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Friday Night Special: 21 Life Sentences for Maddie Soto Killer · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:00
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Little thirteen year old Matti
0:09
Speaker 1: Soto told her friends as soon as she turned thirteen
0:13
Speaker 1: she wanted to run away from home and live in
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Speaker 1: the woods. Why because mommy's boyfriend was repeatedly molesting her
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Speaker 1: and had been since we believe age nine, yes, since
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Speaker 1: age nine, and mommy knew nothing nothing. We'll never know
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Speaker 1: the full truth because Mattie Soto was murdered in the
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Speaker 1: last days. Stefan Stern, the no good boyfriend learns his
0:45
Speaker 1: fate in court. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
0:49
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for being with us. Stefan
0:53
Speaker 1: Stern's the living of Matti Soto's mom entered please in
0:58
Speaker 1: a Kassimi court room. It's part of a deal with prosecutors.
1:04
Speaker 1: Stearn's thirty nine learns his fate in court twenty one
1:09
Speaker 1: life sentences. And this is why Maddie Soto, just thirteen
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Speaker 1: years old, slept in the bed with mommys live in
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Speaker 1: the night before her murder. This as disturbing details emerge
1:28
Speaker 1: about the crime, saying and well that's not all shocking.
1:33
Speaker 1: Prison emails go back and forth between the suspect, mommies
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Speaker 1: live in lover, and they seemingly blow this case wide open.
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Speaker 2: Madeline is thirteen years old. She has been missing since
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Speaker 2: eight thirty on Monday morning, when mom's boyfriend dropped her
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Speaker 2: off near Hunter's Creek Middle School. He dropped her off
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Speaker 2: actually near the Piece United Methodist Church on Town Boulevard.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so she was supposed to be dropped off by school.
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Speaker 1: Didn't make it to school, didn't make it a school.
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Speaker 3: I went to pick her up from school today and
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Speaker 3: she never came out. They announced it all the speaker,
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Speaker 3: and I'm just like, maybe she walked here, because sometimes
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Speaker 3: she'll walk here to this office.
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Speaker 1: I came here, nothing. I went back to the school.
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Speaker 1: We were closed.
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Speaker 3: I got to notice an.
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Speaker 1: Email from the school saying she was absent, but I
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Speaker 1: also messaged.
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Speaker 3: Her teacher and you looked at her entire tennis.
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Speaker 1: Today and saw that she was completely not at school
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Speaker 1: today either. So she never made it. Okay, what's her name? Madeline?
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Speaker 1: I'm a d e O, I Annie, I'm a d
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Speaker 1: out any any last name? So ohto Yeah? Is it
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Speaker 1: just me? And my projecting word is everybody just a
2:49
Speaker 1: little too calm? In that video, that's Madeline's mother and
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Speaker 1: the living standing behind her, like, what what? Why? Is
2:59
Speaker 1: everybody so calm? Mattie is missing and she has been
3:04
Speaker 1: missing for a considerable period of time. When that happens? Now,
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Speaker 1: hold on, I want you to think about what you
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Speaker 1: just saw with the backdrop of a new evidence we
3:18
Speaker 1: are learning, and that is that Mommy's car went back
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Speaker 1: and forth to where Mattie's body was dumped before it
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Speaker 1: was discovered. Let that sink in Mommy's car went back
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Speaker 1: and forth between the home where little Mattie slept routinely
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Speaker 1: with Mommy's boyfriend alone to where her body was dumped.
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Speaker 1: It's caught on surveillance video. Who was driving it don't know,
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Speaker 1: but it was Mommy's car that I do know. Now
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Speaker 1: I want you to hear from the horse's mouth.
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Speaker 4: Listen, is this like, does she like have any places
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Speaker 4: that you guys know that she'll usually be at.
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Speaker 5: Any friend's house, any places like she has to hang
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Speaker 5: out or typically?
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Speaker 1: No, not typically? Okay, just give you one second.
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Speaker 6: Let me get some thank you for football.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't have any idea where she might be
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Speaker 1: joining me an all star panel to make sense of
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Speaker 1: what we know right now. First, I want to go
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Speaker 1: out to Shannon Butler, investigative reporter WFTV nine on this
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Speaker 1: case from the beginning and giving me a lot of
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Speaker 1: information I'm not getting from the outside looking in. Shannon,
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Speaker 1: thank you for being with us. Shannon. In addition to disturbing,
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Speaker 1: disturbing descriptions and details are getting about the crime scene,
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Speaker 1: I'm floored about how often the suspect, which some people
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Speaker 1: are describing as Maddie's stepdad, he's not her stepfather. Let's
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Speaker 1: just be clear about that. How many times he was
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Speaker 1: sleep in the bed with her. But that's a whole
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Speaker 1: other can of worms. I want to talk about the evidence,
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Speaker 1: the evidence regarding Mommy's car, going back and forth. Then
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Speaker 1: we'll get to all of Sterns, the suspect, the murder suspect,
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Speaker 1: all of his emails whining from behind bars about his food,
5:27
Speaker 1: his mattress, the walls, and his cell really really, But
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Speaker 1: first let's talk about that car. What do we know
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Speaker 1: about that vehicle?
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Speaker 7: Listen shocking new revelations in the Mattie Sodo murder investigation.
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Speaker 7: Investigators release information about Stephan Sterns and tracking the silver
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Speaker 7: Lincoln he was driving. But now detectives say they tracked
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Speaker 7: another vehicle, a white Nissan om by Mattie's mother, Jennifer,
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Speaker 7: making an identical trip as was made in the Lincoln
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Speaker 7: from the apartment to where Maddie's body was found. Detectives
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Speaker 7: don't get a clean look at the driver, but the
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Speaker 7: Nissan was driven and from the apartment to the body
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Speaker 7: in the middle of the night, twelve hours after Stearns
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Speaker 7: was seen driving his Lincoln to the same area.
