Murdered Florida teen Madeline Soto’s mother allegedly told police that she knew her older boyfriend was “grooming and abusing” the young girl before he was accused of killing her.
The body of Madeline Soto, 13, was found in rural Osceola County on March 1, four days after she was first reported missing when she failed to arrive at school in Kissimmee on Feb. 26.
In an interview with detectives from the day the teen’s body was discovered, Madeline’s mom Jennifer Soto said she believed her 37-year-old boyfriend, Stephan Sterns, was “guilty” of killing the girl, according to the supplemental report obtained by FOX35 Orlando.
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When pressed about why she believed Sterns supposedly murdered her daughter, Jennifer Soto explained that she knew “he’s been grooming and abusing my child.”
At the time of the interview, Sterns was in jail on unrelated charges of child sex abuse material that police discovered on his phone during the investigation into Madeline’s disappearance.
Sterns claimed to have last seen the teen when he dropped her off near her middle school on the morning of Feb. 26.
Jennifer Soto told detectives that Sterns was a “master liar,” but that she initially did not want to believe that he was connected to her daughter’s disappearance, FOX35 reported.
The concerned mom changed her mind after the officers showed her evidence photos of what appeared to be Madeline’s lifeless body slumped over in Sterns’ car on the same day he claimed to have left her near her school.
When the detectives told Jennifer Soto that the investigation was shifting from a missing persons case to a homicide probe, she was “silent for a few moments and started to cry,” according to the report.
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When the investigators asked her if she thought Sterns killed her daughter, she admitted that “at this point, I do.”
An arrest affidavit published in March suggested that Sterns started sexually abusing Madeline when she was just 11 years old.
In the latest reports, authorities alleged that Jennifer Soto admitted to prioritizing her boyfriend over her daughter’s safety.
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At one point, she supposedly told officers that the “‘sex stuff’” – meaning sexual abuse of Madeline perpetrated by Sterns –was “not evil”. However, she admitted that her daughter’s murder was “‘evil,’” according to Click Orlando.
“It appeared to me that she has already accepted that the victimization was happening, and her emotion appeared fictitious,” one detective’s assessment read.
During an earlier interview, on the second day of the investigation, Jennifer Soto also admitted that she let Sterns share a bed with her young child.
“Sometimes when I really need a good night’s sleep, I will send them upstairs [to sleep together],” Soto said in the recording obtained by WFTV9.
“But when, I’ll also — a lot of times we will sleep together in the king-sized bed. All three of us. Or sometimes Stephan will go upstairs and share a bed alone. So it just really depends on what’s going on that night with our schedules and what we’re doing,” she explained.
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Even after Sterns and Soto broke up, she told cops that she allowed him to keep living with her and her daughter because she “trusted him.”
On Feb. 29, police interviewed a woman who had a brief relationship with Sterns in 2022.
The unnamed woman told investigators that she broke off the relationship because Sterns insisted on returning to Soto’s house every night to sleep, claiming that the mother and daughter could not sleep without him, Click Orlando said.
On March 7, two of Jennifer Soto’s roommates told detectives they heard “noises” coming from the upstairs bedroom where Sterns and Madeline were allegedly sleeping alone the night before the teen vanished, the outlet added.
Jennifer Soto was supposedly sleeping in a separate room at the time.
Despite the mom’s apparent admissions in connection with the abuse and killing of her daughter, authorities have repeatedly said that they are not looking to charge anyone else in the case.
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On the morning of Madeline’s disappearance, Sterns was captured on video dumping items into a trash can on the property he shared with the mom and daughter.
The authorities later count Madeleine’s backpack and school laptop in the trash can.
Sterns was indicted for Madeline’s murder on April 24.
The teen’s manner and cause of death was homicide by strangulation, according to the autopsy results obtained last month.
Sterns also faces 40 counts of Unlawful Possession of Materials Depicting Sexual Performance by a Child Ten or More Images, five counts of Sexual Battery with a Child 12-18, Seven counts of Lewd or Lascivious Molestation, and eight counts of Sexual Battery on a Child Under 12.
He is due in court for a status hearing on Oct. 14.
