dismembering and murdering a St. Pete teen<\/a> has been found competent to stand trial.<\/p>\nA judge made the decision on Wednesday during Steven Gress’ court appearance in Pinellas County. A pretrial hearing for Gress was set for Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026.<\/p>\n
A motion was also granted to unseal his juvenile records.<\/p>\n
\nWho is Steven Gress? <\/p>\n
St. Petersburg police say 35-year-old Gress met 16-year-old Miranda Corsette on social media, primarily using the Grindr app, before she went missing in February.<\/p>\n
In early March, a witness came forward to police with information about a possible kidnapping and homicide involving a missing teen, leading authorities to find Gress as a suspect.<\/p>\n
St. Pete Police Chief Anthony Holloway said that on Feb. 14, Gress went to Corsette’s home, picked her up and took her to his duplex on 27th Avenue North.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the first meeting, police say he took Corsette back to her home. However, she returned to his home the next day.<\/p>\n
Through tips and further investigation, detectives learned there was “some type of dispute over some missing jewelry” at the house on Feb. 20, according to Holloway.<\/p>\n
Holloway added that from Feb. 20-24, Corsette was “beaten, tortured because they could not find this piece of jewelry.” As a result, detectives believe that she was killed during that time frame.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gress \u2014 along with his “domestic partner,” Michelle Brandes \u2014 put the 16-year-old’s body in the car and drove her to a house on Mallory Drive in Largo, according to police.<\/p>\n
Largo detectives were able to find evidence that Miranda was “dismembered” at that location. Then the couple drove her down to Ruskin, where they dumped her body into a dumpster, according to Holloway.<\/p>\n
On March 13, police confirmed the trash from the dumpster where Miranda’s body was discarded was taken to the Falkenberg Transfer Center and then to the incinerator.<\/p>\n
Gress was already in custody for “pointing a harpoon gun” at Brandes and for possession of drugs. In this incident, he is charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brandes turned herself in to police and is also charged with first-degree murder.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Police previously confirmed that Miranda had an 11-month-old baby, although no other information was provided.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Previous 10 Tampa Bay News reporting contributed to this article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Steven Gress is charged with kidnapping and first-degree murder in the death of Miranda Corsette. ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-45477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}