What the camera recorded
On January 31, 2017, nearly two months after Sarah disappeared, Liam McAtasney sat down in Curry’s car. The camera was rolling.
He did not talk about Canada this time.
On the tape, McAtasney described killing Sarah Stern in her own home. He described taking her safe, and how he and Preston Taylor had carried her out and thrown her body off the Route 35 bridge into the Shark River.
He also complained about the money. He had expected a fortune. “She had one safe that she took money out [of],” he said, “and she only had $10,000.”
The empty car on the bridge had never been a sign that Sarah had jumped. According to prosecutors, it was left there on purpose, so that everyone would believe she had.
The prom date talks
Things moved fast after that.
The next day, February 1, 2017, detectives sat down with Preston Taylor, McAtasney’s roommate and Sarah’s old prom date. Taylor confessed.
He told investigators that McAtasney had been planning it for months, and he admitted helping McAtasney move Sarah’s body and throw it from the bridge.
Taylor also led investigators to the safes the two men had buried. In one of them was cash taken from Sarah’s home.
On February 2, 2017, two months after the search began, both of Sarah’s friends were in jail. McAtasney was charged with murder, robbery and desecration of human remains. Taylor was charged with helping to dispose of her body and with hindering the investigation.
The community that had searched for Sarah alongside them was stunned.
No body, but a tape
In April 2017, Preston Taylor pleaded guilty to robbery and related charges and agreed to testify against his friend.
Liam McAtasney pleaded not guilty. His trial began in January 2019 at the Monmouth County courthouse in Freehold.
His lawyers had a strong card to play: Sarah’s body had never been found. There was no murder weapon and little physical evidence. And they had an explanation for the tape. Everything McAtasney said in that car, they argued, was a made-up story. He was pitching an idea to a horror filmmaker.
Prosecutors played the hidden-camera video for the jury. Then Taylor took the stand.
He testified that McAtasney had told him Sarah had “the type of money that somebody would kill for.” He said the two of them had tried to rob her once before, about a month earlier, but the money was not in the house that day. After that, he said, robbery turned into a plan to kill her, and they even timed the drive from her house to the bridge.
The cover story, Taylor testified, was suicide. They would tell police that Sarah was depressed and had been fighting with her father.
Prosecutors also pointed to one small detail. On the tape, McAtasney described the stolen cash as old-looking bills. The money investigators dug up looked just like that. He could not have known that, prosecutors argued, unless he had held the money in his hands.
He had expected about $100,000. Prosecutors said he got roughly $8,000.
Guilty on every count
On February 26, 2019, after two days of deliberations, the jury found Liam McAtasney guilty on all seven counts, including murder, robbery and desecration of human remains.
After the verdict, Michael Stern said he felt “justice was served.” He called his daughter “an angel” who “didn’t have a mean bone in her body.” Hearing the confession tape in court, he said, had been “sickening.”
On June 21, 2019, a judge sentenced McAtasney to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus another 10 years for what he did with Sarah’s body.
Later that month, Preston Taylor was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his part. When he stood to apologize, Sarah’s father walked out of the courtroom.
Still in the river
Divers and search teams went back into the Shark River more than once. Sarah Stern’s body has never been found.
She was 19. For two months, the friend who killed her helped look for her, told police she had run away to Canada, and let everyone believe she had jumped.
What finally broke the case was not a body or a forensic test. It was Liam McAtasney’s own voice, on a camera he never knew was there.
