Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Maddie Soto Murder: Everything We Know So Far

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Maddie Soto had just celebrated her 13th birthday when she vanished in February 2024. The state attorney for Orange and Osceola Counties would later say Maddie was being sexually abused by Stephan Sterns, her mother's on-again, off-again boyfriend, for years. Sterns faces the possibility of the death penalty if convicted of murdering Maddie. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the key points we know about the case and what comes next in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime. Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Hey there. Hey there. What's going on? So, my daughter was dropped off close to school this morning, but never made it. The search for missing teenager Maddie Soto sadly turned into a homicide investigation. I take a look at everything we know about the case and when the man accused of taking her life is set to go on trial.

Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Maddie Soto's disappearance and what would end up being her murder has touched so many people. Maddie should still be here. She had just celebrated her 13th birthday in February with a party at her grandparents' home. The photos of her show a girl who appears to be here. She had just celebrated her 13th birthday in February with a party at her grandparents' home. The photos of her show a girl who appears to be happy, but we would later find out her life was filled with sadness. Kissimmee police would later reveal in investigative reports that Maddie was being sexually abused for years. Detectives would write that the abuse was taking place at the hands of a man that Maddie's mother, Jen Soto, was dating.

His name, Stefan Stearns. The allegations are disturbing. And at this point, Stefan Stearns has pleaded not guilty to sexually abusing Maddie Soto and murdering her. Police said they found more than 1,700 images of Stearns molesting Maddie on a Google Drive connected to his cell phone. Much of the investigation into Maddie's disappearance was captured by body-worn cameras and police-recorded audio of interviews. Let's take a look back at the case from the very beginning. Maddie's mom, Jen Soto, reported her missing on the evening of February 25th after she went to pick up Maddie from school and she didn't come out.

Hey there. Hey there. What's going on? So my daughter was dropped off close to school this morning but never made it. I went to the doctor's school. I'm sorry, one second. Go ahead, sir.

Are we looking for another kid or we have a kid? Looking for another one. I'm trying to reach down. Good. All right. Before we go on, let's put that out. Any hospital locations? How old?

13. I'm trying to get that right now. Absolutely. Okay. All right. So she was supposed to be dropped off at school. Didn't make it to school. Didn't make it to school. I went to pick her up from school today. Okay. So she was supposed to be dropped off at school, didn't make it to school. Didn't make it to school.

I went to pick her up from school today and she never came out. They announced it over the speaker and I'm just like, maybe she walked here because sometimes

she'll walk here to this office. I came here, nothing. I went back to the school, they were closed. I got a notice, an email from the school saying she was absent

but I also messaged her teacher and he looked at her entire attendance today and saw that she was completely not at school today either. Okay. So she never made it. Okay. What's her name?

Madeline. M-A-D-E-L-I-N-E. M-A-D-E-L-I-N-E. Last name? Soto. S-O-T-O. S-O-T-O? Yeah.

Now you saw Jen Soto there with Stefan Stearns in the background saying she got a notification from Maddie's school saying Maddie didn't show up. Soto said she reached out to Maddie's teacher too. There have always been a lot of questions about what the school did or didn't do when Maddie didn't show up for school. The conversation between the deputy and Jen Soto continued. What was the name of the signal aid? Madeline Soto, age 13. I'm trying to get a clothing description now. What was she last seen wearing? A guy in a black shirt.

A guy in a black shirt. Black people hit my phone. Madeline Soto. Green hoodie. Green hoodie. White Crocs. White Crocs. Blue or black pants.

I think black shorts. Black shorts. Yeah. Black shorts? Mm-hmm. Okay. Black shorts. All right.

Do you know if she has, like, friends in the area? She does, but she doesn't know where they live. She doesn't know where they live. Okay. I asked all of them. Um, okay. An interesting note about that clip. Stefan Stearns knew what Maddie was wearing.

Not a big surprise, since he would later tell law enforcement that he took Maddie to school that morning, but dropped her off at a church. Deputies tried to get more information about Maddie in these critical first moments of the missing persons investigation. Is this like, does she like have any places that you guys know that she'll usually be at? Any friends' house? Any places that like she likes to hang out? Typically, no. Not typically? No.

