Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
Speaker 1: not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: And when you guys show me the picture of her,
Speaker 3: I believe the sexual stuff, but I didn't want to
Speaker 3: believe that he had done anything equal to her.
Speaker 4: I'm like, know what if he did this? Stop buying.
Speaker 5: Some of the stories we tell here on Soor and
Speaker 5: Scale will make you sick. They'll tug at your heartstrings,
Speaker 5: They'll change your whole perspective on humanity. They're the ones
Speaker 5: you can't get over, the ones you can't really shake,
Speaker 5: and they stay with you for a long time. The
Speaker 5: story we're about to tell you is one of them.
Speaker 5: This is part one of a two part series. Let's go.
Speaker 4: Nine one one.
Speaker 6: What's the location of your emergency?
Speaker 5: The call is coming out of kissing Me, Florida in
Speaker 5: a quiet suburb in Pocket near Hunter's Creek Middle.
Speaker 6: School, Police, fire or medical police?
Speaker 7: Possibly, I'm reporting a missing child?
Speaker 6: And is she white, black or Hispanic?
Speaker 7: She's white, kay and dirty blonde hair, blue eyes.
Speaker 6: Okay, hold on with me here, okay, And then how
Speaker 6: long has it been though, since you guys have last
Speaker 6: seen her?
Speaker 7: Since this morning? She was dropped off at school this morning,
Speaker 7: and apparently she never showed up. We called everyone we knew,
Speaker 7: no one had seen her. She was less seen at
Speaker 7: the church next to Hunter's Creek Middle School. I think
Speaker 7: it's called Peace Church.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if.
Speaker 7: He's back to dress.
Speaker 5: She was dropped off that morning, just steps away from
Speaker 5: the school, but she never made it inside. By that afternoon,
Speaker 5: no one had seen her, not her friends, not her teachers,
Speaker 5: not a single person at the school she was dropped
Speaker 5: off then just disappeared. Her name was Madeline Soda and
Speaker 5: she was just thirteen years old. This was her best friend.
Speaker 8: She came to school in the middle of the year
Speaker 8: in fourth grade. She was like the new kid, so
Speaker 8: like everybody kind of just picked on her stuff. She
Speaker 8: was in a different class to me.
Speaker 1: She had picked on a lot by people like.
Speaker 8: That, like nobody really liked and stuff. And then one
Speaker 8: day I kind of like went up to.
Speaker 1: Her and I was like, Hey, what's your name?
Speaker 8: And then we got to know each other ever since,
Speaker 8: I just been best friends.
Speaker 5: As best friends, she and Maddie talked every day.
Speaker 9: Like every single day.
Speaker 8: She texted me every morning, I wake up and I
Speaker 8: was gonna text her mind unless she but usually I
Speaker 8: thought it was fitchy yesterday when she didn't text me
Speaker 8: at all, because usually even if justn't going to school
Speaker 8: that day, she texted me like the night or the
Speaker 8: date of like she like up brightly just so like
Speaker 8: text me like, hey, I'm.
Speaker 9: Not going to school. And she didn't yesterday.
Speaker 8: But I think everything of it except thought she like,
Speaker 8: oh she like.
Speaker 10: S left it or something.
Speaker 5: That morning, February twenty sixth, twenty twenty four, was supposed
Speaker 5: to be routine, a ride to school, maybe breakfast on
Speaker 5: the way. It was the kind of morning you don't
Speaker 5: think twice about until something goes horribly wrong. That morning,
Speaker 5: her mother's boyfriend, Stephen Stearns, drove her to school.
Speaker 8: Stephanie who all him and she loved him.
Speaker 9: They were really close.
Speaker 5: They left earlier than usual. They had time to spare
Speaker 5: and talked about stopping for breakfast at McDonald's, but she
Speaker 5: changed her mind, as little kids do. She was sleepy,
Speaker 5: but she also just wanted to get to school early
Speaker 5: to hang out with her friends. Instead of waiting in
Speaker 5: the insufferable car line, she asked to be dropped off
Speaker 5: about a block away. She would walk the rest of
Speaker 5: the way to find her friends. Apparently, no matter who
Speaker 5: was taking her to school, Maddy preferred to be dropped
Speaker 5: off in the near vicinity. This was usually at the
Speaker 5: church across the street, where a lot of parents dropped
Speaker 5: off their kids to avoid the long lines. That morning,
Speaker 5: the car pulled over, Maddie got out and started walking.
Speaker 7: They're going to the school to double text and everything.
Speaker 7: But from what we know, she wasn't there, so they
Speaker 7: could be back at seem too because it's right.
Speaker 6: Next So that's fine. So if at least one of
Speaker 6: you remains there, though I have to meet with an officer,
Speaker 6: that's more than fine.
Speaker 7: Okay, Yeah, I'll be here.
Speaker 6: I'll be here, Okay, then all right, thank you so much, ma'am.
Speaker 6: And I'll go ahead and let you goo. We'll be
Speaker 6: out there as quickly as we can.
Speaker 11: Okay.
Speaker 5: When someone goes missing, every second matters. Unfortunately, it doesn't
Speaker 5: matter how much you want a limited resource like law enforcement.
Speaker 5: If there's no cops available. There's no cops available, what
Speaker 5: do you expect? After years of demonizing law enforcement all
Speaker 5: cops are bastards? You say, yeah, that has a negative
Speaker 5: but opposite effect.
Speaker 9: Duh.
Speaker 7: At LISTADICONI I called that long ago reporting the missing child.
Speaker 7: That it's sort of so howdong the captate here?
Speaker 12: Okay, hold on, let me open up the call. Let's
Speaker 12: say the cost still currently depending. They had the deputies
Speaker 12: respond out there that we don't have any available deputies.
Speaker 12: We still have the call up though, holding.
Speaker 7: Okay, so so no one's on their way yet, not yet.
Speaker 7: No does it take long set up to respond to
Speaker 7: the call.
Speaker 12: If there's a big emergency in the area and there's
Speaker 12: nobody there's no units available, they put the call on hold,
Speaker 12: but as soon as one becomes available, they respond to
Speaker 12: the next pressing call. I'll go ahead and update them
Speaker 12: for the information.
Speaker 7: All right, thank you, because it's happened on very recently,
Speaker 7: so we just want to everyone here.
Speaker 5: Since eight am, at the same time, her family started
Speaker 5: calling the school, reaching out to teachers to see if
Speaker 5: anyone had seen her, but no one had.
Speaker 13: It was one on any please pior medical.
Speaker 7: No, it's not a medical issue.
Speaker 12: We have a missing child.
Speaker 14: Since this morning.
Speaker 12: We already called three times and the police didn't show
Speaker 12: it up to it because ma'am.
Speaker 13: I see it. There's a wait for a deputy response.
Speaker 12: They haven't. They haven't come here yet.
Speaker 13: I'm wareing, mam.
Speaker 12: I see it.
Speaker 13: It's waiting for a deputy response.
Speaker 12: You're waiting for a deputy response, ma'am.
Speaker 6: And how long what do we need to wait?
Speaker 1: It's a child missing.
