[music]
It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey Shore.
“Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge.”
Was there anybody inside the vehicle? I looked down. And the driver is nowhere to be found. It's the beginning of a mystery. Is it a missing person?
Is it a suicide?
At this point, nobody knows.
We don't know if we got a jumper or what could have pulled up there and just jumped off the bridge.
“Underneath the bridge, the current of the shark river runs fast.”
Out to the ocean. A search gets underway for the missing driver. 19-year-old Sarah Stern. The resources that are out there right now are looking for her. The amount of manpower.
We have people swimming in the shark river. In this cold weather, we have boats we have helicopters. The day Sarah went missing,
“she went to her safety deposit box at the bank”
and brought boxes to a neighbour for safekeeping. Nobody knew where she was. It was a 19-year-old girl who would have normally been attached to her phone and she was off the grid. Sarah was a promising artist, a loving daughter.
Sarah's my only child. It's a hard feeling that we couldn't find her.
A million things go through your mind.
Her close friends share with police their varying theories on her disappearance. In the past, she had a tendency to have self-destructive suicide or behavior. I thought she had staged it herself
and just went to Canada without telling anyone. Like, you just hope that, you know, she's alive and well. What really happened on that bridge? An undercover sting operation reveals the ultimate betrayal and it's all caught on tape.
I know you're not a rat, but we got to play it safe. Old friendships bearing cash and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life. I'm Juju Chang, from 2020 and ABC Audio,
listen to Bridge of Lies. Coming March 10th, wherever you listen to podcasts. (soft music)
