Speaker 1: When a nineteen year old's car was found abandoned on
Speaker 1: a bridge at the Jersey Shore, speculation ran wild keys.
Speaker 2: We're in the ignition, no sign of foul play, nothing.
Speaker 3: Sarah was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1: But was Sarah Stern trying not to be found?
Speaker 4: Sarah talked about possibly starting a new life in Toronto
Speaker 4: and moving away.
Speaker 5: Her mother had left her a lot of cash.
Speaker 1: It all added up to one giant mystery.
Speaker 4: You don't know what today.
Speaker 1: To be honest, today we're at the Jersey Shore in
Speaker 1: the community of Neptune City for BFFs the disappearance of
Speaker 1: Sarah Stern. I'm Sloan Glass and this is American homicide.
Speaker 1: As a note, this podcast also contains subject matter which
Speaker 1: may not be suitable for all audiences. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: The Jersey Shore, What did it give us? Snookie, Polly
Speaker 1: d and Jwow. But what you say see on TV
Speaker 1: and what really happens in real life are two completely
Speaker 1: different things.
Speaker 5: The Jersey Shore is not quite what you would expect
Speaker 5: to see.
Speaker 1: Journalist Tom Davis grew up on the Jersey Shore and
Speaker 1: now covers the area for Patch dot Com.
Speaker 5: It's actually a very conservative, traditional community, that's mixed in
Speaker 5: with a tourist atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Like clockwork, every summer, tourists and beachgoers take over the area.
Speaker 5: During the summertime, I would say the population probably for
Speaker 5: druples at least, especially on the weekends. It almost develops
Speaker 5: a little bit more of a Miami Field to it.
Speaker 1: The party atmosphere every summer takes over the mini bars, restaurants,
Speaker 1: and of course the beaches.
Speaker 5: The beaches are the best place to beat.
Speaker 1: The shore features forty four beaches in total, and if
Speaker 1: you're like Tom and live there year round, you look
Speaker 1: forward to the off season.
Speaker 5: For a lot of people, they really kind of hate
Speaker 5: the crowd, so they actually like the fall and the
Speaker 5: winter bigg This is obviously a lot emptier, it's a
Speaker 5: lot less crowded. I always called it the void between
Speaker 5: Labor Day and Moral Day because literally nothing happens here.
Speaker 1: But in the early morning hours of December third, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: something did happen. A ridehair driver noticed an abandoned Oldsmobile
Speaker 1: sedan atop a bridge heading out of town and called
Speaker 1: nine one one.
Speaker 5: Mine one one, where is the emergency?
Speaker 1: I kut on the Belmore Bridge through the car that
Speaker 1: debanded gets off the side in the road.
Speaker 4: Was there anybody inside the vehicle?
Speaker 2: I look down.
Speaker 1: That tall bridge spans the Shark River, which despite its name,
Speaker 1: isn't known for having sharks.
Speaker 5: The water underneath is a Shark River, which is a
Speaker 5: very shallow river. The might do some fishing there. There's
Speaker 5: really no swimming or anything like that.
Speaker 1: When police got to the car, they found no one inside,
Speaker 1: so they contacted its owner, Michael Stern.
Speaker 3: About three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 6: Was kind of a squeaky voice saying they were from
Speaker 6: the Mamouth County Sheriff's Department and they were looking for
Speaker 6: the owner of an oldsmobile.
Speaker 1: Michael lived in Neptune City, New Jersey year round with
Speaker 1: his daughter Sarah, but at the time he was out
Speaker 1: of town. He was vacationing in Orlando.
Speaker 3: And I said, yeah, you know, Sarah drives that car.
Speaker 1: Sarah was his nineteen year old daughter. She was in
Speaker 1: college studying media production.
Speaker 3: Well, Sarah was into the arts.
Speaker 6: She was taking television production, art classes, pottery photography.
Speaker 1: Well, her dad was in Orlando, Sarah was back home.
Speaker 3: Sarah was basically by herself, and she didn't like to
Speaker 3: be by herself.
