Latest / Crime Stories with Nancy Grace / Killers Amongst Us: 19-year-old artistic beauty disappears after car found abandoned on bridge. What happened to Sarah Stern? (Part 4))
Transcript
- 0:04Speaker 1: Hi, guys, Nancy Grace here, Welcome back to Killers amongst Us,
- 0:08Speaker 1: the production of iHeartMedia and Crime Online. We are investigating
- 0:14Speaker 1: the disappearance of Sarah Stern, a gorgeous team girl, her
- 0:18Speaker 1: car found abandoned late at night on a remote bridge,
- 0:21Speaker 1: New Jersey. We are joined by Sarah's dad, Michael Stern,
- 0:26Speaker 1: local reporter on the scene on the story from the
- 0:28Speaker 1: get go, Alex Napoleonello, Mama County Prosecutor Christopher Gramicioni, the
- 0:35Speaker 1: lead detective on the case, Brian Weisbrot is with US
- 0:38Speaker 1: doctor Daniel bober Renow, forensic psychologist. Last week we ended
- 0:43Speaker 1: with police trying to piece together a timeline of Sarah's disappearance,
- 0:47Speaker 1: her comings, her goings. Now neighborhood home surveillance cameras managed
- 0:52Speaker 1: to catch Sarah's car leaving her home several times the
- 0:56Speaker 1: day she goes missing. That's a good start, but there's
- 0:59Speaker 1: nothing saw it to give cops the league they really need.
- 1:03Speaker 1: All hope is seemingly lost. Then a new tip is
- 1:10Speaker 1: the love of money, the root of all evil. The
- 1:14Speaker 1: search intensifies. How any time Saturday morning, this weekend, and
- 1:19Speaker 1: you want to help search for Sarah Stern, Nancy Grace
- 1:24Speaker 1: Chillers unmongst Us, Sarah Stern. She's the young lady nineteen
- 1:31Speaker 1: years old missing since last weekend. Her car was found
- 1:35Speaker 1: on the Belmar Bridge through thirty five Bridge at three
- 1:37Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. And she's from Neptune City and
- 1:41Speaker 1: no trace of her. Nobody can find her. Coast Guard
- 1:43Speaker 1: and law enforcement has been looking all over that area
- 1:46Speaker 1: and no trace of her yet. So her father Michael
- 1:49Speaker 1: is getting a bunch of people as many volunteers as
- 1:51Speaker 1: can come to the boardwalk tomorrow morning Ocean Grove at
- 1:55Speaker 1: Ocean Pathway at Ocean Avenue at the Boardwalk Pavilion. They
- 1:57Speaker 1: gather there at eight thirty and they fan out the
- 2:00Speaker 1: towns all up and down the shore. And if you're
- 2:02Speaker 1: a parent like me and you've ever had a child missing,
- 2:06Speaker 1: my heart goes out of this guy and to anyone
- 2:08Speaker 1: else who's close to Sarah and wants to try to
- 2:11Speaker 1: help find her. That's din as hard. At one on
- 2:14Speaker 1: one point five, the whole community joining in to comb
- 2:17Speaker 1: the area looking for Sarah. To Detective Brian, wife brought
- 2:21Speaker 1: with Mama County Detective, tell me this, tell me about
- 2:24Speaker 1: the land search for Sarah. So, the land search we
- 2:28Speaker 1: had that was conducted by the police and the various
- 2:34Speaker 1: volunteers with e MS and fire departments in the area
- 2:38Speaker 1: was conducted in and around the area of the bridge
- 2:44Speaker 1: where Sarah's carr was found over the Shark River on
- 2:46Speaker 1: round thirty five. That's essentially where the primary search began
- 2:51Speaker 1: and then it spanned out. Of course from there, an
- 2:56Speaker 1: extensive amount of searching was done by the marine law
- 3:00Speaker 1: enforcement units with the state Police in the County Sheriff's
- 3:03Speaker 1: office as well. And we were doing uh, you know,
- 3:10Speaker 1: campusing for surveillance cameras and an effort to be able
- 3:13Speaker 1: to locate Sarah. You know in the area. Detective, did
- 3:18Speaker 1: you bring in tracker dogs? Yes, we did. We had
- 3:21Speaker 1: canine dogs assisting us, especially during the early portions of
- 3:27Speaker 1: the search. We had dogs in boats with their handlers, um,
- 3:33Speaker 1: you know, searching the shoreline as well. You know what
- 3:38Speaker 1: a lot of people don't know is that a dog,
- 3:40Speaker 1: a tracker dog can pick up a scent even in
- 3:43Speaker 1: the water. If the person has been in the water
- 3:47Speaker 1: or is in the water, the dog can pick up
- 3:49Speaker 1: that scent. To Michael Stern, Michael, that had to be
- 3:54Speaker 1: so surreal. Everything's fine when you leave for Florida. You
- 4:00Speaker 1: talked to her the night before. Everything is fine, she's happy.
- 4:05Speaker 1: The next thing you know, her car is abandoned, she's
- 4:09Speaker 1: not in the home, the dog is in the cage,
- 4:11Speaker 1: locked up, and all of a sudden you look out
- 4:14Speaker 1: and there are tracker dogs looking for your girl. Well,
- 4:18Speaker 1: there was a lot of a lot of things going on.
- 4:20Speaker 1: There was a lot of activity with between the local
- 4:25Speaker 1: local police and the Sheriff's department to order rescue unit.
- 4:31Speaker 1: So it was just it was just so many things
- 4:33Speaker 1: going on all at once. It was a little bit overwhelming.
- 4:37Speaker 1: In the meantime, we're you know, we're throwing the information
- 4:42Speaker 1: that that Sarah's missing out farther and farther, So would
- 4:45Speaker 1: you know to just try to, you know, get some
- 4:48Speaker 1: kind of clue of what happened or where she was.