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Speaker 1: Okay, straight out to Shannon Butler, joining US investigative reporter
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Speaker 1: WFTV nine, Shannon, what can you tell me about Mommy's
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Speaker 1: car going to the location where Maddie's body is ultimately found.
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Speaker 3: Well, we don't know who the driver is, and that,
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Speaker 3: of course is one of the biggest questions we get
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Speaker 3: right now is who's driving that car. The running theory
6:30
Speaker 3: is that it was Stephen Sterns that went back to
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Speaker 3: the alleged scene of that crime. But there is so
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Speaker 3: much speculation and doubts surrounding Madeline Soto's mother that it's
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Speaker 3: hard for people not to question whether or not she
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Speaker 3: was behind the wheel and went back down to that
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Speaker 3: same location where Madelisoto's body was. At that point, that
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Speaker 3: body would have still been in that area because it
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Speaker 3: was days.
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Speaker 1: Later before they found her.
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Speaker 3: So it's hard for us because in theaters didn't get
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Speaker 3: a good look of the driver to figure out who
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Speaker 3: was behind the wheel. But there are a lot of
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Speaker 3: a lot of questions. Could it have been Jen Sodo?
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Speaker 1: Okay, Shannon Butler, you just said, Shanna joining us WFTV nine,
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Speaker 1: you just said, with so much suspicion swirling around Maddie's mother,
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Speaker 1: we're talking about thirteen year old Madeline Sotto found dead.
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Speaker 1: She had been sex assaulted. I was counting back the years,
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Speaker 1: maybe to age at age nine, that we're getting conflicting
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Speaker 1: reports on that by mommy's live in It's very difficult
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Speaker 1: for me to believe mommy had no idea what was
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Speaker 1: going on under her own roof, even sending her daughter
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Speaker 1: to bed with her living lover. Oh excuse me, he
7:54
Speaker 1: alternated between the Soto home and his own mother. What
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Speaker 1: was he just living out in the basement there? Anyway,
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Speaker 1: so much suspicion around the mom, as we're hearing from
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Speaker 1: Shannon Butler, But the mom is not a suspect. The
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Speaker 1: mom is not a person of the interest at all.
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Speaker 1: It's entirely possible the suspect her boyfriend was driving her
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Speaker 1: car back to the scene. And you know, that's a
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Speaker 1: really interesting question to Tim Jansen joining US, high profile
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Speaker 1: criminal defense attorney, former federal prosecutor, and analyst for the
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Speaker 1: Tallahassee Democrats newspaper, joining us from the Florida jurisdiction, Tim Jansen,
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Speaker 1: why do criminals go back circle back to the scene
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Speaker 1: of the crime? I always think of Scott Peterson. How
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Speaker 1: many times did he go back and look off into
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Speaker 1: San Francisco Bay where he dumped his wife Lacy and
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Speaker 1: their unborn son Connor. He's tracked. There was a GPS
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Speaker 1: monitor on his car, Ding Ding figure that out, and
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Speaker 1: they were tracking going back and forth where he would
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Speaker 1: stand gazing out there, what to see if her body
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Speaker 1: had washed up yet. And we're seeing the same thing here.
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Speaker 1: He goes back and forth to where Mallin's body is.
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Speaker 5: Why, well, you know, it's interesting. Brian Kohlberger did the
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Speaker 5: same thing after the Idaho murders. He was there the
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Speaker 5: next morning. They go either looking for their trophies, watching
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Speaker 5: what they did, or they're trying to cover up and
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Speaker 5: see if this crime has been disclosed. So the curiosity,
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Speaker 5: the adrenaline they get, maybe trying to cover something they
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Speaker 5: felt they forgot, or going back to see if the
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Speaker 5: police have found their bad deeds.
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Speaker 1: I think it's the adrenaline and they want to find
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Speaker 1: out who's looking. Have I been discovered? Coburger is a
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Speaker 1: very good example. And you know what else, Jansen, the
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Speaker 1: returning to the scene. A good defense attorney like you
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Speaker 1: will argue, well, that means nothing. Tell that to you,
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Speaker 1: was Juri. Okay, Jansen, go ahead and tell the jury
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Speaker 1: it means nothing when a suspect goes back and forth
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Speaker 1: to the scene of the crime and just stands there
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Speaker 1: and stares. Well, to me, I'm not a shrink, but
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Speaker 1: it means something to me. I'm getting off track. There's
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Speaker 1: so much happening in the Madeline Soto case right now.
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Speaker 1: I've got to get to all of it. But right now,
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Speaker 1: remember we're trying to determine who was driving Mommy's car
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Speaker 1: after Maddie goes missing and before her body is found,
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Speaker 1: back and forth to where the body is ultimately found.
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Speaker 1: She's got a device, so school should be.
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Speaker 3: It'll try to everybody's so calm.
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Speaker 1: I'm not going to speculate on why they're so calm
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Speaker 1: when Maddie missing. Let me go to an expert with me.
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Speaker 1: Robin Drake, behavior expert and former FBI special agent Wait
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Speaker 1: for it. He was the chief of FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral
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Speaker 1: Analysis Program and author of Sizing People Up, a veteran
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Speaker 1: FBI agent's manual for behavior prediction, and you can find
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Speaker 1: him at peopleformula dot com. Robindrake, I told you about
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Speaker 1: the time when I was looking for organic sun tanlation
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Speaker 1: in a baby superstore and I was like all down
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Speaker 1: on the very bottom shelf, bent over double looking to
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Speaker 1: try to find it. I turned around and there was Lucy,
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Speaker 1: but no John David. I started screaming. I put her
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Speaker 1: under my arm like a football and started running toward
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Speaker 1: the front of the store because there were all glass windows, screaming,
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Speaker 1: help me find my son. Lock the doors. My son
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Speaker 1: is lost. Okay, Hey, that's just me. So am I projecting?