Speaker 1: Yes, but sometimes, like everyone, Sarah just needed her space.
Speaker 6: When she was fifteen, her mom passed away cancer and
Speaker 6: it was a tough time for her.
Speaker 1: It was very tough. Sarah's mom had a long bout
Speaker 1: with breast cancer.
Speaker 3: And Sarah, you know, she was a champ.
Speaker 6: She loved her mom and she did everything she could
Speaker 6: to keep for comfort when she was going through chemo.
Speaker 1: And sadly, her mom ultimately lost that fight. When Sarah
Speaker 1: was a freshman in high school.
Speaker 3: She struggled at the time, you know, losing her mom.
Speaker 1: Sarah took that pain and channeled it into her artwork.
Speaker 6: So she had to kind of find herself and that's
Speaker 6: when she threw herself into art, drawing, photography, and the media,
Speaker 6: and her talent just blossomed. Within a couple of years,
Speaker 6: she was doing things that I thought were incredible.
Speaker 1: According to Michael, as a widower and father of a
Speaker 1: teenage daughter, he thought the only thing to do was
Speaker 1: to pull Sarah close and cope together.
Speaker 6: Our family basically was Sarah and myself and always a dog.
Speaker 6: She loved her dog Buddy, and she dressed Buddy up
Speaker 6: in different outfits like put jackets on them in sweatshirts, and.
Speaker 3: The buddy dressed up for Halloween. That was her best friend.
Speaker 1: With Sarah and Buddy back home, Michael spent the early
Speaker 1: morning hours of December third, twenty sixteen, trying to figure
Speaker 1: out why Sarah's carr was left on a bridge some
Speaker 1: two miles from their home.
Speaker 6: I tried the house phone and her cell phone, and
Speaker 6: I wasn't getting anything through.
Speaker 1: Then he did what every father of a nineteen year
Speaker 1: old would do. He sent her a text message.
Speaker 6: The messages were coming up green as opposed to blue
Speaker 6: on an iPhone, so I thought, maybe your phone was off,
Speaker 6: or you know, the battery life had gone down.
Speaker 1: By then, the police had gone to Sarah's home and
Speaker 1: already did a search.
Speaker 3: No one was there except for the dog.
Speaker 1: The police found Buddy locked in his cage, which was
Speaker 1: something Sarah's dad said she would only do when strangers
Speaker 1: were at the house.
Speaker 6: It was kind of odd that he would have been
Speaker 6: in there, but Sarah was nowhere to be found. At
Speaker 6: that point, we just didn't know what was going on,
Speaker 6: so we just packed up and threw everything in the
Speaker 6: car and started driving north.
Speaker 1: The sixteen hour ride from Orlando to Neptune City gave
Speaker 1: Michael plenty of time to think about what could have happened.
Speaker 6: There was a million scenarios going through my head. Did
Speaker 6: the car stall with something wrong with it, you know?
Speaker 6: Did Sarah have somebody with her that might have abducted her.
Speaker 1: There was also the terrifying thought that Sarah, who was
Speaker 1: struggling with the loss of her mother, possibly took her
Speaker 1: own life.
Speaker 3: We had no answers, no answers at all.
Speaker 1: Early that morning, the police sent a team of divers
Speaker 1: into the frigid waters of the Shark River to look
Speaker 1: for any signs of Sarah.
Speaker 3: The tides go in and out very very quick.
Speaker 6: It's cold, it's rocky in some areas, and it's marshy
Speaker 6: and other areas.
Speaker 1: By the time the sun came up that Saturday morning,
Speaker 1: there was still no sign of Sarah and no evidence
Speaker 1: of what could have happened.
Speaker 4: There were a couple of theories that law enforcement believed.
Speaker 1: Early on, Alex Napoliello covered the story for NJ dot
Speaker 1: com and the Star Ledger newspaper.