- 4:51Speaker 1: Take a listen to what was happening at the scene
- 4:54Speaker 1: of the search. Things are becoming very desperate. I really
- 4:58Speaker 1: didn't want to do this. I thought, you know, Sarah
- 5:01Speaker 1: would turn I was sooner, should be home and everything
- 5:04Speaker 1: would be fine. This is just that's you, Michael. That's
- 5:14Speaker 1: you at the search scene. You're there at an event
- 5:18Speaker 1: in the midst of everyone looking for Sarah. Do you
- 5:21Speaker 1: remember that moment when you spoke to NJA dot com? I,
- 5:25Speaker 1: actually I don't. I spoke to so many people and
- 5:28Speaker 1: there was so much going on from five six o'clock
- 5:32Speaker 1: in the morning until eleven o'clock twelve o'clock every night
- 5:35Speaker 1: that it just never ended. It was just one continuous
- 5:39Speaker 1: conversation going on with hundreds of people. The news media.
- 5:44Speaker 1: We know, we wanted to get as many media people
- 5:46Speaker 1: involved as possible to you know, try to figure out
- 5:51Speaker 1: if anybody had seen Sarah, or where she might have been,
- 5:53Speaker 1: or what might have happened. So we were kind of
- 5:56Speaker 1: at a loss, which we just kept throwing the you know,
- 6:00Speaker 1: the church out farther and farther as police follow the
- 6:03Speaker 1: leads all the way to Canada. At the bridge, the
- 6:08Speaker 1: search begins in the water to public safety dive instructor
- 6:13Speaker 1: and trainer and evidence recovery specialists being Dobrin being thanks
- 6:18Speaker 1: for being with us, being what do you make of
- 6:21Speaker 1: the point where the car was found that remote bridge.
- 6:25Speaker 1: If Sarah Stern jumped off the bridge where they were
- 6:27Speaker 1: told she jumped off the bridge, the first thing you
- 6:29Speaker 1: do is put boats in the water. You need to
- 6:31Speaker 1: find out what the tide is doing. That's a tidal
- 6:33Speaker 1: body of water that empties directly into the Atlantic Ocean
- 6:37Speaker 1: with an outgoing tide, that that body can be washed
- 6:41Speaker 1: out very quickly, and once it gets from the ocean,
- 6:44Speaker 1: your search area has just gone up exponentially. If it's
- 6:48Speaker 1: an ingoing tide, you know, that really kind of narrows
- 6:52Speaker 1: down the search area to just that tidal basin where
- 6:54Speaker 1: the water is going to be going in. Now, there's
- 6:57Speaker 1: a difference if somebody jumps in, there's there's a lot
- 7:01Speaker 1: of variability if the person is still alive when they
- 7:05Speaker 1: hit the surface and inhale now they're gonna have a
- 7:07Speaker 1: lung full of water, and they're gonna sink. If they
- 7:13Speaker 1: die on impact and don't inhale water and their lungs
- 7:16Speaker 1: are full of air, they can float or they can
- 7:19Speaker 1: be what it's called neutrally buoyant. They can be under
- 7:22Speaker 1: the water or foot or two you won't be able
- 7:23Speaker 1: to see from the surface, but they're also not gonna
- 7:25Speaker 1: be dragging on the bottom, and so they're really gonna
- 7:28Speaker 1: be impacted by the current. Now, the search air for
- 7:31Speaker 1: something like that obviously you're going to start right under
- 7:33Speaker 1: the bridge. You can have some surface search. You can
- 7:35Speaker 1: have people walking along the shoreline, because a lot of
- 7:38Speaker 1: times bodies will wash up on the shoreline. You'll have
- 7:42Speaker 1: teams walking on the shoreline. But you also can have boats.
- 7:45Speaker 1: Helicopters can be a very good asset, especially if the
- 7:49Speaker 1: person had just jumped. If you have a helicopter with FLEAR,
- 7:52Speaker 1: especially at night or if the water's cold, you have
- 7:54Speaker 1: you have some time that a heat signature signature can
- 7:57Speaker 1: show up on flear as well. Tides affect the search.
- 8:03Speaker 1: Tides going in and out of that tidal basis. Okay,
- 8:06Speaker 1: if you're looking for somebody five days later in a
- 8:09Speaker 1: tidal body of water, you know that that bridge is
- 8:13Speaker 1: very close to the Atlantic Ocean. And on the East
- 8:16Speaker 1: Coast we have what's called semi diurnal tides. Tide shift
- 8:20Speaker 1: every every six hours. You have two high tides and
- 8:23Speaker 1: two low tides a day. So it goes high tide
- 8:25Speaker 1: six hours later, low tides six hours later, high tide
- 8:28Speaker 1: six hour laters for so the tides are constantly moving.
