KISSIMMEE, Fla. – Days after 13-year-old Madeline Soto failed to show up at school and was reported missing, detectives used surveillance camera footage and license plate readers to re-trace the movements of two different vehicles, including one allegedly driven by the boyfriend of Soto’s mother.
Both vehicles traveled to an area of St. Cloud not far from where Soto’s decomposing body would later be found, newly released court records show.
It is unclear from the documents whom investigators believe was driving the second vehicle, a white Nissan, which was photographed in St. Cloud hours after a silver Lincoln belonging to Soto’s accused murderer reportedly made the same journey.
Stephan Sterns, who had been dating Soto’s mother, has pleaded not guilty to sexually molesting and murdering the teen. He faces the death penalty if convicted.
[TIMELINE: Here’s where things stand in Madeline Soto case]
Sterns originally told detectives he dropped Soto off near Hunter’s Creek Middle School on the morning of February 26.
But prosecutors believe he killed Soto in the Kissimmee apartment she shared with her mother Jennifer and then drove the teen’s body to a remote area of St. Cloud.
Two days after Soto was reported missing and two days before her body was found, a detective with the Kissimmee Police Department was tasked with generating a “driving profile” for two vehicles that were “suspected to be involved in the case”, records show.
One of the vehicles, a silver Lincoln MKZ, was allegedly driven by Sterns on the day Soto vanished, court documents indicated.
Records released by prosecutors so far do not indicate who owned the second vehicle, a white Nissan.
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Using security camera footage from the apartment and nearby businesses, the detective determined Sterns’s Lincoln left the Venetian Bay Village apartments on Feb. 26 at 7:40 a.m. and then returned around 10:14 a.m.
Sterns’ vehicle left the apartment complex again at 11:03 a.m. and returned 53 minutes later, records show.
The Lincoln left the apartment a third time around 12:44 p.m. and travelled east along U.S. 192 towards St. Cloud where it was photographed by traffic cameras and detected by license plate readers, according to the detective’s profile.
At 1:16 p.m., a security camera at a charter school captured video of a car with a similar color, style and size driving southbound on Old Hickory Tree Road.
The same vehicle was recorded heading northbound on Old Hickory Tree Road around 2:11 p.m., records show, before returning to the apartment at 2:43 p.m.
Soto’s body was found on March 1 a in a wooded area off nearby Hickory Tree Road.
After tracing the movements of Sterns’ silver Lincoln on the day of Soto’s disappearance, the Kissimmee detective discovered the white Nissan had followed nearly the same route to St. Cloud the following day, records show.
On February 27, at 3:16 a.m., the Nissan was captured on video leaving the apartment complex and travelling east along U.S. 192, documents show.
The Nissan passed by the charter school on Old Hickory Tree Road at 3:35 a.m. and again 34 minutes later before returning to the Kissimmee apartment at 4:30 a.m., detectives allege.
Records released by prosecutors Thursday do not indicate whether investigators believe Sterns or someone else may have been traveling in the Nissan that morning.
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