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))

Episode Date: June 9, 2020

19-year-old Sarah Stern, a New Jersey woman disappears. Police find her abandoned car on a bridge with the keys inside. Did she jump off the bridge, committing suicide? Was she kidnapped? Police work to develop a timeline leading to Sarah's disappearance, and then surveillance video emerges. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hi guys, Nancy Grace here. Welcome back to Killers Amongst Us, a production of iHeartMedia and Crime Online. We are investigating the disappearance of Sarah Stern, a gorgeous teen girl. Her car found abandoned late at night on a remote bridge, New Jersey. We are joined by Sarah's dad, Michael Stern, local reporter on the scene, on the story from the get-go, Alex Napoliello, Monmouth County prosecutor, Christopher Grimiccioni. The lead detective on the case, Brian Weisbrot, is with us. Dr. Daniel Bober, renowned forensic psychologist.

Last week, we ended with police trying to piece together a timeline of Sarah's disappearance, her comings, her goings. Now, neighborhood home surveillance cameras managed to catch Sarah's car, leaving her home several times the day she goes missing. That's a good start, but there's nothing solid to give cops the lead they really need. All hope is seemingly lost. Then a new tip. Is the love of money the root of all evil? The search intensifies. Do you have any time Saturday morning this weekend and you want to help search for Sarah Stern? Nancy Grace, killers amongst us. Sarah Stern, she's the young lady, 19 years old, missing since last weekend. Her car was found on the Belmar Bridge, Route 35 Bridge at 3 o'clock in the morning. And she's from Neptune City. And no trace

of her. Nobody can find her. Coast Guard and law enforcement's been looking all over that area and no trace of her yet. So her father, Michael, is getting a bunch of people, as many volunteers as can come, to the boardwalk tomorrow morning, Ocean Grove, at Ocean Pathway and Ocean Avenue at the boardwalk pavilion. They gather there at 830 and they fan out to towns all up and down the shore. And if you're a parent like me and you've ever had a child missing, God, my heart goes out to this guy and to anyone else who's close to Sarah and wants to try to help find her. That's Dennis Hart at 101.5. The whole community joining in to comb the area, looking for Sarah. To Detective Brian Weisbrot with Monmouth County Detective, tell me this. Tell me about the land search for Sarah.

So the land search we had that was conducted by the police and the various volunteers with EMS and fire departments in the area uh was um was conducted in and around the area of the the bridge where sarah's car was found over the shark river on route 35. that's essentially where the primary search began and then it spanned out of course from there an extensive amount of searching was was done by the marine law enforcement units with the state police and the county sheriff's office as well. And we were doing, you know, canvassing for surveillance cameras in an effort to be able to locate Sarah, you know, in the area. Detective, did you bring in tracker dogs? Yes, we did. We had canine dogs assisting us, especially during the early portions of the search. We had dogs in boats

with their handlers, you know, searching the shoreline as well. You know what a lot of people don't know is that a dog, a tracker dog, can pick up a scent even in the water. If the person has been in the water or is in the water, the dog can pick up that scent. To Michael Stern, Michael, that had to be so surreal. Everything's fine. When you leave for Florida, you talk to her the night before everything is fine she's happy the next thing you know her car is abandoned she's not in the home the dog is in the cage locked up and all of a sudden you look out and there are tracker dogs looking for your girl well there was a lot of a lot of things going, there was a lot of things going on. There was a lot of activity between the local police and the sheriff's department, the

border rescue unit. So it was just so many things going on all at once. It was a little bit overwhelming. In the meantime, we're throwing the know, we're throwing the information that Sarah's missing out farther and farther. So, you know, to just try to, you know, get some kind of clue of what happened or where she was. Take a listen to what was happening at the scene of the search. Things are becoming very desperate. I really didn't want to do this. I thought Sarah would turn up sooner and she'd be home and everything would be fine. This is just heartbreaking.

