Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - HORROR: MADELINE SOTO, 13, 'SLEPT IN BED' WITH MOM'S BOYFRIEND NIGHT BEFORE MURDER

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

As accused killer, Stephan Sterns,  adjusts to life in a jail cell, he complains to his brother via email about everything from the size of his cell, the noise, filth, and eating utensils.  Sterns complain his bed mat is flat with very little cushion left, his cell is small and filthy, and he claims there are spots on the wall that appear to be bloody fingerprints.  It is emails from Sterns' mother that contains shocking information as she encouraging him to tell the truth.Sterns' mother believes other people are involved in the murder of Maddie and she tells her son to stop protecting these people. Knowing the emails are not private and protected, Sterns mother alludes to a  woman being involved in the case saying she is quote "disgusted that she is free and you are not when this is not all your fault."  Some of the emails between Stephan Sterns and his mother seem a bit heavy handed, trying to make it seem as though Sterns is a "stand-up guy" who wouldn't be a "rat", possibly to try and help her son as he prepares to spend the rest of his life behind bars. -Sterns mother says " 'I keep thinking about how you would not ever rat out a friend,'  and later adds, "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."  Sterns mother says things like, " 'We all know [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 and let you take the fall for everything.'   JOINING NANCY GRACE TODAY:  Tim Jansen - Criminal defense lawyer and former Federal Prosecutor, Legal Analyst for Tallahassee Democrat’s Newspaper, www.jansenlawoffice.com  Dr. Jorey L Krawczyn - Psychologist, Faculty Saint Leo University; Consultant Blue Wall Institute, Author: Operation S.O.S.   Robin Dreeke - Behavior Expert & Former FBI Special Agent / Chief of the FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program, Author: "Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agents Maual for Behavior Prediction", peopleformula.com, Twitter: @rdreeke   Dr. Eric Eason -  Board Certified Forensic Pathologist, consultant, Instagram: @eric_a_eason, Facebook: Eric August Eason, LinkedIn: Eric Eason, MD  Shannon Butler - Investigative Reporter WFTV-9  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Pure horror. Maddie Soto, just 13 years old, slept in the bed with mommy's live-in the night before her murder. This as disturbing details emerge about the crime scene and well, that's not all. Shocking prison emails go back and forth between the suspect mommy's live-in lover and they seemingly blow this case wide open. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us. Madeline is 13 years old. She has been missing since 8.30 on Monday morning when mom's boyfriend

dropped her off near Hunters Creek Middle School. He dropped her off actually near the Peace United Methodist Church on Town Boulevard. 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 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. 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. Is it just me? Am I projecting or is everybody just a little too calm in that video? That's Madeline's mother

and the live-in standing behind her like, what? What? Why is everybody so calm? Maddie is missing and she has been missing for a considerable period of time when that happens. Now, hold on. I want you to think about what you just saw with the backdrop of new evidence we are learning. And that is that mommy's car went back and forth to where Maddie's body was dumped before it was discovered. Let that sink in. mommy's car went back and forth between the home where little Maddie slept routinely with mommy's boyfriend alone to where her body was dumped. It's caught on surveillance video. Who was driving it? Don't know. But it was mommy's car that I do know. Now, I want you to hear from the horse's mouth. Listen.

Is this like, does she like have any places that you guys know that she'll usually be at? Any friend's house? Any places that like she has to hang out? Typically no.

Not typically? No. Okay. Just give me one second. Let me see if I get some. Thank you. No problem. Yeah, we don't have any idea

where she might be. Joining me, an all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now. First, I want to go out to Shannon Butler, investigative reporter, WFTV9, on this case from the beginning and giving me a lot of information. I'm not getting from the outside looking in.

Shannon, thank you for being with us. Shannon, in addition to disturbing descriptions and details we're getting about the crime scene, I'm floored about how often the suspect, which some people are describing as Maddie's stepdad, he's not her stepfather. Let's just be clear about that. How many times he would sleep in the bed with her, but that's a whole nother can of worms. I want to talk about the evidence, the evidence regarding mommy's car going back and forth. Then we'll get to all of Stearns, the suspect, the murder suspect, all of his emails whining from behind bars about his food, his mattress, the walls in his cell.