- 8:31Speaker 1: There's a slack tide of about an hour between shifts,
- 8:34Speaker 1: but the tide is constantly moving. So if you have
- 8:36Speaker 1: five days, which you know, with four title shifts a day,
- 8:41Speaker 1: that's twenty different title shifts, and so that body's going
- 8:44Speaker 1: to move, especially if it's not all the way on
- 8:47Speaker 1: the bottom. If there's a little bit of either positive
- 8:50Speaker 1: flotation or neutral buoyancy, body's going to go a lot
- 8:54Speaker 1: of ways. Been question. Would it have helped if someone
- 8:59Speaker 1: could have placed Sarah if they had got a visual
- 9:04Speaker 1: of her at the bridge getting out of her car
- 9:07Speaker 1: to help you determine what happened. If you have a
- 9:10Speaker 1: witness that says I saw somebody jump into this body
- 9:14Speaker 1: of water, you have a very high confidence that you're
- 9:17Speaker 1: going to find the body in that water, and so
- 9:21Speaker 1: you really want to get it done, and you're going
- 9:23Speaker 1: to keep searching until you find that body. If you
- 9:26Speaker 1: have some less manageable evidence or less you know, actionable information,
- 9:34Speaker 1: you can search and you want to find the body
- 9:37Speaker 1: and you're gonna you know, one of the things that
- 9:40Speaker 1: that public safety dive teams really want to do is
- 9:43Speaker 1: they want to bring closure to the families. We're out
- 9:45Speaker 1: there to find these people and to bring them home
- 9:50Speaker 1: so that the families can have closure, because sometimes it's
- 9:53Speaker 1: a missing person. Nobody knows where the person is. If
- 9:56Speaker 1: we find that person, then we can stop searching elsewhere
- 10:02Speaker 1: and the family can grieve with the body. Well, Ben,
- 10:05Speaker 1: what about the height of the bridge. Would the height
- 10:08Speaker 1: of the bridge make a difference. The height of the
- 10:10Speaker 1: bridge actually doesn't matter. We had a suicide a few
- 10:14Speaker 1: years ago off of one of our local bridges. It's
- 10:15Speaker 1: around one hundred and sixty two hundred and sixty feet
- 10:18Speaker 1: off the water, just depending on the tide. And when
- 10:22Speaker 1: we had video, there was no doubt that this person
- 10:24Speaker 1: jumped the bridge has video, We watched the person jump,
- 10:28Speaker 1: and one of the things that happens with the height
- 10:30Speaker 1: of that bridge is when he hit the water, that's
- 10:33Speaker 1: like cement from that height, and so when he hit
- 10:35Speaker 1: the bridge, all the air in his lungs. This is
- 10:38Speaker 1: what I believe happened. All the air and his lungs
- 10:41Speaker 1: got pushed out and the impact killed him. Because if
- 10:45Speaker 1: you inhale water and drown, your body generally sinks. Drowning
- 10:49Speaker 1: victims sink to the bottom. We had sonar out there
- 10:53Speaker 1: for about two days. We had multiple boats, we probably
- 10:56Speaker 1: seven or eight boats running sonar. He was not on
- 10:59Speaker 1: the bottom. We also had boats obviously looking at the surface.
- 11:02Speaker 1: He was not on the surface. He was probably that
- 11:05Speaker 1: body of water. It was about forty five to fifty
- 11:07Speaker 1: five feet deep. He was somewhere between the surface and
- 11:10Speaker 1: the bottom and we could not get a stone our
- 11:12Speaker 1: picture on him. And the only way we found him
- 11:15Speaker 1: was about four days later. It was summertime and his
- 11:19Speaker 1: body bloated and came to the surface and he was
- 11:22Speaker 1: within a hundred yards of where he jumped in Durban
- 11:25Speaker 1: with me public safety dive instructor an evidence recovery specialist,
- 11:29Speaker 1: Michael Stern. Could you ever imagine Sarah jumping from that bridge? No,
- 11:35Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine at all. That just wouldn't wouldn't be star.
- 11:38Speaker 1: I mean, she was a good swimmer, but she was
- 11:41Speaker 1: on the swim team in high school. But it just
- 11:47Speaker 1: will be totally unlike Sarah. Just nothing thought like that
- 11:51Speaker 1: just didn't come to my mind at all. And when
- 11:53Speaker 1: the divers were out there searching, what was going through
- 11:56Speaker 1: your mind? I mean, in your mind, she would never
- 11:58Speaker 1: have jumped off that bridge, right, Well, we thought there
- 12:02Speaker 1: might have been some foul play involved, so you know,
- 12:04Speaker 1: we weren't sure, you know, like you said, where she
- 12:07Speaker 1: was that evening, you know, prior to them finding in
- 12:12Speaker 1: the car, So some speculations that you know, it could
- 12:16Speaker 1: have been an abduction, or it could have been a
- 12:18Speaker 1: you know, something else could have happened. It just it
- 12:22Speaker 1: was a mystery. We just, you know, something that nothing
- 12:25Speaker 1: made any sense at all. Being durban with me, what
- 12:35Speaker 1: is it lot? What told does it take on you
- 12:38Speaker 1: and your team when you look for a victim. It's
- 12:42Speaker 1: physically demanding, especially depending on the time of the year.
- 12:45Speaker 1: If it's cold water, um, that could be very physically
- 12:48Speaker 1: demanding on the people underwater, but also the support crew
- 12:51Speaker 1: as well. One of the things with the type of
- 12:53Speaker 1: diving that you're talking about is it takes a lot
- 12:55Speaker 1: of support staff. You generally have about five or six
- 12:58Speaker 1: people for every one day ivory you have. You've got
- 13:01Speaker 1: to have a tender, you've got to have a safety diver,
- 13:03Speaker 1: nine diver, a dive supervisor. We have medics on themes.
- 13:07Speaker 1: So you're talking about, you know, to get one diver
- 13:09Speaker 1: in the water, you're gonna have six or sevens four
- 13:11Speaker 1: people and if it's very cold, you know, that gets
- 13:14Speaker 1: tire tiring very quickly. But from from bank to bank
- 13:18Speaker 1: where that bridge was if you have a dive team
- 13:21Speaker 1: of ten or fifteen people, you could clear that in
- 13:25Speaker 1: two days, a day and a half, depending on how
- 13:28Speaker 1: many hours you were out there in that time. Ben question,
- 13:32Speaker 1: tell me you're objective and what it's like in that water.
- 13:36Speaker 1: I've dived many, many times and there were times I
- 13:40Speaker 1: couldn't even see my hand in front of my face.
- 13:42Speaker 1: We're trying to find a person to bring home to
- 13:44Speaker 1: the family. It's a horrible feeling. I have found bodies
- 13:48Speaker 1: and black water, and you know, to know that I
- 13:53Speaker 1: have now found this body. It's a horrible, lonely feeling
- 13:57Speaker 1: to be in dark, cold water holding on to a person.
- 14:02Speaker 1: But I know I'm out there doing that to bring
- 14:07Speaker 1: that body back to the family. If it's evidence in
- 14:11Speaker 1: something a crime, now we can go forward with the
- 14:16Speaker 1: investigation for the crime. You know. I'm just thinking about
- 14:19Speaker 1: this search and that water. I want to go to
- 14:23Speaker 1: Detective Brian Wi s brought Brian. I'm just trying to
- 14:30Speaker 1: get a handle on it because when all of this
- 14:32Speaker 1: is happening, and there's dive teams out there, and there's
- 14:35Speaker 1: hide skin sonar are going on, and the whole community
- 14:39Speaker 1: is involved. What was the scene on the water. There'll
- 14:43Speaker 1: be a lot of personnel out there, a lot of
- 14:47Speaker 1: agencies involved, local law enforcement, counting law enforcement, state law enforcement.
