Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Abused at 8, Murdered at 13; The Sad, Short Life of Madeline Soto

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

AUTOPSY REPORT WILL NOT BE RELEASED. On this episode of Body Bags, Joseph Scott Morgan will explain what happened to Madeline Soto and Dave Mack will dig into the back story of the entire family. You will find out by the time she reached 13-years-old, Madeline Soto had already been sexually abused for years. When she was a “missing 13-year-old" from Florida, the news covered every tidbit of information about the search for the teen. One piece of evidence that made it to the press was how Madeline Soto told a friend when she turned 13, she was going to live in the woods. That is why police searched the woods for Madeline.     Subscribe to Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan : Apple Podcasts Spotify iHeart   Transcript Highlights  00:00:28 Introduction, talk about parents protecting children  00:04:28 Talk about Madeline Soto saying she wanted to live in the woods  00:05:31 Discussion of ages 12 and 13  00:09:04 Discussion of Madeline not taking cell phone  00:12:29 Talk about family being told about evidence  00:16:42 Discussion of time children go to school  00:20:07 Discussion of Madeline Soto seen in vehicle  00:21:49 Talk about being haunted by evidence  00:26:26 Discussion of Madeline Soto  00:30:26 Talk about video surveillance of suspect  00:33:22 Discussion of 60 charges against suspect   00:37:32 Discussion of evidence of previous abuse See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. When I was 13 years old, I played baseball. And the reason I bring that up is that I always thought that I would never be able to, but something clicks when you hit that age, 12 or 13. I was never a very good baseball player prior to that. I was not naturally gifted at it. But when you hit 12 or 13, like so many other things at that time in life,

there's something that arises within you as a child where you begin to kind of see your way just a little bit. Certainly not all the way. I've had middle schoolers in my house. Trust me, they haven't seen their way clear in all things, but there's something that happens at that magical age where your future begins to brighten a little bit. You kind of go from being a child into that teen world and you start to, on wobbly legs get your footing but you know for many kids unfortunately like the one we're gonna speak of today the

future doesn't brighten it gets darker and darker until there's no light at all. Today, we're going to talk about the homicide of Matt Soto. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, I'm weary brother. I'm weary and I'm tired of covering these cases. It seems like they just will not stop. They are and you know I'd like to say that it you know and of course Harmony is a lot younger but it seems like every time we turn around there is another one of these cases in the news where children have been failed and it's like it's a broken record it's like we can just insert you know that that little bit of sound into these episodes that we do the children have been failed the children have been failed over and over and over and over and over again.

Coming on the heels of Audrey Cunningham, this story made both you and I sick to our stomach because we had just put that horrid story. At least we had a conclusion. We had somebody in jail. Again, I know we're not supposed to do this, Joe, but as a parent, as a father, if something happens to my child under my watch, it's my responsibility. It's our job as parents to protect our children from the monsters and the bad people.

And when we introduce the monsters and bad people into their life, then it's on us. In Madeline's case, she's found out in this horrible abandoned area where she's recovered by law enforcement and the investigators out there. After having searched for her for some time. The story of Madeline Soto began as a 13-year-old girl is missing. And because that's how I end up coming into these stories with Nancy Grace and some of the other stuff that we do, you dig it from the very beginning. She's missing. And here was the here was the drill. She was being taken to school. She's 13 by her mother's longtime boyfriend.

Not some short time guy she just met, but a longtime influence in their home. And he took her to school. Now, the first thing we were told is that maybe at that age, Madeline said she was embarrassed of his car and didn't want him to drop her off at school, so he dropped her off a couple of blocks from the school so nobody would see her, so she wouldn't be embarrassed. Now, that story made sense in a very small way because I've had a 13-year-old daughter that was embarrassed if I breathed. And so I

understand that. But as we started following it, there was another thing that came up and that was on her cell phone. There was a note that she wrote to a friend that when she turned 13, she was going to move out and live in the woods. So police looked at that and said, Hey, we got to go check the woods. might have done it she just turned 13 but in my mind when i saw that joe as somebody who reads these stories and follows them up and has to research them i thought she was saying there's a monster in my house in my life i gotta get away from yeah what's what's so what would compel a 13-year-old to want to put that, to leave the comfort of her home to go live in the woods in Florida? In Orlando, where it's humid and bugs are the size of horses.

