American Homicide - S1: E12 – BFFs: The Disappearance of Sarah Stern, Part 1

Episode Date: January 9, 2025

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.  Reach out to the American Homicide team by emailing us: [e-mail]. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Begley is guilty. They've never found a weapon. Never made sense. Still doesn't make sense. She found out she was pregnant in jail. The person who did it is still out there. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor? What's in the museum of failure?

And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. The Really Know Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremorchi. And I'm Holly Frye. Together, we invite you into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Each season, we explore a new theme, from poisoners to art thieves. We uncover the secrets of history's

most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. When a 19-year-old's car was found abandoned

on a bridge at the Jersey Shore, speculation ran wild. Keys were in the ignition. No sign of foul play, nothing. Sarah was nowhere to be found. But was Sarah Stern trying not to be found? Sarah talked about possibly starting a new life in Toronto and moving away. Her mother had left her a lot of cash. It all added up to one giant mystery.

You don't know what to think, 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 Sloane 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. The Jersey Shore. What did it give us? Snooki, Pauly D, and J-Woww. But what you see on TV and what really happens in real life are two completely different things.

The Jersey Shore is not quite what you would expect to see. Journalist Tom Davis grew up on the Jersey Shore and now covers the area for Patch.com. It's actually a very conservative, traditional community that's mixed in with a tourist atmosphere. Like clockwork, every summer tourists and beachgoers take over the area. During the summertime, I would say the population probably, or drooples at least, especially on the weekends, it almost develops a little bit more of a Miami feel to it. The party atmosphere every summer takes over the many bars, restaurants, and of course the beaches. The beaches are the best place to be.

The shore features 44 beaches in total. And if you're like Tom and live there year-round, you look forward to the off season. For a lot of people, they really kind of hate the crowds, so they actually like the fall and the winter because it's obviously a lot emptier. It's a lot less crowded. I always call it the void between Labor Day and Moral Day because literally

nothing happens here. But in the early morning hours of December 3rd, 2016, something did happen. A rideshare driver noticed an abandoned Oldsmobile sedan atop a bridge, heading out of town and called 911. 911, where is the emergency? Actually on the Belmore bridge. There's a car that's abandoned. It's off to the side of the road.

Was there anybody inside the vehicle? I looked, no. That tall bridge spans the Shark River, which despite its name, isn't known for having sharks. The water underneath is the Shark River, which is a very shallow river. They might do some fishing there. There's really no swimming or anything like that.

When police got to the car, they found no one inside. So they contacted its owner, Michael Stern. About three o'clock in the morning, it was kind of a squeaky voice saying they were from the Monmouth County Sheriff's Department, and they were looking for the owner of an Oldsmobile. 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. And I said, yeah, you know, Sarah drives that car. Sarah was his 19-year-old daughter. She was in college studying media production. Well, Sarah was into the arts. She was taking television production, art classes, pottery, photography. While her dad was in Orlando, Sarah was back home.

Sarah was basically by herself and she didn't like to be by herself. Yes, but sometimes, like everyone, Sarah just needed her space. When she was 15, her mom passed away of cancer, and it was a tough time for her. It was very tough. Sarah's mom had a long bout with breast cancer. And Sarah, you know, she was a champ. She loved her mom, and she did everything

she could to keep her comfortable when she was going through chemo. And sadly, her mom ultimately lost that fight when Sarah was a freshman in high school. She struggled at a time, you know, losing her mom. Sarah took that pain and channeled it into her artwork. 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 years, she was doing things that I thought were incredible. 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. Our family basically was Sarah and myself and always a dog. She loved her dog Buddy and she dressed Buddy up in different outfits

and like put jackets on him and sweatshirts and she'd get Buddy dressed up for Halloween. That was her best friend. With Sarah and Buddy back home, Michael spent the early morning hours of December 3, 2016 trying to figure out why Sarah's car was left on a bridge some two miles from their home. I tried the house phone and her cell phone and I wasn't getting anything through. Then he did what every father of a 19-year-old would do. He sent her a text message.

