The Betrayal of Sarah Stern

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Speaker 13 Tonight, on dateline.

Speaker 14 I heard my mom crying. She said that they found Sarah's car on the bridge.

Speaker 15 Nobody could find her, and her phone was off.

Speaker 17 You have to start working worst-case scenarios.

Speaker 14 Did she jump off the bridge?

Speaker 18 I was just sure hysterical.

Speaker 19 This was a huge search. Hundreds of people came.

Speaker 20 A lot of people.

Speaker 17 We had state police, we had the sheriff's department, we had divers.

Speaker 14 This is things you see on TV, not things that happen

Speaker 14 to you.

Speaker 22 I looked at her right in the face, just like I'm looking at you right now.

Speaker 23 That girl's alive.

Speaker 24 Sarah's whole deal was my thing.

Speaker 25 He explained that he had studied her movements.

Speaker 17 The plan was to take her money.

Speaker 13 A case that would tear a tight-knit town apart.

Speaker 10 Evil.

Speaker 26 Pure evil.

Speaker 27 That hurt's never going to be over.

Speaker 29 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Date Live.

Speaker 13 Here's Keith Morrison with The Betrayal of Sarah Stern.

Speaker 30 There was something wrong on the bridge.

Speaker 33 It was 2.45 a.m., December 3rd, 2016.

Speaker 35 An old town on the Jersey shore called Neptune City.

Speaker 36 It was bitter cold.

Speaker 37 Dark.

Speaker 38 It was an Uber driver who saw the car just sitting there halfway across the bridge.

Speaker 39 911, where's the emergency? Actually on the Belmore Bridge, right after heading south in the middle of the bridge, there's a car that's abandoned. It's off to the side of the road.

Speaker 40 So what kind of car is it?

Speaker 39 It kind of looks like an old beat-up, light tan-colored, like, sedan.

Speaker 28 They sent a squad car out for a look.

Speaker 37 The cop got close.

Speaker 28 It was unlocked.

Speaker 8 Keys in the ignition.

Speaker 4 No sign of the driver.

Speaker 41 Two, three feet away was a railing, and beyond it, a straight drop to the night-black current surging out to sea.

Speaker 11 What happened here?

Speaker 30 They ran the place, discovered the car was registered to a 96-year-old lifelong local resident named Lillian Stern.

Speaker 11 But she hadn't used her car that day.

Speaker 1 She'd loaned it to her 19-year-old granddaughter. Her name, Sarah.

Speaker 47 Sarah Stern.

Speaker 4 A thousand miles south at Disney World, her dad Mike was on vacation with his girlfriend, Christine.

Speaker 5 He was awakened by his phone.

Speaker 26 3 o'clock in the morning, and they just asked, does Sarah drive the Oldsmobile? And I said, yeah.

Speaker 50 Well, the call ended.

Speaker 51 Just like that. Yeah.

Speaker 8 After the call dropped, Mike called back and got a recording at the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office.

Speaker 52 So panic beginning to stir, he phoned a nephew.

Speaker 54 who happened to be a Neptune first responder.

Speaker 26 He called back about 10 minutes later later and said, yeah, they found Sarah's car up on the bridge. She wasn't in it.

Speaker 11 And then the terror set in.

Speaker 19 Mike and Christine jumped in their car and began the 16-hour drive home.

Speaker 56 God, I can't imagine what that drive back was like.

Speaker 15 It was a lot of crying and

Speaker 59 just thinking and talking.

Speaker 1 Well, you don't know.

Speaker 26 No. We were getting calls in from the police department asking questions.
And, well, I said, I don't know.

Speaker 30 While Christine drove, Mike frantically texted: Sarah, what's going on?

Speaker 48 Why is your phone off?

Speaker 60 Call me when you get this message.

Speaker 31 Things happen faster in a small town than the big city.

Speaker 61 The police department, hello! Anybody home?

Speaker 62 Announce yourself, please.

Speaker 36 Officers checked the Stern home.

Speaker 62 Except for checking the house.

Speaker 38 It was empty, except for Sarah's beloved dog, Buddy, in his crate.

Speaker 18 Michael called me that night, 2:30, 3 o'clock in the morning, to tell me that the car was on the bridge.

Speaker 18 My thoughts were not good.

Speaker 30 Robin Draper, an old friend of the Sterns, lived across the street.

Speaker 61 How much do you know so far?

Speaker 44 Officers walked over and asked her about Sarah.

Speaker 62 What mindset was she in today when she drove? You didn't see it. Did anybody in your family talk to her this morning?

Speaker 61 Today

Speaker 69 she texted me.

Speaker 18 She said, can I bring some stuff over for it's my mother's.

Speaker 70 I said, sure.

Speaker 62 Is she depressed?

Speaker 70 Is she you is she I I think she's suicidal.

Speaker 71 Is she

Speaker 62 not suicidal in any way, do you think?

Speaker 18 I don't know.

Speaker 44 Robin told the officers Sarah had come by the house earlier in the day with her friend Liam McCatazny.

Speaker 19 They'd left a container of Sarah's things with her daughter, Carly.

Speaker 71 She's alone on Holly 41.

Speaker 73 So the officers drove over to Liam's place to see if he could help.

Speaker 74 You're Liam?

Speaker 62 You got a second? Can I come in and talk to you real quick?

Speaker 71 Yeah, no problem, boss.

Speaker 62 Is Sarah here by chance? No. When was the last time you talked to her?

Speaker 75 I was with her today.

Speaker 62 What time? Uh, before I went to work.

Speaker 61 We'll turn some light on if you don't mind.

Speaker 2 I mean,

Speaker 62 we went to get food today.

Speaker 32 Liam said he hadn't seen Sarah since late afternoon.

Speaker 62 Soon as

Speaker 61 you hear anything, call the Neptune City or Neptune Township.

Speaker 62 Please want to let us know. Thank you.

Speaker 36 Mike Stern had notified his extended family, including Sarah's cousins, Lindsay and Lauren Barr.

Speaker 77 What was it like to hear that for the two of you?

Speaker 15 Instant panic.

Speaker 59 Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 78 I tried calling her phone, sending her texts. Didn't answer, which was automatically weird because she was glued to her phone.

Speaker 15 I left the house in my pajamas, got in my car, and raced down to the where they said they found her car to see if we could find anything, see anything.

Speaker 81 Just hours later, they were gathered with most of the family at Mike and Sarah's house.

Speaker 18 Family was there. His sisters, Sarah's cousins.
There was about 30 to 40 people.

Speaker 28 All kind of frantic.

Speaker 83 All kind of like, what's going on?

Speaker 4 Sarah's friends and family began to to imagine all too many things,

Speaker 72 including Robin Draper's daughter, Carly, a lifelong friend of Sarah's.

Speaker 14 I heard my mom on the phone crying downstairs, and she said that they found Sarah's car on the bridge.

Speaker 80 You know the bridge?

Speaker 14 I went down there after it.

Speaker 45 That morning?

Speaker 55 Did your mind go at all to the idea that she may have jumped off the bridge?

Speaker 14 It was one of the thoughts in my head. I was like, did she jump off the bridge?

Speaker 14 I didn't know.

Speaker 28 Meanwhile, Sarah's father, on his agonizing drive north, worried that Sarah might have done something terribly, fatally rash.

Speaker 26 Because you just don't know. Because the keys are in the car.
The car was operational.

Speaker 26 And

Speaker 26 Sarah was missing.

Speaker 86 And it was like two, three feet from that parapet over

Speaker 16 the water.

Speaker 81 So Mike imagined awful things on his 16-hour drive home.

Speaker 4 But surely, neither his imagination nor any other could stoop so deep as what you're about to see.

Speaker 87 A case that started on a bridge with a car

Speaker 8 and ended inside another.

Speaker 68 What dark possibilities lie in the human heart, primed both for loyalty and betrayal?

Speaker 13 When we come back,

Speaker 13 where was Sarah? Maybe there was a simple explanation. Everyone knew she wanted to move up north.

Speaker 26 She said she wants to go to Canada.

Speaker 13 But if she'd done that, wouldn't she have told someone?

Speaker 14 A very tightly knit community.

Speaker 5 While police officers on the Route 35 Bridge were trying to make sense of what happened in the early dark of December 3rd, Sarah's dad Mike and his girlfriend Christine, were frantically driving up Highway 95 from Florida, their minds whirling among dreadful possibilities.

Speaker 26 We didn't know what was going on at that point, so it was kind of a panic.

Speaker 93 But to the experts in Neptune, the possibilities were limited.

Speaker 17 The facts that we had at the time that we could go on was that there was either a possible suicide, that she had jumped off the bridge, or that she just left her car abandoned.

Speaker 17 That's the facts that we had.

Speaker 87 It was hardly surprising that in the little town of Neptune City, the public safety director, Ed Kirschenbaum, knew Sarah.

Speaker 17 I knew Sarah. She worked at a popular restaurant in Neptune City with my daughter.

Speaker 55 You know her well enough to know whether or not she would be a suicide risk or.

Speaker 17 You know, all I know of Sarah, when I saw her at work, a very nice person.

Speaker 93 But jumped from a bridge into the Shark River?

Speaker 53 Why would she?

Speaker 72 She'd been happy, on the brink of new possibilities.

Speaker 93 And Neptune City on the Jersey shore had always been her safe place.

Speaker 3 Good place to grow up?

Speaker 37 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 14 I'm happy that I grew up here.

Speaker 52 Here, they say the sand gets in your shoes.

Speaker 95 People tend to stay.

Speaker 34 Families count back generations.

Speaker 58 Friendships last whole lifetimes.

Speaker 96 Everybody knows each other, Neptune.

Speaker 14 It's a very tightly knit community. And if you don't know that person, someone you know is going to know that person.

Speaker 93 And the block where Carly, her brother Sam, and Sarah grew up was even tighter, A kind of kid heaven.

Speaker 7 That's Sarah with the dark bangs.

