Video shows struggles of Sarasota girl

Published: Saturday, October 19, 2013 at 10:39 p.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, October 19, 2013 at 10:39 p.m.

SARASOTA - The sky was dark, but Melissa Stoddard couldn’t come inside.

The 11-year-old kneeled on the concrete slab, looking into the lit laundry room where her stepmother, Misty Stoddard, was watching her through the lens of a video camera.

The video would later be part of the evidence in the court case against her after Melissa died.

Melissa, an autistic child, was often treated differently than her half-siblings, court records show. She wasn’t allowed to eat the same things at school. Sometimes, she was sent outside as punishment when her father and stepmother thought she was bad.

“Why can’t she just go away?” one of the children asked Misty Stoddard as she filmed Melissa outside.

“Why’s she crying?”

In a last desperate move to come inside, Melissa started to wail. Her screams outside were so loud, sometimes the neighbors could hear them.

Melissa threw her arms wildly in the air and kicked her legs. The cries lasted for 25 long seconds, but Misty Stoddard didn’t budge. Melissa’s stepmother kept filming.

Finally, Melissa seemed broken, like she had given up. She lifted up her hands and buried her head in them. Her screams grew quieter.

Later that month, first-responders would rush to the house in the 9000 block of Delft Road when Melissa stopped breathing. That was Dec. 12.

She was declared brain dead and was hospitalized until Dec. 17, when her family decided to take her off life support. Her organs were harvested, and Melissa was buried back home in North Carolina.

In February, Misty Stoddard is scheduled to stand trial and could face life in prison if she is convicted of first-degree murder since Prosecutor Karen Fraivillig has said she does not plan to seek the death penalty.

Both Misty and Kenneth Stoddard, who is Melissa’s biological father, have also been charged with aggravated child abuse with great bodily harm. Attorneys for Misty and Kenneth Stoddard declined to comment for this story. In previous interviews the Stoddards and their attorneys have steadfastly maintained their innocence.

Several videos capture a few moments into Melissa’s life as her stepmother filmed her outside the family home, court records show.

Melissa, the Stoddards say, was an especially difficult child.

The pre-teen was diagnosed as autistic and bipolar and struggled to communicate.

Court documents show somebody at the home googled “children obsessive destructive,” “how to cope with violent outbursts from a child” and “sociopathic tendencies in children” on a computer confiscated by authorities.

In one video filmed during the day, Melissa had stopped fighting. Her arms appear to be bound behind her as she sat on the concrete slab, barely moving. She stared straight ahead for a moment, and then tilted her head to look up. She wore a shirt with colorful peace signs.

The blood had dried on her nose, and a hastily made bandage from what looked like a towel and a washcloth was tied on her head. She was later taken to the hospital several hours later where she received stitches for the head injury, court records show. The Stoddards reportedly told medical personnel that the Melissa sustained the injury by hitting her head against the wall.

“Go ahead and watch something on TV,” Misty Stoddard said to one of her other children inside the home during the 1-minute, 35-second clip.

Melissa had reportedly been abused in some way for most of her life.

At her biological mother’s home in North Carolina, Melissa’s older brother had sexually molested her, according to a Department of Children and Families report. Her parents agreed that Melissa would be safe moving in with her father and stepmother, who lived in a rural east Sarasota County house.

The Stoddards were already a blended family, raising five other children beside Melissa. Misty Stoddard was also pregnant with a sixth.

Once in Sarasota County, Melissa attended Oak Park School and was known to throw wild tantrums after she started late in 2012.

But over the weeks, her teachers were impressed by how the girl seemed to be growing up and working on her lessons.

“Your daughter could have gone to Harvard,” her teacher told Melissa’s father, one day after her behavior was nearly perfect.

By the fall, Melissa racked up several days of absences in a row, and eventually stopped coming to school altogether.


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