Hidden True Crime - The Disturbing Case of Madeline Soto

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Warning: This episode discusses topics related to sexual violence. Please listen with caution. Case Background: Madeline Soto was a 13-year-old girl living in Kissimmee, Florida. She was initially reported missing on February 26, 2024, after her mom, Jennifer Soto, went to pick her up from school, and Madeline was nowhere to be found. At the time, Jennifer Soto told police that Madeline was dropped off across the street from her school in a church parking lot by her mom's long-time/live-in boyfriend, Stephan Sterns. Stephan Sterns said he watched Madeline walk from the church parking lot towards the school but didn't watch Madeline walk all the way to see that she made it in. A massive 4-day search effort by multiple law enforcement agencies to find Madeline quickly ensued. In the immediate aftermath of her disappearance, investigators turned their attention to Stephan Sterns. Law enforcement found several disturbing pictures and videos on his phone of Madeline. He was later arrested on 60 charges, including capital sexual battery, lewd or lascivious molestation, and unlawful possession of materials depicting sexual performance by a child. Tragically, on March 1, 2024, Madeline was found deceased near a wooded area on Hickory Tree Rd. in Osceola County. This is the same area where Stephan Sterns's car was reported as being seen on the day Madeline went missing. Through several press conferences and news statements, law enforcement has stated that they believe that Madeline was already dead the morning she disappeared and that Stephan Sterns was actually moving her body at the time he was supposed to take her to school. Police also revealed that security footage shows Stephan Sterns dumping Madeline's backpack and her school laptop in an apartment complex dumpster at 7:35 am that morning. Additionally, police have video footage of Stephan Sterns returning to the dumpster, with what appears to be Madeline visibly deceased in the car. In April of 2024, Stephan Sterns was indicted on first-degree murder by a grand jury. He is now being held without bail at Osceola County Jail. On June 10, 2024, prosecutors announced that they will be seeking the death penalty against Stephan Sterns for Madeline's murder. Body Cam Footage Compilation: Gray Hughes Investigates https://www.youtube.com/@GrayHughesInvestigates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WH-CP7wUq_U Interviews: Fox Orlando https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbcXE3b-t34 WFTV Channel 9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvUdnLGAqto About Hidden True Crime: Lauren Matthias was a television reporter for a decade and has followed the Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell case since 2019. She and her husband, Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, started Hidden True Crime in 2020 with their Season, 'Beyond the Veil,' a psychological deep dive into the doomsday murders and prophet. What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a forensic psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Additional terms apply. Service plan required for Apple Watch and iPad. Hello, Hidden Jens. It's Lauren and Dr. John. co-hosts, husband and wife back together in the same house after a long two-month trial, where we saw justice for JJ, Tiley, and Tammy. Chad Daybill was convicted, and I was at the trial full-time. We are now back together.

It's so good to be back together with my partner in crime. It's a good kind of crime, the reporting of crime. And we are now delving into some cases that John and I have been talking a lot about, but haven't been able to cover. But our cases that we consider very important. And so before we begin today, I want to share what we're talking about and give a trigger warning. This is a tragic case that happened in February of this year. Madeline Soto went missing the day after.

her 13th birthday. And she was found five days later. And by that, I mean her body. Since that time, they called him her stepfather, but her mother's living boyfriend, Stefan Stearns was arrested. First, charged with abuse, then her murder of this little girl.

And this week, new body cam footage came out from the day that Madeline Soto went missing. Dr. John, who has assessed and evaluated criminals for 30 years, he more than the criminals you assess and evaluate the most, have to do with these type of offenders. So this is a case that we want to delve into because of John's expertise and because Madeline deserves the discussion. session. But a trigger warning to those, I think you understand where we're going with that.

Yeah. So if we refer to, I'll call it exploitative material, the initials I use for that when I talk to attorneys is we just call it CP, which I think people can interpret, people can understand what that means. So CP, when this case came out, we had a lot of people that were interested in and they wrote us and asked us to cover it, but we were, at the time, we were kind of prepping for the daybell trial. And of course, during the trial, we paid attention to these cases, but we just didn't really have the time to delve into them. So, so I paid attention. I've been watching some of the commentary and some of the thoughts on this case, but the last few days were really, you know, the first time since this body camp footage came out, the first time I really had a chance to look more

closely at everything. And so I think what people are doing is there, They're looking at a lot of different strands, a lot of different threads. But what I want to try to do tonight is to look at some of those threads in the way that you and I typically do, which hopefully is a little bit different. But I want to look at those different threads and I want to start pulling them together a little bit into something a little. I want to start looking a little bit at the larger picture to make more sense of this whole situation. So I think there's been some interesting commentary out there. But hopefully tonight will situate all of those threads a little more cohesively.

and we'll start putting together the tapestry a little bit more. And maybe in that sense, hopefully we can add some value to this case. And thank you for doing that. John has been preparing for quite a while. So one of the interesting things about this, the analyses I've seen out there so far has been, a lot of the focus has been on the two parents. So obviously the body cam involves Jen Soto and

her boyfriend, Stefan Stearns, and almost all the focus has been on that for that reason, which makes sense. But there's a moment in one of these interviews. So Jen did some interviews with some of the local stations initially after her daughter went missing. And she talked a little bit about Madeline and some of the issues that Madeline had. And there's a moment here, I think, that's really important. And you know how I'm a big fan of looking for moments. and how they tie into the larger case and how they tie into the larger picture.

And we have one of those moments. Nobody's talking about it. So let's start with that. Okay. It's in the Fox interview. If someone's taken her and they're trying to take her, just to show her face, just to make sure she's not being taken against her will.

