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Background

In 1995, 20-year-old Steven Pladl met 15-year-old Alyssa online. Even though she was underage, he started a relationship with her, and within a couple of years, she was pregnant.

A baby named Denise was born on January 29th, 1998, in Austin, TX. The young couple raised Denise for 8 months before they decided to give her up for adoption.

Finances were one of the reasons they decided on adoption. Alyssa later stated that she thought Steven was physically abusing the child, and that was another reason they gave her up.

Anthony and Kelly Fusco adopted Denise, and they renamed her Katie Rose Fusco. She was raised along with the Fusco’s biological daughter in Dover, 80 miles north of New York City.

She graduated from Dover High School in 2016 and was a freelance artist. She was also a talented drummer and a huge lover of animals.

While their firstborn daughter was being raised hundreds of miles away, Steven and Alyssa stayed together, got married, and had two more children.

Kelly Reconnects with the Pladl’s

In January 2016, Kelly turned 18. She knew she was adopted, and she decided to reach out to her biological parents on Facebook.

In August 2016, she passed on going to college and decided to move in with Steven and Alyssa. The two welcomed her with open arms, even though they were separated and slept in different bedrooms.

Alyssa would later say the relationship was filled with verbal and emotional abuse for years.

“I was always on eggshells, whatever his mood was, everybody knew, and that mood was often not happy, a lot of yelling, a lot of things smashed in the house, in front of our kids,” she said

His mood changed when he met Kelly, he started to dress younger wearing skinny jeans and form-fitting shirts. He was grooming more often and he started to grow his hair out.

Six weeks after she moved in he slept on the floor of her bedroom. He did it again the next night and Alyssa became concerned. She questioned him about his motives but he told her to mind her business before he stormed out of the house with Katie,

Three months after her firstborn moved in, Alyssa took the two youngest children and moved out.

Incestious relationship gets exposed

In May 2017, while looking through her 11-year-old daughter’s journal, Alyssa found out that Steven and Denise were having a sexual relationship and were expecting a baby.

Alyssa called Steven to question him, and he confirmed it was true. He told her, “I thought you knew,” and “We’re in love”.

Alyssa was disgusted by the news and told him off before she contacted the police to report the two for incest.

Alyssa and Steven divorced shortly after the incest news broke.

Even though they were under police investigation, Steven and Katie moved forward and got married in Parkton, Maryland, on July 20th, 2017.

On their marriage application, they were asked if they were related, and they said no.

You would think no one would show up to a wedding like this, but Steves’s mother attended along with Katie’s adoptive parents. They even took photos together.

Katie’s parents knew there wasn’t much they could do, so they decided to be supportive.

On September 1st, 2017, Katie gave birth to a boy named Bennett, and the couple moved into a home in Knightdale, North Carolina, just east of Raleigh.

Incest Charges

In January 2018, the two were arrested on incest and adultery charges, and the baby was taken away and given to Stevens’s mother. The couple was ordered not to have contact with each other.

Katie moved back home with her parents in New Milford, hundreds of miles away from Steven and her newborn son.

Crime

On April 11th, 2018, Katie contacted Steven via phone to end their relationship.

Steven took the news hard. He picked the child he shared with Katie from his mother’s home. At some point that night, he killed the child and left the body in his home in Knightdale, North Carolina.

He then drove about 9 hours to the Fusco’s home in New Milford and waited in a liquor store parking lot until they came outside.

His wife and father-in-law left the home at around 8:30 am. Moments later, they were both killed with an assault-style weapon when they were stopped at an intersection. Katie was just 20 years old while her father was 56.

Steven fled the scene, and at some point, he reached out to his mother to confess what he had done.

5 miles away from the crime scene in New Milford, he took his own life. He was 43 years old.