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 1)
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 start today
- 0:14Speaker 1: and the story of Sarah Stern, a beautiful teen girl
- 0:18Speaker 1: who loses her mom after a fight with cancer and
- 0:22Speaker 1: was trying to find her way in the world. She
- 0:25Speaker 1: disappears from home without a trace, leaving behind so many
- 0:29Speaker 1: questions and so few clues. You will hear from Sarah's dad, Michael,
- 0:35Speaker 1: about his anguish learning his little girl is missing, and
- 0:39Speaker 1: how the search for Sarah begins. You hear from a
- 0:43Speaker 1: local reporter on the scene, Alex Epoliello, who covered Sarah's
- 0:47Speaker 1: disappearance from day one. FBI special agent Bobby Chicone, and
- 0:52Speaker 1: renowned Hollywood psychoanalyst doctor Bethany Marshall weigh in with expert
- 0:58Speaker 1: analysis on Sarah's appearance. We start at two forty five
- 1:03Speaker 1: a m. The morning of December three, twenty sixteen. An
- 1:08Speaker 1: abandoned car found on any Jersey Bridge bine one one
- 1:12Speaker 1: where the emergency and not the emergency actually on the
- 1:16Speaker 1: Belmar Bridge right after heading south in the middle of
- 1:20Speaker 1: the bridge, there's a car that abandoned. It's off at
- 1:22Speaker 1: the side of the road. But the Belmark Bridge being
- 1:25Speaker 1: the thirty five bridge. Yeah, the thirty five bridge would
- 1:28Speaker 1: be going over then going from north going down. Nancy
- 1:32Speaker 1: Grace killers unlist us. So what kind of carson? I
- 1:39Speaker 1: kind of looked like an old beat up, light hand
- 1:42Speaker 1: colored like to Dan, was there anybody inside the vehicle?
- 1:47Speaker 1: I looked, now, okay, unless they were sleeping. I couldn't
- 1:50Speaker 1: see them by their head being up. Nobody. A light
- 1:55Speaker 1: colored sedan parked on an obscure bridget is the beginning
- 2:01Speaker 1: of the story of the disappearance of a beautiful young girl,
- 2:05Speaker 1: Sarah Stern. But why there, why that bridge, and what,
- 2:12Speaker 1: if anything does it mean. I'm Nancy Grace, thank you
- 2:16Speaker 1: for being with us today the mystery of Sarah Stearn's disappearance.
- 2:23Speaker 1: But what do we know about Sarah? Alex Napoliello, Alex,
- 2:28Speaker 1: thank you for being with us crime and Court reporter
- 2:31Speaker 1: for the NJA dot com and Star Ledger. I've watched
- 2:34Speaker 1: the bodycam footage. I've I've listened to it very very
- 2:39Speaker 1: carefully explained to me how the police were first alerted
- 2:45Speaker 1: to this sedan part on the side of a bridge,
- 2:48Speaker 1: and what time of the day was it and why
- 2:51Speaker 1: was that so unusual? So police were called to the
- 2:54Speaker 1: bridge shortly before three am on December third, in two
- 2:58Speaker 1: thousand and sixteen. They were alerted to this car parked
- 3:01Speaker 1: on the shoulder at the top of the Route thirty
- 3:04Speaker 1: five bridge in Belmar buy a couple ride share drivers
- 3:08Speaker 1: who were in the area. So it's important to note
- 3:11Speaker 1: that that bridge at the base of the bridge is
- 3:13Speaker 1: a popular nightclub called the Headliner. That bridge goes from
- 3:18Speaker 1: Neptune Township into Belmar, so it's pretty well trafficked even
- 3:23Speaker 1: at three am, So it wasn't uncommon for a ride
- 3:26Speaker 1: share driver to be in that area and call it
- 3:29Speaker 1: into police. Hold on, are you talking about an Uber?
