January 9, 2025 • 31 mins
19-year-old Sarah Stern's car was found abandoned on a bridge in Neptune City, New Jersey. That led to rumors of family secrets and the belief that Sarah ran away. But a former classmate’s tip leads investigators to wonder if it was all part of a twisted movie plot.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
When a nineteen year old's car was found abandoned on
a bridge at the Jersey Shore, speculation ran wild keys.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We're in the ignition, no sign of foul play, nothing.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Sarah was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
But was Sarah Stern trying not to be found?
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Sarah talked about possibly starting a new life in Toronto
and moving away.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Her mother had left her a lot of cash.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
It all added up to one giant mystery.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
You don't know what today.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
To be honest, today we're at the Jersey Shore in
the community of Neptune City for BFFs the disappearance of
Sarah Stern. I'm Sloan Glass and this is American homicide.
As a note, this podcast also contains subject matter which
may not be suitable for all audiences. Discretion is advised.
(00:54):
The Jersey Shore, What did it give us? Snookie, Polly
d and Jwow. But what you say see on TV
and what really happens in real life are two completely
different things.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
The Jersey Shore is not quite what you would expect
to see.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Journalist Tom Davis grew up on the Jersey Shore and
now covers the area for Patch dot Com.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
It's actually a very conservative, traditional community, that's mixed in
with a tourist atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Like clockwork, every summer, tourists and beachgoers take over the area.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
During the summertime, I would say the population probably for
druples at least, especially on the weekends. It almost develops
a little bit more of a Miami Field to it.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The party atmosphere every summer takes over the mini bars, restaurants,
and of course the beaches.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
The beaches are the best place to beat.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
The shore features forty four beaches in total, and if
you're like Tom and live there year round, you look
forward to the off season.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
For a lot of people, they really kind of hate
the crowd, so they actually like the fall and the
winter bigg This is obviously a lot emptier, it's a
lot less crowded. I always called it the void between
Labor Day and Moral Day because literally nothing happens here.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
But in the early morning hours of December third, twenty sixteen,
something did happen. A ridehair driver noticed an abandoned Oldsmobile
sedan atop a bridge heading out of town and called
nine one one.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Mine one one, where is the emergency?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I kut on the Belmore Bridge through the car that
debanded gets off the side in the road.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Was there anybody inside the vehicle?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I look down.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
That tall bridge spans the Shark River, which despite its name,
isn't known for having sharks.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
The water underneath is a Shark River, which is a
very shallow river. The might do some fishing there. There's
really no swimming or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
When police got to the car, they found no one inside,
so they contacted its owner, Michael Stern.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
About three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 6 (02:54):
Was kind of a squeaky voice saying they were from
the Mamouth County Sheriff's Department and they were looking for
the owner of an oldsmobile.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Michael lived in Neptune City, New Jersey year round with
his daughter Sarah, but at the time he was out
of town. He was vacationing in Orlando.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And I said, yeah, you know, Sarah drives that car.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Sarah was his nineteen year old daughter. She was in
college studying media production.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Well, Sarah was into the arts.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
She was taking television production, art classes, pottery photography.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well, her dad was in Orlando, Sarah was back home.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Sarah was basically by herself, and she didn't like to
be by herself.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yes, but sometimes, like everyone, Sarah just needed her space.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
When she was fifteen, her mom passed away cancer and
it was a tough time for her.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It was very tough. Sarah's mom had a long bout
with breast cancer.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
And Sarah, you know, she was a champ.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
She loved her mom and she did everything she could
to keep for comfort when she was going through chemo.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And sadly, her mom ultimately lost that fight. When Sarah
was a freshman in high school.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
She struggled at the time, you know, losing her mom.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Sarah took that pain and channeled it into her artwork.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
So she had to kind of find herself and that's
when she threw herself into art, drawing, photography, and the media,
and her talent just blossomed. Within a couple of years,
she was doing things that I thought were incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
According to Michael, as a widower and father of a
teenage daughter, he thought the only thing to do was
to pull Sarah close and cope together.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
Our family basically was Sarah and myself and always a dog.
She loved her dog Buddy, and she dressed Buddy up
in different outfits like put jackets on them in sweatshirts, and.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
The buddy dressed up for Halloween. That was her best friend.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
With Sarah and Buddy back home, Michael spent the early
morning hours of December third, twenty sixteen, trying to figure
out why Sarah's carr was left on a bridge some
two miles from their home.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
I tried the house phone and her cell phone, and
I wasn't getting anything through.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Then he did what every father of a nineteen year
old would do. He sent her a text message.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
The messages were coming up green as opposed to blue
on an iPhone, so I thought, maybe your phone was off,
or you know, the battery life had gone down.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
By then, the police had gone to Sarah's home and
already did a search.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
No one was there except for the dog.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The police found Buddy locked in his cage, which was
something Sarah's dad said she would only do when strangers
were at the house.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
It was kind of odd that he would have been
in there, but Sarah was nowhere to be found. At
that point, we just didn't know what was going on,
so we just packed up and threw everything in the
car and started driving north.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
The sixteen hour ride from Orlando to Neptune City gave
Michael plenty of time to think about what could have happened.
Speaker 6 (06:11):
There was a million scenarios going through my head. Did
the car stall with something wrong with it, you know?
Did Sarah have somebody with her that might have abducted her.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
There was also the terrifying thought that Sarah, who was
struggling with the loss of her mother, possibly took her
own life.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
We had no answers, no answers at all.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Early that morning, the police sent a team of divers
into the frigid waters of the Shark River to look
for any signs of Sarah.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The tides go in and out very very quick.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
It's cold, it's rocky in some areas, and it's marshy
and other areas.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
By the time the sun came up that Saturday morning,
there was still no sign of Sarah and no evidence
of what could have happened.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
There were a couple of theories that law enforcement believed.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Early on, Alex Napoliello covered the story for NJ dot
com and the Star Ledger newspaper.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's possible her car had broken down and she flagged
the wrong person for help, and someone did something terrible
to her, possibly threw her body off the bridge. And
I remember early reports talking to sources off the record,
that there was belief that she had jumped off the bridge.
So then law enforcement wants to start putting the pieces together.