Speaker 13: I understand it, man, but I'm just not able to
Speaker 13: give out eta. I don't know when they'll be.
Speaker 6: There, So how long do we need to wait? An
Speaker 6: emergency and we.
Speaker 13: Have the information, but it just is they're trying to
Speaker 13: get this someone as soon as possible.
Speaker 6: So this is not informant for you guys.
Speaker 13: Really, then we were very busy in the area. Look,
Speaker 13: I understand, and they'll be there something they can, Okay.
Speaker 5: They didn't just call nine one one once. They had
Speaker 5: to call three times. The first call came in at
Speaker 5: around four forty three pm, then again at five sixteen,
Speaker 5: and then another one at seven twenty one. It took
Speaker 5: officers almost three hours to arrive, and they get there
Speaker 5: until seven thirty seven pm. Deputy logs show the call
Speaker 5: sat waiting because no deputies were available. Units were tied
Speaker 5: up with other emergencies and this one had to wait
Speaker 5: its turn. But before you blame dispatchers, understand that the
Speaker 5: people answering those calls weren't the ones heading out to search.
Speaker 5: They were taking information and waiting for someone in the
Speaker 5: field to clear. They did their jobs correctly by the book,
Speaker 5: exactly as instructed. Mattie's mother was later told there were
Speaker 5: other missing children that day. Seems like an epidemic, right,
Speaker 5: resources were stretched thin. In fact, nearly one thousand children
Speaker 5: are reported missing in the United States every day. That
Speaker 5: works out to about one child every ninety seconds, or
Speaker 5: roughly three hundred and fifty thousand children under eighteen each year.
Speaker 5: Think about that for just a second. That's roughly the
Speaker 5: capacity of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. So yeah, an Indianapolis
Speaker 5: Motor Speedway's worth a children goes missing every year. But
Speaker 5: to Maddie's parents, family and friends, statistics didn't really matter
Speaker 5: at the moment. This was serious and urgent. This was
Speaker 5: their own daughter. An entire day had now passed with
Speaker 5: no one seeing Maddie.
Speaker 6: Does she have a cell phone that she might keep
Speaker 6: on her person?
Speaker 7: She does it, She had when she looked at home
Speaker 7: conveniently today.
Speaker 5: Okay, there was no surprise that Maddie left her phone
Speaker 5: at home. This was a common occurrence and it wasn't
Speaker 5: just because she was forgetful.
Speaker 15: Okay?
Speaker 6: Is she diagnosed with any medical mental conditions at all?
Speaker 7: I know she takes medication for ADHD, and I think
Speaker 7: that I'm pretty sure that.
Speaker 5: At seven thirty seven PM, officers pulled into the condo
Speaker 5: complex and Kissime, where Mattie lived with her mother, Jennifer Soda.
Speaker 5: Also in the home was Jennifer's boyfriend, Stephan Stearns, who
Speaker 5: was frequently there despite an on and off again relationship.
Speaker 5: The unit itself was shared with rooms rented out to
Speaker 5: other women, and the condo was owned by Mattie's grandfather.
Speaker 5: It was a crowded living arrangement, with multiple people coming
Speaker 5: and going in limited space inside the home. By the
Speaker 5: time deputies got there that evening, both Jennifer and Stephan
Speaker 5: were there answering questions and helping officers piece together the
Speaker 5: last known details from that morning. Officers started with the basics,
Speaker 5: documenting what Maddie was wearing and establishing a clear timeline.
Speaker 9: Be there, what's going on?
Speaker 3: So it was dropped off close to school this morning,
Speaker 3: but never wee it.
Speaker 9: I went to the partment to school. I'm sorry once again, ahead, are.
Speaker 10: We looking for another kid, or we have a kid.
Speaker 9: Looking for another one.
Speaker 5: Like I said, an epidemic, especially when Disney World is
Speaker 5: in your backyard.
Speaker 16: So she was supposed to be dropped off high school,
Speaker 16: didn't make it to school, didn't make.
Speaker 17: It to school.
Speaker 4: I went to pick her up from school today and
Speaker 4: she never came out.
Speaker 18: They announced it over the speaker, and I'm just like,
Speaker 18: maybe she walked.
Speaker 3: Here, because sometimes she'll walk here to this office.
Speaker 4: I came here, nothing.
Speaker 9: I went back to the school.
Speaker 4: We were closed.
Speaker 3: I got to notice an email from the school thing
Speaker 3: she was absent. But I also messaged her teacher and
Speaker 3: he looked at her entire tends today and saw that
Speaker 3: she was completely not at school today either.
Speaker 4: Okay, so she never made it.
Speaker 9: Okay. What's her name?
Speaker 4: Madeline?
Speaker 16: M A d E O I an e I'm ade
Speaker 16: out I any any last name?
Speaker 9: Otoya.
Speaker 3: Date of birth February twenty second, two thousand and eleven,
Speaker 3: twenty seven seconds.
Speaker 16: Oh sorry, twenty second, twenty eleven, thirteen for bred.
Speaker 5: He said it quietly, but Stephan just pointed out that
Speaker 5: Maddie had just turned thirteen. In fact, just the day
Speaker 5: before a Sunday, the family had a birthday party. Her mother, Jennifer,
Speaker 5: and her mother's boyfriend, Stephan, were not there, but her
Speaker 5: best friend was. But on Monday evening back at the scene,
Speaker 5: officers needed to know what Maddie was wearing when she
Speaker 5: was last seen, so they talked to her mom and Stephan.
Speaker 9: Green green, white, cross white, cross blue or black?
Speaker 12: Parents.
Speaker 3: I think black shorts, black shorts, okay, my shorts?
Speaker 9: All right. Do you know she has a friends in area?
Speaker 4: She does, but she doesn't know where they live.
Speaker 9: She doesn't know where she live.
Speaker 4: Okay, I asked all of them.
Speaker 16: Okay, sometime is this like, did she like have any
Speaker 16: places that you guys know that she would usually be
Speaker 16: at any friend's house, any places that like she used
Speaker 16: to hang out?
Speaker 9: No, not typically okay.
Speaker 10: Yeah, uh wait one hundred and ten for hundred, hair
Speaker 10: color flung long like that, okay, eye color blue.
Speaker 9: Does she have any marking arn like any scars or.
Speaker 15: Anything distinctive beauty mark on her face.
Speaker 10: On her face, on the face, like below the nose,
Speaker 10: the nose.
Speaker 15: Yeah, like righting that area there.
Speaker 9: It's it's very distinctive.
Speaker 2: You'd know it if you saw her.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 5: One officer was talking to Mattie's parents another was speaking
Speaker 5: with staff at the church where she was dropped off.
Speaker 5: That morning, Surveillance showed a child sitting in a parking
Speaker 5: lot for about ten minutes before getting up and walking away.
Speaker 5: After that, the trail disappeared. At that point, investigators were
Speaker 5: still working through possibilities, including one that seemed plausible that
Speaker 5: Maddie may have left on her own.
Speaker 11: It's possible that she came here and sat in the
Speaker 11: parking lot.
