Bridge of Lies: Box of Money

from 2020 and ABC Audio, Bridge of Lies. Remember, you can get new episodes early by following Bridge of Lies on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now. Now, here's the next episode of Bridge of Lies. We invest in our careers, our finances,

“and our relationships, but when was the last time you invested in your health?”

Want to shut that extra weight? Need more energy throughout the day?

One of finally crush that brain fog? That's where goby meds can help.

And here's the best part. Unlike the other big medical weight loss in telehealth companies, goby meds has zero monthly membership fees. You pay for your treatment, not a subscription, no hidden costs, just transparent access to great care. And treatments start at just $99 a month. The process is really simple. Fill out a quick consultation form, a licensed provider will review and ask any questions, and if approved, your medications will be sent directly to your door.

“And you can do all of this from your phone. So stop settling for tired as your new normal.”

Go see what the best version of you actually feels like. Head to goby meds.com. That's G-O-B-Y-M-E-D-S.com. Use code True Crime for $25 off. Go be you with goby meds.com. A few months before Sarah Stern disappeared, she took a trip to a neighboring Jersey Shore beach town called Avon by the sea. Her parents had bought a home there and planned to move in one day.

But that never happened. On the outside, the house looked like a charming Victorian.

It was white with a wrap around porch and lots big windows. But inside, it was clear why the family didn't move in. The Avon home was uninhabitable. Detective Nick Catalona visited the house

“as he was investigating Sarah's disappearance. The house didn't have any power to it. It didn't”

look like anybody had been in there for quite a while. The cobwebs are all attacked in areas of entry. The Stearns had owned a bookstore called Books Unlimited for decades. And Michael Stearn told investigators that the house was used to store what was left of the business. Like the Stearns Neptune City House, it was cluttered. It was pretty much packed capacity with odds and ends items and just storage. There was a detached garage in the back and that was literally packed from

floor to ceiling wall to wall. But based on what investigators say Sarah's aunt told police when Sarah stopped by the house, she found something of value among all that storage. Her aunt told police Sarah was looking through a box of photos of her mother who had passed away when Sarah was just 15 and she discovered something else in the box. Cash. A lot of cash. According to what her aunt told police, Sarah counted $10,000 but believed there might have been

twice as much. There's a lot we're never gonna know about this money. Like where it all came from

or why it was left in a random box in a house used for storage. My grandmother used to keep money in the freezer. Anytime she needed a money, she wouldn't go to the bank. She would go in her freezer and get money out of there. So people do things differently. Why she had a little stash of money? Who knows? But answering what Sarah did with this hidden treasure and whether it had anything to do with her disappearance, that is where investigators hungry for a breakthrough

in the case turn their attention. From ABC Audio and 2020, I'm Judy Chiang and this is Bridge of Lies. Episode 3 Box of Money In the days after Sarah's disappearance, investigators were working with two main theories that Sarah had died by suicide or that she had run away to Canada. Police were still exploring both theories, but investigators including detective Brian Weissbrot were becoming more and more

skeptical that Sarah had jumped off that bridge. Sarah's family and her close friends, they described her as being her happy go-lucky self that she was in good spirits that she had

Alex Napoleono covered the case for nj.com and said he got a lot of tips from the community saying that Sarah, who was known for her quirky sense of humor and her artistic talent, just wouldn't end her life. I've covered, you know, cases where people jump off bridges

in New Jersey. However, I had never experienced people coming forward to me saying this is not the

Sarah that we know someone who would do this. People emailing me, calling me, telling me, "This is impossible. There's no way she jumped from a bridge." None of the searches for Sarah along the shark river turned up anything, not a scarf, not a wallet, not a purse, or backpack. Investigators didn't pick up any fingerprints from her car and they didn't find anything inside the car besides some artwork that Disney memorabilia

“and a small key. Detective Nick Catalona also searched the Stern's main house in Neptune City”

a few days after police first went through it in the middle of the night, looking for Sarah.

