127: Where is Sebastian Rogers? + Horrifying Madeline Soto Updates
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Hey, True Crime Besties. Welcome back to an all-new episode of Serialistly.

Hey everybody, welcome back to an all new episode of Serialistly with me, Annie Elise, here to talk to you about everything going on in the true crime world. Now, if you're a new listener over on this podcast, let me just kind of break down what it is we do in today's episode because we do two different episodes during the week. The first one is like a full-length

mega deep dive on a single case and then we come back with a second episode later in the week where we do mini deep dives on different cases but we talk about breaking cases that are happening in week we talk about case updates in some cases maybe we've talked about in the past and we kind of just review everything going on in the true crime world because

As I'd imagine, I think it's probably difficult for everybody to stay up to speed on what's going on, especially with hours, hours worth of trials and unfortunately no shortage and new cases popping up. So that's what I'm here for. I'm here to be your true crime bestie and just give you the skinny on everything that's going on.

So today we're going to talk through some case updates. We're going to talk about new cases that have been requested this week, and we are going to just go through it all together. So I want to start with Robin Howington and the trial going on here. Now, Robin is a mother in Tennessee who's accused of shooting and killing her five-year-old daughter, Destiny Oliver. She's accused of shooting her back in September of 2019.

Destiny died of a fatal gunshot wound to the chest, and her mom's trial just started this week. Now, I'll be honest, I haven't heard of this case before, but once I saw the trial start, I looked into it, and it's a really insane case, guys. Let me break it down.

So, according to court documents, Robin is facing six charges, including felony murder. After she was arrested, apparently she gave law enforcement multiple different versions of what happened. First, she said that some stranger or an unknown intruder was the one that shot Destiny. Then she said that it was Destiny's biological dad. But then she changed her story again and said that her two-year-old son accidentally shot his five-year-old sister. Okay. Okay.

Also, during her interview with police, she admitted that she tried to destroy her cell phone in a hospital bathroom. And she said she did that, quote, because she was scared about it containing evidence of drug sales. She also admitted that she wiped down the gun after the shooting. So before the trial, her defense tried to get this interview thrown out, saying that her statement, it was not voluntarily given because she was in distress.

In her interview, she told police that she was nervous because she had been raped by a police officer in the past. Her defense also said that during the interview, another officer apparently hugged her without permission.

Now, the prosecution argued back that there was no proof to any of her claims, and, I mean, given her changing story a million times along with her criminal record, she didn't have any sort of credibility, none whatsoever. So the judge ruled with the prosecution on this one. Her statements were admissible. So like I said, her trial recently started, and the evidence that's come out so far has been pretty shocking, I'll be honest. And

There was a witness that said that he bought pills earlier in the day from Robin. There was also the police interview footage with Robin lying and changing her story multiple times. That interview footage was played. There was also a 911 call that was played. And in the 911 call, she says that her daughter has been shot and that somebody had just walked through the door.

Robin's defense claims that she was suffering from PTSD for 19 months at the time of the murder and that she was also medicated during this entire thing. One police officer testified about Robin's behavior during her interview, how she wouldn't tell them who murdered her five-year-old. The officer gets so irritated with Robin that he actually starts screaming at her. Take a listen. Are you fucking kidding me? Are you serious? Your daughter is dead?

And you don't want to tell this to a future child? Lord have mercy, man. You have a heart, but you have a soul. No worries about being charged for throwing that phone in the toilet. You're fucking right. No, she will be charged. You're going to be charged for tampering. That's tampering with evidence.

I'm serious to God. You're going to go to jail for that tonight. You can lawyer up, do what you want to. We want the truth from you. If you tell us the truth, it's fine. George, I'll call them down to the A's office and tell them, hey, what's the slower roll here? But if you're going to sit here and bullshit us on this, then we're not going to help you.

So I'll be watching that case as the trial continues to unfold. And definitely let me know if this is a case that you'd be interested in me doing a deep dive on. Let me know that either through the Q&A section on Spotify or in the review section on Apple. But I also now kind of want to change gears to another case that's in the headline about a woman who was missing for seven years.

On February 26th, a call came into the police dispatch center in Michigan. The caller was a woman, and she said that she just got off the phone with her stepdaughter, and that her stepdaughter needed help immediately.

Police were listening as this woman just continued, and then that's when she dropped honestly a true bombshell. This was the first time that she had heard from her stepdaughter in seven years, because apparently seven years ago, the stepdaughter voluntarily went missing.

The woman relayed to dispatch that her stepdaughter said that she was being held against her will and that she was at a motel in Michigan. So police, of course, obviously, immediately went out to this motel, right? At the motel, they could hear a woman screaming, hear a woman crying. All of these noises were coming from one of the motel rooms. So from there, they busted through the door and they found this woman.