And you mentioned ADHD. Was there anything else maybe mentally going on or that, that you knew of? She does suffer from anxiety, and once upon a time she was diagnosed with autism. We had her re-sword. Brain, maybe. We evaluated. Okay.

We had her reevaluated a few months ago, actually, and they told us, no, she didn't have autism, but she did have some autistic traits. She did have ADHD, some autistic traits, but not autism. So I'm not sure where to leave with that because one doctor said she did and one doctor saying she doesn't. I don't know. She's just in the middle, I guess. Because she does have some tendencies, but socially she's pretty great. So I'm not sure.

And with the video that you were able to see whenever your boyfriend dropped her off, where was that? Like, which video? Okay. Let's start with this comment. So she had talked briefly, or there was some talk. of Madeline having ADHD. And then Jen tells us that her real issue is anxiety and that in the past,

she had been diagnosed with some autism. We don't know if that's low functioning or high functioning autism. Autism's on a spectrum. But I think this is a really interesting moment to begin thinking about this case, because autism, even at the high end of the spectrum, autism would imply more of biological situation. In other words, it would imply that whatever type of autism it is,

it's probably not going to improve too much over the course of a lifetime. In other words, it's more genetic, it's more ingrained, it's going to be harder to change, right? And so what's interesting to me about this is that somebody assessed her and saw her level of functioning being whatever it was sufficiently low or sufficiently concerning to label it autism. And when you think about this family and when you think about this relationship, they've been together for seven years. So that would put Stefan Stern's in Madeline's life around age six. So let's say five or six. I don't know for sure, but I'm assuming that this evaluation occurred probably sometime after that. So whoever's doing this e-val is essentially saying, I think that this young girl, Madeline,

is having sufficient problems with communication or social interaction. or schoolwork or whatever it is, I don't know the specifics, that we're going to label her as autistic. And then, for whatever reasons, they go in for another, a reevaluation is what Jen calls it. And the diagnosis changes. It changes to ADHD. Now, ADHD is much more fluid. First of all, one of the things about ADHD that is important to understand is,

Jen is correct. It's largely an anxiety-based, not fully, but to a large degree in anxiety. anxiety-based disorder. And so ADHD may or may not follow someone into adulthood. Typically, it can be managed better than autism with certain medications. And so ADHD is more of a fluid situation than autism. And so what's fascinating to me about these comments is when I heard that, I did a double take and I thought, first of all, I thought this abuse is probably very severe in the sense that a psychologist is willing to, you know, to label her as autistic, when in fact it doesn't appear to be autism at a very early age,

which I think becomes a reflection of the severe abuse that she's encountering. In other words, this abuse is impairing her and affecting her and impacting her to such a large degree that they're calling it autism. And then we learn later, and then it becomes even more interesting. We learn later, it's not autism, it's ADHD. And here's the fascinating thing about ADHD. It's people that are traumatized and abused and molested. So the abuse could be physical or otherwise, it could be molestation, are often misdiagnosed with ADHD.

There's a lot of work by Bruce Perry. I recommend people refer to Bruce Perry's work in his book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog. He talks a lot about this, how that the symptoms of ADHD often mimic trauma. They mimic abuse. And so right away, you know, right away my first thought was, this is a child who this isn't about anxiety. This isn't about ADHD. I mean, yes, there's anxiety. This isn't about autism.

This is about severe, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse to a child over many years. And it's being misdiagnosed to such a degree that people see this as autism even. They see it as ADHD. But obviously now we know that none of that's true. We know that really what's going on here is you have a child that's being traumatized. She can't function very well because she's scared to death. She's crippled with anxiety. She's probably not sleeping much.

She probably doesn't want to be in this home, right? Like you've got all of these elements going on. Sad to say that people in my profession, and it would be hard to find, by the way, if she's not disclosing it, but they're missing that. They're not seen this for what it is. And so I think the beginning of the story has to be a tragic beginning, sadly. Obviously, we know what happened to Madeline, but the tragedy goes back further. It goes back to presumably when this guy, Stefan Stearns, enters her life.

And my guess is that the abuse started occurring fairly quickly to such a degree that they thought this was autism when it wasn't. And then continued. continued until she passed away. So I just want to say that this moment was important to me because it really puts the spotlight on the most important element of this crime, which is Madeline, the victim, and what she went through and the struggles and turmoil and suffering and pain that she went through. Now I'm getting emotional. And so even this little comment by Jen was so, to me, it was so revealing and so tragic and so heartbreaking. But it's one of those moments that people haven't really,

it's a thread that people haven't really pulled out. And I want to pull it out because I want to acknowledge how sad this is. And I want to start this with Madeline and the thought that nobody may be including Jen, that nobody saw this and nobody went deeper to find this. And nobody protected her. Nobody. Why didn't the teacher see this? Did her mother see this? Right? Who saw this? Did the mental health professional who assessed Madeline for autism? Did that person ask about abuse? Right? Like, who protected this girl? And, you know, that's the tragedy to me is that, you know, like Daybell, we just finished Daybo. Like, if Charles is taking more seriously than these kids are alive, right? I don't know. how or where in the story somebody could have intervened, but it seems to me that if you have abuse that's this severe, it's going to show itself somewhere along the way.

Over a period of seven years, you would expect maybe it's going to show itself somewhere. So that's my start here. It's not the happiest beginning of our show, but I think the emphasis needs to be put on the victim and how heartbreaking it is and how, the system and the people that surround these cases, maybe we all need to do better and see more and see deeper. One of my favorite lines in all of literature is from King Lear. And it's two words.