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Speaker 1: Or Are these two calm as a cucumber?
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Speaker 4: No, you're absolutely right.
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Speaker 8: They are way too calm as a cucumber, as you say.
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Speaker 8: And the car and who's driving it, to me, is
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Speaker 8: a smaller part of a whole.
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Speaker 4: In this entire case.
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Speaker 8: I'm shocked that Madeline is the entire circle around her,
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Speaker 8: and that the mother hasn't been charged yet. Because this
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Speaker 8: to me, and every time we have a child that's
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Speaker 8: been abused, and every time we have a child that
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Speaker 8: looks like they may have been even part of something
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Speaker 8: greater than just one single pedophile, there's a I think
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Speaker 8: there's a network involved here, and I think there's gonna
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Speaker 8: be a lot of tendrils that go out, And I
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Speaker 8: think that's why the investigation is taken as long as
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Speaker 8: it has and there's as many witnesses going to be called,
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Speaker 8: because I've been involved with cases.
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Speaker 1: A minute up, Robin Drake, hold on just a moment.
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Speaker 1: What do you mean you think a network is involved.
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Speaker 8: So, every time you have a case like this, Nancy,
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Speaker 8: where you have a sexual potential sexual predator, if it's
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Speaker 8: a serial sexual predator, which he's been doing this a
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Speaker 8: number of years, says that he might be serial, you
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Speaker 8: can have an uppers of two to four hundred children
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Speaker 8: that have been affected, either through trafficking of their pornographic images.
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Speaker 4: Or of them themselves.
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Speaker 8: And so a lot of times these investigations take a
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Speaker 8: long time to ferret out who's actually involved. And so
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Speaker 8: every time you see a behavior arc of not just
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Speaker 8: the individual of Sterns, but a network of entire family
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Speaker 8: members potentially acting very nonchalant about this. It gives investigators
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Speaker 8: a lot of leads on where to potentially look to
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Speaker 8: see how far this network goes.
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Speaker 1: Crime stories with Nancy Grace, Florida man gets twenty one
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Speaker 1: life sentences when he plays no contest to murder and
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Speaker 1: guilty to other counts. And the second abuse and murder
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Speaker 1: a little Maddie's Soto. What a piece of crap. I
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Speaker 1: thought for sure the state would seek the death penalty
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Speaker 1: in this case. But Stephan Stearns lives to breathe the
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Speaker 1: fresh air while Mattie's Soto is six feet under. Does
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Speaker 1: that sound right to you? I've got a problem with that.
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Speaker 1: And this is why thirteen year old Madeline Soto murdered.
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Speaker 1: Sexually abused by mom's boyfriend. And that's kind of putting
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Speaker 1: perfume on the pig, isn't it's sexually abused. We're talking
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Speaker 1: about dozens and dozens, I think, Shannon, how many sex
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Speaker 1: related videos and photos were found on Stern's as mommy's
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Speaker 1: boyfriend's phone? How many ballpark hundreds, hundreds.
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Speaker 3: Hundreds and hundreds there were videos, there were pictures.
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Speaker 1: Okay, and I think it's actually in this new data
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Speaker 1: dump we're getting, which of course you are the one
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Speaker 1: that alerted us to that, Shannon Butler, and thank you.
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Speaker 1: They're literally thousands, seventeen hundred explicit sex photos of Madeline,
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Speaker 1: thousands thousands on Stearn's phone. Where was a mommy when
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Speaker 1: all this was happening. Why do we know it's Madeline
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Speaker 1: that's the child victim on the phone, because in charging
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Speaker 1: documents and other data we have reviewed, the victim is
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Speaker 1: described as a child and the incidents, the rapes occurred
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Speaker 1: in the home Madeline's who is that it's a girl,
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Speaker 1: it's a child, and it's in Maddie's home, and it
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Speaker 1: Stearns who is charged now with sixty plus sex related charges,
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Speaker 1: So saying she was sex abuse, that hardly describes what
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Speaker 1: this child went through. Now we are also know that,
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Speaker 1: according to the documents we've just gotten huge data dump,
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Speaker 1: the molestations, these videos on his phone. Some reports are
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Speaker 1: that they go back to twenty nineteen. There are other
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Speaker 1: dates stated as well, twenty nineteen. She's thirteen when she's
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Speaker 1: murdered in twenty twenty four. This makes her eight or
16:21
Speaker 1: nine years old when these videos started being taken of her.
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Speaker 1: So she's not just getting raped, she's not just getting
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Speaker 1: potentially sodomized. He's videoing it. How many times do you
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Speaker 1: use your husband's phone or you know, grab your child's phone.
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Speaker 1: You don't see anything on there when there's nearly two
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Speaker 1: thousand of these videos and photos. Okay, that said, take
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Speaker 1: a listen to this.
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Speaker 9: Stephen Stern slept with Madeline Soto and her mother on
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Speaker 9: a regular basis. Stern would sleep with Madeline without her
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Speaker 9: mother present, including the night before she was murdered. Jennifer
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Speaker 9: Soto tells Mattie she has a really bad headache and
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Speaker 9: tells Mattie to take Stephen Sterns and go sleep in
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Speaker 9: an upstairs bedroom.
