November 21, 2025 • 41 mins
As accused killer, Stephan Sterns, adjusts to life in a jail cell, he complains to his brother via email about everything from the size of his cell, the noise, filth, and eating utensils. Sterns complain his bed mat is flat with very little cushion left, his cell is small and filthy, and he claims there are spots on the wall that appear to be bloody fingerprints. Now he will be dealing with this situation for the rest of his life. Stephan Sterns sentenced to multiple life sentences.
After Sterns' arrest it is emails from Sterns' mother that contains shocking information as she encouraging him to tell the truth.Sterns' mother believes other people are involved in the murder of Maddie and she tells her son to stop protecting these people. Knowing the emails are not private and protected, Sterns mother alludes to a woman being involved in the case saying she is quote "disgusted that she is free and you are not when this is not all your fault."
Some of the emails between Stephan Sterns and his mother seem a bit heavy handed, trying to make it seem as though Sterns is a "stand-up guy" who wouldn't be a "rat", possibly to try and help her son as he prepares to spend the rest of his life behind bars. -Sterns mother says " 'I keep thinking about how you would not ever rat out a friend,' and later adds, "It really made me mad and I felt like you valued them over us when you let them get away with stuff. Don't be doing that again."
Sterns mother says things like, " 'We all know [redacted] was heavily involved in this and I am disgusted that she is free and you are not when this is not all your fault!! 'You need to think about yourself more and her less. She sure isn't thinking of you and how she can help you right now. That whole family is willing to stay quiet and let you take the fall for everything.'
JOINING NANCY GRACE TODAY:
- Tim Jansen - Criminal defense lawyer and former Federal Prosecutor, Legal Analyst for Tallahassee Democrat’s Newspaper, www.jansenlawoffice.com
- Dr. Jorey L Krawczyn - Psychologist, Faculty Saint Leo University; Consultant Blue Wall Institute, Author: Operation S.O.S.
- Robin Dreeke - Behavior Expert & Former FBI Special Agent / Chief of the FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program, Author: "Sizing People Up: A Veteran FBI Agents Maual for Behavior Prediction", peopleformula.com, Twitter: @rdreeke
- Dr. Eric Eason - Board Certified Forensic Pathologist, consultant, Instagram: @eric_a_eason, Facebook: Eric August Eason, LinkedIn: Eric Eason, MD
- Shannon Butler - Investigative Reporter WFTV-9
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Little thirteen year old Matti
Soto told her friends as soon as she turned thirteen
she wanted to run away from home and live in
the woods. Why because mommy's boyfriend was repeatedly molesting her
(00:23):
and had been since we believe age nine, yes, since
age nine, and mommy knew nothing nothing. We'll never know
the full truth because Mattie Soto was murdered in the
last days. Stefan Stern, the no good boyfriend learns his
(00:45):
fate in court. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
I want to thank you for being with us. Stefan
Stern's the living of Matti Soto's mom entered please in
a Kassimi court room. It's part of a deal with prosecutors.
Stearn's thirty nine learns his fate in court twenty one
(01:09):
life sentences. And this is why Maddie Soto, just thirteen
years old, slept in the bed with mommys live in
the night before her murder. This as disturbing details emerge
about the crime, saying and well that's not all shocking.
(01:33):
Prison emails go back and forth between the suspect, mommies
live in lover, and they seemingly blow this case wide open.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Madeline is thirteen years old. She has been missing since
eight thirty on Monday morning, when mom's boyfriend dropped her
off near Hunter's Creek Middle School. He dropped her off
actually near the Piece United Methodist Church on Town Boulevard.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Okay, so she was supposed to be dropped off by school.
Didn't make it to school, didn't make it a school.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I went to pick her up from school today and
she never came out. They announced it all the speaker,
and I'm just like, maybe she walked here, because sometimes
she'll walk here to this office.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I came here, nothing. I went back to the school.
We were closed.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I got to notice an.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Email from the school saying she was absent, but I
also messaged.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Her teacher and you looked at her entire tennis.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Today and saw that she was completely not at school
today either. So she never made it. Okay, what's her name? Madeline?
I'm a d e O, I Annie, I'm a d
out any any last name? So ohto Yeah? Is it
just me? And my projecting word is everybody just a
(02:49):
little too calm? In that video, that's Madeline's mother and
the living standing behind her, like, what what? Why? Is
everybody so calm? Mattie is missing and she has been
missing for a considerable period of time. When that happens? Now,
(03:10):
hold on, I want you to think about what you
just saw with the backdrop of a new evidence we
are learning, and that is that Mommy's car went back
and forth to where Mattie's body was dumped before it
(03:31):
was discovered. Let that sink in Mommy's car went back
and forth between the home where little Mattie slept routinely
with Mommy's boyfriend alone to where her body was dumped.
It's caught on surveillance video. Who was driving it don't know,
(03:53):
but it was Mommy's car that I do know. Now
I want you to hear from the horse's mouth.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Listen, is this like, does she like have any places
that you guys know that she'll usually be at.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
Any friend's house, any places like she has to hang
out or typically?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
No, not typically? Okay, just give you one second.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Let me get some thank you for football.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, we don't have any idea where she might be
joining me an all star panel to make sense of
what we know right now. First, I want to go
out to Shannon Butler, investigative reporter WFTV nine on this
case from the beginning and giving me a lot of
information I'm not getting from the outside looking in. Shannon,
(04:40):
thank you for being with us. Shannon. In addition to disturbing,
disturbing descriptions and details are getting about the crime scene,
I'm floored about how often the suspect, which some people
are describing as Maddie's stepdad, he's not her stepfather. Let's
(05:01):
just be clear about that. How many times he was
sleep in the bed with her. But that's a whole
other can of worms. I want to talk about the evidence,
the evidence regarding Mommy's car, going back and forth. Then
we'll get to all of Sterns, the suspect, the murder suspect,
(05:22):
all of his emails whining from behind bars about his food,
his mattress, the walls, and his cell really really, But
first let's talk about that car. What do we know
about that vehicle?
Speaker 7 (05:35):
Listen shocking new revelations in the Mattie Sodo murder investigation.
Investigators release information about Stephan Sterns and tracking the silver
Lincoln he was driving. But now detectives say they tracked
another vehicle, a white Nissan om by Mattie's mother, Jennifer,
making an identical trip as was made in the Lincoln
from the apartment to where Maddie's body was found. Detectives
(05:57):
don't get a clean look at the driver, but the
Nissan was driven and from the apartment to the body
in the middle of the night, twelve hours after Stearns
was seen driving his Lincoln to the same area.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Okay, straight out to Shannon Butler, joining US investigative reporter
WFTV nine, Shannon, what can you tell me about Mommy's
car going to the location where Maddie's body is ultimately found.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, we don't know who the driver is, and that,
of course is one of the biggest questions we get
right now is who's driving that car. The running theory
is that it was Stephen Sterns that went back to
the alleged scene of that crime. But there is so
much speculation and doubts surrounding Madeline Soto's mother that it's
hard for people not to question whether or not she
(06:45):
was behind the wheel and went back down to that
same location where Madelisoto's body was. At that point, that
body would have still been in that area because it
was days.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Later before they found her.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So it's hard for us because in theaters didn't get
a good look of the driver to figure out who
was behind the wheel. But there are a lot of
a lot of questions. Could it have been Jen Sodo?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Okay, Shannon Butler, you just said, Shanna joining us WFTV nine,
you just said, with so much suspicion swirling around Maddie's mother,
we're talking about thirteen year old Madeline Sotto found dead.
She had been sex assaulted. I was counting back the years,
(07:31):
maybe to age at age nine, that we're getting conflicting
reports on that by mommy's live in It's very difficult
for me to believe mommy had no idea what was
going on under her own roof, even sending her daughter
to bed with her living lover. Oh excuse me, he
(07:54):
alternated between the Soto home and his own mother. What
was he just living out in the basement there? Anyway,
so much suspicion around the mom, as we're hearing from
Shannon Butler, But the mom is not a suspect. The
mom is not a person of the interest at all.