(07:29):
What was her mental state leading up to this?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
You know, was she sad?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Was she depressed?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Well?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
According to witnesses who last saw Sarah, she was not
in a good place mentally.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Police talked to her neighbor across the street, Robin Draper,
and what Robin had told them was that Sarah had
seemed a little off that day and not necessarily herself.
Sarah was over at their home earlier in the day
and she had dropped off some bins of her belongings.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But Sarah didn't just drop all of some of her stuff.
She also dropped some hints about where she might be going.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Sarah talked about possibly starting a new life in Toronto
and moving away. If she's getting rid of these belongings
while her father is vacationing, maybe she wanted to leave
town without necessarily notifying her family that she was leaving.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
One of the last people to see Sarah Stern before
her disappearance was one of her best friends, Liam Mcatasne.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Liam Mcatazsne was one of Sarah's closest friends growing up.
They lived about a block away from each other. They
were childhood friends and they did what normal kids do,
play video games, talk on the phone, text with each other.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
The two had one of those rare lifelong friendships. They
met at Sunday School when they were just six years old.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
They were close and they remained close up until the
day she disappeared.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Liam was with Sarah that afternoon as she moved those
beens filled with her personal belongings into a neighbor's house.
When detectives questioned him, he painted a bleak picture of
Sarah's state of mind.
Speaker 7 (09:10):
In the past, she has had a tendency to have
self destructive, suicidal behavior.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
He was telling law enforcement she wanted to move away.
She wasn't happy, she was depressed.
Speaker 8 (09:27):
Over the past few months, she's been telling.
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Me how bad her relationship with her father is and
how she just needs to get out of here.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
She had a rocky relationship with her father. There were
some periods where you know, they fought and had disagreements.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So let's say that one of Sarah's best friends was right,
and she did leave to get away from her dad, Well,
how could she afford it.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
On the day before Sarah's carr was found abandoned on
the bridge, police learned that she I had gone to
a bank during the day to withdraw money from a
safety deposit box that she had.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Liam said he went with her to the bank, but
stayed in the car while Sarah went inside.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
She took out seven thousand dollars. What would a nineteen
year old be doing with this money?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
What nineteen year old has thousands of dollars soft away
in a safe deposit box.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
You don't know what to think, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Sarah's father also didn't know what to think of that cash.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Well, here's what he learned. Sarah found those thousands of
dollars in a shoe box inside their home, and this
money was filthy and old from well before the US
Treasury redesigned the twenty and fifty dollars bills.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Her mother I'd squirreled away money, I guess for years.
But she mentioned it to somebody and he got back
to Sarah and.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
She found it.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
So Sarah Stern had some problems with her dad, and
she had a pile of cash. So it makes perfect
sense that she left town, but her dad wasn't buying it.
Speaker 6 (11:10):
You know, she just wasn't leaving her car on a
bridge and leaving her suitcase and her passport. Her passport
was up in her drawer where she kept it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, without a passport, Sarah would have no way to
get into Canada.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
We just we didn't know. Then.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
It just left the big open wound.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
In the early hours of December third, twenty sixteen, nineteen
year old Sarah Stearn's car turned up on a bridge
near her home in Neptune City, New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
There's really not a lot of room over there on
the shoulder, so it's very, very odd for people to
be stopping.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
On the bridge.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Edward Kirshenbaum was the director of Public Safety for the
Neptune City Police Department.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
He's bring the ignition with no sign of a driver
or a pass sure, no sign of foul play. Nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And here's a bit of bad luck. Surveillance cameras near
the bridge were not working that night, but a home
security camera across from the Stearns house was working. Unfortunately,
for detectives, they couldn't make out anything other than the
time Sarah's car came and left the house.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
You don't know what's going on, so you have to
pull in every resource that you can to try to
get to the inline of what happened.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Hundreds of Sarah's friends and neighbors joined Sarah's best friend,
Leah Mcatasne in the search for any sign of Sarah.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The beaches in the lakes and the inlets were all
searched by volunteers, so there was an all out effort
by the community to see if they could locate anything
that would give any indication of what happened to.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Sarah stick but detectives were concerned about Sarah's bizarre behavior.
The afternoon before she.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Disappeared wasations with friend of Sarah's Liam mcintazie, where she
may have had some type of suicidal tendency that she
was upset with issues, maybe because of her mom's death.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
In fact, Liam was with her when she moved some
of her stuff into a neighbor's house. The afternoon before
she went missing.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Sarah had dropped off bins of her personal belongings to
be kept in the friend's basement. Sarah also gave a
bin of footballs and basketballs or some type of equipment
to kids in the neighborhood, so that was kind of odd.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Liam told detectives that afternoon, the two went to the bank,
got tacos for lunch, and returned to Sarah's house. They
ate and then played video games until around four forty
five PM. That's when Liam left for his job at
a local steakhouse.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Liam was the last person that Sarah had talked.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
To, and most concerning was what Liam told detectives about
Sarah's state of mind.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Sarah was unhappy with her home life, that her father
was overbearing, that the relationship between Michael Stern and Sarah
Sterne was not a good relationship.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
So naturally, detectives questioned her father, Michael, about his relationship
with Sarah, and they were surprised by his response.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Michael Sterne was an open book. He was forthcoming with
everything that we discussed. Any type of telephone communication, whether
it be text messages, their voicemails.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And these messages didn't show any sort of conflict between them.
Just before Sarah disappeared, she texted her dad, Hey Dad,
good afternoon. What day are you coming back from Florida?
Her text also contained emojis, a smiley face with sunglasses,
a palm tree, and a little red car. Michael's response
(14:49):
included a picture of a rainbow that had just appeared
right around that time. He later sent a picture of
Disney's Magic Kingdom, where he was vacationing. Sarah wrote back, Wow,
the castle looked so pretty with the lights. She added
a shooting star emoji. It was the last message he
(15:10):
received from Sarah. So again, what's going on here?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
It's a parent sports nightmare. I couldn't imagine it myself,
and my heart was breaking for him.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
At this point, all detectives knew for sure was that
Sarah took out a large sum of money from the
bank and then vanished.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
There was no utilization of any bank cars or anything
that would give some kind of information that she had
left the area, because without funding, how far can you
go you have no car, So it was a unique case.
