Criminology - Steven and Katie Pladl

Episode Date: July 9, 2023

Steven Pladl murdered his wife, Katie, their son Bennett, and Katie's father, Anthony Fusco. This story made the headlines because Katie was not just Steven's second wife; she was also his biological daughter. Steven and his first wife, Alyssa, put Katie up for adoption when she was just a baby. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss Steven Pladl and the murders he committed. Steven had a horrible temper and a history of grooming young girls. He began grooming his first wife, Alyssa, when she was only fifteen years old. Many years later, their daughter, Katie, who had been raised by a loving family, reunited with Steven and Alyssa. This began a strange odyssey that culminated in the murder of three people. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 264 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Morford, man.

What's going on with you, buddy? I had a nice little relaxing 4th of July holiday and had made the most of the downtime. I was a little bit alone because my family went away for a week and they'll be back tomorrow. I'm really excited about that. How was your 4th of July? It was good. You know, we went to Gallenberg for my daughter's national dance competition during the our week off. And, you know, it was nice.

Spent a lot of time with the family. But it was a little bittersweet because, you know, her dance group did amazingly well. But that was it for her. That's the last one. You know, she graduated. She's headed off to college. So there were a few tears. Yeah.

Oh, that's understandable. But I feel we're. fresh for the second half of the year. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Lynn Bartolo, Renee Bonick, Wendy Rees, and Jana Paris. So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it. Thanks so much for supporting the show. It means a lot to us. And if you want to help support, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology. All right, buddy, let's jump into this week's case. And every once in a while, we have a case where the deep. The details are shocking or unsettling or they make people uncomfortable.

And this is one of those cases. It made headlines for good reason. It was not only shocking, it was distinct from most other crimes like it. Murder suicide cases almost always make the news. This case, though, had an element that doesn't come up a lot. One of the victims was not only the perpetrator's son, but also his grandson. son. Two of the victims were not just mother and son. They were siblings. So if all that sounds a little bit confusing, we'll try to clear it up throughout this episode. We're talking about the

Plodell family. Although the deaths we'll be discussing in this episode didn't happen until 2018, we need to go back to the 1990s to tell the full story. It was technically a crime 23 years in the making. In 1995, 20-year-old Stephen Pladell met Alyssa Garcia, who was 15 years old at the online. The internet was extremely new at that time. And today we know that minors have to be safe and careful online, but it wasn't always like this, especially when the internet was new. Looking at their ages alone, its relationship not many would approve of today, especially between a young girl and a stranger on the internet. With hindsight, we can now call it grooming. They wrote back and forth to each other, and they started a long-distance relationship. Stephen would even visit a listen person as they

grew closer. Eventually, Alyssa ran away from her home in San Antonio, Texas to be with Stephen in New York. In January 1998, when she was 17, Alyssa gave birth to their first daughter, who they named Denise. Now, we don't know whether Alyssa went back home to be close to her family for the delivery, or if she and Stephen lived in Texas briefly. But records indicate that Denise was born in Texas. it's possible she got pregnant while Stephen lived in New York and visited her in Texas. And Alyssa only chose to run away to New York with him after she had Denise. But ultimately, we couldn't find all of that information. Before Denise turned one, Alyssa and Stephen decided to place her up for adoption.

Alyssa would later tell Daily Mail TV. I knew from the very beginning that I had to get my daughter away from him to give her a chance in life. Stephen, who Alyssa described as violent and angry, temperamental, and unpredictable, would pinch infant Denise until her skin was black and blue. He would also place her into a small cooler when she cried so that the lid would muffle the sound. Many times, Alyssa feared this would suffocate Denise. Stephen wouldn't let her open the cooler for most of the time. Alyssa told the New Zealand Herald, he would make me wait a few minutes until he would. I could go back and I'd open the cooler and she would just be gasping for air, drenched in sweat,

bruises on her. I would just scoop her up and shut the bedroom door so he couldn't bother me. And I would rock her back and forth and tell her how sorry I was for the life she was having. So, you know, I think right off the bat here, we're into some really tough stuff. And no doubt when it comes to Stephen, there are a lot of. of red flags. And I don't even know if that word is, is strong enough. But I want to go back to, you know, what we talked about as far as grooming. You know, you think of the mid 90s. And I think you said it more if the internet was new and it, and it was. It was kind of like to Wild Wild West,

you know, very unregulated. Not everybody knew what was going on, what was possible. I think as far as parents, a lot of parents were probably naive to what their kids were doing on the internet and to the dangers that were lurking. Yeah, it's sort of a flashback for me, the old dial-up system. The bell's ringing as the thing went online, and it was just so new, and there were no protections in place, no safeguards like we have today. there's all kinds of different things that parents can use to monitor what their kids are doing online, that kind of stuff. But back then, like you said, there was just nothing. So when someone came along that targeted kids, they sort of had carte blanche. Well, and, you know, look at their ages.

