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