Speaker 4: For a while.
Speaker 11: HiT's blurry video, but it looks like I was a
Speaker 11: child sitting right there, and she's sitting The people here
Speaker 11: said that they were adamant they see her on the property,
Speaker 11: But like I said, it's a blurry video, and I
Speaker 11: don't see her getting into anybody's car in the video,
Speaker 11: I see you're sitting on property for going to take
Speaker 11: ten minutes and then walking off property. I don't know
Speaker 11: which way she went from there.
Speaker 5: The video was blurred, he said, but clearly he showed
Speaker 5: a child lingering for a bit and then walking away.
Speaker 5: Could it have been Maddie? There were signs, even messages
Speaker 5: and comments about wanting to leave, about going off on
Speaker 5: her own, living in the woods when she turned thirteen.
Speaker 5: Why the Woods why thirteen, You may ask, who knows?
Speaker 5: But when don't we all like to just go off
Speaker 5: the grid from time to time regardless. This half baked
Speaker 5: plan was something she had confided about with her friend.
Speaker 8: We were walking around the bus loop and she was like,
Speaker 8: she was talking about a gator and then she was like,
Speaker 8: you know, it'd.
Speaker 2: Be like so cool to do.
Speaker 4: And I was like what.
Speaker 8: She was like, if we like run into the woods,
Speaker 8: like you know that trail we'd the scope.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah.
Speaker 8: She was like, you would be so cool with like
Speaker 8: go there and just think the little house. And I
Speaker 8: was like the woods like with like animals stuff, And
Speaker 8: I was like, where are you going to get this
Speaker 8: like wooden.
Speaker 19: Stuff to go this house? And she was like, I
Speaker 19: don't know, if figure it out. And I thought she
Speaker 19: was joking and stuff because she kind of like E
Speaker 19: smiled if you did it, so I thought she was joking,
Speaker 19: but I didn't. I didn't think her seriously.
Speaker 8: And then when I found she was missing, I can
Speaker 8: deposit in my mind and that to my dad, her
Speaker 8: saying if she were to run away, go into the
Speaker 8: woods and find a place and stay there.
Speaker 5: If this were true, if she really had planned to leave.
Speaker 5: Then where did she go?
Speaker 9: He dropped her off a block away and drove away.
Speaker 2: Okay, did she go to school?
Speaker 9: Was walking in that direction?
Speaker 15: She was rifling through her backpack, sliding, so my thought
Speaker 15: maybe she was just looking for her headphones before she
Speaker 15: kind her walking on. Yeah, but she was just coming,
Speaker 15: you know, shambling over in that direction.
Speaker 2: I looked the same as any.
Speaker 5: Other morning, Okay, But it wasn't just like any other morning.
Speaker 5: On any other morning, Mattie would have been safe in
Speaker 5: school all day, but she wasn't. She would have made
Speaker 5: it home after school like every other day, but she didn't.
Speaker 5: Whether Maddie ran away or something far worse happened, the
Speaker 5: truth was that she wasn't just missing. She had vanished.
Speaker 5: She had just turned into a teenager, and now her
Speaker 5: family feared she would never make it to adulthood. Mattie
Speaker 5: Soto had just turned thirteen. She lived in Kissimi, Florida,
Speaker 5: with her mother, Jennifer Soto, in a condo complex near
Speaker 5: her school. On the morning of February twenty sixth, twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four, she was dropped off just a short distance
Speaker 5: from the school, a walk she had made before and
Speaker 5: won that at the time didn't seem unusual, but that
Speaker 5: morning she never made it inside. Hours passed before anyone
Speaker 5: realized something was wrong. Her family made calls to the school,
Speaker 5: then to nine point one. By the time deputies arrived
Speaker 5: that evening, Mattie had already been missing for hours, and
Speaker 5: no one could say where she had gone after getting
Speaker 5: out of the car. At first, there were explanations. Maybe
Speaker 5: she left on her own, maybe she wandered off. She
Speaker 5: had allegedly made comments about wanting to leave, about going
Speaker 5: off into the woods. When she turned thirteen. Mattie lived
Speaker 5: with her mother, and she also spent time with her
Speaker 5: grandmother from the time she was about six. Her mother's
Speaker 5: boyfriend was also in the picture. Jennifer and Stephen were
Speaker 5: in an on again, off again relationship for years. For
Speaker 5: the majority of that time, they lived under the same roof.
Speaker 5: According to Jennifer and other family members, Stephan was like
Speaker 5: a dad to Maddie and they had a great relationship.
Speaker 5: But she also had a great relationship with her biological
Speaker 5: dad and her sister, who lived miles away. If she
Speaker 5: didn't take off to live in the woods, maybe she
Speaker 5: took off on a bus or plane to see them.
Speaker 5: Her friend remembered her preoccupation with getting money for her birthday.
Speaker 8: One section thirteen, I'm going to leave this house and
Speaker 8: never come back. Why thirteen Because I think because she
Speaker 8: would always brag. Because I said that I can't wait
Speaker 8: to my birthday and she was like, are you having
Speaker 8: a birthday party? I said no, and she was like, oh,
Speaker 8: I get a home went of money, like five hundred
Speaker 8: and something dollars on my birthday, you know, like that's
Speaker 8: like so much money. And I was like, yeah, like
Speaker 8: I get money, but like not like that. And I
Speaker 8: don't really like having birthday parties.
Speaker 19: To last birthday party, I have so much drama.
Speaker 9: Then she was like okay.
Speaker 8: She would always talk about getting money for her birthday
Speaker 8: and I didn't give her money, and I already had
Speaker 8: given her a gift.
Speaker 4: I brought it to school.
Speaker 8: She kind of got mad that I didn't give her
Speaker 8: any money or anything, and I was like, I spent
Speaker 8: money on this and physically give you any money though.
Speaker 8: And then when we also got there, I was like,
Speaker 8: how many presents did you get? And then she was
Speaker 8: like I barely got any money yet, Like I'm kind
Speaker 8: of mad because I want more money. I think she
Speaker 8: was waiting to turn thirteen. That way she could get
Speaker 8: all with her money and go.
Speaker 4: She got to her sister.
Speaker 8: Her dad is in Washington, DC, and I think her
Speaker 8: sister is too. Her and her sister are close.
Speaker 5: Missing her biological dad and sister weren't the only reasons
Speaker 5: Maddie may have taken off without telling anyone. Her friend
Speaker 5: said she didn't always get along with her mom, and
Speaker 5: she had ADHD and other challenges based something I know.
Speaker 8: I think she kind of just wanted to be free,
Speaker 8: kind of just not live under Like.
Speaker 5: The word mom or mom's rules was redacted, but that's
Speaker 5: a reasonable inference that she didn't necessarily want to live
Speaker 5: under her mom's rules. She had just turned into a teenager.
Speaker 3: Was she like defiant, like didn't like to follow the rules?
Speaker 12: Sort of?
