Rotten Mango
Teen Girl Found Dead - Police Find Texts Between Her + “Stepdad” About “New Parent Decision Coin”
Thu, 6 Feb 2025
“New Parent Decision Coin.” It’s a great gag gift for new parents. On one side it reads - “daddy’s turn” and on the other it reads “mommy’s turn.” When the baby starts getting fussy, you flip the coin, and whoever’s side it lands on gets to take care of the new baby. 13 year old Maddie sends the link to the coin with the text - “We need this - can you get this for us?” She sends the text message to her mom’s 37 year old boyfriend, Stephan Sterns. It does not appear that Maddie’s mother is pregnant… so who is the coin for? 2 months later - Maddie is found dead. Her “stepfather” is arrested and graphic pictures and videos of Maddie are found on his phone. Did he kill her? Why did he kill her? Was she pregnant? And how did her mother not know anything about this? Those are all the questions netizens have in the case of Madeline Soto. Full show notes at rottenmangopodcast.com
Chapter 1: What is the background of the case involving Maddie Soto?
It's probably one of the worst relationships in Hollywood history. I mean, who are we to judge? But we're going to judge this relationship because the whole setup of it is very odd. You have Mia Farrow. She's this famous actress. She starred as Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby back in the 60s. She's dating this guy who is also in Hollywood.
And in the span of dating for 12 years, they end up making 13 movies together. But it's interesting because there are all these tabloid rumors. Why are they not getting married? How come they never got married? How come they never even live together? They never even move in together in the span of 12 years? Which power to them if that's not the life that they want?
But people are on the side just trying to grasp how is this relationship working? Especially because Mia Farrow, the actress, she has six children of her own. Some of them come from her previous relationship. They're her biological kids. Other children, she's adopted them. But Woody, her boyfriend, filmmaker, is very firm from the get-go. I have no interest in co-parenting.
I don't want to co-parent your kids. I don't want to be involved in your kids' lives. I don't want to financially support them. I don't want to emotionally support them. I just don't see myself as a father like that. Maybe he just doesn't like kids. At least in the very beginning, that's what people are thinking. But then they end up having a son together.
ronan farrow who's a pulitzer prize-winning journalist now amazing okay but they have him and eventually woody does end up adopting two of mia farrow's children perhaps he comes around on not wanting to have children and he becomes slowly more integrated into at least three of the kids lives a year after woody adopts two of mia's kids So they have a son and then he adopts two of her kids.
Mia goes over to Woody's apartment one day because remember, they don't live together. And she finds a stack of pictures, just graphic pictures. She's saying they wouldn't even put these on Playboy. They're like Hustler magazine pictures. So they're very raunchy, I guess is the word. Just really, really sexual pictures of another woman who is clearly very young, about 21 years old.
Woody's in his 50s. And the pictures are very clear. These are not cutouts of a magazine. They're not printed out. They're Polaroids. So Woody probably took these pictures.
Woody Allen is cheating on his long-term girlfriend, Mia Farrow, which is already devastating enough, but Mia is doing triple takes on these pictures because it is not just a random girl that he met on set or a random woman that he walked by on the street that developed some sort of chemistry with. This girl in the picture is her own adopted daughter from Korea, Soon-Yi.
Wait, this is Mia's kid or?
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Chapter 2: What suspicious behavior did Jennifer Soto exhibit?
Uh-huh.
And now she's seeing her adopted daughter in Woody Allen's apartment with these very sexually graphic photos that are, he is cheating on her with her own daughter.
Is this one of the daughters that he adopted? No. Okay, okay. So this is the one that he didn't adopt.
Yes, but it's still her daughter.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
This is the case of Woody Allen and Mia Farrow that I could probably do a whole two-part series separate from this one on. And Woody Allen's adopted daughter, the one that he does, in fact, adopt from Mia's clan of children, Dylan, goes on to accuse Woody Allen of SA when she was a kid. So with all of this, Mia breaks up with Woody.
He and Mia's adopted daughter from Korea, Soon-Yi, ends up getting married to Woody Allen. So suddenly this guy who doesn't want to get married is getting married to his ex-girlfriend's daughter. Woody claims Mia convinced their other kid, Dylan, to lie about Woody essaying her to get back at him for cheating on her with her own daughter. But he claims Soon-Yi is 21.
I mean, it's not like she's a minor, but she would have been 11 when Woody Allen came into her life. When Mia and Woody Allen start dating, Soon-Yi would have been 11. You're telling me, you're telling the world that you did not groom this little girl to any degree? and then cheat on your own girlfriend with her own daughter, if you can even use the word cheat in this scenario.