She was alone, and she didn't seem physically hurt, but she was emotionally distraught. She was taken to the hospital for evaluation for any injuries, while the police then decided they needed to search the motel room. That's where the police found a cell phone, drugs, and a gun.

Now, the authorities have not released the victim's information, but they did say that after she was discharged from the hospital, she returned to her family. So now they're trying to determine if human trafficking was involved in this woman's disappearance. She was gone for seven years and then found in a motel. Something doesn't smell right here.

They're also looking into whether it was a possible domestic violence case, where maybe she did leave on her own and it started out as a relationship, but maybe then later turned into her being held against her will, being trafficked, something like that. Authorities said that they do have a suspect, but nobody is currently in custody. So they might just be trying to get more evidence so to make sure that charges really stick so that they can't fight it further down the line.

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Now, I'm going to give an update and talk a little bit about the Madeline Soto case here for a minute. If you missed it, I released a full deep dive episode earlier this week so you can go back and listen. But there have been a couple of updates in this case that I wanted to just touch on briefly because I know so many of you have been following this case closely. And if you haven't been following it closely, I'll just kind of give you a very brief summary so that you're fully caught up and you know what we're talking about.

But Madeline's a 13-year-old girl who went missing at the beginning of last week, towards the end of February. Her mom did this interview right after she went missing, saying that the mom's boyfriend dropped Madeline off at school that morning, or she started it and said she dropped her off at school. Then she changed her story and said he dropped her off at the church across the street from the school. And then they didn't know where she was. They didn't know what happened. He did an interview as well, which gave, like, all of these creepy Chris Watts –

or Trezell and Jackie West vibes. I mean, it was a horrible, horrible, horrible interview.

And then two days after Madeline's disappearance, the boyfriend was arrested, but he wasn't arrested for any charges related to her disappearance. He was related here. He was arrested because they found tons of explicit content on his phone, images and videos of child battery there in the affidavit. It was a lot of redacted names, but we'll get into who that was and what that meant. But it had descriptions of like up close video and image shots of breasts,

Vagina, anal cavity, actual penetration, horrific, horrific things. Okay. So he was arrested for all of that.

Then, unfortunately, a few days after that, Madeline's body was found and she had been murdered. In the meantime, when they had looked up at surveillance footage and all these things while they were looking at the boyfriend, they saw him on CCTV dumping Madeline's school backpack, dumping her school-issued laptop, all in the dumpster behind her apartment complex. They even saw him on footage driving around while he was looking for the dump sites with

with Madeline's body in the car. They say you can see Madeline, but she was presumably dead. So again, full deep dive on an earlier episode from this week if you want to get fully caught up. But let's talk about these updates. First,

First, one of the sheriffs that was part of Madeline's recovery team once her body was located accidentally posted a picture of the crime scene where allegedly you could see her body and the clothing that she was wearing. He posted this on Instagram, guys. Now, personally, I haven't seen the photos and I don't want to see the photos. And hopefully for Madeline's sake, the picture is not floating around on social media. To be honest, I haven't even done a deep dive to try to find it and look because I don't think that needs to be out there.

And you might be asking yourself, like, how the hell does something like this happen when

Well, apparently, somehow this sheriff, which isn't the main sheriff that has been in all of the press conferences, he went to post something that was completely and totally unrelated on Instagram, and he selected multiple photos to post, and somehow the crime scene picture was posted as the second photo. Like, maybe when he was selecting a bunch for a carousel, he accidentally selected that one, which, truthfully, I don't know why that would be on his phone in the first place, and I'll get to that in a moment.

But apparently the post was immediately taken down, and the sheriff then issued an apology. The sheriff's department has also come out and they've addressed it, basically saying that there's no excuse for this, it should have never happened, this was, you know, complete negligence, which obviously I think we can all agree on that because what I'm trying to still wrap my mind around, as I mentioned earlier, is like, why the hell is that kind of picture on your personal device in the first place? It makes no sense.

I don't know much about police protocol, guys. I'm not trying to pretend I do, but I'm just being real here. This certainly does not sound like standard procedure to me. Sure, accidents happen. I get that. This is a pretty big fumble, in my opinion, like beyond fumble.

Breaking this afternoon, the state attorney's office says it's asking the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate how and why a photo that appeared to be a body in the woods was posted to the Osceola County Sheriff's personal Instagram page.

The photo was posted less than 24 hours after investigators found Madeline Soto's body. Sheriff Marcos Lopez, who you see here, said he accidentally posted the image when sharing a post of himself visiting a senior citizen's area. The sheriff's office has not said why the sheriff had the photo or who took it. But that's not even the worst of it. That's not even the worst update that has come out regarding Madeline.

