Borderline Personality Mother Charged with Aggravated Murder and More

I have been following the story of this poor little boy (Ethan Stacy) who was 4 years old when his father (Joe Stacy) had to turn him over to the estranged mother (Stephanie Sloop) for visitation rights-- part of the court order of their divorce. Ethan didn't want to go with his mother as he didn't want anything to do with her-- he was scared of her and he thought she had abandoned him. The father had to make him go or else he would go to jail for contempt of court. Ethan flew from Florida to Utah to be with his mother on April 30, 2010. He was reported missing 2 weeks later, and then the mother confessed that her new husband (Nathan Sloop) beat and abused him to death. To top it off, they used a hammer to beat the boy's face so that the police wouldn't be able to identify him.

This story has captivated me as my heart has cried out for the little boy and the father. And I am blown away that a mother could sit back and watch her new husband literally beat / abuse her child to death for two weeks, and then help the new husband to hide the boy (they hid the boy in their house when they ran off to get married, the mother didn't seek medical help when Ethan was vomiting all day and non-responsive, and the mother didn't report the any of the abuse including the burns that her husband inflicted on poor little Ethan). PLUS she got the materials necessary from the store (along with Slushies for herself and her husband) in order to conceal the boys identity when they buried him in a far off location.

Anyway, charges were finally filed against Stephanie and Nathan Sloop for the crimes at the end of May after several weeks of gathering evidence. The Sloops have been charged aggravated murder as well as second degree felony child abuse, second degree felony obstruction of justice and third degree felony abuse or desecration of a body. They are going to be facing the death penalty.

HERE IS THE KICKER>>> I have been following this since mid-May and have been SICK (literally) over what happened to the boy. I followed the boy's funeral and even joined two Facebook groups in support of Ethan Stacy and his father. Now today, during my reading of the case against Stephanie and Nathan, the fact that she was diagnosed with BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER when she was 13 years old was revealed! WHOA! My heart skipped a beat! They also said she was highly narcissistic, a pathological liar, and listed a bunch of typical BPD things she has done in the past. Here's an excerpt from The Salt Lake Tribune:

Stephanie's former friends say she has always been difficult. As a teenager, she would sneak out at night with boys. She once brought a physical abuse charge against her stepfather, a false accusation, according to an ex-friend. The charge was dismissed.

Joe, her ex-husband, says Stephanie's mother once told him she had been diagnosed at age 13 with borderline personality disorder. She often bragged that her purse was a pharmacy, say former friends. "She had a lot of prescription pills from doctors," says Joe. "She'd always know just what to tell them."

Stephanie enlisted in the Air Force, but was other-than-honorably discharged during basic training, says Joe. After a brief early marriage, Stephanie met Joe in Orlando via a mutual friend and married when she was 21.

Over the years, Stephanie sometimes worked as a dancer at strip clubs in Cocoa Beach and Daytona Beach, according to friends. She also dabbled in modeling from a young age, she says on her Model Mayhem website. She claims to have been a Bud Girl and a Jager Girl in bar promotions, and was trying to get into the "Playboy Hot Housewives" special edition last year. But whether that was a real possibility is up for debate. "She is a pathological liar," says Carla Jones, a former friend.

Rodriguez, the mother of Joe's two older children, had a ringside seat for the drama that surrounded Stephanie. Her children lived with Joe and Stephanie for four years; a flight attendant, Rodriguez visited often. Stephanie pulled all kinds of shenanigans to try to make Rodriguez's life miserable, she says. She tried to get her fired, falsely accused her of neglect and bad parenting in custody court and with child services; and cracked into her employee account at Continental Airlines, as well as her MySpace, Facebook and eBay accounts. "Stephanie is not a stupid woman. She's very clever," says Rodriguez. "She always seemed to cover her tracks."

Stephanie insisted Destrian and Alisa call her "mom" and their real mom by her first name, says Rodriguez. She monitored the few phone conversations she allowed between Rodriguez and her children. "She always had to be Number One," says Joe. "She was so narcissistic." Rodriguez says she didn't know, until much later, how much her children disliked their stepmom. Destrian says Stephanie expected him to take care of baby Ethan from the start. Their father was often gone for two weeks at a time, working as a roustabout on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. "She really never changed his diapers," says Destrian. Stephanie would spank Destrian and Alisa with a metal spatula, and whack the backs of their heads with the back of her diamond-ringed hand, the siblings say.

"We felt we were back in the slave days," says Alisa. "She used to make us make her alcohol drinks, clean the pool, clean the bathroom until it was spotless white." Alisa went to friends' houses rather than invite them to her own. "I was afraid she would yell at me in front of my friends," says Alisa. "She yelled for stupid reasons. "She threatened my dad so much it got me mad." When a relative gave Destrian and Alisa laptops for Christmas, Stephanie sold them, says Rodriguez. When their mother sent clothes, Stephanie threw them away. When she sent cash, the kids got empty envelopes. Stephanie wanted people to think of her as the perfect mother, Joe says. "But behind closed doors, it was a whole different story." "I tried to get her to be more of a mother," he says. "But she was not cut out to be a mother....She just is a person with no patience."

After Joe slipped on an oil rig in late 2008, a fall that required surgery to insert two titanium rods in his neck, things got rocky, he says. Stephanie began commuting to Las Vegas to dance at a strip club, and eventually moved there in late spring 2009. Joe intended to move the family to Las Vegas in August, but Rodriguez fought the move because she could not easily fly in and out to see her children.

Joe returned to Orlando with Ethan, and late last year to his home state of Virginia. Destrian and Alisa went to live with their mother in Illinois.Joe filed for divorce in October, and in a motion for temporary custody in November he said Stephanie had abandoned Ethan and was "unstable," and that he feared she would take Ethan and never return him.

For an excellent time line of sorts with details of Stephanie and Nathan Sloop: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105719