There was nothing adding up.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Even the surveillance footage from the bank showed Sarah smiling
and waving to the manager as she left, it didn't
exactly point to someone who was considering taking her own
life or fleeing the country.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
There were no hardcore facts out there, so you had
to use the totality of circumstances to just old fashioned
police work, hoping that somebody says something, and just talking
to everybody to try to put the pieces together.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Journalist Alex Napoleello covered the story.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Very early on. The reports coming to us from police
was that Sarah was missing and that there wasn't anything
suspicious about her disappearance. And then, sort of seemingly out
of the blue, the Mammoth County Prosecutor's office puts out
information that they are willing to pay anyone who would
(16:37):
have information in her disappearance.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
That reward, which totaled five thousand dollars, caught everyone off guard.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Now that struck us as a bit odd because usually
those rewards are put out when there's a crime that
has occurred.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Reporters saw it as a sign that police no longer
believe Sarah took off to Canada or her own life.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
And it was the first indication to us that maybe
something the faarius had happened here.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And then seven weeks after Sarah's disappearance, detectives got a
mysterious lead from someone who went to high school with Sarah.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Police father got information of a gentleman by the Marathony Curry.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Okay, let's talk about Anthony Curry. Like Sarah, he was
nineteen years old and liked the arts at the time.
He considered himself to be an aspiring horror movie maker
and sort of looked the part. He was tall, with long,
dark hair, wore dark clothing, and smoked cigarettes, but he
wasn't exactly a loner. In high school, he was named
(17:41):
most likely to become famous.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Mister Curry met with detectives of the case and told
them an incredible story.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Incredible is an understatement. Anthony Curry told detectives about a
bizarre conversation he had with a longtime friend about movies.
This friend floated a movie idea past Anthony that involved
robbing and killing someone.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
A scenario of parking a vehicle on the bridge, making
hear that somebody committed suicide by jumping off the bridge
into the water.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
This so called movie plot sounded all too familiar to detectives.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
It was a detail by detail description of what had
happened to Sarah.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Star, making things even more bizarre. This conversation with Anthony
Curry happened on Thanksgiving twenty sixteen, just days before Sarah
Stern went missing.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Anthony came up with information that only somebody involved in
the crime would know.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And this person who shared this movie idea with Anthony, well,
he was also no stranger to Sarah.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
It was a friend of Sarah's, Liam mcintazie.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I know a lot has happened, so let's take a
moment to reset. A week before Sarah disappeared, Anthony Curry
alleges that Sarah's good friend, her best friend, Liam shared
his idea for a movie about a young woman who
was robbed, murdered, and then thrown off a bridge while
her car was left on a bridge to appear like
(19:21):
she took her own life. Things are getting really weird here,
so just.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
The whole concept is beyond comprehension.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And Anthony said he never thought about this conversation after
it happened, that is, until he read about Sarah's mysterious disappearance.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Mister Curry came forward too law enforcement because mister mcintassie
continued to reach out for mister Curry.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Leah mcintazzne told Anthony it was urgent they meet up,
which is what caused Anthony to go to the cops.
But again, Liam was one of Sarah's oldest and best
and most devoted friends. Could he actually be involved in
Sarah's disappearance? Was this just some sort of weird coincidence,
(20:09):
or had Sarah and Liamp cooked up some sort of plan.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
This is just so off the choice that nobody knows
what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So the police came up with a plan to learn
the truth, and it involves some serious work on the
part of Anthony Curry. If he could pull this off,
it would make him famous for reasons no one in
his high school could have ever imagined. A week before
(20:37):
nineteen year old Sarah Stern went missing in December twenty sixteen,
Leamcatazzne told his friend Anthony Curry an idea for a movie.
In this movie, a young woman is robbed and killed.
Her body is then thrown off a bridge, all to
make it look like she took her own life. Now
back to reality, nobody was found when already searched the river.
(21:01):
But since the rest of the movie plot sounded like
what could have happened to Sarah Stearn, Anthony Curry went.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
To the cops, so they wired mister Curry up.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Edward Kirshenbaum worked for the Neptune City Police Department, and
a plan.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Was put in placed by the investigative team for a
meet between Liam mctazzie and Anthony Curry, with law enforcement
wiring mister Curry and monitoring with audio and video the
conversation that would take place.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
On January thirty first, twenty seventeen, seven weeks after Sarah
Stearn's disappearance, Anthony Curry met Liam mcintasney in his car.
The police listened from a safe distance in hopes of
learning whether Liam's idea for a movie was actually his
plan to murder Sarah.
Speaker 9 (21:52):
Don't he don't put you on to hide from the cops. Dude,
you can't blame me for doing this, right. I got
a few y real quick, right right.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Off the bat. Liam Mcatazsney amped up the drama. He
was nervous and asked to pat down Anthony Curry in
case he was wearing a wire.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
No disrespect.
Speaker 9 (22:18):
I'll show you no disrespect, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Liam's pat down of Anthony didn't reveal anything because the
police didn't wire him up. They wired up his car,
so Liam had no idea their conversation was being recorded.
Speaker 9 (22:34):
I got the FBI on my ass. Dude, what are
they questioning? Oh yeah, a lot? Well what killing there?
Speaker 1 (22:42):
The FBI was not involved in the investigation, So what
was Liam talking about? Was this another page from his script?
Was this all again to him? And then police heard this?
Speaker 8 (22:57):
I did something really dumb.
Speaker 9 (22:59):
Then I planned it out half a year and the
worst part is we threw off the bridge and the
body never showed up.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Well that was pretty shocking, and who is we? Then
Liam shared what happened the afternoon before Sarah disappeared.
Speaker 9 (23:17):
I'm hanging out with her. We went to the bank.
She took some money out, not all for money.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Liam said. After Sarah took seven thousand dollars out of
her safe deposit box, the two went back to Sarah's
and that's when Liam put his plan into action.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
We're counting out and then she goes to walk out
the front door.
Speaker 8 (23:40):
I choked her out, like I just I picked her up.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
And had her just like dangling off the ground, and
she just herself said my name, and then that was it.