It's entirely possible the suspect her boyfriend was driving her
(08:20):
car back to the scene. And you know, that's a
really interesting question to Tim Jansen joining US, high profile
criminal defense attorney, former federal prosecutor, and analyst for the
Tallahassee Democrats newspaper, joining us from the Florida jurisdiction, Tim Jansen,
why do criminals go back circle back to the scene
(08:43):
of the crime? I always think of Scott Peterson. How
many times did he go back and look off into
San Francisco Bay where he dumped his wife Lacy and
their unborn son Connor. He's tracked. There was a GPS
monitor on his car, Ding Ding figure that out, and
they were tracking going back and forth where he would
(09:04):
stand gazing out there, what to see if her body
had washed up yet. And we're seeing the same thing here.
He goes back and forth to where Mallin's body is.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Why, well, you know, it's interesting. Brian Kohlberger did the
same thing after the Idaho murders. He was there the
next morning. They go either looking for their trophies, watching
what they did, or they're trying to cover up and
see if this crime has been disclosed. So the curiosity,
the adrenaline they get, maybe trying to cover something they
(09:35):
felt they forgot, or going back to see if the
police have found their bad deeds.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I think it's the adrenaline and they want to find
out who's looking. Have I been discovered? Coburger is a
very good example. And you know what else, Jansen, the
returning to the scene. A good defense attorney like you
will argue, well, that means nothing. Tell that to you,
was Juri. Okay, Jansen, go ahead and tell the jury
(10:01):
it means nothing when a suspect goes back and forth
to the scene of the crime and just stands there
and stares. Well, to me, I'm not a shrink, but
it means something to me. I'm getting off track. There's
so much happening in the Madeline Soto case right now.
I've got to get to all of it. But right now,
remember we're trying to determine who was driving Mommy's car
(10:26):
after Maddie goes missing and before her body is found,
back and forth to where the body is ultimately found.
She's got a device, so school should be.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
It'll try to everybody's so calm.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I'm not going to speculate on why they're so calm
when Maddie missing. Let me go to an expert with me.
Robin Drake, behavior expert and former FBI special agent Wait
for it. He was the chief of FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral
Analysis Program and author of Sizing People Up, a veteran
(11:19):
FBI agent's manual for behavior prediction, and you can find
him at peopleformula dot com. Robindrake, I told you about
the time when I was looking for organic sun tanlation
in a baby superstore and I was like all down
on the very bottom shelf, bent over double looking to
(11:42):
try to find it. I turned around and there was Lucy,
but no John David. I started screaming. I put her
under my arm like a football and started running toward
the front of the store because there were all glass windows, screaming,
help me find my son. Lock the doors. My son
is lost. Okay, Hey, that's just me. So am I projecting?
(12:02):
Or Are these two calm as a cucumber?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
No, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 8 (12:07):
They are way too calm as a cucumber, as you say.
And the car and who's driving it, to me, is
a smaller part of a whole.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
In this entire case.
Speaker 8 (12:17):
I'm shocked that Madeline is the entire circle around her,
and that the mother hasn't been charged yet. Because this
to me, and every time we have a child that's
been abused, and every time we have a child that
looks like they may have been even part of something
greater than just one single pedophile, there's a I think
(12:37):
there's a network involved here, and I think there's gonna
be a lot of tendrils that go out, And I
think that's why the investigation is taken as long as
it has and there's as many witnesses going to be called,
because I've been involved with cases.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
A minute up, Robin Drake, hold on just a moment.
What do you mean you think a network is involved.
Speaker 8 (12:55):
So, every time you have a case like this, Nancy,
where you have a sexual potential sexual predator, if it's
a serial sexual predator, which he's been doing this a
number of years, says that he might be serial, you
can have an uppers of two to four hundred children
that have been affected, either through trafficking of their pornographic images.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Or of them themselves.
Speaker 8 (13:17):
And so a lot of times these investigations take a
long time to ferret out who's actually involved. And so
every time you see a behavior arc of not just
the individual of Sterns, but a network of entire family
members potentially acting very nonchalant about this. It gives investigators
a lot of leads on where to potentially look to
(13:38):
see how far this network goes.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace, Florida man gets twenty one
life sentences when he plays no contest to murder and
guilty to other counts. And the second abuse and murder
a little Maddie's Soto. What a piece of crap. I
(14:07):
thought for sure the state would seek the death penalty
in this case. But Stephan Stearns lives to breathe the
fresh air while Mattie's Soto is six feet under. Does
that sound right to you? I've got a problem with that.
And this is why thirteen year old Madeline Soto murdered.
Sexually abused by mom's boyfriend. And that's kind of putting
(14:29):
perfume on the pig, isn't it's sexually abused. We're talking
about dozens and dozens, I think, Shannon, how many sex
related videos and photos were found on Stern's as mommy's
boyfriend's phone? How many ballpark hundreds, hundreds.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Hundreds and hundreds there were videos, there were pictures.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Okay, and I think it's actually in this new data
dump we're getting, which of course you are the one
that alerted us to that, Shannon Butler, and thank you.
They're literally thousands, seventeen hundred explicit sex photos of Madeline,
thousands thousands on Stearn's phone. Where was a mommy when
(15:19):
all this was happening. Why do we know it's Madeline
that's the child victim on the phone, because in charging
documents and other data we have reviewed, the victim is
described as a child and the incidents, the rapes occurred
in the home Madeline's who is that it's a girl,
(15:43):
it's a child, and it's in Maddie's home, and it
Stearns who is charged now with sixty plus sex related charges,
So saying she was sex abuse, that hardly describes what
this child went through. Now we are also know that,
according to the documents we've just gotten huge data dump,
(16:04):
the molestations, these videos on his phone. Some reports are
that they go back to twenty nineteen. There are other
dates stated as well, twenty nineteen. She's thirteen when she's
murdered in twenty twenty four. This makes her eight or
nine years old when these videos started being taken of her.
(16:25):
So she's not just getting raped, she's not just getting
potentially sodomized. He's videoing it. How many times do you
use your husband's phone or you know, grab your child's phone.
You don't see anything on there when there's nearly two
thousand of these videos and photos. Okay, that said, take
(16:53):
a listen to this.
Speaker 9 (16:54):
Stephen Stern slept with Madeline Soto and her mother on
a regular basis. Stern would sleep with Madeline without her
mother present, including the night before she was murdered. Jennifer
Soto tells Mattie she has a really bad headache and
tells Mattie to take Stephen Sterns and go sleep in
an upstairs bedroom.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
I got a headache too, and spreading to my teeth.
Now when I hear that, it wasn't just once in
a while, it was all the time, and that's not all. Listen.
Speaker 9 (17:25):
Stephen Sterns and Madeleine Soto's mother, Jennifer, broke up briefly
in late twenty twenty three. Even while they are broken up,
Sterns would sleep at the Soto household in a bed
with Madeline, a woman who dates Sterns during his breakup
with Jennifer, claims Sterns told her he had to sleep
with Mattie cuddle with her so she could go to sleep.
(17:47):
The woman stopped talking to Sterns after he tells her
of waking up with an erection while in the bed
with the child.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Our Friendnicole Parton from Crime online dot Com really said
that like she's reading the weather report or the farmer's almanac.
Ho hold on just a moment, Shannon Butler joining me
WFTV nine No Offense and Cole Parton, But what did
I just hear? Did I just hear that? Even after
Steven Sterns, the murder suspect, had broken up with the mom,
(18:18):
what he broke up with her? Really? He would come
back to the home to sleep with little Maddie, to
cuddle her, to get her to sleep, and then he
tells the new girlfriend he would get erections in bed
with Maddie and it was so disgusting the woman broke
(18:39):
up with him. Did I just hear that? You did?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
You?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Did hear it?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And we had even asked, like did that woman ever
report that to police, to anybody? And she didn't you
know at the time, I think she was just trying
to get away from him. But these are the things
that just continue to come up, and everybody in that
you know, interview process seems like this is just normal, right, well,
you know, she slept with she slept with them when
(19:06):
she needed to get to sleep. It which it was
very very strange for us hearing that about how like
this was just everyday business.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Okay, I'm just I really occasionally I'm a speechless and
this is one of those moments because I'm thinking about
the life that Manisoto endured in the home age eight
or nine, Mommy's boyfriend starts raping her. There's not a
(19:35):
nice way to say, oh, he slept in bed with her,
he cuddled her, they had sex. That is a lie.