Okay. Just give me one second. Let me see if I can get some. Thank you. No problem. And what school she go to? Hunter's Creek Middle School. Hunter's Creek Middle?

All right, cool. One, two, five. Do you guys have... do you have a picture of her? Can you air drop it to me? Yeah, I know. Let me see which picture. I don't know which picture. You mean the one from the birthday party, right? Yeah, but I wasn't there, so I had to look at it. What's up? Go ahead.

That's what I'm about to grab right now. Yeah. Alright, cool. Thank you. Is this a good enough picture? Or do you need a full body picture? Yeah, that's perfect. Okay. How do I eardrop? I don't know how to do it. I got you.

Okay, where's the photo? Right there. It's on WhatsApp. That's fine. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead and take a picture. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay, where's the photo? Right there. It's on WhatsApp. That's fine.

I saved it to my photo, so you could go to your photo. You saved it to your photo? Yeah, we just Give me a second. I'm going to send it out right now to my other guys. Thank you very much. The cases I cover each day here on Crime Fix show you just how scary the world can be. And one of the scariest things that can happen is if you ever get hurt. But I want you to know if you're ever seriously hurt or in an accident, your case could be worth millions.

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Prosecutors and police say that entire time, Stearns knew where Maddie was because he killed her and hit her body. But that night, Stearns went with deputies to the area where he said he dropped her off that morning. Are they here? It was along this stretch. I couldn't remember the exact spot, but it was around where these communities were. Is there a phone? No, thank you. So it's like around where these communities were.

Okay. And it's just like in this stretch. Like we could see the overpass down there. Where's the school? Just on the other side of the overpass. So somewhere around here. So yeah, somewhere, maybe not this one, but the next one possibly is right in this stretch.

We just came down and we drove about halfway down and she was like, that's good right here. Okay. on the second floor. It was all hands on deck. Canines tried to find Maddie's scent. Hold on buddy, I gotta fix it. It looks like it's your lead. Hold on. I gotta fix it. I know, he's... whenever I open the door he wants to jump out. Hello. Come easy. Hello. Let me see.

You're stinky. Hold on, dude. I'm gonna get the center. Hold on, son. See if you want to pick it up again just in case i have to like reintroduce it to him okay sorry the day after those body worn camera videos were taken stern spoke with detectives at length. They locked him into a story about what happened that morning, what he did, and why.

Woke up around 7, 7.15, somewhere around there, which is an early start for us, but we had talked about getting McDonald's breakfast beforehand, so we wanted to make good time. We did make good time. We got out the door maybe 7.30, 7.45-ish, maybe. Got over to that area. She was asleep in the car most of the time, just snoozing until we got there. We got to McDonald's. We're close to McDonald's. I said, do you still want it? She wasn't interested in the McDonald's anymore, so we continued on. Stearns then told detectives about dropping off Maddie and why he didn't take her directly to school. She's got this phase that she's been into lately where she's very particular about what car she's seen getting out of in front of the school. She prefers her mom's car, but my cars are, I guess, kind of hooties.

I get it. It's an image thing but that was sometime probably between 8 20 and 8 40 ish somewhere in there it was along the stretch of the road that on the right side that has all the communities on it before you get to the overpass you could see the overpass from where it was. So it was on that side on that stretch of road. And that's where I dropped her off. She said she was going to go wait for her friends. She was going to go find them and hang out and wait for her friends. And I asked if that was going to be okay. She said, yeah, it's fine. Kids get dropped off early enough as it is. it's not totally unusual for that to happen.

It's just not usually that early that I drop her off. I do school runs every once in a while for her. I said, okay, let her out. Have a good day. I love you. Thanks. Love you, too. And I turned around and was driving away and was watching her in my rearview mirror to make sure that she was going where she was supposed to go. She was moving in that direction, but she was rummaging around in her backpack or something. What I assumed was probably headphones or something like that, but I found out later that she forgot her phone here, so she may have been rummaging for her phone.