- 14:52Speaker 1: The aviation unit was flying as well, doing aerial searches
- 14:57Speaker 1: of the area. So the ghost traveling in and around
- 15:02Speaker 1: that area, they certainly saw a very large and significant
- 15:04Speaker 1: police presence, especially early on in the investigation. Our efforts
- 15:11Speaker 1: were heavily being conducted in and around the bridge with
- 15:17Speaker 1: me Is Alex and Polilla Alex. Were you covering the
- 15:21Speaker 1: water search? So yes, I was one of the weekend
- 15:25Speaker 1: reporters that weekend and I signed on early Sunday morning.
- 15:29Speaker 1: So her car was found Saturday. I was reporting Sunday morning.
- 15:34Speaker 1: The information coming into our newsroom initially was that police
- 15:39Speaker 1: and the dive teams were out looking for a possible jumper.
- 15:43Speaker 1: What struck me as odd from the start was that
- 15:46Speaker 1: bridge really isn't that high. It's not a bridge that
- 15:51Speaker 1: common that you would commonly associate with suicide. I mean,
- 15:54Speaker 1: here in New Jersey we have jumpers at the George
- 15:58Speaker 1: Washington Bridge what frequently, and at the Victory Bridge in
- 16:03Speaker 1: perth Amboy, but not at the thirty five Bridge in
- 16:07Speaker 1: del mar So this struck me as odds, and yeah,
- 16:12Speaker 1: we were covering the search. The dive teams were out
- 16:14Speaker 1: for approximately three days, if I recall, and there wasn't
- 16:18Speaker 1: much information initially, it was just that police were searching
- 16:22Speaker 1: for a possible bridge jumper and that the car had
- 16:25Speaker 1: been found and Sarah was missing. Man, I'm just trying
- 16:28Speaker 1: to take it all in. Oh, let me go back
- 16:31Speaker 1: to you, Ben. What about size key and sonar. You
- 16:36Speaker 1: go over the area and you can say within thirty
- 16:40Speaker 1: yards either side of this bridge, there's no body. And
- 16:44Speaker 1: then we've sonared in and we've sonard out, and there's
- 16:47Speaker 1: no sonar picture of a body. Because sometimes you get
- 16:51Speaker 1: targets that might look like a body, like you'll get
- 16:52Speaker 1: a tree trunk or you know, just something that looks
- 16:55Speaker 1: like a body, and you can dive on that just
- 16:58Speaker 1: to rule it out and say, you know, we put
- 17:00Speaker 1: divers down there and it was a tree trunk. But
- 17:04Speaker 1: you know, if you do a meticulous search from shore
- 17:07Speaker 1: bank to shore bank and then you know twenty or
- 17:09Speaker 1: thirty yards either side, and if you have sonar available,
- 17:12Speaker 1: you know, three days, four days, I'm thinking about these sides.
- 17:17Speaker 1: Can sonar the search going on on the water tracker
- 17:22Speaker 1: dogs out on the water the whole nine yards. But
- 17:26Speaker 1: deep in his heart Michael Stern, her dad is like,
- 17:30Speaker 1: she's not in the water. She did not jump off
- 17:34Speaker 1: that bridge. He just knows it to detected. Brian Weisbrott,
- 17:38Speaker 1: tell me how far you went in the ground search.
- 17:42Speaker 1: Where did you guys search? How did you search? We had?
- 17:47Speaker 1: The ground search was quite extensive. We had covered, of course,
- 17:52Speaker 1: the area of the Dirty Five Bridge connecting Neptune Township
- 17:56Speaker 1: in Belmar. We covered the entire area of the Shark
- 18:01Speaker 1: River the inlet as well as the western part of them,
- 18:08Speaker 1: the river and all the roads and the land adjoining
- 18:13Speaker 1: the river. We had assistance from dive teams, marine law
- 18:20Speaker 1: enforcement units in the State Police Aviation Unit, which assisted
- 18:24Speaker 1: in conducting those searches. Wow, so you're saying by land,
- 18:28Speaker 1: by air, by water, community involvement, volunteers, professional searchers, dive teams,
- 18:35Speaker 1: side skin sonar, the works. Was there ever a moment
- 18:39Speaker 1: that you heard we think we found her, or we
- 18:42Speaker 1: think we found some evidence. Was there ever that moment?
- 18:45Speaker 1: There were several times that various pieces of clothing items
- 18:51Speaker 1: were located, but unfortunately they were quickly determined to not
- 18:56Speaker 1: be related. To Sarah. Additional, the marine units that were
- 19:02Speaker 1: in the water had investigated various um um abnormalities that
- 19:08Speaker 1: they had located in the water um but again, unfortunately
- 19:13Speaker 1: those were also determined to be um very Michael Stern,
- 19:20Speaker 1: would they tell you, hey, we think we found something.
- 19:25Speaker 1: Do you remember that, Yeah, we were. We were in
- 19:27Speaker 1: contact with anybody that was looking, and if they did
- 19:30Speaker 1: find something, whether it was a shoe or a sneaker,
- 19:34Speaker 1: they would check the size, the color, description. A lot
- 19:39Speaker 1: of stuff was, you know, was uncovered that unfortunately didn't
- 19:46Speaker 1: weren't related to Sarah, but there was always hope that
- 19:50Speaker 1: something was. Oh gosh, Doctor Bethany Marshall, can you just
- 19:53Speaker 1: imagine you're looking for your child and they call it
- 19:57Speaker 1: a hey, we thought we found a sneaker, and then
- 20:00Speaker 1: they call back it's the wrong size, or it's you
- 20:03Speaker 1: look at it, it's not hers. I mean, it's just
- 20:06Speaker 1: like raise your hopes to dash your hopes. Nancy, I
- 20:09Speaker 1: can't imagine what that would be like. Because when somebody
- 20:13Speaker 1: first goes missing, the family members believe that that person
- 20:18Speaker 1: is just about to show up. They have to stay
- 20:22Speaker 1: in a state of denial in order to keep their
- 20:25Speaker 1: courage up and their hope up to continue the search.