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Speaker 1: I got a headache too, and spreading to my teeth.
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Speaker 1: Now when I hear that, it wasn't just once in
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Speaker 1: a while, it was all the time, and that's not all. Listen.
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Speaker 9: Stephen Sterns and Madeleine Soto's mother, Jennifer, broke up briefly
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Speaker 9: in late twenty twenty three. Even while they are broken up,
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Speaker 9: Sterns would sleep at the Soto household in a bed
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Speaker 9: with Madeline, a woman who dates Sterns during his breakup
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Speaker 9: with Jennifer, claims Sterns told her he had to sleep
17:44
Speaker 9: with Mattie cuddle with her so she could go to sleep.
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Speaker 9: The woman stopped talking to Sterns after he tells her
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Speaker 9: of waking up with an erection while in the bed
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Speaker 9: with the child.
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Speaker 1: Our Friendnicole Parton from Crime online dot Com really said
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Speaker 1: that like she's reading the weather report or the farmer's almanac.
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Speaker 1: Ho hold on just a moment, Shannon Butler joining me
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Speaker 1: WFTV nine No Offense and Cole Parton, But what did
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Speaker 1: I just hear? Did I just hear that? Even after
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Speaker 1: Steven Sterns, the murder suspect, had broken up with the mom,
18:18
Speaker 1: what he broke up with her? Really? He would come
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Speaker 1: back to the home to sleep with little Maddie, to
18:27
Speaker 1: cuddle her, to get her to sleep, and then he
18:31
Speaker 1: tells the new girlfriend he would get erections in bed
18:35
Speaker 1: with Maddie and it was so disgusting the woman broke
18:39
Speaker 1: up with him. Did I just hear that? You did?
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Speaker 3: You?
18:43
Speaker 1: Did hear it?
18:44
Speaker 3: And we had even asked, like did that woman ever
18:47
Speaker 3: report that to police, to anybody? And she didn't you
18:51
Speaker 3: know at the time, I think she was just trying
18:53
Speaker 3: to get away from him. But these are the things
18:56
Speaker 3: that just continue to come up, and everybody in that
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Speaker 3: you know, interview process seems like this is just normal, right, well,
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Speaker 3: you know, she slept with she slept with them when
19:06
Speaker 3: she needed to get to sleep. It which it was
19:09
Speaker 3: very very strange for us hearing that about how like
19:12
Speaker 3: this was just everyday business.
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Speaker 1: Okay, I'm just I really occasionally I'm a speechless and
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Speaker 1: this is one of those moments because I'm thinking about
19:23
Speaker 1: the life that Manisoto endured in the home age eight
19:30
Speaker 1: or nine, Mommy's boyfriend starts raping her. There's not a
19:35
Speaker 1: nice way to say, oh, he slept in bed with her,
19:37
Speaker 1: he cuddled her, they had sex. That is a lie.
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Speaker 1: That's rape under the law, and we cannot turn away
19:45
Speaker 1: from the black and white letter of the law. A
19:49
Speaker 1: child that age cannot consent to any type of sex conduct,
19:53
Speaker 1: just like they can't go buy a car, or liquor
19:56
Speaker 1: or cigarettes. They don't have the mental capacity to do that.
20:00
Speaker 1: Out joining me, Doctor Jury Crossing, renowned psychologist, faculty Saint
20:07
Speaker 1: Leo University, consultant with a blue Wall Institute and you
20:11
Speaker 1: can find him at doctor Jury j O r Ey
20:15
Speaker 1: dot com doctor Jury. Does any woman really need a
20:20
Speaker 1: man that badly?
20:22
Speaker 6: Really?
20:23
Speaker 1: Just let me think about it. My sister's a a
20:25
Speaker 1: T shirt that said a man a woman needs a
20:28
Speaker 1: man like a fish needs a bicycle, and that really
20:31
Speaker 1: stuck with me at about age eight. So what is
20:36
Speaker 1: a woman willing to do to keep a man?
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Speaker 6: Well, it goes to humility to locate or find a
20:43
Speaker 6: woman and establish a relationship that has a child. Okay,
20:50
Speaker 6: you see this in the pedophilia behavior numerous times, and
20:55
Speaker 6: one thing you want to look at is the age
20:58
Speaker 6: when this started and then and how it ended with
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Speaker 6: the homicide. They have preferred ages that they're attracted to
21:06
Speaker 6: in that they will maintain a relationship with, But once
21:10
Speaker 6: the child starts to age out through puberty or starting
21:14
Speaker 6: to develop, they'll usually start to look for another access
21:21
Speaker 6: to another child in their preferred age. That's a very
21:25
Speaker 6: common pedophilic behavior.
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Speaker 1: Okay, wait a minute, I'm trying to decipher what you're saying,
21:30
Speaker 1: doctor Jory Crawlsen, you're the strength. I'm just a JD.
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Speaker 1: But I think you're saying certain pedophiles go look specifically
21:40
Speaker 1: to establish a relationship with a woman that has a
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Speaker 1: child the age in which they're interested. Is that what
21:47
Speaker 1: you just said. That's correct, Yes, okay, And I appreciate that,
21:52
Speaker 1: and it's a phenomenon I want to explore with you.
21:56
Speaker 1: But I'm asking you how bad do you need a man?
22:02
Speaker 1: I mean, after all, no offense to you, but what
22:05
Speaker 1: what can they do that you can't do? Why do
22:08
Speaker 1: you have to have him sleeping with your daughter under
22:11
Speaker 1: your own roof?
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Speaker 6: Yeah? Let me let me address both of those. The
22:14
Speaker 6: man has that ability to whatever it takes to provide
22:19
Speaker 6: to the woman to get access to the child. He's
22:22
Speaker 6: going to provide.