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 8: Took her mans if she didn't take her medsin, she's
Speaker 8: like really crazy and she just thinks she just does
Speaker 8: so like impulsive.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 5: When investigators took a closer look at what actually happened
Speaker 5: that morning, Mattie's disappearance seemed less like a troubled teenager
Speaker 5: looking for escape and more like a vulnerable girl who
Speaker 5: may have been abducted on the morning of Mattie's disappearance,
Speaker 5: Stephan drove her to school. This wasn't unusual. In fact,
Speaker 5: they had a routine for the days he took her
Speaker 5: to school that included stopping at McDonald's. But that day
Speaker 5: was different. Mattie was more lethargic and slept the whole way.
Speaker 5: She refused breakfast twice.
Speaker 15: Woke up around seven seven fifteen somewhere around there. This
Speaker 15: is an early start for us, but she had We
Speaker 15: had talked about getting McDonald's like this beforehand, so we
Speaker 15: wanted to make good time.
Speaker 2: We did make good time.
Speaker 15: We got out the door maybe seven seven five is maybe,
Speaker 15: got over to that area. She was asleep in the
Speaker 15: car most of the time, just snooze until we got there.
Speaker 9: We got to McDonald's.
Speaker 15: We're close to McDonald's.
Speaker 2: I said, you still want it.
Speaker 15: Wasn't interested in the McDonald's anymore, so we continued on
Speaker 15: and she wanted to be dropped off a little down
Speaker 15: the ways from the school. She's got this phase that
Speaker 15: she's been into lately where she was very particularly about
Speaker 15: what car she seemed getting out of in front of
Speaker 15: the school.
Speaker 2: I get it, it's an image thing, but that was.
Speaker 15: Sometime probably between eight twenty and eight forty ish, somewhere
Speaker 15: in there. It was along the stretch of the road
Speaker 15: that on the right side has all the communities on
Speaker 15: it before you get to the overpass. You could see
Speaker 15: the overpass from where it was, so it was on
Speaker 15: that side, on that stretch of road, and that's where
Speaker 15: I dropped her off. She said she was going to
Speaker 15: go wait for her friends. Who's going to find them?
Speaker 15: And hang out and wait for her friends. And I
Speaker 15: asked if that was going to be okay. She said, yeah,
Speaker 15: it's fine. Kids get dropped off early enough as it is.
Speaker 15: It's not totally unusual for that to happen. It's just
Speaker 15: not usually that early that I dropped her off. Two
Speaker 15: school runs every once in a while for her.
Speaker 5: Jennifer was happy to have Stephan in her life. He
Speaker 5: was a huge help to her. He was able to
Speaker 5: give insight to Jennifer about Maddie's ADHD because he too
Speaker 5: had ADHD me. According to Stephan, his ADHD was severe.
Speaker 5: But Jennifer had issues of her own, including bipolar disorder,
Speaker 5: which she was medicating for. Typically, the medicine would help
Speaker 5: regulate her moods and her sleep but at times she'd
Speaker 5: forget to take it or her dose needed to be adjusted.
Speaker 5: She often didn't sleep well and appreciated that Stephan and
Speaker 5: Maddie had a solid father daughter like relationship and he
Speaker 5: could pick up the slack. In this next clip, take
Speaker 5: particular notice of how she's explaining her behavior that night,
Speaker 5: as if she's trying to explain away a question that
Speaker 5: hasn't been asked yet.
Speaker 4: I got home are on ten thirty. I started getting
Speaker 4: ready for bed myself.
Speaker 3: I started beating and taking my meds to after take meds.
Speaker 3: When I went to take my meds, I realized, oh
Speaker 3: my god, I forgot to take my Saturday night's.
Speaker 17: Med which is why I felt so weird, so abnormal,
Speaker 17: and not myself. Sunday, while I was at work, everyone
Speaker 17: at work nowders. I was acting different and not being
Speaker 17: myself like. I couldn't smile in front of the guests.
Speaker 17: I felt this wave of depression that I hadn't felt
Speaker 17: in years. It was my bipolar symptoms coming up again
Speaker 17: that I just I've been medicating.
Speaker 9: Myself for for well.
Speaker 14: Sonny, you took your beds. What meds? If you don't
Speaker 14: mind me asking what beds do you take, I'm like, ww,
Speaker 14: does it? Can they put you to sleep deep? Does
Speaker 14: it helped you fall asleep? Or is it helped regulate you?
Speaker 14: What kind of happens if you take the beds?
Speaker 4: So they do all of the afolve.
Speaker 3: They make me sleepy, They helped me stay asleep, and
Speaker 3: they help me function so I'm stable all day.
Speaker 4: They only work well if.
Speaker 3: I've got a good night's sleep, and if I bet
Speaker 3: in with them the night before when I take them,
Speaker 3: or the night I take them. It's The medication is
Speaker 3: called Giadah. Generic brand is called zig Brazo Dome my mess.
Speaker 3: And then I told him to start getting ready for Bett,
Speaker 3: to start heading upstairs and get ready to do this
Speaker 3: old lady of this eleven o'clock has passed for bedtime
Speaker 3: she used to go to sleep.
Speaker 5: Even by her own account, when Jennifer did take her medication,
Speaker 5: it didn't just help her sleep, It knocked her out.
Speaker 5: She described feeling groggy, disoriented, and sometimes not fully aware
Speaker 5: of what had happened the night before. Sleep was very
Speaker 5: important to Jennifer in general, so the next morning she
Speaker 5: remembered Stephan coming into her room to get the dog
Speaker 5: and take him for a walk before he took Maddie
Speaker 5: to school because she needed to sleep in and didn't
Speaker 5: want to take her Stephan confirmed that he took the
Speaker 5: dog for a walk, and then he said he and
Speaker 5: Maddie had an early start. Other than Maddie being excessively
Speaker 5: sleepy and not wanting McDonald's, this was a typical trip
Speaker 5: to school. Then she just dropped off the radar. Dropping
Speaker 5: off the radar wouldn't be as easy for Maddie as
Speaker 5: it would for other students. Her teachers were paying attention.
Speaker 5: She had an IEP Individualized Education Programmer special ED as
Speaker 5: it used to be known.
Speaker 20: She has been in my class all year round. She's
Speaker 20: always very sweet, and she's struggles of it. I mean,
Speaker 20: all my kids hit kinds of clids, so there are
Speaker 20: the students who are struggling. She was on my door
Speaker 20: decorating team. She was actually chosen to be my student
Speaker 20: of the week from two of us ago for helping
Speaker 20: us win our door decorating competition with our friends. She
Speaker 20: had been reading a book a couple months ago and
Speaker 20: it had kissing in it, and it was a graphic
Speaker 20: novel and she was like scandalized that there was a
Speaker 20: kissing scene.
Speaker 5: Seventh grade was the year sex education was introduced in
Speaker 5: this school system, so it wasn't surprising the kids would
Speaker 5: make a big deal about a graphic novel. But she
Speaker 5: also remembered something Mattie's friends told her after Mattie went missing.
Speaker 20: I was shocked when the kids were telling me about
Speaker 20: to live in the woods conversation. I was shocked to
Speaker 20: hear something like that. She was very excited about her birthday.
Speaker 5: She had just been made Student of the week. She
Speaker 5: was quiet, she struggled, and she was happy about her birthday.
