Several people saw Gulfport teen held captive. None told police, records say.

ST. PETERSBURG — At least six people saw Miranda Corsette or knew the 16-year-old Gulfport girl was being held against her will and tortured the week before she was murdered. No one told police.That’s according to a search warrant affidavit recently filed in Pinellas County court, which reveals new details in the investigation that so far has yielded criminal charges against two people.Steven Gress, 35, and Michelle Brandes, 37, were indicted last week on first-degree murder charges. Prosecutors said they plan to seek the death penalty. Miranda’s body has not been found. Police have said they believe her remains likely were destroyed in a Hillsborough County incinerator after they were placed in a Ruskin trash bin.While the purpose of the affidavit, authored by a St. Petersburg police detective, is to get a judge’s permission to search Gress’ mother’s phone, its 25 pages paint the most detailed portrait yet of a horrifying murder case.The torture took place in a tranquil neighborhood featuring wide lawns that stretch before modest midcentury ranch homes and burgeoning oaks and palm trees.That others bore witness to Miranda’s plight begs the question: Will anyone else be charged?Two neighbors had seen the slender, dark-haired girl at the duplex where they said Gress frequently brought home young, disadvantaged women in St. Petersburg’s Ponce de Leon neighborhood.“This little bitch stole my ring and won’t give it back,” Gress told one neighbor who saw Miranda. “So I’ve been beating her ass.”Three people, including Gress’ mother, would later admit to police that he’d sent them photos of the girl that showed her nude, bruised and in increasingly worse physical condition.His mother, according to the affidavit, denied viewing the photos. She said he’d told her the girl was still in the house and had stolen a ring from him. In response, she said she couldn’t talk to him anymore.“Good people don’t want to know bad things,” she told him, the affidavit states.Efforts to reach Gress’ mother and other witnesses mentioned in the document were unsuccessful Friday. Attorneys listed for Gress and Brandes did not return calls for comment.A St. Petersburg police spokesperson said Friday they could not say whether anyone else might be charged.“The case is still open and there’s a pretty good likelihood of more (charges) to come,” Pinellas-Pasco State Attorney Bruce Bartlett said. The six days of torture and “calculated killing” made the murder one of the most disturbing he’s seen.“People like that should be eliminated from society,” Bartlett said. “They have a tool for that, and that’s called the death penalty.”Miranda had a 1-year-old child, who is now in the care of the teen’s grandmother, police said.The investigation began after police learned from a man who knew Brandes that she’d allegedly confessed to having taken part in a murder, according to the affidavit.On Friday, Miranda’s grandmother, Rita Farnham, told the Tampa Bay Times she wasn’t ready to talk about the case, but later wrote in a text message she was thankful to the man who knew Brandes told police about the apparent confession.“If not for (him), we would never know what happened to Miranda,” she wrote. “My family is very grateful to (him).”One of the first people detectives questioned was a woman who lived with Gress and Brandes in their first-floor apartment on 27th Avenue North. She’s described in the affidavit as having previously been in a sexual relationship with Gress. Now, though, Gress and Brandes were together. He wanted an “open relationship,” the woman said, but Brandes was jealous.She described a volatile home situation where Gress frequently beat and abused the two women. She also said Gress killed animals he got through Craigslist and disposed them near the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge.He brought home other women, who were homeless or addicted to drugs, she said. When detectives asked about a girl he’d brought home on Valentine’s Day, the woman began to cry.She talked about Miranda. She said Gress met her through Grindr, a dating app that caters to the LGBTQ community. He brought her home, she said.The next day, the woman said, Gress was furious. A ring that belonged to him was missing. He was convinced that Miranda stole it.Miranda was brought back to the apartment. Gress demanded the ring back, but Miranda wouldn’t turn it over.Days later, Brandes would show her the ring, claiming to have found it in Gress’ car, according to the affidavit. The woman said she believed Brandes had the ring all along. She believed she wanted Gress to dislike the girl.The woman described a week of beatings and torture, inflicted by Gress and Brandes. It ended Sunday night, Feb. 23. The woman said Brandes wrapped the girl’s head in plastic. Gress told her not to cover her nose, but Brandes did, the woman said. Miranda suffocated.After she died, Gress carried her in a purple blanket to the trunk of his Honda Civic. The three of them later drove to Brandes’ mother’s house on Mallory Drive in Largo.Late the next morning, Gress and Brandes went outside to a semiprivate pathway along the side of the house. They removed the body from the trunk and used a chain saw to dismember it before disposing it in white trash bags, the woman told police.As the pair worked outside, the woman said she stayed in the house with Brandes’ mother, another woman who lived there and a home health aide.It was Brandes’ birthday, the woman said. And they later went to eat fried chicken at Popeye’s and play putt-putt golf at Congo River in Clearwater. After that, they drove around the Tampa Bay area looking for a place to dispose of the body. They found a green dumpster near where Gress’ grandparents lived in Ruskin.Detectives first spoke with Gress on March 6 at the Pinellas County Jail. He’d been booked there a day earlier, after police said he threatened Brandes with an air-powered harpoon gun when she tried to leave their apartment amid an argument. His arrest happened mere hours before the murder investigation began.When the detectives asked why Brandes would say he had taken part in a murder, Gress showed no reaction, according to the affidavit. He denied any knowledge of a young girl being murdered.The next day, though, he said he wanted to talk.“This was never supposed to happen,” he said.He told the detectives he’d picked up Miranda at her grandmother’s house in Gulfport. He was told she was 21, he said, according to the affidavit, but later learned she was 16.He became convinced Miranda had stolen his ring. He said he brought her to his apartment and, for the better part of a week, “lumped her up,” according to the affidavit. It was a gift from a friend, he said, and it meant a lot to him.He said Miranda just trembled. He took that to mean she was mocking him.He and Brandes repeatedly beat the girl, the affidavit states. Whenever they injured her, he said, he would go to CVS to get medicine to help her heal.He blamed Brandes for causing Miranda’s death. He described her shoving a billiard ball into Miranda’s throat and covering her face in plastic wrap. He said he couldn’t get to her quickly enough to poke holes in the plastic so she could breathe, according to the affidavit. He confirmed they took Miranda’s body to Brandes’ mother’s home in Largo and disposed of it in Ruskin.The detectives asked about the claim that he’d killed animals. That was partly true, he said. He would get animals, mostly through Craigslist, and kill them, he said. But he denied throwing them off the Skyway Bridge. Rather, he would dispose of them in his apartment trash bin.He would do this, he said, according to the affidavit, so he wouldn’t kill his girlfriends or other people.Brandes turned herself in to police on March 8. While the affidavit states that Gress largely blamed Brandes for the worst of the violence against Miranda, in her own interview with detectives, she depicted him as the main aggressor.She described herself as a victim, who feared being beaten by Gress. She had no choice, she said, but to do what he told her. She was too afraid to tell police. Times staff writers Tony Marrero and Jack Prator contributed to this report.

Several people saw Gulfport teen held captive. None told police, records say.

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