That's you, Michael. That's you at the search scene. You're there at an event in the midst of everyone looking for sarah do you remember that moment when you spoke to nj.com i actually i don't i spoke to so many people and there was so much going on from five six o'clock in the morning until 11 o'clock 12 o'clock every night that it just never ended it was just one continuous conversation going on with hundreds of people. The news media, you know, we wanted to get as many media people involved as possible to, you know, try to figure out if anybody had seen Sarah or where she might have been

or what might have happened. So we were kind of at a loss. We just kept throwing the search out farther and farther. As police follow the leads all the way to Canada, at the bridge, the search begins in the water. To public safety dive instructor and trainer and evidence recovery specialist Ben Dobrin. Ben, thanks for being with us. Ben, what do you make of the point where the car was found, that remote bridge? If Sarah Stern jumped off the bridge where they

were told she jumped off the bridge, the first thing you do is put boats in the water. You need to find out what the tide is doing. That's a tidal body of water that infuse directly into the Atlantic Ocean. With an outgoing tide, that body can be washed out very quickly, and once it gets in the ocean, your search area has just gone up exponentially. If it's an ingoing tide, you know, that really kind of narrows down the search area to just that tidal basin where the water is going to be going in. Now, there's a difference if somebody jumps in you know there's there's a lot of variability if the person is still alive when they hit the surface and inhale now they're going to have a lung full of water and they're going to sink if they die on impact and don't inhale water and

their lungs are full of air they can float or they can be what we've called neutrally buoyant they can be under the water a foot or two you won't be able to see from the surface but they're also not going to be dragging on the bottom so they're really going to be impacted by the current now the search area for something like that obviously you're going to start right under the bridge you can have some surface search you can have people walking along the shoreline because a lot of times bodies will wash up on the shoreline. You'll have teams walking on the shoreline, but you also can have boats. Helicopters can be a very good asset, especially if the person had just jumped.

If you have a helicopter with FLIR, especially at night or if the water's cold, you have some time that a heat signature can show up on FLIR as well. Well, Ben, how does tides affect the search? Tides going in and out of that tidal basin. Okay, if you're looking for somebody five days later in a tidal body of water, that bridge is very close to the Atlantic Ocean. And on the East Coast, we have what's called semi-diurnal tides. Tides shift every six hours. You have two high tides and two low tides a day.

So it goes high tide, six hours later, low tide, six hours later, high tide, six hours later, four. So the tides are constantly moving. There's a slack tide of about an hour between shifts, but the tide is constantly moving. So if you have five days with four tidal shifts a day, that's 20 different tidal shifts. And so that body is going to move, especially if it's not all the way on the bottom. If there's a little bit of either positive flotation or neutral buoyancy placed Sarah, if they had got a visual of her at the bridge, getting out of her car, to help you determine what happened? If you have a witness that says, I saw somebody jump into this body of water, you have a very high confidence that you're going to find the body in that water. And so you really want to get it done, and you're going to keep searching until you find that body. If you have some less manageable evidence or less, you know, actionable information,

you can search, and you want to find the body, and you're going to, you know. One of the things that public safety dive teams really want to do is they want to bring closure to the families. We're out there to find these people and to bring them home so that families can have closure. Because sometimes it's a missing person. Nobody knows where the person is. If we find that person, then we can stop searching elsewhere and the family can grieve with the body. Well, Ben, what about the height of the bridge? Would the height of the bridge make a difference? Height of the bridge actually does matter. We had a suicide a few

years ago off of one of our local bridges. It's around 160 to 160 feet off the water, just depending on the tide and when we had video there was no doubt that this person jumped the bridge has video we watched the person jump and one of the things that happens with a height of that bridge is when he hit the water that's like cement from that height and so when he hit the bridge all the air in his lungs this is what I believe happened all the air in his lungs, this is what I believe happened, all the air in his lungs got pushed out, and the impact killed him. Because if you inhale water and drown, your body generally sinks. Drowning victims sink to the bottom. We had sonar out there for about

two days. We had multiple boats. We probably had seven or eight boats running sonar. He was not on the bottom. We also had boats, obviously, looking at thear. He was not on the bottom. We also had boats, obviously, looking at the surface. He was not on the surface. He was probably, that body of water, it was about 45 to 55 feet deep. He was somewhere between the surface and the bottom, and we could not get a sonar picture on him. And the only way we found him was about four days later. It was summertime, and his body bloated and came to the surface, and he was within 100 yards of where he jumped. Ben Dobrin with me, public safety dive instructor and evidence recovery specialist. Michael Stern, could you ever imagine Sarah jumping from that bridge?