Catalona needed to be certain Sarah was not somewhere on the property. There was a lot of areas where somebody could have either fallen and got injured and incapacitated or could have been hidden. People tend to kill themselves in the strangest of places, so I searched all the cars on the property, all the buildings, sheds, things like that, the pool area, all the bushes, and there was nothing. The garbage went through the garbage, there was nothing of any

any interest whatsoever. Detective Catalona noticed that all of Sarah's belongings

seemed to still be in the house. While her clothing, her, you know, like she was very into her art,

“all that stuff was still there. I just found that then Belmore police department ultimately had”

her passport. If she's moving to Canada, you would think that she would need that personal security card, things of that nature, so that didn't make sense to me that she was running away. Why would she run off to Canada without her car, her clothes, her art, and most importantly her passport and ID? To authorities, the theory that she ran away to Canada, seemed to make less and less sense. Investigators decided to look into Sarah's bank records.

Maybe there was something in her financial history that could explain her disappearance. Detective Catalona said Sarah's records at JP Morgan Chase didn't reveal anything odd, no big purchases or withdrawals in the days leading up to her disappearance. No erratic behavior at all.

“Up until the day she went missing, there was regular activity on her debit card,”

but then pretty much stopped the day that she went missing and hasn't been any activity since. But Sarah also had an account at a local branch, Carney Bank in Bradley Beach. Reporter Jessica Easttop said Sarah had good relationships at the bank. The manager, Raymond Blow Jess, was a family friend. The bank staff knew her, and she had known Raymond since she was born. And so the bank was somewhere she was often found.

She would even stop by when she wasn't interacting with her account at all just to say hi. As investigators searched for information that could break open this mystery, they received a tip. On the day of Sarah's disappearance, she went to the bank. Investigators learned that in September 2016, just months before she disappeared, Sarah opened a new account at Carney Bank, a safety deposit box account.

According to investigators, a review of her bank records showed she accessed the box three times, once in September, once in November, and once in December, on the last day she was seen. They got search warrants for her safety deposit box, and for surveillance footage from the last time she went to the bank, and that's when they went to the bank to search Sarah's box. The bank kept the safety deposit boxes in a big, shiny metal cabinet.

Detective Catalona was there to execute the search warrant. The bank has it's like a two-keyed system, so the bank maintains the key and the customer has

That small gold key that had been found in Sarah's car had the number 35 on it,

“and it was the matching key for the safety deposit box.”

They inserted their key, I inserted the key that we recovered from Sarah's car, and it unlocked the box. The long beige metal box was pulled from the cabinet and set down on a table. Detective Catalona opened it.

My first thought was wow, this is a lot of money.

This money wasn't an organized stacks of crisp clean bills, like you see in the movies when someone pulls out a lot of cash. This is old-old currency, and it was in a very bad condition. It was brittle, some of it was falling apart. Most of them were stuck together. They had a lot of holes in them. These are the old-style,

“smaller portraits. Current currency has the larger portraits on them.”

It's like when you go to the store and they hand you an old bill, you're like, wow, that's, you know, I haven't seen this in a while. So it's just, it was old, it had not widely circulated at all. Police believe this was the money Sarah found in the avon by the sea house, tucked away in a box of photos, and there was far more than $10,000 of it. Double that, actually.

$25,250 in 2050s and hundreds. Catalona noticed that the money was split into a few rough piles. There was a yellow mesh bag that had some money in it, and the money seems to have been separated by amounts with index cards. Some of the index cards had the amount of money that was in it. Some of them didn't.

“They sent the money away to their evidence vault.”

They didn't know whether Sarah had taken money out on her last trip to the bank or put money in. All they knew was that she made this trip just before 3 p.m. on the day of her disappearance. In the surveillance footage from the bank, you can see Sarah is wearing a puffer jacket and glasses. Her hair is in a messy bun. She's dressed for a casual day with a friend, getting lunch, running some errands.

As she leaves the bank, she waves and says goodbye to the bank manager, who's a close family friend. She's smiling, and you can see her dimples even in the grainy footage. She doesn't look stressed or tense. She looks like someone who's seen some friendly faces and made another ordinary stop at a bank she's been coming to for years. But this trip was not ordinary. This surveillance footage is the last clear recording

showing Sarah's face before she vanished into the night. Sarah turns around, walks through French double doors in the lobby and leaves. Another camera shows her exiting through glass doors into the parking lot. She was a 19-year-old walking seemingly carefree out of a bank where she had over $25,000 in cash. Hidden away.