- 20:29Speaker 1: And so every time a shoe comes in, a piece
- 20:32Speaker 1: of clothing, a shred of evidence, it reinforces that belief
- 20:37Speaker 1: that that person is out there, and that in turn
- 20:41Speaker 1: disrupts the process of coming to grips with a very
- 20:47Speaker 1: harsh reality, which is that that person may never be found.
- 20:51Speaker 1: It's hope, then hope stashed, hopes, and then hope stashed.
- 20:56Speaker 1: It's like a form of trauma that gets repeated again
- 20:59Speaker 1: and again to all. It's the Poliello, the crime and
- 21:02Speaker 1: court reporter for NJA dot com, and star Ledger Alex
- 21:06Speaker 1: And it was a frenzy with the media, everybody there.
- 21:10Speaker 1: The saying of the search, the knines, the divers. I
- 21:14Speaker 1: bet that was quite the same. Do you remember it was?
- 21:17Speaker 1: And I can't say this enough because it's an important
- 21:21Speaker 1: part of the search and the story is that community
- 21:24Speaker 1: was a big thing. So there were a couple hundred
- 21:27Speaker 1: people who turned out for this search. And like I've
- 21:29Speaker 1: said over and over again, this is a tight knit
- 21:32Speaker 1: community where everyone knew each other by name. And although
- 21:36Speaker 1: thousands of people come to the Jersey Shore every summer
- 21:39Speaker 1: to vacation, the people who live here full time. They
- 21:42Speaker 1: know who each other are, and they recognized one another.
- 21:46Speaker 1: And with that being said, there were people who came
- 21:48Speaker 1: to this search who had no connection to Sarah whatsoever.
- 21:52Speaker 1: I met a man who drove from Point Pleasant, which
- 21:55Speaker 1: is about twenty five twenty five minutes south of where
- 21:58Speaker 1: the search was. He never met Sava, he never met Michael.
- 22:02Speaker 1: He didn't know anyone in the family, but he had
- 22:04Speaker 1: a teenage daughter and he felt moved to drive to
- 22:07Speaker 1: join this search. And there were others who were just
- 22:10Speaker 1: like this person, who had no connection to this story whatsoever,
- 22:14Speaker 1: who just felt that they needed to be there. Michael
- 22:16Speaker 1: is the search that dragged on. How could you even
- 22:19Speaker 1: put your head on your pillow and go to sleep
- 22:22Speaker 1: at night? Well, the answer to that is they didn't
- 22:24Speaker 1: get much sleep, and just you know, thinking of the
- 22:29Speaker 1: different things, and just you know, staying in touch with
- 22:32Speaker 1: a lot of people, even into the late hours until
- 22:35Speaker 1: midnight a lot of nights just to talking to different people,
- 22:39Speaker 1: trying to come up with ideas and thoughts and what
- 22:42Speaker 1: else we could do it. It was a very tiring
- 22:48Speaker 1: effort to keep going every day and still not be
- 22:52Speaker 1: able to find Sarah. Did you expect at any moment,
- 22:54Speaker 1: she's going to call on your cell and go Dad, Dad,
- 22:57Speaker 1: I'm okay, Well, you know I had hope that would happen,
- 23:03Speaker 1: but you know, the days went on and there was
- 23:05Speaker 1: no no response on her phone, and you know, it
- 23:10Speaker 1: just you know, it just seemed like she just vanished.
- 23:13Speaker 1: It just you know, it became a feudal effort. You know,
- 23:19Speaker 1: a month, a month later, six weeks later. You know what,
- 23:25Speaker 1: we didn't stop looking. We just uh, you know, I
- 23:28Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that you know, there wasn't anything
- 23:32Speaker 1: that wasn't looked at or we weren't checking into. And
- 23:37Speaker 1: it just it got tougher every day. And it's still
- 23:40Speaker 1: to this day, it's not very easy to to know
- 23:43Speaker 1: what happened. And you know, and then as my content
- 23:47Speaker 1: regarding the search of his daughter surveillance video emerges, will
- 23:53Speaker 1: it crack the case Sarah? From his greed? I would say,
- 24:03Speaker 1: we're pretty close friends. When did you last see Sarah?
- 24:08Speaker 1: When I was leaving her house? Gotta work? Was sometime
- 24:14Speaker 1: before four forty five on what day? Day? Friday? And
- 24:19Speaker 1: what do you say before forty four forty five? Had
- 24:22Speaker 1: to be at work? Good to be at Where did
- 24:24Speaker 1: you work friend of Sack has what time did you
- 24:26Speaker 1: work at Brundas? What time Diday work? Yes, between four
- 24:31Speaker 1: forty five five o'clock I got there and then when
- 24:34Speaker 1: I was off U sometime around ten o'clock when you
- 24:39Speaker 1: went to work? What was what were you? Sara to him,
- 24:43Speaker 1: I was just hanging out. You know, when you don't
- 24:45Speaker 1: know where to go, when you hit a wall, what
- 24:48Speaker 1: do you do? You start over square one. Cops detectives
- 24:54Speaker 1: desperately trying to determine what happened to beautiful team girls
- 24:58Speaker 1: Sarah Stern, So they start back at the beginning with
- 25:02Speaker 1: the timeline. Best friend Sarah Stern, Liam mctaznee, and Preston
- 25:07Speaker 1: Taylor had been together really since grade school. In fact,
- 25:12Speaker 1: Taylor had been her stand in as a prom date
- 25:15Speaker 1: the three of them the Three Musketeers, throughout high school.