No, couldn't imagine at all that this wouldn't be Sarah. I mean, she was a good swimmer, but she was on the swim team in high school. But it just would be totally unlike Sarah. Just nothing, a thought like that just didn't come to my mind at all. And when the divers were out there searching, what was going through your mind? I mean, in your mind, she would never have jumped off that bridge. Right. Well, we thought there might have been some foul play involved. So, you know, we weren't sure, like I said, where she was that evening, you know, prior to them finding the car.

So some speculation that, you know, could have been an abduction or could have been a, you know, something else could have happened. It just it was a mystery. We just, you know, something that, nothing made any sense. Nothing at all. Ben Durbin with me. What is it like, what toll does it take on you and your team when you look for a victim? It's physically demanding, especially depending on the time of the year. If it's cold water, that could be very physically demanding on the people underwater, but also the support crew as well.

One of the things with the type of diving that you're talking about is it takes a lot of support staff. You generally have about five or six people for every one diver you have you got to have a tender you've got to have a safety diver a 90% diver a dive supervisor we have medics on the scene so you're talking about you know get one diver in the water you're gonna have six or seven support people and if it's very cold you know that gets tires tiring very quickly but from from bank to bank where that bridge was if you have a dive team of 10 or 15 people, you could clear that in two days, a day and a half, depending on how many hours you were out

there in that time. Ben, question. Tell me your objective and what it's like in that water. I've dived many, many times and there were times I couldn't even see my hand in front of my face. We're trying to find a person to bring home to the family. It's a horrible feeling. I have found bodies in black water and, you know, to know that I have now found this body, it's a horrible, lonely feeling to be in dark, cold water holding on to a person but i know i'm out there doing that to bring that body back to the family if it's evidence in something um a crime now we can go forward with the investigation for the crime you know I'm just thinking about this search and that water. I want to go to Detective Brian Weisbrot.

Brian, I'm just trying to get a handle on it because when all of this is happening and there's dive teams out there and there's ice-skinned sonar going on and the whole community is involved, what was the scene on the water oh there'd be a lot of um personnel out there a lot of agencies involved uh local law enforcement county law enforcement state law enforcement um the uh the aviation unit was uh was flying as well uh doing aerial searches of the area um so for those traveling in and around that area,

they certainly saw a very large and significant police presence, especially early on in the investigation. Our efforts were heavily being conducted in and around the bridge. With me is Alex Napoliello. Alex, were you covering the water search? So yes, I was one of the weekend reporters that weekend, and I signed on early Sunday morning, so her car was found Saturday. I was reporting Sunday morning. The information coming into our newsroom initially was that police and the dive teams were out looking for a possible jumper. What struck me as odd from the start was that bridge really isn't that high. It's not a bridge that you would commonly associate with suicide. I mean, here in New Jersey,

we have jumpers at the George Washington Bridge somewhat frequently and at the Victory Bridge in Perth Amboy, but not at the Route 35 Bridge in Belmar. So this struck me as odd. And yeah, we were covering the search. The dive teams were out for approximately three days, if I recall. And there wasn't much information initially. It was just that police were searching for a possible bridge jumper and that the car had been found and Sarah was missing. Man, I'm just trying to take it all in. Let me go back to you, Ben. What about size key and sonar? You go over the area and you can say within 30 yards, either side of this bridge, there's no body.

