Transcript for Two friends of Sarah Stern are arrested in her disappearance: Part 8
Ask your healthcare provider if Ozempic?? is right for you. It’s now exactly two months to the day since police found Sarah stern’s abandoned car up on that bridge. She seemingly had vanished without a trace. This girl that we thought had killed herself all of a sudden there was a major break in T case. Two people have been arrested for the murder of Sarah stern. And they are not just two random people. They are two people who grew up with her and knew her well, Liam mcatasney and Preston Taylor. They were childhood friends. I came home from work, and I started making dinner. I noticed there was a bright light coming from my backyard, and I looked out the back window, and I thought Liam and his friends were shooting a movie or a video and I decided to go back there and say hi to everybody. And then a detective yelled at me to stand back, and at that point I realized that people were going through my son’s trash. They had gloves on. They were raiding my son’s home. I asked where my son was, and I was told, “Ma’am, you have to get back.” It was a two dk two-bedroom, one bath, small house. They had a living room, kitchen, dining room, all one area. Liam’s bedroom was pretty neat and orderly, Preston’s on the other hand was not. Um, there was nothing of any significance found it’s a typical teenager. Is lot of booze around and things like that. So while all of this is going on, Liam’s mom, Megan has no idea where her son is, she hasn’t been in communication with him, she can’t talk to him, and she’s not getting any answers from police. It was 2:30, 3:00 A.M. That I got the call and was told what Liam was being charged with, and my head was just spinning, because I didn’t understand what was happening. I grew up at the beach, and when somebody goes in the water they wash up somewhere. When Sarah had not washed up onto any of our shores it gave us hope that Sarah had, maybe, run away. And so, in my head I was thinking that Sarah needed to get away and for some reason she felt she couldn’t tell any of us, and that’s why she was moving all of her belongings into different people that she trusts homes. And that’s why she had gone to the bank and all of these things were making sense, and for whatever reason she felt she couldn’t tell us. And that’s what I had been thinking up until that moment. So I didn’t understand why — why my son was being charged. I got a call. I wasn’t home and they said well we liked to talk to you at the house. The detectives, the police department they were there and they said just sit down we want to tell you something. That was not the news you wanted to hear. No. And that was after the taped confession that they had. And I actually didn’t hear that. They just told me what was on there and they said you don’t want to hear the details. Even though prosecutors have this so-called confession tape by Liam mcatasney, they still want that ace in the hole. I wanted to be able to put on the only other person that saw her dead body prior to putting her in the water. I just thought that was important. So Preston Taylor takes police on another field trip. This time to the route 35 bridge. It’s the last known place Sarah stern’s body ever was. Now I’m pulling my vehicle off to the shoulder of the roadway. Is this the area where the car No, a little further up. We wanted to bring Preston to the bridge so he could identify the exact location where they threw her over the bridge. We had put a life jacket on Preston Taylor. We wanted to ensure that we took all necessary safety precautions in the event that something were to happen on the bridge. Liam was going to throw the body over himself, and then run across and jump over the median and get in the passenger seat of my car. But he wasn’t strong enough to pull Sarah up and over himself. So he radioed me on the walkie-talkie and told me to loop around and to come help him get her over. Liam had her by the shoulders and hoisted her up onto the railing. Then I pushed her feet over so that she was going over the rest of the way. We heard a loud metallic bang, and that was all. Preston Taylor agreed to plead guilty and cooperate with the state. He pled guilty to disposing of Sarah’s remains. Preston wishes he had acted differently, Preston has cried with me. Preston has now tried what he could to try to atone for himself. He knows that whatever he does, he can’t bring her back. I always thought of him as a storyteller, I never thought him to be credible, so to see him confessing towards Liam, I just didn’t — I didn’t believe it. None of it made sense to me. I don’t have anything nice to say about Preston. We sat down and spoke with Liam’s mom about the case and about watching that chilling video tape, that so-called confession that her son made. And it took me a half hour to kill her. I thought I was gonna be able to choke her out and have her out in like, a couple minutes. Liam doesn’t speak about things lightheartedly. That was not Liam, to me, describing an actual murder. That’s not the tone Liam uses when he speaks about something serious. That was an act. He was doing an audition. He was making things up, trying to impress that horror film director. They were making movies together. Liam was writing scripts for him. Liam was gonna star in some of Anthony’s movies. That wasn’t no movie that’s real life. Trust me I’ve worked in film for years. I know the difference between reality and fiction. That’s reality. What did you make of the defense’s assertion that Liam was auditioning, he was acting and not confessing on that tape? I don’t even know how — unless you go into total fiction. That’s all that was. I don’t know what he was auditioning for. The only movie being made was that videotape describing that horrible murder. Does Liam deny having that conversation with him earlier, around the Thanksgiving time? He absolutely denies that. I think that Anthony curry — he’s pointing the finger at my client and trying to make stories up so that he can better his career because it’s not that great. Did Liam mcatasney, your client, kill Sarah stern and throw her body over the route 35 bridge? No. And I can say that because I — just based on the evidence that he’s maintained his innocence from the beginning. This has seriously affected our entire family and poor Mike stern doesn’t know where his daughter is. I mean, everybody is affected by this. This is a horrible, horrible, horrible situation. And we still can’t find Sarah. We don’t know where Sarah is and we just stopped looking. I’m here because I want justice for Liam and I want justice for Sarah stern. There’s not enough pieces to put together to make heads or tails of anything, and the fact that Sarah just disappeared and no body’s been recovered or anything, it’s just — it’s terrifying. In every bone of my body I do not believe that Liam is capable of killing Sarah stern, who he loved and adored. I do not believe Liam is capable of killing anybody. But what really matters is what those 12 jurors who are about to hear the entire case, what will they believe? State of New Jersey vs Liam mcatansey.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