New court documents shed more light into the sexual abuse charges that Madeline's mom's boyfriend, Stefan Stearns, had been accused of.

Previously, the affidavit that we had reviewed and that had been released had not said specifically that Madeline was the victim of all of that explicit content that was found on his phone. However, now police are saying that she was in fact the victim. If you remember when we went over the affidavit, it was redacted. I had advised, you know, I have my own theories come to your own conclusions, but now they have said it was in fact Madeline's.

Apparently, investigators were also able to figure out that through these videos and pictures that were in his phone, he had been repeatedly raping Madeline going as far back as 2022, when she was just 11 years old. And all of this was taking place in the family home.

So while law enforcement had initially found evidence that Stearns had been abusing Madeline when she was 12, this latest arrest affidavit that we obtained breaks down how they were able to determine that the abuse went back even further.

An arrest affidavit for Stefan Stern says he allowed law enforcement to search his phone, but said he had accidentally done a factory reset on it the day Madeline disappeared. Despite the reset, investigators say they were able to get videos and images off of the phone, and metadata showed some of what they found was from August of 2022, when Madeline would have been 11. Is Mr. Stern aware of what he's been arrested for?

Stearns is now in the Osceola County Jail being held on charges of sexual battery and possession of child sexual abuse material. A therapist says it's important to talk to your kids about abuse, even if you think you don't need to. Some family members or some parents feel they're doing everything that they can to protect their children so it doesn't come to mind to even ask those questions.

Charlotte McCullough, a licensed marriage and family therapist, says there can be certain indicators that something can be happening with your child. Specifically for sexual abuse, things like mistrust, things like not wanting to be alone with a certain person, you know, things like knowing about sexual things that's inappropriate for their age. She says indicators of emotional abuse can be depression, low self-esteem, and a lack of personal hygiene.

When your child shuts down or becomes withdrawn, that is the time to lean in, not from an aggressive perspective, but from a caring perspective and just talking to them, normalizing, talking to your teens about everything, including abuse.

Now honestly, this is just absolutely sick. This was going on for years in her family home, starting when she was 11. And I'm going to talk more about the mom in a second here, but I want to just stay on this because so far, Stefan has not officially been charged with murder or anything related to Madeline's death. He was charged with all of the explicit child material and all of that.

But law enforcement has stated that because he's in custody and for the other heinous charges, they are going to just be taking their time. They're doing a proper investigation. And that really does make sense to me that no other charges have come yet because there's not a risk of him fleeing. He's currently in custody. So it makes sense why they're trying to really like cross all their T's, dot their I's, get as much evidence as possible so that they can have a rock solid mega huge case against this freaking predator.

But I do want to talk about Madeline's mom for a minute. In my podcast episode about Madeline that was released earlier this week, I said that a lot of people believe that her mom might have had more knowledge than she was letting on. And I said that for now, I just wanted to wait until there was more information from law enforcement before going any further on that or, you know, she...

doing the shame bell against her mom. Earlier this week, though, one news outlet said that their sources have told them that two separate law enforcement agencies have interviewed the mom, that they've interviewed her multiple times this week, and they're looking into every single angle as part of their investigation. Take a listen.

We spoke one-on-one with Jennifer Sotil last Tuesday. Her daughter Madeline had been missing for one day. She told us that Stephan Stearns, her boyfriend and now the prime suspect in Madeline's death, had taken the teenager to school. She said the last conversation she had with the 13-year-old was the night before. But this report we got a hold of today shows she told deputies she saw her daughter the morning of her disappearance.

Channel 9 investigative reporter Shannon Butler has been digging into the details of this case. She joins us live in studio. And Shannon, that's not the only thing you noticed in this new report. Greg, no one has been charged in Madeline Soto's death, but we do know investigators are looking into who knew what and when. And some of that means looking at those initial interviews of the couple and the ones later on. Sources tell me the statements about the timeline are not consistent.

Jennifer Soto told us last week that the last conversation she had with her daughter was about her 13th birthday party the night before Maddie disappeared. I told her goodnight and

Yeah, that was it. But according to documents, Sunday night was not the last time Soto saw Maddie. New documents show that Maddie's mom told deputies on February 26th that she saw her daughter getting dressed for school at 8 o'clock that morning and that her boyfriend then took the teen to school. But since that initial report was taken, we learned from the Orange County Sheriff that Maddie was likely dead earlier than that.