The messages were coming up green as opposed to blue on an iPhone, so I thought maybe her phone was off or the battery life had gone down." By then, the police had gone to Sarah's home and already did a search. "...no one was there except for the dog." 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. 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. The 16-hour ride from Orlando to Neptune City gave Michael plenty of time to think about what could have happened. There was a million scenarios going through my head. Did the car stall? Was something wrong with it? You know, did Sarah have somebody with her

that might have abducted her? There was also the terrifying thought that Sarah, who was struggling with the loss of her mother, possibly took her own life. We had no answers. No answers at all. 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. The tides go in and out very, very quick. It's cold, it's rocky in some areas, and it's marshy in other areas. 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. There were a couple of theories

that law enforcement believed early on. Alex Napoliello covered the story for NJ.com and the Star Ledger newspaper. 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. What was her mental state leading up to this?

You know, was she sad? Was she depressed? Well, according to witnesses who last saw Sarah, she was not in a good place mentally. 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. But Sarah didn't just drop off some of her stuff.

She also dropped some hints about where she might be going. 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. One of the last people to see Sarah Stern before her disappearance was one of her best friends, Liam McAtaasny. Liam McAtaasny 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. The two had one of those rare lifelong friendships. They met at Sunday school when they were just six years old. They were close and they remained close up until the day she disappeared. Liam was with Sarah that afternoon as she moved those bins 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. In the past, she has had a tendency to have self-destructive, suicidal behavior. He was telling law enforcement she wanted to move away, she wasn't happy. She was depressed. Over the past few months, she's been telling me how bad her relationship with her father is and how she just needs to get out of here. She had a rocky relationship with her father. There were some periods where, you know, they fought and had disagreements. 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? On the day before Sarah's car was found abandoned on the bridge, police learned that she had gone to a bank during the day to withdraw money from a safety deposit box that she had. Liam said he went with her to the bank, but stayed in the car while Sarah went inside. She took out $7,000. What would a 19-year-old be doing with this money? What 19-year-old has thousands of dollars socked away in a safe deposit box? You don't know what to think, to be honest.

Sarah's father also didn't know what to think of that cash. I didn't know about it. Well, here's what he learned. Sarah found those thousands of dollars in a shoebox inside their home. And this money was filthy and old, from well before the US Treasury redesigned the $20 and $50 bills.

Her mother had squirreled away money, I guess, for years, but she mentioned it to somebody. And it got back to Sarah, and she found it. 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. 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. Yeah, without a passport, Sarah would have no way to get into Canada. We just, we didn't know. Then it just left a big open wound. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death.

Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Beth Lee is guilty. This case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head something's not right. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there.

I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere. It's sickening. A few steps and we'd be, that many times you'd have blood splatter, where's the change? Close. She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent being at all. Which is just horrific. Nobody has gotten justice yet. And that's what I wish people would understand.

Listen to Murder on Songbird Road, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really Podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like... Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the wooly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts?

His stunt man reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really? Yeah, really.

No, really? Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. There was big news.

I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult. I think there were many individuals present. I don't know who pulled the trigger. A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story.

I like saw what happened. An arrest, trial and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her?

Listen to The Real Killer, Season 3 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. your podcasts. In the early hours of December 3rd, 2016, 19-year-old Sarah Stern's car turned up on a bridge near her home in Neptune City, New Jersey. There's really not a lot of room over there on the shoulder. So it's very, very odd for people to be stopping on the bridge. Edward Kirchenbaum was the director of public safety for the Neptune City Police Department. He's been in the ignition with no sign of a driver or passenger, no sign of foul play, nothing.

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. 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 end line of what happened. Hundreds of Sarah's friends and neighbors joined Sarah's best friend, Liam McAteasney,

in the search for any sign of Sarah. The beaches and 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 Sarah's story. But detectives were concerned about Sarah's bizarre behavior the afternoon before she disappeared. There was conversations with friend of Sarah's, Liam McIntazzie, where she may have had some

type of suicidal tendencies that she was upset with issues, maybe because of her mom's death. In fact, Liam was with her when she moved some of her stuff into a neighbor's house the afternoon before she went missing. 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. 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 4.45 p.m. That's when Liam left for his job at a local steakhouse. Liam was the last person that Sarah had talked to. And most concerning was what Liam told detectives about Sarah's state of mind.

Sarah was unhappy with her home life, that her father was overbearing, that the relationship between Michael Stern and Sarah Stern was not a good relationship. So naturally, detectives questioned her father Michael about his relationship with Sarah. And they were surprised by his response. Michael Stern was an open book. He was forthcoming with everything that we discussed. Any type of telephone communication, whether it be text messages or voicemails. 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 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 looks so pretty with the lights.'" She added a shooting star emoji. It was the last message he received from Sarah.

