What I want to do is not to get a lot of students.
The semester-by-tark laptop is often held in the internet.
So it's a master's choice.
“I'm saying, you can say that you're a hero.”
You're a hero, right? But you don't understand. Egal, it's a famous trick. Do you just do it with this story? And if you then do it, you'll be able to do it.
- That's right? - Save. This story is called "Holy Dangle". Now, let's try it. 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 were all attacked in the 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 going to 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 any 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 Chan, and this is Bridge of Lies. Episode 3
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 goals, and she had plans, and that she had things that she wanted to accomplish in life. 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 it 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 interest whatsoever. Detective Catalona noticed that all of Sarah's belongings seem to still be in the house. While her clothing, her, you know, she was very into her art,
“all that stuff was still there. I just found it odd. Then Belmore, a 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 warrants. The bank has its like a two-keyed
“system, so the bank maintains the key and the customer has a key, and the box can only be opened”
with both keys. 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 answered the key that we recovered from Sarah's car, and then 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.
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's not widely circulated at all.”
Police believe this was the money Sarah found in the Avon by the Seahouse 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 100s. 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 hairs 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 was certainly what 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 Weissbrook said finding out about Sarah's trip to Carly Bank marked a big turn in the investigation. Especially when we took into account that Leo had failed to tell us that he had gone to the bank with Sarah. Leo Macotasney. Leo 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 Leo. Did Leo know more than he was
“letting on? Was Sarah's friend going all the way back to first grade hiding something?”
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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 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
“plaid 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? Weissprot asks Liam to go over the day of Sarah's disappearance one more time. 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 steakhouse. That was it. Again, no mention of visiting the bank. Weissprot 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. We're talking about going to Canada with her over the past few weeks. But that was just a kind of promotional 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.
But they're dead. Detective Weissprot urges Liam to think carefully.
Did Sarah say something that suggested she might be in Canada?
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 out, I want to talk to you guys about what's on this sheet. She did jump off the bridge.
“What are the odds that she's not somewhere all the way out to 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? Linden asked any of those questions?"
Detective Weissprot 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. Liam says he had a great night, a great workshop. All my tables were good, I had a great time. It definitely would not have been able to do that, and thank you for something new. You just think that we're going to discuss about this.
“The investigators step outside for 10 minutes, and Liam sits in the room alone.”
When they come back in Detective Weissprot, we'll get to the thing that they really want to ask. What about the bank? Public mass.
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“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 betrayed 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 10 on central on ABC and stream on Disney Plus in Hulu. When Detective Weissprot and another investigators sit back down, Weissprot 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. Did you go to the bank? I was with her.
I was going to wait back and talk about him, which to do with the bank. No idea, didn't come in. Liam says he stayed in the car. Well, if you stop at the bank, which tells you she must stop at the bank. Something to do with her money. I don't know. She needs her money.
And I have one house, she wants to go.
She has a lot of facts from money in there.
I don't know. She was taking money out, putting money in there.
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. She wasn't sure how much money she found? Yeah, I think that makes sense to you.
“Are you going to be sure of which money she was supposed to tell me?”
Even as Weissprot pushes Liam, Liam stays calm. And he doesn't climb up. He keeps responding to the detectives' questions. It seems like he's trying to be helpful, offering whatever information he can.
Well, she told me the condition of the wanting was pretty bad.
Like it was all stuck together. Oh, it was all old bills. So that could have been a reason for not knowing you were seeing it. No. After ticking through some more questions about the day of Sarah's disappearance,
detective Weissprot 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. And Sherry, out of his business, it just makes sense that you do all these things. Stop at the bank, so she can take care of her money. And you ask no questions.
She doesn't know why I've got anything just to share anything with you. Liam says he isn't sure what more Sarah could have told him. What she's doing to bank the benefits of the cork here is that I've got to stop at the gate here. I've got to get the girl cash. We'll see, I've got to say, I've got a deposit, yes, I have to stop by the bank.
“That's all it was to, is a car and I'll stay in the car.”
To stay in the car, must see you to be here or something and then we were at her house. 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 us 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 there. 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 from missing person to murder. Liam was one of the few people who knew about Sarah's money 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 Wysbrot 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.
It's horrible.
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 seen me. I know you're not a rat, but we got to we got to play it safe.
Bro, this is like shit over here. 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 in production help from Audrey Mastek and Annelisa Lindner. Tracy Samuelson is our
“story editor, our supervising producer is Sasha Aslanian, music and mixing by Evan Biola,”
special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnston, Joseph Diaz, Avery Brook, and Michelle Margillus.
Josh Cohen is our director of podcast programming. Aiman McNiff is our executive producer. From 30 for 30 podcasts. Ryan Patta, Senior Defense of Lime and for Miami, gun down. The key to this case, it's Brian. What happened?
Our before he died, he was on a phone. Arnold's about this might be my hit. You want to true, you just want to conviction be in place here arrest. We had a killer Marks does. Murder at the you, listen now.
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