Speaker 4: It's possible her car had broken down and she flagged
Speaker 4: the wrong person for help, and someone did something terrible
Speaker 4: to her, possibly threw her body off the bridge. And
Speaker 4: I remember early reports talking to sources off the record,
Speaker 4: that there was belief that she had jumped off the bridge.
Speaker 4: So then law enforcement wants to start putting the pieces together.
Speaker 4: What was her mental state leading up to this?
Speaker 3: You know, was she sad?
Speaker 4: Was she depressed?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: According to witnesses who last saw Sarah, she was not
Speaker 1: in a good place mentally.
Speaker 4: Police talked to her neighbor across the street, Robin Draper,
Speaker 4: and what Robin had told them was that Sarah had
Speaker 4: seemed a little off that day and not necessarily herself.
Speaker 4: Sarah was over at their home earlier in the day
Speaker 4: and she had dropped off some bins of her belongings.
Speaker 1: But Sarah didn't just drop all of some of her stuff.
Speaker 1: She also dropped some hints about where she might be going.
Speaker 4: Sarah talked about possibly starting a new life in Toronto
Speaker 4: and moving away. If she's getting rid of these belongings
Speaker 4: while her father is vacationing, maybe she wanted to leave
Speaker 4: town without necessarily notifying her family that she was leaving.
Speaker 1: One of the last people to see Sarah Stern before
Speaker 1: her disappearance was one of her best friends, Liam Mcatasne.
Speaker 4: Liam Mcatazsne was one of Sarah's closest friends growing up.
Speaker 4: They lived about a block away from each other. They
Speaker 4: were childhood friends and they did what normal kids do,
Speaker 4: play video games, talk on the phone, text with each other.
Speaker 1: The two had one of those rare lifelong friendships. They
Speaker 1: met at Sunday School when they were just six years old.
Speaker 4: They were close and they remained close up until the
Speaker 4: day she disappeared.
Speaker 1: Liam was with Sarah that afternoon as she moved those
Speaker 1: beens filled with her personal belongings into a neighbor's house.
Speaker 1: When detectives questioned him, he painted a bleak picture of
Speaker 1: Sarah's state of mind.
Speaker 7: In the past, she has had a tendency to have
Speaker 7: self destructive, suicidal behavior.
Speaker 4: He was telling law enforcement she wanted to move away.
Speaker 4: She wasn't happy, she was depressed.
Speaker 8: Over the past few months, she's been telling.
Speaker 7: Me how bad her relationship with her father is and
Speaker 7: how she just needs to get out of here.
Speaker 4: She had a rocky relationship with her father. There were
Speaker 4: some periods where you know, they fought and had disagreements.
Speaker 1: So let's say that one of Sarah's best friends was right,
Speaker 1: and she did leave to get away from her dad, Well,
Speaker 1: how could she afford it.
Speaker 4: On the day before Sarah's carr was found abandoned on
Speaker 4: the bridge, police learned that she I had gone to
Speaker 4: a bank during the day to withdraw money from a
Speaker 4: safety deposit box that she had.
Speaker 1: Liam said he went with her to the bank, but
Speaker 1: stayed in the car while Sarah went inside.
Speaker 4: She took out seven thousand dollars. What would a nineteen
Speaker 4: year old be doing with this money?
Speaker 1: What nineteen year old has thousands of dollars soft away
Speaker 1: in a safe deposit box.
Speaker 4: You don't know what to think, to be honest.
Speaker 1: Sarah's father also didn't know what to think of that cash.
Speaker 3: I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1: Well, here's what he learned. Sarah found those thousands of
Speaker 1: dollars in a shoe box inside their home, and this
Speaker 1: money was filthy and old from well before the US
Speaker 1: Treasury redesigned the twenty and fifty dollars bills.
Speaker 6: Her mother I'd squirreled away money, I guess for years.
Speaker 6: But she mentioned it to somebody and he got back
Speaker 6: to Sarah and.
Speaker 3: She found it.
Speaker 1: So Sarah Stern had some problems with her dad, and
Speaker 1: she had a pile of cash. So it makes perfect
Speaker 1: sense that she left town, but her dad wasn't buying it.