Really? Really? But first, let's talk about that car. What do we know about that vehicle? Listen. Shocking new revelations in the Matdie Soto murder investigation. Investigators release information about Stefan Stearns and tracking the silver Lincoln he was driving. But now detectives say they tracked another vehicle, a white Nissan owned by Maddie's mother, Jennifer, making an identical trip as was made in the Lincoln from the apartment to where Maddie's body was found. Detectives don't get a clean look at the driver, but the Nissan was driven from the apartment to the body in the middle of the night, 12 hours after Stearns was seen driving his Lincoln to the same area. Okay, straight out to Shannon Butler joining us, investigative reporter WFTV9. Shannon, what can you tell me about Mommy's car going to the location

where Maddie's body is ultimately found. Well, we don't know who the driver is. And that, of course, is one of the biggest questions we get right now is who's driving that car. The running theory is that it was Seth and Stearns that went back to the alleged scene of that crime. But there is so much speculation and doubt surrounding Madeline Soto's mother that it's hard for people not to question whether or not she was behind the wheel and went back down to that same location where Madeline Soto's body was. At that point, that body would have still been in that area because it was days later before they found her. So it's hard for us because investigators didn't get a good look at the driver to figure out who was behind the wheel. But there are a lot

of questions. Could it have been Jen Soto? Okay. Shannon Butler, you just said, Shannon joining us on WFTV9, you just said with so much suspicion swirling around Maddie's mother. We're talking about 13 year old Madeline Soto found dead. She had been sex assaulted. I was counting back the years, maybe to age at age nine that we're getting conflicting reports on that by mommy's live-in. It's very difficult for me to believe mommy had no idea what was going on under her own roof. Even sending her daughter to bed with her live-in lover. Oh, excuse me. He alternated between the Soto home and his own mother. What was he just living down in the basement there? Anyway, so much suspicion around the mom as we are hearing from Shannon Butler, but the mom is

not a suspect. The mom is not a person of interest at all. It's entirely possible the suspect, her boyfriend, was driving her car back to the scene. And, you know, that's a really interesting question. To Tim Jansen joining us, high-profile criminal defense attorney, former federal prosecutor, and analyst for the Tallahassee Democrats newspaper, joining us from the Florida jurisdiction, Tim Jansen, why do criminals go back, circle back to the scene of the crime? I always think of Scott Peterson. How many times did he go back and look off into San Francisco

Bay where he dumped his wife, Lacey, and their unborn son, Connor? He's tracked. There was a GPS monitor on his car. Ding, ding, figure that out. And they would track him going back and forth where he would stand gazing out there, what to see if her body had washed up yet. And we're seeing the same thing here. He goes back and forth to where Madeline's body is. Why? Well, you know, it's interesting. Brian Kohlberger did the same thing after the Idaho murders. He was there the next morning. They go either looking for their trophies, watching what they did, or they're trying to cover up and see if this crime has been disclosed.

So the curiosity, the adrenaline they get, maybe trying to cover something they felt they forgot, or going back to see if the police have found their bad deeds. I think it's the adrenaline. And they want to find out who's looking. Have I been discovered? Koberger is a very good example. And you know what else, Jansen?

The returning to the scene, a good defense attorney like you will argue, well, that means nothing. Tell that to a jury. Okay, Jansen, go ahead and tell the jury it means nothing. Tell that to a jury. Okay, Jansen, go ahead and tell the jury it means nothing when a suspect goes back and forth to the scene of the crime and just stands there and stares. Well, to me, I'm not a shrink, but it means something to me. I'm getting off track. There's so much happening in the Madeline Soto case right now. I've got to get to all of it but right now remember we're trying to determine who was driving mommy's car after Maddie goes missing and before her body is