So again, what's going on here? It's a parents's worst nightmare. I couldn't imagine it myself and my heart was breaking for him. At this point, all detectives knew for sure was that Sarah took out a large sum of money from the bank and then vanished. There was no utilization of any bank cards 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.

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. 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. Journalist Alex Napoliello covered the story. 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 Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office puts out

information that they are willing to pay anyone who would have information in her disappearance. That reward, which totaled $5,000, caught everyone off guard. Now that struck us as a bit odd because usually those rewards are put out when there's a crime that has occurred. Reporters saw it as a sign that police no longer believe Sarah took off to Canada or took her own life. And it was the first indication to us that maybe something nefarious had happened here.

And then seven weeks after Sarah's disappearance, detectives got a mysterious lead from someone who went to high school with Sarah. Police department got information of a gentleman by the name of Anthony Curry. Okay, let's talk about Anthony Curry. Like Sarah, he was 19 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 most likely to become famous.

Mr. Curry met with detectives of the case and told them an incredible story. 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. A scenario of parking a vehicle on the bridge,

making it appear that somebody committed suicide by jumping off the bridge into the water. This so-called movie plot sounded all too familiar to detectives. It was a detail-by-detail description of what had happened to Sarah Stern. Making things even more bizarre, this conversation with Anthony Curry happened on Thanksgiving 2016, just days before Sarah Stern went missing. Anthony came up with information that only somebody involved in the crime would know. And this person, who shared this movie idea with Anthony, well, he was also no stranger

to Sarah. It was a friend of Sarah's, Liam McIntazzie. 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 she took her own life. Things are getting really weird here. So just the whole concept is beyond comprehension. And Anthony said he never

thought about this conversation after it happened. That is, until he read about Sarah's mysterious disappearance. Mr. Curry came forward to law enforcement because Mr. McIntassey continued to reach out for Mr. Curry. Liam McIntasney 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? Or had Sarah and Liam cooked up some sort of plan? This is just so off the charts that nobody knows what happened.

So the police came up with a plan to learn the truth. And it involved 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. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence but charged with her murder.

I am confident that Julie Begley is guilty. This case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head. Something's not right. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there. I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere. It's sickening.

A few steps and we need that many times. You have blood splatter, where's the change? Close. She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent being at all. Which is just horrific. Nobody has gotten justice yet and that's what I wish people would understand. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Lily podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions, like...

Why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you, and the one bringing back the wooly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by.

Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you two? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to ReallyNoReally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead.

It's called Really No Really and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. That was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery, big, big news. When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult, I think there were many individuals present.

I don't know who pulled the trigger. a long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw what happened. An arrest, trial and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free?

Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, Season 3, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A week before 19-year-old Sarah Stern went missing in December 2016, Liam McItasney 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. No body was found when authorities searched the river. But since the rest of the movie plot sounded like what could have happened to Sarah Stern, Anthony Curry went to the cops. So they wired Mr. Curry up. Edward Kirshenbaum worked for the Neptune City Police Department. And a plan was put in place by the investigative team for a meet between Liam McIntasey and Anthony Curry, with law enforcement wiring Mr. Curry and monitoring with audio and video the conversation that would take place.

On January 31, 2017, seven weeks after Sarah Stern'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. What's happening, bro? How you doing? How you doing?

What'd you run to? Hiding from the cops. What happened? Dude, you can't blame me for doing this, right? I gotta feel you up real quick, all right?" Right off the bat, Liam McAtaasny amped up the drama. He was nervous. And asked to pat down Anthony Curry in case he was wearing a wire. No disrespect. I'll show you. No disrespect, okay? Nothing.

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. The FBI was not involved in the investigation. So what was Liam talking about? Was this another page from his script? Was this all a game to him? And then police heard this. I did something really dumb

and I planned it out for half a year. And the worst part is we threw her off the bridge and the body never showed up. Well, that was pretty shocking. And who is we? Then Liam shared what happened the afternoon before Sarah disappeared. I'm hanging out with her. We went to the bank.

