Trial starts for man charged in Tahoe girl’s assault, murder

Wednesday, Jan. 17, 2001 | 5:54 a.m.

About 200 prospective jurors completed questionnaires, and others were expected to do the same on Thursday as the jury selection process continues. The trial before Douglas County District Judge David Gamble is expected to last up to six weeks.

Prosecutors have described Soria, 39, who faces a potential death penalty if convicted, as a pedophile who kept a lurid computer file and used his son to help bait his victims.

Soria's last alleged victim, 9-year-old Krystal Steadman of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., disappeared March 19 from a Stateline apartment complex where she and her mother were visiting friends.

The girl's body was found the next day down an embankment along U.S. 50, about 20 miles from where she disappeared. Authorities said she was raped and tortured before her throat was slashed.

Soria's son, Thomas Soria Jr., worked part time at a branch of the Lake Tahoe Boys and Girls Club. He pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murder in the case and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Now 20, he is expected to testify against his father.

Michael Roeser and John Springgate, Soria Sr.'s defense lawyers, contend the younger Soria, not their client, is responsible for the killing.

Soria Jr., who lived with his father at the complex Krystal was visiting, was seen playing in the parking lot with the little girl the day she disappeared. At his sentencing, he admitted to luring her into the Soria apartment at his father's request.

During a videotaped interview with investigators, he said his father sexually abused him from a young age and got him to find young girls for him.

Prosecutors say the elder Soria kept a computer file describing fantasies of sexually assaulting, torturing and killing women and girls.

Deputy District Attorney Tom Perkins said the file contains "striking similarities" to the events leading to the Lake Tahoe girl's death.

The case will also focus on DNA evidence.

The Sorias, whose family history is riddled with violence, moved to Lake Tahoe from Sacramento, Calif., in January 1999.

When he was a teen-ager in 1979, Soria Sr.'s mother was raped and murdered by his stepbrother, who had molested him 10 years earlier. In 1982, an uncle shot up a bar in North Sacramento, killing three people and wounding nine, according to court records.