That's rape under the law, and we cannot turn away
from the black and white letter of the law. A
child that age cannot consent to any type of sex conduct,
just like they can't go buy a car, or liquor
(19:56):
or cigarettes. They don't have the mental capacity to do that.
Out joining me, Doctor Jury Crossing, renowned psychologist, faculty Saint
Leo University, consultant with a blue Wall Institute and you
can find him at doctor Jury j O r Ey
dot com doctor Jury. Does any woman really need a
(20:20):
man that badly?
Speaker 6 (20:22):
Really?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Just let me think about it. My sister's a a
T shirt that said a man a woman needs a
man like a fish needs a bicycle, and that really
stuck with me at about age eight. So what is
a woman willing to do to keep a man?
Speaker 6 (20:39):
Well, it goes to humility to locate or find a
woman and establish a relationship that has a child. Okay,
you see this in the pedophilia behavior numerous times, and
one thing you want to look at is the age
when this started and then and how it ended with
(21:01):
the homicide. They have preferred ages that they're attracted to
in that they will maintain a relationship with, But once
the child starts to age out through puberty or starting
to develop, they'll usually start to look for another access
to another child in their preferred age. That's a very
(21:25):
common pedophilic behavior.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Okay, wait a minute, I'm trying to decipher what you're saying,
doctor Jory Crawlsen, you're the strength. I'm just a JD.
But I think you're saying certain pedophiles go look specifically
to establish a relationship with a woman that has a
child the age in which they're interested. Is that what
you just said. That's correct, Yes, okay, And I appreciate that,
(21:52):
and it's a phenomenon I want to explore with you.
But I'm asking you how bad do you need a man?
I mean, after all, no offense to you, but what
what can they do that you can't do? Why do
you have to have him sleeping with your daughter under
your own roof?
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Yeah? Let me let me address both of those. The
man has that ability to whatever it takes to provide
to the woman to get access to the child. He's
going to provide.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Provide what this guy didn't even work? Did he work?
Hold on Shannon but or did this guy have a
job or did he basically hang out at his mom's
basement in his spare time?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, that's pretty much what he did. He played a
lot of gets.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So what does he bring it to the table? Nothing?
Why does she need him? Back to my question, what
is wrong with these women that they keep child molesters
in the home.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I've seen hundreds of those cases, and you know, even
I've looked at the lethality of living boyfriends to children,
and it just it's phenomenal because mothers don't protect their children.
You know, I'm in Florida, this case is in Florida.
I'm in a different judicial circuit. But we have regularly
(23:10):
charged mothers with failure to protect.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You know what, that's exactly the charge, That's exactly the
charge I'm thinking of doctor Jory Crawsen, failure to protect. Again.
Mattie's mother has not been named, a suspect, has not
been named, a person of interests. The reason we're even
talking about her right now is because her car spotted
on video going back and forth to where Mattie's body
(23:36):
thirteen years old, it's found just dumped, dumped. Remember this,
Remember Maddie kept telling all of her friends when she
turned thirteen she wanted to leave home and go live
in the woods. I wonder why listen are missing persons?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Detectives responded to take over the investigation, so they did
interviews with mom, mom's boyfriend, Malan's friends from school. We
were able to access Madelin's phone and there is information
on the phone.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
They indicated that she.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Told people when she turned thirteen, which was on February
twenty second, she actually wanted to go live in the woods,
so that was in her phone.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
Investigators believe the female seen at seven thirty six am
and the surveillance video in the front passenger seat of
Stephan Stern's vehicle is Madelein Soto's dead body propped up
and buckled into the seat to appear as a living person,
but closer inspection of the video shows her head leaning
toward her shoulder with her mouth open. Stens is caught
on surveillance video again at eight nineteen am when he
(24:43):
is seen entering the front security gate of the neighborhood
with a female in the same position as the surveillance
video captured at seven thirty six am.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I don't want to gloss over that as we race
towards the newest developments, including the suspect, Mommy's boyfriend whining
behind bars about his mattress, his food, not having the
right spoon, the walls in his cell. We also have
emails that are emerging from his mom back and forth
(25:11):
to him, knowing full well they're going to be read
about how somebody else ate she is involved, more crime
scene details that reveal the nature of this crime. But
to Shannon Butler, joining me WFTV. I don't want to
gloss over the fact that Madeline's dead body, this thirteen
(25:35):
year old girl that has been being raped and sodomized
since age is eight or nine, under mommy's nose, her
dead body is propped up and buckled into the car.
Did I get that right, Shannon Butler? Yeah, And that
was part of his story, right.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So he goes in and out of that apartment complex,
which they did in the morning, on the way to school,
so that way, if any of the neighbors or anything saw,
it wouldn't be unusual for Madeline to be buckled into
the seat. What he said to us and investigators is
that she slept on the way to school, so he
(26:12):
was working that. It appears into his story about how
he took her to school and she was asleep. But
he did, I mean, according to investigators, the buckle that
seatbelt and let her sit there leaned over. It's just unbelievable, really,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Tim Jansen, criminal defense attorney, he is actually taaloring a
very intricate lie stating that Mattie fell asleep on the
way to school to cover up the fact that she's
leaned over with her eyes closed because she's dead.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
Yeah, science technology is going to undermine the cameras that
were seen. Clearly, this guy's the evidence on the phone.
He's a pedophile. He committed a sexual terrorism on this child.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
The mother.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
I certainly had to know something or see something. The
apartment was very small, and to allow a child to
sleep in the bed at that age is just It
seems more like Maddie was an annoyance to the mother
than her actual daughter.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Guys, what more are we learning now? Well, for one thing,
and I'm going to circle back to doctor eric Ason
regarding the years years of sex abuse. How that can
be determined from an autopsy or if it can be determined.
But DeShannon Butler, I want to talk about his whiny
emails from behind prison walls. He complains about everything from
(27:43):
his mattress behind bars, not getting enough food. I have
never felt a full stomach and have in fact forgotten
what that is like. Really, there's never a time these
days when I don't feel hungry. Have you heard of
the vending machine? The sale is small and filthy? Well,
(28:04):
how is your mom's basement? You can still be living
there if you had and murdered Mattie. The mat is
flat and has very little cushion left. I bet it
was nothing compared to sleeping in the bed with Maddie.
Those are a few things you can think about Stern's
before you send any more emails. Shannon Butler, what is
this guy saying from behind bars? You know that wasn't
(28:26):
the first time.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Right when he was being transferred between jails, really early on,
he first started complaining about that first night that he
spent in jail, that he had to use the toilet
paper roll as his pillow. That was the beginning of
his complaints. So we expected when we saw his emails
that he would start complaining more about how the treatment
(28:49):
is there and that how it's you know, it's not
so comfortable behind.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Bars, Okay, Robin Drake, former FBI special Agent expert behavioral analysis. Robin,
as soon as we finish on air, I want you
to run right down to the jail with an allergen free, puffy,
bouncy pillow so he can get a good night's sleep.
(29:15):
What he can't sleep because of his pillow. He shouldn't
be able to sleep because Maddie is dead and he's
whining about his pillow. You know, this isn't the first time, Drake,
that I've seen a murder of defendants and later convicted
whine about their pillow, their food, their diet, their amount
(29:38):
of exercise. He's charged with a murder, and in my mind,
a lot fewer sex charges than are established, because if
I've got two thousand, two nearly two thousand photos and
videos and most of them of this little girl on
(29:59):
his phone, he needs to be charged with every single
one of them, and when he's convicted, they all need
to run consecutively. There and he's talking about his pillow, Drake.