found back and forth to where the body is ultimately found found everybody's so calm I'm not to speculate on why they're so calm when Maddie is missing. Let me go to an expert with me, Robin Dreek, behavior expert and former FBI special agent. Wait for it. He was the chief of FBI counterintelligence behavioral analysis program and author of sizing people up a veteran a Veteran FBI Agent's Manual for Behavior Prediction. And you can find him at peopleformula.com. Robin Drake, I told you about the time when I was looking for organic suntan lotion in a baby superstore. And I was like all down on the very bottom shelf, bent over double looking to try to find it. I turned around and there was Lucy, but no John David. I started screaming. I put her

under my arm like a football and started running toward the front of the store because there were all glass windows screaming, help me find my son, lock the doors. My son is lost. OK, hey, but that's just me. So am I projecting or are these two calm as a cucumber? No, you're absolutely right. They are way too calm as a cucumber, as you say. And the car and who's driving it to me is a smaller part of a whole in this entire case. I'm shocked that Madeline is the entire circle around her and that the mother hasn't been charged yet because this to me, every time we have a child that's been abused, every time we have a child that looks like they may have been even part of something greater than

just one single pedophile, I think there's a network involved here. And I think there's going to be a lot of tendrils that go out. And I think that's why the investigation is taken as long as it has. And there's as many witnesses going to be called because I've been involved with cases. Okay, wait a minute. Robin Drake, hold on just a moment. What do you mean you think a network is involved? So every time you have a case like this, Nancy, where you have a sexual potential sexual predator, if it's a serial sexual predator, which he's been doing this a number of years, says that he might be serial. You can have an upwards of two to four hundred children that have been affected either through trafficking of their pornographic images or of them themselves. And so a lot of times these investigations take a long time to ferret out who's actually involved. And so every time you see a behavior arc of not just the

individual of Stearns, but a network of entire family members potentially acting very nonchalant about this, it gives investigators a lot of leads on where to potentially look to see how far this network goes. 13-year-old Madeline Soto murdered, sexually abused by mom's boyfriend. And that's kind of putting perfume on the pig, isn't it sexually abused we're talking about dozens and dozens i think uh shannon how many sex related videos and photos were found on stern's as mommy's boyfriend's phone how many ballpark hundreds hundreds hundreds and hundreds there were videos there were pictures okay and i think it's actually in this new data dump we're getting which of course you are the one that alerted us to that shannon butler and thank you they're literally thousands 1700 explicit sex photos of madeline. Thousands, thousands on Stern's phone. Where was a mommy when all this

was happening? Why do we know it's Madeline that's the child victim on the phone? Because in charging documents and other data we have reviewed, the victim is described as a child and the incidents the rapes occurred in the home Madeline's home so who is that it's a girl it's a child and it's in Maddie's home and it's Stearns who is charged now with 60 plus sex related charges so saying she was sex abuse, that hardly describes what this child went through. Now, we also know that according to the documents, we've just gotten a huge data dump. The molestations, these videos on his phone, some reports are that they go back to 2019. There are other dates stated as well. 2019, She's 13 when she's murdered in 2024.

This makes her eight or nine years old when these videos started being taken of her. So she's not just getting raped. She's not just getting potentially sodomized. He's videoing it. How many times do you use your husband's phone or, you know, grab your child's phone? You don't see anything on there when there's nearly 2,000 of these videos and photos? Okay, that said, take a listen to this. Stephen Stearns slept with Madeline Soto and her mother on a regular basis. Some nights, Stearns would sleep with Madeline without her mother present, including the night before she was murdered. Jennifer Soto tells Maddie she has a really bad headache and tells Maddie to take Stephen Stearns and go sleep in an upstairs bedroom.

I got a headache, too. In fact, it's spreading to my teeth now when I hear that. It wasn't just once in a while. It was all the time. And that's not all. Listen. Stephen Stearns and Madeline Soto's mother, Jennifer, broke up briefly in late 2023.