Yeah, what's going to make you leave the comfort of your, you know, environmentally controlled air conditioning and soft bed with a pillow and food to eat and also the other thing you have to consider i think as an investigator you start to talk about kids and you know i was reflecting back you know the changes that kids go through it at this age and this age for some reason the 12 and 13 year old age you've got this introduction in hormones that are raging throughout the body. I know that's rote to say that, but it's, it's the truth. And, you know, and you'll have kids that will just suddenly for no reason, I know parents and in the sound of my voice can identify with this. You'll, you'll have a child that will just start raging in front of you.

And there's no explanation, you know, it just comes out of nowhere. And there are a lot of kids, you know, you got the old's no explanation, you know, it just comes out of nowhere. And there are a lot of kids, you know, you got the old image of the, you know, the old hobo walking down the road with a stick on his shoulder, you know, he's got his, you know, his belongings tied up and the handkerchief hanging off of his back. And you're thinking, you know, kids are going to run away and kids do run away. That's been, that's been an issue for years and years, you know, milk cartons and all these sorts of things. But, you know, milk cartons and all these sorts of things. But, you know, when you get down to the heart of it as an investigator and you begin to kind of peel these layers back, you think, okay, now, was there something, some kind of stimulus, if you will, if you look at it, you know, from the perspective of, you know, a scientific experiment that was introduced into the equation that's going to

compel this child to leave that environment. Why would she say this? Why would she, why would she do that? I don't think they did that. I, okay. You and I both know that they're in an investigation. There's not just a parallel investigation that the police force runs. They're also running game on the media. They give the media the story they need to cover the, so they get the information out, especially if you're actually looking for a 13 year old girl. And then the parallel investigation of here's what the evidence looks like. It looks like

maybe she met somebody at this church where he church where her mom's boyfriend dropped her off. But the reality is we need to take a really good look at mom's boyfriend because he's probably the most likely story here. So the police are doing two things and telling us a third. So, okay, they have the story that she wrote something about wanting to live in the woods when she turned 13. Well, why 13? If you're going to live in the woods, what's the difference between 12 and 13? That's for starters. But second of all, the story was that she was embarrassed by the car, so he dropped her off to save her the embarrassment.

And we, the media, we were told that there was video showing her at this church right there on the main road and that it appeared she was waiting for somebody. So that led us to believe that maybe she had been talked to online, had communicated with somebody who made arrangements to meet her at this location at this time and that she had been picked up and she was gone. And that has happened so many times. And we've done plenty of stories on those that don't turn out good. And so there was that story. And then there was the sheriff. The sheriff was very public. He called press conferences. He said, this is what we're doing. This is what we're looking for. This is what we have found. Very direct, very fast. Something you and I brought up over the last several shows, Joe, the number of video cameras that exist in surveillance. People have them at home now with our doorbell cameras. Many buildings, schools, churches have digital coverage of

surveillance cameras because they are inexpensive. So they have access to all these cameras that can follow movement. And so police having that on top of having cell phones. And by the way, one of the things police caught onto very early on was that Madeline didn't take her cell phone with her to school. Now, if she was going to school that day and her plan was to either meet up with somebody else or to go off on the, whatever it was, her communication with the world started and ended with her phone and she left that at home. So there were a number of things going here that had the police really on target with what they were doing they were able to track down the uh boyfriend's cell phone and while they were you know they have to do all sorts of different legal wrangling they can't just grab your phone hey let me look at your phone they can't do that and if you're unwilling

you know they'll ask you for it hey dave look you're not a suspect or anything well they know they won't say that they never say you're not a suspect they say no they'll never tell you that they tell this dave look we really want you to help find your you know uh your daughter your girlfriend's daughter whatever try to appeal to your humanity look here man we know you're not we know you're not involved can i take a look at your phone yeah no uh. Can I take a look at your phone? Yeah. No, you can't take a look at my phone. I don't know what kind of person you are.