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Speaker 1: Provide what this guy didn't even work? Did he work?
22:27
Speaker 1: Hold on Shannon but or did this guy have a
22:29
Speaker 1: job or did he basically hang out at his mom's
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Speaker 1: basement in his spare time?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's pretty much what he did. He played a
22:35
Speaker 3: lot of gets.
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Speaker 1: So what does he bring it to the table? Nothing?
22:38
Speaker 1: Why does she need him? Back to my question, what
22:42
Speaker 1: is wrong with these women that they keep child molesters
22:45
Speaker 1: in the home.
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Speaker 6: I've seen hundreds of those cases, and you know, even
22:53
Speaker 6: I've looked at the lethality of living boyfriends to children,
22:57
Speaker 6: and it just it's phenomenal because mothers don't protect their children.
23:03
Speaker 6: You know, I'm in Florida, this case is in Florida.
23:06
Speaker 6: I'm in a different judicial circuit. But we have regularly
23:10
Speaker 6: charged mothers with failure to protect.
23:13
Speaker 1: You know what, that's exactly the charge, That's exactly the
23:18
Speaker 1: charge I'm thinking of doctor Jory Crawsen, failure to protect. Again.
23:25
Speaker 1: Mattie's mother has not been named, a suspect, has not
23:27
Speaker 1: been named, a person of interests. The reason we're even
23:30
Speaker 1: talking about her right now is because her car spotted
23:33
Speaker 1: on video going back and forth to where Mattie's body
23:36
Speaker 1: thirteen years old, it's found just dumped, dumped. Remember this,
23:43
Speaker 1: Remember Maddie kept telling all of her friends when she
23:46
Speaker 1: turned thirteen she wanted to leave home and go live
23:50
Speaker 1: in the woods. I wonder why listen are missing persons?
23:56
Speaker 2: Detectives responded to take over the investigation, so they did
24:01
Speaker 2: interviews with mom, mom's boyfriend, Malan's friends from school. We
24:07
Speaker 2: were able to access Madelin's phone and there is information
24:10
Speaker 2: on the phone.
24:13
Speaker 1: They indicated that she.
24:14
Speaker 2: Told people when she turned thirteen, which was on February
24:18
Speaker 2: twenty second, she actually wanted to go live in the woods,
24:21
Speaker 2: so that was in her phone.
24:23
Speaker 7: Investigators believe the female seen at seven thirty six am
24:26
Speaker 7: and the surveillance video in the front passenger seat of
24:28
Speaker 7: Stephan Stern's vehicle is Madelein Soto's dead body propped up
24:32
Speaker 7: and buckled into the seat to appear as a living person,
24:34
Speaker 7: but closer inspection of the video shows her head leaning
24:38
Speaker 7: toward her shoulder with her mouth open. Stens is caught
24:40
Speaker 7: on surveillance video again at eight nineteen am when he
24:43
Speaker 7: is seen entering the front security gate of the neighborhood
24:46
Speaker 7: with a female in the same position as the surveillance
24:48
Speaker 7: video captured at seven thirty six am.
24:50
Speaker 1: I don't want to gloss over that as we race
24:54
Speaker 1: towards the newest developments, including the suspect, Mommy's boyfriend whining
25:00
Speaker 1: behind bars about his mattress, his food, not having the
25:03
Speaker 1: right spoon, the walls in his cell. We also have
25:07
Speaker 1: emails that are emerging from his mom back and forth
25:11
Speaker 1: to him, knowing full well they're going to be read
25:15
Speaker 1: about how somebody else ate she is involved, more crime
25:21
Speaker 1: scene details that reveal the nature of this crime. But
25:26
Speaker 1: to Shannon Butler, joining me WFTV. I don't want to
25:30
Speaker 1: gloss over the fact that Madeline's dead body, this thirteen
25:35
Speaker 1: year old girl that has been being raped and sodomized
25:38
Speaker 1: since age is eight or nine, under mommy's nose, her
25:42
Speaker 1: dead body is propped up and buckled into the car.
25:46
Speaker 1: Did I get that right, Shannon Butler? Yeah, And that
25:49
Speaker 1: was part of his story, right.
25:50
Speaker 3: So he goes in and out of that apartment complex,
25:53
Speaker 3: which they did in the morning, on the way to school,
25:55
Speaker 3: so that way, if any of the neighbors or anything saw,
26:00
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be unusual for Madeline to be buckled into
26:03
Speaker 3: the seat. What he said to us and investigators is
26:08
Speaker 3: that she slept on the way to school, so he
26:12
Speaker 3: was working that. It appears into his story about how
26:15
Speaker 3: he took her to school and she was asleep. But
26:18
Speaker 3: he did, I mean, according to investigators, the buckle that
26:21
Speaker 3: seatbelt and let her sit there leaned over. It's just unbelievable, really,
26:26
Speaker 3: I mean.
26:27
Speaker 1: Tim Jansen, criminal defense attorney, he is actually taaloring a
26:32
Speaker 1: very intricate lie stating that Mattie fell asleep on the
26:37
Speaker 1: way to school to cover up the fact that she's
26:40
Speaker 1: leaned over with her eyes closed because she's dead.
26:44
Speaker 5: Yeah, science technology is going to undermine the cameras that
26:49
Speaker 5: were seen. Clearly, this guy's the evidence on the phone.
26:53
Speaker 5: He's a pedophile. He committed a sexual terrorism on this child.
26:58
Speaker 1: The mother.