It's see better. See better. So, you know. That is profound. That is profound if everybody could see better in so many ways. Evidence. So I want to take this beginning and develop it a little bit. We're going to develop it with body.

camp footage, we're going to develop it with some of the other interviews. And I think by the end of our show, I hope to present a picture of what was really going on here and why that matters and maybe how we can, you know, if we're lucky, maybe we can, we can see better in these situations to prevent them. Great. Thank you. And I'm here to listen as well to you. So let's let's go to, let's go to the body cam footage. This was the, footage that was released, as you pointed out, it was released this week, so it's kind of fresh in the news. Yes, and we're sharing this from Gray Hughes Investigates, who gathered it all. Here we are. Do you have a picture of her? Yeah, I know. Let me see which picture. I don't know which

picture. You can recently probably from a birthday party, right? Yeah, but I wasn't there, so I had to look at Is this a good enough picture or do you need a whole body picture? Okay, perfect. Okay, where's your photo? I don't know. Okay, where's the photo? I saved it to my photos, so you could... You saved it to your photos?

Perfect. Okay, perfect. Give me a second. Okay, I'm gonna send it out right now to my other guys. Thank you very much. Okay. So, what a moment. What a moment.

I mean, I laugh because, so the officer asks her, do you have a picture of her? It takes her five minutes to find a picture of her daughter, right? If I asked you, if I said to you right now, do you have a picture of our son? You have a picture as a screensaver. You have a picture. You have every picture in your gallery is of him. I mean, there's some of me, fortunately. But, you know, we both love our son.

I love that you have so many pictures. Your photo was my screensaver for the trial. But yes, go ahead. Okay. Good to know. But I feel very good about the fact that you have so many pictures of our son. And if I asked you to produce a picture of him, you would be able to find that picture instantaneously.

I think the question here becomes, why can't she find a picture of her daughter? that's missing, right? Yeah. This is an extraordinarily important question for understanding this case. So I think there's only a few reasons why she can't. There's maybe a few reasons why she can't find a picture of her daughter immediately. One is that she doesn't prioritize her daughter.

My guess is that she probably has more pictures of Stefan than she does of her daughter. So if you asked her to get a picture of her boyfriend, she could probably get to that, you know, instantaneously and show you immediately. But her daughter, she doesn't even have, she tells us, she doesn't even have any pictures of her daughter and her, her photos. Right away, I'm kind of sensing that there's an issue here in the sense that she's not really placing a huge amount of value on her daughter and pictures of her daughter and her relationship with her daughter. And I almost have the feeling like there's a sense in which she's, maybe this is, going too far, but there's a sense in which she's kind of dehumanized her daughter to some degree

by my guesses, by prioritizing her boyfriend over her daughter. And the obvious reason for that would be that Stefan Stearns sees her daughter as competition. And he probably is threatened by any relationship that she has with their daughter is as typical of abusive relationship and domestic violence relationships. And he probably demands at his picture. As the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know.

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So I think right away, right away, right away, this very small thing that's captured on the body cam is giving us tons of information about their relationship and how she sees her daughter. And so when I see a moment like this and this idea, this idea that not only does it appear that this relationship is controlling at the very least, and probably abusive, if I had to guess. There's probably some coercive control and domestic violence going on here for sure.

Yeah. But the casualty in that process is Madeline, right? That Madeline becomes secondary to the boyfriend. That Madeline becomes an afterthought. And so this explains why, I think, to some degree, why Jen has no problem letting her daughter sleep alone in the same bed with her boyfriend. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start

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So that's something she's acknowledged and she told the police. That's been going wild on chat, by the way. Many people asking, why in the world would this even be okay? Of course, we're going to delve into Jen fully in this episode. But yeah, okay. This is why, because from this very small interaction about, do you have a picture of your daughter, she can't find a picture of her daughter. That's insane.

If I asked you for a picture of our son, you would come up with so many in five seconds that my head would spin. I mean, I'd be happy. I'd love pictures of our son, but the fact is, like, if it took you five minutes to find a picture of our son, I would be concerned. Right. And so, and she can't find a picture of her daughter. It's just amazing. And it's because she's probably more than likely.

She's in an abusive relationship. And her daughter doesn't matter. And he, Stefan, has probably dehumanized her, which also, I think, raises some suspicions about her potential involvement. It's not clear that she's involved. but it's also not clear that she might have known more than she's letting on. If you get to the point where your daughter becomes objectified and dehumanized, you're also at the point where somebody like Stefan can talk you into harming her. And so we don't know for sure if that's happened.

One thing I do know, though, is if this is an extremely abusive relationship, and I believe it is, why has Jen not come forward at this point and talked about that. I know. That's what we're all wondering. I'm sharing all of these comments. She'd have nothing to lose by throwing them under the bus and saying, look, this was an abusive relationship.

I was worried about this. I'm so happy to be out. But she hasn't. Right. She can't be afraid of her safety at this point. He's behind bars. I know. That's where it gets confusing.

Right. It gets confusing. So does she know? I don't know. The only reason I can think of, the main reason I can think of why she hasn't come forward is she might have some knowledge. Or maybe she even participated. It doesn't, fortunately, in the images they discovered on his phone, there were no images of her. But I was, I was waiting to hear or see if any of those

thousands of images contain pictures of her alongside him or with him or was she behind the camera. I don't know. These are all questions we need to have answered. Right. So, so I think that this moment, this moment in the body cam footage that most people probably wouldn't even notice, is so critical in terms of understanding this case. I think that was another important. That was a really important moment that I picked up on too. Let's go to BodyCam. Can you go to like 15 minutes and 15 seconds?

Oh, and let me just comment too. During that question that if you look at Stefan Stern's body language, he's always kind of on edge. Like there's always this, there's this edginess. There's this anger, right? Like he's sitting there with his arms crossed and he's just kind of hovering. You'll notice that we'll get to this a little bit more. But there's this quality that he has.