Speaker 14 Our age gap between like all the kids was probably like six years at the most. And we'd all just play together after school.
We're a neighborhood gang. We've known Sarah our whole life.

Speaker 14 And she was like my older sister. Like we were like sisters.

Speaker 96 She's basically family. And like if I wanted to play catch or something, I could always just ask Sarah.

Speaker 11 That Sarah was always there.

Speaker 11 That she was there at all was kind of amazing.

Speaker 13 A gift.

Speaker 96 Sarah?

Speaker 26 She was a miracle child.

Speaker 32 The only child of Mike Stern and his wife Carla.

Speaker 26 She didn't think she could have children and

Speaker 26 finally

Speaker 26 Sarah came along.

Speaker 18 I mean I fell in love with this kid.

Speaker 43 Robin, Carly and Sam's mom, was there from the beginning.

Speaker 18 Carla and I raised our kids together. It was amazing.

Speaker 45 Did they hang out at your place a lot?

Speaker 97 They did.

Speaker 26 We had a pool, sometimes 10, 12 kids, just splashing around for hours and hours.

Speaker 26 It was a good time.

Speaker 94 Until it wasn't.

Speaker 43 In 2013, when Sarah was just 15 years old, her mom, Carla, died after a long struggle with cancer.

Speaker 72 What was it like when her mother died?

Speaker 14 Sarah was at our house that night, and all I remember is just Sarah just hearing her sobbing downstairs.

Speaker 43 I didn't know what to do. Did you know what had happened?

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 43 Yeah.

Speaker 43 Just

Speaker 14 hard and it was sad.

Speaker 58 But Sarah managed.

Speaker 52 Instead of turning into her grief, she reached out, got even closer to her grandmother, and her dog Buddy became her constant companion.

Speaker 14 She loved Buddy so much.

Speaker 15 She really did.

Speaker 95 She grew closer, too, to classmates at Neptune High School.

Speaker 41 Her friend Liam, his twin Seamus, Preston Taylor.

Speaker 72 Preston took her to the junior prom.

Speaker 72 Just friends.

Speaker 1 She also made a different kind of friend, one you wouldn't necessarily expect.

Speaker 89 After Carla's death, Mike found Christine and fell in love. Sarah could see Christine was good for her dad, and maybe her too.

Speaker 59 I know how Sarah felt. I had gone through the same thing she did.

Speaker 40 Yeah.

Speaker 59 You know, my mom passed away when I was young, and it wasn't easy at first.

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 5 And maybe that's why Sarah so embraced what became a genuine passion.

Speaker 14 I think making art made her mentally escape from that and be creative and can create any kind of happiness she wanted to.

Speaker 28 There was a whole other world for her. Yeah.

Speaker 26 Where Sarah picked up her talent, we still don't know.

Speaker 41 Like it was a natural thing for her.

Speaker 26 It seemed natural. What she turned out was...
It's pretty good stuff. We have some really, really neat stuff.
She just started drawing and any medium.

Speaker 31 Beautiful images.

Speaker 30 Magical even.

Speaker 10 She started going to conventions to meet online stars and artists.

Speaker 36 Got to meet YouTube stars like Jenna Marbles.

Speaker 26 There was a VidCon convention up in Toronto and she fell in love with the city. And she said she, well, she wants to go to Canada.

Speaker 102 When she was ready, Mike told her.

Speaker 89 Yes, but soon, she said.

Speaker 44 And then it was that Friday, December 2nd, when Sarah dropped by the draper's house.

Speaker 14 I heard her walk inside and she was like calling my mom's name, but I was the only one home. And she said that she had texted my mom

Speaker 14 that she was leaving a box here, and my mom said it was okay. Sarah was talking about her dad, how she had like lost respect for him.

Speaker 86 Did that seem strange to you?

Speaker 14 Not really, because I knew that they like, you know, argued, but I argue with my parents all the time.

Speaker 28 Yeah. So it wasn't.

Speaker 3 So it wasn't wasn't anything unusual. No.

Speaker 63 As Carly told it, Sarah left that bin, and then she was gone.

Speaker 95 Running errands, she said, in her grandmother's old car.

Speaker 88 The very car that Uber driver spotted after midnight, abandoned, halfway across the Route 35 bridge.

Speaker 39 And was there anybody inside the vehicle? I look now.

Speaker 93 The news spread through the early morning.

Speaker 55 First responders descended on the bridge and the Shark River beneath it.

Speaker 7 There was a depressing logic to the scene that greeted them.

Speaker 19 It wouldn't be the first time some desperate soul had taken a final leap.

Speaker 10 But this was bright, happy Sarah Stern.

Speaker 50 So it couldn't be that, could it?

Speaker 13 Coming up, the eerie last images of Sarah just before she disappeared.

Speaker 85 Could you tell what her demeanor was? Did she seem frightened or anything like that?

Speaker 13 When dateline continues.

Speaker 11 Just hours after Sarah Stern's car was found abandoned on the Route 35 bridge, the rising sun revealed dozens of first responders searching for her.

Speaker 5 Many braving the frigid waters of the Shark River.

Speaker 17 We had called the state police, we had the sheriff's department there, we had divers enter the water, a vessel with sightsew in her, plus an aviation unit from the state police.

Speaker 92 We got called out at around around 5 a.m. that morning to do a search for someone who they believed went off the bridge.
We had no idea who it was. The general conception was that someone had jumped.

Speaker 7 Fran Hines is an EMS and rescue director.

Speaker 92 We were in it a couple of hours and somebody walked up to me and they said, you know who we're looking for, right? And I go, no, who are we looking for?

Speaker 92 And they said, Sarah Stern, which just... just put a lump in my throat.

Speaker 1 Understandable that, because.

Speaker 92 Sarah lived two houses away from it, their whole family. Her father, Michael, was a good friend of mine.
And then all I could think about was, you know, how's he going to feel now?

Speaker 29 Well, the water search was underway.

Speaker 84 Cops in town were talking to anyone who might know anything.

Speaker 104 Is that basically what Sarah's following around?

Speaker 84 They encountered a few of Sarah's friends, Preston, Sean, and Liam, clustered on a porch.

Speaker 104 We just want to make sure she's okay.

Speaker 87 Body cams picked up their questions.

Speaker 38 Did Sarah just take off?

Speaker 28 Were her pals covering for her?

Speaker 104 Nobody's going to get in any trouble here. Trust me.
We just got to to make sure that Sarah's all right.

Speaker 104 And if you've got any other information, you've got to throw it out at us so we can go a little further, you know?

Speaker 48 Sarah's friend Liam confirmed for police what Robin and Carly Draper had said, that Sarah had left a bin of her things at the Draper house.

Speaker 46 And then, he said, he and Sarah went to lunch together.

Speaker 53 Meanwhile, back at the inlet, the search of the frigid Shark River was turning up nothing.

Speaker 41 As the winter sun set, it became too cold and dangerous to continue operations, and the search was called off for the day.

Speaker 92 I didn't want to go home, you know. I didn't want to drive past Mike's house

Speaker 92 and not have some kind of closure for him.

Speaker 5 But Mike and Christine were still making their way home from Florida.

Speaker 59 We left around 3.30 in the morning. We got home at 7 Saturday night.

Speaker 84 Christine and Mike arrived to a packed house.

Speaker 15 We just all started putting ideas and things that could have happened.

Speaker 10 How was he doing at that point?

Speaker 15 I he was in shock.

Speaker 51 Yeah.

Speaker 28 Mike headed for the bridge.

Speaker 49 What did you first find here?

Speaker 105 I didn't know. Yeah.

Speaker 105 All unknown.

Speaker 26 By the time we were back, the dive crews and everybody had already left.

Speaker 93 So it was night. You can't do much at night.

Speaker 4 By the next morning, the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office was running the missing person's investigation.

Speaker 73 Brian Weisbrot was the lead detective.

Speaker 25 We had spoken with neighbors, friends of Sarah's, family members, family friends. There's a house across the street from Sarah's house that had a video surveillance camera facing Sarah's home.

Speaker 106 Did you see anything on those videos?

Speaker 25 We did. We were able to see her vehicle leave multiple times throughout the day.

Speaker 36 From those surveillance videos and their interviews, investigators started piecing together Sarah's day.

Speaker 25 She had carried a bin in a box across the street to her neighbor's house.

Speaker 8 That was Carly in Robin Draper's house.

Speaker 43 After that, Sarah and her friend Liam went to lunch at Taco Bell.

Speaker 36 The restaurant security cameras had her there at 2.18 p.m.

Speaker 38 Later, she stopped by a bank in Bradley Beach.

Speaker 33 Security cameras indicated that was a little before 3 p.m.

Speaker 43 And the branch manager, an old friend of the Stern family, remembered her waving hello.

Speaker 94 Could you tell looking at the video what her demeanor was?

Speaker 85 I mean, did she seem frightened or anything like that?

Speaker 25 No, she didn't. She appeared happy.
She smiled. She communicated with the staff there who she had known for many years.

Speaker 28 But after that friendly wave, Sarah seemed to have dropped off the planet.

Speaker 47 The contents of that mysterious bin Sarah left at the drapers didn't help investigators at all.

Speaker 25 It was all just miscellaneous things, just Halloween decorations. There were some coins from her grandparents.

Speaker 80 Like what you'd put in the bottom drawer of a bureau with personal stuff that you don't know what else to do with.

Speaker 106 Right.

Speaker 36 Day after day of searching the Shark River and its shoreline proved fruitless.

Speaker 20 The local Crime Stoppers posted a $5,000 reward.

Speaker 25 We had prepared some flyers seeking information in an effort to locate Sarah's whereabouts.

Speaker 101 Volunteers are helping police today search for a beloved missing Neptune City teenager.

Speaker 98 It all yielded nothing.

Speaker 5 So

Speaker 66 a week after Sarah was last seen, her family organized a search, and hundreds of people showed up.

Speaker 91 They walked the beaches and the streets and the parks of Neptune and Bel Mar and Ocean Grove.