27:00
Speaker 5: I certainly had to know something or see something. The
27:03
Speaker 5: apartment was very small, and to allow a child to
27:07
Speaker 5: sleep in the bed at that age is just It
27:11
Speaker 5: seems more like Maddie was an annoyance to the mother
27:14
Speaker 5: than her actual daughter.
27:15
Speaker 1: Guys, what more are we learning now? Well, for one thing,
27:20
Speaker 1: and I'm going to circle back to doctor eric Ason
27:23
Speaker 1: regarding the years years of sex abuse. How that can
27:27
Speaker 1: be determined from an autopsy or if it can be determined.
27:32
Speaker 1: But DeShannon Butler, I want to talk about his whiny
27:35
Speaker 1: emails from behind prison walls. He complains about everything from
27:43
Speaker 1: his mattress behind bars, not getting enough food. I have
27:48
Speaker 1: never felt a full stomach and have in fact forgotten
27:51
Speaker 1: what that is like. Really, there's never a time these
27:55
Speaker 1: days when I don't feel hungry. Have you heard of
27:59
Speaker 1: the vending machine? The sale is small and filthy? Well,
28:04
Speaker 1: how is your mom's basement? You can still be living
28:06
Speaker 1: there if you had and murdered Mattie. The mat is
28:09
Speaker 1: flat and has very little cushion left. I bet it
28:12
Speaker 1: was nothing compared to sleeping in the bed with Maddie.
28:16
Speaker 1: Those are a few things you can think about Stern's
28:19
Speaker 1: before you send any more emails. Shannon Butler, what is
28:23
Speaker 1: this guy saying from behind bars? You know that wasn't
28:26
Speaker 1: the first time.
28:27
Speaker 3: Right when he was being transferred between jails, really early on,
28:33
Speaker 3: he first started complaining about that first night that he
28:36
Speaker 3: spent in jail, that he had to use the toilet
28:39
Speaker 3: paper roll as his pillow. That was the beginning of
28:43
Speaker 3: his complaints. So we expected when we saw his emails
28:46
Speaker 3: that he would start complaining more about how the treatment
28:49
Speaker 3: is there and that how it's you know, it's not
28:52
Speaker 3: so comfortable behind.
28:53
Speaker 1: Bars, Okay, Robin Drake, former FBI special Agent expert behavioral analysis. Robin,
29:03
Speaker 1: as soon as we finish on air, I want you
29:05
Speaker 1: to run right down to the jail with an allergen free, puffy,
29:11
Speaker 1: bouncy pillow so he can get a good night's sleep.
29:15
Speaker 1: What he can't sleep because of his pillow. He shouldn't
29:18
Speaker 1: be able to sleep because Maddie is dead and he's
29:23
Speaker 1: whining about his pillow. You know, this isn't the first time, Drake,
29:27
Speaker 1: that I've seen a murder of defendants and later convicted
29:30
Speaker 1: whine about their pillow, their food, their diet, their amount
29:38
Speaker 1: of exercise. He's charged with a murder, and in my mind,
29:44
Speaker 1: a lot fewer sex charges than are established, because if
29:49
Speaker 1: I've got two thousand, two nearly two thousand photos and
29:56
Speaker 1: videos and most of them of this little girl on
29:59
Speaker 1: his phone, he needs to be charged with every single
30:03
Speaker 1: one of them, and when he's convicted, they all need
30:05
Speaker 1: to run consecutively. There and he's talking about his pillow, Drake.
30:10
Speaker 8: Yeah, And I also don't think it's going to be
30:12
Speaker 8: the only person they find.
30:14
Speaker 4: He's done this too. He don't go from zero to
30:16
Speaker 4: one hundred in this.
30:17
Speaker 8: Kind of case, because he's going to have a track
30:19
Speaker 8: record establish of this.
30:21
Speaker 4: He's got a lifetime pattern of self centeredness and me me.
30:26
Speaker 8: Me, all his primal urges and despicable behaviors. I've obviously
30:30
Speaker 8: been placated for such a long time that he's got
30:33
Speaker 8: a level of expectation that the world will continue to
30:36
Speaker 8: service him, and it just leaks out of him at
30:40
Speaker 8: every single turn. And so that's what we're seeing in
30:42
Speaker 8: the jailhouse. That's what we're seeing in all these communications,
30:45
Speaker 8: and he's completely shocked that he doesn't happen.
30:47
Speaker 1: What about this? Do you see a pattern of behavior
30:52
Speaker 1: of getting taken care of and whining and expecting everything
30:57
Speaker 1: to be handed to you. I mean, he's still technically
31:00
Speaker 1: even though he's living with Madeline Soto's mother and their apartment,
31:05
Speaker 1: which a lot of people thought this was a home,
31:07
Speaker 1: it's an apartment, which makes it much smaller. My point is,
31:10
Speaker 1: how could she not know what was happening. He's living
31:13
Speaker 1: with her, and he's living with his mother, He's not working.
31:17
Speaker 1: What is he doing? Everyone is giving him a place
31:20
Speaker 1: to stay, food to eat. I don't know how he
31:23
Speaker 1: made his car payment. Maybe mommy made the payment for him.
31:26
Speaker 1: But now same thing, same behavior, carrying over behind bars
31:31
Speaker 1: wine wine wine.
31:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, you hit it exactly right, Nancy.
31:35
Speaker 8: It is his lifetime behavior pattern, behavior arc of complete
31:39
Speaker 8: self centerness and narcissism, and it plays out in everything,
31:43
Speaker 8: and even with his girlfriend that he had dated briefly.
31:46
Speaker 8: He's testing that water by saying, hey, I slept and
31:49
Speaker 8: had an erection with this little girl. You know, I
31:52
Speaker 8: think that's a test to say, hey could I manipulate
31:54
Speaker 8: you into my circle because she's aging now. I mean,
31:57
Speaker 8: it's a lot of conjecture in my part, I know.
