Hundreds of pages of newly released court documents offer new evidence against Stephan Sterns, the man accused of killing 13-year-old Madeline Soto in February, including a rough timeline of where Sterns went the day she disappeared.
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Documents shed new light on suspect’s movements the day Madeline Soto disappeared
Hundreds of pages of newly released court documents offer new evidence against
Stephan Sterns, the man accused of killing 13-year-old
Madeline Soto in February, including a rough timeline of where Sterns allegedly travelled the day of the teen’s disappearance.
Sterns faces the death penalty if convicted of murder.
The files released by the state attorney’s office include pages and pages of interview summaries with witnesses and people who knew Soto and Sterns, cell phone mapping images, and how investigators used surveillance videos and license plate readers to help track Sterns from leaving the apartment complex in Kissimmee the morning of Feb. 26, to driving to an area of St. Cloud. That’s where Soto’s body was found days later.
Jennifer Soto, the teen’s mother and Sterns’ girlfriend, originally wrote in a sworn statement that she observed he daughter getting ready for school around 8 a.m. on Feb. 26, the day Madeline Soto was reported missing.
But in a later interview with detectives, Jennifer Soto denied seeing her daughter that morning and instead heard someone in the kitchen who she assumed was Madeline, court records show.
Jennifer Soto told investigators the last time she actually saw her daughter was around 11 p.m. the prior evening when she sent the teen to go bed with her Sterns in an upstairs bedroom of their Kissimmee apartment, according to court records. The mother reportedly said that was a common arrangement when she needed a good night’s sleep.
At 7:35 a.m., surveillance cameras at the Venetian Bay Village apartments captured video of Sterns “discarding something in the trash compactor,” which investigators believe was Madeline’s backpack and school laptop.
The video also showed a “female wearing a green sweater in the front passenger seat” of Sterns’ car ”completely slumped over with her mouth ajar.”
At 7:50 a.m., surveillance video shows Sterns’ car leaving the apartment complex.
At 8:19 it returns and then leaves again at 8:31.
Each time, a body believed to be the teen’s can be seen in the car with ”her head visible, tilted on her left shoulder.”
Sterns told detectives he dropped Madeline off near Hunter’s Creek Middle School at 8:40 a.m.
But around that same time, investigators say a license plate reader detected Sterns’ car miles away from the school.
At 9:40 a.m., surveillance cameras at an office building on John Young Parkway captured Sterns’ vehicle entering the top floor of a parking garage.
A man then opened the passenger door and “proceeded to carry what appeared to be a limp female body to the trunk of the vehicle”, police records show.
Using data from license plate readers and surveillance video from nearby buildings, investigators were able to trace Sterns’ car as it travelled east from Kissimmee toward St. Cloud and Old Hickory Tree Road, court records indicate.
That’s where investigators later found Madeline Soto’s body lying face down between some bamboo trees and covered in debris.
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