- 3:31Speaker 1: It was an Uber person. I believe that it was
- 3:34Speaker 1: Uber and he was doing both Uber endless. And was
- 3:37Speaker 1: it the driver? I thought it was the driver, not
- 3:39Speaker 1: someone who was actually ride sharing. It was the driver, Yeah,
- 3:43Speaker 1: the ride share driver, you know. To FBI Special Agent
- 3:46Speaker 1: Bobby's account. First of all, as I always told Jerry's
- 3:50Speaker 1: nothing good happens after midnight period. Okay, let's just start
- 3:53Speaker 1: with that. But it doesn't affect me one way or
- 3:57Speaker 1: the other, other than me trying to establish a timeline
- 4:00Speaker 1: that they first spotted this tan sedan, this light colored
- 4:04Speaker 1: sedan on the side of the bridge at three am.
- 4:07Speaker 1: That does not mean to me that that's when it
- 4:10Speaker 1: was parked there by any means, Oh no, not at all.
- 4:13Speaker 1: I mean that's even if it's heavily trafficked. You'd be
- 4:18Speaker 1: surprised to how many people don't report cars on the
- 4:20Speaker 1: side of the road. It's become a pretty routine occurrence.
- 4:23Speaker 1: I mean, I probably see it every day on my commute,
- 4:24Speaker 1: So you don't always have a proper timing of when
- 4:29Speaker 1: that car was left simply by the reporting of the car.
- 4:33Speaker 1: It does it does. It is somewhat dependent on the
- 4:36Speaker 1: time of day. But but if three am is a
- 4:41Speaker 1: heavily traffic time, then you may you may not have Okay,
- 4:45Speaker 1: I don't know what alternate universe you're living in, but
- 4:48Speaker 1: three am out on an obscure bridge I do not
- 4:51Speaker 1: think would be heavily traffic, which leads me to another point.
- 4:55Speaker 1: Bobby Chicone with me Alex Napole Yellow Crime and Court
- 4:59Speaker 1: Report for the NJA dot Com and Star Ledger, and
- 5:03Speaker 1: Bobby Chicone FBI special Agent. That that leads me to
- 5:07Speaker 1: another point. I find this bridge based on all my
- 5:11Speaker 1: research to be fairly obscure, I mean in the big
- 5:15Speaker 1: scheme of things. And I noticed on the original nine
- 5:20Speaker 1: one one call, which we're going to play for you shortly,
- 5:23Speaker 1: even the cops we're not sure which bridge they're talking about.
- 5:27Speaker 1: And when you say it could be a I don't
- 5:30Speaker 1: know if it was a highly traffic time. Let's just rephrase.
- 5:33Speaker 1: Here is December three, that's Saturday at three am in
- 5:38Speaker 1: the morning. Now, the few times I'm out on the
- 5:41Speaker 1: highway at that time of the morning, it's still dark
- 5:45Speaker 1: and nobody's on the road. Bobby Chicom, what are you
- 5:47Speaker 1: talking about. Well, Alex just described it as a as
- 5:50Speaker 1: a heavily trafficked bridge in a you know, in an
- 5:53Speaker 1: area where people do you use that bridge? I'm not
- 5:55Speaker 1: I would have to determine how obscure or not obscure
- 5:59Speaker 1: the bridge would be. But you do start making those
- 6:01Speaker 1: kinds of judgments on what the chances are that the
- 6:06Speaker 1: reporting of the missing car approximates when it was actually abandoned,
- 6:11Speaker 1: and so you do factor in our traffic patterns, and
- 6:14Speaker 1: local authorities would obviously be very familiar with those local
- 6:18Speaker 1: traffic patterns. Well, that lays me to another issue. Alex
- 6:22Speaker 1: did jointing me Crime and Court reporter Jay dot Com
- 6:24Speaker 1: and Star Ledger Alex, I don't believe that the car
- 6:27Speaker 1: was actually reported missing. If it hadn't been for this
- 6:30Speaker 1: Uber driver driving along and seeing it, it would not
- 6:34Speaker 1: have been reported. I mean, did anybody report it stolen? Yeah,
- 6:37Speaker 1: no one reported the vehicle stolen. And you know, whether
- 6:41Speaker 1: or not we know if that vehicle would have been reported,
- 6:44Speaker 1: we don't know. But an Uber driver found it unusual
- 6:48Speaker 1: enough that he did report it. And when he reported
- 6:50Speaker 1: it was just as a disabled vehicle. He didn't believe
- 6:55Speaker 1: at that moment that there was anything suspicious in nature.