Speaker 5: These were descriptions officers heard over and over, but they
Speaker 5: also heard that Maddie had a lot of anxiety, not
Speaker 5: just typical worries, but panic attacks. This is the school counselor.
Speaker 21: When she has come to me, it's often been those
Speaker 21: feelings of panic. She's come to me in the middle
Speaker 21: of class or during lunchtime, just feeling really panicked, kind
Speaker 21: of heavy.
Speaker 4: Breathing, feeling really overwhelmed.
Speaker 21: And when we've had our conversations about what's going on,
Speaker 21: what's making you feel this way, I've got in responses saying, well,
Speaker 21: it's my anxiety. Sometimes I don't know, I'm just really
Speaker 21: overstimulated with all that noise in the cafeteria.
Speaker 5: But she also talked about things being stressful at home.
Speaker 5: Her mother was usually the.
Speaker 21: Focal point, and when I pressed about that, it seemed
Speaker 21: to be things along the lines of, well, she gets
Speaker 21: upset that I'm forgetful or that I don't clean.
Speaker 4: My room the way she wants me to, and.
Speaker 21: We talked about what that does to affect her, And
Speaker 21: she says, yelling that makes me get over stimulated, and
Speaker 21: then I can't respond to her in a way that
Speaker 21: she wants me to. So we discussed strategies for kind
Speaker 21: of calming herself down.
Speaker 5: No when at school was raising any real red flags.
Speaker 5: A lot of this seemed pretty normal for a seventh
Speaker 5: grade girl with hormones and ADHD.
Speaker 9: She also has an IP Okay, so do you think
Speaker 9: maybe I.
Speaker 22: Always thought that it was partly because she struggles with learning,
Speaker 22: so I always thought his struggle with learning also are
Speaker 22: a little bit with drawn and having her time was seen.
Speaker 5: So yeah, there were struggles, a mom who had her
Speaker 5: own mental health issues, a broken family ADHD, but none
Speaker 5: of it really pointed to a child who was about
Speaker 5: to disappear. But investigators had to consider every possibility, whether
Speaker 5: she left on her own, met someone, or was picked
Speaker 5: up along the way. None of these explanations held up
Speaker 5: against the evidence. There was no footage of Maddie getting
Speaker 5: out of a car, no camera capturing the moment she
Speaker 5: was dropped off. The only video investigators could locate came
Speaker 5: from the area near the church, showing a figure believed
Speaker 5: to be Mattie sitting briefly before getting up and walking away.
Speaker 5: After that, the trail stops. There were no more sightings,
Speaker 5: no confirmed movement, and no indication she'd made it any
Speaker 5: farther towards a school. There is no evidence that she
Speaker 5: ever met anyone, no sign that she left the area,
Speaker 5: and nothing to suggest she went anywhere at all. The
Speaker 5: timeline doesn't extend, It just comes to a dead end.
Speaker 5: The last person to see Maddie was Stephan, so detectives
Speaker 5: had no choice but to dig deeper into his version
Speaker 5: of what happened.
Speaker 15: They're saying, Okay, let her out, have a good day.
Speaker 15: I love you, thanks, love you too. And I turned
Speaker 15: around and was driving away and was watching her. In
Speaker 15: my review, Mary and make sure that she was former
Speaker 15: supposed to go, and she was moving in that direction,
Speaker 15: but she was rummaging around in her backpack or something
Speaker 15: when I assumed it was probably headphones or something like that,
Speaker 15: but find out literal that she forgot her phone here,
Speaker 15: so she may have been rummaging for her phone, but
Speaker 15: she was still kind of making her way towards towards
Speaker 15: that direction, So it looked okay, look like any other day,
Speaker 15: and I just continued on.
Speaker 5: After dropping Maddie off, Stephan tells investigators he left the
Speaker 5: area and went to a nearby vape shop, but it
Speaker 5: wasn't opened yet, so he says he returned home briefly,
Speaker 5: Jennifer was just getting up because she had slept in.
Speaker 5: They hung out for a bit, and then he went
Speaker 5: back to the vape shop once it opened. From there,
Speaker 5: his account becomes harder to follow. He describes driving along
Speaker 5: Highway one ninety two, stopping at multiple places, including a
Speaker 5: comic shop and a Target. So, yeah, that's what an
Speaker 5: adult male is doing on a typical weekday, shopping for
Speaker 5: comic books and weed, maybe stopping by Target. We are
Speaker 5: so cooked as a society. Then, at some point during
Speaker 5: that time, he says he got a flat tire. He
Speaker 5: pulled over and changed it using a spear. He explained
Speaker 5: apologetically that the flat tire caused him to fall behind,
Speaker 5: so he missed the opportunity to pick Maddie up from
Speaker 5: school with Jennifer, as they had planned on its own.
Speaker 5: None of that stood out as unusual, running air INDs,
Speaker 5: losing track of time, even getting a flat tire. These
Speaker 5: are the kind of things that happened to everyone every day.
Speaker 5: But it created a stretch of time that wasn't clearly
Speaker 5: accounted for, a window where his movements relied almost completely
Speaker 5: on his own recollection, and his recollection wasn't great because
Speaker 5: remember he has ADHD. Also, so far, no footage had
Speaker 5: confirmed where he was during that period, No independent witnesses
Speaker 5: placed him at any of those stops. As cooperative as
Speaker 5: Stephan was, he gave a series of locations, times, and
Speaker 5: explanations that became harder to pin down the more they tried.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense, make sense.
Speaker 15: I apologize for that. Trying to help you out the
Speaker 15: best I can and bag.
Speaker 1: Right. So like.
Speaker 23: If you drop her off her on eight p forty,
Speaker 23: let's say give her take ten minutes. You make it
Speaker 23: to the shop around nine, the smoke shop, and you
Speaker 23: sit there and wait for a couple minutes for it
Speaker 23: to open. You said you waited for maybe five or
Speaker 23: ten minutes, right, Does it make sense that you're still
Speaker 23: there at ten o'clock.
Speaker 2: I was there at ten o'clock.
Speaker 1: Okay, So what did you do before that?
Speaker 15: I dropped her off and I made my way over
Speaker 15: not a direct route, but I made my way over there.
Speaker 1: Did you stop anywhere on your way to the smoke shop?
Speaker 2: I don't think so.
Speaker 23: Do you have problems with your memory that you can't
Speaker 23: recall what you did?
Speaker 15: I'm extremely ADHD. I'm sorry, so just details start to
Speaker 15: get fuzzy after a while. Even the times I'm giving
Speaker 15: you are my best guesstimates here. Didn't have my phone
Speaker 15: with me at the time, so I wasn't aware of
Speaker 15: exactly what time. There's no time on your car transpiring.
Speaker 15: There probably is, but not my car.
Speaker 2: It's my parents' car.
Speaker 5: ADHD, no phone, unfamiliar car.
Speaker 14: I mean.