No, you can't look at my phone. Okay, then we'll get a search warrant. And they're going to get a search warrant for that, and then they're going to find out what's on your phone. And that's what actually tripped up Stephen Stearns. That's where the truth of the investigation came out, because the police put him under arrest. We got stuff on his phone. They didn't give us a lot of very specific stuff, if you remember, Joe. They're very vague, but it was enough for us to believe there was some type of child pornography found on this man's phone that led them to believe he was not just involved.

He was the person behind the disappearance of madeline soto and when the police announced while we're still looking for her hoping he had stashed her somewhere that she was hidden that she was i mean hoping all these horrible things would be true because all those horrible things were better than the fact that she would be dead and the police came out three days in and said we believe she's dead they never do that police never do that joe have you ever seen police come out during a search when we're looking in the woods we're looking off the road with dogs we're looking in i that i wrote that down on a questionnaire for you have you ever seen a sheriff come out and say we believe we're looking for a body she's dead yeah the one the one thing that investigators can impart to family and friends and those that

are vested in the life of a child like Madeline is hope. But as we can tell, it turned out early on that all hope in Madeline's case was lost. You think about what must it be like when you're looking for a child and you're an investigator. And you do have hope at that moment in time. And suddenly, suddenly there is that instance where something that you're holding in your hand, as small as a smartphone, for instance, opens up a world to arguably some of the most evil that could be perpetrated upon a child. It's no wonder that hope is lost at that moment in time, because suddenly you have a key that unlocks this door. When you begin thinking about what happened to her, I think that police, when they saw all of this data, Dave, you can see how the police at that moment in time began to zero in on Stearns. At this point, we were four days into the investigation of looking for her,, actually, when the sheriff sheriff Mina said, we do not believe she's alive.

It shocked me as somebody who covers these, it shocked me when he said it, but then I thought he'd already told her mom. He'd already talked to the family and said, and gave them the reason why. Now we didn't know it at that moment, what the family knew. The family had already been told the evidence they had and the evidence that they had against

Mr. Stephen Stearns, the man who had been living in that home together with as stepdad, even though he was mom's boyfriend, he'd been there for a number of years and had been a father figure for Madeline Soto. And what the police told them was, well, first things first, we saw him, saw Stephen Stearns on video at about 7.30 in the morning, the day he was supposed to take Madeline to school. We saw him putting her backpack and her school-issued laptop into a dumpster in the back of your apartment complex. Yeah, that amazes me that people that engage in this kind of activity, as dark as this is, and trust me, this is very dark. It's not so much that what was contained in her backpack was dark or what was on her, it's probably a Chromebook.

I think that a lot of these schools are issuing Chromebooks. It's not that that stuff's dark. It's just that they know what else they have, I think, what's going to tie them back to the location of a missing child or in a child that is a homicide victim. They would be so bold as to try to distance themselves from any kind of evidence of her existence as if she's, you know, vanished off of the face of the earth, that they have to have an awareness, Dave, that CCTV is around, but yet they will go to, go to a place like a dumpster and toss this stuff in.

And, you know, and the thing about, the thing about dumpsters, um, you know, when we, we begin to search them and I've, I've had to go, I've had to climb inside of dumpsters for years and years and, and dig through, look for items. I've had to look for elements of the body, body parts, clothing, all kinds of stuff. And, you know, someday I'd plan on doing a show on nothing but landfills and searching for bodies in those kinds of locations. But, you know, we have a method to do this and it's painstaking work. But, you know, when you have CCTV that gives you an idea of where, you know, where something might be, it kind of narrows it down for you.

