Madeline Soto's mom's boyfriend sentenced to life in prison after accepting murder charge in plea deal
Stephan Sterns, 39, pleaded no contest to Madeline Soto's murder and guilty to 21 counts of sex charges on Monday afternoon during an Osceola County Court hearing.
No contest has the same legal ramifications as a guilty plea, but Sterns never had to explicitly admit or deny killing Madeline in February 2024.
Prosecutors originally said they were going to pursue the death penalty against the convicted predator, but execution was taken off the table in a plea deal.
The state also dropped about 40 other charges pertaining to explicit images of Madeline investigators discovered on Sterns' phone.
In exchange, Sterns was sentenced to 21 concurrent life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Emotions ran high during the chilling hearing, with Madeline's relatives and loved ones confronting Sterns and sharing tear-jerking testimonies.
But Madeline's mother, Jennifer Soto, was not in attendance.
'I can't grasp the selfishness of you, the deplorability of your actions. You're depraved, weak, you're a coward,' Madeline's father, Tyler Wallace, told Sterns in court.
'I can only hope that [Sterns] lives a long time in prison and has those same horrors visited upon him by his fellow inmates.'
He also described his daughter as he took the stand alongside his wife, Tatiana, saying she was 'quirky and intelligent' as well as a 'joy to be around.'
'I just loved her so much and I was not able to be in her life as much as I would've liked to due to circumstances and choices I had made and the way finances worked,' he went on.
He said the last time he saw his child was in October 2023, months before her 13th birthday.
Once she turned 13, Madeline would have had a say in which parent she would live with. Wallace said his daughter told him she wanted to stay with him.
'I was this close to having my little girl,' Wallace said as he began choking up.
The accused murder appeared stoic in court - keeping his gaze low in apparent acceptance of his fate.
While never addressing the heinous crimes, Sterns issued a statement about the young victim.
'I agree that it's not fair that Madeline is not hear anymore,' Sterns told the court.
'I still have a hard time contemplating a world where she's not around, a world that feels less vibrant and less colorful than it did before.'
He also said he wished he could 'trade places' with Madeline.
'I have nothing but sorrow for her loss. And I miss her all the time. Her passing has torn me and my family apart as well and she truly was a joy,' Sterns told the court. 'And I apologize for all the pain.'
Wallace's lawyer, Deborah Barra, told Click Orlando his family is at peace with the plea deal, as it is the first step in putting an end to the horrifying ordeal.
'In a case like this, there's never going to be any joy or happiness, there's not going to be a resolution where everybody is like "that's great,"' Barra told the outlet.
'But it is a matter of, "well what can you live with?"'
State Attorney Monique Worrell also spoke out, writing in a statement: 'I want to extend my deepest condolences to the Soto family and everyone who loved Madeline.
'While nothing we do can bring Madeline back, I hope her family finds some measure of peace knowing that justice has been served.'
Madeline was reported missing in Orlando on February 26, 2024. Her mother, Jennifer, realized something was wrong when she went to pick her up from school and she was not there.
Sterns was allegedly supposed to drop Madeline off at Hunter's Creek Middle School and quickly became a 'prime suspect' in her disappearance.
Four days after she was reported missing, her body was found in the woods close to where she disappeared from.
Police believe Sterns strangled, molested and dumped Madeline. Her school bag was found dumped behind an apartment complex in Kissimmee.
Investigators said they found child porn and evidence of Sterns abusing his longtime girlfriend's daughter as far back as 2022.
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