31:59
Speaker 8: But at the same time, though, this is what he
32:01
Speaker 8: does to his entire environment. He manipulates it for his
32:04
Speaker 8: own gain, and he's got such lifetime reps out as it.
32:07
Speaker 8: He looks completely fluid and natural doing it, because this
32:10
Speaker 8: isn't his first time in life or is his first
32:12
Speaker 8: rodeo doing this.
32:21
Speaker 1: Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Stephan Stern's age thirty nine,
32:29
Speaker 1: gets twenty one life sentences which will run concurrently or
32:34
Speaker 1: at the same time, so I'm not that impressed. Concurrently
32:37
Speaker 1: means he's got one life sentence. One life sentence. What
32:42
Speaker 1: do we know about Maddie's death? Two thousand explicit videos,
32:47
Speaker 1: many the majority. We understand Stephan sterns performing sex sex
32:55
Speaker 1: on a child that lives in Mattie's Soto's home to
33:00
Speaker 1: doctor a Eson. Doctor airy Esen is a renowned board
33:04
Speaker 1: certified forensic pathologist a consultant doctor Aeson. We know that
33:12
Speaker 1: her body was discarded out of the open, but in
33:16
Speaker 1: an obscure area, which is not hard to find in Florida.
33:21
Speaker 1: There's a lot of untamed land swamps inlets in Florida.
33:26
Speaker 1: How can a medical examiner tell if this was the
33:30
Speaker 1: first time Madeline had been raped or not. And with
33:37
Speaker 1: her body lying out in the elements for several days,
33:41
Speaker 1: would that preclude such a determination.
33:44
Speaker 10: Well, that's going to make it tough. If the body's
33:47
Speaker 10: been there for a couple of days and in the
33:49
Speaker 10: heat in Florida, you're going to have the evidence of decomposition,
33:53
Speaker 10: which is going to obscure some of the findings that
33:55
Speaker 10: you're going to have an autopsy. But during the autopsy,
33:58
Speaker 10: we're going to determine the cause death, but also assess
34:02
Speaker 10: for evidence of sexual assault, and so evidence of the
34:06
Speaker 10: acute sexual assault would occur when the swabs are placed
34:10
Speaker 10: in the various rifices to check for a DNA that's
34:13
Speaker 10: there to compare from the DNA from the suspect.
34:15
Speaker 1: Please do not say that, doctor Ason. We don't all
34:20
Speaker 1: have medical degrees like you do. When you say they're
34:24
Speaker 1: going to put swab, they're going to swab Mattie's orifices.
34:27
Speaker 1: You are talking about euphemistically describing her mouth, her vagina,
34:33
Speaker 1: and her anus to see if she was right. Told
34:37
Speaker 1: on Shannon Butler WFTV. How long do we think that
34:41
Speaker 1: Mattie was lying out in the elements before her body
34:44
Speaker 1: was found? How many days?
34:45
Speaker 3: I think it was five days?
34:46
Speaker 1: Okay, I thought it was four, but let's go with five,
34:50
Speaker 1: doctor Ason. How would five days down the elements affect
34:55
Speaker 1: the determination of inter orifices such as vagina or anus.
35:02
Speaker 10: I mean you can still insert the swabs and collect
35:07
Speaker 10: any evidence. As time goes on further, it's going to
35:11
Speaker 10: be less have less of an ability to collect that.
35:14
Speaker 10: I think you're also asking about remote sexual assault and
35:17
Speaker 10: that's going to be very tough to determine after five
35:20
Speaker 10: days out in the elements like this, Can I.
35:22
Speaker 1: Just boil it down, Dodger Ason? In a rape kit,
35:28
Speaker 1: I know that if there is vagual tearing, if there
35:32
Speaker 1: is bleeding inside the vagina or the anus, that may
35:36
Speaker 1: suggest a recent rape.
35:40
Speaker 4: That's right.
35:41
Speaker 1: How would you be able to tell if her body
35:45
Speaker 1: had been found immediately whether she had been raped in
35:48
Speaker 1: the past.
35:48
Speaker 10: Well, you can look for evidence of old bruising or
35:51
Speaker 10: old abrasions. When bruises start to age, the color will change,
35:55
Speaker 10: and so if you find evidence of a yellow and
35:58
Speaker 10: a bruise, that indicates the bruise as older as compared
36:01
Speaker 10: to an acute bruise, so you can check for that.
36:04
Speaker 10: That's definitely one way to check for like an older
36:07
Speaker 10: type sexual assault.
36:08
Speaker 1: So we may not be able to tell from her
36:10
Speaker 1: body that she had endured molestation for years if it
36:14
Speaker 1: weren't for this idiot's phone that reveals these thousands of photos.
36:21
Speaker 1: To Shannon Butler WFTV nine, I want you to listen
36:25
Speaker 1: to this emails between the murder suspect and his mother
36:31
Speaker 1: in which she suggests someone else, a female, is involved.
36:35
Speaker 7: Listen, Stern's mother is saying things like quote, we all
36:39
Speaker 7: know Blank was heavily involved in this, and I am
36:42
Speaker 7: disgusted that she's free and you are not. When this
36:45
Speaker 7: is not all your fault. You need to think about
36:48
Speaker 7: yourself more and her less. She's isn't thinking of you
36:52
Speaker 7: and how she can help you right now that whole
36:54
Speaker 7: family is willing to stay quiet and let you take
36:57
Speaker 7: the fall for everything.
36:59
Speaker 1: Shannon Butler, the FTV nine, What well, I.
