Stefano DiMera, the Patriarch Handsome, wealthy and charming on the outside, intriguingly sinister on the inside, tycoon Stefano DiMera first set foot in Salem in 1982. But not without first sending his son, Count Tony DiMera, to check out the lay of the land. Everything looked right for the transfer of his aristocratic family's business interests from Italy to America, but Stefano seemed more interested in Salem's women.
He thought Marlena would make a magnificent wife for his son, Julie Williams would make a great wife for him (even if she was married), and Kayla Brady caught his eye... because her brother Roman was captain of the police force! After all, an international crime kingpin needs to be wary of his natural foes.
1980s
In the beginning, it seemed that the animosity between the Bradys and DiMeras was a natural case of cops vs. robbers, but there was much more at stake. Stefano was in search of the Baka, an ancient and mysterious wooden talisman, which signified the connection between the DiMera and Brady families, by a marriage that occurred in the late 18th century. According to legend, the Baka increased the power of the DiMera family when it was in their possession; but when the Bradys held it, as they had for 200 years, the DiMeras were unable to abuse its power.
Stefano brings his nephew Andre to Salem to retrieve the Baka, after having him surgically altered to look exactly like Tony. Acting on Stefano's orders, Andre chains up Tony and becomes the Salem Stalker, stabbing and poisoning his victims while wearing a mask to look like Roman, Stefano's sworn enemy. When Andre steals the Baka, Stefano uses it to make a bomb, designed to kill Marlena and bring the Brady family to its knees. Too bad for Stefano, his plans are foiled. He makes a daring escape, only to have his limo plunge into the icy waters of the Salem River. The driver's body was found, but Stefano's was not, and he was presumed dead.
Stefano retreated to his yacht, to suffer from an inoperable brain tumor and plot the retrieval of three prisms, which held the key to his health. He sends Andre after one of the prisms, held by the Bradys. Andre engineers a plane crash on a deserted island involving several Salemites, including Roman. Stefano and Roman struggle over the prism on a cliff. Roman falls and dies, though Stefano makes off with his body and the prism. Back in Salem, Stefano vows revenge once again on the Bradys for his daughter Megan's death, kidnapping Marlena's twins, Eric and Sami. Stefano and Marlena struggle in the rafters of the ice rink during a big show. He drops one of the prisms, setting the rink on fire, falling when Marlena shoots him. Later, a body burned beyond recognition is assumed to be Stefano.
In 1988, Stefano returns to Salem to retrieve his son, Benji Hawk, while sending clues to Roman that Marlena is still alive. Unable to get to Benji, Stefano kidnaps Carrie, luring Shane Donovan and the other Bradys to his island. Blaming Roman for Benji's deafness, Stefano activates Roman's chip, programming him to kill his own family. Roman is able to shake the trance, Benji learns that his father is a very bad man, and Stefano escapes once again via helicopter.
1990s
After a five-year absence, a wheelchair-bound, stroke-addled Stefano returns to Salem with his adopted children, Peter and Kristen Blake. Learning that Belle was fathered by John and not Roman, Stefano forces Marlena to reveal the truth at Belle's christening, effectively ending her relationship with Roman. John battles Stefano on Kristen's wedding day, shooting at his car, which explodes in a fireball. Stefano resurfaces at Maison Blanche in Louisiana, where he imprisons John, kidnaps Marlena, and secrets away Hope, who thinks she is Gina. When Celeste torches the mansion, Stefano tries to escape with Hope in a rowboat during a hurricane, but goes missing and is presumed dead.
Back in Salem, Stefano moves into the apartment next to Marlena, constructing a secret door from his bedroom into her closet. Paving the way for her satanic possession with his nightly visits, Stefano tries to help Marlena, but she throws him out a window while in a fugue state. Stefano survives, but he's an amnesiac cripple. Marlena nurses Stefano, helping him recover Aremid, and he begins falling for her again. Stefano's memory returns when he is struck by lightning, but he tells no one. Within the next year, Stefano kidnaps Marlena and brings her to his subterranean Paris hideout to be his queen. John comes to the rescue, and is nearly guillotined. Rachel tries to blow herself and Stefano up, but he escapes back to Salem, bringing pregnant Susan Banks with him. Stefano plots to derail Marlena's wedding, bringing back Roman, who is dying of a deadly virus. Claiming that he's the only one who can cure Roman, Stefano gains his release from jail, and takes the gang to his island compound, sending John and Hope into the jungle to retrieve a rare orchid needed for Roman's cure. Upon return to Salem, Stefano agrees to give Roman the cure, only if Marlena will agree to be his friend.
When Stefano is hospitalized after having a heart attack at Kristen's funeral, Hope decides to dig up the four lost years she spent at Maison Blanche. Rather than tell Hope the truth, Stefano activates the microchip in her neck, transforming her back into Gina. Forgetting all about Bo, Hope/Gina kidnaps her old lover and partner in crime, John, on his honeymoon, and makes love to him for two hot days onboard her secret submarine. When Stefano interrupts and sends John ashore, Hope/Gina seduces him. Soon afterwards, the real Princess Gina locks Stefano and Hope in her castle, and Hope discovers that she's pregnant - but who's the father?
2000s
The latest satellite transmission causes Hope to lose all memory of her recent escapades as Gina, so she doesn't remember that she's estranged from Bo when she and Stefano are rescued and returned to Salem. Stefano wonders if he is the father of Hope's baby, and engineers a complex baby swap, involving Dr. Rolf's pregnant, alcoholic niece, Marlo, and Lexie and Abe Carver. In the fallout, Hope and Bo are reunited with their son, and John and Roman join forces to take Stefano down. But he escapes!
Like the Phoenix that is his family crest, Stefano always rises from the ashes to regain his power. He is the seventh son of the seventh son, and according to a 300-year-old DiMera legend, such a son will never die. Of course, that didn't stop his own son, Tony, from trying to kill him, or at least saying that he killed him. The last time Stefano was presumed dead, Tony confessed that he was responsible for the state of his burned and mutilated corpse, having drained Stefano's blood to cure his own blood disease.
In 2006, John and Marlena tracked Stefano to an oxygen tent in an Italian hospital to learn that Stefano was EJ's father. A few months later, EJ brought ailing Stefano to Salem for a clandestine kidney transplant, but it didn't do the trick. Stefano needs stem cells, and has set his sights on pregnant Sami as his donor. Despite EJ and Sami's efforts to put an end to the Brady/DiMera feud, Stefano warns that this is impossible, until all wrongs between the two families have been righted. Mistaking Sami for Colleen Brady, who was taken from his father Santo DiMera, Stefano cryptically refers her to Grandpa Shawn - he knows the true roots of the feud. According to Stefano, the only way to end hostilities would be for Sami to marry EJ, and raise her child as a DiMera. But that's not what Sami had in mind...