There's like this menacing quality that he always has of kind of hovering in the background with this kind of scowl on his face. Like he's angry. Like he can't control the situation. And that is a constant theme throughout this body cam footage. Are you like a phone number or phone? She does, but she left it at home today, I haven't. You have it.

And I've already known through her messages. Okay, how about, did she have like Avalch? Yeah. She's got a device, only device she's got on her right now is her school laptop. Is that trackable? I don't think so. It should be. If the Wi-Fi is turned on, it'll try to connect to the Wi-Fi.

I don't know any of the history around our way or not possibly. I don't know she got dropped off she was like I um

so she's a better as fine his car so she wanted me dropped off at school she wanted me dropped off like half a block away so she can walk to him this thing she's in a face but um he dropped her up a block away and drove away

okay Did she ever go to school? No, we called school. She was walking in that direction. She was walking through her backpack. Just looking for something. I thought maybe she was just looking for headphones before she comes. So let's talk about this moment.

The officer is asking if she has a cell phone and she says no, she left it at home. And then the officer says, well, does she have an Apple watch? He's just trying to find if there's something she might, some electronic device she might have where they can find her, right? And she doesn't have an Apple watch. And then he says, the mom says she has a school laptop. And somebody that's sitting in the station says, well, you know, if she turned that on, you can track it. And all of a sudden, Jan starts swaying. The most interesting moment here, I think, is her response is this swaying back in front.

Well, she can't stand still. She starts swaying back and forth, and she continues doing that for the rest of the body cam footage. And what's interesting about that is the anxiety. The swaying to me is indicative of fear and or anxiety. And this is a common theme. So we see this with Madeline. We know that Madeline had anxiety. Now we're seeing it with Jen.

We're going to see it in one of the interviews that we're going to look at later, that there's this underlying theme. So let's back up a little bit and look at the family. Let's look at the family culture. This is a family culture that is predominantly infused with anxiety from top to bottom. It's not just Madeline, it's also Jen. And to a lesser degree, it's Stefan. So there's only three people in this family.

But the question is, why are people here so anxious? And the obvious answer is because you have one person in charge of this family. One person is dictating the terms of this family. One person is controlling this family. And that's Stefan. This is the proverbial walking on eggshells family. If you say or do something wrong, you're going to get punished. If you do nothing wrong, you might find that, you know, in the case of Adeline,

you might find that your mother's boyfriend is abusing you, right? Like this is an environment that's completely unpredictable. This is an environment where you have someone with absolute control, coercive control. She's constantly worried about how Stefan is going to respond to something. So here you have a situation where apparently she learns that the school laptop could be a vulnerability. That if Madeline somehow took that laptop with her and it's on, they'll find out where she is. Right. They'll find her body.

So when she realizes that this could be a potential mistake that Stefan made, he doesn't, we don't know presumably if that laptop, obviously the laptop wasn't with her, but if it was, they don't know. This is the day after she goes missing. So here she becomes super anxious, and she's trying to, it's a form of self-soothing. She's trying to soothe herself,

but she's obviously concerned that Stefan is going to respond to this in a very probably potentially violent manner. So this is what she's doing. This is what she's, she's expressing this anxiety and the only way she knows how, which she's trying to diffuse that

by swaying back and forth. And the point is that's when she started swaying was this moment of vulnerability where she realized. If she knows about this, then she realizes they made a mistake. Or, you know, but whether she knows or not, she realizes that if the school laptop is in Madeline's backpack and it's on, they can find her. Right. And she doesn't know that necessarily. So people are, yes, he had put that somewhere we learned later. Exactly.

He had put it in the dumpster we learned later. Right. And we don't know what she knew at this moment. Right. We don't know if she knew that or if she thought that it was, right, we don't know. Right. Yes, correct. It was thrown in the dumpster at like 7.30 a.m.

So before he supposedly dropped her off. So I think that's an interesting moment because it really, it tells us a lot about the family culture. And it also tells us that let's assume that Jen had no knowledge of this crime, that Jen more than likely is the victim of abuse as well. Correct. Right. Whether she had knowledge or not, she's still the victim of interpersonal violence. Coercive control, somebody being in control over her. So let's go to body cam footage, 1945.

Again, Gray Hughes investigates, put all of this together. Thank you. Gray Hughes Investigates. 1945, you said? Yes. I'm getting a random 407 number. Hello? Yes? Hi, principal.

I'm okay, how are you? Okay, pause it. So notice his body language before the principal calls. The way I would describe it as menacing. He just, he's standing with his arms crossed, sort of hovering over her, almost dominating her. He's looking straight ahead, barely blinks. He's got this anger.

He's got this kind of underlying. anger. And then she gets this call from the principal. She doesn't know it's the principal. She answers it. And then he lets out this big sigh. Hi, principal. I'm okay. How are you? Like, why did you answer that? Right. Like, there's this anger there that's just pervasive. The other thing that's interesting about that call with the principal is she answers the call from the principal and she says, hi, principal, I'm okay. How are you? Think about that. Like, typically if someone calls me, I might say to them, hey, how are you doing? and they'll respond, they'll say, I'm fine, I'm okay, right?

Like, that's sort of the normal protocol. Here she's telling him, without the principal asking her anything, she's volunteering, I'm okay. Hey, principal, I'm okay. You're in the police station trying to find your missing daughter. Is that just being polite or disregarding? Is that just formality, though, you know, just to play devil's advocate, formality, or is it showing you're right?