Speaker 8 (30:10):
Yeah, And I also don't think it's going to be
the only person they find.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
He's done this too. He don't go from zero to
one hundred in this.
Speaker 8 (30:17):
Kind of case, because he's going to have a track
record establish of this.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
He's got a lifetime pattern of self centeredness and me me.
Speaker 8 (30:26):
Me, all his primal urges and despicable behaviors. I've obviously
been placated for such a long time that he's got
a level of expectation that the world will continue to
service him, and it just leaks out of him at
every single turn. And so that's what we're seeing in
the jailhouse. That's what we're seeing in all these communications,
and he's completely shocked that he doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
What about this? Do you see a pattern of behavior
of getting taken care of and whining and expecting everything
to be handed to you. I mean, he's still technically
even though he's living with Madeline Soto's mother and their apartment,
which a lot of people thought this was a home,
(31:07):
it's an apartment, which makes it much smaller. My point is,
how could she not know what was happening. He's living
with her, and he's living with his mother, He's not working.
What is he doing? Everyone is giving him a place
to stay, food to eat. I don't know how he
made his car payment. Maybe mommy made the payment for him.
But now same thing, same behavior, carrying over behind bars
(31:31):
wine wine wine.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Yeah, you hit it exactly right, Nancy.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
It is his lifetime behavior pattern, behavior arc of complete
self centerness and narcissism, and it plays out in everything,
and even with his girlfriend that he had dated briefly.
He's testing that water by saying, hey, I slept and
had an erection with this little girl. You know, I
think that's a test to say, hey could I manipulate
you into my circle because she's aging now. I mean,
(31:57):
it's a lot of conjecture in my part, I know.
But at the same time, though, this is what he
does to his entire environment. He manipulates it for his
own gain, and he's got such lifetime reps out as it.
He looks completely fluid and natural doing it, because this
isn't his first time in life or is his first
rodeo doing this.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Stephan Stern's age thirty nine,
gets twenty one life sentences which will run concurrently or
at the same time, so I'm not that impressed. Concurrently
means he's got one life sentence. One life sentence. What
(32:42):
do we know about Maddie's death? Two thousand explicit videos,
many the majority. We understand Stephan sterns performing sex sex
on a child that lives in Mattie's Soto's home to
doctor a Eson. Doctor airy Esen is a renowned board
(33:04):
certified forensic pathologist a consultant doctor Aeson. We know that
her body was discarded out of the open, but in
an obscure area, which is not hard to find in Florida.
There's a lot of untamed land swamps inlets in Florida.
(33:26):
How can a medical examiner tell if this was the
first time Madeline had been raped or not. And with
her body lying out in the elements for several days,
would that preclude such a determination.
Speaker 10 (33:44):
Well, that's going to make it tough. If the body's
been there for a couple of days and in the
heat in Florida, you're going to have the evidence of decomposition,
which is going to obscure some of the findings that
you're going to have an autopsy. But during the autopsy,
we're going to determine the cause death, but also assess
for evidence of sexual assault, and so evidence of the
(34:06):
acute sexual assault would occur when the swabs are placed
in the various rifices to check for a DNA that's
there to compare from the DNA from the suspect.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Please do not say that, doctor Ason. We don't all
have medical degrees like you do. When you say they're
going to put swab, they're going to swab Mattie's orifices.
You are talking about euphemistically describing her mouth, her vagina,
and her anus to see if she was right. Told
(34:37):
on Shannon Butler WFTV. How long do we think that
Mattie was lying out in the elements before her body
was found? How many days?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
I think it was five days?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Okay, I thought it was four, but let's go with five,
doctor Ason. How would five days down the elements affect
the determination of inter orifices such as vagina or anus.
Speaker 10 (35:02):
I mean you can still insert the swabs and collect
any evidence. As time goes on further, it's going to
be less have less of an ability to collect that.
I think you're also asking about remote sexual assault and
that's going to be very tough to determine after five
days out in the elements like this, Can I.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Just boil it down, Dodger Ason? In a rape kit,
I know that if there is vagual tearing, if there
is bleeding inside the vagina or the anus, that may
suggest a recent rape.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
How would you be able to tell if her body
had been found immediately whether she had been raped in
the past.
Speaker 10 (35:48):
Well, you can look for evidence of old bruising or
old abrasions. When bruises start to age, the color will change,
and so if you find evidence of a yellow and
a bruise, that indicates the bruise as older as compared
to an acute bruise, so you can check for that.
That's definitely one way to check for like an older
type sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
So we may not be able to tell from her
body that she had endured molestation for years if it
weren't for this idiot's phone that reveals these thousands of photos.
To Shannon Butler WFTV nine, I want you to listen
to this emails between the murder suspect and his mother
(36:31):
in which she suggests someone else, a female, is involved.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
Listen, Stern's mother is saying things like quote, we all
know Blank was heavily involved in this, and I am
disgusted that she's free and you are not. When this
is not all your fault. You need to think about
yourself more and her less. She's isn't thinking of you
and how she can help you right now that whole
family is willing to stay quiet and let you take
(36:57):
the fall for everything.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Shannon Butler, the FTV nine, What well, I.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Think that we expected some of this from his family members,
that they would start putting some of the eyes back
on Jen Soto. What we didn't know is if he
had told them something that we didn't We didn't know
yet about if she was involved, or if she wasn't involved,
or if they're just doing this as the show. Right,
(37:26):
everybody knows these things become public and that everybody would
be able to see what they were saying. But this
was not a surprise to any of us who have
been working this story that the family would start to
raise some questions about Jen Soto and if he was
taking the fall for her well.
Speaker 7 (37:44):
The search for Metalinoto is ongoing. Investigators ask if they
can take a look at Stephan Stern's phone. Sterns then
informs the detectives he accidentally performed a factory reseat on
the phone the same day Mattie went missing. A factory
reset can't be done on accident, has to be delivered
as it requires multiple steps by the user to ensure
that it doesn't happen by accident. Thousands of images, sexual photos,
and videos, mostly of Madeline, were recovered and led to
(38:06):
the sixty additional charges against Stephen Stern's.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Over sixty charges, but over nineteen hundred explicit videos and photos.
I want to find out something else. She had a
butler or VESSI had a reporter, WFTV nine. This is
an apartment, not a home as many people thought. So
how big is the apartment? I'm trying to gauge what
was going on and what the mom should have known,
(38:32):
do you know.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Well, it's not very big. It's kind of like a townhouse.
So there's an upstairs and a downstairs. But there were
other people, like the night of her disappearance or murder,
there were other people in the home. But there was
you know, there was a there was bedrooms upstairs, but
there was also some kind of makeshift kind of bedroom
(38:54):
that was kind of cordoned off downstairs, and there was
a lot of question about if that's where where you know,
Madeline was sometimes laying. So the home is very small.
If you're talking about what could you hear or not
hear in some kind of house, it is it is
fairly small. I mean it's an average town hall.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
I want to ask you something else before we sign off.
It's my understanding that Maddie's friends tell police that Maddie
was constantly being texted and called by Stern. Stephan Stern
the boyfriend back to Robin Drake. That's textbook. It's classic.
(39:39):
I trust my children but when I see them on
the phone all the time or they're on a video
all the time, I go, who you're talking to? Who's that?
Don't you think it's odd? Nobody wondered why the boyfriend
was constantly calling this little girl and texting her.
Speaker 8 (39:56):
Yeah, constantly isolating her, controlling her environment. That's what these
horrible sexual predators do. And that's exactly what he was
doing Maddie the entire time, you know. And as for
the mother making those comments via text too or in
an email, I don't care what it is. You know,
as an investigator, put my investigator hat on for a second.
If you're opening your mouth like that, I'm now looking
(40:16):
at you too. So I think this is a network
of really important behavior by a lot of people, and
he just happens to be to point to the spirit
we're going to take down first, and I think we're
going to save a lot of people in this one.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I'm hoping doctor Jory Crausen, renowned psychologists joining US faculty
Saint Leo University. Another thing is I noticed that Stefan
Stern states that he was the one who would comfort
little Maddie when she would get into an argument. With
her mom. Okay, there you go, coming between the child
(40:50):
and her parent. That's text book doctor Jory. Yes, it is.