Woody's explanation in all of this is, I'm not Soon-Yi's father. I'm not her stepfather. I've never even lived with Mia. I've never even slept at Mia's apartment. I never even used to go there until my own children came along. I was not a father to her or to any of her adopted kids in any sense of the word. There's no downside of it.
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Chapter 3: What incriminating evidence was found on Stefan Stearns' phone?
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They focus on finding missing children, reducing child sexual exploitation, and the prevention of child victimization. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team.
And we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support. As always, full show notes are available at rottenmingopodcast.com. A few disclaimers for today's case. There's heavy mentions and themes of CSAM, otherwise formerly known as CP, CA, CSA, SA, and potential familial incest.
There's quite a few mentions of these themes throughout this entire episode, so please, if it's too much, take a break, get some air, and I'll see you in the next one. Charges have been pressed in this case, lots of charges, over 60 charges, but unfortunately and legally there has yet to be a trial.
So everyone is innocent until proven guilty in the eyes of the law, I guess, but we are all entitled to our own personal opinions. This is also a two part case. If you haven't already watched part one, please go watch that. I'm going to link that below, but I'm going to try to keep it as thorough as possible. There's, I watched 20 plus hours of interview footage.
There's audio interviews, interrogation footage, over a thousand pages of court documents. This case is has just been releasing non-stop paperwork all the time. There has just been no way to condense it down into one. So in part one, we focused on Maddie going missing, what happened the day that she disappeared, and all of the weird actions of Jennifer Soto, her own mother.
Because right when she reports Maddie missing, there's so many weird things. The police are like, where have you looked for Maddie? And she's like, nowhere. I've been at home protecting my mental health. It's just everything about the mother is odd.
Then in part two, this episode, we're going to focus on Stefan Stearns, the boyfriend of Jennifer Soto, and all the conspiracies that are tied to what happened. Why? There's allegations of a massive CSAM ring that's operating on Telegram. There's allegations of pregnancy. There's a lot happening. So with that being said, let's get started.
There was a trend on TikTok going through your boyfriend's text messages, going through your boyfriend's DMs. That's child's play. The big account that you want to find and go through is your boyfriend's Reddit account. If a man has a Reddit account, do you really know who the man is if you don't go through his Reddit history? That was the sentiment on TikTok. People are giving tips.
This is how you find your partner's Reddit username. What kinds of subreddits to look out for? What kinds of subreddits are Reddit pages undercover that are just misogynistic cesspools of incels jerking each other off? People are posting, be careful though. Actually, don't go through your boyfriend's Reddit because once you see it, you can never go back.
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Chapter 4: What are the details surrounding Maddie's disappearance?
Wow.
I mean, it's a niche hobby. I respect it. The hobby itself, of course. Now, 98% of his posts are about Tamagotchi. It's the other 2% of his posts that are interesting. If you were to be dating Sesternet, you would want to go through that 2%. He likes to comment answers to people's Reddit, like ask Reddit questions. If you were a serial killer, who would be your victim?
Sestanet comments, people who drive down the shoulder of the road during traffic jams, people who refuse to let others merge into their lane, people who go through the express lane at a grocery store with many more items than the limits suggest, basically the most selfish and careless people in society. Okay, kind of quirky, I guess. Is a thumb a finger? If so, why do you think that is?
Sestanet responds, all thumbs are fingers, but not all fingers are thumbs. Not false. I mean, relatively true. I don't know how pertinent information this is to carry on with life, but continues. What instantly ruins the vibe at any social gathering? Sestanet says. The guy with all the conspiracy theories that insist on talking to you about it and trying to convert you into believing them too.
Which, I mean, I think that's kind of a fun dude, but to each their own. If he's not crafting up these responses to questions, he'll try to whip out some of these one-liners that are not the most original, but they all kind of have a certain vibe to them. He writes, funny enough, common sense isn't really common at all. Then he'll go back to answering questions.
What should be off limits in comedy? Nothing. What can you not do that everyone else seems to be able to do? Adult. Men have read it. What goes through your mind when a woman starts unzipping her pants? Ma'am, I don't know you and we're in a bus station. I mean, this digital footprint is never ending. How do you love yourself? Usually with my left hand.
Okay, so things are getting a little more personal and people start, you know, you keep scrolling. You keep scrolling looking for anything that's gonna tell you something more about this poster. And here it is. Sustanet is talking about his past, his past relationship and being cheated on. You know, I had my suspicions for a long time.
I drove to her house after she did that sleepy goodnight call and she wasn't there. This was weeks after months of shady behavior, deleted conversations, unsaved numbers, calling late at night, and her turning over in bed as she would answer a text so that I couldn't see who it was. Basically, all the red flags. When I finally caught her in the lie, we sat down, she confessed, and we broke up.
