Hello, everyone. My name is Hayley Reisbeth and if you don't know who I am, this is my true crime podcast where once a week

I sit down and I talk about all things true crime ranging from murders, just appearances, cults all the way to the biggest drug bus in history, the biggest bank

ice in history, all things true crime. So if you're interested in any of that, you could head over to the YouTube channel every Wednesday for the visual version or every

Tuesday on Spotify Apple, where you can find podcasts for the audio version. For today's case, we're going to be talking about the case of Stephen and Katie

Pledel. Now there is a lot to get through, so we're just going to hop right into it. Starting off with Stephen Pledel, there really isn't much about his backstory online. All we really know is that in 1995 at the age of 20 years old is when he met 15 year old Alissa Garcia. Alissa and Stephen

met through an online chat room and at first they were just kind of casual friends until they started to text every single day and then one thing led to another. They started

having phone conversations with each other every night and then later on the couple would then date and furthermore confess their love to one another. Now, Alissa's parents obviously did not like this relationship because Stephen was 20 and Alissa was only 15. She was like a sophomore in high school barely starting her life. But since Alissa was so young, she wasn't really old enough to see all of the abuse, all of the grooming, all of the manipulation that Stephen was putting onto her.

Because Stephen knew that there was a problem with their relationship because he never ever spoke to Alissa's family. He never told anyone about his relationship with Alissa. He kept it very secret and there was actually a couple of times where Stephen would fly out from his home in New York all the way to San Antonio where Alissa was just to meet up with her in secret and even have sexual relations with her.

And so as Alissa and Stephen's relationship pursued, it just got way too out of hand to the point where Alissa felt that she was deeply, deeply in love with Stephen and she would do anything for Stephen and that's exactly what she did. She ran away at the age of 15 away from her home in San Antonio and she ran off to New York to live with Stephen.

In doing so, she cut off her entire family and all of her friends from San Antonio because none of her friends or family was approving of this relationship.

Thought that it was a really messed up situation, especially what Stephen was doing to young Alissa. But nonetheless, Alissa did indeed move out to New York and lived with Stephen and then two years into their relationship in 1998 is when Alissa grew pregnant with their first child at the age of 17.

And then on January 29th of 1998, that is when Alissa would give birth to her and Stephen's daughter named Denise Pledel.

Wasn't until after Denise was born where Alissa started to see some really big red flags with Stephen. She said that prior to having Denise, Stephen was very loving, he was very caring, he was very kind, they had a lot in common, he was funny.

But then as soon as Denise was born, she started to see some really concerning traits along with Stephen. Stephen would then go on to frequently abuse Denise and Alissa would later speak to a news outlet saying, quote,

he would do things like cover her mouth when she would cry. He pinched her all over her body until she turned black and blew a couple of times. Eventually he said he couldn't stand the screaming and crying anymore so he started placing her into a cooler or an ice chest.

Sometimes he would put a blanket in there to keep a crack open, sometimes he would shut it and wouldn't let me go back to open it. He would make me wait a few minutes until I could go back and I'd open the cooler and she'd just be gasping for air drenched in sweat and bruises on her.

I would scoop her up and shut the bedroom door so he couldn't bother me and I would rock her back and forth and tell her how sorry I was for the life that she was having.

And so at this point Alissa knew that this was not a safe environment for Denise to grow up in and so she had to make a tough decision to either put Denise up for adoption or attempt at running away with Denise and leaving Stephen.

But as I said, Alissa at this time is just a 17 year old girl like she's not even an adult yet. So even if she wanted to get a place of her own or even rent out a motel room, she couldn't because she wasn't old enough to do so.

And also she had cut off all of her family and friends to be with Stephen. She was in a whole different state where she knew absolutely no one.

But Alissa eventually had to come up with a decision and when Denise was eight months old, that's when she decided to put her up for adoption.

It's when she put her up for adoption because Alissa knew that Denise could not have a good life living with Stephen.

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