But she was still kind of making her way towards that direction. So it looked okay. It looked like any other day. And I just continued on. One thing that investigators always found odd in this case, Stefan Stern said that he and Maddie, they just happened to leave their phones at the condo that morning when he claimed that he dropped her off at school.

This is how he explained that. Is it normal for her to not have her phone? Unfortunately, she's severely ADHD, as am I and her mother. So it is not uncommon at all in that very, very usual thing for her to forget things. She'd forget her head if it wasn't screwed on. We're forgetful about, you know, writing her about that. We'll remind her, and then it will leave our mind, and she'll say, okay, and then it will leave her mind.

And is she on medication for this stuff? Normally, yes. She's been staying with her grandparents a lot this week while her mom was working. So she has not been getting her meds a whole lot. Okay. So she was really spaced out. Where is mom working at? What changed in her hours that she needs on this thing?

She's training, so it's not a set schedule yet. Within days, Stearns was placed under arrest. He would later be charged with more than 60 sex cri The sheriff of Orange Cou was the prime suspect in It's our belief that she and that he moved her bo said back when Stearns wa

custody that he believed Stearns left the apartmen that morning. Our detecti that Maddie was dead when Stearns left the apartment complex with her that morning. Our detectives have determined that Madeline was never dropped off on the morning of February 26th near her school. Instead, we believe she was already dead at the time and that Stefan Stearns moved her body in the early morning hours on that day. We have video evidence that shows Stefan Stearns discarding items in a dumpster in that apartment complex in Kissimmee at 735 on Monday, February 26. Detectives later recovered Madeline's backpack and her school-issued laptop from that dumpster. At 8-19, we have evidence that shows Stephan Stearns returning to the complex and Madeline was visible in that vehicle.

We believe she was already dead at that time. The arrest of Stephan Stearns came after this exchange with detectives where they confronted him about his cell phone, which he claims to have accidentally factory reset the day that Maddie disappeared. From what I understand, you gave the deputies consent to look through your phone. You did? Okay. And you voluntarily gave it to them so they could bring it here to do the extraction and stuff like that. Okay. What do you think was on the phone? Text messages.

Text messages. Emails. Phone stuff. Pictures? Oh, yeah. What kind of pictures were on there? Training card pictures, lightsaber pictures, Disney pictures. Do you have a Google account?

Yeah. Do you save pictures to your Google account? Sometimes. Or is it automatically? I know sometimes phones sync to a cloud. Yeah, I think it backs up to Google. Here's where I'm going to be brutally honest with you. There's a phone.

And I'm pretty sure you know what some of those pictures are about. You're a very intelligent person. And I don't want you to discredit yourself by saying you don't know about all the pictures that are on your phone. You understand what I'm saying? So do you want to add to the list of pictures? I don't know. Should I be talking with a lawyer right now? I can't answer that question. My sole purpose right now is to see if I can find...

And I'm really hoping you can help me. Okay. I'd like to try to help, but I feel like I should probably have a lawyer present at this point. So you're wanting an attorney? Yeah, I think so. Okay. That can happen. I want to let you know you're not free to leave. You're being detained. Okay? Do you want to know what you're being detained for? Yeah.

Capital sexual battery and possession of child pornography. Okay. Okay. So we are going to step out. If you need anything, please tap on this door. Okay. So we are going to step out. If you need anything, please tap on this door. Okay. And there's gonna be detectives outside that will be able to assist you. Okay.

Detectives had also confronted Jen Soto about allowing her daughter to sleep in the same bed with Stefan Stearns. Sleepovers before. Yeah. You want to watch movies and eat snacks. Can you do that? I'm like, no, no, no. We can all watch movies down here together.

