Bridge of Lies: Box of Money

This is Deborah Roberts here with another weekly episode of our latest true crime series

from 2020 and ABC audio, Bridge of Lies. Remember, you can get new episodes early by following

Bridge of Lies on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening now.

Now here's the next episode of Bridge of Lies.

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A few months before 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 Sterns had owned a bookstore called Books Unlimited for decades.

And Michael Stern told investigators the house was used to store what was left of the business.

Like the Sterns Neptune city house, it was cluttered. It was pretty much packed capacity with

odds and ends items and storage. There was a detached garage in the back and that was literally packed

from four 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 money, she wouldn't go to

the bank. She would go on 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 Judu Chang. And this is Bridge of Lies.

Episode three. Box of money.

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 Weisbrot,

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 Napoliello 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 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 incapacitated or 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.

All of her clothing, her, you know, like, she was very into her art, all that stuff was still there.

I just found that, uh, then Belmore Police Department ultimately had her passport.

If she's moving to Canada, you would think that she would need that, her social security card

things of that age or 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 East Hope said Sarah had good relationships at the bank.

The manager, Raymond Blojess, 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 warrant. The bank has it's like a two keyed system so the bank maintains the key

and the customer has a key and the 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 inserted 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, you know, brittle, something that was falling apart. Most of them were stuck together.

They had a lot of holes in them. These are the old-style smaller portraits. Current currency has

the larger portraits on them. It's like when you go to 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 and $20,50 and hundreds.

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 hair is 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 certainly would 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 Seahouse 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, Liam.

Detective Brian Weisbrot said finding out about Sarah's trip to Carney Bank

marked a big turn in the investigation.

Especially when we took into account that Liam had failed to tell us that he had gone to the

bank with Sarah. Liam McAtesney.

Liam had told police about going to Taco Bell and playing video games with Sarah.

Investigators knew from the time stamp bank surveillance video that Sarah had gone to the bank

right after Taco Bell when she would have still been with Liam.

Did Liam 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 6, 2016, police officers had spoken with Liam McAtasney multiple times.

Now he was being brought in for a more formal interview at the police station.

The detective from the county is going to come in and talk to you, you know, you haven't met him yet.

At this point, detective Brian Weisbrot had just joined the investigation. Weisbrot has a very

calm matter of fact demeanor. I wanted to be able to introduce myself to him and also speak to him

directly in 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.

I would say we're pretty close friends. I'm a lifeguard in front of the beach. It's

just a bad check. I saw her pretty much every day over the summer.

Weisbrot 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.

Weisbrot wants to know if Sarah asked Liam to help keep any secrets.

If you make any promises there, no, I'd just want to know if they wouldn't tell anybody anything.

No. Liam pauses for a while and then without prompting,

leads investigators back to a familiar theory that Sarah was in emotional distress and ran away

to start a new life with her YouTube friends in Canada.

I had spoken about going to Canada over the past few weeks, but that was just

kind of for emotional support, I guess. I didn't think she would actually go through with the

full Canada thing. It's just trying to escape the situation she was in, I guess,

after that. Detective Weisbrot 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.

I'm looking out. I don't want to talk to you guys about the way she did jump off the bridge.

What are the odds that she's not somewhere all the way out of the ocean better?

I found the question very odd. I would have expected him to ask us questions like,

what are we doing to find her? What efforts have we made? Who's assisting? Who's helping?

Liam didn't ask any of those questions.

Detective Weisbrot 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.

If she had told me that I, this she could have jumped off the bridge,

there would have been no way that I could have gone to work that night.

Liam says he had a great night, a great work shift. I mean, a bunch of money.

All my tables were good. I had a great time. It definitely

I would not have been able to do that in fact with something.

The investigators step outside for 10 minutes and Liam sits in the room alone.

When they come back in, Detective Weisbrot will get to the thing that they really want to ask.

What about the bank?

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When Detective Weisbrot and another investigator sit back down, Weisbrot immediately brings up the bank.

We haven't told us about 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. Okay, there's the way back from Taco Bell

to him. What did she do with the bank? No idea. It didn't go in.

Liam says he stayed in the car. Where did she stop at the bank?

Where did she tell you she was stopping at the bank? There's something to do with her money.

I don't know. She needs to find money. You know, I have a house a few months ago.

And she has a lot of box full of 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. How does that make sense to you? That you wouldn't be sure how much money you found.

Even as vice-brought pushes Liam, Liam stays calm. And he doesn't clam up.

He keeps responding to the detectives' questions. It seems like he's trying to be helpful,

offering whatever information he can.

So that could have been a reason for not knowing. Do you ever see it? No.

After ticking through some more questions about the day of Sarah's disappearance,

detective vice-brought 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.

But if you do all these things, stop in the bank, so she can take care of her money,

and then you ask her questions. She doesn't require anything. She doesn't share anything with you.

Liam says he isn't sure what more Sarah could have told him.

Well, she's still in the bank. I mean, if I was in the car here,

I got a stop at the ATM in the car cash. Well, see, I got a stop at the boss of this.

Yes, just like I had to stop by the bank. I thought it was to a car. I don't stay in the car.

Stay in the car. I want to see you to be here or something. 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.

We're not going to talk to you any further today. We do appreciate you coming down.

The interview ends ultimately after approximately two hours of bus 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 to her.

For the first few weeks of the investigation, police had been working with two theories on this case.

But by mid-December, reporter Jessica Easthope 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 sum 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 Weisbrot 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, if not every day.

Michael Stern was not sitting by without checking 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, it's a sense of hopelessness.

When you have no idea, Sarah is my only child, 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 Liam.

Pursuing this lead would require a dangerous undercover sting operation,

and a high stakes gamble between two friends.

Bridge of Lies is a production of ABC Audio and 2020, hosted by me, Judu Chang,

produced by Camille Peterson and Sabrina Fang.

Fact-checking and production help from Audrey Mastek and Annalisa 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 Brooke, and Michelle Marguilis.

Josh Kohan is our director of podcast programming.

Aiman McNiff is our executive producer.

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