Speaker 6: You know, she just wasn't leaving her car on a
Speaker 6: bridge and leaving her suitcase and her passport. Her passport
Speaker 6: was up in her drawer where she kept it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, without a passport, Sarah would have no way to
Speaker 1: get into Canada.
Speaker 3: We just we didn't know. Then.
Speaker 6: It just left the big open wound.
Speaker 1: In the early hours of December third, twenty sixteen, nineteen
Speaker 1: year old Sarah Stearn's car turned up on a bridge
Speaker 1: near her home in Neptune City, New Jersey.
Speaker 2: There's really not a lot of room over there on
Speaker 2: the shoulder, so it's very, very odd for people to
Speaker 2: be stopping.
Speaker 3: On the bridge.
Speaker 1: Edward Kirshenbaum was the director of Public Safety for the
Speaker 1: Neptune City Police Department.
Speaker 2: He's bring the ignition with no sign of a driver
Speaker 2: or a pass sure, no sign of foul play. Nothing.
Speaker 1: And here's a bit of bad luck. Surveillance cameras near
Speaker 1: the bridge were not working that night, but a home
Speaker 1: security camera across from the Stearns house was working. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: for detectives, they couldn't make out anything other than the
Speaker 1: time Sarah's car came and left the house.
Speaker 2: You don't know what's going on, so you have to
Speaker 2: pull in every resource that you can to try to
Speaker 2: get to the inline of what happened.
Speaker 1: Hundreds of Sarah's friends and neighbors joined Sarah's best friend,
Speaker 1: Leah Mcatasne in the search for any sign of Sarah.
Speaker 2: The beaches in the lakes and the inlets were all
Speaker 2: searched by volunteers, so there was an all out effort
Speaker 2: by the community to see if they could locate anything
Speaker 2: that would give any indication of what happened to.
Speaker 1: Sarah stick but detectives were concerned about Sarah's bizarre behavior.
Speaker 1: The afternoon before she.
Speaker 2: Disappeared wasations with friend of Sarah's Liam mcintazie, where she
Speaker 2: may have had some type of suicidal tendency that she
Speaker 2: was upset with issues, maybe because of her mom's death.
Speaker 1: In fact, Liam was with her when she moved some
Speaker 1: of her stuff into a neighbor's house. The afternoon before
Speaker 1: she went missing.
Speaker 2: Sarah had dropped off bins of her personal belongings to
Speaker 2: be kept in the friend's basement. Sarah also gave a
Speaker 2: bin of footballs and basketballs or some type of equipment
Speaker 2: to kids in the neighborhood, so that was kind of odd.
Speaker 1: Liam told detectives that afternoon, the two went to the bank,
Speaker 1: got tacos for lunch, and returned to Sarah's house. They
Speaker 1: ate and then played video games until around four forty
Speaker 1: five PM. That's when Liam left for his job at
Speaker 1: a local steakhouse.
Speaker 2: Liam was the last person that Sarah had talked.
Speaker 1: To, and most concerning was what Liam told detectives about
Speaker 1: Sarah's state of mind.
Speaker 2: Sarah was unhappy with her home life, that her father
Speaker 2: was overbearing, that the relationship between Michael Stern and Sarah
Speaker 2: Sterne was not a good relationship.
Speaker 1: So naturally, detectives questioned her father, Michael, about his relationship
Speaker 1: with Sarah, and they were surprised by his response.
Speaker 2: Michael Sterne was an open book. He was forthcoming with
Speaker 2: everything that we discussed. Any type of telephone communication, whether
Speaker 2: it be text messages, their voicemails.
Speaker 1: And these messages didn't show any sort of conflict between them.
Speaker 1: Just before Sarah disappeared, she texted her dad, Hey Dad,
Speaker 1: good afternoon. What day are you coming back from Florida?