It's bizarre. It's bizarre. Yeah, it's bizarre. Like, who answers the phone? When your daughter is deceased and who answers the phone and says, I mean, that's not how I would get it. I'd be like, high principle. You know, I'm really busy now. You know, I'm at the police station.

My daughter's missing. I'm a wreck. Can I call you back? She's like, no, I'm good. Everything's good here. Nothing to see here. Like, what? Who answers the phone like that?

I guess the problem I have with this moment, maybe it's a formality, you could be right, but the formality typically is high principle, and the principal says, hey, Jen, just calling to check up on you, get an update, how are you doing it? And she says, then she says, I'm all right. Or I'm not good.

I'm not good. I've been better. So what does that mean? I'm okay. So she says it. What does that mean? I mean, again, this might point in the direction of her having some knowledge.

She's walking into the police station with Stefan, presumably to find her daughter, but maybe she knows. This is the type of thing you would say if you had knowledge that your daughter was deceased. I'm okay. That moment should be the furthest thing from okay. And people are asking,

how do you know that she didn't say, hey, are you all right or whatever? Either way, you say, I'm not okay, is what you're saying. It's strange. Sure. I mean, there could be some denial and there could be some avoidance.

You know, we know that when they showed her the pictures or when they confronted her with the pictures on the phone, that she denied it. Right. She denied knowing, but then she wasn't okay, the exploitative material, in other words. I noticed his sigh, but I also noticed when she said,

I'm getting a random number. I'm getting a random 407 number. Hello? He turned directly, like just looking. You're right? He's sort of menacing. He's menacing. He's, he's in control or trying to be in control of everything that's going on.

And so he's looking right at her as she talks. And then she says who it is. And he goes, you know, and you're right. She's probably trying to also just keep him happy or whatever the case may be, too, it seems. Right. And the exhale or the sigh, typically that's going to be somebody's going to do that to try to calm down. Right. somebody exhales usually to try to compose themselves,

try to calm down, right? He's probably so angry that he's in that police station having to deal with that, the possibility of any accountability, the possibility that he could be arrested or caught. He doesn't want to imagine any of that. And it's a situation that's out of his control. He's not asking the questions. The police officers are, right?

That's the problem here. If he could control that, then he probably wouldn't be as, is concerned, but he can't. Someone said he's trying to glean info. He always perks up and the officer makes a sound. Somebody else said, to be fair, they are always saying, I'm okay, I'm okay in traumatic situations. And you know what?

I can say similar that I was that person as a child, as a teenager. But that's also telling, in my opinion. Is it not that they're trying to keep somebody happy or just keep things calm. Yeah. People are pointing out that it's not the police station. Thank you, Ruth, listen to it. It's her mother's workplace.

Oh, okay. Thanks, yes. All right. Thank you for clarifying that. I was wondering why there were so many people. So many people in the lobby. Right. So the police went to a call.

That makes sense. The police responded to a call. Yeah. And when she says, Oh, hi, principal is almost like it was caller ID for her boyfriend. and she was kind of saying that out loud for him. Yeah. Yeah.

Right. There could have been this performative element like I'm okay. Right. That's a good point. It could have been for him to appease him. Let's go to the, I believe the first interview was the Fox Orlando interview, right? Let's go to that. People are also putting out, I just want to say, well, I pull out the Fox Orlando.

People are also saying, notice how no, no, he's not comforting her either. Right. A Fox Orlando. Right, that's a great point. Yeah, in this time of trauma, if he's innocent and she doesn't know, right, then he should be, at the very least, yeah, he should definitely be comforting her. We dropped her off close to school across the street from a church, which is very, it's right next to the school. She crossed the street and walked to school, what we thought walked to school. Um, my boyfriend who drove her to school, drove away at that point. Um, it was seen on video footage that she hung out in the parking lot of the church for a few minutes and then got up and walked towards the school. But she never made it for that walk from, and that was around 9 a.m. when she got up, uh, she never made it to school after that.

Um, it's right next to the school. I don't know why she didn't make it. I don't know if something happened. on her walk along the way or she got taken, but she never made it. And that was the last anyone seen of her or heard from her? Yes. I went to pick her up after school and she wasn't there. So I started driving around, maybe thinking she took a walk, maybe she decided to walk to my mom's office, which is pretty close to the school as well, drove around and I didn't see anything. I drove back to the school.

The school was closed. I emailed one of her teachers. They confirmed that she was absent all day. At that point is when I called 911 because I realized something was truly wrong. Have you heard from like any of her friends? Has she been active on any social media? She hasn't been active on social media.

None of her chats, none of her games. We did contact all her friends. none of them had seen her Monday or heard from her. Yeah, there's no update. And I have to ask this, and I know I hate doing it, but is she the type that would run away? Has this happened in the past or anything? Has she ever threatened to run away?

Never. She's never ever mentioned anything like this before, and she's not the type to want to do this. She did accidentally leave her phone on Monday, which is kind of... She's got ADHD and very careful. You can pause it. Yeah, I think I noticed a lot of.

So this is the first interview she ever did. And yeah, the guy, there's, again, this menacing quality. He's hovering in the background, checking on her, listening to her, right? That's one thing. And the other thing people picked up on, which I think is fascinating, is her use of the term we, we, right? That would go along with the picture idea I mentioned earlier, that many times in these types of abusive relationships, and I mean, again, I don't know for sure that this is an abusive relationship.