Speaker 6 (40:55):
It's that dependent personnelity. I will pay that on the mother.
I mean she's very dependent. Also, you can see that
relationship in the dynamics where she readily turns anything over
to him dealing with the daughter. You know, it's not
a good attachment in bonding, maternal bonding.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
There Stepan Stearns gets in my mind a very light
sentence in court. Yeah, the headlines all say twenty one
life sentences, but it was what it boils down to
is one life sentence because they're running concurrently at the
same time. Mattie Soto rest in peace, beautiful girl. Nancy
(41:37):
Grace signing off goodbye friend.
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Little thirteen year old Matti
Soto told her friends as soon as she turned thirteen
she wanted to run away from home and live in
the woods. Why because mommy's boyfriend was repeatedly molesting her
(00:23):
and had been since we believe age nine, yes, since
age nine, and mommy knew nothing nothing. We'll never know
the full truth because Mattie Soto was murdered in the
last days. Stefan Stern, the no good boyfriend learns his
(00:45):
fate in court. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.
I want to thank you for being with us. Stefan
Stern's the living of Matti Soto's mom entered please in
a Kassimi court room. It's part of a deal with prosecutors.
Stearn's thirty nine learns his fate in court twenty one
(01:09):
life sentences. And this is why Maddie Soto, just thirteen
years old, slept in the bed with mommys live in
the night before her murder. This as disturbing details emerge
about the crime, saying and well that's not all shocking.
(01:33):
Prison emails go back and forth between the suspect, mommies
live in lover, and they seemingly blow this case wide open.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Madeline is thirteen years old. She has been missing since
eight thirty on Monday morning, when mom's boyfriend dropped her
off near Hunter's Creek Middle School. He dropped her off
actually near the Piece United Methodist Church on Town Boulevard.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
Okay, so she was supposed to be dropped off by school.
Didn't make it to school, didn't make it a school.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I went to pick her up from school today and
she never came out. They announced it all the speaker,
and I'm just like, maybe she walked here, because sometimes
she'll walk here to this office.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
I came here, nothing. I went back to the school.
We were closed.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
I got to notice an.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Email from the school saying she was absent, but I
also messaged.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Her teacher and you looked at her entire tennis.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Today and saw that she was completely not at school
today either. So she never made it. Okay, what's her name? Madeline?
I'm a d e O, I Annie, I'm a d
out any any last name? So ohto Yeah? Is it
just me? And my projecting word is everybody just a
(02:49):
little too calm? In that video, that's Madeline's mother and
the living standing behind her, like, what what? Why? Is
everybody so calm? Mattie is missing and she has been
missing for a considerable period of time. When that happens? Now,
(03:10):
hold on, I want you to think about what you
just saw with the backdrop of a new evidence we
are learning, and that is that Mommy's car went back
and forth to where Mattie's body was dumped before it
(03:31):
was discovered. Let that sink in Mommy's car went back
and forth between the home where little Mattie slept routinely
with Mommy's boyfriend alone to where her body was dumped.
It's caught on surveillance video. Who was driving it don't know,
(03:53):
but it was Mommy's car that I do know. Now
I want you to hear from the horse's mouth.
Speaker 4 (04:03):
Listen, is this like, does she like have any places
that you guys know that she'll usually be at.
Speaker 5 (04:08):
Any friend's house, any places like she has to hang
out or typically?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
No, not typically? Okay, just give you one second.
Speaker 6 (04:17):
Let me get some thank you for football.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Yeah, we don't have any idea where she might be
joining me an all star panel to make sense of
what we know right now. First, I want to go
out to Shannon Butler, investigative reporter WFTV nine on this
case from the beginning and giving me a lot of
information I'm not getting from the outside looking in. Shannon,
(04:40):
thank you for being with us. Shannon. In addition to disturbing,
disturbing descriptions and details are getting about the crime scene,
I'm floored about how often the suspect, which some people
are describing as Maddie's stepdad, he's not her stepfather. Let's
(05:01):
just be clear about that. How many times he was
sleep in the bed with her. But that's a whole
other can of worms. I want to talk about the evidence,
the evidence regarding Mommy's car, going back and forth. Then
we'll get to all of Sterns, the suspect, the murder suspect,
(05:22):
all of his emails whining from behind bars about his food,
his mattress, the walls, and his cell really really, But
first let's talk about that car. What do we know
about that vehicle?
Speaker 7 (05:35):
Listen shocking new revelations in the Mattie Sodo murder investigation.
Investigators release information about Stephan Sterns and tracking the silver
Lincoln he was driving. But now detectives say they tracked
another vehicle, a white Nissan om by Mattie's mother, Jennifer,
making an identical trip as was made in the Lincoln
from the apartment to where Maddie's body was found. Detectives
(05:57):
don't get a clean look at the driver, but the
Nissan was driven and from the apartment to the body
in the middle of the night, twelve hours after Stearns
was seen driving his Lincoln to the same area.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Okay, straight out to Shannon Butler, joining US investigative reporter
WFTV nine, Shannon, what can you tell me about Mommy's
car going to the location where Maddie's body is ultimately found.
Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, we don't know who the driver is, and that,
of course is one of the biggest questions we get
right now is who's driving that car. The running theory
is that it was Stephen Sterns that went back to
the alleged scene of that crime. But there is so
much speculation and doubts surrounding Madeline Soto's mother that it's
hard for people not to question whether or not she
(06:45):
was behind the wheel and went back down to that
same location where Madelisoto's body was. At that point, that
body would have still been in that area because it
was days.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Later before they found her.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
So it's hard for us because in theaters didn't get
a good look of the driver to figure out who
was behind the wheel. But there are a lot of
a lot of questions. Could it have been Jen Sodo?
Speaker 1 (07:08):
Okay, Shannon Butler, you just said, Shanna joining us WFTV nine,
you just said, with so much suspicion swirling around Maddie's mother,
we're talking about thirteen year old Madeline Sotto found dead.
She had been sex assaulted. I was counting back the years,
(07:31):
maybe to age at age nine, that we're getting conflicting
reports on that by mommy's live in It's very difficult
for me to believe mommy had no idea what was
going on under her own roof, even sending her daughter
to bed with her living lover. Oh excuse me, he
(07:54):
alternated between the Soto home and his own mother. What
was he just living out in the basement there? Anyway,
so much suspicion around the mom, as we're hearing from
Shannon Butler, But the mom is not a suspect. The
mom is not a person of the interest at all.
It's entirely possible the suspect her boyfriend was driving her
(08:20):
car back to the scene. And you know, that's a
really interesting question to Tim Jansen joining US, high profile
criminal defense attorney, former federal prosecutor, and analyst for the
Tallahassee Democrats newspaper, joining us from the Florida jurisdiction, Tim Jansen,
why do criminals go back circle back to the scene
(08:43):
of the crime? I always think of Scott Peterson. How
many times did he go back and look off into
San Francisco Bay where he dumped his wife Lacy and
their unborn son Connor. He's tracked. There was a GPS
monitor on his car, Ding Ding figure that out, and
they were tracking going back and forth where he would
(09:04):
stand gazing out there, what to see if her body
had washed up yet. And we're seeing the same thing here.
He goes back and forth to where Mallin's body is.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Why, well, you know, it's interesting. Brian Kohlberger did the
same thing after the Idaho murders. He was there the
next morning. They go either looking for their trophies, watching
what they did, or they're trying to cover up and
see if this crime has been disclosed. So the curiosity,
the adrenaline they get, maybe trying to cover something they
(09:35):
felt they forgot, or going back to see if the
police have found their bad deeds.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
I think it's the adrenaline and they want to find
out who's looking. Have I been discovered? Coburger is a
very good example. And you know what else, Jansen, the
returning to the scene. A good defense attorney like you
will argue, well, that means nothing. Tell that to you,
was Juri. Okay, Jansen, go ahead and tell the jury
(10:01):
it means nothing when a suspect goes back and forth
to the scene of the crime and just stands there
and stares. Well, to me, I'm not a shrink, but
it means something to me. I'm getting off track. There's
so much happening in the Madeline Soto case right now.