Speaker 1: Her text also contained emojis, a smiley face with sunglasses,
Speaker 1: a palm tree, and a little red car. Michael's response
Speaker 1: included a picture of a rainbow that had just appeared
Speaker 1: right around that time. He later sent a picture of
Speaker 1: Disney's Magic Kingdom, where he was vacationing. Sarah wrote back, Wow,
Speaker 1: the castle looked so pretty with the lights. She added
Speaker 1: a shooting star emoji. It was the last message he
Speaker 1: received from Sarah. So again, what's going on here?
Speaker 2: It's a parent sports nightmare. I couldn't imagine it myself,
Speaker 2: and my heart was breaking for him.
Speaker 1: At this point, all detectives knew for sure was that
Speaker 1: Sarah took out a large sum of money from the
Speaker 1: bank and then vanished.
Speaker 2: There was no utilization of any bank cars or anything
Speaker 2: that would give some kind of information that she had
Speaker 2: left the area, because without funding, how far can you
Speaker 2: go you have no car, So it was a unique case.
Speaker 2: There was nothing adding up.
Speaker 1: Even the surveillance footage from the bank showed Sarah smiling
Speaker 1: and waving to the manager as she left, it didn't
Speaker 1: exactly point to someone who was considering taking her own
Speaker 1: life or fleeing the country.
Speaker 2: There were no hardcore facts out there, so you had
Speaker 2: to use the totality of circumstances to just old fashioned
Speaker 2: police work, hoping that somebody says something, and just talking
Speaker 2: to everybody to try to put the pieces together.
Speaker 1: Journalist Alex Napoleello covered the story.
Speaker 4: Very early on. The reports coming to us from police
Speaker 4: was that Sarah was missing and that there wasn't anything
Speaker 4: suspicious about her disappearance. And then, sort of seemingly out
Speaker 4: of the blue, the Mammoth County Prosecutor's office puts out
Speaker 4: information that they are willing to pay anyone who would
Speaker 4: have information in her disappearance.
Speaker 1: That reward, which totaled five thousand dollars, caught everyone off guard.
Speaker 4: Now that struck us as a bit odd because usually
Speaker 4: those rewards are put out when there's a crime that
Speaker 4: has occurred.
Speaker 1: Reporters saw it as a sign that police no longer
Speaker 1: believe Sarah took off to Canada or her own life.
Speaker 4: And it was the first indication to us that maybe
Speaker 4: something the faarius had happened here.
Speaker 1: And then seven weeks after Sarah's disappearance, detectives got a
Speaker 1: mysterious lead from someone who went to high school with Sarah.
Speaker 2: Police father got information of a gentleman by the Marathony Curry.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about Anthony Curry. Like Sarah, he was
Speaker 1: nineteen years old and liked the arts at the time.
Speaker 1: He considered himself to be an aspiring horror movie maker
Speaker 1: and sort of looked the part. He was tall, with long,
Speaker 1: dark hair, wore dark clothing, and smoked cigarettes, but he
Speaker 1: wasn't exactly a loner. In high school, he was named
Speaker 1: most likely to become famous.
Speaker 2: Mister Curry met with detectives of the case and told
Speaker 2: them an incredible story.
Speaker 1: Incredible is an understatement. Anthony Curry told detectives about a
Speaker 1: bizarre conversation he had with a longtime friend about movies.
Speaker 1: This friend floated a movie idea past Anthony that involved
Speaker 1: robbing and killing someone.
Speaker 2: A scenario of parking a vehicle on the bridge, making
Speaker 2: hear that somebody committed suicide by jumping off the bridge
Speaker 2: into the water.
Speaker 1: This so called movie plot sounded all too familiar to detectives.
Speaker 2: It was a detail by detail description of what had
Speaker 2: happened to Sarah.
Speaker 1: Star, making things even more bizarre. This conversation with Anthony
Speaker 1: Curry happened on Thanksgiving twenty sixteen, just days before Sarah
Speaker 1: Stern went missing.
Speaker 2: Anthony came up with information that only somebody involved in
Speaker 2: the crime would know.