Even while they are broken up, Stearns would sleep at the Soto household in a bed with Madeline. A woman who dates Stearns during his breakup with Jennifer claims Stearns told her he had to sleep with Maddie, cuddle with her so she could go to sleep. The woman stopped talking to Stearns after he tells her of waking up with an erection while in the bed with the child. Our friend Nicole Parton from CrimeOnline.com really said that like she's reading the weather report or the Farmer's Almanac. Hold on just a moment. Shannon Butler joining me, WFTV9. No offense, Nicole Parton, but what did I just hear?

Did I just hear that even after Stephen Stearns, the murder suspect, had broken up with the mom, what, he broke up with her? Really? He would come back to the home to sleep with little Maddie, to cuddle her, to get her to sleep. And then he tells the new girlfriend he would get erections in bed with Maddie. And it was so disgusting. The woman broke up with him. Did I just hear that? You did. You did hear it.

And we had even asked, like, did that woman ever report that to police, to anybody? And she didn't. You know, at the time, I think she was just trying to get away from him. But these are the things that just continue to come up. And everybody in that, you know, interview process seems like this is just normal, right? Well, you know, she slept with him when she, you know, needed to get to sleep. It was just, it was very, very strange for us hearing that about how like this was just everyday business.

Okay. I'm just, I really occasionally am speechless. And this is one of those moments because I'm thinking about the life that Maddie Soto endured in the home, age eight or nine, mommy's boyfriend starts raping her. There's not a nice way to say, oh, he slept in bed with her. He cuddled her. They had sex. That is a lie. That's rape under the law.

And we cannot turn away from the black and white letter of the law. A child that age cannot consent to any type of sex conduct. Just like they can't go buy a car or liquor or cigarettes. They don't have the mental capacity to do that. Joining me, Dr. Jory Croson, renowned psychologist, faculty, St. Leo University, consultant with the Blue Wall Institute. And you can find them at drjorie, J-O-R-E-Y.com. Dr. Jory, does any woman really need a man that badly? Really? Just let me think about it.

My sister used to have a t-shirt that said, a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle. And that really stuck with me at about age eight. So what is a woman willing to do to keep a man? Well, it goes to his ability to locate or find a woman and establish a relationship that has a child. Okay. You see this in the pedophilia behavior numerous times and one thing you want to look at is the age when this started and then how it ended with the homicide they have preferred ages that they're attracted to and that they will maintain a relationship with but once the child starts

to age out through puberty or starting to develop, they'll usually start to look for another access to another child in their preferred age. That's a very common pedophilic behavior. Okay, wait a minute. I'm trying to decipher what you're saying, Dr. Jory Croson. You're the shrink. I'm just a JD. But I think you're saying certain pedophiles go look specifically to establish a relationship with a woman that has a child the age in which they're interested. Is that what you just said? That's correct.

Yes. Okay. And I appreciate that. And it's a phenomenon I want to explore with you. But I'm asking you, how badly do you need a man? I mean, after all, no offense to you, but what what can they do that you can't do? Why do you have to have him sleeping with your daughter under your own roof? Yeah, let me let me address both of those. The man has that ability to,

whatever it takes to provide to the woman to get access to the child, he's going to provide. Provide what? This guy didn't even work. Did he work? Hold on, Shannon Butler, did this guy have a job

or did he basically hang out in his mom's basement in his spare time? Yeah, that's pretty much what he did. He played a lot of games. So what does he bring into the table? Nothing. Why does she need him? Back to my question.

What is wrong with these women that they keep child molesters in the home? I've seen hundreds of those cases. And, you know, even I've looked at the lethality of living boyfriends to children. And it just is phenomenal, you know, because mothers don't protect their children. You know, I'm in Florida. This case is in Florida. I'm in a different judicial circuit, but we have regularly charged mothers with failure to protect. You know what?