Stephen was 20 years old. Alyssa was 15. I mean, that is giving me a real, you know, to catch a predator vibe. And, you know, in 1995, I don't know if anybody had even heard of the word grooming. Today, we're very familiar with it. But then to think that they go on to, you know, not only foster a relationship, but it grows. And, you know, they have a daughter. Yeah, so all of that is true.

And then you have this other issue. Once they have this brand new baby, we see a different form of abuse. Now he's not just grooming, but he's a bit. abusing his daughter. He's putting her in coolers. He's endangering her. And I think it seems like Alyssa sensed that and was sinking in that he's doing things to her daughter that's dangerous. And even though Alyssa was young, she still realized that for the sake of her baby, she needed to put her up for adoption to keep her away from Stephen. A couple named Anthony and Kelly Fusco from Wingdale, New York, adopted Denise and changed her name to Katie. In 2007,

Stephen and Alyssa had their second child and other daughter. In 2012, they had her third daughter. Alyssa thought with the arrival of their two youngest children that Stephen was getting better as a father. She told the New Zealand Herald, for a little while, I thought he was getting better because he didn't treat the two children like he treated Katie. But eventually, things got just as bad as they had been with his first child.

Through the years, Stephen would threaten Alyssa, basically gilding her into staying with him. She told Fox News, he threatened that if I was gone, he would blow his brains out with a gun, figure out a way to record it, and make sure the video got to me. In 2016, 18-year-old Katie Fusco was ready to learn about her biological family. Many people who are adopted want to know where they came from and who their biological parents were. So Katie sought out Stephen and Alyssa.

She gathered information on them and using social media, contacted them. They began to write back and forth to each other on Facebook. Katie graduated high school in June of that year and was planning to first attend community college in order to transfer to SUNY Purchase for their digital advertising communications program. Just two months later, though, Katie decided not to go to SUNY Purchase. She decided to move back in with her biological parents, Stephen and Alyssa, who now lived in Henrico, Virginia. Katie's adoptive parents didn't want her to give up on college and they were nervous about her moving to Virginia, but they decided to support her decision to reconnect with her birth family. And I said it more if, you know, a lot of people who are adopted, they want to learn about their biological parents. But I don't know how many people kind of fall into this scenario that we're talking about here.

with Katie. I mean, she had spent what, 17 years with her adoptive parents. And then, you know, starts communicating with Stephen and Alyssa. And then the next thing you know decides not to go to college, but makes the decision to move in with them in Virginia. I don't know how many times that happens. Yeah. And it's, you can understand why her adopted parents would be upset about that because she's, on course to have this career. She's got her future ahead of her. And while they were supportive of her meeting her birth parents, they saw that this sort of changed her course. So they were concerned about that. By the time Katie moved in with Alyssa and Stephen, their marriage was falling apart. And they had stopped sleeping in the same bed. Alyssa tried to tell Katie about what Stephen had done

to her as a child, but it didn't really seem to phase Katie. She didn't seem to feel unsafe. Alyssa tried to warn Katie about Stephen's temper and about how often you had to walk on eggshells around him, but Katie didn't seem to care. Alyssa noticed that Stephen changed up his wardrobe, switching to skinny jeans and tighter shirts. He also started growing out his hair and keeping his facial hair shaved. In September, just one month after Katie moved in, Stephen started to sleep in her bedroom on the floor. After two nights of this, Alyssa told Stephen this wasn't appropriate, but he and Katie left the house angrily. In November, Alyssa moved out of the home and filed for divorce.

She didn't know it at the time, but Katie and Stephen had already begun a sexual relationship by that point. So the story takes another turn, and it's not a good one. There's not going to be a lot of great turns in this story as far as people feeling comfortable, right, with the things that are going on. I mean, we're talking about incest here, more. Stephen begins a sexual relationship with his daughter. I don't even know how to contain myself in the disgust that I'm feeling right now.