- 7:00Speaker 1: And just to go back to some earlier points, this bridge,
- 7:04Speaker 1: it's the Route thirty five bridge. The reason there was
- 7:06Speaker 1: some confusion was because over the Shark River where that
- 7:10Speaker 1: bridge runs over that body of water, there are three
- 7:14Speaker 1: bridges in that area. There's one bridge over Ocean Avenue
- 7:19Speaker 1: along the beach, there's another bridge called commonly referred to
- 7:23Speaker 1: as the Belmar Bridge, and then there's the Root thirty
- 7:26Speaker 1: five bridge. So those names often do get confused. So
- 7:29Speaker 1: how does this compare. I mean, is there a lot
- 7:31Speaker 1: of traffic? Is there a lot of traffic there at
- 7:33Speaker 1: three am. I don't think there's a lot of traffic
- 7:37Speaker 1: at three am. The bar that I mentioned earlier, the
- 7:40Speaker 1: Headliner club in Neptune gets out at two am, so
- 7:43Speaker 1: I guess you have some trickle, some people trickling out
- 7:47Speaker 1: still at three am and hopping in cabs and ubers
- 7:51Speaker 1: to head home for the evening early morning. But no,
- 7:56Speaker 1: I mean at three am. I wouldn't say it's it's
- 7:59Speaker 1: get more traffic than it would middle of the day. Listen,
- 8:04Speaker 1: I started Tello one nine er. I'm tanning. Do you
- 8:15Speaker 1: see if we have any contact info for the r
- 8:17Speaker 1: O trying to give me to doctor Bethany Marshall joining
- 8:39Speaker 1: me psycho analyst out of California at doctor Bethany Marshall
- 8:42Speaker 1: dot com. Dotor Bethany, you know Chicon's right. I passed
- 8:47Speaker 1: abandoned cars on the side of the road all the time,
- 8:50Speaker 1: and I typically will call on nine one if I
- 8:53Speaker 1: see there's a crash and people are standing around or
- 8:55Speaker 1: somebody standing by their car. But if I just see
- 8:59Speaker 1: an abandoned car, are I don't think anything of it.
- 9:01Speaker 1: I think they've run out of gas or they had
- 9:03Speaker 1: a flat tire and they've gone to get help. I
- 9:06Speaker 1: would not report it. Why, Nancy. It depends on the bridge.
- 9:12Speaker 1: We have two bridges here in California, the Golden State
- 9:15Speaker 1: Bridge and then there's a very famous bridge as you
- 9:18Speaker 1: drive into Pasadena where one of my offices is located,
- 9:22Speaker 1: and those bridges are notorious for people committing suicide. So
- 9:27Speaker 1: if you were going over one of those bridges, you
- 9:30Speaker 1: might report. But now this seems to be a very
- 9:33Speaker 1: rural area, one nightclub nearby, people ride sharing going back
- 9:38Speaker 1: and forth. It seems like perhaps it was an older
- 9:41Speaker 1: car in this case, I don't think anybody would report.
- 9:45Speaker 1: And the reason people do not report, Nancy, is that
- 9:49Speaker 1: they think that they've made it up. They think that
- 9:51Speaker 1: they're overreacting. And often people underreport all kinds of crimes
- 9:56Speaker 1: and mysterious happenings because they don't want to get an
- 10:00Speaker 1: other person in trouble. We see this with underreporting of
- 10:03Speaker 1: domestic violence and child abuse. And I would imagine it
- 10:05Speaker 1: would be seem with an abandoned sedan on a bridge
- 10:09Speaker 1: that you feel like you're going to look foolish, or
- 10:11Speaker 1: maybe there's a homeless person in there that couldn't have
- 10:15Speaker 1: you afford a hotel or another place to spend the night.
