Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Maddie Soto Murder: Shocking Details Revealed By Suspect's Mom in New Documents

Starting point is 00:00:00 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. She was looking forward to my visit here. She was looking forward to us all being together. She was just happy. That was Stefan Stearns talking to detectives the day before he was charged with trying to destroy evidence that investigators said showed him sexually abusing Maddie Soto. Prosecutors would later charge Stearns with murdering Maddie. And now we're learning some stunning new details about what police claim Stearns' mother told them in the first days of the investigation.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Welcome to Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. We've been digging into the Maddie Soto murder investigation for months, and now we've uncovered new information about what happened when detectives searched the home of Stefan Stearns' parents days after Maddie went missing. This information is even more surprising given some of the statements that Stearns' mother, Debra, made in messages to her son in jail. We'll get into that in just a bit. But first, we have to go over the timeline. That's important here. Maddie was reported missing on the evening of February 26th when her mom went to pick her up at school and she didn't come out. 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

Starting point is 00:01:18 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, it was 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. So she never made it. Jen Soto talked to the deputy for a few minutes explaining what Maddie was wearing when she left for school.

Starting point is 00:01:48 Madeline Soto, age 13. I'm trying to get a clothing description now. What was she last seen wearing? Green hoodie. Green hoodie. White Crocs. White Crocs. Either blue or black pants. I think black shorts.

Starting point is 00:02:07 Black shorts? Yeah. Black shorts? Mm-hmm. Okay. I always find that part of the interaction interesting because Jen Soto would later tell detectives that she didn't see Maddie before she left for school that morning, that she maybe heard her and Stearns getting ready to leave.

Starting point is 00:02:21 Stearns was interviewed the morning after Maddie was reported missing. That was February 27th. And he told detectives about the last time that he saw Maddie. I said, okay, let her out. Have a good day. 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, like any other day, and I just continued on.

Starting point is 00:03:08 Police and prosecutors would later say that statement was a lie and that Maddie was never dropped off at school the morning of February 26th. Our detectives have determined that Madeline was never dropped off on the morning of February 26 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. Sheriff's officials also revealed that Stearns also drove with Maddie's dead body in the passenger seat of that Silver Lincoln he linc the morning of February 2 returned to the complex w

Starting point is 00:03:50 have video evidence that discarding items in a dum complex in Kissimmee at 7 26. Detectives later recovered Madeline's backpack and her school-issued laptop from that dumpster. Detectives in Kissimmee tracked Stearns' movements using license plate readers. They basically knew the route that he took when he left that morning. Even though he was a suspect in Maddie's disappearance early on, detectives still could not find her body. So they asked police to search the home of Stearns' parents in Northport, about three hours south of Kissimmee.

Starting point is 00:04:28 That's the view of the house on Google Maps. You see the silver Lincoln in the driveway. The police reports from that search are interesting when it comes to Stearns' mother. Officer Feagan wrote, On our arrival, we observed a female later identified as Deborah Stearns outside her residence and calling out for the name is redacted. That name being redacted will become important in a moment. The report continues. Contact was eventually made with Deborah, who was very emotional during our initial interaction. Initially, Deborah only appeared to be upset by a torso she found in her son Stefan's room. Deborah would elaborate on this torso and described it as

Starting point is 00:05:06 a sex doll. This was later determined to be a rubber slash plastic sex toy found by Deborah when she was cleaning the room where Stefan had been staying. Deborah advised that Stefan was not here, but she believed he had returned to the property last night. So this was February 28th, the Wednesday of that week, around 10 o'clock at night. It would have been dark outside. Maddie was reported missing two nights earlier on February 26th. It was later divulged, the report says, by Debra that she was awoken at exactly 319 hours this morning to her five dogs barking in a manner to alert her that someone was at the house. Debra's husband, Christopher Stearns,

Starting point is 00:05:45 was not at home last night as he had ventured to Orange County at approximately 2,300 hours to assist their son, Stefan Stearns, with a recent housing crisis. Deborah Stearns then explained the reasons why she believes Stefan would have returned to their home almost three hours south of Kissimmee. One part is redacted from the report, but then it says she believes Stefan could have returned for cash that was kept within the home by her and Christopher. Deborah Stearns then told the officer that she took something from Stefan's bedroom, but that is also redacted from the report. The officers took photos of Stefan Stearns' bedroom to document the way that it looked. They searched his parents'

Starting point is 00:06:25 home and said they found nothing of evidentiary value. Now, this was the same night that Stefan Stearns was taken into custody by Orange County Sheriff's deputies after the sheriff said they discovered Stearns had tried to delete evidence from his phone. At the same time, Stearns was being booked into the jail. Northport police wrote, Deborah expressed her disgust at the crimes her son is alleged to have committed and is hoping that, name redacted, it's safe to assume she means Maddie, is found alive. Deborah opined that these allegations worried her to the point that when she found the, quote, sex torso, she initially believed it to be real. This then led her to exit her residence and call out for