The first thing that went through my mind is that Sarah did not run away because if she was

going to leave, she certainly would have taken her money with her. Based on police interviews, it seems that not many people knew about Sarah's safety deposit box. Her dad Michael says he didn't. According to investigators, he told police he didn't even know Sarah had found money in the avon by the sea house in the first place. Sarah's aunt, her dad's sister, did know about the money. So did some of her friends based on what investigators

say they told them. Friends like her neighbor, Carly, and her friend, Leo. Detective Brian Weissbrock said finding out about Sarah's trip to Carney Bank marked a big turn in the investigation. Especially when we took into account that Liam had failed to tell us that he had gone to the bank with Sarah. Liam McAtassney. Liam had told police about going to Taco Bell and playing video games with Sarah. Investigators knew from the timestamped bank

surveillance video that Sarah had gone to the bank right after Taco Bell when she would have still been with Liam. Did Liam know more than he was letting on? Was Sarah's friend going all

the way back to first grade hiding something?

invested in your health? Want to shut that extra weight? Need more energy throughout the day?

“Want to finally crush that brain fog? That's where goby meds can help.”

And here's the best part, unlike the other big medical weight loss in telehealth companies, goby meds has zero monthly membership fees. You pay for your treatment, not a subscription, no hidden costs, just transparent access to great care, and treatments start at just $99 a month. The process is really simple. Fill out a quick consultation form, a licensed provider will review and ask any questions, and if approved, your medications will be sent directly to your door,

and you can do all of this from your phone. So stop settling for tired as your new normal,

go see what the best version of you actually feels like. Head to goby meds.com, that's

G-O-B-Y-M-E-D-S.com, use code true crime for $25 off. Go be you with goby meds.com. This show is sponsored

“by Quince, a thoughtfully built wardrobe is all about pieces that mix well and last. That's”

where Quince shines, premium fabrics, thoughtful design, and everyday essentials. Their pieces are effortless, and dependable, even as the seasons change. From the short sleeve Mongolian cashmere polo's to the linen pants and shorts, their pieces are designed to stay crisp and comfortable, season after season, and Quince works directly with top factories, so you're not paying for any markup or middlemen or fancy retail stores. It's all just quality clothes. No matter where you are,

whether it's already warm enough that it feels like summer, or it's still a bit chilly and damp, like it is here in York. Quince has the pieces you'll need for the perfect spring wardrobe. Right now go to quince.com/bridge of lies for free shipping and 365 day returns. That's a full year to build your wardrobe and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too. Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to qu-i-n-c-e.com/bridge of lies for free shipping and

365 day returns. Quince.com/bridge of lies. 2020 is partnering with vibes open year wireless headphones. That's Vy-B-Z. If you listen to a lot of true crime, you probably like to listen with a good pair of headphones, but it can be tricky to find a pair that provides great sound quality that's not too immersive, because when you're out with a podcast during a late night dog walk or a pre-do on run,

“you don't necessarily want noise cancellation that blocks out the sounds around you. That's why”

you want to get yourself a pair of vibes, your perfect companion in audio. They're designed for maximum comfort with ultra lightweight earbuds that just sit outside the ear canal, and they offer crystal clear audio. No matter what you're listening to, whether it's your favorite song or a sound rich true crime podcast, it'll come across loud and clear and silky smooth. The battery lasts up to 10 hours per charge and they come in a range of sleek modern colors and

styles. So what are you waiting for? Order now and you'll be listening to better sound with better headphones before you know it. For a limited time, our listeners can get more than 60 percent off a pair of vibes wireless headphones. Just go to abcsecretsavings.com/2020. Again, that's abcsecretsavings.com/2020. ABCsecretsavings.com/2020. By December 6th 2016, police officers had spoken with Liam McItazney multiple times. Now he