She took some money out, not all of her money. Liam said after Sarah took $7,000 out of her safe deposit box, the two went back to Sarah's. And that's when Liam put his plan into action. We're counting out and then she goes to walk out the front door. I choke her out. Like, I just, I picked her up 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 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 Stern's friend and neighbor, Liam McAteasny, very nonchalantly described how he killed Sarah with his own two hands. She was just laying there having a seizure or something. I got a shirt and I just shoved it down her throat so she wouldn't throw up or anything and held my finger over her nose.

And it took me like a half an hour. 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 5 p.m. 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, Preston was in on the plan. They had actually been planning to rob and kill Sarah for six months. You are the only person on this planet that knows besides Preston. And Preston doesn't know that you know. 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. I get off work that night.

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. I watched her every time she backed out, she does the same thing. So I had to act like her. I watched her, every time she backed out, she does the same thing. So I backed out exactly like she did and drove off. 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. Put her in the passenger seat of her own car. With the 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.

I go up, open the door, unhook her, pull her out, start dragging her to throw her over, and then cars start coming up. I see, like, headlights coming. I try to get her over, and I can't. I f*** my leg up, like. So now I'm limping, my leg's f***ed up, and there's three cars coming up.

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 Preston for help. From the way he described it, Liam did all of this with no regard for Sarah. It was like she was no longer a person, but just an object. No longer his best friend. Just a thing. The two of us throw the body over and then we're out. This is the thing about heights. There's so much **** you can't account for. You don't know until it happens. Liam then explained how he and Preston stole a safe from Sarah. Along with that money,

Sarah took out from her safe deposit box. That's not even the worst part. The worst part of it is I thought I was walking out 50 grand, 100 grand in my pocket. She only had 10 grand. And this money, I don't know if it was birthed or something. It's f----- old money, terrible quality. That's the worst part? He's upset about the money? Well, if you remember, those 20 and $50 bills looked old and beaten up, which upset Liam.

I don't even know if I can put any of it in the bank. Throughout this sickening discussion with Liam, Anthony Curry kept repeating, it's like a movie, it's like a movie man. And Liam agreed. To your life, you might as well make it one. What, are you gonna live some boring ass life? 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. What's up? I don't know where the keys are. Thought I had everything. Oh, they're there. You found them? Alright, bro. Alright, bro.

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 detectives, they also tried to process what they heard. It was a detailed accounting of what he, along with President Taylor, did to Sarah Stern.

Ed Kirshenbaum of the Neptune City Police Department was shocked not just at what Liam said, but how he said it. It was a chilling account with no remorse, no emotion. With Liam McAtezney on tape detailing what he did to Sarah Stern, you would think there would have been enough evidence to charge him with murder. But this story was far from over.

They spotted somebody that looked like Sarah. I got a good look right in her face, stared right into her eyes the way I'm looking at you right now, and she turned her head down an alleyway. I said, I don't know what that is, but that girl did not want to be seen. I just, you know, I was beside myself. I had never seen anything like that as a reporter covering crime for many years. 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 Homicide team by emailing us at americanhomicidepod at gmail.com. That's americanhomicidepod at gmail.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 is executive produced by Nancy Glass and Todd Gans.

The series is also written and produced by Todd Gans, with additional writing by Ben Federman and Andrea Gunning. Our associate producer is Kristen Malkuri. Our iHeart team is Ali Perry and Jessica Kreincheck. Audio editing and mixing by Matt Dalvecchio, Dave Sayah, and Britt Robichaud. Additional editing support from Nick O'Rouke, Tanner Robbins, and Patrick Walsh. American Homicide's theme song was composed by Oliver Baines of Noiser. Music library provided by MyMusic. Follow American Homicide on Apple Podcasts.

And please 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 iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Begley is guilty.

They've never found a weapon. Never made confident that Julie Beckley is guilty. They've never found a weapon. Never made sense. Still doesn't make sense. She found out she was pregnant in jail. The person who did it is still out there. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together our mission on the Really No Really podcast podcasts. $100, a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead, the Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Maria Tremorchi Welcome to the Criminalia Podcast. I'm Maria Tremorchi. Holly Frye And I'm Holly Frye. Together, we invite you

into the dark and winding corridors of historical true crime. Maria Tremorchi Each season, we explore a new theme from poisoners to art thieves. We uncover the secrets of history's most interesting figures, from legal injustices to body snatching. And tune in at the end of each episode as we indulge in cocktails and mocktails inspired by each story. Listen to Criminalia on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.