Yeah, this is very taboo. Most people, they sort of cringe when they hear this. I mean, there's a reason this is illegal in most states because this is not something that's socially accepted. Yeah, when I first sat down and read about this case, I just remember how creepy it made me feel. and how disgusted I was by that. And the fact that this father, who's the older person here, although his daughter was an adult by this point, he still was an authority figure that could have said,

no, we can't do this. This isn't right. But he didn't do that. I don't know how this happened, but, you know, it's something that it's hard to wrap your head around. Yeah, no doubt. And, you know, Katie was 18 years old. technically an adult, but not in my mind, right?

I have a 22-year-old and an 18-year-old daughter. I still think of them, both as kids, even the 22-year-old. I know they're not, but that's just the way I think of them. The one thing that really jumps out at me here is, you know, we talked about the grooming with Alyssa. It's hard for me not to believe that Stephen D.N. did essentially the very same thing or some form of grooming with 18 year old Katie. Yeah, I think that shows a clear pattern, a long-term pattern with him of doing this to younger

vulnerable people. Well, and it makes me wonder how many other times over the years did he do it? That's a scary thought. We only know what has been brought to light, what didn't get uncovered, and how many other victims may this man have had. That scares the, you know what, out of me. By 2017, Stephen and Alyssa's two younger daughters, Katie's little sisters, had begun to call Katie their stepmom at Stevens' instruction. On May 23, 2017, Alyssa read a diary, entry written by their 11-year-old. She had just returned from a visit to Stevens' house.

In it, the 11-year-old wondered, does she see me as a daughter or a sister? And also explained in an entry that Katie was pregnant. It seemed to be a very confusing situation for the 11-year-old. The entry continued, my dad calls her baby also his baby. She wrote, Did he make her pregnant? She didn't seem happy about the situation and was adamant that Katie was her sister, not her stepmother. After reading this entry, Alyssa immediately contacted the Enrico County Sheriff's Office. So this situation is so strange and disturbing that even this 11-year-old girl is confused about it.

And she can tell it's not right. She's putting it in her diary. And so you could see this is something. that's extending into the family here. Well, and I think about Alyssa, who, you know, has gone through from the time she was 15 years old, all of this was Stephen. And she has to know immediately upon reading this entry that this is bad. You know, he's doing it again.

He's doing the same types of things to Katie that he did to me. And I can only imagine the helpless feeling that she must have been having because, you know, her kids are with Stephen without her at points in time. What is he doing to them? You know, those are questions that had to run through her mind. On May 31st, 2017, Stephen and his two youngest daughters were interviewed by staff at the Henrico County Child Advocacy Center. But no further action was taken. Stephen and Katie didn't wait around for something else to happen. They moved in Nightdale, North Carolina.

They thought that anything going on was now out of the hands of Henrico County authorities. On July 20, 2017, Stephen and Katie went to Parkton, Maryland, and got married. They didn't mention that they were father and daughter on any of the filing paperwork. Stephen's mother and Katie's adopted parents were both at their lakeside ceremony. Stephen's mother is smiling and looks happy in photos. Katie's adoptive parents are doing that. that smile you do when you're just sort of accepting something and staying silent. Katie's adopted brother, Kerry Gold, told CBS News, their parents felt there was nothing they could do. And they had decided

it was best to support Katie because she was an adult. And morph when you and I do episodes, I try to be very careful about putting blame on people who, you know, are not perpetrators, but they're involved in the story. You know, in this case, we're looking at. the actions of Katie's adoptive parents. And I think what you see online is a lot of people questioning, why didn't they do something? Why didn't they, you know, step up and try to stop at the very least stop this relationship? I can't imagine attending the wedding.

I know they said they were trying to support Katie. She was an adult. but she was in an incestuous relationship with her biological father. And, you know, to stand there and, you know, go through the ceremony, stand there for pictures and put on a fake smile. You know, I'm not trying to come down on them too hard, but a lot of people do. You know, if you look online, you see, you know, what were these people doing? Yeah.

I'm there with you because this sort of isn't like an endorsement of this marriage. To be there shows that you're supporting it. And I think most people, a lot of people would be like, absolutely not. There's no way I'm going to this wedding and supporting this decision of yours. Because it's not something, because again, it's incest. It's not something that should be supported. It's illegal. And they were on the verge of being in trouble over this.

