Transcript for Community comes together to search for Sarah Stern: Part 3
We were about an hour into the search when we discovered who we were looking for and it kinda sent a tingle down my spine. Sarah was our neighbor for her entire life. I’ve been on a lot of searches for a lot of people, but this is the first time we were searching for somebody that we knew. So it made it a little more difficult. All right, Liam. I gotta throw something in here, okay? Yeah. You know what’s going on here? Do you know why we’re standing here talking to you? Yeah, I have a pretty good idea. We had gone to Liam’s mother’s house over on Bradley street here in Neptune city to see if we can locate him and just kind of talk to him about what he might’ve known. Early in an investigation police are trying to rule people out. They’re talking to people who maybe they have questions about. They want to follow up. The goal is rule this person out as a possible suspect. The resources that are out there right now looking for her, the amount of manpower, we have people swimming in the shark river in this cold, cold water. We have helicopters. Dude, if you know anything about where this girl is, or have had any contact with her, you need to let us know. Believe me officer, I — And exactly what it was that you had spoken to her about yesterday afternoon before you went your way and she went her way. You need to open up and let this detective know everything. Did Liam cooperate with police and investigators? He was willing to talk with police as a friend of hers who was a witness. Listen, man, we’re not looking to get you in trouble. We’re not even looking to get her in trouble. We want to find her and make sure she’s safe and okay. They’re just generally trying to get as much information as they can. They ask Liam about, you know, was she ever depressed? Did she say anything to you about where she may be? Has she been different than normal lately? In the past, she has had a tendency to have self-destructive, suicidal behavior. I actually know about– How long ago? Years ago. He started talking to us about how Sarah was miserable living with her father. And she talked about running away to get away from her dad. Over the past few months she’s been telling me — excuse me — how bad her relationship with her father is and how she just needs to get out of here. Why was it bad? What made it bad? Fighting. Arguing, fighting? Arguing, fighting, constantly. Liam answered every question you know. He was explaining and giving great detail about things that they’d done. Yeah, so yesterday, you guys went to taco bell, you dropped the stuff off at the drapers’. You went to taco bell first, or you went to the drapers’? Taco bell first. Then to the drapers’. Drapers’. And then you left. Then to her house. Then to her house. Hung out, I left. What time was that around? 4:45. 4:45. Yeah. And then you worked til when? I worked until 10:00. Okay. I was supposed to work until midnight, but I got off at 10:00. And then you just came back here? Yeah, I went back there. When the police interview Liam, they are able to timeline where Sarah was because that becomes very important as you try to sort out fact from fantasy in investigating a case. What was with you? My roommate. Just your roommate? Yeah. She didn’t come back? No. She didn’t text you, call you, nothing last night? I mean, I didn’t have my phone. So I wish I could tell you. Nothing cut caught me off guard or out of the ordinary in that conversation. Again, Liam, we’ve said it a couple times. I’m gonna throw it at you one more time, dude. We just want to make sure she’s okay. Nobody’s going to get into any trouble here. We’ve just got to make sure that Sarah’s all right. On December 6th, 2016, Sarah’s family organized a civilian search. There were hundreds of people at this search. People from the community, people she had gone to school with, friends of her family, her friends. It’s been a full week since 19-year-old Sarah stern in Neptune was last seen and now her family and friends are organizing a search party. Family is going to, if you will, take the matters into its own hands and get a search party together. The entire community, not just in Neptune city but so many that knew her, friends, and family from surrounding communities all went out searching for her. You had Mr. Stern out there, Sarah stern’s dad, and the mcatasney twins, Liam, as well as his brother, both participated in it. Hopefully we find something today. The detectives did spend time looking at different routes from her house to the bridge, to see if we could find surveillance or anything and there was nothing. Police are searching for any evidence and then they think they get a break. They find out there is a surveillance camera under the route 35 bridge, and another camera on the neighboring railroad bridge. They go to the scene and they think, yes, we’re going to find out what happened on the bridge that night only to find out that both of the cameras were not working and hadn’t been working for years. You know, unfortunately we didn’t have any cameras that were working on the bridge. Those may be the only broken cameras in this story, because there were a lot of other cameras that were working. So some of the evidence happened right here because you had a neighbor with a camera. I knew that they had cameras but I didn’t know where they were, if they caught anything. But when I got back that night, Saturday night, we started reviewing the tape and stuff and we saw Sarah and Liam coming and going during the day. Sarah stern’s neighbor has a surveillance camera that actually caught Liam leaving late afternoon, which sort of corroborates his story that he was going to work. So much later after Liam leaves late afternoon, Sarah’s car is witnessed with this camera backing out of her driveway, but they can’t determine who’s actually driving the car. Her car left that house close to 11:45. Then it ended up on the bridge.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.