And then we've sonared in and we've sonared out and there's no sonar picture of a body. Because sometimes you get targets that might look like a body, like you'll get a tree trunk or, you know, just something that looks like a body. And you can dive on that just to rule it out and say, you know, we put divers down there, and it was a tree trunk. But, you know, if you do a meticulous search from shore bank to shore bank, and then, you know, 20 or 30 yards either side, and if you have sonar, the search going on on the water, tracker dogs out on the water the whole nine yards. But deep in his heart, Michael Stern, her dad, is like, she's not in the water. She did not jump off that bridge. He just knows it. To Detective Brian Weisbrot, tell me how far you went in the ground search. Where did

you guys search? How did you search? The ground search was quite extensive. We had covered, of course, the area of the Route 35 bridge connecting Neptune Township and Belmar. We covered the entire area of the Shark River, the inlet, as well as the western part of the river and all the roads and the land adjoining the river. We had assistance from dive teams, marine law enforcement units, and the state police aviation unit, which assisted in conducting those searches. Wow. So you're saying by land, by air, by water, community involvement, volunteers, professional searchers, dive teams, side-scan sonar, the works. Was there ever a moment that you heard, we think we found her,

or we think we found some evidence? Was there ever that moment? Yeah, there were several times that various pieces of clothing items were located, but unfortunately they were quickly determined to not be related to Sarah. Additionally, the Marine units that were in the water had investigated various abnormalities that they had located in the water. But again, unfortunately,

those were also determined to be very... Oh, gosh. Michael Stern, would they tell you, hey, we think we found something? Do you remember that? Yeah, we were in contact with anybody that was looking, and if they did find something, whether it was a shoe or a sneaker, they would check the size, the color, description, a lot of stuff was, you know, was uncovered that unfortunately didn't, weren't related to Sarah, but there was always hope that something would come out.

Oh, gosh, Dr. Bethany Marshall, can you just imagine you're looking for your child, and they call and go, hey, we thought we found a sneaker. And then they call back, it's the wrong size. Or you look at it, it's not hers. I mean, it's just like raise your hopes to dash your hopes. Nancy, I can't imagine what that would be like because when somebody first goes missing, the family members believe that that person is just about to show up. They have to stay in a state of denial in order to keep their courage up and their hope up to continue the search.

And so every time a shoe comes in, a piece of clothing, a shred of evidence, it reinforces that belief that that person is out there. And that in turn disrupts the process of coming to grips with a very harsh reality, which is that that person may never be found. It's hope, then hope stashed, hopes, and then hope, hope stashed. It's like a form of trauma that gets repeated again and again. To Alex Napoliello, the crime and court reporter for NJ.com and Star Ledger, Alex, and it was a frenzy with the media, everybody there at the scene of the search, the canines, the divers. I bet that was quite the scene. Do you remember? It was. And I can't say this enough because it's an important part of this search and the story is that community was the big thing. So there were a couple hundred people who turned out for this search. And like I've said over and over again, this is a tight-knit

community where everyone knew each other by name. And although thousands of people come to the Jersey Shore every summer to vacation, the people who live here full time, they know who each other are and they they recognize one another. And with that being said, there were people who came to this search who had no connection to Sarah whatsoever. I met a man who drove from Point Pleasant, which is about 25, 25 minutes south of where the search was. He never met Sarah. He never met Michael. He didn't know anyone in the family, but he had a teenage daughter and he felt moved to drive to join this search. And there were others who were just like this person who had no connection to this story whatsoever, who just felt that they needed to be there. Michael, as the search dragged on,

how could you even put your head on your pillow and go to sleep at night? Well, the answer to that is I didn't get much sleep. You know, just, you know, thinking of different things and just, you know, staying in touch with a lot of people, even into the late hours up till midnight, a lot of nights, just talking to different people, trying to come up with ideas and thoughts and what else we could do. It was a very tiring effort to keep going every day and still not be able to find Sarah. Did you expect at any moment she's going to call, call on your cell and go, Dad, Dad, I'm okay?