You know, it's something that might have connection. And the quality of the video has to be really good because they were specifically able to identify this book bag. And then, you know, once they get their hands on it, they can tie it back to her directly. And you've got this guy that's placing the stuff in here without a care in the world. Right. At least seemingly. And this is a time well before he was supposed to take her to school. Yeah.

Yeah. And so that, that again goes back to a post-mortem timeline well let me ask you because joe you know we have we live in an area joe and i both live in the same area i don't know if y'all know that but we do yeah even though we're both from very different parts of the country and we work on national television and radio broadcast networks but we live within 15 minutes of each other. We never knew it. It's so funny, but in our area, children tend to go to school. Their, uh, elementary and junior high schools take in about seven 30, eight o'clock in the morning. Well, at the school that Madeline Soto went to her school day did not begin until nine 30. And so police already had a few things

in their back pocket that we were unaware of. I look at it from my standpoint. I was thinking about when my children would go to school and well, 830 in the morning. Okay. Where was he? He was dropping her off near the school at 830, according to Stephen Stearns. But police were like, why were you dropping her off there an hour before her school day was going to begin? So police knew certain things they were not putting out to the public.

And that's where this came in. Two hours before he's going to take her to school, he's getting rid of her school issued laptop and her backpack. The backpack that we do know was described because we had it as part of our descriptors of things she had with her. Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, was described because we had it as part of our descriptors of things she was had with her. Yeah, exactly. Because, you know, they're listen, the police are not going they're going to exhaust every avenue. You know, if they're if they're invested in this case and in most cases involving kids that are missing, they're going to pull every bit of footage that they possibly can in order to try to track these kids down. Any child or, you know, even an elderly person that's at risk, they're going to try to do everything that they possibly can to, you know, kind of tighten down the focus so that they can begin to understand it.

That's why I'm so shocked by the fact that not that. And I'm glad that he didn't take more care. Right. But he didn't. It's like he had very little self-awareness and i think that you can see that thread running through all of this behavior very little self-awareness until it gets to this critical moment and then her life ends joe the part that got me in all of his friends is that according to the affidavit that we've now seen, that's 36 pages long, they actually have Stearns, allegedly, on video driving the car,

and they can see Madeline's body in the vehicle, and she was already dead. Yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry. All I can say is that here you've got a guy that is on video throwing away her backpack and her laptop. And then he's driving with her dead body in the car. Yeah. And they can see it from the surveillance cameras. You said he had no awareness.

That points to zero awareness of what was he thinking? Was he in some kind? Could he use that as a defense? Joe, you've seen this everywhere. But would he be able to say that he was so out of himself he was so crazed by whatever had taken him over in that moment that he wasn't thinking smart enough to even cover that track well let's don't give them that idea for the defense because they'll probably snap it up and here here's what i've i've always thought

about these cases that are over the top like this that I work on or not work on, but cover in the media. It's almost as if the more grotesque and the more absurd things are as, you know, they reach such a level of horror that is used by the defense many times to attempt to demonstrate that the person is in some way incapacitated mentally. You know, they're not capable of making good decisions. Whereas I think that maybe years and years ago, they would have said, no, this is, this is evidence of evil. And, uh, and so it's not necessarily like that anymore. You've got a man. And again, we have to go back to the timeline, and I'm hoping that we're going to learn more, putting a finer point on the postmortem interval relative to her remains. When that finally does come about, when you're looking at her and you're thinking, well, first off, he's got her riding about in the car with him. The police at least have alluded to the fact that they could

tell that she was deceased. Now, what does that mean? That means that she's obviously, goes without saying, she's not moving, but was she postured in some particular way where it looks like she's unconscious? She might be leaning on the door. She's slumped over. Or was it something else? Did they have such a high elevation of the camera where they could see down into the interior of the vehicle and appreciate some kind of other odd posturing within the vehicle? And I'd like to know, and hopefully this is going to come out as well, is what the status of her clothing was. And I think that that plays a very key role here, Dave. Because as we know, and as we're about to reveal, what this child endured, what she went through, from the perspective of this individual being in her life,

are things that even I, on this show, will not even begin to describe. I hesitate to use the word relief. I think there's an abiding sadness with it. If you're on a search team and you're trying to find a child and you're hoping against hope that they might be alive, I don't know that you feel relief when you come across the broken body of a small child. You know, that sort of thing haunts those of us in investigations. It does for years and years.

