On an April morning in 2018, police officers found the bodies of Steven Pladl, his daughter Katieher adoptive father, Anthony Fusco, and a seven-month-old baby. The officers cordoned off the area and began collecting evidence to reveal the cause of the crimes. Thus, they began to pull the threads to unravel the skein of a case that caused a great impact in the United States.
The tragedy begins when Steven Pladl, 43, begins a relationship with his biological daughter Katie, with whom he has a son. The macabre chain of events began in Knightdale, North Carolina. There, the police found little Bennett, just seven months old, dead in Steven’s house. The boy’s paternal grandmother had called the police, desperate after receiving a disturbing call from the murderer. ““Don’t go to the house,” Steven warned his mother. “I left the dead baby there.”
The dark chronology of the crimes began Wednesday night, when Steven Pladl picked up his son Bennett from his mother’s home in Cary, North Carolina. The boy lived in the custody of his grandmother, but that night, the fateful journey toward horror had begun. Steven took the little boy to his house in Knightdale, where the first murder took place.
The tragedy did not stop there. Pladl, enraged, drove about 1,000 miles to New Milford, Connecticut. Steven’s car traveled the roads at more than 100 kilometers per hour. All the time, the murderer thought about how he was going to end the life of his daughter. Arriving, shot Katie and her adoptive father, Anthony Fusco, while they were inside a van. Then, she continued her journey to Dover, New York. and on the side of the lonely road he shot himself in the head.
Upon arriving at Steven’s home, officers found the body of little Bennett. The first officers to enter the house were shocked by the scene. Blood stains on the walls and the disfigured body of the child. His father had beaten him to death. Despite police warnings, they were unable to stop the killer from racing toward new targets. Later, in New Milford, police discovered the bodies of Katie Pladl and her adoptive father. The lights of the truck were left on and the splintered glass was scattered among the bodies of the victims.
Knightdale Police Chief Lawrence Capps confirmed the murders and suicide at a news conference that same day in April 2018. “We are heartbroken and saddened by the death of this child,” the officer said. “I try to understand all the factors that led to these senseless crimes.”
Katie and Steven They had tried to legitimize their relationship with a marriage ceremony. Katie’s biological mother, Alyssa Pladl, had given her daughter up for adoption when she was just a baby, trying to keep her away from Steven’s abuse. However, fate brought Katie back to the arms of her biological father when the girl had turned 18. What began as a family reunion quickly turned into a forbidden and dangerous relationship.
The marital crisis between Pladl and her ex ended exploding in November 2016, when the woman decided to leave the house. In March 2017, she filed for divorce and three months later, she had already put an end to that story. But shortly after she left the home, she told authorities, her ex began sleeping on the floor of Katie’s bedroom. In May of last year she found out she was pregnant.
After the scandal over the possible marriage, the couple was arrested on charges of incest. In July, Katie posted a photo of herself on her Instagram account in which she was kissing her father. There you can see the pregnant girl in the photo and the post says: “Nothing elegant, just love” along with the hashtags “Just Married”, “SimpleWedding” and “Pregnancy”.
After paying bail, the couple was released but the courts prevented the man from approaching his partner and his son. Over time, custody of the baby would fall into the hands of the grandmother. There, Steven went to look for him to begin his death raid.
Alyssa Pladl, Katie’s biological mother and Steven’s ex-wife, was devastated by the loss of her daughter and grandson. In an interview, Alyssa revealed the abuse suffered by Katie at the hands of Steven when she was just a baby, abuse of her that led her to give her up for adoption to protect her from him. “I knew from the beginning that I had to get Katie away from him to give her a chance at life,” Alyssa confessed through tears. “Steve was just finishing what he started 20 years ago.”
The tragedy was further complicated when details were revealed about the systematic abuse Steven inflicted on Katie during her childhood. “He pinched her until she was purple,” Alyssa said. “And he put her in a refrigerator to drown her crying.”
When the girl turned 18, she decided to look for her biological parents, which led her back to Steven’s arms. What began as a family reunion soon transformed into an incestuous and controlling relationship. Manipulative and domineering, Steven exerted complete control over Katie, leading her to an illegal marriage and the birth of her son Bennett.
Steven’s ex-wife He told authorities that he began sleeping on the floor in Katie’s room after Katie moved into the house. Court warrants stated that Steven told his other children to address Katie as his stepmother.
His ex—and Katie’s mother— He learned about the macabre story by reading the diary of one of his 11-year-old daughters: the girl had drawn a pregnant Katie and He described Steven as “Satan.” He wrote that, he told the mother, because Katie was “human” and Steven was “Satan,” so their baby would be “half-demon.”
Steven’s abuse was not limited to Katie. Alyssa also described how Steven was violent and temperamental. He “threatened to commit suicide if he left him.” He even said that he was going to record himself to make sure I saw it,” Allysa recalled.
Alyssa Pladl, devastated by the loss of her daughter and grandson, was faced with the painful task of explaining to her other daughters what had happened. “When I told them that their father, sister and her nephew were dead, I saw absolute devastation on their faces. I had never seen such shock in children before,” the woman said. Six years after the crimes and suicide, what remains of the Pladl family is still trying to recover from everything that happened. Despite the time, the images of the bloody bodies return from time to time to their minds. The past is still there, around the corner.