Well, you know, I had hoped that would happen, but, you know, days went on and there was no response on her phone. And, you know, it just seemed like she just vanished. It just became a futile effort, you know, a month later, six weeks later. You know, we didn't stop looking. We just, you know, wanted to make sure that, you know, there wasn't anything that wasn't looked at or we weren't checking into. And it just, it got tougher every day.

And still to this day, it's not very easy to to know what happened and you know and then as michael on it regarding the search of his daughter surveillance video emerges will it crack the case How long have you known Sarah? First grade. I would say we're pretty close friends. When did you last see Sarah? When I was leaving her house to go to work. When was that?

Sometime before 4.45 on what day? I'd say Friday. And why do you say before 4.45? That's the time I had to be at work. You had to be at, where did you work? Brendan's Shake House. What time did you work at Brendan's? What time did I work?

Yeah, at 4.45. Between 4.45 and 5 o'clock I got there and then I was off sometime around 10 o'clock. When you went to work, what were you and Sarah doing? We were just hanging out. You know, when you don't know where to go, when you hit a wall, what do you do? You start over square one. Cops detectives desperately trying to determine what happened to beautiful teen girl Sarah Stern. So they start back at the beginning with the timeline. Best friends Sarah Stern, Liam McIntasney, and Preston Taylor

had been together really since grade school. In fact, Taylor had been her stand-in as a prom date. The three of them, the three musketeers, threw out high school. So cops go back to Liam. And he says that he saw Sarah that day before he went to work at Brennan's Steakhouse. And as a matter of fact, to Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Grammaccione, you could confirm that with video of him at work. Tell me about that.

It was shocking. He showed up at work and we have video surveillance from the restaurant where he worked right in town in Neptune City. He showed up, he looked a little bit disheveled, was running a little bit late, and then he goes in and works a shift as a waiter at a high-profile steakhouse in town. Yeah, I remember looking at that video with me, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Grimiccioni. Christopher, I remember looking at that video with me, Monmouth County Prosecutor Christopher Grimiccioni. Christopher, I remember looking at the video and it shows him bursting through the double doors, picking up an order at the steakhouse, and I think going back through the double doors to serve it. He was there where he said. you agree, Christopher, that when you're trying to corroborate a story or a timeline and you can corroborate part of it, that tends to show the rest of the timeline could be reliable? Absolutely.

And that's something not just that we look for in as investigators, but as you know, being a lawyer, that's what jurors want to see. They want to be able to piece together what happened during this significant event. So it makes perfect sense. Man, man don't we all take a listen to what else liam tells detectives okay right you got up did some dishes cleaned up the house then i uh called her initially asked her if she wanted to get some food what time did you hook up with sarah sometime between one and two o'clock one and two i 2? Mm-hmm. I went over. Did you go to eat? Not yet. Okay. We did go to eat, but we initially wrapped up all of our stuff, put it in the containers, and then went across the street to the Drapers, put the stuff in their basement. And Sarah and I went to Taco Bell. Did you eat there? No, we went back to her house.

Did you stay there the whole time after you went back to her house? Yeah. We actually went up in her room and played some video games. There you have him again confirming the Taco Bell trip. And they meet around 1 o'clock. They bring containers of her stuff to neighbors' homes, which always has stumped me. But forget about the containers. Where's Sarah? They go to Taco Bell and you actually pull up video of them at Taco Bell. So Christopher Grimiccioni, you're one of Monmouth County's lead prosecutors.

There you've got Liam's timeline hanging together again there at Taco Bell, just like you thought. You confirmed that with video. That's right. So just like a puzzle, we're piecing together a timeline of what happened from the point where Sarah was last known to find out where she was and trying to piece together what happened there from. So that's just yet another piece in the puzzle. Now, I find something that came out during Liam McIntosh's police interview to be highly probative. Take a listen to this, Christopher. What's the extent of your relationship?