I can still see the faces of children from 40 years ago dave you know they never they never leave you at all and and i can promise you that these heroes that were out there uh doing this search are going to be haunted by what they saw and what was wrought at the hands of, of this monster. And that's where maybe because, uh, I don't know. I, I'm only, I only know what I'm told. Uh, rarely do I even see pictures, um, unless I have to, I, it's a choice for me, thankfully, that I don't have to dig in that far. I'm not one of those people that is out there doing that. But my heart breaks every time I do because my mindset when somebody is missing, which is why I was so shocked that the police came out and said, we know she's dead. We believe she's dead

because I always think of JC Dugard. I think of her in particular being gone, taken right in front of her stepfather, snatched right off the street and being gone for 18 years and turning back up. And I think about that every time some child goes, well, there's always a chance. You know, there's always a chance. And then my heart breaks when we got it. You know, you find out, OK, now we've got another boyfriend. He has usually they have a criminal record, but now we find out that his phone is eat up with horrible things. We know that the minute they gave him a chance

to speak, he lawyered up. He said, lawyer, won't you just talk to us? Look, you've got to have some relationship with this girl. You know, you were in her life since she was eight years old. Please help us, help us lawyer, help us find lawyer. And so when they did find her, Joe, what did police discover when they found the body of Madeline Soto? Well, we don't really know what they found at this point in time because they're not releasing a lot of information. We do know that she was recovered in a wooded area. And look, and I understand, I think that a lot of us that, that are familiar with this case and that have been hoping against hope that she would resurface alive. We were hoping, we're hoping to understand, you know, precisely what did happen to her. But, you know, we don't have that data as of yet.

We do not have a cause of death. In Madeline's case, I'm still trying to understand why that has not been released to this point. But can I just tell you what we do have, Dave? And let me just kind of throw a date out to you, okay? A date range, and I want everybody to listen to this. We have date ranges on Stern's phone that begin, you ready? June 19th, 2019. And it ends February 26th, 2024. You know what's contained in that, Dave? Graphic images. Graphic images going back all these years. Now let's do a little arithmetic here Madeline is 13 right and so let's do the calculation on that it's 2024 right now and let's just say we'll ballpark it and say that Madeline was born in what year Uh, 2000. She had just turned 13 when she was missing. Yeah.

Yeah. So 2011, 2011, Dave. So eight years old, 2019 day, this child, this precious angel. Since 2019, when she was eight years old, Dave, all of her teeth have not come in yet. Mark that. Just think about that. She's still experiencing growing pains throughout her body. Mom's having to buy new clothes because she's growing.

We know what that's like if you're a parent. Bedtime. Bedtime is supposed to be at 8 or 9. You've got to get to bed, honey. It's time to go to bed. A child cannot yet fully take care of themselves. Eight years old. Eight years old.

And there are images on this person's phone going back all those years. Now for us, you know, us old people in the audience, I count myself as old. 2019 doesn't seem that long ago, but when you're living in a hell like this, and trust me, it was, it probably seemed like an eternity for her. Back to your earlier comment, Dave. The comment that she had actually made, I think she would have rather have lived in the woods, in the heat, in the humidity, covered with bugs, than live this existence. And she even had that awareness, you know, going back, you know, all this time. She knew that it was bad, even at her young age, that she knew that there had to be something that was not abnormal like this, that it would be more normal and more secure for her to live away from her home than to indwell this structure with this person because of everything that he had done to her.

