Son pleads guilty, father’s prelim continues in Tahoe murder

Wednesday, May 10, 2000 | 11:29 a.m.

The son, Thomas Soria Jr., 19, faces sentencing July 5. Under a plea agreement, his minimum term could be 20 years before he has a chance for parole. But he also could get a no-parole life term.

By pleading guilty Tuesday in Douglas County District Court to charges of murder and kidnapping in the March 19 death of Krystal Steadman, Soria Jr. avoided the prospect of a death sentence.

Execution remains a possibility for his father, Thomas Soria Sr., 39, whose two-day Justice Court preliminary hearing ended Tuesday with him being bound over for trial on charges of kidnapping, sexually assaulting and killing Steadman by slashing her throat.

The victim's nude body was found dumped down a U.S. 50 slope, a day after her disappearance.

Soria Sr. also faces a June 6 trial on separate sexual assault charges stemming from an October incident involving a 15-year-old girl. Charges filed against the son in that case were later dismissed.

The Sorias moved from the Sacramento area to Tahoe in early 1999, and Soria Jr. was hired several months ago to work part-time at a branch of the Lake Tahoe Boys and Girls Club. A background check didn't reveal an April 1999 arrest for burglary, possession of stolen property and trying to pass a bad check.

Soria Sr., an unemployed computer technician, had a prior arrest in 1998 for making obscene, threatening phone calls to two female coworkers, and had a violent family history.

When he was a teenager in 1979, Soria Sr. found his mother raped and murdered by his stepbrother. Ten years earlier, the stepbrother had molested him. Also, an uncle shot up a North Sacramento, Calif., bar in 1982, killing three people and wounding nine, according to court records.