Speaker 43 Mike Stern was steady, almost stoic, when he talked to Fios One News.

Speaker 108 We're just hoping to search any possible

Speaker 108 area with more people than just, you know, the local authorities because we just, you know, it's a big area.

Speaker 19 This is a huge search. Hundreds of people came.

Speaker 20 A lot of people.

Speaker 40 Yeah.

Speaker 59 People didn't even know out of town up north.

Speaker 26 It was people from, I think, as far out as Pennsylvania.

Speaker 36 Many of Sarah's friends joined the search.

Speaker 72 An old classmate, Sean.

Speaker 109 I met her back in high school and it just

Speaker 109 is shocking.

Speaker 109 I just hope we can find her.

Speaker 45 Her friend Liam.

Speaker 109 She's pretty strong. So hopefully we're going to find something today.

Speaker 3 The search for 19-year-old Sarah became one of the biggest in the history of the Jersey Shore.

Speaker 5 But if Sarah ended up in the Shark River, these locals knew the likely grim outcome.

Speaker 17 Once that tide starts ripping out, it moves quickly.

Speaker 111 Out it goes right up the inlet. Correct.

Speaker 11 The massive search turned up no sign of Sarah, and weeks went by.

Speaker 10 So, was she swept out to sea?

Speaker 52 Or, as many around town began to think, she must be alive and well, and unaware people were looking for her.

Speaker 8 Maybe she was just living her life somewhere else.

Speaker 13 Coming up, the secret in Sarah's safety deposit box.

Speaker 25 $25,250 cash.

Speaker 86 $25,000 a kid who had that kind of money.

Speaker 99 It's a lot of money.

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Speaker 8 Detectives working the Sarah Stern missing person case in Neptune City had nothing but theories in December of 2016.

Speaker 44 Some suspected she simply walked away from that old car to start a new life.

Speaker 10 But there was other, more sinister speculation, too.

Speaker 25 We still had no clear indication as to what happened to Sarah.

Speaker 63 So, theories.

Speaker 41 Maybe she ran away. Maybe she was the victim of some sort of crime.

Speaker 7 And maybe she threw herself off the bridge.

Speaker 5 But those who knew Sarah best, like Carly and Sam Draper, weren't buying the suicide theory.

Speaker 14 She couldn't have jumped off the bridge like that. She asked me to hang out that night.

Speaker 36 Their minds kept going back to the last time Carly saw Sarah, the afternoon of December 2nd, just before she vanished, when she'd stopped by their house and dropped off those things.

Speaker 14 I looked in the box and it was just like coins and different little trinkets.

Speaker 36 Sarah explained she was just cleaning house.

Speaker 19 But Carly could tell Sarah had something else to say.

Speaker 14 She seemed really happy when she came over. Like really happy.

Speaker 19 Like she'd made a decision happy.

Speaker 28 Yeah.

Speaker 58 A big one.

Speaker 32 Sarah said she had decided to leave town, leave Neptune behind, strike out for Canada to start her life as an artist.

Speaker 14 It was until that day she told me she was going to move there.

Speaker 86 Like this was some sort of sudden change in her decision making.

Speaker 14 I wouldn't call it sudden because she talked about how much she liked Canada before, but she didn't say she was moving that day. She just said she was moving to Canada and that she found money.

Speaker 28 Wait, money? What money?

Speaker 66 From what she told Carly, it appeared Sarah had not only a reason to leave, but the means.

Speaker 14 I didn't know anything about it until December 2nd, 2016.

Speaker 44 That very day.

Speaker 28 That very day. That day.

Speaker 14 She said that she had found a safe in the house. They had an avon and she told me not to tell anyone.

Speaker 1 Sarah told Carly she'd found thousands of dollars that had been hidden in an old house her dad owned in a neighboring town.

Speaker 36 A secret.

Speaker 5 But of course, Carly had to tell the detectives.

Speaker 11 And they were very interested.

Speaker 99 So then what did you do? Go talk to the banker?

Speaker 25 We did. She had multiple accounts at the bank, including a safety deposit box.
And on the day of her disappearance, she had actually accessed that safety deposit box.

Speaker 43 Maybe she is planning to take off and...

Speaker 93 Run away and take some money with her.

Speaker 25 Absolutely.

Speaker 102 They got a search warrant for Sarah's safety deposit box.

Speaker 25 At which point we had learned what was actually inside.

Speaker 85 Which was what?

Speaker 25 $25,250 U.S. cash currency.

Speaker 106 That was still in there when you got there.

Speaker 25 Correct. The money was in very poor condition.
The money was very brittle. And when you would handle the bills, a lot of times they would just deteriorate in your hand.

Speaker 86 $25,000, a kid who had that kind of money.

Speaker 99 It's a lot of money.

Speaker 85 Where did this money come from?

Speaker 25 Sarah's mother had saved this money

Speaker 25 for Sarah.

Speaker 94 Bit by bit squirreled it away, is it?

Speaker 16 Perhaps.

Speaker 25 And that Sarah was at the house looking through some of their belongings and had come across this money.

Speaker 7 But all of this, a possible decision about leaving quite soon for Canada, the found money.

Speaker 89 All of this was news to Mike Stern.

Speaker 45 Did you know about that at all? No.

Speaker 19 But as he thought about it, said Mike, it started to make sense.

Speaker 9 That his late wife would have gradually hidden cash away in his other house, which one day her daughter could inherit.

Speaker 36 A gift of sorts.

Speaker 26 My wife, you know, she was

Speaker 26 a saver.

Speaker 55 She would have stuffed it in some secret spot.

Speaker 26 Yeah.

Speaker 26 I wish I had known.

Speaker 5 Anyway, he said Sarah must have discovered the money a few months before she vanished.

Speaker 26 It surprises me that that all happened in secret and

Speaker 26 she started looking.

Speaker 19 Then it became Sarah's secret.

Speaker 20 Yeah.

Speaker 63 But the money was still in the bank.

Speaker 98 Would she leave without it?

Speaker 25 After we found that money in her safety deposit box, that told us that she likely did not leave.

Speaker 36 Because you wouldn't leave that there.

Speaker 25 Correct. We had also located her U.S.
passport, her social security card, and U.S. and Canadian currency inside her bedroom.
All those factors put together, Sarah Stern did not leave.

Speaker 106 Gold comfort to Sarah's father because that left something much worse.

Speaker 17 Mr. Stern was down at those docks every day, walking the docks, walking the shoreline, just wouldn't give up hope.

Speaker 43 You'd see him out there. I did.

Speaker 17 I did.

Speaker 80 What did you think?

Speaker 45 My heart broke for him.

Speaker 17 For a father to not know the whereabouts of his daughter, it was devastating.

Speaker 31 And Mike Stern had no inkling of the sea change about to occur in the search for his missing daughter.

Speaker 52 Coming up, a phone call from another state transforms transforms the case.

Speaker 17 It shifted from a missing person investigation into a homicide.

Speaker 13 When dateline continues.

Speaker 36 It was a frigid two months on the Jersey shore.

Speaker 55 Organized searches for Sarah Stern dwindled as the temperature dropped, and gradually the story faded from the news cycle.

Speaker 5 A 19-year-old aspiring artist who vanished into thin air, and the authorities were baffled.

Speaker 86 Did you get to the point where you thought this was just going nowhere?

Speaker 17 We were at a standstill. We were at a dead end.

Speaker 100 With no activity on her social media, or her phone, or her bank accounts, and no credible sighting of any sort, The chance that Sarah simply ran away seemed vanishingly slim.

Speaker 25 The one thing that we knew, and that was that she likely didn't leave.

Speaker 94 So something bad happened to that girl.

Speaker 25 As we progressed, we began thinking that that was a possibility, absolutely.

Speaker 38 Mike and Christine kept looking for any scrap of a clue, handing out Sarah's photo to captains heading out to sea.

Speaker 86 Was there a moment when you knew you'd lost her, that she was gone?

Speaker 26 No, I never wanted to think that.

Speaker 37 No. Who would, right?

Speaker 38 Carly was still searching, too, wanting to believe Sarah had just started over in another place.

Speaker 66 She messaged Sarah every night on Instagram.

Speaker 14 I would just say random things like,

Speaker 14 if you're alive, like create a fake Disney account because she loved Disney World and everything Disney. I was like, create a fake Disney account and follow me on it and I'll know you're okay.

Speaker 86 You're just desperate to know.

Speaker 97 Yeah. What did you get back? Nothing.

Speaker 54 It had been two months, and then?

Speaker 34 Then a young man in Brooklyn, New York called his dad back in Neptune City, said he was desperate for some parental advice.

Speaker 66 His name was Anthony Curry.

Speaker 36 He was 19 years old, a high school classmate of Sarah's, who'd moved to New York to fulfill a lifelong ambition to make movies.

Speaker 44 But that night, he was very troubled.

Speaker 4 And when his dad, Eddie, heard why, he called Detective Mike Bonano.

Speaker 113 I know the family very well. Known Anthony since he was young.
And Eddie was was concerned that he had some information on this. What may have happened to Sarah.

Speaker 53 I was shocked.

Speaker 48 Detectives met with Anthony and his dad.

Speaker 84 The young man told them about a spooky conversation with a mutual friend of his and Sarah's.

Speaker 63 It took place on Thanksgiving evening, he said, eight days before Sarah vanished.

Speaker 91 The friend told Anthony a horrifying tale.

Speaker 25 About a plan that he had

Speaker 25 to rob Sarah of her money and to kill her, strangle her, and throw her over the bridge.

Speaker 86 How did Anthony take this?

Speaker 94 As a...

Speaker 94 as a real thing or what?

Speaker 25 No, he dismissed it. He thought it was...

Speaker 107 This kid was just pitching him a movie idea.

Speaker 91 Yeah.

Speaker 25 He completely dismissed it.

Speaker 58 Anthony had been making movies since middle school, quite a few of them horror films.