Now, Joe, when you and I look at this, we're coming at it from the standpoint of how is it possible that you could have somebody in your world that is living with you, is around you and yours every minute of the day. And you don't know anything's going on. How is that possible? Now I'm not blaming the mother. I'm questioning the mother. That's all.

And I don't think that's an, um, I don't think that's a bad thing to do because this 13 year old girl is dead. Joe, I didn't do it. You didn't do it. Somebody who knew that girl since before all of her teeth came out, as you mentioned.

I have a grandson that's eight, Joe. Yeah. And I know the children he's around. I know because of the friends, you know, I and it breaks my heart to think that nobody was watching out for her from that age until she's 13, where she's writing. I'd rather be in the woods. I'm not blaming here. I'm just saying, Joe Scott Morgan, how is it possible somebody can have that on their phone and you wouldn't know?

That doesn't, I mean, how do they, what are they doing in their world that they can have, are they that crazy that they can have this whole thing going on over here and hide it from you? You don't see it? Yeah, I don't understand that either, that you could be so numb and lack such self-awareness that you don't know that this is going on. And there have been, when it comes to Stephen Stearns, there have been 60 new charges now to this point at the time of this recording. I got to ask you about these, Joe, because of the number, because I don't understand the charges. I mean, I understand them, but I don't know what they actually mean. And I know you do.

So let me start off with one thing. And it goes back to when police saw what they said was Madeline in the car with Steven Stearns. I want to get this timeline squared away so you know where she was when they found her. You mentioned that we don't know that much about it. Well, we do know that the morning that they saw Stephen Stearns getting rid of her backpack

and her laptop in the dumpster behind their apartment complex, that he came back to the apartment complex and was leaving again around 819 that morning. He was that's where they saw. Madeline. In the car, in the vehicle with Stearns, and they believe she was already dead at that point. Now, near where her body was found.

It was out in this area off of Old Hickory Tree road in a very rural part of osceola osceola osceola county now she was found in this area where stephen stearns was seen for about an hour and a half changing the tire on a vehicle so what they're trying to and she was found in the clothing she was described as wearing that morning. We do know that much. So they saw her, what they believed to be dead in the back of the, in the car. I don't know if it was back or front, but in the car with him at 819 that morning. And then out in this rural area, he was based on his cell phone and other information, eyewitness accounts of the car being there for an hour and a half. And she was found near that area

where he was allegedly changing the tire on the car. We don't know what he, we don't know everything that he did to her in life. We don't know everything he did to her in death. But that does kind of set the stage for you of what he did to get rid of her body. He wasn't thinking things through when he threw the bag in the back in the dumpster. No, he wasn't. And I wonder, I wonder relative to the changing of the tire, if that was, if that was planned, right. You know, to give, was that a stage set up thing?

Yeah. So that you can kind of alibi yourself relative to that. You're moving about, people see you take a tire out. They might mistake that, uh, if you're removing the remains of a 13 year old child and you're walking them off the road, but yet you come back and you're, you know, you're still feigning changing your tire. I don't know, maybe his tire was flat, but we do know that her remains were found you know close out there i think one of the um sidebars on this whole thing that was unfortunate was that uh the sheriff had actually sent out on social media an image that was apparently intended to be something that had something to do with the retiree community in his jurisdiction,

but unfortunately it was actually an image of Madeline's body at the scene. And I know that there's tremendous regret over that. And again, with phones, you never know what you're going to be sending out or what folks are going to be exposed to. The caption below the photo said, a great day with our seniors, It had a smiley emoji. Yeah. And, you know, and that's, that's certainly a tragedy.

But not intentional. No, it's not. I mean, I don't think that that's the case, but unfortunately this child who has just, you know, I mean, look, it's, it is, it's just kind of the exclamation point on all of this. And I think that from the perspective of she this child is going to be when this does go to trial, that jury that's impaneled in this case, they're going to be exposed to all of this. These horrible images that are there. And, you know, there, there, there's 60 charges that have been filed.