And her dog laid there and watched as I killed her.
Didn't do anything.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
That's really hard to hear and makes my stomach drop.
Such a sad ending to Sarah's life and the police
could not believe what they were hearing. Sarah Stearn's friend
and neighbor, Liam mcintosney, very nonchalantly described how he killed
Sarah with his own two hands.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
She was just laying there, having a seizure or something.
Speaker 9 (24:24):
I got a shirt and I just shoved it down
her throat so she wouldn't throw up her anything, and
held my finger over her nose.
Speaker 8 (24:32):
And it took me like a half an hour.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It's really hard to listen to this because he is
so cold, But Liam went on. He said he ran
out of time. He had to be at work at
five pm, so he dragged Sarah's body to the bathroom
and left her there. And that's where Liam's accomplice comes
into the story. His roommate, Preston Taylor. According to Liam,
(24:59):
Preston was in on the plan. They had actually been
planning to rob and kill Sarah for six months.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
You are the only person on the planet that not
besides Preston, and Preston doesn't know.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
That you know.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
So if what he is saying is true, then while
Liam was at work, Preston entered Sarah's house through her
back door and then moved her body to a bushy
area in the backyard.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
I get off work, Donn Preston, and I go over
to her house. Then we take her body out of
the bushes and drag it over to her back fence,
and I crawl get into her car and I back up.
She had There's a security camera across the street, so
I had to back I had to act like her.
(25:45):
I watched her. Every time she backed out, she does
the same thing. So I backed out exactly like she
did and drove off.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Liam still hasn't said anything that establishes a clear motive.
His story is so brutal and so nonchalant at the
same time, it's hard to believe it's true. And then
there's another thing. Somehow Liam dodged the security cameras, which
wasn't easy considering where he put the body.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
Put her in the passenger seat of her own car.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
With a seatbelt around. Sarah's dead body in the passenger
seat of her own car, Liam said he drove to
the bridge over the Shark River.
Speaker 9 (26:26):
I go up, open the door on hooker, pull her out,
start dragging her to throw her over, and then cars
start coming up.
Speaker 8 (26:34):
I seeing like headlights coming.
Speaker 9 (26:37):
I try to get her over and I can't my
leg up like so now I'm limping my legs up
and there's three cars coming up.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Liam said he freaked out and dragged Sarah's body back
to the car, pushing her into the passenger seat and
signaling to his roommate pressed in for help. From the
way he described it, Liam did all of this with
no regard for Sarah. It was it's like she was
no longer a person, but just an object, no longer
(27:04):
his best friend, just a thing.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
The two of us throw the body over and then
we're out. This is the thing about there's so much
you can't account for. You don't know until it happens.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Liam then explained how he and Preston stole a safe
from Sarah along with that money Sarah took out from
her safe deposit box.
Speaker 9 (27:25):
That's not even the worst part. The worst part of
it is I thought I was walking out fifty grand,
one hundred grand in my pocket. She only had ten
grand and this money I don't know if it was
birth or something.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
It's old money, terrible quality.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
That's the worst part. He's upset about the money. Well,
if you remember those twenty and fifty dollars bills looked
old and beaten up, which upset Liam.
Speaker 8 (27:56):
I don't even know if I can put any of it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
In the ban out this sickening discussion with Liam, Anthony
Curry kept repeating, it's like a movie. It's like a movie, man,
and Liam agreed, to.
Speaker 9 (28:09):
Your life, you might as well make it. What are
you gonna list on? Foreign ass life?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That's when Liam said he needed to go and exited
the car. But then seconds later Liam turned around and
ran back to Anthony's car. Liam knocked on Anthony's window
and looked worried.
Speaker 8 (28:30):
There he there, got ahead, everything got They're there.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Liam found his keys in Anthony's car, grabbed them and left.
Anthony exhaled, lit up another cigarette, and drove back home,
wondering how on earth this horror movie plot Liam shared
with him on Thanksgiving may have turned into a real
life murder. As for the detective, they also tried to
(29:01):
process what they heard.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It was a detailed accounting of what he, along with
President Taylor did to Sarah start Ed.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Kirshenbaum of the Neptune City Police Department was shocked not
just at what Liam said, but how he said it.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It was a chilling account with no remorse, no emotion.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
With Liam mctasne on tape detailing what he did to
Sarah Stearn. You would think there would have been enough
evidence to charge him with murder, but this story was
far from over.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
They spotted somebody but looked like Sarah.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I got a good look right in her face, stared
right into her eyes.
Speaker 8 (29:43):
Away and looking at you right now, and she turned
her head duck down an alleyway. I said, I don't
know what that is, but that girl did not.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Want to be seen. I just you know, I was
beside myself.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
I had never seen anything like that. As a reporter
covering crime for many years.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I'm Sloane Glass. Join me for part two of BFFs,
the Disappearance of Sarah Stern, as we learn what really
happened in the small beach town of Neptune City. That's
next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American
(30:25):
Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at
gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass
and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show
(30:47):
is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The
series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with
additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate
producer is Kristin Melcurie. Our iheartyap is Ali Perry and
Jessica Crimechack. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Dave
(31:09):
Seya and Britt Robashow. Additional editing support from Nico Ruka,
Tanner Robbins and Patrick Walsh. American Homicide theme song was
composed by Oliver Bains of Noisier Music Library provided by
my Music. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts and please
(31:29):
rate and review American Homicide. Your five star review goes
a long way towards helping others find this show. For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
When a nineteen year old's car was found abandoned on
a bridge at the Jersey Shore, speculation ran wild keys.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We're in the ignition, no sign of foul play, nothing.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Sarah was nowhere to be found.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
But was Sarah Stern trying not to be found?
Speaker 4 (00:18):
Sarah talked about possibly starting a new life in Toronto
and moving away.
Speaker 5 (00:24):
Her mother had left her a lot of cash.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
It all added up to one giant mystery.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
You don't know what today.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
To be honest, today we're at the Jersey Shore in
the community of Neptune City for BFFs the disappearance of
Sarah Stern. I'm Sloan Glass and this is American homicide.
As a note, this podcast also contains subject matter which
may not be suitable for all audiences. Discretion is advised.