Speaker 5: ADHD is a real thing, don't get me wrong. And
Speaker 5: it does affect memory and the ability to recall details
Speaker 5: or keep track of time, all of those things. But
Speaker 5: it may also be a really good cover or someone
Speaker 5: who's trying to hide something, and that's when the investigation
Speaker 5: started to shift away from what Stephan said and towards
Speaker 5: what could actually be verified. He gave the investigators every
Speaker 5: little detail, but he couldn't account for big gaps of time.
Speaker 5: And while Jennifer corroborated his version of events, she was
Speaker 5: also unable to explain gaps of time, probably because she
Speaker 5: was asleep or at the doctor's office, maybe getting medicines readjusted.
Speaker 5: So investigators turned to the one thing that doesn't rely
Speaker 5: on memory or even coherence, his phone. His phone showed
Speaker 5: him going home, leaving again, and doubling back in a
Speaker 5: pattern that doesn't match the simple errands he described. What
Speaker 5: should have been a simple morning became a series of
Speaker 5: trips and changes in direction. He couldn't really explain. Jennifer
Speaker 5: corroborated Stephan's morning pretty sure.
Speaker 1: He called me around ten eighteen.
Speaker 3: What did he call you for?
Speaker 18: To let me know that if he didn't go to
Speaker 18: McDonald's planned. He had asked her multiple times if she
Speaker 18: wanted to stop at mcdonald'scause that was the plan of
Speaker 18: the night before, that they were going to wake up early.
Speaker 18: He was gonna take her to McDonald's. Do like a
Speaker 18: special McDonald's breakfast and then drop her off at school
Speaker 18: early because she wanted to get there a little early.
Speaker 18: But on his way to school, she was very sleepy
Speaker 18: and wanted to sleep in the car, and she said
Speaker 18: she did not want to do McDonald's. She just wanted
Speaker 18: to be dropped off.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 17: Also to let me know.
Speaker 18: That he left his phone at home because I had
Speaker 18: called Hi multiple times in the video. He had left
Speaker 18: his phone at home by accident. He had went to
Speaker 18: the Babe Shop but they didn't open on time, so
Speaker 18: he had waited for quite a while in front of
Speaker 18: the Babe shop. They didn't open, so he left and
Speaker 18: came back and we hung out a little bit, and
Speaker 18: then I think he left again to the Babe shop.
Speaker 1: To go by what he did.
Speaker 5: Okay, detectives already knew something they weren't telling Jennifer, something
Speaker 5: they had already discussed with Stephen. His car was caught
Speaker 5: on camera with a passenger in it for longer than
Speaker 5: he admitted, including turning around en route to circle back
Speaker 5: to the apartment because he forgot a keyfob.
Speaker 23: When you came back to get your keyfob, what did
Speaker 23: you do when you got here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, got key fob, ran back out again.
Speaker 1: Okay? Where did you park?
Speaker 2: Right right up here? I think?
Speaker 1: Okay? How long would you say you were inside your apartment.
Speaker 15: For literally long enough to run in, grind the falling,
Speaker 15: and come back out, so okay, And.
Speaker 1: Then what did you do? What did you do when
Speaker 1: you came back up.
Speaker 15: Got back in the car, and went back on went
Speaker 15: back on the morning mission?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 23: The camera has you in the complex for twelve minutes?
Speaker 1: Does that seem about right?
Speaker 13: Yeah?
Speaker 15: Coming into the complex, driving around, parking, getting the fog,
Speaker 15: coming back out sounds about right.
Speaker 1: Okay. And then you leave?
Speaker 23: What time would you say you dropped her off at
Speaker 23: the school or not at the school, but in the area.
Speaker 15: My estimate was sometime between eight twenty and eight forty Yeah, okay.
Speaker 15: The camera has you leaving the complex at eight thirty
Speaker 15: one thirty one, okay, so it must have been closer
Speaker 15: to eight forty then roundabout, I think.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 23: So, like, let's say you drop her off at eight forty,
Speaker 23: we don't see your car coming back south until ten
Speaker 23: o'clock in the morning, So what are you doing between
Speaker 23: eight forty and.
Speaker 1: Ten o'clock.
Speaker 2: Cruising around a little bit?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 23: But I asked you earlier, you know, like what you
Speaker 23: were doing, and you said you were there for like
Speaker 23: five or ten minutes and then you came back home.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I went to the smoke shop, like I said,
Speaker 15: but I was probably I may have been reandering around
Speaker 15: the area but made my way home.
Speaker 23: Okay, But I'm asking you earlier, right, And even like
Speaker 23: the first time we talked to you, you're not telling
Speaker 23: us that you're like, you know, just cruising the area
Speaker 23: like you're coming home. So I need to be able
Speaker 23: to explain to my supervisors why there's such a time gup.
Speaker 5: Stephan tried to make the return to the apartments sound routine.
Speaker 5: He forgot a key, fop, he said, so he doubled back,
Speaker 5: ran inside, and came right back out. But investigators were
Speaker 5: already seeing cracks in that story. The stop took longer
Speaker 5: than he claimed, the timeline didn't hold, and while he
Speaker 5: was back at the complex, surveillance caught him doing some
Speaker 5: things things that made the forgot my fob explanation seem
Speaker 5: maybe well like a cover.
Speaker 1: Did she go inside with you?
Speaker 2: No, she was in the car, so she was asleep.
Speaker 1: Where in the car passengers the front seat? Correct?
Speaker 23: Okay, just she had any point going the back of
Speaker 23: the vehicle, like in the back seat. So she was
Speaker 23: in the front the whole time, awake or asleep?
Speaker 2: She was asleep?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 23: How was she positioned in the front seat?
Speaker 2: Leaned back in the seat? It's kind of punked out
Speaker 2: and happened.
Speaker 1: Where was her head in relation to the seat.
Speaker 15: Against the seat acting against it? Was a seat leaning
Speaker 15: back or she was leaning back as she had leaned
Speaker 15: the seat back so that she could reply.
Speaker 5: In those questions. Seemed kind of like who cares questions?
Speaker 22: Right?
Speaker 5: This all took place before he dropped her off at school.
Speaker 5: According to Stephan, they had been up early, Maddie was tired,
Speaker 5: she slept on the way. She didn't want McDonald's. They
Speaker 5: were making good time, and he realized he had forgotten
Speaker 5: the keyfop, so he just drove right back to the complex.
Speaker 5: She was still asleep in the passenger seat. The problem is, well,
Speaker 5: the problem for Stephan was that detectives weren't just looking
Speaker 5: at the one stop back at the complex. The more
Speaker 5: they reviewed the surveillance footage, the more they realized the
Speaker 5: same car Stephan was driving kept appearing different locations, different times,
Speaker 5: but every time the passenger looked exactly the same, Her
Speaker 5: position never changed. She wasn't sleeping, she was already dead.
