A handcuffed Aaron Michael Orlando Rathke spun around in his courtroom chair slowly several times Monday as he waited to be sentenced for murdering his 5-month-old son in their Fridley home.

At other times before the hearing, Rathke leaned back and rocked his chair. When his family walked into the Anoka County courtroom, the 24-year-old looked back at them and smiled.

Rathke let out a yawn as Judge Suzanne Brown called his case — and again shortly after she sentenced him to 25½ years in prison for killing Kaiden Michael Rathke, who died of blunt-force injuries on March 1, 2023.

Brown had asked Rathke if he wanted to address the court. “Nope,” he replied.

Rathke entered an Alford plea last month to second-degree intentional murder as part of a plea agreement, which included the length of his prison term. An Alford plea means he maintained his innocence while acknowledging the prosecution likely had enough evidence to convict him.

Despite the plea, Brown noted Monday, Rathke admitted to conduct that would have harmed the child, who she said had both “healing” and “fresh” injuries.

“It is disappointing not to see any remorse from you in the PSI (presentence investigation) or now,” Brown said before handing down the sentence.

Baby’s mother: Dad choked him

Rathke and Ahnisah Simone Waters drove their child to the Fridley police department after the boy stopped breathing. He did not have a pulse. Officers began CPR and the child was taken to Children’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead a half-hour later.

According to the charges, Rathke told police that he took the baby into a bedroom to change his diaper. He said the infant vomited and stopped breathing. He said he did chest compressions but they were unsuccessful.

They did not call 911, he said, because in other cases when the baby had stopped breathing they had been able to “bring him back,” the charges say.

He said the child would sometimes have trouble breathing or “forget to breathe” and it had been happening since the baby was 4 months old. He said he would do chest compressions with his fingers to get the baby to breathe again.

During further questioning, Rathke told detectives that the baby was a quiet child who would “holler” if he was picked up or touched. He described changing the baby’s diaper by saying “it was hell” and that the baby would “scream his lungs out.”

Rathke said he’d been diagnosed as bipolar, “which results in him getting angry and having ‘mini outbursts’ and ‘blank out,’” where he is unable to remember things. He denied having any of those behaviors with his son.

Less than a week later, Rathke gave another statement to police saying he may have hugged the baby “a little too hard,” adding that he always gave the boy big hugs because “that way, I wouldn’t lose it.”

Later, detectives learned that Waters had sent a message to a friend through Snapchat saying that Rathke had “killed the baby.”

Waters then told police that Rathke had killed their child, saying she had been afraid to tell police what really happened because Rathke had been abusive to her. She said she saw him choke the child when he was 3 months old, and that when she intervened, he pushed her away. She said he told her he would put pressure on his son’s throat to make him pass out when he was having trouble getting him to go to sleep.

‘Devastated’

No one gave a victim impact statement at Rathke’s sentencing.

Prosecutor Brenda Sund said the child “suffered a tremendous amount of harm” during his young life and that she hopes Rathke “reflects on his actions” during incarceration.

“The state is devastated about (Kaiden),” she said.

As Rathke was being led out of the courtroom by a deputy, he nodded at a family member, who blew him a kiss.

Related Articles