I'm speculating here, but many times in these types of relationships, the victim will, in this case, she will sacrifice herself to the abuser. And one of the goals of the abuser is to systematically dismantle the victim's sense of self. And I think, so I think you're seeing some of that here. When she says, we, she's saying, I don't, I don't know who I am, right? She's kind of disavowing her identity. I agree with you. Yeah, people are saying coercive control for sure. He was sitting there to control the narrative. Right. People notice him looming too. Wee. And he's hovering to listen to what's being said. Right. And then the use of the we, the term we is really bizarre. Like she's not speaking for herself. She needs, she needs him. It's almost as if he's the puppet master behind her and he's pulling her strings and she's saying,

sometimes she'll say I, but for the most part, it's such a bizarre thing to say, we dropped her off. She has acknowledged many times that he dropped her off. But her sense of self is so, at this point, I think it's so corroded and so non-existent that she thinks of her relationship as a we, that her sense of herself has been completely whittled away at this point. She needs his approval. All of these pieces, I think, are starting to, I hope that I'm starting to, I'm starting to, I'm

starting to kind of try to put these pieces together to make sense of the larger picture. You are. Let's go to, so let's go to the W-F-T interview. So the first question is if I can have your first, your last name and spell them both down for me. Okay. Jennifer Soto, J-E-N-N-I-F-E-R-S-O-O. Mother. Mother.

Jennifer, tell me how you put her now. I feel like I can't breathe. All I keep thinking about is. Where is she? Is she safe? She okay. But we're all a wreck. My entire family is a mess. We're just so worried. When did you first realize, or when did you file a missing report? We filed a missing report. We called the police at like 4.45 yesterday, 4.45 p.m. But she actually went missing. that morning around between... Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day.

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She wanted to walk the rest of the way. We dropped her off at school, close to school. She wanted to walk the rest of the way. I'm not sure what I'm allowed to share. you should whatever you feel comfortable sharing. I know you had conversations with detectives. Not sure with that conversation. Whatever you feel comfortable sharing that would put the awareness out there.

Yeah. She was spotted walking by the church, by the middle school on the cameras. They saw her hang out in the parking lot for a little bit and then get up and leave. The N.C. vehicle or anything else. They just saw her walk away around 9 a.m. heading towards the school, but she never made it. What has the school said? Have you given in contact with the school? Yes. That they're doing everything they can. They've given me all their resources. The principal's called me. They've looked at their cameras. Cameras. I don't think they've caught anything on the cameras. It's too far away from the sidewalk. Everything is too grainy.

so they can't see specific faces. But they've looked. I'm just waiting to hear anything else from them. Is this normal behavior to just not show up or call or text or anything? Not at all, no. From time to time, she will leave her cell phone at home accidentally, and that's actually what happened yesterday. She left her phone at home.

She went to school. But that happens from time to time. She's got ADHD, her memory. She's very forgotful. So, yeah, there's no way to track her right now because I have, well, the detectives now have her phone. But this isn't normal behavior now. What was the last thing, I guess, the conversation that you two had you were

your daughter? We spoke about her birthday party. She had a birthday party on Sunday. She had a great time. I couldn't make it because I was working. But she had an amazing time. She was so happy with all her gifts. I told her good night.

And yeah, that was it. I was the one who took her to school in the morning. That was my partner. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll come back to the end of that because it's one of the, I think it's the only interview, the only formal interview with Stefan, But the most important thing to me is just the visible shaking.

Yeah. Right. The anxiety. Keep a mind that he's hovering here. Stearns is behind the door watching all of this. He's, again, he like the guy can't, he can't leave the room. Now's the time for a great deal on a new Honda. It's time to take an adventure with rugged capability and commanding style.

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But like, if I'm interviewing someone and they're shaking and they're going to fall off their chair? You know, I'm going to say, are you okay? Let's take a break. Here's some water, right? Like, let's, you know, I'm sorry. This is hard, right? But I mean, but putting that aside, like, that's, that's just a little moment that's peculiar, like, the reporters, like, indifferent to her anxiety, indifferent to her suffering in this moment. But again, here you see, you see the same elements. You see Stefan Stern's out of the picture, kind of hovering in medicine, and she's shaking. She can't control that shaking. Right. Here's, here's that anxiety that's defining this family culture that comes into play

again. So that anxiety, again, this is kind of that, like I said, that kind of walking on eggshells type feeling. Like, this is the type of anxiety that victims of abuse experience all the time. Right. She's clearly, to me, an abused woman. Yeah. No doubt about it. So, you know, in my mind, and again, I don't know, I guess we don't know for sure. We're speculating here, but based on all of this, it seems to me that this is a violent relationship, violent in the, they're not married, but he's violent towards her, towards Jen, and clearly he's violent towards Madeline. And not only violent, but violent to an extreme degree.

And the defining feature of this family culture is this underlying anxiety that neither Jen nor Madeline apparently have the capacity to really cope with or control. The question you and I always ask is, how does this lead to the events that happened, right? And so now I think we're starting to answer that. When you start pulling these threads together, you see a family culture that's traumatic and violent, and it's having a huge impact on the victims that are in this culture. And now we have to, right now you'd have to speculate about, I guess we can talk a little bit about, we can speculate about Stefan Stearns and how he got to the point where he's so controlling.

But before that, I guess the big question would be, what were some of the potential incidents or triggers that led to the eventual homicide? Well, that's what I've been wondering, too, is because we don't have a motive. Yeah. Well, I think there could be a few things, but one thing that kind of comes to my mind initially is that she turned 13. And perhaps that was a defining moment for her. I don't know what happened on her 13th birthday or how she celebrated,

but perhaps that was a bit of a defining moment in the sense that she feels like she's getting older, she feels more autonomy. Maybe she was going to disclose the abuse. Yeah, that's what I wonder. Maybe after seven years of being brutalized, she had enough. Maybe she was going to come forward. This is what I suspected. She threatened to tell, exactly.