(00:54):
The Jersey Shore, What did it give us? Snookie, Polly
d and Jwow. But what you say see on TV
and what really happens in real life are two completely
different things.
Speaker 5 (01:05):
The Jersey Shore is not quite what you would expect
to see.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Journalist Tom Davis grew up on the Jersey Shore and
now covers the area for Patch dot Com.
Speaker 5 (01:16):
It's actually a very conservative, traditional community, that's mixed in
with a tourist atmosphere.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Like clockwork, every summer, tourists and beachgoers take over the area.
Speaker 5 (01:28):
During the summertime, I would say the population probably for
druples at least, especially on the weekends. It almost develops
a little bit more of a Miami Field to it.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
The party atmosphere every summer takes over the mini bars, restaurants,
and of course the beaches.
Speaker 5 (01:44):
The beaches are the best place to beat.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
The shore features forty four beaches in total, and if
you're like Tom and live there year round, you look
forward to the off season.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
For a lot of people, they really kind of hate
the crowd, so they actually like the fall and the
winter bigg This is obviously a lot emptier, it's a
lot less crowded. I always called it the void between
Labor Day and Moral Day because literally nothing happens here.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
But in the early morning hours of December third, twenty sixteen,
something did happen. A ridehair driver noticed an abandoned Oldsmobile
sedan atop a bridge heading out of town and called
nine one one.
Speaker 5 (02:23):
Mine one one, where is the emergency?
Speaker 1 (02:25):
I kut on the Belmore Bridge through the car that
debanded gets off the side in the road.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Was there anybody inside the vehicle?
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I look down.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
That tall bridge spans the Shark River, which despite its name,
isn't known for having sharks.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
The water underneath is a Shark River, which is a
very shallow river. The might do some fishing there. There's
really no swimming or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
When police got to the car, they found no one inside,
so they contacted its owner, Michael Stern.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
About three o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 6 (02:54):
Was kind of a squeaky voice saying they were from
the Mamouth County Sheriff's Department and they were looking for
the owner of an oldsmobile.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Michael lived in Neptune City, New Jersey year round with
his daughter Sarah, but at the time he was out
of town. He was vacationing in Orlando.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
And I said, yeah, you know, Sarah drives that car.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Sarah was his nineteen year old daughter. She was in
college studying media production.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Well, Sarah was into the arts.
Speaker 6 (03:23):
She was taking television production, art classes, pottery photography.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Well, her dad was in Orlando, Sarah was back home.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Sarah was basically by herself, and she didn't like to
be by herself.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yes, but sometimes, like everyone, Sarah just needed her space.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
When she was fifteen, her mom passed away cancer and
it was a tough time for her.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
It was very tough. Sarah's mom had a long bout
with breast cancer.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
And Sarah, you know, she was a champ.
Speaker 6 (03:55):
She loved her mom and she did everything she could
to keep for comfort when she was going through chemo.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And sadly, her mom ultimately lost that fight. When Sarah
was a freshman in high school.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
She struggled at the time, you know, losing her mom.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Sarah took that pain and channeled it into her artwork.
Speaker 6 (04:16):
So she had to kind of find herself and that's
when she threw herself into art, drawing, photography, and the media,
and her talent just blossomed. Within a couple of years,
she was doing things that I thought were incredible.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
According to Michael, as a widower and father of a
teenage daughter, he thought the only thing to do was
to pull Sarah close and cope together.
Speaker 6 (04:42):
Our family basically was Sarah and myself and always a dog.
She loved her dog Buddy, and she dressed Buddy up
in different outfits like put jackets on them in sweatshirts, and.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
The buddy dressed up for Halloween. That was her best friend.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
With Sarah and Buddy back home, Michael spent the early
morning hours of December third, twenty sixteen, trying to figure
out why Sarah's carr was left on a bridge some
two miles from their home.
Speaker 6 (05:13):
I tried the house phone and her cell phone, and
I wasn't getting anything through.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Then he did what every father of a nineteen year
old would do. He sent her a text message.
Speaker 6 (05:24):
The messages were coming up green as opposed to blue
on an iPhone, so I thought, maybe your phone was off,
or you know, the battery life had gone down.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
By then, the police had gone to Sarah's home and
already did a search.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
No one was there except for the dog.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
The police found Buddy locked in his cage, which was
something Sarah's dad said she would only do when strangers
were at the house.
Speaker 6 (05:47):
It was kind of odd that he would have been
in there, but Sarah was nowhere to be found. At
that point, we just didn't know what was going on,
so we just packed up and threw everything in the
car and started driving north.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
The sixteen hour ride from Orlando to Neptune City gave
Michael plenty of time to think about what could have happened.
Speaker 6 (06:11):
There was a million scenarios going through my head. Did
the car stall with something wrong with it, you know?
Did Sarah have somebody with her that might have abducted her.
Speaker 1 (06:21):
There was also the terrifying thought that Sarah, who was
struggling with the loss of her mother, possibly took her
own life.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
We had no answers, no answers at all.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
Early that morning, the police sent a team of divers
into the frigid waters of the Shark River to look
for any signs of Sarah.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
The tides go in and out very very quick.
Speaker 6 (06:44):
It's cold, it's rocky in some areas, and it's marshy
and other areas.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
By the time the sun came up that Saturday morning,
there was still no sign of Sarah and no evidence
of what could have happened.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
There were a couple of theories that law enforcement believed.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Early on, Alex Napoliello covered the story for NJ dot
com and the Star Ledger newspaper.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
It's possible her car had broken down and she flagged
the wrong person for help, and someone did something terrible
to her, possibly threw her body off the bridge. And
I remember early reports talking to sources off the record,
that there was belief that she had jumped off the bridge.
So then law enforcement wants to start putting the pieces together.
(07:29):
What was her mental state leading up to this?
Speaker 3 (07:32):
You know, was she sad?
Speaker 4 (07:33):
Was she depressed?
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Well?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
According to witnesses who last saw Sarah, she was not
in a good place mentally.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Police talked to her neighbor across the street, Robin Draper,
and what Robin had told them was that Sarah had
seemed a little off that day and not necessarily herself.