Speaker 29 So this wasn't as far-fetched as it sounds.

Speaker 9 Anthony drove home to Brooklyn that Thanksgiving night, didn't give his spell's gory movie pitch another thought until.

Speaker 113 He learned from the social media about what happened to Sarah.

Speaker 32 And when Anthony Curry saw on social media that exactly like in his pal's movie pitch, Sarah's car was on the Route 35 Bridge, he got a bad feeling, which turned to alarm when his friend reached out to him a few days later.

Speaker 25 That message that was sent via Snapchat said, have the police spoken to you?

Speaker 25 And Anthony responded that they had not. It was from that moment that Anthony Curry believed that he may have had something to do with Sarah's disappearance.

Speaker 102 All those little clues that didn't fit together, Sarah's last conversation with Carly, the mysterious old cache, Sarah leaving her stuff at the Drapers, were reconsidered in the light of Anthony Curry's story.

Speaker 5 Though Monmouth County Prosecutor Chris Gramicioni still had questions about Anthony.

Speaker 115 Based on the story that he told us, the question arose: well, how come you didn't do anything about this before Sarah went missing when you heard about it?

Speaker 115 We have experienced investigators that were on this case that interviewed him. And in doing so, his credibility and veracity is being tested thoroughly.

Speaker 5 And he passed the test.

Speaker 3 The prosecutor and detectives decided Anthony was credible and his story was real.

Speaker 113 Without Anthony, we're not sitting here talking to you today.

Speaker 19 And from that moment, everything was different.

Speaker 17 It shifted. from a missing person investigation into a homicide.

Speaker 41 Except, the major case squad really had nothing but suspicions.

Speaker 25 And what we had decided was that we were going to ask Anthony if he'd be willing to essentially work with us.

Speaker 94 What'd he say?

Speaker 37 He agreed.

Speaker 3 So the detectives enlisted Anthony in their plan.

Speaker 36 He would be their bait in an elaborate and dangerous trap.

Speaker 48 But what might they capture?

Speaker 48 Oh my.

Speaker 48 They had no idea.

Speaker 24 That's not even the worst part.

Speaker 13 Coming up, what they were about to witness would stun these seasoned detectives.

Speaker 55 It was chilling.

Speaker 113 We couldn't believe what we were hearing.

Speaker 13 The revelation that would devastate Sarah's dad.

Speaker 26 It literally sucked the life out of me. It's unfathomable.

Speaker 42 He had been directing and acting in horror movies for years.

Speaker 9 Now, Anthony Curry must have felt like he was living one.

Speaker 116 The approximate time is 6.20 p.m. I placed an electronic recording device on Anthony Curry.

Speaker 102 Anthony had been cast as the lead actor in an elaborate sting, a dangerous ruse crafted to get a mutual friend of his and Sarah Stearns to implicate himself in her disappearance.

Speaker 38 The detective scripted a phone call designed to get Anthony's friend talking.

Speaker 32 The teenage filmmaker would pretend he needed money to replace a broken camera.

Speaker 8 If his buddy had gone through with his plan to rob Sarah, he should be flushed.

Speaker 102 Police recorded the call.

Speaker 83 My camera broke, dog.

Speaker 83 I don't have to

Speaker 116 dropped it on the shoot. It fell into a bucket of blood.

Speaker 116 Damn it. Yeah, dude.
I have like no fing cash to pay for anything. You couldn't like spot me some cash from that girl's money, right?

Speaker 116 Uh,

Speaker 116 waiting.

Speaker 48 The friend wouldn't say much more.

Speaker 41 He seemed cautious.

Speaker 40 I don't really want to talk about it

Speaker 17 right now. I know what you mean.

Speaker 73 But Anthony did get the guy to agree to meet in person.

Speaker 30 Maybe he'd open up then.

Speaker 75 I'll see you side of that. Bye.

Speaker 102 The location?

Speaker 9 This parking area aside the boardwalk in Bradley Beach.

Speaker 16 Desolate in the dead of winter.

Speaker 9 Investigators wired up Anthony's car.

Speaker 113 We do set up the car for audio and video.

Speaker 44 Was there a little camera in there?

Speaker 113 There was a camera in there.

Speaker 42 But if their suspect was a killer, what might he do to Anthony if he suspected a trap?

Speaker 8 So they knew this was dangerous.

Speaker 8 They tailed Anthony's car.

Speaker 113 We had surveillance units on either side. We were monitoring everything live.

Speaker 8 It was just before midnight when Anthony drove towards the meet point.

Speaker 19 You can see his hands on the steering wheel.

Speaker 113 So Anthony was listening to his music to relax him.

Speaker 8 And he was game ready.

Speaker 113 He wasn't playing.

Speaker 11 Anthony parked and minutes later their suspect climbed into the car.

Speaker 97 Good money.

Speaker 24 Nah, I ain't good. I quit them shit.

Speaker 5 It was Liam McCasney, Sarah's friend.

Speaker 38 The guy who'd spent the day with her a few hours before she vanished.

Speaker 88 What are we doing?

Speaker 40 Sitting around.

Speaker 8 And what Liam did next horrified the listening detectives.

Speaker 36 He reached over and searched Anthony for a wire.

Speaker 24 Dude, you can't blame me for doing this, right?

Speaker 24 I gotta feel you uprope real quick, right?

Speaker 113 And he starts patting him down, and we're listening to that in the car.

Speaker 113 And things became very, very real at that moment.

Speaker 5 And then just as suddenly the tension broke.

Speaker 8 Liam stopped searching, explained the cops had been on his tail.

Speaker 26 About what?

Speaker 24 About killing Sarah.

Speaker 87 Anthony sat back and listened to Liam.

Speaker 91 The officers hung on every word.

Speaker 24 And not even... That's not even the worst part.

Speaker 55 It was chilling. I mean,

Speaker 113 we looked at each other. We couldn't believe what we were hearing.

Speaker 25 It nauseated me.

Speaker 49 And then the cops heard something else.

Speaker 32 Liam wasn't in this alone.

Speaker 84 He had an accomplice.

Speaker 24 The two of us.

Speaker 102 They talked for 20 minutes before Liam slipped out into the night.

Speaker 24 It's good talking, Liber. Good talk.
Take it easy, bro.

Speaker 32 The detectives, monitoring the appalling conversation in the car, had heard what they needed.

Speaker 5 They kept Liam under surveillance while warrants were drawn up.

Speaker 32 And based on what he'd said to Anthony Curry in that car, you didn't hear about it?

Speaker 87 They arrested Liam McCatazney.

Speaker 9 Liam, who'd seemed so helpful when he told police he'd been with Sarah that last day.

Speaker 62 We went to get food today.

Speaker 1 Liam, who'd voluntarily gone downtown to tell detectives about his great friend Sarah.

Speaker 89 What does she do during the day? She draws, she watches YouTube videos, she walks her dog.

Speaker 84 Liam, who'd joined the search for her, who'd gone on TV to praise her.

Speaker 109 She's pretty strong. So hopefully we're gonna find something today.

Speaker 77 Turn around, face the wall.

Speaker 66 There were different cameras on him this day.

Speaker 25 You're being charged with murder, felony murder,

Speaker 25 first-degree robbery, desecration of human remains.

Speaker 29 The other arrest was every bit as stunning.

Speaker 25 I'm going to be right with you, okay, man.

Speaker 32 It was Liam's alleged accomplice, 19-year-old Preston Taylor.

Speaker 4 And if he looks familiar, well, that's because you probably recognize him from Sarah's junior prom photo.

Speaker 29 Preston was her date.

Speaker 2 Who were these young men accused of these horrific crimes?

Speaker 94 Preston and Liam.

Speaker 85 How close were they?

Speaker 25 They were close, friends. They had known each other for several years.
They had just recently moved into a house together.

Speaker 5 Investigators had two most unlikely murder suspects.

Speaker 3 Liam McAtasney was a college sophomore studying psychology.

Speaker 43 He'd worked with Sarah Summers on the beach, but he'd known her, had been her friend since first grade.

Speaker 35 He had no criminal record.

Speaker 66 And Preston Taylor, also a college student, economics and political science, a friend of Sarah's since high school.

Speaker 1 He worked part-time around his class schedule.

Speaker 42 With their suspects in custody, what Ed Kirschenbaum and the detectives had to do now was very, very difficult.

Speaker 17 It was at that time that myself, Detective Weisbrat, Detective Volbert, Detective Mahoney,

Speaker 17 met with Mike Stern at his house, and we had to inform him that we now had information of what had happened to Sarah. And there's no easy way to do that.

Speaker 91 No.

Speaker 60 But he listened.

Speaker 34 This man now sentenced to permanent sorrow as they told him that Sarah, his only child, had died at the hands of two of her friends.

Speaker 26 I didn't know what to say. I just remember just staring at the table and not knowing what to think.

Speaker 47 Mike Stern was heartsick.

Speaker 35 These were kids you'd driven around, you know, their carpool, their carpool, church, fire department, events,

Speaker 26 you know, things at the school.

Speaker 41 Suddenly they weren't innocent anymore.

Speaker 26 It literally sucked the life out of me.

Speaker 26 Just in disbelief. It's unfathomable.

Speaker 86 And there was just no indication anywhere, anytime, that this was lurking in there somewhere.

Speaker 37 Nope.

Speaker 26 That's what...

Speaker 26 kind of hurts the most, that that evil can be in there.

Speaker 16 Evil?

Speaker 28 Oh, yes.

Speaker 5 And Mike Stern was only beginning to comprehend the enormity of the chain of events that culminated on that bridge over the Shark River.

Speaker 103 Coming up,

Speaker 13 after two arrests, an entire town reeling.

Speaker 18 We were struggling with why.

Speaker 13 But the shocks will keep coming, including more from that stomach-turning tape.

Speaker 14 That's disgusting. Disgusting.

Speaker 13 And an eyewitness who says he saw Sarah after she disappeared.

Speaker 65 I caught her eye and she caught my eye.