I've got to get to all of it. But right now,
remember we're trying to determine who was driving Mommy's car
(10:26):
after Maddie goes missing and before her body is found,
back and forth to where the body is ultimately found.
She's got a device, so school should be.
Speaker 3 (10:51):
It'll try to everybody's so calm.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
I'm not going to speculate on why they're so calm
when Maddie missing. Let me go to an expert with me.
Robin Drake, behavior expert and former FBI special agent Wait
for it. He was the chief of FBI Counterintelligence Behavioral
Analysis Program and author of Sizing People Up, a veteran
(11:19):
FBI agent's manual for behavior prediction, and you can find
him at peopleformula dot com. Robindrake, I told you about
the time when I was looking for organic sun tanlation
in a baby superstore and I was like all down
on the very bottom shelf, bent over double looking to
(11:42):
try to find it. I turned around and there was Lucy,
but no John David. I started screaming. I put her
under my arm like a football and started running toward
the front of the store because there were all glass windows, screaming,
help me find my son. Lock the doors. My son
is lost. Okay, Hey, that's just me. So am I projecting?
(12:02):
Or Are these two calm as a cucumber?
Speaker 4 (12:05):
No, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 8 (12:07):
They are way too calm as a cucumber, as you say.
And the car and who's driving it, to me, is
a smaller part of a whole.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
In this entire case.
Speaker 8 (12:17):
I'm shocked that Madeline is the entire circle around her,
and that the mother hasn't been charged yet. Because this
to me, and every time we have a child that's
been abused, and every time we have a child that
looks like they may have been even part of something
greater than just one single pedophile, there's a I think
(12:37):
there's a network involved here, and I think there's gonna
be a lot of tendrils that go out, And I
think that's why the investigation is taken as long as
it has and there's as many witnesses going to be called,
because I've been involved with cases.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
A minute up, Robin Drake, hold on just a moment.
What do you mean you think a network is involved.
Speaker 8 (12:55):
So, every time you have a case like this, Nancy,
where you have a sexual potential sexual predator, if it's
a serial sexual predator, which he's been doing this a
number of years, says that he might be serial, you
can have an uppers of two to four hundred children
that have been affected, either through trafficking of their pornographic images.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Or of them themselves.
Speaker 8 (13:17):
And so a lot of times these investigations take a
long time to ferret out who's actually involved. And so
every time you see a behavior arc of not just
the individual of Sterns, but a network of entire family
members potentially acting very nonchalant about this. It gives investigators
a lot of leads on where to potentially look to
(13:38):
see how far this network goes.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Crime stories with Nancy Grace, Florida man gets twenty one
life sentences when he plays no contest to murder and
guilty to other counts. And the second abuse and murder
a little Maddie's Soto. What a piece of crap. I
(14:07):
thought for sure the state would seek the death penalty
in this case. But Stephan Stearns lives to breathe the
fresh air while Mattie's Soto is six feet under. Does
that sound right to you? I've got a problem with that.
And this is why thirteen year old Madeline Soto murdered.
Sexually abused by mom's boyfriend. And that's kind of putting
(14:29):
perfume on the pig, isn't it's sexually abused. We're talking
about dozens and dozens, I think, Shannon, how many sex
related videos and photos were found on Stern's as mommy's
boyfriend's phone? How many ballpark hundreds, hundreds.
Speaker 3 (14:49):
Hundreds and hundreds there were videos, there were pictures.
Speaker 1 (14:53):
Okay, and I think it's actually in this new data
dump we're getting, which of course you are the one
that alerted us to that, Shannon Butler, and thank you.
They're literally thousands, seventeen hundred explicit sex photos of Madeline,
thousands thousands on Stearn's phone. Where was a mommy when
(15:19):
all this was happening. Why do we know it's Madeline
that's the child victim on the phone, because in charging
documents and other data we have reviewed, the victim is
described as a child and the incidents, the rapes occurred
in the home Madeline's who is that it's a girl,
(15:43):
it's a child, and it's in Maddie's home, and it
Stearns who is charged now with sixty plus sex related charges,
So saying she was sex abuse, that hardly describes what
this child went through. Now we are also know that,
according to the documents we've just gotten huge data dump,
(16:04):
the molestations, these videos on his phone. Some reports are
that they go back to twenty nineteen. There are other
dates stated as well, twenty nineteen. She's thirteen when she's
murdered in twenty twenty four. This makes her eight or
nine years old when these videos started being taken of her.
(16:25):
So she's not just getting raped, she's not just getting
potentially sodomized. He's videoing it. How many times do you
use your husband's phone or you know, grab your child's phone.
You don't see anything on there when there's nearly two
thousand of these videos and photos. Okay, that said, take
(16:53):
a listen to this.
Speaker 9 (16:54):
Stephen Stern slept with Madeline Soto and her mother on
a regular basis. Stern would sleep with Madeline without her
mother present, including the night before she was murdered. Jennifer
Soto tells Mattie she has a really bad headache and
tells Mattie to take Stephen Sterns and go sleep in
an upstairs bedroom.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
I got a headache too, and spreading to my teeth.
Now when I hear that, it wasn't just once in
a while, it was all the time, and that's not all. Listen.
Speaker 9 (17:25):
Stephen Sterns and Madeleine Soto's mother, Jennifer, broke up briefly
in late twenty twenty three. Even while they are broken up,
Sterns would sleep at the Soto household in a bed
with Madeline, a woman who dates Sterns during his breakup
with Jennifer, claims Sterns told her he had to sleep
with Mattie cuddle with her so she could go to sleep.
(17:47):
The woman stopped talking to Sterns after he tells her
of waking up with an erection while in the bed
with the child.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Our Friendnicole Parton from Crime online dot Com really said
that like she's reading the weather report or the farmer's almanac.
Ho hold on just a moment, Shannon Butler joining me
WFTV nine No Offense and Cole Parton, But what did
I just hear? Did I just hear that? Even after
Steven Sterns, the murder suspect, had broken up with the mom,
(18:18):
what he broke up with her? Really? He would come
back to the home to sleep with little Maddie, to
cuddle her, to get her to sleep, and then he
tells the new girlfriend he would get erections in bed
with Maddie and it was so disgusting the woman broke
(18:39):
up with him. Did I just hear that? You did?
Speaker 3 (18:43):
You?
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Did hear it?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
And we had even asked, like did that woman ever
report that to police, to anybody? And she didn't you
know at the time, I think she was just trying
to get away from him. But these are the things
that just continue to come up, and everybody in that
you know, interview process seems like this is just normal, right, well,
you know, she slept with she slept with them when
(19:06):
she needed to get to sleep. It which it was
very very strange for us hearing that about how like
this was just everyday business.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Okay, I'm just I really occasionally I'm a speechless and
this is one of those moments because I'm thinking about
the life that Manisoto endured in the home age eight
or nine, Mommy's boyfriend starts raping her. There's not a
(19:35):
nice way to say, oh, he slept in bed with her,
he cuddled her, they had sex. That is a lie.
That's rape under the law, and we cannot turn away
from the black and white letter of the law. A
child that age cannot consent to any type of sex conduct,
just like they can't go buy a car, or liquor
(19:56):
or cigarettes. They don't have the mental capacity to do that.
Out joining me, Doctor Jury Crossing, renowned psychologist, faculty Saint
Leo University, consultant with a blue Wall Institute and you
can find him at doctor Jury j O r Ey
dot com doctor Jury. Does any woman really need a
(20:20):
man that badly?
Speaker 6 (20:22):
Really?
Speaker 1 (20:23):
Just let me think about it. My sister's a a
T shirt that said a man a woman needs a
man like a fish needs a bicycle, and that really
stuck with me at about age eight. So what is
a woman willing to do to keep a man?