- 25:18Speaker 1: So cops go back to Liam and he says that
- 25:22Speaker 1: he saw Sarah that day before he went to work
- 25:25Speaker 1: at Brennan's Steakhouse. And as a matter of fact, to
- 25:29Speaker 1: Mamma County Prosecutor Christopher GRAMMACIONI, you could confirm that with
- 25:37Speaker 1: video of him at work. Tell me about that. He
- 25:40Speaker 1: was shocking. He showed up at work, and we have
- 25:42Speaker 1: video surveillance from the restaurant where he worked, right in
- 25:45Speaker 1: town in Neptune City. He showed up, he looked a
- 25:48Speaker 1: little bit disheveled, was running a little bit late, and
- 25:50Speaker 1: then he goes in and works a shifts as a
- 25:52Speaker 1: waiter at a high profile steakhouse in town. Yeah. I
- 25:56Speaker 1: remember looking at that video with me, Mamma County Prosecutor
- 26:00Speaker 1: Christopher GRAMICIONI, Christopher, I remember looking at the video and
- 26:04Speaker 1: it shows him bursting through the double doors picking up
- 26:07Speaker 1: an order at the steakhouse, and I think going back
- 26:10Speaker 1: through the double doors to serve it. He was there
- 26:12Speaker 1: where he said. And would you agree, Christopher, that when
- 26:18Speaker 1: you're trying to corroborate a story or a timeline, and
- 26:22Speaker 1: you can corroborate part of it that tends to show
- 26:26Speaker 1: the rest of the timeline could be reliable. Absolutely, And
- 26:31Speaker 1: that's something not just that we looked for in his investigators,
- 26:34Speaker 1: but as you know, being a lawyer, that's what jurors
- 26:36Speaker 1: want to see. They want to be able to piece
- 26:37Speaker 1: together what happened during this significant event. So it makes
- 26:40Speaker 1: perfect sense. Man, don't we all take a listen to
- 26:43Speaker 1: what else? Liam tells detectives, dishes cleaned of the house.
- 26:49Speaker 1: Then I called her initially that's whar I want to
- 26:53Speaker 1: get some food. What time do you hope about it? Sarah?
- 26:57Speaker 1: Sometimes between them one and two o'clock one and two,
- 27:01Speaker 1: I went over. Did you go to eat? No? Yeah,
- 27:04Speaker 1: we did go to eat fire. I'm sure we initially
- 27:08Speaker 1: um wrapped up all her stuff, put in the containers
- 27:12Speaker 1: and then went across the street to the drapers put
- 27:17Speaker 1: the stuff and they're basing them and Sarah and I
- 27:23Speaker 1: Taco Bell. Would you eat there? Now? We went back
- 27:26Speaker 1: to her house? Did you stay there the whole time? Here?
- 27:28Speaker 1: If you went back to her house? Yeah, we actually
- 27:30Speaker 1: went up into her and take some baby games. There
- 27:33Speaker 1: you have him again confirming the Taco Bell trip, and
- 27:38Speaker 1: they meet around one o'clock. They bring in containers of
- 27:42Speaker 1: her stuff to neighbors homes, which always has stumped me.
- 27:47Speaker 1: But forget about the containers where you're Sarah, They go
- 27:52Speaker 1: to Taco Bell, and you actually pull up video of
- 27:55Speaker 1: them at Taco Bell. So Christopher GRAMICIONI you're one of
- 28:01Speaker 1: Mammoth County's lead prosecutors. There you've got Liam's timeline hanging
- 28:07Speaker 1: together again. There at Taco Belle, just like you thought,
- 28:10Speaker 1: you confirmed that with video. That's right. So, just like
- 28:13Speaker 1: a puzzle, we're piecing together a timeline of what happened
- 28:16Speaker 1: from the point where Sarah was last known to be
- 28:19Speaker 1: to find out where she was, and trying to piece
- 28:22Speaker 1: together what happened there from. So that's just yet another
- 28:24Speaker 1: piece in the puzzle. Now I find something that came
- 28:27Speaker 1: out during Liam mctasney's police interview to be highly probitive.
- 28:34Speaker 1: Take a listen to this, Christopher, what's the extent of
- 28:37Speaker 1: your relationship? Were pretty close friends? Ever your girlfriend? Now?
- 28:49Speaker 1: Sarah's friends and family portray her as this happy, go
- 28:53Speaker 1: lucky girl that never had any reason to say she
- 28:59Speaker 1: would hurt herself or hurt someone else, but Liam portrays
- 29:03Speaker 1: a different picture. Does she ever talk about like guys
- 29:08Speaker 1: or don't I know girls? No, she has been known
- 29:13Speaker 1: to obsess over girls in the past, though. He talks
- 29:19Speaker 1: about an ex girlfriend of his, Maggie, who Sarah became
- 29:23Speaker 1: obsessed with. She would always say stuff like, Maggie, if
- 29:29Speaker 1: you don't come here right now, I'm gonna kill myself.
- 29:34Speaker 1: During his interview with detectives, Liam also asks them this question.
- 29:39Speaker 1: One thing. I want to fuck to you guys about boys.
- 29:45Speaker 1: She she did jump off the bridge? What did the
- 29:51Speaker 1: odds say She's not somewhere all the way out to detected?
- 29:57Speaker 1: Brian Weiss brought you know right there. That just strikes
- 30:01Speaker 1: me as odd. You're in the middle of trying to
- 30:03Speaker 1: piece together a timeline when suddenly mctasney starts asking, wouldn't
- 30:08Speaker 1: her body have washed out to sea by now? Yeah?
- 30:10Speaker 1: That was one of one of a few very odd
- 30:12Speaker 1: questions that Liam had had either asked or statements that
- 30:16Speaker 1: he made during that interview. We found it extremely Here
- 30:21Speaker 1: we are looking to find one of his close childhood friends,
- 30:25Speaker 1: and the question that he asks is that I would
- 30:29Speaker 1: have expected that he would have asked questions such as
- 30:33Speaker 1: what can I do to help? What have you done
- 30:35Speaker 1: so far? And perhaps identify additional people that we could
- 30:40Speaker 1: speak to to assist us in Low King Sarah. Yeah.