Speaker 28 That girl's alive.

Speaker 13 When dateline continues.

Speaker 34 February 2017.

Speaker 5 The two arrests and the mysterious disappearance of Sarah Stern were big news from the Jersey Shore to New York City.

Speaker 117 Stunning developments in the search for a missing 19-year-old 19-year-old girl, the charges two teens now face.

Speaker 33 Mike Stern was in the county courthouse when they brought in the teens accused of killing his Sarah.

Speaker 4 Both pleaded not guilty to murder and six other charges.

Speaker 50 Stern's family being escorted out of the courthouse asking for privacy lesson 24 hours after finding out she was dead.

Speaker 41 Sarah's family and her friends appeared composed in public.

Speaker 43 but were in a private hell.

Speaker 36 They couldn't believe these two could have done this.

Speaker 1 Neither of them had a criminal record.

Speaker 32 Preston Taylor, Sarah's junior prom date, was a quiet 19-year-old. His roommate and co-defendant Liam McItasny was also 19, a tall toe head with an identical twin brother,

Speaker 32 was easily recognizable around town.

Speaker 47 Lots of Neptune City residents knew him from his job as a waiter at a local steakhouse.

Speaker 38 Mike Stern had watched both defendants grow up.

Speaker 76 You must have thought an awful lot about those boys

Speaker 26 and what they were like when they were in your house, when they hung around with sarah they had birthday parties and pool parties and

Speaker 4 you seemed like they were normal kids mike of course but also the others who had known leah most of his young life were having a very hard time how to understand

Speaker 18 we were struggling with why if he was such a friend all these years There has to be something evil about him that

Speaker 18 we're missing here. Like, you don't just have no criminal record and go to murder.

Speaker 48 Carly and Sam thought they knew Liam and Preston, but did they really?

Speaker 86 What did you think when those two guys were arrested?

Speaker 96 I couldn't believe that. I was mad.

Speaker 22 I was angry, honestly.

Speaker 14 I pulled up to my house and I went inside and my dad was just home. I said, is it true?

Speaker 14 And he said, yes, and I...

Speaker 14 I couldn't even, for days, I couldn't even look over at Sarah's house. Did you go to school with Sarah? Yeah, they were all the same friend group.

Speaker 14 That was essentially who I started hanging out with when I went to high school.

Speaker 5 Remember, detectives have been talking to Preston and Liam since the first days of their missing persons investigation, even invited them down to the station.

Speaker 49 I'm Ryan.

Speaker 89 But not as suspects. It was nice to meet you.

Speaker 30 Liam had been with Sarah the day she was last seen, and in fact, one of Sarah's cousins had found Liam's phone in Sarah's driveway the morning after she went missing, but It didn't signify much.

Speaker 1 They were often together, and Liam didn't try to hide it, and he'd been happy to let them search his phone.

Speaker 2 So cooperative.

Speaker 67 But now detectives decided Liam's statements deserved another look.

Speaker 79 When did you last see Sarah?

Speaker 79 When I was leaving her house.

Speaker 25 It was benign.

Speaker 55 So you went back and looked at this thing again?

Speaker 63 Absolutely.

Speaker 55 Began to see it in a different light.

Speaker 25 Absolutely. Hindsight's very powerful.

Speaker 67 And in hindsight, detectives thought Liam's words seemed carefully, deviously crafted to support the idea that Sarah had run away.

Speaker 1 What's your relationship like Orcat?

Speaker 1 Not good.

Speaker 1 When you say not good, what do you mean? I know that there's a lot of fighting all the time. She just needs to get to Canada.

Speaker 7 And then there was something Liam asked that they just couldn't get out of their heads now. If

Speaker 7 she did jump off the bridge,

Speaker 7 what are the odds that she's not somewhere all the way out in the ocean by now?

Speaker 32 But even though they saw Liam and Preston in a new light now, building a murder case was complicated by the fact that Sarah's body had simply vanished.

Speaker 99 If young Sarah did indeed end up in the Shark River, it looked less likely by the day she would ever be found.

Speaker 32 And without a body or a funeral, it all felt somehow unfinished to those who loved Sarah, to so many people in Neptune's city so profoundly disturbed and betrayed and saddened by her loss.

Speaker 28 So?

Speaker 18 We decided to do a celebration of life.

Speaker 76 And did they ever?

Speaker 2 In the summer of 2017, seven months or so after Sarah vanished, they dressed up the Neptune City Community Center.

Speaker 18 Two, three main rooms filled. from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, of all Sarah's art.

Speaker 40 Wow.

Speaker 18 I think they said there was over a thousand visitors.

Speaker 5 It was as if the whole town skipped the beach that brilliant Saturday, set aside the frustrating wait for the trial to begin, at least for one afternoon.

Speaker 105 I recall first meeting Sarah in kindergarten when she was.

Speaker 3 To hear Sarah eulogized.

Speaker 118 Because she just loved them so, so much.

Speaker 45 By her friends and family.

Speaker 118 Sarah, I will miss you every day and I'll always carry you in my heart.

Speaker 47 And teachers.

Speaker 119 She just was kind and caring like her mother. She had a smile and an awesome humor and a quick wit like her father.
She was just a beautiful combination of both of her parents.

Speaker 119 I've never met someone who marches to the beat of their own drum so beautifully and is willing to pick up people along the way to join her.

Speaker 26 I was overwhelmed. It was kind of a tearful moment.
Very touching. She touched a lot of people.

Speaker 74 God bless everybody. God bless Sarah.

Speaker 40 I bless her.

Speaker 7 Bittersweet, exhausting,

Speaker 89 but hardly preparation for what was coming when Liam and Preston had their day in court.

Speaker 103 Coming up.

Speaker 13 At trial, Preston takes the stand.

Speaker 111 Open the door and brighten and

Speaker 40 find Sarah and play in that passage.

Speaker 86 Revealing dark details from a night of horror that cannot be easy to listen to.

Speaker 26 It's kind of like mistake through your heart.

Speaker 4 The irony was lost on no one in Neptune City, a place where people like to say everybody knows everybody.

Speaker 81 Now, too, they thought they knew.

Speaker 36 Leah McIntasney and Preston Taylor were being held in county jail, accused of killing their friend Sarah Stern.

Speaker 81 But what really happened?

Speaker 120 All rise.

Speaker 34 In January 2019, two years after Sarah vanished, Mattasny, now 21 years old, went on trial for murder.

Speaker 52 Monmouth County Assistant Prosecutors Megan Doyle and Chris Decker felt they had a strong case, but not a perfect one.

Speaker 121 We didn't have a body.

Speaker 121 So for all of the evidence you have, you don't know what a jury is going to do with that.

Speaker 87 The prosecutors expected the defense would try to hit that point hard.

Speaker 121 What if he says during his summation, ladies and gentlemen, they're Sarah Stern and we just could envision 14 people in the box looking at the door. Well, there's reasonable doubt.

Speaker 33 We didn't have a body. We weren't going to have a body.

Speaker 122 So it was just something that we had to

Speaker 122 take advantage of.

Speaker 121 Ladies and gentlemen, Sarah Stern will not be walking through those doors into this courtroom at any point because this defendant murdered her.

Speaker 5 The prosecution alleged Liam and Preston threw Sarah's body into the river.

Speaker 1 Early on, remember, people thought maybe Sarah took her own life.

Speaker 68 But no, the prosecution painted a picture of a happy young woman, excited about her future.

Speaker 36 As did Sarah's dad, Mike.

Speaker 121 Were you worried about your daughter?

Speaker 123 No.

Speaker 121 Was she depressed? No.

Speaker 123 Did you think your daughter jumped?

Speaker 27 No.

Speaker 73 Mike's sister, Linda, Sarah's aunt, described a loving relationship between father and daughter.

Speaker 110 She absolutely loved her father.

Speaker 20 Were you aware whether or not her father loved her?

Speaker 27 He absolutely loved Sally.

Speaker 73 So what exactly did happen?

Speaker 19 The shocking answer came from the unlikeliest imaginable source, Sarah's prom date, Preston Taylor.

Speaker 83 Do you solemnly swear or affirm?

Speaker 93 Charged in connection with Sarah's murder two years earlier, Preston now took the stand for the prosecution.

Speaker 34 The state had given him a deal.

Speaker 93 They dropped the felony murder charge, and in exchange, Preston pleaded guilty to six other charges and agreed to testify against his good friend Liam.

Speaker 4 County prosecutor Gramicioni.

Speaker 115 Sometimes you got to get dirty, sometimes you got to get in the mud, and you've got to deal with bad people who played a major role in committing a crime in order to be able to prove that crime against others.

Speaker 55 Do you know what that cooperation agreement really requires you to do?

Speaker 110 With honesty.

Speaker 124 Complete honesty. And we said, said?

Speaker 40 Of course.

Speaker 74 Is that included today?

Speaker 110 Absolutely.

Speaker 5 And now, in exchange for a reduced sentence, he was about to tell the world what he and Liam did to Sarah Stern.

Speaker 66 Preston delivered his horrifying story in a cool, steady voice.

Speaker 19 Did you know her?

Speaker 76 Are you friends with her?

Speaker 110 They were friends throughout our school. Okay.

Speaker 5 It started months before she went missing, he said, after Sarah told Liam about what she found in the family's second home.

Speaker 110 It was was a shoebox full of money.

Speaker 124 Did you ask any questions about that money when you first learned about it?

Speaker 110 I asked how much it was, and I was told that it was in the range of about $100,000.

Speaker 3 Preston testified that Liam said $100,000 was the kind of money somebody would kill for.

Speaker 110 It started off as plans to either burglarize her house or to rob her personally.

Speaker 110 And

Speaker 29 over time, the conversations progressed to

Speaker 111 killing her.

Speaker 110 It's been in order to obtain that money.

Speaker 102 The crime, he said, was planned in intricate detail.

Speaker 5 To avoid using cell phones, Preston and Liam bought walkie-talkies.