She threatened to tell. And somehow maybe she talked to her mother about it and her mother. And again, I don't know if her mother knows about the abuse going on in the home. I presume she certainly knows about the abuse towards herself, but maybe she talked to her mother and maybe her mother inadvertently told him. I don't know. I think there's probably something in here about many years of abuse maybe becoming, going from private to public,

and he wants to squash that in any way he can. That's exactly what I suspect the motive is, which is even more heartbreaking because she was getting stronger and she wanted it to end. As you know, I've worked with a lot of these types of crimes, and I think it's entirely possible that Stern's targeted Madeline many years ago. In other words, I think it's quite possible that he entered this relationship, knowing that Jen had a child that was vulnerable and that he could gain access to.

It's quite possible that he entered. this relationship, not to be with Jen, but to be with Madeline, he saw that Jen too was perhaps quite vulnerable and that he could take advantage of her and that she would be susceptible to his controlling nature. And so in that sense, I think that he may have targeted Madeline from the start and then he groomed her, as long as sex offenders do, he groomed her for abuse and then he abused her for many years. I think this is sadly, this is kind of a classic case of a sexual predator targeting a young child and a mother that might have some vulnerabilities that he knew he could take advantage of. And then he did. And I think that at some point, as Madeline became older and

a little more autonomous and gained a little more confidence, I think more than likely Madeline may have felt empowered after her 13th birthday to disclose the abuse. He found out, and this was the outcome. Yeah. I think we'll learn a little bit more soon, of course. I think you're right. And so let's go to, let's end with, let's go to the interview with him. So we've talked about Jen, we've talked about Madeline in a little bit, and now let's, let's take a look at the interview with Stefan Stearns. And let's talk a little bit about that. He seemed very emotional right now. Explain to us. I dropped her off. Gerty looked fine when I drove away. Celeste, we saw her.

More of the conversations that you had in the car when you dropped her off? Not much. She was asleep for most of the way. Told her have a good day in school when she got out. I love her. She said, thanks. Love you too. What was it?

And so where do you think she could possibly be? I mean, this isn't, as I was told, this isn't normal behavior. There's not normal behavior. She's not the type that would just run off. We don't know where she can be. We're scared. We just want her home. Are you in the sense blaming yourself?

It's hard not to. Why? I dropped off early. I could have waited longer. She looked okay. She was walking towards the school when I saw her. It was like any other day, so I went on with my day. It's hard not to blame myself.

What has the conversation been with Jen since? She's been very, a lot stronger to meet. She's been home and together really well. But it just keeps coming in waves. This reality keeps hitting. We don't know where she is. We don't know she's safe. We're just scared.

We just want her home. Have you, like, literally put boots on the ground? Went out. Yeah, I even went out with the cops. Where I had dropped her off. And we looked all up and down the road, all-loin communities, and there was nothing helpful.

None of the cameras were pointing the street. Nothing, which in 2024 was surprising. The church across the street had some cameras, and they mentioned seeing her waiting around in the parking lot for a while before moving on, and that was it. But it was greedy. It was greedy footage and not much, not much else. It seems like she walked west, east.

They sent in the direction, of the school. I'm not sure what that is. What was the language, not language, verbally, language, body language. When you drive through all, that she seemed happy, where she's like, I'm going to meet my friends. She got a happy weekend. She just turned 13. She had had a 13th birthday party. She was happy that we were all together here.

She was just very happy. She was a happy kid. She's very sweet. She's a very sweet girl. She brings a lot of joy to us. And we just not knowing. So I think the most obvious is he's acting tearful without tears, which, you know, people express sadness. I've said this a lot in the past. People express sadness in different ways. So the lack of tears doesn't necessarily mean that someone isn't sad, but obviously we know he knows the truth at this point. Right.

So we know what this is. We know this is acting. We know. We know. Right. This is fake. So clearly what. But, you know, somebody had mentioned Chris Watts.

I mean, this, right, this has Chris Watts vibes in the sense that there's so many times when you have these scenarios and the perpetrator or the murderer will get up in front of media and say, you know, I just want her back. I just want, right? I mean, it's, it's, it's narcissism at an extreme. The fact that someone like this commits murder or allegedly commits murder and then they have the gall to. present themselves to the world and say, I'm so sad she's gone. I can't believe it. Right. Like it's, it's, it's just, it's classic narcissism. And I don't mean that in terms of diagnosis. I mean that in terms of just the grandiosity, the belief that he's special, that he can get away with it, the belief that somehow he could get in front of the media in

front of the world and everyone's going to believe him. They're not going to believe him. They don't believe him. He's not credible. People also pointed out, or someone pointed out what I also noticed listening to that for the first time. He said she was a sweetheart, or at least that's what it sounded like to me, and that was, was very telling as well. Yeah, there were a couple of moments where he said things that were just jaw dropping. One of them was, do you blame yourself? And he said, it's hard not to. Think about that.

Do you blame yourself? I'd be like, I mean, maybe that's the right response in the sense that he, I guess what he, means is he blames himself for dropping her off, according to his story, dropping her off and not seeing her into school. But when you think about it, it's certainly, again, it's one of those slips. Do you blame yourself? It's hard not to. Yeah, well, of course it's hard not to. You murdered her. Yeah, it shows how manipulative. And then he says, not feeling her presence here is hard. I thought, yeah, he probably, yeah, he probably does miss her because he's abusing her, like in some ways. He means that. He actually means that. Yeah, he means that. Like, he's, he's having a hard time because

essentially, I think this is a situation where I said earlier, where Madeline was targeted. She became kind of the primary relationship, honestly. I think Jen became, I don't know what she was. But she was secondary to Madeline. And so I think in many ways, this guy, Stern's thought of Manilin is his primary relationship. So yeah, he does miss her. He misses her because he was in bed with her. he was abusing her, right? Like, he misses all of that. Yeah, and he brought us a lot of joy more past tense. Exactly.