Sarah was over at their home earlier in the day
and she had dropped off some bins of her belongings.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
But Sarah didn't just drop all of some of her stuff.
She also dropped some hints about where she might be going.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
Sarah talked about possibly starting a new life in Toronto
and moving away. If she's getting rid of these belongings
while her father is vacationing, maybe she wanted to leave
town without necessarily notifying her family that she was leaving.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
One of the last people to see Sarah Stern before
her disappearance was one of her best friends, Liam Mcatasne.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
Liam Mcatazsne was one of Sarah's closest friends growing up.
They lived about a block away from each other. They
were childhood friends and they did what normal kids do,
play video games, talk on the phone, text with each other.
Speaker 1 (08:46):
The two had one of those rare lifelong friendships. They
met at Sunday School when they were just six years old.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
They were close and they remained close up until the
day she disappeared.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Liam was with Sarah that afternoon as she moved those
beens filled with her personal belongings into a neighbor's house.
When detectives questioned him, he painted a bleak picture of
Sarah's state of mind.
Speaker 7 (09:10):
In the past, she has had a tendency to have
self destructive, suicidal behavior.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
He was telling law enforcement she wanted to move away.
She wasn't happy, she was depressed.
Speaker 8 (09:27):
Over the past few months, she's been telling.
Speaker 7 (09:29):
Me how bad her relationship with her father is and
how she just needs to get out of here.
Speaker 4 (09:37):
She had a rocky relationship with her father. There were
some periods where you know, they fought and had disagreements.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So let's say that one of Sarah's best friends was right,
and she did leave to get away from her dad, Well,
how could she afford it.
Speaker 4 (09:54):
On the day before Sarah's carr was found abandoned on
the bridge, police learned that she I had gone to
a bank during the day to withdraw money from a
safety deposit box that she had.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Liam said he went with her to the bank, but
stayed in the car while Sarah went inside.
Speaker 4 (10:11):
She took out seven thousand dollars. What would a nineteen
year old be doing with this money?
Speaker 1 (10:17):
What nineteen year old has thousands of dollars soft away
in a safe deposit box.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
You don't know what to think, to be honest.
Speaker 1 (10:26):
Sarah's father also didn't know what to think of that cash.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
I didn't know about it.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Well, here's what he learned. Sarah found those thousands of
dollars in a shoe box inside their home, and this
money was filthy and old from well before the US
Treasury redesigned the twenty and fifty dollars bills.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
Her mother I'd squirreled away money, I guess for years.
But she mentioned it to somebody and he got back
to Sarah and.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
She found it.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
So Sarah Stern had some problems with her dad, and
she had a pile of cash. So it makes perfect
sense that she left town, but her dad wasn't buying it.
Speaker 6 (11:10):
You know, she just wasn't leaving her car on a
bridge and leaving her suitcase and her passport. Her passport
was up in her drawer where she kept it.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah, without a passport, Sarah would have no way to
get into Canada.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
We just we didn't know. Then.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
It just left the big open wound.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
In the early hours of December third, twenty sixteen, nineteen
year old Sarah Stearn's car turned up on a bridge
near her home in Neptune City, New Jersey.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
There's really not a lot of room over there on
the shoulder, so it's very, very odd for people to
be stopping.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
On the bridge.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Edward Kirshenbaum was the director of Public Safety for the
Neptune City Police Department.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
He's bring the ignition with no sign of a driver
or a pass sure, no sign of foul play. Nothing.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
And here's a bit of bad luck. Surveillance cameras near
the bridge were not working that night, but a home
security camera across from the Stearns house was working. Unfortunately,
for detectives, they couldn't make out anything other than the
time Sarah's car came and left the house.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
You don't know what's going on, so you have to
pull in every resource that you can to try to
get to the inline of what happened.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
Hundreds of Sarah's friends and neighbors joined Sarah's best friend,
Leah Mcatasne in the search for any sign of Sarah.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
The beaches in the lakes and the inlets were all
searched by volunteers, so there was an all out effort
by the community to see if they could locate anything
that would give any indication of what happened to.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Sarah stick but detectives were concerned about Sarah's bizarre behavior.
The afternoon before she.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
Disappeared wasations with friend of Sarah's Liam mcintazie, where she
may have had some type of suicidal tendency that she
was upset with issues, maybe because of her mom's death.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
In fact, Liam was with her when she moved some
of her stuff into a neighbor's house. The afternoon before
she went missing.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Sarah had dropped off bins of her personal belongings to
be kept in the friend's basement. Sarah also gave a
bin of footballs and basketballs or some type of equipment
to kids in the neighborhood, so that was kind of odd.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
Liam told detectives that afternoon, the two went to the bank,
got tacos for lunch, and returned to Sarah's house. They
ate and then played video games until around four forty
five PM. That's when Liam left for his job at
a local steakhouse.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Liam was the last person that Sarah had talked.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
To, and most concerning was what Liam told detectives about
Sarah's state of mind.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Sarah was unhappy with her home life, that her father
was overbearing, that the relationship between Michael Stern and Sarah
Sterne was not a good relationship.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
So naturally, detectives questioned her father, Michael, about his relationship
with Sarah, and they were surprised by his response.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Michael Sterne was an open book. He was forthcoming with
everything that we discussed. Any type of telephone communication, whether
it be text messages, their voicemails.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
And these messages didn't show any sort of conflict between them.
Just before Sarah disappeared, she texted her dad, Hey Dad,
good afternoon. What day are you coming back from Florida?
Her text also contained emojis, a smiley face with sunglasses,
a palm tree, and a little red car. Michael's response
(14:49):
included a picture of a rainbow that had just appeared
right around that time. He later sent a picture of
Disney's Magic Kingdom, where he was vacationing. Sarah wrote back, Wow,
the castle looked so pretty with the lights. She added
a shooting star emoji. It was the last message he
(15:10):
received from Sarah. So again, what's going on here?
Speaker 2 (15:15):
It's a parent sports nightmare. I couldn't imagine it myself,
and my heart was breaking for him.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
At this point, all detectives knew for sure was that
Sarah took out a large sum of money from the
bank and then vanished.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
There was no utilization of any bank cars or anything
that would give some kind of information that she had
left the area, because without funding, how far can you
go you have no car, So it was a unique case.