The authorities were involved. So to go to this wedding at that point, just to me doesn't seem like the right move at all. But at the same time, are they caught between this thing that they know is not right and wanting to keep Katie in their lives? Because, you know, there is a danger. You go too far and Katie cuts them out of her life completely. Yeah, there are many instances where families have some kind of rift between. them and that a wedge and they split apart and they don't talk to each other, they avoid each other. And I think Katie's adoptive parents were worried about this.

But this was a wedge or a risk that probably doesn't happen in most relationships where there's a wedge. It's this was something so rare probably. So they must have felt like they were in an impossible position to make this choice. Hey, criminology listeners. Morph and I would love to tell you. you about a podcast we think you'll really enjoy. It's called True Crime Garage, hosted by our friends, Nick and the Captain. If you haven't heard about the True Crime Garage podcast, well, then you've

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True Crime Garage is free to listen to and available everywhere you get your favorite podcasts. Check out the True Crime Garage podcast today. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodontes, where you're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor,

moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch.

Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Less than two months after getting married on September 1st, Katie gave birth to a baby boy that her and Stephen named Bennett. Now, I think to everyone listening, all of this seems pretty wild. Up until this point, we're talking about incest, which to most of us is just unfathomable. Some listeners are probably wondering why biologically related people would decide to start a sexual relationship, especially so soon after reconnecting and why they would take it as far as starting a family together. But it's apparently happened before. And some think there is an explanation for it.

We even came across a news article about a mother named Patricia Span in Oklahoma who had married both her son and her daughter at different points. The theory is that there is a phenomenon called genetic sexual attraction. It has been described happening with people who were adopted when they reconnect with biological family members of the opposite sex. Apparently, there can be an overwhelming sense of emotion and attraction, not just a very strong sense that you need to be together, but according to Adoption.com, there is an almost primordial sense of having belonged together all their lives.

It's clear that reconnecting with and accepting birth family would be exciting, positive, and may unleash emotions and feelings of love. But how and when does it cross over to something romantic or sexual and how do the people involved allow it to happen? I mean, I think those are the questions that people really struggle with. But not everyone believes that genetic sexual attraction is real. Many people call it pseudoscience. One writer, Amanda Marcotte of Salon.com, and a piece debunking the theory, called it nonsense that people dreamed up to justify continuing unhealthy abusive relationships. Some experts in child abuse and in adoption believe that this so-called phenomenon

is more likely to happen when the reconnection is sudden or not planned out well enough. I think Katie's reunion with Steve and Alyssa would qualify as sort of unplanned. They talked over her Facebook, unsupervised. This wasn't a meeting planned by her and her adoptive parents over a long period of time. Whether or not genetic sexual attraction is a real phenomenon. Incest is still socially unacceptable and in many cases illegal. But that didn't stop Stephen and Katie in this case from having an incestuous relationship. On November 29, 2017, Henrico County authorities issued arrest warrants for both 42-year-old Stephen and 20-year-old Katie.

In Virginia, incest is illegal and includes sexual intercourse with your child or your own parent. By the end of January 2018, they had both been arrested and charged with adultery and incest. Looking at the way the adultery code is worded, adultery is technically fornication with any person you are forbidden to marry. So if you're not allowed to marry someone because they're your parent or your child, intercourse makes that not just incest, but adultery as well. Again, we're not attorneys, but this is what it looks like. Stephen and Katie were each held with a bail of $1 million, awaiting extradition to Virginia. Stephen was able to pay before Katie was.

Upon release on bond, Katie moved back to New York to live with her adoptive parents. There was a no-contact order between Katie and Stephen, meaning they were not supposed to talked to each other in person or on the phone or even write to each other or text. Stephen's 72-year-old mother, Grace, who lived in North Carolina, was granted custody of Baby Bennett for the time. Stephen was allowed to go back to North Carolina, but was not supposed to go back to his house where he had multiple guns. By April 2018, Katie decided she no longer wanted to be with Stephen.

