Katie Pladl wanted to meet the biological parents who had placed her up for adoption as an 8-month-old baby. Instead, the reunion with Alyssa and Steven Pladl ended in one of the most disturbing family tragedies to reach a courtroom and later a Netflix film.
Alyssa Pladl said she was 15 when her relationship with Steven began and he was 20. The couple later had a daughter, Denise, but Alyssa said they placed her up for adoption because they were young, short on money and because she suspected Steven may have been physically abusing the child. Katie, known in her adoptive family as Katie Fusco, was raised by Tony and Kelly Fusco in upstate New York.
Cary Gould, who knew Katie, remembered her as a cheerful child with a strong appetite and a love of animals. “They had a very, very normal life,” Gould said. “My nickname for Katie was Pac-Man. She was always eating. She loved animals. She was a vegetarian.”
After Katie turned 18, she reached out to her birth parents, who were happy to reconnect. She put off college and moved in with the Pladls in August of 2016. Alyssa later noticed Steven paying more attention to his appearance and sleeping on the floor of Katie’s bedroom. By May 2017, Alyssa said she learned Katie and Steven had begun a romantic relationship and that Katie was pregnant. “I started to become hysterical, and I called him,” Alyssa told The. “I said, ‘Is Katie pregnant with your baby?’” Steven’s reply, she said, was blunt: “I thought you knew. We’re in love.”
Police say Steven impregnated Katie and secretly married her. When Katie tried to break free from the relationship, police say he killed their baby, then tracked Katie and her adoptive father down and allegedly shot them to death before taking his own life. The case now anchors the Lifetime movie “Husband, Father, Killer: The Alyssa Pladl Story,” which is available on Netflix.
The film’s title captures the central horror of the story, but the facts answer it plainly: the husband, father and killer were the same man, and the reunion that was supposed to give Katie a family instead drew her into the one that destroyed her.