I'm Sarah's friends and family portray her as this happy-go-lucky girl that never had any reason to say she would hurt herself or hurt someone else but Liam portrays a different picture does she ever talk about like the guys or girls no she has been known to obsess over girls in the past though. He talks about an ex-girlfriend of his, Maggie, who Sarah became obsessed with. She just would always say stuff like, Maggie,

if you don't come here right now, I'm gonna kill myself. During his interview with detectives, Liam also asks them this question. One thing I want to talk to you guys about was if she did jump off the bridge, what are the odds that she's not somewhere all the way out in the ocean by now?

To Detective Brian Weisbrot, you know, right there, that just strikes me as odd. You're in the middle of trying to piece together a timeline when suddenly McIntasney starts asking, wouldn't her body have washed out to sea by now? Yeah, that was one of one of a few very odd questions that Liam had had either asked or statements that he made during that interview. We found it extremely odd. Here we are looking to find one of his close childhood friends, and the question that he asks is that. I would have expected that he would have asked questions such as,

what can I do to help? What have you done so far? And perhaps identify additional people that we could speak to to assist us in locating Sarah. Yeah, and the way he actually gesticulates to Mama County Prosecutor Christopher Grimiccioni, Chris, the way he kind of like gesticulated out to sea, it's like he wanted her to be out to sea. It's hard to read what's in his mind. Obviously, we can't do that. But I think that throughout, he's not only creating this ruse that Sarah maybe killed herself or had some kind of depressive problems that might have caused her reason to want to kill herself. But he's also probing to find out how much the state has on the case. The interview with Liam McIntasney goes on. You guys keep questioning him.

Then you find out something very, very odd, an inconsistency. The bank. Did you go to the bank? I was with her. Okay. That's the way back from Taco Bell. What bank did you go to? It was in Bradley Beach. It's called Carney. And what did she do at the bank? I have no idea. I didn't go in. You stayed in the car?

Yeah. Why did she stop at the bank? What did she tell you she was stopping at the bank for? Something to do with her money. I don't know. She had found money in that one house a few months ago. And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank.

And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank. And she was going to the bank. And she was stopping at the bank for? Something to do with her money. I don't know. She had found money in that one house a few months ago. And, uh, she has a lockbox full of money in there. I don't know. She was taking money out, putting money in there.

A lockbox full of money where? In the Kearney Bank. On the way back from Taco Bell, you stopped at the bank. Where else did you stop? We went straight to the house after that. And we were at the house until I went to work. Okay, now wait a minute to Christopher Grimiccioni. We knew somebody was in the car with her when she checked on the money at the bank.

Thousands and thousands of dollars in a safe deposit box. We knew somebody was in the car with her when she checked on the money at the bank, thousands and thousands of dollars in a safe deposit box. We knew that. Didn't really know who. But what difference does it make whether Liam went with her or not to the bank, Chris? That's it. I mean, he left out one of the more material and important parts of what we learned during the investigation, that he accompanied her to the bank, that he watched her go in, get the money. They had discussions about the money. And leaving that out, I know, created a serious concern and raised the red flag for our investigators.

Yeah, I mean, to forensic psychiatrists joining us, Dr. Daniel Bober, I typically get more worried when somebody outright lies. When you've got a missing girl that could be murdered, could have committed suicide, could have been kidnapped, and you leave out a portion of the date. But yet, I worry more when somebody lies about it. Here, he just left out what seemed to be an innocent trip to the bank. Does that really bug you, Dr. Bober? Yes, Nancy. I mean, listen, there's lies of to be an innocent trip to the bank. Does that really bug you, Dr. Bober? Yes, Nancy. I mean, listen, there's lies of commission.

There's lies of omission. And clearly, if he was going to cooperate completely, he would give the full and complete story. So, yes, that would be concerning to me. So, let me tell you how this interview ends. Did she tell you she was going to jump off the bridge? No. I think Canada was a place that she had been, that she had a great experience at, and it was something that she talked about potentially moving there.