- 10:18Speaker 1: And you don't want to alert the police and get
- 10:20Speaker 1: somebody into trouble unnecessarily. So what do we do now,
- 10:22Speaker 1: Bobby Chicone? This the police can't ignore. They've gotten a
- 10:26Speaker 1: call from a new Bord driver. Here's the car. They
- 10:28Speaker 1: make their way after much confusion to the correct bridge
- 10:33Speaker 1: and what happens then, Bobby? What do you do with
- 10:35Speaker 1: an abandoned cars? What is sop for cops? Well, the
- 10:39Speaker 1: first thing they do is run the license plate. If
- 10:41Speaker 1: they have a license plate on the car, see who
- 10:42Speaker 1: the registered owner of the car is. See if you
- 10:45Speaker 1: can make contact with that registered owner. If there's not
- 10:48Speaker 1: a license plate on the car, you can run the
- 10:50Speaker 1: VIN number which is visible from the windshield. You run
- 10:52Speaker 1: the VIN number. That could also lead you to the
- 10:55Speaker 1: registered owner. Which I want to do is find out
- 10:57Speaker 1: who who the registered owner is and then who had
- 11:00Speaker 1: less possession of the vehicle. They could have barred it, it
- 11:02Speaker 1: it could have been leant out, whatever, whatever the status
- 11:05Speaker 1: of that vehicle is. You have to start with the
- 11:07Speaker 1: registered owner of the vehicle. And so you do that.
- 11:09Speaker 1: You try to determine that either through the election play
- 11:12Speaker 1: or with a VIN number, the registration of the car.
- 11:14Speaker 1: They find the VN registration. That means they can find
- 11:18Speaker 1: out the owner of the car. A V I N
- 11:22Speaker 1: is a number that's on your car. It's like a fingerprint.
- 11:26Speaker 1: Every car has their own VIN number V I N.
- 11:31Speaker 1: No car will have the same one. When you go
- 11:33Speaker 1: to a shop shop where you're dealing with stolen cars,
- 11:36Speaker 1: they scratch out the VIN number. It's very difficult to
- 11:41Speaker 1: do on a car. It's it's it's welded in there.
- 11:45Speaker 1: It's hard to get it off. They track the VIN
- 11:49Speaker 1: or they track the tag number, and then they find
- 11:51Speaker 1: out who owns the car. Alex Napoliello explain to me
- 11:57Speaker 1: what was unusual about the car. Did they automatically know
- 12:02Speaker 1: that the car was not just a band? And what
- 12:05Speaker 1: was found in the car and what deductions do you make?
- 12:09Speaker 1: So police arrive at the bridge behind. They pull up
- 12:14Speaker 1: behind the vehicle. The officer walks up to the driver's
- 12:18Speaker 1: side of the vehicle, shines the slashlight intough the vehicle,
- 12:22Speaker 1: sees the keys still inside the vehicle, but sees nothing else.
- 12:27Speaker 1: There's no one around there. They run the registration, they
- 12:31Speaker 1: run the VIN number. They find out that the car
- 12:34Speaker 1: is registered to a Lilian Stern. Lilian Stern is Sarah
- 12:38Speaker 1: Stern's grandmother. They also learned that Lilian doesn't drive this
- 12:45Speaker 1: car anymore, that she had given it to Sarah, and
- 12:47Speaker 1: Sarah was the one who typically drove the vehicle, so
- 12:52Speaker 1: the car. The officer gets back to his car, calls dispatch,
- 12:57Speaker 1: and shortly thereafter, thinking that there was nothing suspicious with
- 13:01Speaker 1: this vehicle, he calls it to be towed from the scene,
- 13:05Speaker 1: and then radio's other officers to respond to this Stern
- 13:09Speaker 1: residence in Neptune City. Now, isn't it true that the
- 13:12Speaker 1: keys were in the car? Is that right, Bobby Chicon?
