chilling."

He sentenced her to two terms of 25 years to life, one for each parent, to be served one after the other, plus up to five more years for the shot fired at her brother. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole will decide how much of that time she actually serves.

Washington County Attorney Jerry Jaeger said afterward that the hearing "wasn't about Mia. It was about Joseph and Gail, two individuals whose lives were cut tragically short."

Mia Bailey will be in prison for at least 50 years. According to her lawyer, she had gone to a hospital for help 13 days before the shooting, and it sent her home after three.

Sources

• Cassidy Wixom, "St. George woman pleads guilty with mental condition to aggravated murder of parents," KSL.com, November 6, 2025.

• "'Very chilling': Mia Bailey sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for murder of parents," KSL.com via East Idaho News/AOL, December 19, 2025.

• Ryan Bittan and Sorina Trauntvein, "Mia Bailey sentenced," ABC4 Utah, December 2025.

• Escher Walcott, "Utah Woman Sentenced to Life in Prison After Pleading Guilty to Killing Her Parents," People via Yahoo News, December 20, 2025.

• "Competency evaluation ordered after defendant in Washington City double murder asks for death penalty," St. George News (headline only; article not retrieved).