Against the no-contact order, she called Steve. to tell him that it was over. On April 11th, Stephen went to his mother's house and took seven-month-old Bennett. He claimed that he's going to take Bennett and drop him off with Katie. Instead, he drove to his night-down North Carolina home. Back at home, he suffocated Bennett and placed his body in a closet. He then drove from North Carolina to New York, a 500-mile overnight drive, not even stopping to sleep. He parked in the parking lot of a winged out of a wiggard liquor store where he could see the Fusco home and waited watching for Katie. Stephen knew that every Tuesday and Thursday,

Katie went with her adoptive father, Anthony Fusco, to visit her adoptive grandmother in Connecticut. When Katie and Anthony left their home, Stephen Pledell followed them. As they stopped at a stop sign at the intersection of Routes 55 and 7 in New Milford, Connecticut, Stephen pulled up next to their truck and opened fire on them firing several shots at them,

killing them both before speeding off. So, I mean, more if we've known, right, since the beginning of this episode that Stephen Pledell was not a good guy. Now he's taken it further. He's killed his own child. He's killed Katie and her adoptive father. And one thing that I get a sense of about Stephen Pledell was that he was a man who was used to getting what he wanted. Now, illegally most of the time it seems like and it's almost as if he made the decision once you know Katie broke it off with him that he was going to kill her you know I don't know if it was the line that we've heard from so many men over the years which is if I can't have her nobody

will you know we've heard that time and time again I don't know if it was exactly that, but it seems as though it was something along those lines. Yeah, and I think with his troubling past, just this long history of doing bad stuff, to me, it's not all that surprising that this is where this story winds up, because it seems like he was always troubled and might be capable of something like this, and then here, here it happened. Yeah, it almost seems as though it was an escalation that was eventually going to happen, right? For me, and we'll probably, probably talk about it more later, but I just don't know why or how this guy was never stopped at certain points in time. And that seems to be universal in many stories, you know,

where people are kind of habitual offenders. But they get away with it. Nobody steps in, puts a stop to it. And a lot of the times they escalate and graduate to more. or serious crimes, including murder. And I think that's what happened here. It turns out that an off-duty firefighter had witnessed Steven, shoot, Anthony, and Katie, according to CBS17.com, at around 8.40 a.m., he called 911 and said,

the car pulled up, went around him, and shot him, adding that the shooter had emptied a whole clip into his head. The firefighter managed to look at the license plate, telling the dispatcher that it was definitely an out-of-state plate heading into New Milford, and he also described the car as a light blue minivan. After getting across the state line, about five miles away from the scene of the shooting, Stephen called his mother and told her what he had done, confessing to shooting Katie and Anthony as well as killing Bennett.

Stephen's mother, Grace, quickly called 911 and said, my son just called me and told me, oh God, you know, he killed his baby and he's in the house. He killed his wife. He killed her father. I can't even believe this is happening. She told the dispatcher, the only motive she could think of was that his wife broke up with him yesterday over the phone. Alyssa would later look back on the situation, saying to Daily Mail, all Steve had left was Katie and the baby. The only thing that kept him. him going was his thought of getting back with her. It was all just too much for him to find out that he wasn't going to.

I think that was the straw that broke the camel's back. And that makes sense. It's kind of what we talked about, you know, in different wording. It almost seems like it was a culmination of everything in his life spiraling out of control. He was losing everything. and he just couldn't handle it. But I want to go back to his mother, Grace, he calls her on the phone to tell her what he had done. Can you imagine getting a call from a loved one, a child, and them explaining to you over the phone?

Not only that they've killed their husband or wife, but they killed, you know, that person's parent, but they killed the baby. as well. And I think you can kind of get from the quotes as she's talking to this 911 dispatcher. She's in shock. And I think anybody would be who had had just received that type of news. Yeah, it probably was a real impossible situation for her being because what can she do at this point? She doesn't know where he's at. She can't stop anything. Stuff's already happened. So she's just reliving this moment for the dispatchers. and it clearly was very, very upsetting for her. It didn't take long for the authorities to connect the two calls,

a mother in North Carolina concern for her son, who was heading to New York, and a shooting in Connecticut just across the border from New York, by a suspect driving a blue minivan with North Carolina plates. About 20 minutes after police officers responded to the firefighters 911 call, New Milford, Henrico County officers found Baby Bennett's lifeless body in the closet at Stephen's home. Before police could find Stephen,