She then worked very hard to win me back, begging my parents to talk to me. And then when I took her back, she cheated again and even laughed about it. I'm well enough endowed. You know, length and girth are pretty perfectly proportioned. Good looking by most standards. Knew my way around a woman's body very well, but it didn't matter. It wasn't an issue of me not satisfying her.
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Chapter 5: How did the police investigate the timeline of events?
Sustanette responds, finding people to date that haven't spent all their teens and 20s in the sun with minimal sun protection, making them all look like a 70-year-old Clint Eastwood, plus all the emotional baggage and kids from first marriages or absent fathers. Honestly, dating in or after your 30s is a shit show these days. One begins to understand the DiCaprio strategy.
Wow.
the alarm bells start going off. I mean, the aggression starts to come out. In other threads, he's responding to people who need life advice because, for example, poster friend A said that friend B came to pick him up to hang out and friend B drove up in a stolen car, thus making friend A somewhat legally culpable in this crime of stealing a car.
Sustenite responds, your friend will end up in prison and they will see who the pussy is when they are being used like one.
just kind of getting bleak in fact he starts writing about humanity and he has all these thoughts about society he says i work at a major theme park in a safety critical role because he worked at disney and get to observe human nature all day long to the tunes of thousands i mean literally thousands of people a day and let me tell you the outlook for the future of humanity is not good
Some folks are just feral shitbags that are incapable of self-governing. If there isn't a reward for doing it or a punishment for not doing it, they just couldn't give less of a shit about anything.
Humanity at this point is just 80% vacant-minded zombies that half-ass their way through life without ever bothering to think critically, read a sign, listen to instructions, or follow any sort of example that is already set for them. Just complete waste of oxygen, really. He responds angrily to this post. Oh, he does this weird thing where he goes on r slash advice for teens.
And he will give advice for teenagers that ask for advice. I mean, I guess the whole theory of the subreddit is that adults will come and give teenagers advice from their life experience of having gone through that phase and all the lessons that they've accrued from it. But he does frequent it quite a lot. And I mean, most of the advice that he gives is not unsound. It makes sense.
So it's not that alarming. But he does respond angrily to some other posts. Like for example, there is a Life Pro Tips subreddit and the original post reads, never force your kids to get a hug or a kiss from someone. Grandparents are even included. It will ruin their sense of bodily autonomy. They should know that it's their choice if people can touch them or not.
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Chapter 6: What led to the discovery of Maddie's body?
You forget it and you're about to drop your kid off. Not even your kid, your girlfriend's kid off at her school. You're almost at the school. Would you not just drop her off and then go home, talk to the security person and say, hey, I forgot my gate clicker. He thinks, no, no, no. The best option is to U-turn drive all the way back without dropping Madeline off,
go to the security guy and say, hey, I forgot my gate clicker and then go get the gate clicker and then drive all the way back to the school again. The police are asking, could you not have just gotten your gate clicker after you dropped her off? I could have, but I also like to come back in through the back gate sometimes and sometimes they're busy up front, so it was better to avoid the line.
I don't know if it makes more sense. It's just what I did. And they also confront him. Okay, well, there is footage of you talking to security while Madeline is sitting in the front reclined and you say she's asleep. We don't believe that, but then you go to the dumpster and you throw something away. We went through that dumpster and we found her backpack in the trash.
Why is there a backpack in the trash if you're dropping her off at school? He doesn't respond. He just keeps blinking and he's staring at them like he's confused by what they're saying. Like, what do you mean you found a backpack? There's no way there's a backpack. And they tell him, Stefan, I'm telling you what I'm pleading with you is that you do some soul searching.
The more time that goes on, the more that this gets tough. That little girl is out there and we need to know. I really think that you can help us and I'm pleading with you. I dropped her off. I dropped her off. That's the last time I saw her. What do you think was on your phone? Text? Emails? Pictures? Yeah, I mean, trading card pictures, lightsaber pictures, Disney pictures.
Do you have a Google account? Sometimes phones will do that thing where even if you reset your phone, factory reset your phone twice like you did on Monday. They don't say that, but they say sometimes phones will do that thing where they sync to the cloud. Sometimes when you reset it, even if you update your phone, they'll put it back on your phone because it's synced to the cloud.
Do you have pictures of you and Maddie? I assume so. We went to Disney, took selfies on the train. She got back from Puerto Rico and had her hair braided. We had pictures of that. I mean, all sorts of pictures, family nights. I'm not as much of a shutterbug anymore, but I take them every once in a while. Any other pictures you can think of? He's quiet. I'm going to be brutally honest with you.
There's CSAM on your phone. I'm pretty sure you know what some of those pictures are about. You're a pretty intelligent person and I don't want you to discredit yourself by saying you don't know about all those pictures that are on your phone. So do you want to add to the list of pictures?