Speaker 6 (20:39):
Well, it goes to humility to locate or find a
woman and establish a relationship that has a child. Okay,
you see this in the pedophilia behavior numerous times, and
one thing you want to look at is the age
when this started and then and how it ended with
(21:01):
the homicide. They have preferred ages that they're attracted to
in that they will maintain a relationship with, But once
the child starts to age out through puberty or starting
to develop, they'll usually start to look for another access
to another child in their preferred age. That's a very
(21:25):
common pedophilic behavior.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Okay, wait a minute, I'm trying to decipher what you're saying,
doctor Jory Crawlsen, you're the strength. I'm just a JD.
But I think you're saying certain pedophiles go look specifically
to establish a relationship with a woman that has a
child the age in which they're interested. Is that what
you just said. That's correct, Yes, okay, And I appreciate that,
(21:52):
and it's a phenomenon I want to explore with you.
But I'm asking you how bad do you need a man?
I mean, after all, no offense to you, but what
what can they do that you can't do? Why do
you have to have him sleeping with your daughter under
your own roof?
Speaker 6 (22:11):
Yeah? Let me let me address both of those. The
man has that ability to whatever it takes to provide
to the woman to get access to the child. He's
going to provide.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Provide what this guy didn't even work? Did he work?
Hold on Shannon but or did this guy have a
job or did he basically hang out at his mom's
basement in his spare time?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, that's pretty much what he did. He played a
lot of gets.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So what does he bring it to the table? Nothing?
Why does she need him? Back to my question, what
is wrong with these women that they keep child molesters
in the home.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
I've seen hundreds of those cases, and you know, even
I've looked at the lethality of living boyfriends to children,
and it just it's phenomenal because mothers don't protect their children.
You know, I'm in Florida, this case is in Florida.
I'm in a different judicial circuit. But we have regularly
(23:10):
charged mothers with failure to protect.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
You know what, that's exactly the charge, That's exactly the
charge I'm thinking of doctor Jory Crawsen, failure to protect. Again.
Mattie's mother has not been named, a suspect, has not
been named, a person of interests. The reason we're even
talking about her right now is because her car spotted
on video going back and forth to where Mattie's body
(23:36):
thirteen years old, it's found just dumped, dumped. Remember this,
Remember Maddie kept telling all of her friends when she
turned thirteen she wanted to leave home and go live
in the woods. I wonder why listen are missing persons?
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Detectives responded to take over the investigation, so they did
interviews with mom, mom's boyfriend, Malan's friends from school. We
were able to access Madelin's phone and there is information
on the phone.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
They indicated that she.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
Told people when she turned thirteen, which was on February
twenty second, she actually wanted to go live in the woods,
so that was in her phone.
Speaker 7 (24:23):
Investigators believe the female seen at seven thirty six am
and the surveillance video in the front passenger seat of
Stephan Stern's vehicle is Madelein Soto's dead body propped up
and buckled into the seat to appear as a living person,
but closer inspection of the video shows her head leaning
toward her shoulder with her mouth open. Stens is caught
on surveillance video again at eight nineteen am when he
(24:43):
is seen entering the front security gate of the neighborhood
with a female in the same position as the surveillance
video captured at seven thirty six am.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
I don't want to gloss over that as we race
towards the newest developments, including the suspect, Mommy's boyfriend whining
behind bars about his mattress, his food, not having the
right spoon, the walls in his cell. We also have
emails that are emerging from his mom back and forth
(25:11):
to him, knowing full well they're going to be read
about how somebody else ate she is involved, more crime
scene details that reveal the nature of this crime. But
to Shannon Butler, joining me WFTV. I don't want to
gloss over the fact that Madeline's dead body, this thirteen
(25:35):
year old girl that has been being raped and sodomized
since age is eight or nine, under mommy's nose, her
dead body is propped up and buckled into the car.
Did I get that right, Shannon Butler? Yeah, And that
was part of his story, right.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
So he goes in and out of that apartment complex,
which they did in the morning, on the way to school,
so that way, if any of the neighbors or anything saw,
it wouldn't be unusual for Madeline to be buckled into
the seat. What he said to us and investigators is
that she slept on the way to school, so he
(26:12):
was working that. It appears into his story about how
he took her to school and she was asleep. But
he did, I mean, according to investigators, the buckle that
seatbelt and let her sit there leaned over. It's just unbelievable, really,
I mean.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Tim Jansen, criminal defense attorney, he is actually taaloring a
very intricate lie stating that Mattie fell asleep on the
way to school to cover up the fact that she's
leaned over with her eyes closed because she's dead.
Speaker 5 (26:44):
Yeah, science technology is going to undermine the cameras that
were seen. Clearly, this guy's the evidence on the phone.
He's a pedophile. He committed a sexual terrorism on this child.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
The mother.
Speaker 5 (27:00):
I certainly had to know something or see something. The
apartment was very small, and to allow a child to
sleep in the bed at that age is just It
seems more like Maddie was an annoyance to the mother
than her actual daughter.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Guys, what more are we learning now? Well, for one thing,
and I'm going to circle back to doctor eric Ason
regarding the years years of sex abuse. How that can
be determined from an autopsy or if it can be determined.
But DeShannon Butler, I want to talk about his whiny
emails from behind prison walls. He complains about everything from
(27:43):
his mattress behind bars, not getting enough food. I have
never felt a full stomach and have in fact forgotten
what that is like. Really, there's never a time these
days when I don't feel hungry. Have you heard of
the vending machine? The sale is small and filthy? Well,
(28:04):
how is your mom's basement? You can still be living
there if you had and murdered Mattie. The mat is
flat and has very little cushion left. I bet it
was nothing compared to sleeping in the bed with Maddie.
Those are a few things you can think about Stern's
before you send any more emails. Shannon Butler, what is
this guy saying from behind bars? You know that wasn't
(28:26):
the first time.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Right when he was being transferred between jails, really early on,
he first started complaining about that first night that he
spent in jail, that he had to use the toilet
paper roll as his pillow. That was the beginning of
his complaints. So we expected when we saw his emails
that he would start complaining more about how the treatment
(28:49):
is there and that how it's you know, it's not
so comfortable behind.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Bars, Okay, Robin Drake, former FBI special Agent expert behavioral analysis. Robin,
as soon as we finish on air, I want you
to run right down to the jail with an allergen free, puffy,
bouncy pillow so he can get a good night's sleep.
(29:15):
What he can't sleep because of his pillow. He shouldn't
be able to sleep because Maddie is dead and he's
whining about his pillow. You know, this isn't the first time, Drake,
that I've seen a murder of defendants and later convicted
whine about their pillow, their food, their diet, their amount
(29:38):
of exercise. He's charged with a murder, and in my mind,
a lot fewer sex charges than are established, because if
I've got two thousand, two nearly two thousand photos and
videos and most of them of this little girl on
(29:59):
his phone, he needs to be charged with every single
one of them, and when he's convicted, they all need
to run consecutively. There and he's talking about his pillow, Drake.
Speaker 8 (30:10):
Yeah, And I also don't think it's going to be
the only person they find.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
He's done this too. He don't go from zero to
one hundred in this.
Speaker 8 (30:17):
Kind of case, because he's going to have a track
record establish of this.
Speaker 4 (30:21):
He's got a lifetime pattern of self centeredness and me me.
Speaker 8 (30:26):
Me, all his primal urges and despicable behaviors. I've obviously
been placated for such a long time that he's got
a level of expectation that the world will continue to
service him, and it just leaks out of him at
every single turn. And so that's what we're seeing in
the jailhouse. That's what we're seeing in all these communications,
and he's completely shocked that he doesn't happen.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
What about this? Do you see a pattern of behavior
of getting taken care of and whining and expecting everything
to be handed to you. I mean, he's still technically
even though he's living with Madeline Soto's mother and their apartment,
which a lot of people thought this was a home,
(31:07):
it's an apartment, which makes it much smaller. My point is,
how could she not know what was happening. He's living
with her, and he's living with his mother, He's not working.
What is he doing? Everyone is giving him a place
to stay, food to eat. I don't know how he
made his car payment. Maybe mommy made the payment for him.