- 30:43Speaker 1: And the way he actually gesticulates to Mama County Prosecutor
- 30:48Speaker 1: Christopher Gramicione, Chris, the way he kind of like gesticulated
- 30:53Speaker 1: out to see. It's like he wanted her to be
- 30:56Speaker 1: out to see. It's hard to read within his mind. Obviously,
- 30:59Speaker 1: we can't do that. But I think that throughout he's
- 31:03Speaker 1: not only creating this ruse that Sarah maybe killed herself
- 31:07Speaker 1: or had some kind of depressive problems that might have
- 31:09Speaker 1: caused her reason to want to kill herself, but he's
- 31:12Speaker 1: also probing to find out how much the state has
- 31:15Speaker 1: on the case. The interview William mctasney goes on, you
- 31:20Speaker 1: guys keep questioning him. Then you find out something very
- 31:26Speaker 1: very odd and inconsistency. You haven't told us about the bank.
- 31:31Speaker 1: How can you haven't told us about the bank? Well,
- 31:34Speaker 1: I told the bank. Did you go to the bank?
- 31:38Speaker 1: I was with her? Okay, that's the way back from
- 31:40Speaker 1: Taco Bell, Well, thank you, char I shouldn't badly be
- 31:44Speaker 1: called Carney. What did you do with the bank? No idea,
- 31:48Speaker 1: it didn't going you stay at the car? Yeah, why
- 31:55Speaker 1: don't you stop at the bank. What did she tell you?
- 31:58Speaker 1: She was stopping the bank something to do for money.
- 32:00Speaker 1: I don't know. She has found money in the one
- 32:03Speaker 1: house she wants ago and she has a lock box
- 32:08Speaker 1: call money any there. I don't know. She was taking
- 32:12Speaker 1: money out, putting money in there in a lock box?
- 32:14Speaker 1: School moneywhere and Carney Bank? On the way back from
- 32:19Speaker 1: Taco value stuff to the bank, ro own new stuff,
- 32:21Speaker 1: being straight to the house. After that, you're at the
- 32:24Speaker 1: house until I want to work. Okay, Now wait a minute.
- 32:32Speaker 1: To Christopher Gramicione, we knew some money was in the
- 32:37Speaker 1: car with her when she checked on the money at
- 32:39Speaker 1: the bank, thousands and thousands of dollars in a safe
- 32:42Speaker 1: deposit box. We knew that. Didn't really know who. But
- 32:47Speaker 1: what difference does it make whether Liam went with her
- 32:51Speaker 1: or not to the bank, Chris, that's it. I mean
- 32:55Speaker 1: he left out one of the more material and important
- 32:57Speaker 1: parts of what we learned during the investigation, that he
- 33:00Speaker 1: accompanied her to the bank, that he watched her go
- 33:03Speaker 1: in get the money, they had discussions about the money,
- 33:06Speaker 1: and leaving that out, I know, created a serious concern
- 33:12Speaker 1: and raised the red flag for our investigators. Yeah, I
- 33:15Speaker 1: mean to forensic psychiatri is joining us doctor Daniel Bober,
- 33:19Speaker 1: I typically get more worried when somebody outright lies when
- 33:23Speaker 1: you've got a missing girl that could be murdered, could
- 33:26Speaker 1: have committed suicide, could have been kidnapped, and you leave
- 33:29Speaker 1: out a portion of the day. But yet on the
- 33:32Speaker 1: I worry more when somebody lies about it. Here he
- 33:36Speaker 1: just left out what seemed to be an innocent trip
- 33:38Speaker 1: to the bank. Does that really bug you, doctor Bober? Yes,
- 33:41Speaker 1: I mean, listen, there's lies of comission, there's lives of omission,
- 33:44Speaker 1: and clearly, if he was going to cooperate completely, he
- 33:46Speaker 1: would give a full and complete story. So yes, that
- 33:48Speaker 1: would be concerning to me. So let me tell you
- 33:52Speaker 1: how this interview ends, Richard. If she had told me
- 34:02Speaker 1: that she was going to jump off the bridge, there
- 34:04Speaker 1: would have been no way that I could have gone
- 34:06Speaker 1: to work. That she's something she had to get away Canada,
- 34:14Speaker 1: get away from her dad. I think Canada was a
- 34:18Speaker 1: place that she had been, that she had a great experience,
- 34:21Speaker 1: had when it was something that she talked about potentially
- 34:24Speaker 1: moving there in Canada. I couldn't tell you. I can
- 34:31Speaker 1: honestly tell you that I'm one of her closest friends,
- 34:34Speaker 1: and I have no idea why she wouldn't tell me
- 34:36Speaker 1: anything before she left. When did you last see Sarah
- 34:45Speaker 1: when I was leaving her house to get a work.
- 34:49Speaker 1: It's interesting because Liam is very chatty in these initial
- 34:55Speaker 1: first interviews, but eventually Tom runs out heres lawyer and
- 35:00Speaker 1: he stops talking. WHOA He lawyers up and stops talking Uh,
- 35:05Speaker 1: is that what happened to Chris GRAMICIONI yes, it is.
- 35:10Speaker 1: At some point after a detective White Brott was questioning him,
- 35:14Speaker 1: and soon after that the question concerning would you would
- 35:18Speaker 1: you would you be able to find her body if
- 35:19Speaker 1: it was out to see um? He has ended up
- 35:22Speaker 1: asserting his Fifth Amendment rights and opted no longer to
- 35:25Speaker 1: speak with law enforcement. Cops hit a dead end with
- 35:29Speaker 1: friend Liam mctaznie when he lawyers up and won't talk anymore,
- 35:32Speaker 1: so they turn to the third member of the Tree
- 35:35Speaker 1: of the Three Musketeers, Preston t l Or Listen tell
- 35:38Speaker 1: you about his day here there everything that Liam had
- 35:51Speaker 1: told us, Preston had confirmed there were no real inconsistencies
- 35:55Speaker 1: that they presented. At one point in the intervie, you
- 36:00Speaker 1: police ask Preston what he thinks happened to Sarah Stern?