There was nothing adding up.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Even the surveillance footage from the bank showed Sarah smiling
and waving to the manager as she left, it didn't
exactly point to someone who was considering taking her own
life or fleeing the country.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
There were no hardcore facts out there, so you had
to use the totality of circumstances to just old fashioned
police work, hoping that somebody says something, and just talking
to everybody to try to put the pieces together.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Journalist Alex Napoleello covered the story.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
Very early on. The reports coming to us from police
was that Sarah was missing and that there wasn't anything
suspicious about her disappearance. And then, sort of seemingly out
of the blue, the Mammoth County Prosecutor's office puts out
information that they are willing to pay anyone who would
(16:37):
have information in her disappearance.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
That reward, which totaled five thousand dollars, caught everyone off guard.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Now that struck us as a bit odd because usually
those rewards are put out when there's a crime that
has occurred.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Reporters saw it as a sign that police no longer
believe Sarah took off to Canada or her own life.
Speaker 4 (17:01):
And it was the first indication to us that maybe
something the faarius had happened here.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
And then seven weeks after Sarah's disappearance, detectives got a
mysterious lead from someone who went to high school with Sarah.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
Police father got information of a gentleman by the Marathony Curry.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Okay, let's talk about Anthony Curry. Like Sarah, he was
nineteen years old and liked the arts at the time.
He considered himself to be an aspiring horror movie maker
and sort of looked the part. He was tall, with long,
dark hair, wore dark clothing, and smoked cigarettes, but he
wasn't exactly a loner. In high school, he was named
(17:41):
most likely to become famous.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Mister Curry met with detectives of the case and told
them an incredible story.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Incredible is an understatement. Anthony Curry told detectives about a
bizarre conversation he had with a longtime friend about movies.
This friend floated a movie idea past Anthony that involved
robbing and killing someone.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
A scenario of parking a vehicle on the bridge, making
hear that somebody committed suicide by jumping off the bridge
into the water.
Speaker 1 (18:19):
This so called movie plot sounded all too familiar to detectives.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
It was a detail by detail description of what had
happened to Sarah.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
Star, making things even more bizarre. This conversation with Anthony
Curry happened on Thanksgiving twenty sixteen, just days before Sarah
Stern went missing.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Anthony came up with information that only somebody involved in
the crime would know.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
And this person who shared this movie idea with Anthony, well,
he was also no stranger to Sarah.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
It was a friend of Sarah's, Liam mcintazie.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
I know a lot has happened, so let's take a
moment to reset. A week before Sarah disappeared, Anthony Curry
alleges that Sarah's good friend, her best friend, Liam shared
his idea for a movie about a young woman who
was robbed, murdered, and then thrown off a bridge while
her car was left on a bridge to appear like
(19:21):
she took her own life. Things are getting really weird here,
so just.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
The whole concept is beyond comprehension.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
And Anthony said he never thought about this conversation after
it happened, that is, until he read about Sarah's mysterious disappearance.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Mister Curry came forward too law enforcement because mister mcintassie
continued to reach out for mister Curry.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Leah mcintazzne told Anthony it was urgent they meet up,
which is what caused Anthony to go to the cops.
But again, Liam was one of Sarah's oldest and best
and most devoted friends. Could he actually be involved in
Sarah's disappearance? Was this just some sort of weird coincidence,
(20:09):
or had Sarah and Liamp cooked up some sort of plan.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
This is just so off the choice that nobody knows
what happened.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
So the police came up with a plan to learn
the truth, and it involves some serious work on the
part of Anthony Curry. If he could pull this off,
it would make him famous for reasons no one in
his high school could have ever imagined. A week before
(20:37):
nineteen year old Sarah Stern went missing in December twenty sixteen,
Leamcatazzne told his friend Anthony Curry an idea for a movie.
In this movie, a young woman is robbed and killed.
Her body is then thrown off a bridge, all to
make it look like she took her own life. Now
back to reality, nobody was found when already searched the river.
(21:01):
But since the rest of the movie plot sounded like
what could have happened to Sarah Stearn, Anthony Curry went.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
To the cops, so they wired mister Curry up.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
Edward Kirshenbaum worked for the Neptune City Police Department, and
a plan.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
Was put in placed by the investigative team for a
meet between Liam mctazzie and Anthony Curry, with law enforcement
wiring mister Curry and monitoring with audio and video the
conversation that would take place.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
On January thirty first, twenty seventeen, seven weeks after Sarah
Stearn's disappearance, Anthony Curry met Liam mcintasney in his car.
The police listened from a safe distance in hopes of
learning whether Liam's idea for a movie was actually his
plan to murder Sarah.
Speaker 9 (21:52):
Don't he don't put you on to hide from the cops. Dude,
you can't blame me for doing this, right. I got
a few y real quick, right right.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Off the bat. Liam Mcatazsney amped up the drama. He
was nervous and asked to pat down Anthony Curry in
case he was wearing a wire.
Speaker 8 (22:17):
No disrespect.
Speaker 9 (22:18):
I'll show you no disrespect, okay.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Liam's pat down of Anthony didn't reveal anything because the
police didn't wire him up. They wired up his car,
so Liam had no idea their conversation was being recorded.
Speaker 9 (22:34):
I got the FBI on my ass. Dude, what are
they questioning? Oh yeah, a lot? Well what killing there?
Speaker 1 (22:42):
The FBI was not involved in the investigation, So what
was Liam talking about? Was this another page from his script?
Was this all again to him? And then police heard this?
Speaker 8 (22:57):
I did something really dumb.
Speaker 9 (22:59):
Then I planned it out half a year and the
worst part is we threw off the bridge and the
body never showed up.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
Well that was pretty shocking, and who is we? Then
Liam shared what happened the afternoon before Sarah disappeared.
Speaker 9 (23:17):
I'm hanging out with her. We went to the bank.
She took some money out, not all for money.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
Liam said. After Sarah took seven thousand dollars out of
her safe deposit box, the two went back to Sarah's
and that's when Liam put his plan into action.
Speaker 9 (23:32):
We're counting out and then she goes to walk out
the front door.
