Thank you. From the things you've mentioned, I'm not seeing any clear corroboration from anyone else that Charli & Steven were speaking again.
The things Steven knew about the name Joshua and the plans would have easily come from mutual friends, because we know that Adam would call Steven and keep him in the loop, and Steven mentions in the interview that he and Charli had all the same friends, and he frequently refers to "our friends."
The only thing that makes sense to me that would fuel this deep level of rage indicated by the crime is for Steven to be reaching out to Charli over and over, and her being totally unresponsive. The theory that Steven was simply clearing the way for a "happily ever after" with Cass does not ring true for me (she had cheated on him, and he stated straight up that he doesn't believe in marriage).....Nor does him being enraged that Charli had disobeyed or misled him by not going through with an abortion. That's just not enough, in my mind, to provoke such brutality. For me, the only thing that accounts for the level of rage in this crime is for her to have been totally and utterly ignoring him after he tried reaching out to her again and again. It would have been deeply humiliating for him to hear from other people about what's going on with the baby, and for him to be completely left out of it all despite his efforts to talk. In the interview he never says "the baby," he always says "my baby." Over and over again: "my baby." I believe he was so angered that she would become impregnated by him but then totally cut him off, and this is where his rage came from.
He specifically says that Charli would not contact him after he'd reach out to her. But then, after his convo w/ Adam Gaines, she did reach out to him, according to Steven. And yet, none of this contact shows up on his phone, conveniently enough, because he says he deletes his texts so that his smartphone will run faster. Hmmm.
I think he lied that Charli had reestablished contact w/ him. He told this lie in order to downplay the tension that existed between them, thereby removing a strong motive. He said they had met and were texting and he was "coming around to the idea" and they were talking baby names and blah blah blah.......in the same way he rattled on about the guy with dreadlocks in the Toyota Corolla with the rasta medallion hanging from the mirror and how they'd laughed about him hitchhiking at night....it's all just a bunch of BS. He's a liar. He is inventing scenarios for his story/alibi.
And if one of Charli's family members contradicted the fact that they were talking again, his excuse would be that Charli had probably kept their renewed contact a secret because they "didn't like him."
This is a tentative theory, but if anyone can provide quotes from one of Charli's friends/family that demonstrate that they were aware that Charli had started talking to Steven again, then I will discard this theory.