'A Special Kind of Scary'
Garcia was 15 when she connected with Steven, then 20, on the internet in 1995. The adolescent girl was seduced by him and they became a couple, resulting in Katie's birth when Garcia was 17. (When the two were married, Garcia went by Alyssa Pladl.)
The relationship quickly devolved into a nightmare, Garcia told DailyMail TV.
Because Steven was unable to hold down a job, his moods would swing from morose to enraged. He beat the couple's cats, verbally abused her and tormented the baby, Garcia alleged.
"The adoption actually happened because I was worried about Katie's safety," Garcia said. "She would cry, and it would just instantly trigger him."
She claimed Steven pinched the infant, and sometimes placed her in a cooler, then shut the lid, putting Katie at risk of suffocation.
"He was a special kind of scary," Garcia recounted, noting Steven owned a number of guns. Katie was adopted at 8 months old.
Incestuous Spiral
That wish was granted initially. Katie had a happy childhood with her adopted parents, Anthony "Tony" and Kelly Fusco, in small-town New York, relatives said.
She loved drawing, specializing in comic strips, and wanted to attend college. "They had a very, very normal life," Kelly Fusco's brother Cary Gould told the AP.
As she grew older, however, Katie yearned to know her biological parents. In January 2016, at age 18, she found them online and reconnected.
That summer, Katie dropped college plans and moved to her re-found family's house in Virginia's Henrico County.
She walked into a broken home. Steven and Garcia, who had married and had two more children, were in the midst of a messy separation.
Steven spruced up his appearance after Katie's arrival, wearing tight-fitting clothing and shaving off his beard, Garcia told AP. He began to sleep in Katie's room, sparking a volcanic parental dispute.
Garcia moved out that fall but learned in May 2017 that Katie was pregnant.
Garcia called Steven and screamed, "'How could you? You're sick. She's a child,'" she told AP. She also informed police.
Loving Parents, Secret Longings
Adoption-related trauma may have played into Katie's choices, experts surmise.
"Adoptions are traumatizing in the sense of being given away," psychologist Christine Courtois tells A&E Crime + Investigation. "Even with the most loving [adoptive] parents, for some kids, the being given away is the big issue. And that would make a daughter very susceptible to an abuser."
Courtois, an expert in sexual assault and incest, says Katie would have been "very vulnerable" in a situation with someone like Steven. "And if he's that manipulative and he prefers younger women—this may have been his ultimate dominance or his ultimate win," she continues.
Father and daughter were wedded on June 20, 2017, after lying on their marriage application, per AP. A son, Bennett, was born on September 1, 2017, and the couple settled into a home in Knightdale.
But in January 2018, Knightdale Police charged Steven and Katie with incest, adultery and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Authorities awarded custody of Bennett to Steven's mother, and Katie returned to her adoptive parents in Dover, N.Y.
'She Was Supposed to Be His'
At about 9 a.m. on April 12, 2018, Steven's mother called the Knightdale Police Department's 911 center in distress.
She told the responding dispatcher that Steven had confessed to murdering Bennett, Katie and Tony, after Katie broke up with him.
Knightdale police rushed to Steven's home and found Bennett's body. The Chief Medical Examiner's report said the 7-month-old died of suffocation on April 11. Earlier, Pladl had convinced his mother to give him the child, explaining he wanted Katie to see Bennett.
"Many of our officers are mothers and fathers themselves. I would be lying to you if I didn't say that a situation like this certainly does stir deep emotions," Capps recalls.
Over in Connecticut, authorities were investigating a double murder near New Milford. Steven, who knew Katie would be visiting her grandmother that day, followed Fusco's truck and opened fire on both of them.
Steven then fatally shot himself in Dover.
Asked to explain Steven's fury, Courtois notes some incestuous fathers view their daughters and sons as possessions: "The ones who are like that can be excessively controlling. They're king of the castle, [and] what they say goes."
Fusco's presence may have made Steven "more jealous" since Katie "was supposed to be his," Courtois says. "The new baby was his. Somehow, his control and dominance got interrupted."
Capps thinks that once authorities got involved, Steven may have felt that murder was his only option.
"[He believed] the only way out of this was death for those involved," Capps says, "which is unfortunate because certainly there could have been a different outcome for everyone."
How to Help Prevent Incest
Sexual abuse involving incest is all too common in the U.S., Mara White, senior manager of consulting at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), tells A&E Crime + Investigation.
"Unfortunately, a lot of times it takes something this extreme for people to start talking about it again," White says.
It's frequently assumed rape perpetrators are strangers, but between 34% and 49% of child sexual abuse cases involve family members, according to RAINN.
"When you read a story like the Pladl case, it impacts you. It's such a tragedy and we all feel it," White says." So, it's really important to continue having these conversations."
"A lot of people are so hesitant to do something because it [may be a] suspicion, and they don't have evidence," White says. But because of the serious nature of the crime, "suspicion is all you need. If you turn out to be wrong, then you're wrong."