Starting point is 00:07:05 name redacted. That would be, of course, Maddie. The officer and a detective wrote that Deborah Stearns was worried that Stefan had returned to her home early that morning when the dogs awoke her and they were barking and that he may have put Maddie in the woods behind their house. Of course, the officer searched the area and did not find Maddie. Stearns had been living with his parents. This is why Stearns told police he went to Kissimmee that Sunday prior to see Maddie and her mom. It's my parents' house. They're old and they need help these days and they got a house full of poodles and it's chaos. So I needed to come back up here and just get away from that. Between two deaf old people yelling at each other and poodles yapping all the time, it's

Starting point is 00:07:51 enough to drive anyone up a wall. I'm just very happy to be back here. That Sunday, Stearns drove his dad, Silver Lincoln, from his parents' home in Northport to the apartment where Maddie and her mom lived in Kissimmee. Less than 24 hours later, police said Maddie was dead after celebrating her 13th birthday with a party at her grandparents. Hey, Crime Fix viewers, I want to tell you all about Wondry's awesome podcast, American Scandal. You can listen right now and explore the biggest political corruption scheme in US history in the latest season, Teapot Dome. Using vivid and immersive storytelling, American Scandal retraces the bribes, players, and underhanded deals related to the Teapot Dome scandal. In 1922, newspapers reported that Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall had leased federally owned oil reserves to two of the nation's wealthiest oil barons, Edward Doheny and Harry Sinclair. The scandal, named after one of the oil reserves in

Starting point is 00:08:50 Wyoming, would eventually send Sinclair to prison for contempt of Congress and jury tampering, and made Fall the first person ever convicted of a crime committed while serving in the U.S. Cabinet. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. And you can also binge this season, American Scandal Teapot Dome, early and ad-free right now on Wondery Plus and by going to our link, wondery.fm slash lawandcrimefix. Maddie's body was found that Friday on March 1st on a property on Hickory Tree Road. She was in a fetal position between two trees and covered in grass. Deputies were led to that area by a man who called in a tip saying that he saw a silver Lincoln and a man changing a flat tire there that Monday.

Starting point is 00:09:37 Stearns told police that he got a flat tire the day that Maddie disappeared. He claimed it happened after he dropped her off for school. Do you remember what places you visited? Yeah, Coliseum of Comics. Stopped by a couple targets and I was going to go to House Rules Games down by Oak and 192. I didn't make it that far. I got a flat tire on the way. Do you remember where you got your flat tire? It was on 192. I pulled into over into one of those plazas somewhere. It's been about 10 years since I switched out a tire though so I made a lot of rookie mistakes and ended up pinning my thumb between the frame and the jack. Yeah I'm lucky it's not a lot worse than it could have been. Now back to what Stearns's mother said

Starting point is 00:10:22 about her son and being disgusted by the allegations and hoping that Maddie would be found alive. It's interesting given what Deborah Stearns wrote to Stefan in jail at the end of June. That message says, I keep thinking about how you would not ever rat out a friend. It really made me mad and I felt like you valued them over us when you let them get away with stuff. Don't be doing that again. We all know that name redacted was heavily involved in this and I am disgusted that she is free and you are not when this is not all your fault. You need to think about yourself more and her less. She sure isn't thinking of you and how she can help you right now. That whole family is willing to stay quiet

Starting point is 00:11:01 and let you take the fall for everything. When you do that, you are hurting us too. Please get out of your head over this and start talking with your attorneys. This stuff is serious and you need to approach it as life and death, which it is. I think of the craziness that Name Redacted lived through with Name Redacted. Various partners, not a stable life at all for a child. I do pray for Name redacted and for you daily. In that message, Deborah Stearns is clearly talking about Maddie and her mother, Jen Soto. Jen Soto has not been charged with any crimes related to Maddie's death or disappearance. I want to bring in Dave Ehrenberg. He is the state attorney for Palm Beach County. He is not involved in this case though. Dave, your thoughts on this crazy police report

Starting point is 00:11:46 that we read where Matty Soto is missing and the cops go to search his parents' house and mom is outside yelling Matty's name and saying she found a sex torso, what she thought was a sex torso, in his bedroom. Yeah. when I became a prosecutor, I never thought I'd be on a podcast talking about sex torsos, but here we are. This case is bizarre. It's disgusting. And according to the police report,

Starting point is 00:12:14 it sounds like she, the mother, thought it was a real live body. And so that's why she called the police. She got all frantic. She realized then it was a sex torso, but she still didn't trust her son enough that she was calling out for Maddie. But the other part of the police reports we're learning, to me, that was really relevant was that she has always thought that there were others

Starting point is 00:12:37 involved. I think perhaps that goes to more of the jail calls, but she's a big believer that the mother is the main culprit here. And there's been a lot of talk on the internet that the mother should be arrested. But I think that if the police and prosecutors had enough evidence against the mother to charge her with a crime, they would have done so already. Yeah, and we've been pretty clear about that. There's been a lot of speculation and suspicion because in the police reports, it does note that Jen Soto made some inconsistent statements, but she faces no charges in this case. The police have said they have interviewed her. They've also said the investigation is ongoing.