Speaker 8 (23:40):
I choked her out, like I just I picked her up.
Speaker 9 (23:45):
And had her just like dangling off the ground, and
she just herself said my name, and then that was it.
And her dog laid there and watched as I killed her.
Didn't do anything.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
That's really hard to hear and makes my stomach drop.
Such a sad ending to Sarah's life and the police
could not believe what they were hearing. Sarah Stearn's friend
and neighbor, Liam mcintosney, very nonchalantly described how he killed
Sarah with his own two hands.
Speaker 8 (24:21):
She was just laying there, having a seizure or something.
Speaker 9 (24:24):
I got a shirt and I just shoved it down
her throat so she wouldn't throw up her anything, and
held my finger over her nose.
Speaker 8 (24:32):
And it took me like a half an hour.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
It's really hard to listen to this because he is
so cold, But Liam went on. He said he ran
out of time. He had to be at work at
five pm, so he dragged Sarah's body to the bathroom
and left her there. And that's where Liam's accomplice comes
into the story. His roommate, Preston Taylor. According to Liam,
(24:59):
Preston was in on the plan. They had actually been
planning to rob and kill Sarah for six months.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
You are the only person on the planet that not
besides Preston, and Preston doesn't know.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
That you know.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
So if what he is saying is true, then while
Liam was at work, Preston entered Sarah's house through her
back door and then moved her body to a bushy
area in the backyard.
Speaker 9 (25:23):
I get off work, Donn Preston, and I go over
to her house. Then we take her body out of
the bushes and drag it over to her back fence,
and I crawl get into her car and I back up.
She had There's a security camera across the street, so
I had to back I had to act like her.
(25:45):
I watched her. Every time she backed out, she does
the same thing. So I backed out exactly like she
did and drove off.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Liam still hasn't said anything that establishes a clear motive.
His story is so brutal and so nonchalant at the
same time, it's hard to believe it's true. And then
there's another thing. Somehow Liam dodged the security cameras, which
wasn't easy considering where he put the body.
Speaker 8 (26:13):
Put her in the passenger seat of her own car.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
With a seatbelt around. Sarah's dead body in the passenger
seat of her own car, Liam said he drove to
the bridge over the Shark River.
Speaker 9 (26:26):
I go up, open the door on hooker, pull her out,
start dragging her to throw her over, and then cars
start coming up.
Speaker 8 (26:34):
I seeing like headlights coming.
Speaker 9 (26:37):
I try to get her over and I can't my
leg up like so now I'm limping my legs up
and there's three cars coming up.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Liam said he freaked out and dragged Sarah's body back
to the car, pushing her into the passenger seat and
signaling to his roommate pressed in for help. From the
way he described it, Liam did all of this with
no regard for Sarah. It was it's like she was
no longer a person, but just an object, no longer
(27:04):
his best friend, just a thing.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
The two of us throw the body over and then
we're out. This is the thing about there's so much
you can't account for. You don't know until it happens.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Liam then explained how he and Preston stole a safe
from Sarah along with that money Sarah took out from
her safe deposit box.
Speaker 9 (27:25):
That's not even the worst part. The worst part of
it is I thought I was walking out fifty grand,
one hundred grand in my pocket. She only had ten
grand and this money I don't know if it was
birth or something.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
It's old money, terrible quality.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
That's the worst part. He's upset about the money. Well,
if you remember those twenty and fifty dollars bills looked
old and beaten up, which upset Liam.
Speaker 8 (27:56):
I don't even know if I can put any of it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
In the ban out this sickening discussion with Liam, Anthony
Curry kept repeating, it's like a movie. It's like a movie, man,
and Liam agreed, to.
Speaker 9 (28:09):
Your life, you might as well make it. What are
you gonna list on? Foreign ass life?
Speaker 1 (28:14):
That's when Liam said he needed to go and exited
the car. But then seconds later Liam turned around and
ran back to Anthony's car. Liam knocked on Anthony's window
and looked worried.
Speaker 8 (28:30):
There he there, got ahead, everything got They're there.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Liam found his keys in Anthony's car, grabbed them and left.
Anthony exhaled, lit up another cigarette, and drove back home,
wondering how on earth this horror movie plot Liam shared
with him on Thanksgiving may have turned into a real
life murder. As for the detective, they also tried to
(29:01):
process what they heard.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
It was a detailed accounting of what he, along with
President Taylor did to Sarah start Ed.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Kirshenbaum of the Neptune City Police Department was shocked not
just at what Liam said, but how he said it.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
It was a chilling account with no remorse, no emotion.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
With Liam mctasne on tape detailing what he did to
Sarah Stearn. You would think there would have been enough
evidence to charge him with murder, but this story was
far from over.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
They spotted somebody but looked like Sarah.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
I got a good look right in her face, stared
right into her eyes.
Speaker 8 (29:43):
Away and looking at you right now, and she turned
her head duck down an alleyway. I said, I don't
know what that is, but that girl did not.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Want to be seen. I just you know, I was
beside myself.
Speaker 4 (29:55):
I had never seen anything like that. As a reporter
covering crime for many years.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
I'm Sloane Glass. Join me for part two of BFFs,
the Disappearance of Sarah Stern, as we learn what really
happened in the small beach town of Neptune City. That's
next time on American Homicide. You can contact the American
(30:25):
Homicide team by emailing us at American Homicide Pod at
gmail dot com. That's American Homicide Pod at gmail dot com.
American Homicide is hosted and written by me Sloane Glass
and is a production of Glass Podcasts, a division of
Glass Entertainment Group in partnership with iHeart Podcasts. The show
(30:47):
is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans. The
series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with
additional writing by Ben Fetterman and Andrea Gunny. Our associate
producer is Kristin Melcurie. Our iheartyap is Ali Perry and
Jessica Crimechack. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Delvecchio, Dave
(31:09):
Seya and Britt Robashow. Additional editing support from Nico Ruka,
Tanner Robbins and Patrick Walsh. American Homicide theme song was
composed by Oliver Bains of Noisier Music Library provided by
my Music. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts and please
(31:29):
rate and review American Homicide. Your five star review goes
a long way towards helping others find this show. For
more podcasts from iHeart, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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