Speaker 1: And this person who shared this movie idea with Anthony, well,
Speaker 1: he was also no stranger to Sarah.
Speaker 2: It was a friend of Sarah's, Liam mcintazie.
Speaker 1: I know a lot has happened, so let's take a
Speaker 1: moment to reset. A week before Sarah disappeared, Anthony Curry
Speaker 1: alleges that Sarah's good friend, her best friend, Liam shared
Speaker 1: his idea for a movie about a young woman who
Speaker 1: was robbed, murdered, and then thrown off a bridge while
Speaker 1: her car was left on a bridge to appear like
Speaker 1: she took her own life. Things are getting really weird here,
Speaker 1: so just.
Speaker 2: The whole concept is beyond comprehension.
Speaker 1: And Anthony said he never thought about this conversation after
Speaker 1: it happened, that is, until he read about Sarah's mysterious disappearance.
Speaker 2: Mister Curry came forward too law enforcement because mister mcintassie
Speaker 2: continued to reach out for mister Curry.
Speaker 1: Leah mcintazzne told Anthony it was urgent they meet up,
Speaker 1: which is what caused Anthony to go to the cops.
Speaker 1: But again, Liam was one of Sarah's oldest and best
Speaker 1: and most devoted friends. Could he actually be involved in
Speaker 1: Sarah's disappearance? Was this just some sort of weird coincidence,
Speaker 1: or had Sarah and Liamp cooked up some sort of plan.
Speaker 2: This is just so off the choice that nobody knows
Speaker 2: what happened.
Speaker 1: So the police came up with a plan to learn
Speaker 1: the truth, and it involves some serious work on the
Speaker 1: part of Anthony Curry. If he could pull this off,
Speaker 1: it would make him famous for reasons no one in
Speaker 1: his high school could have ever imagined. A week before
Speaker 1: nineteen year old Sarah Stern went missing in December twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: Leamcatazzne told his friend Anthony Curry an idea for a movie.
Speaker 1: In this movie, a young woman is robbed and killed.
Speaker 1: Her body is then thrown off a bridge, all to
Speaker 1: make it look like she took her own life. Now
Speaker 1: back to reality, nobody was found when already searched the river.
Speaker 1: But since the rest of the movie plot sounded like
Speaker 1: what could have happened to Sarah Stearn, Anthony Curry went.
Speaker 2: To the cops, so they wired mister Curry up.
Speaker 1: Edward Kirshenbaum worked for the Neptune City Police Department, and
Speaker 1: a plan.
Speaker 2: Was put in placed by the investigative team for a
Speaker 2: meet between Liam mctazzie and Anthony Curry, with law enforcement
Speaker 2: wiring mister Curry and monitoring with audio and video the
Speaker 2: conversation that would take place.
Speaker 1: On January thirty first, twenty seventeen, seven weeks after Sarah
Speaker 1: Stearn's disappearance, Anthony Curry met Liam mcintasney in his car.
Speaker 1: The police listened from a safe distance in hopes of
Speaker 1: learning whether Liam's idea for a movie was actually his
Speaker 1: plan to murder Sarah.
Speaker 9: Don't he don't put you on to hide from the cops. Dude,
Speaker 9: you can't blame me for doing this, right. I got
Speaker 9: a few y real quick, right right.
Speaker 1: Off the bat. Liam Mcatazsney amped up the drama. He
Speaker 1: was nervous and asked to pat down Anthony Curry in
Speaker 1: case he was wearing a wire.
Speaker 8: No disrespect.
Speaker 9: I'll show you no disrespect, okay.
Speaker 1: Liam's pat down of Anthony didn't reveal anything because the
Speaker 1: police didn't wire him up. They wired up his car,
Speaker 1: so Liam had no idea their conversation was being recorded.
Speaker 9: I got the FBI on my ass. Dude, what are
Speaker 9: they questioning? Oh yeah, a lot? Well what killing there?