Our detectives have determined that Madeline was never dropped off. Instead, we believe she was already dead at the time and that Stefan Stearns moved her body in the early morning hours on that day. Channel 9 has been going through statements from Steven Stearns and Soto trying to piece together what happened in the last few hours of the little girl's life, starting with our interview of the couple. Her mom told us last week... We dropped her off at school, close to school, um...

She wanted to walk the rest of the way. But in that same interview, then said... I wasn't the one who took her to school in the morning. That was my partner. But, yeah. Detectives believe Maddie was likely dead early Monday morning because a video timeline shows Maddie's belongings being dumped in a dumpster at 735 by Stearns. At 819, Sheriff Mina said video shows Maddie in Stearns' vehicle believed to be deceased.

Since then, the case has moved to Kissimmee Police and sources tell us that Soto has been interviewed multiple times by detectives at two agencies and that they are looking closely at all the statements she's made. But officially, Kissimmee Police won't comment.

So this initial report also shows that Stearns told investigators that after Maddie got out of his car, she stopped to look in that book bag before he drove away. That same book bag was found actually in the dumpster. After her death, he then said he went home for about an hour after going to the vape store and running errands. He was home that day until 2.30. Detectives say a tip showed him changing a flat tire not far from where the little girl's body was found that afternoon.

All right, Shannon, it is starting to piece together. Thank you. We also spoke to suspect Stefan Stearns before he was arrested. He also told us he dropped off Madeline for school the morning of her disappearance. She was asleep for most of the way. Told her have a good day in school when she got out. I love her. She said, thanks. Love you too. That was it.

Again, law enforcement believes Stearns never drove Madeline to school and that she was already dead that morning. So I'm still going to be following this case very closely, and I, of course, will let you guys know any more updates in this case. Hopefully there will be more answers and justice for Madeline coming soon. But for now, I'm glad that one of the people responsible is in custody. Maybe there will be more and more charges to come. TBD, we don't know that yet. But I will say this.

Although there's no concrete evidence against her mom, and I'm not going to start ringing the shame bell just yet because she easily could have been a victim as well, not that that excuses anything, but

I do think that there is a big red flag and a huge elephant in the room about her stories. I mean, obviously they're not adding up. She said that she did see her. She didn't see her. She did drop her off. She didn't drop her off, which it's like the truth is the truth is the truth. So why are you lying? Makes me think of that meme, that guy that sings like, why are you lying? Why are you always lying? Dun-dun-dun.

You're fucking lying. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I probably sound absolutely crazy to you right now. But if you do know what I'm talking about, you get it. But anyway, so hopefully more information will come along. I'm imagining charges will be coming down the pike very, very soon. But in any event, it's just like, hopefully this poor sweet 13-year-old girl gets justice. Because I can't even imagine what this innocent child was exposed to for how long.

in the safety of her own home, to then what? Just be murdered? And we don't know the details or cause of death at this point yet either. I have my own theories. I'm not going to share them here because I just don't want to be super reckless with that given how big the platform is. But I just hope she gets justice. So I'll leave it at that.

Now I want to talk about a new case that I have been getting so many requests to cover this week, actually in the past couple of days specifically. And while there isn't a lot of information, I do want to share what the facts of this case are so far. So Sebastian Rogers is a 15-year-old boy in Hendersonville, Tennessee, who seems to have just vanished completely. Poof, vanished into thin air. Sebastian is autistic, and the search for him has been extensive.

He was first reported as missing on the morning of Monday, February 26th. His mom Katie and his stepdad Chris were the ones who reported him missing. Sebastian had apparently gone to bed at about 9 p.m. on Sunday night, and then when his mom Katie went into Sebastian's room around 6 a.m. to get him up, get him ready for school, he wasn't there.

So Katie said that she called the stepdad Chris immediately. He was working out of town at the time in Memphis, and after she called him, he's the one who called the sheriff's department. Now, if you're thinking these details sound strikingly similar to Summer Wells, either.

You're not wrong. That's kind of exactly what went down. Candace, Summer's mom, noticed she was missing. She called Dawn at work, and Dawn was the one to call the police. Now, it is common for autistic kids to struggle with not running away from their caregiver or not, like, leaving their side. However, Sebastian's parents said that that's not something that he has ever really struggled with.

He also doesn't like to get messy, and he loves to play video games. And what makes this situation even weirder is that if Sebastian left, he didn't take his shoes, his phone, or any electronics with him. The only things that the parents noticed that were missing were his glasses and his favorite flashlight.

So they're trying to position it by saying, okay, he just up and left. I put him to bed, he went to bed, and then we woke up and he was gone. So he must have wandered out of the house. He must have run away. He took his flashlight with him and his glasses, but that's it.