- 13:15Speaker 1: And what do you deduce from that? Yeah, well, if
- 13:16Speaker 1: I saw the keys in the car, I would automatically
- 13:19Speaker 1: think that, you know, there's something suspicious about it, because
- 13:25Speaker 1: if the car was broken down, most people leave if
- 13:27Speaker 1: they have a flat tire, if they're out of gas. No,
- 13:29Speaker 1: they'll secure their vehicle before they walk off to get assistance.
- 13:33Speaker 1: I mean, most people would simply call Triple A or
- 13:36Speaker 1: another vehicle repair service. But once I saw the keys
- 13:39Speaker 1: in the car, I would not probably have that car
- 13:43Speaker 1: touched until we could do some kind of forensic exam
- 13:47Speaker 1: on the car. If the keys are in it, it
- 13:49Speaker 1: just raises the level of concern for me to think
- 13:54Speaker 1: that somebody who abandoned their car, simply walked away from
- 13:57Speaker 1: that car on their own, would leave their keys in
- 13:59Speaker 1: their car. It's just not a common occurrence, and so
- 14:02Speaker 1: I would it would ratchet up my concern about what's
- 14:05Speaker 1: going on with this vehicle. So I would start taking
- 14:07Speaker 1: a look around the vehicle, on the floor, on the ground,
- 14:10Speaker 1: around the vehicle, and then I would start thinking about,
- 14:12Speaker 1: maybe we need to process this because remember our crimes,
- 14:15Speaker 1: if it is intact a crime scene, we have to
- 14:18Speaker 1: You lose anything if you if you step past that process,
- 14:22Speaker 1: So you have to be very cautious about how you proceed.
- 14:25Speaker 1: Oh well, you just kind of glossed over that. When
- 14:29Speaker 1: you say you lose anything, if you gloss over the process.
- 14:32Speaker 1: What I take that to mean is you look, you
- 14:35Speaker 1: don't destroy any potential evidence in the car, such as fingerprints, fluids, hair, fiber,
- 14:42Speaker 1: all of that remains in the car. So while you
- 14:44Speaker 1: look in the car, you see the keys are in there.
- 14:46Speaker 1: You've got to be very very careful about, for instance,
- 14:49Speaker 1: taking the keys out of the ignition, looking in the trunk.
- 14:52Speaker 1: You don't want to destroy any potential evidence. Take a
- 14:56Speaker 1: listen to our friends at twenty twenty. This is a
- 14:59Speaker 1: small town. Word travels fast. The cops know obviously a
- 15:03Speaker 1: lot of people in this small town. They have a
- 15:06Speaker 1: car parked on a bridge and they quickly find out
- 15:09Speaker 1: it's normally driven by a nineteen year old by the
- 15:12Speaker 1: name of Sarah Stern. Phone rang around three o'clock in
- 15:17Speaker 1: the morning. Do you know anything about a the car?
- 15:22Speaker 1: You know, gray Oldsmobile? And I said, yeah, my daughter
- 15:25Speaker 1: drives that car. A million things go through your mind.
- 15:29Speaker 1: You were in Florida. Yeah, we drove from Florida back
- 15:32Speaker 1: to New Jersey three thirty four o'clock in the morning.