Speaker 1: The FBI was not involved in the investigation, So what
Speaker 1: was Liam talking about? Was this another page from his script?
Speaker 1: Was this all again to him? And then police heard this?
Speaker 8: I did something really dumb.
Speaker 9: Then I planned it out half a year and the
Speaker 9: worst part is we threw off the bridge and the
Speaker 9: body never showed up.
Speaker 1: Well that was pretty shocking, and who is we? Then
Speaker 1: Liam shared what happened the afternoon before Sarah disappeared.
Speaker 9: I'm hanging out with her. We went to the bank.
Speaker 9: She took some money out, not all for money.
Speaker 1: Liam said. After Sarah took seven thousand dollars out of
Speaker 1: her safe deposit box, the two went back to Sarah's
Speaker 1: and that's when Liam put his plan into action.
Speaker 9: We're counting out and then she goes to walk out
Speaker 9: the front door.
Speaker 8: I choked her out, like I just I picked her up.
Speaker 9: And had her just like dangling off the ground, and
Speaker 9: she just herself said my name, and then that was it.
Speaker 9: And her dog laid there and watched as I killed her.
Speaker 9: Didn't do anything.
Speaker 1: That's really hard to hear and makes my stomach drop.
Speaker 1: Such a sad ending to Sarah's life and the police
Speaker 1: could not believe what they were hearing. Sarah Stearn's friend
Speaker 1: and neighbor, Liam mcintosney, very nonchalantly described how he killed
Speaker 1: Sarah with his own two hands.
Speaker 8: She was just laying there, having a seizure or something.
Speaker 9: I got a shirt and I just shoved it down
Speaker 9: her throat so she wouldn't throw up her anything, and
Speaker 9: held my finger over her nose.
Speaker 8: And it took me like a half an hour.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to listen to this because he is
Speaker 1: so cold, But Liam went on. He said he ran
Speaker 1: out of time. He had to be at work at
Speaker 1: five pm, so he dragged Sarah's body to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and left her there. And that's where Liam's accomplice comes
Speaker 1: into the story. His roommate, Preston Taylor. According to Liam,
Speaker 1: Preston was in on the plan. They had actually been
Speaker 1: planning to rob and kill Sarah for six months.
Speaker 9: You are the only person on the planet that not
Speaker 9: besides Preston, and Preston doesn't know.
Speaker 3: That you know.
Speaker 1: So if what he is saying is true, then while
Speaker 1: Liam was at work, Preston entered Sarah's house through her
Speaker 1: back door and then moved her body to a bushy
Speaker 1: area in the backyard.
Speaker 9: I get off work, Donn Preston, and I go over
Speaker 9: to her house. Then we take her body out of
Speaker 9: the bushes and drag it over to her back fence,
Speaker 9: and I crawl get into her car and I back up.
Speaker 9: She had There's a security camera across the street, so
Speaker 9: I had to back I had to act like her.
Speaker 9: I watched her. Every time she backed out, she does
Speaker 9: the same thing. So I backed out exactly like she
Speaker 9: did and drove off.
Speaker 1: Liam still hasn't said anything that establishes a clear motive.
Speaker 1: His story is so brutal and so nonchalant at the
Speaker 1: same time, it's hard to believe it's true. And then
Speaker 1: there's another thing. Somehow Liam dodged the security cameras, which
Speaker 1: wasn't easy considering where he put the body.
Speaker 8: Put her in the passenger seat of her own car.
Speaker 1: With a seatbelt around. Sarah's dead body in the passenger
Speaker 1: seat of her own car, Liam said he drove to
Speaker 1: the bridge over the Shark River.
Speaker 9: I go up, open the door on hooker, pull her out,
Speaker 9: start dragging her to throw her over, and then cars
Speaker 9: start coming up.
Speaker 8: I seeing like headlights coming.
Speaker 9: I try to get her over and I can't my
Speaker 9: leg up like so now I'm limping my legs up
Speaker 9: and there's three cars coming up.