We can all sleep down here together. for. Yeah. You want to watch movies and eat snacks. Can you do that? I'm like, no, no, no. We can all watch movies down here together. We can all sleep down here together. Um, up until, I mean, up until, up until June, all the time. So we were always, she would sleep in the middle. I would sleep on this side. He would sleep on the other side. Um, it wasn't until June that he got his own bedroom and I sent him upstairs. That's where the, that's where the requests for sleepover started. Um, and I kept telling her, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no I'm not comfortable with that but eventually at some point we really want to watch

and I forgot what week it was they really wanted to watch something and I was really tired and I said okay fine go ahead but this can't happen often but honestly I think I can count on one hand how many times that's happened. And it hasn't been many times that I've allowed her to have a supper party with him, to be alone in a bed with him.

I'm usually around all the time. Detectives also pressed Jen Soto about their concern that she might be covering for Stearns or that she might know more than she was saying about her daughter's disappearance. But outside of you reporting her missing, and I may be wrong, I haven't been involved in all aspects of it, but you have not shown me one bit that you prioritize her over him. And that sucks. Not because we're working our asses off for your family, not because we have people out there sweating their asses off for your family, but because I feel like all I care about is your care is to make sure Stefan doesn't get held

accountable. I don't care anymore. Anymore? Because we're being nice. Because I'm not being nice. No. But up until Thursday, it was okay that she gave him a big deal. Get a lawyer. No, it wasn't. It wasn't okay. I was, honestly, I saw it and I was in shock.

And I don't know why my first reaction was to tell him to get a lawyer, but I saw that and I was in shock and I was just like, I don't know what to believe. I don't know what to believe. It's easy to believe it now. We showed you pictures of it. You can't deny it anymore. The sex was okay. The murder's not. At least that makes sense. I want to know

what the body is. And not because I think you're a bad parent. Not because I think you're a bad parent. Dead or alive, she's missing. Her body is out there. Her body needs to be recovered so she can have a proper burial, a proper funeral. She needs to be laid to rest. Your family needs to be able to mourn her.

And we need that information. That is life. That is not life of the law. That's not life of the sheriff's office. That is common decency. That is what she deserves. That is what you deserve. That is what your family deserves. Jen Soto has never been charged with a crime related to Maddie Soto's death or disappearance. I want to be very clear about that. And the state attorney's office has told me in statements in the past that the evidence shows that one person at this point is responsible for Maddie's death. And that person is Stephan Stearns. Shortly after that interview on March 1st, Maddie's body was found on a farm property thanks to a tip from someone who saw a person matching Stearns' description changing a flat tire the day that Maddie went missing. Stearns was charged with murdering Maddie

more than a month later. So many disturbing details have emerged since Stearns' arrest. Documents revealed that Maddie was strangled and that investigators say they have surveillance videos showing Stearns moving Maddie's body from the front seat of his silver Lincoln to the trunk in a parking garage of a hotel that morning that she disappeared. Investigators found Maddie's backpack and one of her white Crocs in a trash compactor. Also, there are suspicions that Maddie may have been pregnant. There also has been discussion about Maddie texting about two sides of a coin. In documents, Maddie's name is redacted, but we know from other investigative documents that she and Stephan Stearns were texting about this coin and not her mom. Detectives wrote on 12-16-2023 at 0047 hours, Madeline sends a text message to Stephan that contained a photograph of two coins.

The coins had the inscription of new parent decision coin and appeared to be from Amazon.com. Madeline sends two follow-up texts to Stefan stating, we need this and get it for us, please. A search of Amazon for these coins revealed these coins are for new parents, where one can flip a coin to decide if it is the mother's or father's time to complete a task for a newborn. Due to the fact that this conversation was not near Father's Day or Mother's Day leads one to believe Madeline and Stefan had possibly spoken about conceiving a child. If this indicates that Maddie was pregnant or thought she was pregnant or was thinking about becoming pregnant in the future. It's a major issue in this case. Maddie was a kid.

She was 12 when she sent this text. And there has been speculation that she may have been pregnant since she had possibly missed her menstrual cycle that month. We still don't know if that's true. Those coins look like this on the Amazon website. Stearns' trial on those sex crimes charges is scheduled for February. His trial for Maddie's murder is scheduled to begin in September of 2025. He's been in jail since his arrest

and he has pleaded not guilty. That's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.