- 15:36Speaker 1: Is no traffic, so you can drive pretty quick. Sarah
- 15:43Speaker 1: Stern was very well known through the community. To fact
- 15:48Speaker 1: that her family was very well known and Sarah was
- 15:50Speaker 1: a kid that everybody knew, she was always around kind
- 15:54Speaker 1: of threw everybody off with that car just being left
- 15:56Speaker 1: at the top of that bridge with as to why
- 16:03Speaker 1: no one knew where Sarah was and they didn't know
- 16:06Speaker 1: why they couldn't get in touch with her. She was
- 16:09Speaker 1: attached to her phone like most nineteen year olds are
- 16:13Speaker 1: and there would be no reason for why her phone
- 16:17Speaker 1: was off and she wasn't taking calls, taking text messages
- 16:21Speaker 1: on a Friday night, no answer on her phone. Police
- 16:28Speaker 1: then immediately started investigating, and this becomes not just an
- 16:35Speaker 1: abandoned car on a bridge, but a missing person. There's
- 16:38Speaker 1: this nineteen year old girl who has gone off the
- 16:42Speaker 1: grid and no one knows why. Joining me now a
- 16:49Speaker 1: very special guest, Michael Stern. This is Sarah's dad, Michael.
- 16:54Speaker 1: Why were you in Florida that night of all nights? Well,
- 16:58Speaker 1: I was on vacation for a down at the Disney World.
- 17:01Speaker 1: Do you recall that phone call when you learned the
- 17:05Speaker 1: car was missing and what went through your head? Well,
- 17:10Speaker 1: in the beginning when the call came in, and I've
- 17:14Speaker 1: explained this a few times, but the call came from
- 17:17Speaker 1: the what appeared to be the Mama's County Sheriff's department,
- 17:21Speaker 1: and it was, you know, it wakened out of a sleep,
- 17:27Speaker 1: and the call was kind of a high pitched voice
- 17:30Speaker 1: and it was a little um it almost sounded like
- 17:33Speaker 1: a prank call at the beginning, and they just stanced.
- 17:37Speaker 1: They said that Mama's County Sheriff's department were inquiring about
- 17:40Speaker 1: a car drive you know, an aldimopial, and I said, yeah,
- 17:45Speaker 1: my daughter drives that car, and then the call hung up.
- 17:52Speaker 1: So I called it back and I could see on
- 17:54Speaker 1: my caller ID that you know in the answered it
- 17:57Speaker 1: was the the Sheriff's department, except I got a recording
- 18:01Speaker 1: that said that the hours are from nine am to
- 18:04Speaker 1: five pm and call back or leave a message. So
- 18:08Speaker 1: right there I knew it was you know, it was
- 18:10Speaker 1: called from an official phone, but didn't have any details.
- 18:16Speaker 1: And that's that's how the whole thing started. And you know,
- 18:21Speaker 1: I hadn't been able to get in touch with Sarah,
- 18:24Speaker 1: so you know, I thought something at that point might
- 18:27Speaker 1: be wrong. How long had you been trying to reach her?
- 18:30Speaker 1: From about ten thirty the evening before, so that would
- 18:34Speaker 1: have been Friday night going into Saturday morning. And is
- 18:39Speaker 1: that normal for her to go that long without you
- 18:41Speaker 1: talking to her? No, not necessarily, but it wasn't unusual
- 18:46Speaker 1: because she had been away the week before. She was
- 18:48Speaker 1: in Florida the week before with her cousins and aunts
- 18:52Speaker 1: and stuff. So I had left the day after she
- 18:57Speaker 1: came back, which was blast Friday. I picked her up
- 19:00Speaker 1: to the airport, and then the following morning, I left
- 19:04Speaker 1: for Florida, driving at about five thirty am. So I
- 19:09Speaker 1: only been in touch with you know, talked to her
- 19:12Speaker 1: that day and I think goodbye to her that morning,
- 19:16Speaker 1: and you know, talked to her during the week, but
- 19:18Speaker 1: nothing seemed unusual at that point. What were her spirits
- 19:21Speaker 1: like that week when you talk to her while you
- 19:24Speaker 1: were on vacation for a week. She had been on
- 19:26Speaker 1: vacation for a week. Let me understand that she's in
- 19:29Speaker 1: Florida for a week with relatives, friends, she comes back,
- 19:32Speaker 1: you pick her up the airport, You pretty much leave
- 19:35Speaker 1: shortly after that to go to Florida yourself, and you
- 19:38Speaker 1: are in touch every day by phone. Yeah, either you know,
- 19:42Speaker 1: on the telephone with the boys four tax right right? Okay,
- 19:47Speaker 1: So that evening you started trying to contact her around
- 19:51Speaker 1: ten thirty pm, which would have been I guess a
- 19:55Speaker 1: Friday night. Okay, let me go back just a little.