Speaker 1 Preston testified the two originally planned to kill Sarah in November. But while Liam was at her house about to murder her, he learned her money wasn't there.

Speaker 32 It was in that safety deposit box at the bank, the one that detectives later discovered had $25,000 in it.

Speaker 124 Did you discuss ways around that problem?

Speaker 109 Yeah.

Speaker 110 Liam had had conversations with Sarah. She had been to Canada several times.
She had been talking about taking trips out there again.

Speaker 110 Liam saw that as an opportunity to convince her to take the money out of the bank.

Speaker 66 And so on December 2nd, with Mike and Christine on vacation in Florida, Sarah did go to the bank to get some of that money.

Speaker 87 While she was there, Preston testified he got a message from Liam.

Speaker 111 It was with Sarah, that they were at the bank, and

Speaker 110 this is a chance.

Speaker 8 He knew exactly what that meant.

Speaker 110 You had somehow convinced her to take the money out of the safety deposit box and

Speaker 111 the plan broke over that night.

Speaker 99 Okay, did you say anything back?

Speaker 110 Send the way until it got dark out.

Speaker 5 Okay. Preston was strangely emotionless on the stand.

Speaker 4 as he described the murder of his friend.

Speaker 80 It happened late that afternoon, he said.

Speaker 106 Liam strangled Sarah.

Speaker 67 Prosecutors showed this surveillance video of Liam leaving the house with a backpack, which they said contained some of Sarah's money.

Speaker 4 And another video of him arriving at work at that steakhouse not long afterward.

Speaker 32 But Liam didn't stay long. A few minutes later, he left.

Speaker 5 Preston told the jurors he was waiting for Liam at the house they shared.

Speaker 110 Liam comes to the door and he's frantic.

Speaker 27 He

Speaker 114 said that he killed Sarah,

Speaker 110 that he lost his phone,

Speaker 110 and

Speaker 110 ultimately told me he needed me to go over to Sarah's house to look for his phone and to move Sarah's body.

Speaker 73 Meanwhile, he said, Liam went right back to work as if it was any other day.

Speaker 44 Well, he, Preston, headed over to Sarah's house, climbed the fence in the backyard, went in the back door.

Speaker 1 He looked for Liam's phone, but couldn't find it.

Speaker 7 Prosecutors played a tape of Preston walking detectives through the murder scene, recounting how he moved Sarah's body.

Speaker 111 I opened the door on the right and

Speaker 110 found Sarah bed laying in that fashion.

Speaker 40 What would you do?

Speaker 110 I picked her up by the shoulders and dragged her out back. Took her to the bushes along the side fence, pulled her in there and covered her up with some screws and some sickness.

Speaker 4 Late that night, Preston told the jury.

Speaker 87 He and Liam propped up Sarah's body in the passenger seat of her own car.

Speaker 73 And Liam drove that car to the Route 35 Bridge, and Preston followed in another car, and they heaved her body over the railing, and they left her car there with the key and the ignition, and then drove home.

Speaker 55 What did you do when you got to Holly Street?

Speaker 110 Get there, we both light up a cigarette, and we start kind of homing.

Speaker 8 Sarah's money.

Speaker 68 The total wasn't $100,000, not $50,000.

Speaker 28 No.

Speaker 42 The haul for ending Sarah's young life was less than $10,000.

Speaker 95 Of course, after they arrested Preston, the detectives asked what happened to it.

Speaker 106 Did you tell them where the money was?

Speaker 110 Yeah, I'll tell them that it was buried.

Speaker 80 Preston testified that he and Liam buried the money they stole from Sarah in two small safes, one in the woods in a nearby park, the other 20 miles away, on a long-abandoned army base.

Speaker 36 Is there anything in this safe? It was a chilling tale.

Speaker 7 Mike and Christine sat in court and heard every word.

Speaker 86 That cannot be easy to listen to.

Speaker 26 It's kind of like driving a stake through your heart.

Speaker 26 It hurt

Speaker 26 very deeply.

Speaker 56 My daughter,

Speaker 26 my only child.

Speaker 26 She was my world.

Speaker 87 And things were not going to get any easier for Mike because the defense was about to present an eyewitness with a remarkable claim.

Speaker 27 There was a girl walking down the street.

Speaker 43 That not a word of Preston's story could have been true.

Speaker 13 Coming up, did someone see Sarah the day after she disappeared?

Speaker 22 I looked at her right in the face, just like I'm looking at you right now.

Speaker 23 That girl's alive.

Speaker 13 Testimony that could turn the case upside down.

Speaker 13 When dateline continues.

Speaker 123 A Mochi Moment from Sadie, who writes, I'm not crying, you're crying.

Speaker 123 This is what I said during my first appointment with my physician at Mochi, because I didn't have to convince him I needed a GLP-1. He understood, and I felt supported, not judged.

Speaker 123 I came for the weight loss and stayed for the empathy.

Speaker 64 Thanks, Sadie.

Speaker 123 I'm Myra Ameth, founder of Mochi Health. To find your Mochi Moment, visit joinmochi.com.

Speaker 69 Mochi members have access to licensed physicians and nutritionists and are compensated for their stories. Results may vary.

Speaker 125 A BetterHelp ad.

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Speaker 121 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 118 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 99 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 120 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 33 If we got clear facts, maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 13 NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 25 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 13 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 85 Preston Taylor and Liam McCatazny were certainly an unlikely pair of murder suspects.

Speaker 38 Clean-cut, soft-spoken, never once in trouble.

Speaker 32 But now Preston had taken a deal, and Liam was on trial for killing one of his very best friends for money.

Speaker 126 I developed a relationship with him over the last six or seven months or so.

Speaker 41 This is Liam's defense attorney, Carlos Diascobo.

Speaker 67 Was he terrified going into this trial?

Speaker 86 Yes.

Speaker 126 What 20-year-old wouldn't be?

Speaker 66 Especially scared, said the attorney, because Liam was innocent.

Speaker 6 He didn't do the awful thing he'd been accused of.

Speaker 27 Once all the evidence is in, there will be no

Speaker 114 other verdict than a not guilty verdict.

Speaker 2 Not guilty, the defense argued, because the evidence would show Sarah might have run away from an unhappy home or even taken her own life.

Speaker 63 To support that, the defense presented a different and disturbing take on Sarah's relationship with her dad.

Speaker 76 Far from happy, the defense called it volatile.

Speaker 87 Father and daughter fighting constantly, and the defense suggested it had a profound impact on Sarah.

Speaker 48 Liam said as much the first time he spoke to police the night Sarah disappeared.

Speaker 62 What was her mindset last time you talked to her?

Speaker 62 I just know she's been trying to get away.

Speaker 71 You can tell me she's going to Canada.

Speaker 62 Trying to get away, okay. Canada, she's been a little depressed lately.

Speaker 62 Her dad is crazy.

Speaker 1 On cross-examination, Sarah's aunt Linda, who became Sarah's confidant after her mom died, acknowledged there was some father-daughter friction.

Speaker 127 How would you describe Sarah's relationship with her father in 2016?

Speaker 64 I would say it was a little rocky.

Speaker 27 She was packing up her things

Speaker 114 while her father was away to get them ready to go.

Speaker 18 That's correct.

Speaker 27 Because she didn't want her father to know that she was packing up things.

Speaker 110 That's correct.

Speaker 9 If the defense attorney could convince jurors that Sarah had a secret, urgent plan to get away from her father and move to Canada, then he was on his way to creating reasonable doubt.

Speaker 36 But how would he deal with the powerful testimony of Preston Taylor?

Speaker 51 The answer was simple and emphatic.

Speaker 67 Preston is a liar.

Speaker 86 His testimony is untruthful.

Speaker 85 It's false.

Speaker 27 It's imagined. It's erroneous.

Speaker 99 And not credible.

Speaker 8 And just how would the defense attorney back up that claim?

Speaker 47 Preston made it easy for him.

Speaker 127 You don't always tell the truth, is that correct?

Speaker 111 I have an investment.

Speaker 4 Hoping for leniency after he was arrested, Preston told police an elaborate and disturbing story about one of his own relatives.

Speaker 127 You made an accusation against somebody

Speaker 127 that said that you were sexually assaulted by that person.

Speaker 5 Preston had lied to the police about someone close to him committing a serious crime.

Speaker 28 For Diascobo, it was a gift to attack Preston's credibility.

Speaker 126 We're talking about somebody who has admitted to making up stories,

Speaker 126 making false accusations against innocent people.

Speaker 5 Defense Attorney Diascovo told jurors Preston's story about Liam was a lie too. A lie that could save him from spending the rest of his life in prison.

Speaker 126 He figures, point the finger at someone else, let's see if I can turn the attention away from what I did, what I'm responsible for.

Speaker 11 Is he responsible for Sarah's death?

Speaker 67 He may be.

Speaker 126 That's one of the many questions that arise from this case.

Speaker 115 More questions than answers.

Speaker 48 The defense didn't just challenge the state's witnesses.

Speaker 4 Diaz Goble also presented an eyewitness with an astonishing story.

Speaker 109 Craig Kevin Hetzel Sr.

Speaker 11 And he wanted to tell the jury all about it.

Speaker 127 Be seated, sir.

Speaker 5 On that cold December morning in 2016, Craig Hetzel was doing what he always did.

Speaker 8 At 5 a.m., he drove his son to work.

Speaker 89 Same route, same time,

Speaker 47 every every day.

Speaker 27 There was a girl walking down the street.

Speaker 109 And I said to my son, I said, that is an awfully good-looking girl to be walking on the street at 5 o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 22 And I remembered the things that she had on. She had this leather bomber jacket and

Speaker 16 like a fluffy collar.

Speaker 80 And she had high-heeled shoes on.

Speaker 45 And...

Speaker 22 I looked at her right in the face, just like I'm looking at you right now.

Speaker 65 I caught her eye, and she caught my eye, and all of a sudden she turned away, turned her head down.