Starting point is 00:13:17 But it does seem, you know, there is a difference here, Dave. We have mom, Deborah Stearns, the night that he is arrested for trying to allegedly delete photos of sexual abuse of Maddie off of his phone, out yelling for Maddie, thinking possibly that her son, she thinks that he hid her body in the woods behind the yard. She's fearful that this sex toy thing she found in the bedroom is a real torso. It almost sounds like she suspects her son did something to Maddie. But then later on in June, you're right. She sends that message on the jail tablet saying basically that suggesting her son is taking the fall for other people. So what do you think about that? I mean, is she just trying to help her son out? Or as a prosecutor, how do you view that message and the difference there?

Starting point is 00:14:09 You know, there are like different stages of grief. Well, here are different stages of being shocked that your son is involved in such a horrific crime. First, you want to be helpful. And then you start to rally around your son to think that, you know, get defensive. And you think that someone else should take the fall for this. There's someone else involved. She didn't quite say in the jail calls that you're innocent. She said that there's someone else who's more responsible, who could be of help. And she's letting you hang out to dry. So these are different stages, different days. But the evidence is so overwhelming against Stearns. And now in Florida,

Starting point is 00:14:48 you are eligible for the death penalty, not just for murdering someone, but for sexual assault on a child, which is what is being charged here. So he could get it either way. There's nothing good that's going to happen to him. And even if the mother is eventually prosecuted in this case, he's not going to get a break to turn on her because this guy is already facing the maximum penalty. They're not going to let their foot off the gas and not seek the death penalty against him because what he allegedly did is so horrific. It doesn't matter who else he tries to implicate. The allegations are horrific. He is innocent until proven guilty. He enjoys the presumption of innocence. But everything that we've read

Starting point is 00:15:29 through the police records and the court documents, it's absolutely horrifying the life that Maddie Soto, a 13-year-old girl, just turned 13, was living. There's almost a suggestion by Stearns' mother that other men had abused Maddie, even though Stearns, it appears, had been dating Jen Soto off and on for many years. So what do you think about that? Because the police have said the investigation's ongoing. Do you think that possibly maybe there's some truth to that? Because the police, when the prosecutor and the police have said the investigation's not over, it's ongoing, maybe that's what they're referring to potentially. I don't know. Yeah, I did take the police comments to mean that they are searching for more evidence to see if

Starting point is 00:16:20 there's others involved or whether the mother was so neglectful that she should be charged with child neglect. She's the one, after all, who allowed her daughter to sleep in the same bed in another room with Stearns. And if it's proven, or at least if it's shown with some evidence that there are other men involved, yeah, then I think it's much more likely that the mother gets charged. But you're right. Everyone's innocent until proven guilty, and the mother hasn't even been charged yet. But this investigation is ongoing. I suspect we'll see some more evidence. Don't know which way it's going to go, against the mother or against Stearns, but we're going to see some more evidence come out that we don't know of yet. Interesting. Interesting. They were leaving no stone unturned. It seemed like many law enforcement agencies were working together.

Starting point is 00:17:10 They even searched a storage unit down there in Northport. This is almost three hours south of Kissimmee, Orlando area. And so they were looking everywhere for Maddie's body because they couldn't find it. Yeah, well, they also knew that Stearns had visited that storage unit while the investigation was still going on, he had visited for a short period of time, I believe for 10 minutes. He got his way in there, even though it was not his storage unit. It was his father's. But we don't know what they found in there, if that was something that can be used against Stearns.

Starting point is 00:17:39 But, yeah, police, this is a high-profile case, and police know it, and they're taking their time because they don't want to make a mistake. They've got this guy behind bars and they don't want to start the speedy trial clock under the state law against the mother by charging her too soon. If you charge her too soon before you've got the goods, then you got to get her on trial before perhaps prosecutors are ready. And that is a danger. So I respect what law enforcement is doing. They are being meticulous. They are getting all the evidence, knowing that if they act too soon, then time won't be on their side. Yeah. And they said they didn't really find anything of evidentiary value in the storage unit. They did take swabs, though. They found a key chain

Starting point is 00:18:19 with a picture of a young girl and some other items. They also see some computers and things like that. So I'm sure there'll be some evidence found on there. Dave Ehrenberg, thank you so much. Thanks, Anjanette. Great to be with you. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me.

Starting point is 00:18:35 I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Maddie Soto Murder: Shocking Details Revealed By Suspect's Mom in New Documents

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Maddie Soto Murder: Shocking Details Revealed By Suspect's Mom in New Documents

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