Alone in his minivan in Dover, New York, he fired one more shot, taking his own life with his gun. Most people, including authorities, were completely shocked at the outcome. Rick Friedman, the attorney who represented Stephen, told the BBC, this is a terrible tragedy that nobody foresaw. I really believe that if the judges, or the prosecutor, or the defense attorneys in this case, had any clue that the minor child or anyone would be harmed, there would not have been a bond set for any of the parties. But I think we have to remember, Stephen and Katie were charged with incest-related crimes,

and as repulsive as their relationship may seem to some people, they hadn't committed any violent crimes, and neither had a criminal record. So a million-dollar bond for an incest case seemed to many people to be unreasonably high to begin with. So the question is, would a judge or could a judge have recommended them to be held without bail for a nonviolent offense? It seems unlikely. Yeah, I thought that as well. I thought the bond seemed pretty high. I mean,

like you said, more if we're all kind of repulsed by what they had done, but those were nonviolent crimes. As you mentioned, they didn't have a criminal record. Was there any indication that Stephen was going to harm Katie, the baby, or anything like that?

And I think this guy saying no, because if there had been, then maybe there would not have been a bail. But let's be honest, when people like Stephen Pledell are planning to do really horrible thing, they don't often broadcast it. And they especially would not tell their attorney or a judge or someone in power because they want to get out.

If they want to do this terrible deed, they have to be on the outside in order to see it through. And it may be that he did this sort of spur the moment. Once he found out that Katie didn't want to be with him anymore, that may have been, as we talked about, the straw that suddenly broke the camel's back and he made a snap decision he's going to do these terrible things. So there may have been no warning that this was coming

to keep him without bail in jail in the first place. And there's the element. in this case where you know Stephen ends his life by shooting himself so we don't have years of interviews from Stephen to news outlets explaining why he did what he did or you know providing any further inside because you know he's not alive to do so but not everyone was shocked at what Stephen did Alyssa said to Fox News that ultimately Steve was just finishing off what he started 20 years earlier. Referring to his earlier abuse of Katie, she also told the Daily Mail, from the time that I reported the incest to the police,

I told them repeatedly. I was absolutely terrified that he would kill me, which doesn't sound too unreasonable now. Thinking of her other two daughters, Alyssa told the New Zealand Herald. It's always haunted me that I didn't get them away sooner than I did. And we talked to about the really high bond set for both Stephen and Katie. I'm sure the kids were a big factor, you know, protecting them. But I want to go back to to something that Alyssa said. It's always haunted her that she didn't get the children away from Stephen sooner than she did. And I think people in her position are always going to have that guilt, even though it seems to me, and I don't know every intricate detail, but it seems to me that she was in a very, very tough

position. You know, we mentioned it. She'd been groomed from the time that she was 15. And she was in an abusive relationship. She was threatened repeatedly. Those are not easy. relationships to exit, even though she knew it wasn't good. She knew that her kids were in danger. But when someone is threatening to kill you if you leave, what do you do? If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodontes. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a motherly touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. We talked earlier about another incest case where a mother named Patricia Spann had married both of her children at different points. And in that case, the bond was much lower, just $10,000. The daughter in that case pleaded guilty to avoid prison and instead received a suspended 10-year sentence with 10 years of probation.

After the 10 years of the suspended sentence, she has to have a hearing about the probation. So if you look at the bond in that case, it's nowhere near the million-dollar bond in this case. We don't know what the punishment ultimately handed down to Stephen and Katie would have been. The initial bond issued seemed as if the charters were being taken very seriously by the court. Yeah, I keep going back to the million dollar bond for both on what was a non-violent charge. It is very high. So I don't know how you can't say that the courts were taking it very seriously. Some people are surprised at how severe the penalties for this kind of crime, incest, actually are. I think some people may look at it as more of a social or more.

moral yuck factor than other crimes like murder, sexual assault or child abuse. In the other case, we referenced that took place in Oklahoma where Patricia Spann married both of her children, her son filed for an annulment after 15 months because he only found out that they were related to each other after the fact. This was not a case like Katie's where an adopted person knew they were reconnected. with their birth family, but Patricia Spann did know all along that she was marrying her biological son. She claimed that she was only trying to delay his military deployment and that they were not actually in a sexual relationship. And we don't know the absolute truth here. And she was not charged

for crimes related to this marriage. But Patricia's other son claimed in a ranker.com article that she also wanted to marry him saying she only tried it once and I told her to get lost. I would never be with my biological mom. That is disgusting. I came from that woman. And that word disgusting keeps coming up over and over. And I think that that's the way that 99.9% of the people would look at it. It is disgusting when you think about it. And so according to this other son, she wanted to marry him too. So this is a pattern. You know, we have her marrying the one son. He has to get an old. This son's saying that she tried to marry him. And just eight years later, Patricia Spann married her daughter who had also been adopted as a child. Yeah, I'm thinking about the older son who didn't know and found out after he had been with his mother for 15 months. That's rough.