Then that's exactly the charge. That's exactly the charge I'm thinking of, Dr. Jory Croson. Failure to protect. Again, Maddie's mother has not been named a suspect, has not been named a person of interest. The reason we're even talking about her right now is because her car is spotted on video going back and forth to where Maddie's body 13 years old is found just dumped dumped remember this remember Maddie kept telling all of her friends when she turned 13 she wanted to leave home and go live in the woods I I wonder why. Listen. Our missing persons detectives responded to take over the investigation. So they did interviews with mom, mom's boyfriend, Madeline's friends from school. We were able to access Madeline's phone and there is information on the phone

that indicated that she told people when she turned 13, which was on February 22nd, she actually wanted to go live in the woods. So that was in her phone. Investigators believe the female seen at 736 a.m. in the surveillance video in the front passenger seat of Stefan Stern's vehicle is Madeline Soto's dead body propped up and buckled into the seat to appear as a living person, but closer inspection of the video shows her head leaning toward her shoulder with her mouth open. Stearns is caught on surveillance video again at 8.19 a.m. when he is seen entering the front security gate of the neighborhood with a female in the same position as the surveillance video captured at 7.36 a.m.

I don't want to gloss over that as we race toward the newest developments, including the suspect, Mommy's boyfriend, whining behind bars about his mattress, his food, not having the right spoon, the walls in his cell. his mom back and forth to him, knowing full well they're going to be read about how somebody else ate. She is involved. More crime scene details that reveal the nature of this crime. But to Shannon Butler joining me, WFTV, I don't want to gloss over the fact that Madeline's dead body, this 13 year old girl that has been being raped and sodomized since ages eight or nine under mommy's nose, her dead body is propped up and buckled into the car. Did I get that right, Shannon Butler? Yeah, and that was part of his story, right? So he goes in and out of that apartment complex which they did in the morning on the way to school so that way if any of the neighbors or anything saw um him drive out it wouldn't be unusual for madeline to be buckled into the seat what he said to us and to investigators is that she slept on the way to school so it he was working that, it appears, into his story about how he took her to school and she was asleep.

But he did. I mean, according to investigators, buckled that seatbelt and let her sit there, leaned over. It's just unbelievable, really. I mean, Tim Jansen, criminal defense attorney, he is actually tailoring a very intricate lie stating that Maddie fell asleep on the way to school to cover up the fact that she's leaned over with her eyes closed because she's dead. Yeah. Science, technology is going to undermine the cameras

that are seen. Clearly this guy is the evidence on the phone. He's a pedophile. He committed a sexual terrorism on this child. The mother certainly had to know something or see something. The apartment was very small. And to allow a child to sleep in the bed at that age is just it seems more like Maddie was an annoyance to the mother than her actual daughter. Guys, what more are we learning now? Well, for one thing, and I'm going to circle back to Dr. Eric Eason regarding the years, years of sex abuse,

how that can be determined from an autopsy or if it can be determined. But to Shannon Butler, I want to talk about his whining emails from behind prison walls. He complains about everything from his mattress behind bars, not getting enough food. I have never felt a full stomach and have, in fact, forgotten what that is like. Really? There's never a time these days when I don't feel hungry. Have you heard of the vending machine? The sale is small and filthy. Well, how was your mom's basement? You could still be living there if you hadn't murdered Maddie. The mat is flat and has very little cushion left. I bet it was nothing compared to sleeping in the bed with Maddie.

Those are a few things you can think about, Stearns, before you send any more emails. Shannon Butler, what is this guy saying from behind bars? You know, that wasn't the first time. Right when he was being transferred between jails really early on, he first started complaining about that first night that he spent in jail, that he had to use the toilet paper roll as his pillow. That was the beginning of his complaints. So we expected when we saw his emails that he would start complaining more

about how the treatment is there and that how it's, you know, it's not so comfortable behind bars. Okay. And that how it's, you know, it's not so comfortable behind bars. Okay, Robin Dreek, former FBI special agent, expert in behavioral analysis. Robin, as soon as we finish on air, I want you to run right down to the jail with an allergen-free puffy bouncy pillow so he can get a good night's sleep. What? He can't sleep because of his pillow? He shouldn't be able to sleep because Maddie is dead and he's whining about his pillow? You know, this isn't the first time, Drake, that I've seen a murder of defendants and later convicted whine about their pillow, their food, their diet, their amount of exercise.