- 19:59Speaker 1: My Sarah's grandma and my mother had called me and
- 20:04Speaker 1: said she hadn't been able to get in touch with
- 20:05Speaker 1: Sarah all day and she was staying at my sister's
- 20:10Speaker 1: house because she was recovering from being in the hospital,
- 20:13Speaker 1: so she was over there for ten or twelve days
- 20:18Speaker 1: to recover, so she wasn't home. And you know, she
- 20:23Speaker 1: talked to Sarah every day, and she had seen Sarah
- 20:25Speaker 1: during the week, but she said she haven't been able
- 20:29Speaker 1: to get in touch with her. So I said, well,
- 20:31Speaker 1: it's Friday night at ten thirty. You know, she's either sleeping,
- 20:35Speaker 1: or she's out, or her phones died or something and
- 20:40Speaker 1: she's charging it. Sarah always had things going on to
- 20:43Speaker 1: in like twenty four hours a day, so she'd be
- 20:46Speaker 1: up at four o'clock in the morning talking to people
- 20:51Speaker 1: in Australia or London or California. So okay, wait, wait,
- 20:56Speaker 1: wait wait, I just got to ask you. It's neither
- 20:58Speaker 1: here nor there. But why as Sarah up at four
- 21:00Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning talking to people in Australia. Well,
- 21:03Speaker 1: they were friends. They were her YouTube and internet friends
- 21:08Speaker 1: that she had met at VidCon, Buffer, Fast Book Con,
- 21:12Speaker 1: Comic Con. Okay, wait wait, wait wait wait, I'm learning
- 21:15Speaker 1: what tell me about all the cons she went to.
- 21:18Speaker 1: I just went to Comic Con and took the children.
- 21:21Speaker 1: We had the best time. But what were the other
- 21:25Speaker 1: cons you you went? She went to well VidCon, which
- 21:30Speaker 1: you know is in I guess in different places. I
- 21:33Speaker 1: don't know. There was California, Anaheim, a couple of times,
- 21:39Speaker 1: New York, Toronto, so she was kind of jumping around
- 21:45Speaker 1: all over the place. Along with going to the people
- 21:49Speaker 1: she liked, Grace Helbig and Jenna Marbles and Hannah Heart
- 21:55Speaker 1: autograph parties and things like that that they would have
- 21:58Speaker 1: a bookstores, signing and stuff. So she was into the
- 22:03Speaker 1: very heavily into internet, YouTube and you know the social media. Okay, wait,
- 22:11Speaker 1: I just had to actually look up vidcom and my son,
- 22:15Speaker 1: who's the tech in this house? I mean, Michael, you
- 22:18Speaker 1: would laugh so hard. Bethany and Bobby you already know this. Alex.
- 22:22Speaker 1: I have twins boy girl, John, David and Lucy. I
- 22:27Speaker 1: once and it's my fault because I won't take the
- 22:30Speaker 1: time to learn how to make the TV or the
- 22:33Speaker 1: remote or anything else technical work. I'm like, guys, I'll
- 22:38Speaker 1: handle the legal business. You handle the TV and the
- 22:42Speaker 1: remote control. Can you do that? And they're like yes.
- 22:44Speaker 1: Whenever there's any tech related event or incident, I call
- 22:49Speaker 1: now my eleven year old son. He's like a monkey.
- 22:53Speaker 1: You give him the device whatever it may be and
- 22:57Speaker 1: he finds the answer. So I'm looking this up. He
- 22:59Speaker 1: would be so disappointed that I didn't know what this is.