Speaker 1: Liam said he freaked out and dragged Sarah's body back
Speaker 1: to the car, pushing her into the passenger seat and
Speaker 1: signaling to his roommate pressed in for help. From the
Speaker 1: way he described it, Liam did all of this with
Speaker 1: no regard for Sarah. It was it's like she was
Speaker 1: no longer a person, but just an object, no longer
Speaker 1: his best friend, just a thing.
Speaker 9: The two of us throw the body over and then
Speaker 9: we're out. This is the thing about there's so much
Speaker 9: you can't account for. You don't know until it happens.
Speaker 1: Liam then explained how he and Preston stole a safe
Speaker 1: from Sarah along with that money Sarah took out from
Speaker 1: her safe deposit box.
Speaker 9: That's not even the worst part. The worst part of
Speaker 9: it is I thought I was walking out fifty grand,
Speaker 9: one hundred grand in my pocket. She only had ten
Speaker 9: grand and this money I don't know if it was
Speaker 9: birth or something.
Speaker 8: It's old money, terrible quality.
Speaker 1: That's the worst part. He's upset about the money. Well,
Speaker 1: if you remember those twenty and fifty dollars bills looked
Speaker 1: old and beaten up, which upset Liam.
Speaker 8: I don't even know if I can put any of it.
Speaker 1: In the ban out this sickening discussion with Liam, Anthony
Speaker 1: Curry kept repeating, it's like a movie. It's like a movie, man,
Speaker 1: and Liam agreed, to.
Speaker 9: Your life, you might as well make it. What are
Speaker 9: you gonna list on? Foreign ass life?
Speaker 1: That's when Liam said he needed to go and exited
Speaker 1: the car. But then seconds later Liam turned around and
Speaker 1: ran back to Anthony's car. Liam knocked on Anthony's window
Speaker 1: and looked worried.
Speaker 8: There he there, got ahead, everything got They're there.
Speaker 1: Liam found his keys in Anthony's car, grabbed them and left.
Speaker 1: Anthony exhaled, lit up another cigarette, and drove back home,
Speaker 1: wondering how on earth this horror movie plot Liam shared
Speaker 1: with him on Thanksgiving may have turned into a real
Speaker 1: life murder. As for the detective, they also tried to
Speaker 1: process what they heard.
Speaker 2: It was a detailed accounting of what he, along with
Speaker 2: President Taylor did to Sarah start Ed.
Speaker 1: Kirshenbaum of the Neptune City Police Department was shocked not
Speaker 1: just at what Liam said, but how he said it.
Speaker 2: It was a chilling account with no remorse, no emotion.
Speaker 1: With Liam mctasne on tape detailing what he did to
Speaker 1: Sarah Stearn. You would think there would have been enough
Speaker 1: evidence to charge him with murder, but this story was
Speaker 1: far from over.
Speaker 3: They spotted somebody but looked like Sarah.
Speaker 1: I got a good look right in her face, stared
Speaker 1: right into her eyes.
Speaker 8: Away and looking at you right now, and she turned
Speaker 8: her head duck down an alleyway. I said, I don't
Speaker 8: know what that is, but that girl did not.
Speaker 3: Want to be seen. I just you know, I was
Speaker 3: beside myself.
Speaker 4: I had never seen anything like that. As a reporter
Speaker 4: covering crime for many years.
Speaker 1: I'm Sloane Glass. Join me for part two of BFFs,
Speaker 1: the Disappearance of Sarah Stern, as we learn what really
Speaker 1: happened in the small beach town of Neptune City. That's
Speaker 1: next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American
Speaker 1: Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at
Speaker 1: gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass
Speaker 1: and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Speaker 1: Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show
Speaker 1: is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The
Speaker 1: series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with
Speaker 1: additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Kristin Melcurie. Our iheartyap is Ali Perry and
Speaker 1: Jessica Crimechack. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Dave
Speaker 1: Seya and Britt Robashow. Additional editing support from Nico Ruka,
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Speaker 1: composed by Oliver Bains of Noisier Music Library provided by
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