you're going to need some therapy, for sure, to sort out, you know, all of that stuff. Yeah, I'm with you that therapy, I think, is something he's going to need because this wasn't his choice. This was something that was sort of done without his knowledge that he became a part of and then had to get himself out of that situation. I don't think that's something that's going to easily go away. So it was eight years later that Patricia Spann married her daughter, who had also been adopted as a child. Patricia and her daughter, like Stephen and Katie Pladell, were fully aware of the true nature of their relationship. Patricia convinced her daughter that their marriage would be legal. Because Patricia's mother had adopted the children and amended their birth certificates,

Patricia's name was not the one listed as their mother. At the time, she was also using a different last name, so it didn't set off any alarms when two people with the same last name, one old enough to be the other one's mother, were getting married. Reportedly, Patricia claimed to only be marrying her daughter, to adopt a child. Patricia's daughter was able to file for an annulment for her marriage, like her brother before her had done,

when he married Patricia. In the case of Patricia Span, who knowingly married not one but two of her children, they were fortunate enough to annul their marriages and get away from Patricia. Katie never got the chance to break away from her father slash husband, Stephen. She may have been able to work to get custody of her son back and raise him with her family without the influence of her predatory biological father. She may have been able to file an annulment and move on from this strange chapter of her life,

maybe reconnecting more with Alyssa and her two little sisters. But we don't get to see what Katie would have chosen to do because of Stephen and his temper. It had been left by Alyssa and Katie. And I think it's clear to me that he, he just couldn't handle the rejection. This also may have meant that Katie would have cooperated with any potential prosecution of him. And that could have been a factor in why he chose to kill her.

But why did Stephen kill his own infant son? When he could have easily just left him safe at his grandmother's house, that we don't know. He didn't do it in front of Katie. and he killed her neck. So it doesn't seem like he did it to get back at her or torture her. Katie didn't even know Bennett was dead at the time that she was killed. But I think to most people, this act just reinforced the kind of monster that Stephen had always been back from the days when he groomed Katie's biological mother, Alyssa. to putting Katie in a cooler when she was just a baby.

It's all very clear from the start that Stephen was not a good person and was capable of doing some very terrible things. We mentioned in our last episode and in many episodes as well that trying to leave an abusive relationship can be even more dangerous than being in the relationship itself. Katie was in another state with her family, had a no contact order in place, and still Stephen was able to kill. her. Even though they should have had that father-daughter bond, the familiar dynamics of all abusive relationships ended up at play. Stephen didn't seem to feel any paternal feelings towards Katie. When she was baby-d-niece, he didn't either. The feelings he had for Katie as a young woman were the same old possessive and controlling feelings masquerading as love. As a teenager, Katie's mom, Melissa, was Stephen's victim. And as a young woman, Katie herself was preyed upon by him in the same way.

Some people feel it's possible that Katie may not have truly wanted to keep away from Stephen and that it could have just been the legal consequences of an incestuous relationship she didn't want to deal with and not Stephen himself. Some people who say that they experienced genetic sexual attraction, want to be together, and want incest to be legal. One example is Patrick Stubing from Germany who met his sister when he was in his 20s. They have four children together. After the first two, Stubing was sentenced to one year suspended sentence. But Susan, his sister,

was just 17 at the time, so she was not tried. After the next two children, though, Stubing was sentenced to 10 months in prison. Three years after their first trial, the pair were tried a second time for committing incest again. Susan told the Daily Mail,

we fell in love as adults. And our love is real. there is nothing we could do about it. It was that simple. What else could we do? Stubing was ultimately sentenced to two years in prison. In 2012, Stubing and Susan took their case to the European Court of Human Rights, asking for incest to be made legal. They lost the case based on the protection of marriage and the family, as well as the risk of significant damage to any children born of the relationships. In 2000, The German Ethics Council called for the legalization of incest.