37:03
Speaker 3: Think that we expected some of this from his family members,
37:07
Speaker 3: that they would start putting some of the eyes back
37:12
Speaker 3: on Jen Soto. What we didn't know is if he
37:15
Speaker 3: had told them something that we didn't We didn't know
37:19
Speaker 3: yet about if she was involved, or if she wasn't involved,
37:23
Speaker 3: or if they're just doing this as the show. Right,
37:26
Speaker 3: everybody knows these things become public and that everybody would
37:29
Speaker 3: be able to see what they were saying. But this
37:32
Speaker 3: was not a surprise to any of us who have
37:35
Speaker 3: been working this story that the family would start to
37:39
Speaker 3: raise some questions about Jen Soto and if he was
37:43
Speaker 3: taking the fall for her well.
37:44
Speaker 7: The search for Metalinoto is ongoing. Investigators ask if they
37:47
Speaker 7: can take a look at Stephan Stern's phone. Sterns then
37:50
Speaker 7: informs the detectives he accidentally performed a factory reseat on
37:53
Speaker 7: the phone the same day Mattie went missing. A factory
37:55
Speaker 7: reset can't be done on accident, has to be delivered
37:58
Speaker 7: as it requires multiple steps by the user to ensure
38:00
Speaker 7: that it doesn't happen by accident. Thousands of images, sexual photos,
38:04
Speaker 7: and videos, mostly of Madeline, were recovered and led to
38:06
Speaker 7: the sixty additional charges against Stephen Stern's.
38:09
Speaker 1: Over sixty charges, but over nineteen hundred explicit videos and photos.
38:17
Speaker 1: I want to find out something else. She had a
38:19
Speaker 1: butler or VESSI had a reporter, WFTV nine. This is
38:22
Speaker 1: an apartment, not a home as many people thought. So
38:26
Speaker 1: how big is the apartment? I'm trying to gauge what
38:29
Speaker 1: was going on and what the mom should have known,
38:32
Speaker 1: do you know.
38:32
Speaker 3: Well, it's not very big. It's kind of like a townhouse.
38:36
Speaker 3: So there's an upstairs and a downstairs. But there were
38:39
Speaker 3: other people, like the night of her disappearance or murder,
38:45
Speaker 3: there were other people in the home. But there was
38:47
Speaker 3: you know, there was a there was bedrooms upstairs, but
38:50
Speaker 3: there was also some kind of makeshift kind of bedroom
38:54
Speaker 3: that was kind of cordoned off downstairs, and there was
38:58
Speaker 3: a lot of question about if that's where where you know,
39:00
Speaker 3: Madeline was sometimes laying. So the home is very small.
39:05
Speaker 3: If you're talking about what could you hear or not
39:08
Speaker 3: hear in some kind of house, it is it is
39:11
Speaker 3: fairly small. I mean it's an average town hall.
39:13
Speaker 4: You know.
39:13
Speaker 1: I want to ask you something else before we sign off.
39:17
Speaker 1: It's my understanding that Maddie's friends tell police that Maddie
39:23
Speaker 1: was constantly being texted and called by Stern. Stephan Stern
39:31
Speaker 1: the boyfriend back to Robin Drake. That's textbook. It's classic.
39:39
Speaker 1: I trust my children but when I see them on
39:41
Speaker 1: the phone all the time or they're on a video
39:45
Speaker 1: all the time, I go, who you're talking to? Who's that?
39:48
Speaker 1: Don't you think it's odd? Nobody wondered why the boyfriend
39:53
Speaker 1: was constantly calling this little girl and texting her.
39:56
Speaker 8: Yeah, constantly isolating her, controlling her environment. That's what these
40:00
Speaker 8: horrible sexual predators do. And that's exactly what he was
40:03
Speaker 8: doing Maddie the entire time, you know. And as for
40:06
Speaker 8: the mother making those comments via text too or in
40:10
Speaker 8: an email, I don't care what it is. You know,
40:12
Speaker 8: as an investigator, put my investigator hat on for a second.
40:14
Speaker 8: If you're opening your mouth like that, I'm now looking
40:16
Speaker 8: at you too. So I think this is a network
40:21
Speaker 8: of really important behavior by a lot of people, and
40:24
Speaker 8: he just happens to be to point to the spirit
40:25
Speaker 8: we're going to take down first, and I think we're
40:27
Speaker 8: going to save a lot of people in this one.
40:28
Speaker 1: I'm hoping doctor Jory Crausen, renowned psychologists joining US faculty
40:32
Speaker 1: Saint Leo University. Another thing is I noticed that Stefan
40:37
Speaker 1: Stern states that he was the one who would comfort
40:42
Speaker 1: little Maddie when she would get into an argument. With
40:45
Speaker 1: her mom. Okay, there you go, coming between the child
40:50
Speaker 1: and her parent. That's text book doctor Jory. Yes, it is.
40:55
Speaker 6: It's that dependent personnelity. I will pay that on the mother.
41:00
Speaker 6: I mean she's very dependent. Also, you can see that
41:02
Speaker 6: relationship in the dynamics where she readily turns anything over
41:07
Speaker 6: to him dealing with the daughter. You know, it's not
41:12
Speaker 6: a good attachment in bonding, maternal bonding.
41:17
Speaker 1: There Stepan Stearns gets in my mind a very light
41:20
Speaker 1: sentence in court. Yeah, the headlines all say twenty one
41:23
Speaker 1: life sentences, but it was what it boils down to
41:26
Speaker 1: is one life sentence because they're running concurrently at the
41:30
Speaker 1: same time. Mattie Soto rest in peace, beautiful girl. Nancy
41:37
Speaker 1: Grace signing off goodbye friend.