Madeline Soto: The Teen Abused for Years and Killed By Her Mom's Boyfriend

Before 13-year-old Madeline Soto was murdered by her mother’s longtime boyfriend, he raped her for years. Her mother Jennifer Soto sent her to sleep with him sometimes and the three of them frequently slept together.

The Kissimmee, Fla., girl drew sexually explicit pictures next to algebra equations in her school notebook, and teachers said Madeline often seemed emotional, anxious and listless.

When Jennifer Soto went to pick up her daughter at Hunter’s Creek Middle School the afternoon of February 26, 2024, she was told Madeline never showed up that day.

Five days later, Madeline’s remains were discovered in a wooded area a half-hour drive away. She had been strangled.

Investigators had already identified and arrested Stephan Sterns—the 37-year-old boyfriend of the girl’s mother and the last person who saw Madeline alive.

Police found sexually explicit images of Madeline on Sterns’ cellphone and on his Google Drive. He was also captured on video throwing items into a dumpster where many of her belongings were later found on the day of the teenager's disappearance. 

In a plea deal that spared him the death penalty, Sterns pleaded guilty to 20 counts of sexual abuse and no contest to the murder charge. He received 21 concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Sterns dated Madeline’s mother for about seven years before the teenager’s disappearance.

Madeline and Jennifer lived in a condo that was owned by Madeline’s grandfather. They shared it with roommates, and Madeline had a space cordoned off from the living room with a bed and a desk. But she never slept there, instead sharing a bed with her mother—and Sterns when he stayed over. 

The night before the girl’s murder, Jennifer—who took medicine for bipolar disorder and anxiety, which sometimes disrupted her sleep—sent Madeline to share the bed with Sterns alone, so that she could get a better night’s rest.

“We have a guest bedroom. We were all going to sleep together in the same bed, but I needed some good sleep," Jennifer told police, according to Fox 35 News. "I got a new job recently, I haven't been well rested. I needed some sleep, so I asked, ‘Hey, can you guys go to the guest bedroom upstairs?’"

Elizabeth Jeglic, a professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an expert in child sexual abuse, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that “for most people, someone sleeping in the bed with your child is a huge red flag.”

“But because he had won [Jennifer Soto’s] trust, she didn’t see this as a potentially distressing situation for her daughter,” Jeglic says.

According to WESH 2 News in Central Florida, Madeline would regularly sleep in the same bed as Sterns. The behavior was so commonplace that there were times that Sterns would share a bed with the mother-daughter pair even during periods when he and Madeline’s mother had broken up, according to a woman who briefly dated Sterns during one such period.

A day after Sterns’ arrest, Jennifer was interviewed by police. A police report about the interview said “Jennifer Soto continuously protected Stephan Sterns, was questioned about why she prioritizes Stephan Sterns over (Madeline), and even at one point referred to the ‘sex stuff as not evil but the murder of (Madeline) as ‘evil,” WESH 2 News reported. The TV station said the report went on to state: “Jennifer Soto did not show the same level of emotion or care in regards to (Madeline’s) on going victimization by Stephan Sterns than she did her disappearance. It appeared to me that she has already accepted that the victimization was happening and her emotion appeared fictitious,” the report also noted. Jennifer was never charged with any crime in connection to her daughter. A supplemental investigation report obtained by People said that Jennifer "stated Madeline never wanted to sleep alone in her bedroom. [Jennifer] couldn’t remember how many times she let Madeline sleep with Stephan alone in his bedroom." 

The report added that Jennifer “stated she allowed it because she trusted Stephan, and he treated [Madeline] as his daughter."

Martin Daly, a retired psychology professor of McMaster University in Ontario tells A&E Crime + Investigation that there is strong empirical evidence that, compared to children who grow up with two biological parents, those who grow up with a stepparent are at dramatically elevated risk of harm—a phenomenon known as “the Cinderella effect.”

“They’re sexually abused more often, they’re neglected more often, they’re left unsupervised more often, they’re hungry more often, and they’re at higher risk of almost everything,” Daly says. 

In addition to his sexual assaults of Madeline that police believe had been going on for several years, investigators determined he secretly took naked pictures of Madeline and of an adult female roommate renting a bedroom in the home.

After Madeline’s body was recovered and a medical examiner determined that she had died by strangulation, police released documents that Spectrum News 13 said provided an accounting of what Sterns did after killing the girl.

He spent five hours driving around Central Florida with her body in his car, first in the front passenger seat and then in the vehicle’s trunk, the news report said. Then he dumped her body in the woods where she would be found.

Following his arrest, Sterns said in a phone call from jail with his father, “I didn’t start it” when his dad asked “how all this came about.”

Jeglic says it’s common for child sexual abusers to engage in “cognitive distortion,” meaning they deny their crimes to themselves and others.

“If you recognize you are harming a child, that would create inner conflict,” Jeglic explains. “And so they justify it to themselves.”

At Sterns’ sentencing, Madeline’s aunt, Letizia Nunez, mourned Madeline. 

“You were the bravest girl I ever met, full of love, light, laughter,” Nunez told the court. “I have so much hatred in my heart, specifically for the creature that’s sitting in this room today… I’m so sorry we found out too late.”