Those types of comments are just so telling. They're so diagnostic of his, what he's thinking. She did bring him a lot of joy in a really demented way, but he didn't bring her any joy, right? It wasn't reciprocal. He's not telling us that. I think I just want to talk a little bit about someone like Stern's, gets to the point where this occurs.

I want to refer to an article by Tony Ward and Anthony Beach. Both of them have done a lot of research and work with sex offenders, and they developed kind of a model of offending. The article is called The Edeology of Risk, a preliminary model. It is from the journal called Sexual Abuse. This is from 2004, Volume 16. They lay out kind of a model of abuse. And I want to just talk about three,

just quickly, three of the developmental factors they talk about in terms of ideology or developmental issues that could potentially lead to sexual offending and sexual abuse later on. And so they kind of lay out three factors that drive offenses. They see those as being childhood abuse or neglect, a history of rejection. And so a history of rejection would include could include bullying. It could include parental rejection. Just rejection in general is tends to be a common element in the development of sex offenders. And of course, the first one, abuse makes sense that we know that offenders that were, say, molested as children, often, not all the time, but more than the average person,

they go on to potentially commit offenses as well, about 25% of the time. And then you have the final element they identify is insecure childhood attachments. And that's something you and I talk about all the time, and the children that are insecure attached or develop insecure attachments, they struggle to develop healthy relationships. So it makes sense that that inability to really develop healthy, intimate relationships could translate into problems later on. So those are kind of the main developmental factors, I think,

that might be playing a role here. I don't know anything about Stern's history or background. The other interesting element of their model I want to point out, and this, by the way, is in my work, This is one of the biggest, let me, I'll mention two of the biggest risk factors for recidivism and for offending in and of itself. So not just recidivism, but for sexual offending. Two of the biggest risk factors are sexual preoccupations. So in other words, this constant preoccupation with what we would call, what I would call deviant sexual behavior, meaning abnormal sexual

behavior. An example of deviant sexual behavior would be an attraction to minors, for example. That's obviously not a socially improved form of behavior. So sexual preoccupations, and this is the most interesting one I think that might be relevant to this case, emotional congruence with children. So emotional congruence with children is actually the largest risk factor for reoffending. It's also a risk factor for just offending in general. And one of the reasons that's true is because, and again, I don't know Stern's background, but oftentimes offenders perceive children to be safe and they perceive adults to be dangerous.

And adults are perceived to be dangerous because adults can reject and harm them, whereas they don't believe that children can. They believe they have more control over children. And so they perceive that children are safe. That's why they feel this emotional connection with children. And so my guess is, and again, I don't know anything about Stearns. My guess is that you have some elements of that here,

that he felt safer with Natalie and that he'd did say with Jen. And as I said, it's probably, there's probably some likelihood that his primary relationship was Madeline and not Jen. The goal, by the way, given that issue of safety, the goal for a lot of these offenders is to feel unconditionally cherished and loved and to be adored unconditionally. And a lot of these offenders feel like they can get that more with children than adults. Adults, you know, to have a reciprocal adult relationship, you You have to deal with compromise. You have to deal with a lot of issues that you don't necessarily have to deal with as much with children.

So there's this sort of, I don't know, there's this unrealistic perception of the world, right? That with children, they're going to get what they want. So I think those are just kind of a few general thoughts about these types of crimes. I think those are maybe some of the components that kind of lead to this type of situation. And there is a psychologist by the name of Michael Cino. S-E-T-O, who's done a lot of research on these types of crimes and offenses. And Michael Cito has always argued that, in fact, I'll read what he says here. So this is for Michael Cito's book, Pedophilia and Sexual Offending Against Children from 2018.

It's published by the American Psychological Association. This is page 171. Cito says, quote, multiple quantitative reviews of decades of sex offender recidivism research have zone two major risk dimensions that can be described as, number one, atypical sexual interests, and number two, antisociality. He goes on at the bottom of the page, he says, quote, these risk dimensions are psychologically meaningful because atypical sexual interests can be viewed as the motivations for committing sexual offenses, whereas antisociality represents factors

that facilitate acting on those motivations. So in other words, what Cito is saying is that if you have someone who, if you have an offender who has, let's call them, he calls them a typical sexual interest. In other words, let's say an interest in children. And you combine that with someone who has antisocial qualities. So in other words, someone who doesn't mind breaking social norms and rules, that when you combine those two, it is the worst possible scenario, not only for risk, but for committing any crime in general. And I think you probably have that, or more than likely you have that

here with Stearns, because a lot of offenders with atypical interests, they'll commit sex crimes, but they won't engage in this type of violence. But when you throw in the antisocial component, and when you throw in, let's say there's elements of psychopathy here, when you throw that in, you sadly, you get this type, you get this type of scenario potentially. So this is a guy, I guess, what I'm saying is this is a guy that would be considered like the worst of the worst. And then he had all the, it was like the perfect storm of risk factors and personality factors and opportunity and a situation for offending that all came together. So I guess that, I mean, obviously this is still alleged, we have to know more.

But looking at the initial evidence, you know, it doesn't look good for him. And obviously, this is the type of offender that should have no, has no business being back in society or thinking about being back in society in any capacity whatsoever, obviously. As far as this is what you do, this is, so you know that. Right. I guess, I guess I don't know Florida that well, but I guess there's probably a question here about the death penalty. And I don't know what Florida, I don't know if Florida has the death penalty, but presumably, I would, I would presume that the death penalty is probably going to be on the table here. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now boarding group A.

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