was being brought in for a more formal interview at the police station. The detector from the county is going to come in and talk to you, you know, you have met him yet. So. At this point, Detective Brian Weissprot had just joined the investigation. Weissprot has a very calm, matter-of-fact demeanor. I wanted to be able to introduce myself to him and also speak to him directly at an effort to find Sarah. Liam and the officers sit in plastic chairs at a long,

rectangular table. The camera is pointed down right at Liam. He's wearing a blue-plad shirt and has his arms crossed on the table. He's leaning forward in his chair. He's looking down at the table rather than up at the officers or at the camera and you can see the wavy blonde hair on the top of his head. The officers are sitting across from him. Investigators are curious as to why Liam hasn't mentioned the bank. But they don't ask him about it

right away. They go through a long list of other questions first, like what he's studying at the local

community college. How long? He's known Sarah. And how close they are.

Liam says he slept in till noon. Then between one and two he met up with Sarah and helped

“her move bins to her neighbor's house. After that he says they went to Taco Bell together”

and brought food back to Sarah's house where they played video games until Liam left for his job as a waiter at Brennan's stay house. That was it. Again, no mention of visiting the bank. Why Sprot wants to know if Sarah asked Liam to help keep any secrets. Liam pauses for a while and then without prompting,

leads investigators back to a familiar theory that Sarah was an emotional distress

and ran away to start a new life with her YouTube friends in Canada. I was talking about going to Canada with her over the past few weeks, but that was just kind of her emotional support, I guess. I didn't think she would actually go through with the whole Canada thing. It's just trying to escape the situation she was having with us. For that detective Wysbrot urges Liam to think carefully. Did Sarah say something that suggested she

might be in Canada? If she told you something, if she told you that she was going to do something,

“you need to tell us. For the whole interview, Liam is looking at the table.”

Only raising his head once in a while to make eye contact with the officers. He's nodding a lot as he speaks and uncrossing his arms occasionally to emphasize a point with a hand gesture. He does this during what he says next. It's a question that comes out of the blue. Looking at how I want to talk to you guys about what she did jump off the bridge, what are the odds that she's not somewhere all the way out of the ocean.

I found the question very odd. I would have expected him to ask questions like what are we doing to find her, what efforts have we made, who's assisting, who's helping, Liam didn't ask any of those questions. Detective Wysbrot pushes Liam on what he just asked about the possibility of Sarah's body being carried away by the shark river current, a few hundred yards out to the Atlantic Ocean.

She had told me that I was just going to jump off the bridge, there would have been no way that I could have gone towards that night. Liam says he had a great night, a great workshop. I mean, a bunch of money. All my tables were good, I had a great time. It definitely, I would not have been able to do that and find something new. You just think that we're going to have a great time. The investigators step outside for 10 minutes and Liam sits in the room

alone. When they come back in, Detective Wysbrot will get to the thing that they really want to ask. What about the bank? You're a master of the story, also the school of the school, just to get to the right and then

“the head of the building. No, not at all. How much of a story is my safe space?”

Do you think all of that? Yes, exactly. How much of a story is a story that is really different. A game of studio, job or music. A game of art. I don't really feel like a story. Steuyan Elite? Safe. Medviso Steuya. Welcome back, Grace. You and your sister are here for a very exciting reason. Now and later, hunters, you haven't told Dom to kill them both. Experience the most unhaired. I'm not playing!

20. Diabolically twisted. Movie of the year.

What you're not to, here I come. We did our 17-hundred-middle-out-parent, no-playing only beaters.

“Premiering Sunday night on ABC. What happens when the person you love the most?”

Turns out, not to be, who you think they are? Everything he told me was alive. I was portrayed from the number one true crime podcast, The Trail. He's been living a secret double-life. My marriage ended with a 911 file. The tape is blood curdling. The trail. Secrets and lies. So, many people are living with their own betrayal. Premier's this Sunday night at ten-nine central on ABC and stream on Disney Plus and Hulu.

When Detective Wysprot and another investigators sit back down,

Wysprot immediately brings up the bank.