When did you last see Sarah? When I was leaving her house to go to work. It's interesting because Liam is very chatty in these initial first interviews. But eventually time runs out, he hires a lawyer and he stops talking. Whoa, he lawyers up and stops talking. Is that what happened to Chris Grimiccioni? Yes, it is. At some point after Detective Weisbrot was questioning him, soon after the question concerning would you be able to find her body if it was out to sea, he ended up asserting his Fifth Amendment rights and opted no longer to speak with law enforcement.

Cops hit a dead end with Fran Leah McIntasney when he lawyers up and won't talk anymore, so they turn to the third member of the trio, the Three Musketeers, Preston Taylor. Listen. What did Leah tell you about his day that he spent here? So, nothing really turned out of the ordinary. Everything that Liam had told us, Preston had confirmed. There were no real inconsistencies that they presented. At one point in the interview, police asked Preston what he thinks happened to Sarah Stern. What do you think's happened? And if you watch and listen closely, you'll hear his voice slightly cracked and his hand reaches up to wipe something from his eye.

What do you think's the jump? Okay, what do you why did he jump? Just from the stories that I've heard about what goes on with her and her dad. I went down that night and watched his statement. When Brian came out of the statement, he said, something's not right here at all. I did not have a good feeling about the information that both Liam and Preston had told us. I wasn't satisfied that something didn't happen to her. Detective Brian Weisbrot, right there, you say you've got a bad feeling.

Why? By the information that Liam was both telling us and failing to tell us is his failure to tell us about going to the bank. That certainly, as the prosecutor said, was a huge red flag for us. We felt as though that if he was truly trying to assist in locating one of his closest childhood friends, that was a piece of information that he would have shared, especially considering, the closest person in the world to Sarah, trying to make sense of her disappearance. Michael, when you learn her best friend, Leah McIntyre, lawyers up and won't talk. And then Preston Taylor, the third of the trio of three musketeers, leaves cops feeling uneasy and queasy. When you hear that, what do you think? Well, he was always a suspect in my mind when the first information we had was that he had lost his phone. And that was on the way back from Florida. I asked the detective, you know,

did anybody check his phone? And he had lost his phone. Right away, I was suspicious, but I had nothing else. That's all I had. You had a dad's intuition. Something made you ask cops day one when you are driving through the night to get home from Florida to find your daughter. You think then to say, well, where's his cell phone? What made you think that, Michael? Well, if they had his phone, they would see any communication that he would have had with Sarah. So if she had contacted him after or, you know, during that time when she was, you know, between when he said he last saw her, that there would have been something on there on his phone if Sarah had called because Sarah's phone also was missing. I mean, I know every jury is told point blank the invoking your right to remain silent under the Fifth Amendment or getting a lawyer, which is also a constitutional right, means nothing.

Or at least it's not supposed to to a jury. But, Michael, when you learn your daughter's best friend lawyers up and won't talk. What went through your mind when you heard that? I was just, I was overwhelmed. You know, there was always something that said he had something to do with it. We just couldn't pin it down between the police and the detectives and any of Sarah's friends. Nobody, nobody could figure it out. It was, everything led to dead ends. Michael, during all the years that your daughter, Sarah, was friends, best friends with McIntasney and Taylor, what was your impression of them? Just regular, you know, regular guys. You know, it didn't seem anything, you know, nothing out of the ordinary. You know, kind of cordial, not, you know, I didn't really have a lot of interactions with him although I did you know was in the carpool and stuff and participated

in school projects and stuff in grammar school and you know they were on the same swim team in high school also Liam was on the Bradley Beach fire Department as cadets with Sarah, too. So, you know, I had a lot of interaction with them, but nothing out of the ordinary that would make them seem like you would even be inclined to do anything like this. Not at all. Well, so far, their stories are checking out. Their alibis are holding. What with the Brennan Steakhouse job and McIntasney is on video serving plates that night. So to you, County Prosecutor Christopher Grimiccioni, to me, Liam McIntasney strikes me as Eddie Haskell.

Do you remember him from Leave it to Beaver? I do. I do. It's a great analogy. Yeah, I do. I mean, he's smiling in Sarah and Michael's face, but what's he doing the rest of the time? Nancy Grace, signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.