- 23:02Speaker 1: Celebrate online video with your friends, meet your favorite creators,
- 23:06Speaker 1: have the time of your life, create better content, grow
- 23:10Speaker 1: your channel, break into the industry, meet fellow creators. Wow. Okay,
- 23:14Speaker 1: so I'm learning all about what this is VidCon, and
- 23:19Speaker 1: I guess everyone, all the YouTubers, all the TikTokers, all
- 23:25Speaker 1: of them show up at vidcan So do I have
- 23:27Speaker 1: an understanding of what VidCon is? Michael Stern, Yes, that's
- 23:31Speaker 1: exactly the way. It kind of an international national media
- 23:37Speaker 1: thing where it could be local or a distant And
- 23:40Speaker 1: Sarah had friends in Australia, London. Oh yeah, I'm looking
- 23:45Speaker 1: at it right now. Australia London are the ones they mentioned.
- 23:49Speaker 1: So she's all over the map. Now you mentioned another
- 23:52Speaker 1: thing she liked to go to. What was that started
- 23:54Speaker 1: with a bee as in brother? Well, let's see there
- 23:57Speaker 1: was a buffer fest, which is another internet what's that?
- 24:02Speaker 1: But I guess I'm gonna have to look that up too.
- 24:05Speaker 1: Don't don't judge me. Did you say buffer fast? Buffer Fest? Yeah,
- 24:09Speaker 1: that's a you know when sometimes when you're downloading a
- 24:12Speaker 1: program or a video or something. It buffers, you know,
- 24:17Speaker 1: just you see the little circle going around. Well, Buffer
- 24:19Speaker 1: Fest was kind of a takeoff on that thing where
- 24:23Speaker 1: it was an Internet thing where you just learned about
- 24:25Speaker 1: the different things that were going on in I looked
- 24:29Speaker 1: it up. I had to look everything up. Buffer Festival
- 24:32Speaker 1: is a four day theatrical showcase of theatrical screenings that
- 24:37Speaker 1: celebrates video premiers from acclaimed digital creators. Okay, yep, that
- 24:44Speaker 1: says annually in Toronto or Ontario. Okay, so she's all
- 24:50Speaker 1: about digital and see. Well, the reason I'm curious about
- 24:54Speaker 1: this Michael Stern and I'm going to get back to
- 24:56Speaker 1: her car being found is Bobby, you can't help me
- 24:59Speaker 1: out here. I need everybody on this. The bigger her
- 25:03Speaker 1: circle is, okay, the more people we've got to look
- 25:08Speaker 1: at that may know where she is or what happened
- 25:11Speaker 1: to her, see what I mean. So it's not no
- 25:14Speaker 1: longer just let's go at the next door neighbor. It's
- 25:18Speaker 1: let's go on her all of her devices, her phone,
- 25:21Speaker 1: her laptop, her desktop, her iPad, and who is she
- 25:26Speaker 1: talking to? Who are her best friends online? She's heavily,
- 25:29Speaker 1: heavily involved in and in a fun, fun, good way
- 25:34Speaker 1: in creating video content. Bobby Chicon, I mean that's a
- 25:39Speaker 1: little overwhelming for an investigator because there's so many directions
- 25:44Speaker 1: in which to go looking for information about where is Sarah?
- 25:48Speaker 1: Do I have to go to Vican and Buffer Fest?
- 25:51Speaker 1: I mean, it really does. It's created in a complete
- 25:53Speaker 1: new way of having to investigate these cases that wasn't
- 25:57Speaker 1: in existence when I started in this business. And and
- 26:00Speaker 1: so you always look at the world of the missing person,
- 26:04Speaker 1: the world of whoever you're looking at. And while the
- 26:07Speaker 1: Internet has made the world such a smaller place in
- 26:11Speaker 1: one way, it's now completely made the you know, the
- 26:15Speaker 1: pool of people you have to look at and investigate
- 26:17Speaker 1: much much lawger for investigators. Where is Sarah Stern? Nancy
- 26:26Speaker 1: Grace signing off good night,