“Liam says he told the other detective in the room about the bank,”

during an unrecorded interview at his house. The other detective doesn't react to this. Doesn't confirm or deny that Liam ever mentioned the bank to him. But none of the detectives working on the case documented or even remembered Liam ever bringing up the bank in any of their multiple interviews with him. No idea. Then it's going.

Liam says he stayed in the car. Liam tells detectives it was her mother's money and according to him, Sarah thought it could be up to a hundred grand in cash. Even as Wysprot pushes Liam. Liam stays calm. And he doesn't clam up. He keeps responding to the detective's questions.

It seems like he's trying to be helpful, offering whatever information he can. He told me the condition of the one he was pretty bad. He was all stuck together. All of his old bills. So that could have been a reason for not knowing who he was yet. After ticking through some more questions about the day of Sarah's disappearance,

Detective Wysprot returns to the bank.

“It seems to really bother the calm detective that Liam left out this crucial detail”

from the day his friend went missing. And now, says he doesn't know much about it. Liam says he isn't sure what more Sarah could have told him. About an hour and a half into the interview, the officers leave the room again. Liam sits alone for about 30 minutes before they come back in and tell him that his parents have contacted attorneys on his behalf.

The interview ends ultimately after approximately two hours of bus gathering information from him.

Something was not right. There was nothing at that point pointing in the direction that someone had hurt Sarah, yet at the same time, I wasn't satisfied that something didn't happen to her. For the first few weeks of the investigation, police had been working with two theories on this case. But by mid December, reporter Jessica East Hope said a third theory was suddenly emerging. Police start to believe that something violent happened to Sarah,

but one of the biggest questions is why. When investigators find out about the some of money that Sarah came into, they start to think that this could be a possible motive. Could someone have targeted Sarah for her money? In the minds of detectives could Sarah's case more

and investigators felt something was off about his story, but all they had was suspicion.

“They had no evidence that Liam had anything to do with Sarah's disappearance.”

The case doesn't go cold, but it moves in that direction. Investigators were still searching for Sarah, the promising artist whose life had only just begun. Missing posters featured photos of her and listed a $5,000 reward, police were getting tips from all over, California, Florida, and Canada.

People called in to say they thought they had spotted Sarah somewhere.

There was not one lead that came in that they wouldn't check.

“Michael Stern said one of the YouTubers his daughter liked posted a video,”

asking for help finding Sarah. It went viral. There was 167,000 views on that. That was within a day. But none of these efforts led to any answers. For weeks, detective widespread continued investigating, and her dad, Michael stayed involved in the case, too. I tried to talk to Michael Stern every day or every other day. It's not every day. Michael Stern was not sitting by without checking in with law enforcement

and demanding to know what we were doing.

“December passed, a new year started, and the case was still stalled.”

Charabel, the sense of hopelessness. When you don't, you just, you have no idea. Sarah's my only child, and it's a hard feeling that we couldn't find her. It's weeks and weeks before police come in contact with the person who is going to break this case open. In the dead of winter, a month and a half after Sarah went missing,

investigators finally got a tip that seemed like a breakthrough. It didn't come from another

state or country. It came from within Sarah's community, from someone who went to school with Sarah, and Leon. Pursuing this lead would require a dangerous undercover sting operation and a high-stakes gamble between two friends. The cops haven't quite gotten me. I know you know, I know you're not a rap, but we got to, we got to play it safe for real. This is like sh*t moving through.

Bridge of lies is a production of ABC audio and 2020, hosted by me, Judy Chang. Produced by Camille Peterson and Sabrina Fang, fact-checking and production help from Audreemostec and Annelisa Linth. Tracy Samuelson is our story editor, our supervising producer is Sasha Aslinian, music and mixing by Evan Biola, special thanks to Katy Dendos, Janice Johnson, Joseph Diaz, Avery Brook, and Michelle Marulous. Josh Cohen is our director of podcast

programming, Amen McNiff, is our executive producer. Ryan Pattah, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned out. Murder at the U, listen now. This is the show everyone is watching. Every moment, every game. Every drop of sweat. All for this, players walk in, legends walk out. March Madness on ESPN,

greatness is now playing, continues to label fit on ABC, ESPN, and streaming on the ESPN app, presented by Camille One.