He's charged with a murder and in my mind, a lot fewer sex charges than are established. 2000 to nearly 2000 photos and videos, and most of them of this little girl on his phone. He needs to be charged with every single one of them. And when he's convicted, they all need to run consecutively there. And he's talking about his pillow drink. Yeah. And I also don't think it's going to be the only person they'd find he's done this to. You don't go from zero to 100 in this kind of case because he's going to have a track record established of this. He's got a level of expectation that the world will continue to service him and it just leaks out of him at every single turn and so that's what we're seeing in the jailhouse that's what we're seeing in all these communications he and he's he's completely shocked that it doesn't happen what about this do you see a pattern of behavior

of getting taken care of and whining and expecting everything to be handed to you. I mean, he's still technically, even though he's living with Madeline Soto's mother in their apartment, which a lot of people thought this was a home. It's an apartment, which makes it much smaller. My point is, how could she not know what was happening? He's living with her and he's living with his mother. He's not working. What is he doing? Everyone is giving him a place to stay, food to eat.

I don't know how he made his car payment. Maybe mommy made the payment for him. But now same thing, same behavior carrying over behind bars. Wine, wine, wine. Yeah, you hit it exactly right, Nancy. It is a lifetime behavior pattern, behavior arc of complete self-centeredness and narcissism. And it plays out in everything. And even with his girlfriend that he had dated briefly, he's testing that water by saying, hey, I slept and had an erection with this little girl. I think that's a test to say,

hey, could I manipulate you into my circle because she's aging out. I mean, it's a lot of conjecture on my part, I know. But at the same time, though, this is what he does to his entire environment. He manipulates it for his own gain and he's got such lifetime reps out of it. He looks completely fluid and natural doing it

because this isn't his first time in life or is his first rodeo doing this? The state seeks the death penalty for Stephan Stearns in Madeline Soto's murder case. Is that a surprise? With 2,000 explicit videos, many, the majority, we understand of Stefan Stearns performing sex acts on a child that lives in Maddie Soto's home. Is anybody surprised that Florida is seeking the death penalty? I'm not. But to Dr. Eric Eason, Dr. Eric Eason is a renowned board-certified forensic pathologist, a consultant. Dr. Eason, we know that her body was discarded out in the open, but in an obscure area, which is not hard to find in Florida. There's a lot of untamed land, swamps, inlets in Florida. How can a medical examiner tell if this was the first time Madeline had been raped or not?

And with her body lying out in the elements for several days, would that preclude such a determination? Well, that's going to make it tough. If the body's been there for a couple of days in the heat in Florida, you're going to have evidence of decomposition, which is going to obscure some of the findings that you're going to have an autopsy. But during the autopsy, we're going to determine the cause of death, but also assess for evidence of sexual assault. And so evidence of the acute sexual assault would occur when the swabs are placed in the various orifices to check for DNA.

That's there to compare from DNA from the suspect. Please do not say that, Dr. Eason. We don't all have medical degrees like you do. When you say they're going to put swab, they're going to swab Maddie's orifices, you are talking about euphemistically describing her mouth, her vagina, and her anus to see if she was raped. Hold on. Shannon Butler, WFTV. How long do we think that Maddie was lying out in the elements before her body was found? How many days? I think it was five days. Okay. I thought it was four, but let's go with five. Dr. Eason, how would five days on the elements affect the determination of internal orifices such as vagina or anus?

I mean, you can still insert the swabs and collect any evidence. As time goes on further, it's going to have less of an ability to collect that. But I think you're also asking about remote sexual assault, and that's going to be very tough to determine after five days out in the elements like this. Can I just boil it down Dr. Eason in a rape kit I know that if there is vaginal tearing if there is bleeding inside the vagina or the anus that may suggest a recent rape. That's right. How would you be able to tell if her body had been found immediately, whether she had been raped in the past? Well, you can look for evidence of old bruising or old abrasions.

