Introducing 'Bridge of Lies' -- A New 20/20 True Crime Series

9-1-1, where is the emergency?

It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey Shore.

Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge.

Was there anybody inside the vehicle?

I looked.

Yeah.

And the driver is nowhere to be found.

It's the beginning of a mystery.

Is it a missing person?

Is it a suicide?

At this point nobody knows.

We don't know if we've got a jumper or what.

I could have pulled up there and just jumped off the bridge.

Underneath the bridge, the current of the Shark River runs fast.

Out to the ocean.

A search gets underway for the missing driver.

19-year-old Sarah Stern.

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 weather.

We have boats, we have helicopters.

The day Sarah went missing, she went to her safety deposit box

at the bank and brought boxes to a neighbor for safe keeping.

Nobody knew where she was.

It was a 19-year-old girl who would have normally

been attached to her phone and she was off the grid.

Sarah was a promising artist, a loving daughter.

Sarah's my only child.

It's a hard feeling that we couldn't find her.

A million things go through your mind.

Her close friends share with police

their varying theories on her disappearance.

In the past, she has had a tendency

to have self-destructive suicidal behavior.

I thought she had staged it herself

and just went to Canada without telling anyone.

Like, you just hope that she's alive and well.

What really happened on that bridge,

an undercover sting operation,

reveals the ultimate betrayal and it's all caught on tape.

Bro, this is like a f***ing movie.

The cops haven't questioned me.

I know you're not a rat, but we got to play it safe.

Old friendships, bearing cash,

and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie

plays out in real life.

I'm Juju Chang from 2020 and ABC Audio.

Listen to Bridge of Lies.

Coming March 10th, wherever you listen to podcasts.