- 36:04Speaker 1: What do you think? And if you watch and listen closely,
- 36:10Speaker 1: you'll hear his voice slightly cracked and his hand reaches
- 36:15Speaker 1: up to wipe something from his eye. He should jump?
- 36:21Speaker 1: Why do you jump? Heard her? Dad? I went down
- 36:38Speaker 1: that night and watched his statement. When Brian came out
- 36:41Speaker 1: of the statement, he said, something's not right here. At all.
- 36:46Speaker 1: I did not have a good feeling about the information
- 36:49Speaker 1: that both Liam and Preston had told us. I wasn't
- 36:53Speaker 1: satisfied that something didn't happen to her, detected Brian Wispot,
- 36:58Speaker 1: Right there, you say you've got a bad feeling. Why
- 37:03Speaker 1: by the information that Liam was both telling us and
- 37:07Speaker 1: failing to tell us. Is his failure to tell us
- 37:11Speaker 1: about going to the bank. That certainly, as the proster said,
- 37:13Speaker 1: was a huge red flag for us. We felt as
- 37:17Speaker 1: though that if he was truly trying to assist in
- 37:21Speaker 1: locating one of his closest childhood friends, that was a
- 37:24Speaker 1: piece of information that he would have shared, especially considering
- 37:29Speaker 1: the fact that we had already learned that Sarah had
- 37:32Speaker 1: come into this money. I want to go to special
- 37:35Speaker 1: Guests joining me, Sarah Sterns dad, Michael Stern, the closest
- 37:40Speaker 1: person in the world to Sarah, trying to make sense
- 37:44Speaker 1: of her disappearance, Michael, when you learn her best friend,
- 37:49Speaker 1: Liam mctasney lawyers up and won't talk. And then Preston Taylor,
- 37:56Speaker 1: the third of the trio of three Musketeers, leave cops
- 38:00Speaker 1: feeling uneasy and queasy when you hear that, what do
- 38:04Speaker 1: you think, well, he was always the suspect in my mind.
- 38:09Speaker 1: When the first information we had was that he had
- 38:15Speaker 1: lost his phone, and that was on the way back
- 38:19Speaker 1: from Blarden. I asked the detective, you know, did anybody
- 38:26Speaker 1: check his phone? And he had lost his phone? Right away,
- 38:31Speaker 1: I was suspicious, but I had nothing else. That's all
- 38:35Speaker 1: I had. You had a dad's intuition. Something made you
- 38:40Speaker 1: ask cops day one, when you are driving through the
- 38:45Speaker 1: night to get home from Florida to find your daughter,
- 38:48Speaker 1: you think then to say, well, where's his cell phone?
- 38:51Speaker 1: What made you think that, Michael, Well, if they had
- 38:55Speaker 1: his phone, they would see any communication that he would
- 38:58Speaker 1: have had had with Sarah. So if she had contacted
- 39:01Speaker 1: him after or you know, during that time when she
- 39:05Speaker 1: was between when he said he last saw her, that
- 39:09Speaker 1: there would have been something on there on his phone
- 39:12Speaker 1: if Sarah had called, because Sarah's phone also was missing.
- 39:15Speaker 1: I mean, I know every jury is told point blank
- 39:19Speaker 1: the invoking your right to remain silent under the Fifth
- 39:23Speaker 1: Amendment or getting a lawyer, which is also a constitutional right,
- 39:29Speaker 1: means nothing, or at least it's not supposed to to
- 39:32Speaker 1: a jury. But Michael, when you learn your daughter's best friend,
- 39:36Speaker 1: lawyer's up and won't talk. What went through your mind
- 39:39Speaker 1: when you heard that? I was just I was overwhelmed.
- 39:43Speaker 1: You know. There was always something that said he had
- 39:46Speaker 1: something to do with it. We just couldn't pin it down.
- 39:49Speaker 1: Between the police and the detectives and any of Sarah's friends, nobody,
- 39:55Speaker 1: nobody could figure it out. It was everything led to
- 39:59Speaker 1: dead end. Michael. During all the years that your daughter
- 40:02Speaker 1: Sarah was friends best friends with mctazney and Taylor, what
- 40:07Speaker 1: was your impression of them? Um? Just regular, you know,
- 40:11Speaker 1: regular guys. You know, didn't seem anything, you know, nothing
- 40:14Speaker 1: out of the ordinary, you know, kind of cordial, not
- 40:18Speaker 1: you know, I didn't really have a lot of interactions
- 40:20Speaker 1: with them, although I did, uh you know, was in
- 40:25Speaker 1: the car pool and stuff and participated in school projects
- 40:28Speaker 1: and stuff in grammar school, and you know, they were
- 40:31Speaker 1: on the same swim team in high school. Also, uh,
- 40:37Speaker 1: Liam was on the Bradley Beach Fire Department as cadets.
- 40:42Speaker 1: Was Sarah too. So you know, I had a lot
- 40:45Speaker 1: of interaction with them, but nothing out of the ordinary
- 40:48Speaker 1: that would make them seem like you would even be
- 40:53Speaker 1: inclined to do anything like this. Neither well so far,
- 40:56Speaker 1: their stories are checking out, their alibis are holding, what
- 41:00Speaker 1: with the Brennan Steakhouse job and mctasni is on video
- 41:04Speaker 1: serving plates that night. So to you, County Prosecutor, Christopher
- 41:10Speaker 1: GRAMICIONI to me, Leah, mctasney strikes me as Eddie Haskell.
- 41:16Speaker 1: Do you remember him from Leave It to Beaver? I do?
- 41:19Speaker 1: I do. It's a great analogy, Yeah, I do. I
- 41:21Speaker 1: mean he's smiling in Sarah in Michael's face, But what's
- 41:27Speaker 1: he doing the rest of the time. Nancy Grace signing off,
- 41:33Speaker 1: goodbye friend,