When bruises start to age, the color will change. And so if you find evidence of a yellow in a bruise, it indicates the bruise is older as compared to an acute bruise. So you can check for that. That's definitely one way to check for like an older type sexual assault. So we may not be able to tell from her body that she had endured molestation for years if it weren't for this idiot's phone

that reveals these thousands of photos to Shannon Butler, WFTV9. I want you to listen to this. Emails between the murder suspect and his mother, in which she suggests someone else, a female, is involved. Listen. Stern's mother is saying things like, quote, We all know blank was heavily involved in this,

and I am disgusted that she's 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 and let you take the fall for everything. Shannon Butler, WFTV 9. What? Well, I think that we expected some of this from his family members,

that they would start putting some of the eyes back on Jen Soto. What we didn't know is if he had told them something that we didn't know yet about if she was involved or if she wasn't involved, or if they're just doing this as the show, right? Everybody knows these things become public and that everybody would be able to see what they were saying. But this was not a surprise to any of us who have been working this story that the family would start to raise some questions about Jen Soto and if he was taking the fall for her. While the search for Madeline Soto is ongoing, investigators ask if they can take a look at Stefan Stern's phone.

Stern then informs the detectives he accidentally performed a factory reset on the phone the same day Maddie went missing. A factory reset can't be done on accident. It has to be delivered as it requires multiple steps by the user to ensure that it doesn't happen by accident. Thousands of images, sexual photos and videos, mostly of Madeline, were recovered and led to the 60 additional charges against Stephan Stearns. Over 60 charges, but over 1,900 explicit videos and photos. I want to find out something else. Shannon Butler, investigative reporter, WFTV 9. This is an apartment, not a home as many people thought. So how big is the apartment? I'm

trying to gauge what was going on and what the mom should have known. Do you know? Well, it's not very big. It's kind of like a townhouse. So there's an upstairs and a downstairs. But there were other people like the night of her disappearance or murder, there were other people in the home, but there was bedrooms upstairs, but there was also some kind of makeshift kind of bedroom that was kind of cordoned off downstairs. And there was a lot of question about if that's where Madeline was sometimes laying.

So the home is very small. If you're talking about what could you hear or not hear in some kind of house, it is fairly small. I mean, it's an average townhome. You know, I want to ask you something else before we sign off. It's my understanding that Maddie's friends tell police that Maddie was constantly being texted and called by Stern, Stefan Stern, the boyfriend. Back to Robin Dreek. That's textbook. It's classic. I trust my children, but when I see them on the phone all the time or they're on a video all the time, I go, who are you talking to? Who's that? Don't you think it's odd?

Nobody wondered why the boyfriend was constantly calling this little girl and texting her. Yeah, constantly isolating her, controlling her environment. That's what these horrible sexual predators do. And that's exactly what he was doing, Maddie, the entire time. You know, and as for the mother making those comments via text, too, or in an email, I don't care what it is. You know, as an investigator, I'll put my investigator hat on for a second. If you're opening your mouth like that, I'm now looking at you, too. So I think this is a network of really abhorrent behavior by a lot of people.

And he just happens to be the point of the spear we're going to take down first. And I think we're going to save a lot of people in this one, I'm hoping. Dr. Jory Crawson, a renowned psychologist joining us, faculty, St. Leo University. Another thing is I noticed that Stefan Stern states that he was the one who would comfort little Maddie when she would get into an argument with her mom. Okay, there you go. Coming between the child and her parent. That's textbook, Dr. Jory.

Yes, it is. It's that dependent personality that's on the mother. I mean, she's very dependent also. You can see that relationship and the dynamics where she readily turns anything over to him dealing with the daughter. It's not a good attachment and bonding, maternal bonding there. If you know or think you know anything about the Mattie Soto case, please dial 407-846-3333. Look at your ring camera footage. Think back on the day that this occurred, Feb 26, 2024. Where were you? Were you in this vicinity? Police are still putting together this case.

And as you heard Robin Drake state, it may be more far reaching than we initially believed. But right now, there is nothing we can do for Mattie Soto except seek justice. That number 407-846-3333. Nancy Grace signing off.

Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.