And one thing that the European Court of Human Rights brought up here is that, you know, what is the risk of significant damage to any children born of this type of relationship? I think that risk is real. And when you grow up and find out that your mom and dad are really brother and sister or father, daughter. I mean, what does that do to you? And I think there's also a physical risk because isn't it accurate that some babies that are born out of incest can have developmental issues, physical issues, things like that. So that's another concern is the entire physical. Yeah, I do think there is risk there. I don't know the exact science behind it.

Looking back at the background and tragic conclusion of the Pledell family case, it seems everyone was a victim of Stevens. Alyssa, Katie, and baby Bennett, not to mention Katie's adopted father, Anthony. Could anything have been done differently? We also wonder why there was no contact order between Katie and Stephen, but not one in place to prevent Stephen from having contact with Bennett. A no contact order might not have prevented what happened from happening,

but just the fact there wasn't one in place seems like a missed opportunity. Yeah, it seems to me that Stephen shouldn't have had contact with anybody at that point. But you're right in saying, we don't know what a no contact order would have done because it obviously didn't stop him from killing Katie. And at the end of the day, really, what is it more? It's a piece of paper. It's an order saying, don't do this. But, you know, when someone is hellbent on doing a, harm to another person, that no contact order is not even going to enter their mind. I get it.

They're good things. They need to happen. But they're not going to stop someone from doing something terrible if that is their ultimate goal. When Katie was laid to rest, Alyssa didn't attend Katie's funeral so as not to make a scene. She told the Daily Mail, I will remember Katie in my own wife. We will hold our own little service for her. As for Steve, I have no idea.

And I don't want to even think about him. I also want to have something good come out of this. If it's to get truth out there, to open people's eyes to incest, Alyssa wants authorities to change their methods in the future as well. She told the New Zealand Herald, I want them to overthink. I want them to err on the side of caution. I want them to err on the side of the protection of the child. Alyssa also wants people to know that relationships should be safe and healthy, saying,

if you're talking to someone on the internet or you're dating someone and it doesn't feel right, they're treating you badly, or you're constantly trying to make sure you don't set them off. That's not normal. Carrie Gould said of his adopted sister Katie to CBS News. My nickname for Katie was Pac-Man. she was always eating. She loved animals. She was a vegetarian. She had attended Dover High School where she would draw comic strips for other students. One of Katie's blog post reads, To be short, for me, a life without art is no life at all. We don't know why Katie chose Stephen over the chance to pursue her life's passion, but it sadly led to the beginning of her final days. Tragically, the case of an adopted child seeking to reconnect with her biological parents led to a terrible outcome in this case.

And it's this thought to me more that Katie chose Stephen. I mean, she was 18 years old. She was technically an adult. She knew Stephen was her biological father. I just wonder, you know, what type of pressure, influence, grooming happened to her at the hands of Stephen. That part we don't know because let's not forget, you know, many people. involved in this episode are no longer alive. They didn't end up going to trial. So a lot of things that would have normally come out in a case didn't. There weren't interviews to be given.

And I would just really like to know how that all transpired and what Stephen did kind of to make it happen. Yeah, we did talk about the fact that Katie's adoptive parents were concern that she was giving up on this plan that she had had to go to this college. So they recognize that there was a problem early on and they questioned why she was suddenly changing. And you, yeah, at the end of the day, you have to wonder what kind of role did Stephen play in that? Did he talk her out of going to that college in part of his grooming process? And my thought is he played the role. It was him. You know, I put it on him because of his history.

We know that this is kind of was his MO. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's just a very sad case. As we see in so many cases, you know, one man, one person can wreck the lives of so many people through their actions. You're not, you know, you're talking about the victims who ended up dead. You're talking about their family. the kids you have to think about all of that as they grow up and you know how's it going to change their lives you know it is but how and how traumatic are the changes going to be

from the very beginning of this episode it's just been troubling thing after troubling thing connected to stephen and we see it conclude with just a terrible outcome but to me he's at the epicenter of it all. I just don't think there's any, any doubt about that. But that's it for our episode on Stephen and Katie Pledell. If you love the show, I haven't done so yet. Take a minute. Go out, give us a review, leave a rating. Keep telling your friends. That word of mouth about the criminology podcast really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at CriminologyPod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to Facebook.com slash criminology podcast.

And you can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. So that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.