But now same thing, same behavior, carrying over behind bars
(31:31):
wine wine wine.
Speaker 4 (31:32):
Yeah, you hit it exactly right, Nancy.
Speaker 8 (31:35):
It is his lifetime behavior pattern, behavior arc of complete
self centerness and narcissism, and it plays out in everything,
and even with his girlfriend that he had dated briefly.
He's testing that water by saying, hey, I slept and
had an erection with this little girl. You know, I
think that's a test to say, hey could I manipulate
you into my circle because she's aging now. I mean,
(31:57):
it's a lot of conjecture in my part, I know.
But at the same time, though, this is what he
does to his entire environment. He manipulates it for his
own gain, and he's got such lifetime reps out as it.
He looks completely fluid and natural doing it, because this
isn't his first time in life or is his first
rodeo doing this.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Stephan Stern's age thirty nine,
gets twenty one life sentences which will run concurrently or
at the same time, so I'm not that impressed. Concurrently
means he's got one life sentence. One life sentence. What
(32:42):
do we know about Maddie's death? Two thousand explicit videos,
many the majority. We understand Stephan sterns performing sex sex
on a child that lives in Mattie's Soto's home to
doctor a Eson. Doctor airy Esen is a renowned board
(33:04):
certified forensic pathologist a consultant doctor Aeson. We know that
her body was discarded out of the open, but in
an obscure area, which is not hard to find in Florida.
There's a lot of untamed land swamps inlets in Florida.
(33:26):
How can a medical examiner tell if this was the
first time Madeline had been raped or not. And with
her body lying out in the elements for several days,
would that preclude such a determination.
Speaker 10 (33:44):
Well, that's going to make it tough. If the body's
been there for a couple of days and in the
heat in Florida, you're going to have the evidence of decomposition,
which is going to obscure some of the findings that
you're going to have an autopsy. But during the autopsy,
we're going to determine the cause death, but also assess
for evidence of sexual assault, and so evidence of the
(34:06):
acute sexual assault would occur when the swabs are placed
in the various rifices to check for a DNA that's
there to compare from the DNA from the suspect.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Please do not say that, doctor Ason. We don't all
have medical degrees like you do. When you say they're
going to put swab, they're going to swab Mattie's orifices.
You are talking about euphemistically describing her mouth, her vagina,
and her anus to see if she was right. Told
(34:37):
on Shannon Butler WFTV. How long do we think that
Mattie was lying out in the elements before her body
was found? How many days?
Speaker 3 (34:45):
I think it was five days?
Speaker 1 (34:46):
Okay, I thought it was four, but let's go with five,
doctor Ason. How would five days down the elements affect
the determination of inter orifices such as vagina or anus.
Speaker 10 (35:02):
I mean you can still insert the swabs and collect
any evidence. As time goes on further, it's going to
be less have less of an ability to collect that.
I think you're also asking about remote sexual assault and
that's going to be very tough to determine after five
days out in the elements like this, Can I.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Just boil it down, Dodger Ason? In a rape kit,
I know that if there is vagual tearing, if there
is bleeding inside the vagina or the anus, that may
suggest a recent rape.
Speaker 4 (35:40):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
How would you be able to tell if her body
had been found immediately whether she had been raped in
the past.
Speaker 10 (35:48):
Well, you can look for evidence of old bruising or
old abrasions. When bruises start to age, the color will change,
and so if you find evidence of a yellow and
a bruise, that indicates the bruise as older as compared
to an acute bruise, so you can check for that.
That's definitely one way to check for like an older
type sexual assault.
Speaker 1 (36:08):
So we may not be able to tell from her
body that she had endured molestation for years if it
weren't for this idiot's phone that reveals these thousands of photos.
To Shannon Butler WFTV nine, I want you to listen
to this emails between the murder suspect and his mother
(36:31):
in which she suggests someone else, a female, is involved.
Speaker 7 (36:35):
Listen, Stern's mother is saying things like quote, we all
know Blank was heavily involved in this, and I am
disgusted that she's free and you are not. When this
is not all your fault. You need to think about
yourself more and her less. She's isn't thinking of you
and how she can help you right now that whole
family is willing to stay quiet and let you take
(36:57):
the fall for everything.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
Shannon Butler, the FTV nine, What well, I.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Think that we expected some of this from his family members,
that they would start putting some of the eyes back
on Jen Soto. What we didn't know is if he
had told them something that we didn't We didn't know
yet about if she was involved, or if she wasn't involved,
or if they're just doing this as the show. Right,
(37:26):
everybody knows these things become public and that everybody would
be able to see what they were saying. But this
was not a surprise to any of us who have
been working this story that the family would start to
raise some questions about Jen Soto and if he was
taking the fall for her well.
Speaker 7 (37:44):
The search for Metalinoto is ongoing. Investigators ask if they
can take a look at Stephan Stern's phone. Sterns then
informs the detectives he accidentally performed a factory reseat on
the phone the same day Mattie went missing. A factory
reset can't be done on accident, has to be delivered
as it requires multiple steps by the user to ensure
that it doesn't happen by accident. Thousands of images, sexual photos,
and videos, mostly of Madeline, were recovered and led to
(38:06):
the sixty additional charges against Stephen Stern's.
Speaker 1 (38:09):
Over sixty charges, but over nineteen hundred explicit videos and photos.
I want to find out something else. She had a
butler or VESSI had a reporter, WFTV nine. This is
an apartment, not a home as many people thought. So
how big is the apartment? I'm trying to gauge what
was going on and what the mom should have known,
(38:32):
do you know.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
Well, it's not very big. It's kind of like a townhouse.
So there's an upstairs and a downstairs. But there were
other people, like the night of her disappearance or murder,
there were other people in the home. But there was
you know, there was a there was bedrooms upstairs, but
there was also some kind of makeshift kind of bedroom
(38:54):
that was kind of cordoned off downstairs, and there was
a lot of question about if that's where where you know,
Madeline was sometimes laying. So the home is very small.
If you're talking about what could you hear or not
hear in some kind of house, it is it is
fairly small. I mean it's an average town hall.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
I want to ask you something else before we sign off.
It's my understanding that Maddie's friends tell police that Maddie
was constantly being texted and called by Stern. Stephan Stern
the boyfriend back to Robin Drake. That's textbook. It's classic.
(39:39):
I trust my children but when I see them on
the phone all the time or they're on a video
all the time, I go, who you're talking to? Who's that?
Don't you think it's odd? Nobody wondered why the boyfriend
was constantly calling this little girl and texting her.
Speaker 8 (39:56):
Yeah, constantly isolating her, controlling her environment. That's what these
horrible sexual predators do. And that's exactly what he was
doing Maddie the entire time, you know. And as for
the mother making those comments via text too or in
an email, I don't care what it is. You know,
as an investigator, put my investigator hat on for a second.
If you're opening your mouth like that, I'm now looking
(40:16):
at you too. So I think this is a network
of really important behavior by a lot of people, and
he just happens to be to point to the spirit
we're going to take down first, and I think we're
going to save a lot of people in this one.
Speaker 1 (40:28):
I'm hoping doctor Jory Crausen, renowned psychologists joining US faculty
Saint Leo University. Another thing is I noticed that Stefan
Stern states that he was the one who would comfort
little Maddie when she would get into an argument. With
her mom. Okay, there you go, coming between the child
(40:50):
and her parent. That's text book doctor Jory. Yes, it is.
Speaker 6 (40:55):
It's that dependent personnelity. I will pay that on the mother.
I mean she's very dependent. Also, you can see that
relationship in the dynamics where she readily turns anything over
to him dealing with the daughter. You know, it's not
a good attachment in bonding, maternal bonding.
Speaker 1 (41:17):
There Stepan Stearns gets in my mind a very light
sentence in court. Yeah, the headlines all say twenty one
life sentences, but it was what it boils down to
is one life sentence because they're running concurrently at the
same time. Mattie Soto rest in peace, beautiful girl. Nancy
(41:37):
Grace signing off goodbye friend.
Host
Nancy Grace
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