Speaker 60 Hetzel, a construction contractor who'd lived in Neptune for 35 years, kept driving.

Speaker 45 And then

Speaker 23 we're going over top of the Shark River Bridge on Route 35, and there's a car on the side of the road.

Speaker 53 And I said, that's a bad place to get stuck.

Speaker 10 A few days later, Hetzel said he was at a 7-Eleven and made a startling connection.

Speaker 100 He saw a poster for a missing woman. It was her, the same woman he had seen walking down the street, Sarah Stern.

Speaker 127 This is the picture that you saw? That's it.

Speaker 109 Is this the individual that you saw on December 3rd in the morning at approximately 5 o'clock in the morning? I would have identified that person as that person, yes.

Speaker 89 Hetzel told us that seeing Sarah's picture in court during his testimony gave him a chill.

Speaker 21 It was eerie.

Speaker 23 When they put that picture up, I said, that's it, and I couldn't look at it anymore.

Speaker 28 It was her.

Speaker 126 He was absolutely certain that who he saw,

Speaker 126 sometime a little after five o'clock in the morning, hours and hours and hours after the state alleged Sarah Stern was murdered, that he saw an individual, and that individual was Sarah Stern.

Speaker 38 And he was just as certain that the car on the bridge was Sarah's.

Speaker 9 It stood out because it was so old and beat up.

Speaker 36 But police testified the car was towed off that bridge two hours before Hetzel was there.

Speaker 65 I saw that car at 5.15 in the morning.

Speaker 23 There is no doubt about it. I spoke to my son about it the other day.

Speaker 21 He was in the car with me.

Speaker 115 He said absolutely that car was there.

Speaker 85 They said they towed that car away.

Speaker 23 They did not tow that car.

Speaker 19 But they have a record of towing the car.

Speaker 23 They better go back and check that record and talk to somebody else because that car was there. I think that girl's alive, that's what I think.

Speaker 58 Alive somewhere?

Speaker 37 Somewhere.

Speaker 86 But she hasn't used a credit card?

Speaker 55 You know, when a person stops using a cell phone, stops using a credit card, stops doing anything that would connect them with this earth.

Speaker 98 Can they be around anywhere?

Speaker 17 What will we say in a few years down the road when she turns up?

Speaker 85 And you think she will?

Speaker 23 I think she will.

Speaker 30 But that would mean the whole case falls apart.

Speaker 63 The whole murder case, yeah.

Speaker 95 Diazcobo had poked holes in the prosecution's story.

Speaker 36 But for the whole case to fall apart, he'd have to explain away evidence so disturbing, it shocked even the most veteran courtroom observers.

Speaker 24 I know you're not a rat, but

Speaker 24 we got to play it safe.

Speaker 13 Coming up, jurors see the harrowing hidden camera video of Liam, blood-chilling revelations in his own ice-cold words.

Speaker 24 I picked her up and she just said my name, and then that was it.

Speaker 3 Leo McCatazny sat Ramrod straight in the courtroom, still silent, as the detectives and the prosecutors and his own roommate accused him of murdering his friend, Sarah Stern.

Speaker 31 Sat there while his attorney heaped scorn on the story told by his friend turned prosecution witness, Preston Taylor.

Speaker 114 Preston Taylor is making this up.

Speaker 18 He is liable.

Speaker 3 But how would the defense explain him?

Speaker 5 The prosecution's star witness wasn't Preston Taylor, the flipped accomplice, but Anthony Curry, who was about to premiere the biggest film of his short career.

Speaker 36 Anthony took the stand, nerves all but bursting through his skin.

Speaker 78 You want to be here tonight?

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 10 Shifting around in his seat.

Speaker 34 He told the court about the outrageous story Leah McCatazny told him on Thanksgiving night.

Speaker 75 He told me he was going to meet up Sarah.

Speaker 22 She found his money

Speaker 111 and

Speaker 75 they were going to count it together. He was going to choke her, choke her out,

Speaker 75 bring her to the bridge, throw her off, and then make it look like she killed herself. He said it would be a great idea for a movie.

Speaker 78 Did you think he was serious? No. At that time? No.

Speaker 36 But the young filmmaker explained to the jury, when he learned Sarah was missing, he and his dad went to the police.

Speaker 20 In his cross-exam, Defense Attorney Diaz Coppo attacked Anthony Curry's testimony.

Speaker 16 All Curry's squirming wasn't nerves.

Speaker 32 No, he was lying.

Speaker 114 Your testimony today, sir,

Speaker 114 is that Liam told you prior to December 2nd that he was planning on taking money from Sarah?

Speaker 111 Yes.

Speaker 114 Was anybody with you and my client when he allegedly told you this?

Speaker 25 No.

Speaker 124 So that the only person that would have heard it would have been you, correct?

Speaker 40 Yes.

Speaker 114 You never recorded that conversation, correct, Mr.

Speaker 55 Curry? No.

Speaker 126 He has a motive to lie. He just made national headlines as the horror film maker that's part of this murder case.

Speaker 60 But turning on his best friend for the sake of some good publicity from the national media, what kind of sense does that make?

Speaker 126 Crazier things have happened.

Speaker 35 But as damning as Anthony Curry's testimony on the stand might sound, it was all only prelude to the prosecution's most devastating witness of all, Liam McAtasney himself.

Speaker 24 I planned this thing out for like six months.

Speaker 44 A hushed courtroom heard the recording of Liam talking to Anthony in the car parked by the beach.

Speaker 24 I choke her out.

Speaker 24 Drag her.

Speaker 11 The word disturbing doesn't begin to describe it.

Speaker 24 So you just counted it out and then f ⁇ ing behind her, just whatever it was looking?

Speaker 24 She likes screaming and shit.

Speaker 100 Here in Anthony's car, Liam told the whole sickening story of what he did to Sarah on December 2nd.

Speaker 98 They were alone in her house that afternoon when Liam crept up from behind, then grabbed her.

Speaker 24 I pretty much hung her

Speaker 24 like

Speaker 24 I just...

Speaker 24 I picked her up and had her just like dangling off the ground. And she just said my name and then that was it and it took me a half an hour to kill her.

Speaker 24 I thought I was gonna be able to choke her out and have her out in like a couple minutes. That's the only time I had my phone.

Speaker 24 And it took me like a half an hour after I hit start on the timer.

Speaker 88 You heard that right.

Speaker 41 Liam used his phone to time how long it took for Sarah to die.

Speaker 63 She was helpless.

Speaker 81 Not even her faithful buddy intervened.

Speaker 24 And her dog laid there and watched as I killed her. Didn't do anything.
Her dog, what kind of dog? Yeah, what kind of dog is that?

Speaker 98 And then the grim aftermath.

Speaker 93 Liam told how Preston hid Sarah's body in the yard and how they later went back for it.

Speaker 24 Then we take

Speaker 24 her body out of the bushes and drag it over to her back fence. And I crawl,

Speaker 24 get into her car, and I back up. There's a security camera across the street.
So

Speaker 24 I had to act like her. I watched her every time she backed out, and she does the same thing.
So I backed out exactly like she did and drove off.

Speaker 24 Nah, I put her in the passenger seat of her own car.

Speaker 55 Liam said he drove Sarah's car to the middle of the bridge.

Speaker 33 Preston would follow to pick up Liam once he pushed Sarah's body off, communicating with those walkie donkeys.

Speaker 100 But as carefully as he'd planned, he hadn't factored in one thing.

Speaker 13 Coming up, Liam's sinister strategy for throwing off police.

Speaker 24 That was a whole part of my plan to make me look not guilty.

Speaker 103 And then, maybe the darkest moment of all, Liam hinting at an unthinkable motive.

Speaker 24 Were you going to live some foreign-ass life?

Speaker 13 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 10 A hushed courtroom in Monmouth County, New Jersey sat slack-jawed, stunned by the video prosecutors were playing for the jury.

Speaker 102 Liam McItasny, unaware he was being recorded, described in horrific detail exactly how he killed Sarah Stern.

Speaker 5 Now we turned to how he disposed of her body.

Speaker 38 With Sarah's body belted in the passenger seat of her grandmother's Oldsmobile, he drove to the crest of the Route 35 bridge over the Shark River and encountered a problem.

Speaker 24 I underestimated my own strength and how much a dead body would weigh because it's lint. It's lint weight.
Yeah.

Speaker 24 I got up on top of the bridge to throw her off and

Speaker 24 I go up, open the door, unhook her, pull her out, start dragging her to throw her over, and then cars start coming up. I see like like headlights coming.

Speaker 24 I try to get her over and I can't.

Speaker 31 It was just after midnight, but there was still traffic on the bridge and Liam was outside Sarah's car struggling with her body.

Speaker 33 He began to panic.

Speaker 24 And three cars go by

Speaker 24 and I'm losing my shit because that easily could have been a cop. Yeah.

Speaker 24 And then I mean the police station is like right there.

Speaker 65 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 24 And then Preston comes over the bridge, goes around, makes a U-turn, comes up behind me.

Speaker 24 The two of us throw the body over, and then we were out.

Speaker 24 Oh, so you needed help? I needed help, yeah.

Speaker 53 As he told Anthony the story, Liam reveled in his belief that Sarah's body, dumped off the bridge, was forever lost.

Speaker 24 The body never showed up. It's probably frozen.
It's probably all the way out in the ocean. Bro, this is like a fing movie, bro.

Speaker 88 Yeah.

Speaker 104 Still don't know where your phone is.

Speaker 80 But just as in many crime movies, he made critical mistakes.

Speaker 24 I dropped my phone at Sarah's house. You should have left it in your pocket.
Dude, what were you doing?

Speaker 24 Strangling someone? I couldn't find it, dude.

Speaker 8 Still, he bragged to his friend about how cunning he was.

Speaker 5 He not only planned and carried out Sarah's murder, he also cast himself as a helpful witness in the investigation.

Speaker 24 I had planned Sarah's situation for me to be interrogated by cops. Like, that was a whole part of my plan to make me look not guilty.