But as you can imagine, a lot of people are starting to point fingers because they're saying it's not making sense. And while I don't want to go like gung-ho on blaming people, I do think it's important to note the facts of everything. For the past week and a half, law enforcement has desperately been searching for Sebastian. They've been using helicopters, canines, drones, dive teams, horses, and I mean honestly everything else that you can think of.

But there hasn't been a single promising lead that we know of at this point. On Monday, March 4th, law enforcement announced that they would be scaling back on the search and they're now going to be looking into foul play. So for starters, no security footage of Sebastian leaving the house has been found. Not from his house, not from the neighbor's house around him, not anywhere. Nor has there been any single scent picked up by canine dogs.

So since Sebastian has gone missing, both his mom, stepdad, and his bio dad have all spoken out. His mom and stepdad first spoke on a YouTube panel this week before also speaking to the news. On the YouTube panel, they went over their version of events from Sunday night into Monday morning when Sebastian was then discovered to be missing. So take a listen. There's actually a piece of, so to make something very crystal clear, so that way there's transparency across the board.

Me and the mom were on the phone at 9:43 or 9:46 in the evening. We stayed on the phone for quite some time. The call logs have been verified by all the police departments, TBI included. We stayed on the phone. It was very lengthy. Mom did slightly start falling asleep while she was on the couch. I had said, "Hey, you need to wake up, put the dogs up, go to bed."

uh now mind you that was right around midnight just before midnight or right around midnight so then mom does go to bed and wakes up early in the morning to go break her son up get him ready for school and now we have a worried mom who can't find her son in the house mom made an effort to look and search several times

Mom has called me at the time and asked me. She was like, I can't find him. I was like, do what? And she goes, yeah, I cannot find him. I said, well, hang on. I made the phone call and reported it to the sheriff's department because that's what we're supposed to do. And within 10 minutes, the sheriffs were dispatched to the location. In that same interview, Sebastian's stepdad made sure to say that they have been cleared. Um,

is there anything that you want to put to rest while you're here tonight or make clear to the public about this situation? I know you told me there was a statement that you wanted me to make, um, about you and the mom and the dad. So if you want to make any clarification about that, you have free reign to do so. We will not allow you to be disrespected here on this platform. Um,

it i i i have no malice or ill intent toward anybody everybody has an opinion of course um but what is factual is that the father the mother and myself have been extremely cooperative we have been vetted we have been checked out we have been questioned and everything of that nature

and literally have been cleared. There is no wrongdoing. There is no negative input from the parents or any of the family. Then they said a similar thing again in another interview. Listen. Are you both in the clear? I can tell you that mom, myself, and the father have worked very fully and cooperatively with all agencies across the board. We have anything that they've wanted, we have provided.

Interestingly, law enforcement has not said whether or not they are cleared, yet they're announcing that they are, which always is a red flag to me. Sebastian's mom and stepdad are also 100% sure that he walked out the door on his own. And in their news interview, they also had a message for him. Listen. What do you want to say to Sebastian? What do you want him to hear from you right now? That we love you so much and we want you to come home and you're not in trouble.

In the interview that Sebastian's dad did, he said he has been out searching for him every single day. And it was very evident that he is just completely distraught, completely heartbroken, and not sure at all about what happened. However, you can tell, and he made it pretty clear, that he was not wanting to say anything about him disappearing from his mom's house. So like I said, honestly, there are different circumstances.

But some of this does seem eerily similar to Summer Wells. She is that little girl who's also from Tennessee and who vanished from her home almost three years ago. If you followed her case, you know that she just vanished with no trace, and to this day, nobody knows what happened.

No arrests have been made, no evidence, no body. It's like, poof, she just vanished. So many cases involving missing children in the past few weeks have ended in just honestly devastating circumstances, so I really hope that this one does not have the same ending, and I hope Sebastian's found, I hope we get the truth, and I really, really hope that the parents were not involved in any way. So stay tuned for updates on that.

So obviously, lots going on in the true crime world this week, guys. Lots of case updates and new cases. And as more information comes out, I will definitely keep you updated. And as a reminder, if you feel like you are running out of content and you want a little bit more of a true crime fix, every Friday I am posting updates.

all new exclusive ad free bonus episodes and you can get access to those either through Patreon which I will link in the show notes or directly through Apple Podcasts however I suggest going to Patreon because there's even more bonus access content such as like one on ones with me private access to our group chat things like that so check it out

Other than that, thank you for tuning in to another episode of Serialistly with me, your true crime bestie, Annie. Thank you guys so much for listening and I will be back on the mic with you very, very soon. But until then, be nice, don't kill people. All right, guys, thanks so much. Take care, bye.