What does it mean when of those 60 charges, there's eight counts of sexual battery of a child under 12. What does that tell you, Joe? Well, it tells me that, uh, you know, she's, she's 13, right. And I mean, yeah, we did the calculus on that. Uh, uh, She's 13, right? Just turned? Yeah, we did the calculus on that. So they have proof? This was going, yeah. You know, when we go back to that date, that solid date, that benchmark in Tom that they discovered on him,

there's some kind of Tom stamp in there that goes all the way back to 2019, Dave, that this abuse has been happening. They can document this, and this is key here. They can document this all through this time. And one more thing I think that I'd like to address here that – and I don't want to go too far-field into forensic psychology where people, you know, like my friends like Karen Stark, you know, kind of they're in that world of forensic psychology. But I do know this with sexual predators and child sexual predators.

They will actually they have time more utility for the abuser. They begin to look for somebody else that fits within that bracket. And this has been demonstrated several times over in cases all over the country over the years. And the tragedy of this, we're saying that she's fully clothed. She's actually in the clothing of the years. And the tragedy of this, she's, you know, we're saying that she's fully clothed. She's actually in the clothing of the day. If and when they charge him with homicide and Madeline's, uh, murder, um, I'm wondering if, if there's not necessarily going to be any kind of disruption or clothing,

if he made this decision at this moment in time, allegedly, to take her life, if it was just like, okay, he purposed that morning to end her life and place her body out there, she just aged out. Or is it going to be where we see some kind of trauma on her where he's beaten her to the point because she threatened, perhaps? She said, I'm not going to live like this. Remember what you said, and I think that this is very important, what you alluded to early on. She said she didn't want to dwell this world anymore. She wanted to live out in the woods.

Well, maybe she had expressed that to him at that point in time. And look, he's got everything to lose here. Right. Because he's going to go in for, as the old timers used to say, you're going in all day, pal. Right. You know, you're going in forever and ever. Amen. You're not going to see the light of day again. There was another thing on here too, Joe.

Okay. We had the eight counts of sexual battery of a child under 12, but we have five counts of sexual battery with a child between 12 and 18 would that basically incorporate the time because they have video evidence yes on his phone okay yeah and it's not it's not just photographic it's video evidence so you've got apparently there's evidence of this going on and i'm, I'm, I refuse. I'm not going down this road. I'm not going to get so deep into this, particularly, uh, given, uh, what we know at this point, if people want to read the affidavit, I, you know, I, you know, you can find it, it's there. Uh, but it implies, and what we're talking about here and the reason this is important is that there

are breaks in time here it's not breaks it's more like these benchmarks in time and that's why this case is so strong dave right the electronic evidence and of course what we're going to find i think probably physically uh that she had gone through there will be evidence of abuse oh yeah this is a young girl this is a grown man and there will be evidence of abuse. Oh, yeah. This is a young girl. This is a grown man. And there will be evidence of abuse that has gone on forever and ever. And I would imagine that many times with children that have been sexually abused, they will act out in inappropriate manners many times. And when they go back to interview people that were peripheral to her, say in school, like teachers, perhaps, hopefully a counselor, if they took time to spend time with Madeline, maybe she demonstrated something in the classroom or in social situations that seemed odd.

And if you have someone that is a forensic psychologist that can go back and look at this and say, and they can say, well, she fits a pattern here. She fits a pattern and we can kind of identify this. And that would, in fact, be addressed in court. I got to tell you, Stearns is looking at a real uphill battle as they try to move forward with this case. But I do know this. Right now, somewhere out there, there are other children like Madeline. It's incumbent upon us to be aware of that. This is going on. It goes on every day. And unfortunately, we have a light that has dimmed and it's now been snuffed out.

The only thing that we can hope for is that there will be an ultimate price to be paid for these crimes. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Hike. This is an iHeart Podcast.