Speaker 9 The point of that whole deadly scheme, he said, was about that money he'd taken from Sarah's house.

Speaker 4 But there was no jackpot payout.

Speaker 24 The worst part of it is, I thought I was walking out 50 grand, 100 grand in my pocket, and I didn't.

Speaker 24 I didn't even get a quarter of it.

Speaker 24 So you only got like, what, seven grand, six? Somewhere around there.

Speaker 43 For for all his scheming over six months he only got enough money to buy a little fun and some weed.

Speaker 24 I didn't get a lot of money, but

Speaker 24 I had enough money to just be like living comfortably in my house throwing parties all the time.

Speaker 58 Liam had revealed so much.

Speaker 43 Maybe too much?

Speaker 5 And suddenly he seemed worried.

Speaker 100 Could he trust Anthony to keep quiet?

Speaker 24 I know you're not a rat, but we gotta

Speaker 24 play it safe.

Speaker 48 Or else he he seemed to threaten his friend.

Speaker 24 I don't want Preston to think that he has to kill you and take you out because you are the only person that knows.

Speaker 24 Because I've tried to tried to imply that you might know, and he gets really upset.

Speaker 24 So maybe don't tell him. Don't tell him.
Don't tell him.

Speaker 88 Yeah.

Speaker 24 But you're the only person besides Preston that knows.

Speaker 28 And then Liam got reflective.

Speaker 40 He seemed to suggest to Anthony it wasn't all about the money, that he wanted to get something more out of murdering Sarah.

Speaker 48 And after seemed

Speaker 24 disappointed, I don't feel any different when I don't think about it.

Speaker 24 You always think you're going to try these new things and

Speaker 24 you're going to change.

Speaker 24 But it didn't change. It just doesn't do anything.

Speaker 40 It's weird.

Speaker 40 It's a f movie in Liam.

Speaker 24 It's your life. You might as well make it one.

Speaker 24 What are you gonna live some foreign-ass life?

Speaker 11 The story was beyond chilling.

Speaker 8 The details appalling.

Speaker 4 And Liam had delivered it without a hint of remorse.

Speaker 66 When it was over, people watching in the crowded courtroom were silent, stunned.

Speaker 8 Sarah's cousins, Lauren and Lindsay.

Speaker 15 That was the worst thing I ever saw in my whole entire life. Just listening to him nonchalantly.
Like it's no big deal. It's somebody's life.

Speaker 14 It was sick. It was

Speaker 14 just

Speaker 51 sick.

Speaker 5 It took a while for Carly and Sam to process what they'd heard from the boy they knew as Sarah's good friend.

Speaker 14 It was disgusting. How can you take someone's life for their money and then not be happy with the money that you killed them for.

Speaker 56 He also wasn't happy that he didn't feel more.

Speaker 67 that he felt the same after as he did before.

Speaker 96 It really ticked me when he said

Speaker 96 sometimes you try new things and like expect to feel something and he said he didn't feel anything. But he said when he to try new things, like just killing someone, trying new things.

Speaker 5 Sarah's father had kept his steady composure throughout the trial.

Speaker 8 But hearing that tape, he broke into quiet sobs.

Speaker 56 I was there the day when they played that tape.

Speaker 86 And I kept thinking, what is this like for that poor man?

Speaker 102 You hadn't heard that before. No.

Speaker 26 I knew some of the content, but had never heard it from his mouth. I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 26 Evil. Pure evil.

Speaker 84 A detailed, cold-blooded confession, all on video.

Speaker 4 What might seem like an open and shut case.

Speaker 11 But surprises were in store before the jury rendered its verdict.

Speaker 13 Coming up, the defense calls the tape pure fiction.

Speaker 83 This is not the first time that Liam makes up crazy stories.

Speaker 126 He wants to be in movies.

Speaker 97 He's Leonardo DiCaprio to Anthony Curry's Martin Scorsese.

Speaker 13 And then the verdict and its emotional fallout.

Speaker 27 That hurts never gonna be easy.

Speaker 7 What was there to say after hearing Liam McIntasney confess to murdering his friend Sarah?

Speaker 24 And it took me a half an hour to kill her.

Speaker 30 A lot, as it turned out.

Speaker 1 Liam's attorney took it head-on, said what the jury heard was all made-up fantasy, a kind of audition.

Speaker 46 Liam pitching a horror movie plot to his film-making friend, Anthony.

Speaker 126 There was no evidence to support what he said on that tape. As chilling and as horrifying as it is.

Speaker 51 So what was he trying to do?

Speaker 115 I mean, impress his friend.

Speaker 31 Come on.

Speaker 85 For what reason?

Speaker 4 What did he want out of it?

Speaker 83 If you recall Anthony Curry's testimony, he told you that this is not the first time that Liam makes up crazy stories, that he does it all the time.

Speaker 50 He did make up things to you when he spoke to you, correct?

Speaker 75 Sure.

Speaker 126 He does it to impress him. He wants to be in Anthony Curry's world.

Speaker 115 He wants to be in his movies.

Speaker 97 His Leonardo DiCaprio to Anthony Curry's Martin Scorsese.

Speaker 58 In his closing argument, Biam's attorney said Preston was making up stories too,

Speaker 73 all in his effort to cut his plea deal.

Speaker 63 Was she said

Speaker 41 the biggest problem with the prosecution's case was simple: the defense's eyewitness proved it.

Speaker 22 Ladies and gentlemen, there's no body.

Speaker 25 Why?

Speaker 115 Craig Hetzel tells you that she was still alive.

Speaker 44 Prosecutor Chris Decker wasn't having any of it.

Speaker 110 We talk about Mr.

Speaker 94 Hetzel who sees Sarah wearing heels and a fur collar.

Speaker 124 That's not Sarah Stern.

Speaker 44 No, said the prosecutor, ug boots and turbulence.

Speaker 58 That was Sarah Stern.

Speaker 102 Now the eyewitness was wrong about the car, too.

Speaker 124 That car was not there.

Speaker 104 It just wasn't there.

Speaker 21 He's wrong.

Speaker 124 I don't know if he's lying or he's just wrong.

Speaker 27 I don't know.

Speaker 106 It doesn't matter.

Speaker 122 He did not see her.

Speaker 44 After a five-week trial, Prosecutor Decker has the last word.

Speaker 60 Sarah Stern is dead.

Speaker 124 This is not a movie.

Speaker 86 It's not a story.

Speaker 122 This defendant didn't frame himself for murder.

Speaker 114 He committed murder.

Speaker 124 There is no doubt that this man

Speaker 110 killed Sarah Star.

Speaker 124 He told you.

Speaker 1 The jury took its time.

Speaker 67 Asked to see a lot of those tapes again.

Speaker 127 Answer yes. Question how.

Speaker 42 Asked to hear back some of the testimony.

Speaker 29 And then finally, word reached the judge.

Speaker 52 A verdict.

Speaker 48 Court reconvened.

Speaker 89 As Liam sat there, motionless, stone-faced as ever.

Speaker 78 How do you find us to count one of the indictment as to whether the defendant, Liam McIntasney, committed the crime of murder by purposely or knowingly causing the death of Sarah Stern?

Speaker 18 Guilty.

Speaker 16 Guilty of murder.

Speaker 106 And all six other counts.

Speaker 93 For Michael Stern, who had lost so much, endured so much,

Speaker 10 even had to watch Liam try to tarnish his relationship with Sarah, the daughter he cherished.

Speaker 44 At least this part was over.

Speaker 26 I waited for that.

Speaker 26 27 months.

Speaker 86 It must be a complicated feeling.

Speaker 26 None of it makes any sense.

Speaker 26 But when it comes to Sarah, it's important that, you know, justice be served.

Speaker 66 Where the defendant was found guilty.

Speaker 29 Four months later, justice was served.

Speaker 29 Leah McItasny faced the judge again.

Speaker 28 His reality inescapable.

Speaker 120 I do think this was a heinous murder. I think it was done in a depraved manner, but I'm going to...

Speaker 99 He was sentenced to life without parole.

Speaker 79 Soon after, Preston Taylor was handed 18 years in prison for his role.

Speaker 1 Defense Attorney John Perrone negotiated the plea agreement.

Speaker 19 How can he live with the fact that this girl he liked and was a friend of for years, who he took to the prom, for heaven's sake, he could participate.

Speaker 22 Nobody could live without that fact.

Speaker 92 And he can't. He's going to relive his part for the rest of his life.

Speaker 79 What was this case all about?

Speaker 121 When you see the totality of it, I think the money was an excuse and that he just wanted to kill somebody.

Speaker 122 To me, what the case was about,

Speaker 122 first and foremost, was just the way that he used Sarah.

Speaker 8 The consequences of Sarah's death will be with a lot of people for a very long time.

Speaker 58 Grief still very raw.

Speaker 14 No matter how many times something's like funny or like you have a good day and then

Speaker 14 sorry, you come home and

Speaker 14 just see your house and you just think about it.

Speaker 82 Losing a close friend when you're young, you don't ever get over that.

Speaker 14 And the trial may be over,

Speaker 14 but

Speaker 27 the hurt's never going to be over.

Speaker 41 Sarah Stern's life was taken from her at just 19.

Speaker 5 But she lived long enough to know the artistic life she wanted to pursue.

Speaker 56 How would you like Sarah to be remembered? How will you remember her?

Speaker 26 As a brilliant artist.

Speaker 26 She just loved art, and her art teachers loved her.

Speaker 86 Are there times, particular times, when she comes into your mind or

Speaker 86 every day? Comes to visit you.

Speaker 26 Every day.

Speaker 46 We talk.

Speaker 26 I say hello. Make sure she's doing okay.

Speaker 94 She is.

Speaker 26 Her spirit will live forever.

Speaker 26 Beautiful, beautiful kid.

Speaker 26 My Sarah.

Speaker 13 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again Friday at 9-8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 63 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 13 For all of us at NBC News, good night.

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