The prime suspect in the death of Florida teen Madeline Soto has finally been charged with murder – two months after the young girl first vanished.
Stephan Michael Sterns, 37, was charged with first-degree murder on Wednesday, according to Osceola County court records viewed by The Post.
He is due in court for an initial appearance on Thursday afternoon, the filing indicated.
Madeline Soto, 13, was first reported missing on Feb. 26, after staffers at her Orlando middle school realized that she never arrived for class that day.
Sterns – who was dating Madeline’s mother at the time – was later confirmed to have been the last person to have seen the teen.
“I dropped her off [at school] early, I could have waited longer. She looked okay she was walking towards the school,” the teary-eyed Sterns told a local news channel on Feb. 27.
Sterns was arrested that following day on charges of sexual battery and possession of child sexual abuse material, including images and videos on his phone that supposedly showed him sexually abusing a young girl.
He was already a person of interest in the case when Madeline’s body was found in a wooded area on March 1.
She was still dressed in clothes resembling the outfit she was last seen in, authorities stated at the time.
Following the discovery of Madeline’s body, authorities noted that footage from Monday morning showed Sterns driving his 2010 Lincoln MK with the teen’s dead body supposedly still in the car.
He was then spotted throwing several items into a trash bin where police later recovered her backpack and school-issued laptop.
“We believe she was already dead at the time and that Stephan Sterns moved her body in the early morning hours on that day,” Orange County Sheriff John Mina explained of the grisly timeline.
Sterns allegedly began sexually abusing Madeline in 2022, when she was only 11 years old, an arrest affidavit published in early March revealed.
During a press conference on Wednesday, authorities said they were not sure whether they would seek the death penalty for Sterns.
The jury trial is set for Aug. 19, 2024, WWSB reported.