Speaker 5: Stephan was driving around for much of the morning with
Speaker 5: a corpse in the passenger seat, trying to pass her
Speaker 5: off as sleeping. Maddie never made it to school that
Speaker 5: day because she never got out of the car. On
Speaker 5: the morning of her thirteenth birthday party, Mattie Soto would
Speaker 5: have started another day in her life, school friends, homework. Instead,
Speaker 5: she disappeared and never made it to school. What started
Speaker 5: as a missing child case was now falling apart, right
Speaker 5: in front of her mother's boyfriend, Stephan Stearns, who was
Speaker 5: the last person to see her. Stephan said it was
Speaker 5: a normal morning, a school drop off, a few errands,
Speaker 5: a stop at a vape shop. But the more detectives
Speaker 5: checked his story, the less it held. The timeline shifted,
Speaker 5: the details changed, surveillance exposed gaps he just couldn't explain,
Speaker 5: and whatever hope was left started fading fast. This was
Speaker 5: no longer a search for a missing girl. It was
Speaker 5: a search for a missing corpse. Detectives had to break
Speaker 5: the news to Jennifer, so they showed her a picture
Speaker 5: of the Lincoln in the driveway at about seven thirty.
Speaker 18: That's Mattie as sleep in the car.
Speaker 9: Mattie's not a sleeping What do you mean do you believe?
Speaker 1: Do you believe Maddie's asleep?
Speaker 13: There?
Speaker 2: She did?
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 1: We don't know where she's at.
Speaker 5: Jennifer takes the picture in her hand, scrunches her brow
Speaker 5: and looks closer at her daughter.
Speaker 1: It's a find way for her to be laying down, sneapy.
Speaker 24: Right now. We are probably going to start working this case.
Speaker 9: As a homicide.
Speaker 24: We believe he possibly has done something too Maddie, and
Speaker 24: we want to know where he would possibly go.
Speaker 5: Surveillance picks up his silver Lincoln again and again that morning.
Speaker 5: At seven thirty five, it's at the trash car. Stephan
Speaker 5: gets out and throws a white trash bag inside. Maddie
Speaker 5: is still visible in the front passenger seat, her head
Speaker 5: tilted to the left, mouth hanging open, seat belted in.
Speaker 5: At eight nineteen, the car is seen at the front gate.
Speaker 5: At eight thirty one, it leaves through the back gate,
Speaker 5: and in every one of those videos, Maddie is still
Speaker 5: in the same position. A sleeping thirteen year old doesn't
Speaker 5: usually remain frozen in the same posture across multiple stops,
Speaker 5: multiple gates, multiple movements through a complex, but a dead
Speaker 5: body does and then the camera is at the compactor
Speaker 5: made the morning even darker. Near the tread from a
Speaker 5: tire matching Stephan's vehicle, they recover a white trash bag
Speaker 5: containing Maddie's backpack, a white croc and her school issued laptop.
Speaker 5: So while Stephan is telling detectives about McDonald's, a vape
Speaker 5: shop and a forgotten keyfob oh and a girl sleeping
Speaker 5: quietly in the front seat, the evidence is telling a
Speaker 5: very different story. The car didn't just stay in the
Speaker 5: Kissimi area. Investigators later traced Stephan's vehicle out towards Saint
Speaker 5: Cloud about thirty minutes away. License plate readers and traffic
Speaker 5: cameras followed the Lincoln to Hickory Tree Road, and by
Speaker 5: the time the car was seen coming back, it had
Speaker 5: his spare tire on it, And this time Stephan wasn't lying.
Speaker 5: At some point that morning he really did have a
Speaker 5: flat tire. Someone saw him pulled over on the side
Speaker 5: of the road coming home from one ninety two on
Speaker 5: Hickory Tree.
Speaker 9: I observed that great vehicle Lincoln is it okay?
Speaker 13: With a flack rear tire.
Speaker 24: He was down inside the road, okay, stooping down in
Speaker 24: the back looking at the tire, which I found odd.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's uh, normally I just blowed off.
Speaker 5: That's around twelve thirty the guy. I didn't see Maddie
Speaker 5: in the passenger seat because Stephan had already moved her,
Speaker 5: possibly to her final location by then. It's plausible he
Speaker 5: got a flat tire while off roading and off loading
Speaker 5: the body. Just three hours earlier. Surveillance footage from a
Speaker 5: parking garage near the vape shop caught him in the
Speaker 5: act of moving the body. Stepan backs his vehicle into
Speaker 5: a parking space by the stairs. He exits his vehicle
Speaker 5: and walks towards the rear. Then he opens the trunk.
Speaker 5: At nine am, Stephan is seen placing Maddie, who was
Speaker 5: wearing a green sweatshirt, into the trunk of his vehicle.
Speaker 5: He then exits the parking garage and heads onto one
Speaker 5: Two detectives don't tell tell him about their mounting evidence.
Speaker 5: They're still feeling a map. When he's questioned details about
Speaker 5: his timeline, his answers are very polite and he's sticking
Speaker 5: to his story, his vague story.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry, that's okay.
Speaker 15: I know the details are important, and just the way
Speaker 15: our brains work with ADHD is those things can get fuzzy.
Speaker 1: Are you in any medication I supposed to be?
Speaker 15: I have not been medicated lately, so I'm just I'm
Speaker 15: not a morning person. I'm very time blind on the
Speaker 15: best of days, and forget so I understand that none
Speaker 15: of that is helpful in this case.
Speaker 2: I'm forty sorry.
Speaker 1: We're gonna have the apartment secured for the rest of
Speaker 1: the night.
Speaker 2: Okay, Why so the investigation is not gonna happen tonight?
Speaker 1: It is?
Speaker 5: He asks whether the investigation will still happen that night.
Speaker 5: It would, it would, but that didn't stop Stephan from
Speaker 5: continuing his movements when the interviews ended, because before sunrise,
Speaker 5: while the search was still very much alive, he takes
Speaker 5: Jennifer's car and leaves the hotel, heading out towards Saint
Speaker 5: Cloud around three am. Then later that morning, he takes
Speaker 5: off again, this time much farther. Records show Jennifer's Nissan
Speaker 5: traveling to Northport. Later, Jennifer would say he came back
Speaker 5: with a wah wah Cup and claimed he'd just gone
Speaker 5: to one ninety two. He never told her where he'd
Speaker 5: actually been, which is important because Northport isn't around the corner.
Speaker 5: It's two hours away.
Speaker 3: Because at one point he moved close to where his
Speaker 3: parents live right now.
Speaker 4: In they lived in Northport, order at Sarazorba County.
Speaker 5: You caught that right. The one place these killers always
Speaker 5: seemed to head towards after killing is back to mommy
Speaker 5: and daddy, and in this case, that was Northport, Florida,
Speaker 5: where Stephan's parents lived.
Speaker 2: Obviously you lived down in Northport.
Speaker 9: Yes, I'm just gonna shoot today.
Speaker 14: I don't respect from you.
Speaker 13: And there's a storage unit down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a storage You have a storage unit.
Speaker 15: Is that your son's storage unit or is that your
Speaker 15: at your storage unit?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 9: Does he have access to it?
Speaker 13: No?
Speaker 2: I have the keys of fat Were you aware that?
Speaker 11: Did your son come visit you on Monday morning?
Speaker 9: This Monday?
Speaker 14: Yeah?
Speaker 13: He left?
Speaker 2: Say okay.