Stefan looks taken aback and he feels like the police, the way he responds is like the police are trying to do him dirty. He says, should I be talking to a lawyer right now? I can't answer that question. My sole purpose right now is trying to find Maddie and I'm trying to see if you can help us.
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Chapter 7: What is the significance of Jennifer Soto's text messages?
That makes sense. Absolutely not. No. So what do you think should happen to Stefan? I'm afraid to say press charges, but what else? I mean, there's a side of me that wants to say that he's innocent, that this didn't happen, but who else's penis could that be? This woman is freaking... She's not left alone with anyone else. And why would it be on his phone, right? Yeah, exactly.
Why would it be on his phone? I mean, I don't know what to do. Can I make one decision now and change my mind later? If I decide not to press charges now, can I change my mind and press charges later? I just don't know a singular parent that would not only wanna press charges immediately, but would wanna go into that jail cell themselves and do something about this.
throughout the entirety of the investigation on top of all of that she has never not once said anything nice about maddie i think that she might have mentioned that maddie was kind of artistic at one point but that's it at least from all the released audio and video interviews as well as police and incident reports she somehow cannot say anything kind about her own daughter
But she finds it in herself to say neutral to relatively nice things about Stefan, the guy that essayed her daughter for years, maybe made even more infuriating by the fact that Stefan is a shit person. Even his parents have stated before all of this, Stefan is crazy. He's a manipulator. He's a gaslighter. Stefan's grandpa on his mom's side passed away.
And he left this heirloom Rolex for his daughter, Stefan's mom. Stefan proceeded to steal that Rolex. from his own mother.
How did you find out about that?
Stefan's mom said it. Stefan's mom was like, he stole the Rolex. And yet Jennifer can say nice things about him, even defending him. Meanwhile, Maddie, who has done nothing but be victimized under Jennifer's care, is forgetful. Yeah, like any other human in the world. When it comes to Maddie, she mentions she leaves laundry on the floor. Her room's a mess.
She keeps her personal space very disorganized. If she gets in trouble for anything, it's always her disorganization and her messiness. She's always behind on schoolwork. She has ADHD. She's forgetful. She'll set something down and completely forget where she said it. She sleeps like a monkey. That's what she says.
Even after Stefan's arrest, the detectives ask her, what is Stefan's relationship with Maddie? She says, I was going to say really good, super great. He's always been super kind and sweet to her, very accepting, warm, and understanding of her because she's got ADHD. So she's kind of a little... I'll say abnormal in the sense that she doesn't like, she doesn't act like every other kid.
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Chapter 8: What legal implications does Jennifer face moving forward?
Like just in the bushes?
Yes, near a line of bamboo trees. She was wearing a green hoodie, blue jeans, and she was left lying in a fetal position. It is most people's beliefs that he was trying to drive to Alligator Lake to dispose of her in the lake. He got a flat tire, drove as far as he could on that flat tire, but eventually he had to pull over and he couldn't get a spare tire with Maddie in the trunk.
So he placed her body near the bamboo trees, fixed his tire, drove home. Maddie's cause of death is strangulation. Do you know what derivative immunity is? There's been a lot of outrage online that Jennifer Soto has received immunity for this case, but that is not true. She's received derivative use immunity, which means for this interview that she had in April.
So the main interrogation was done March 1st, the day of the press conference, the day that Maddie's body is found. They questioned her again April 18th of 2024. And whatever she says in that interview, no evidence that is taken directly from her testimony can be used against her. But she does not receive immunity in this case.
She can still be prosecuted based off of independent evidence that is found against her. Okay, so let me try to create a scenario. John is caught. And he was doing a minor powder transaction. He was purchasing powder from a good buddy of his. But he gets arrested. He's talking to the police and he says, I actually have information on a bigger powder operation. Not a transaction, a whole operation.
I can lead you to the big guys upstairs. But he's very scared because once I tell you about it, I'm incriminating myself. The authorities will then give him derivative use immunity. That means his testimony cannot be used directly against him in the future prosecution because you can't incriminate yourself. So let's say John tells him about the warehouse where they're storaging the powder.
Authorities go, they raid the warehouse, find the drugs. They cannot go and say, you knew about it, so we're arresting you.
unless unless john's other buddy kevin comes along and kevin says hey guys look at this picture i have of john in a lab coat cooking up in that facility then he can be prosecuted for the drug charges just not through his own evidence the police have to show that they obtained evidence against john through a completely independent source that is not john himself yeah yeah yeah but don't they usually do that to get some like you know lenience on their previous crime right
Yes, so that could work as well. But in this situation, I mean, they just want Jennifer to feel safe enough to say something.
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