Speaker 5: Stephan's dad sounds confused because he is. You see, Stephan
Speaker 5: had been living with his parents for a few months
Speaker 5: after another breakup with Jennifer, but they were still on
Speaker 5: good terms and because of his strong bond with Maddie.
Speaker 5: Jen invited him back for Maddie's birthday. So his dad
Speaker 5: is talking about his son leaving on Sunday, that had
Speaker 5: to kissing me for Mattie's birthday. He doesn't know yet
Speaker 5: that just three days later, Stephan would quietly make that
Speaker 5: same drive back without telling anyone. It would become apparent
Speaker 5: later in the investigation that Stephan had traveled to his
Speaker 5: parents place in Northport because he had a hard drive
Speaker 5: there containing incriminating material, let's say. And as if the
Speaker 5: Northport trip wasn't incriminating enough, what they found on his
Speaker 5: phone was worse yet, but he had tried to erase it.
Speaker 4: When I saw him at the house, everything was normal.
Speaker 4: We were chatting, We're talking, he was acting normal. He
Speaker 4: was sitting in my computer chair snuffing around on his
Speaker 4: phone while we were hanging out. He mentioned something along
Speaker 4: the lines of, oh, man, I've been avoiding this phone
Speaker 4: update for a really long time. I should probably update
Speaker 4: it now.
Speaker 9: And I said, do it.
Speaker 4: Don't avoid it, just get.
Speaker 2: It over with.
Speaker 4: And he updates his phone and then tells, me, oh
Speaker 4: my god, I don't know what button I just pressed,
Speaker 4: but I just factory reset my entire phone, And I said,
Speaker 4: how the hell's that happened?
Speaker 5: Well, that happens quite simply. When you have something to hide,
Speaker 5: you deliberately go to your phone settings, find the reset
Speaker 5: tab and tap it to erase all the content. And
Speaker 5: that's what Stephan thought he did. But a computer scientist,
Speaker 5: he was not so.
Speaker 3: Earlier that day, I think detective Hot came or somebody
Speaker 3: came and asked Stefan for his cell phone, if you
Speaker 3: would willingly give it up so they can look at it,
Speaker 3: or if they would need a warrant, And.
Speaker 4: I remember him saying, should I have asked a warrant?
Speaker 4: Should I have? And I'm like, no, If you guys
Speaker 4: don't need to hide, give him your fucking phone.
Speaker 3: And then when you guys came in the evening and
Speaker 3: you guys told us to wait outside, and we waited
Speaker 3: in my car, he started getting very anxious and very panicky, going,
Speaker 3: I want my phone back, I want my phone back,
Speaker 3: And I said, listen, at this point, it's their phone.
Speaker 3: It's there for fucking ever. I don't give a shit.
Speaker 3: We will buy you a new phone. It doesn't matter anymore.
Speaker 3: Whatever they need, they need, like, let them look at it.
Speaker 3: And he's like, I just want my phone back, and
Speaker 3: I'm just like, do you are you trying to make
Speaker 3: yourself more suspicious, because like you're if you were to
Speaker 3: go to band your phone back right now, that would
Speaker 3: look suspicious as fuck, Like what are you doing? I'm
Speaker 3: thinking he's just getting impatient because he's bored and wants
Speaker 3: to plant his phone. And at one point he takes
Speaker 3: my phone to start playing with it. I give it
Speaker 3: up and I said, here, play on my phone.
Speaker 12: Have fun.
Speaker 5: Just two days after Maddie went missing, detectives had Stephan's
Speaker 5: phone and all the evidence on it, which was quite
Speaker 5: a bit. They found graphic pictures and videos of him
Speaker 5: sexually abusing thirteen year old Maddie Soda. In one picture,
Speaker 5: Stephan's face is visible and his tongue is on Maddie's nipple.
Speaker 5: It was explicit, undeniable, and extremely disturbing, and it had
Speaker 5: been saved among an album of child sexual abuse material.
Speaker 5: They didn't just find one picture or one scene, they
Speaker 5: found hundreds, basically a typical redditor's stash. These pictures pointed
Speaker 5: to repetition duration, a system of abuse. Later reporting would
Speaker 5: describe roughly seventeen hundred images linked to Stephan's accounts stretching
Speaker 5: back at least two years. So the phone did not
Speaker 5: just prove what Stephan had done. It showed that he
Speaker 5: had been doing it for a very long time, and
Speaker 5: the investigator matched the abuser in those files to Stephen's
Speaker 5: own body parts if you catch my drift. Reports about
Speaker 5: the pictures describe a bright pinkish area below the head
Speaker 5: of the penis and a black mark or freckle on it,
Speaker 5: also visible in some pictures. Yuck. They also collected penile
Speaker 5: swabs from them, which I'm sure was quite humiliating. By then,
Speaker 5: detectives weren't just looking at abuse images. They were connecting
Speaker 5: the penis in those images directly to Stefan Stearns. Imagine
Speaker 5: that being your job. Now that detectives had Stephan's phone,
Speaker 5: Jennifer was forced to reconcile with their understanding of who
Speaker 5: he really was.
Speaker 9: Like, I look back at.
Speaker 3: It now, I'm just like, he was fucking lying, he
Speaker 3: was fucking taking. What else has he been lying to
Speaker 3: me about? I know he's like a master liar manipulator
Speaker 3: because he's done He's done it to his parents, and
Speaker 3: he's told me and shown me the lies he's done
Speaker 3: to his parents. But I don't know why. I never thought,
Speaker 3: not me.
Speaker 5: That would be because Jennifer forgot this stark truth that
Speaker 5: people will always show you who they really are if
Speaker 5: you pay close enough attention.
Speaker 3: I told him to call his dad because I had
Speaker 3: a feeling something. Y'all knew something, and it was gonna
Speaker 3: come down on him. And I'm just like, they're focusing
Speaker 3: on the wrong person. They have the wrong person. In
Speaker 3: my head, I'm convinced you guys are just did you
Speaker 3: have the wrong person?
Speaker 5: He was definitely a wrong person, just not the wrong
Speaker 5: person for these crimes. But what happened to Maddie was
Speaker 5: not an accident at all. Jennifer asked detectives, how the
Speaker 5: hell does that happen? Well, the detectives wanted that question
Speaker 5: answered also, and they wanted to know if Jennifer was complicit.
Speaker 9: I don't know what you want me to say or
Speaker 9: do or.
Speaker 2: I just want my daughter back.
Speaker 24: And this is exactly what I was just talking about.
Speaker 24: We are literally having a conversation right now about Maddie
Speaker 24: possibly being dead.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: You have yet to shed it to here.
Speaker 5: By now, detectives know Maddie is dead. They know Stephan
Speaker 5: is responsible, but the questions that are about to get
Speaker 5: a lot darker are these, why did he kill her?
Speaker 5: And how does this kind of sexual abuse happen for
Speaker 5: years in a home with someone you say you trusted
Speaker 5: with your life. Jennifer may have trusted Stephan with her life,
Speaker 5: but Maddie was the one who paid for and what
Speaker 5: they're about to uncover is far worse than how she died.