Sarah Stern was 19 years old when she was murdered by someone she had trusted since childhood. She never got the chance to live the life she had planned.
Sarah Lee Stern was born on March 24, 1997, in Neptune City, New Jersey. She grew up as an only child with her parents, Michael and Carla. In high school, she played varsity softball and swam competitively, but over time she found her real passion in the arts.
She loved drawing, painting, photography, and digital media. She lived by a personal motto: practice reckless optimism, which meant staying positive and believing things would work out even when they did not look like they would.
In 2013, her mother passed away from cancer while Sarah was still in high school. It was a hard time, and she found comfort in art and in online content. She was a big fan of YouTube and followed creators like Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, Mamrie Hart, Jenna Marbles, and Julian Solomita.
She went to events like VidCon and Comic-Con regularly, where she met online friends and the creators she looked up to. By 2016, she was attending Brookdale Community College, studying television production and art.
She had talked openly about wanting to move to Canada one day, somewhere she had visited and loved. Her father, Michael, supported the idea as long as she found work or joined a study program there.
A few months before she disappeared, Sarah found a shoebox full of cash at her family’s second home in Avon-by-the-Sea, New Jersey. The money had been left behind by her late mother, so it was legally hers.
The bills were old and in poor condition, which would have made them difficult to use without raising questions. Family members told her to keep it quiet. She did not listen. She told a small number of people she trusted, and one of them was a longtime friend named Liam McAtasney.
Liam had been close with Sarah since first grade. In high school, he became friends with another student named Preston Taylor, and the three of them formed a tight group they called the squad. Preston had even taken Sarah to junior prom.
After graduation, Liam and Preston moved in together in a house owned by Liam’s parents, just a block or two from where Sarah lived. After learning about the money, Liam did not keep it to himself.
He told multiple people about it and described it as the kind of money someone would kill for. Those were his exact words. The cash was eventually placed in a safety deposit box at a local bank.
On December 2, 2016, Liam and Sarah spent the afternoon together. They went to Taco Bell, dropped off a container of her late mother’s belongings at a neighbor’s home, and returned to Sarah’s house.
At some point, the two also went to the bank, where Sarah accessed her safety deposit box. Liam waited in the car. That evening, he left for his work shift. It was the last time anyone outside of the two perpetrators saw Sarah alive.
In the early hours of December 3, at around 2:46 a.m., an Uber driver crossing the Route 35 Belmar Bridge spotted an abandoned silver 1994 sedan on the roadside. There was no sign of a crash. He called it in anyway.
When an officer arrived minutes later, the keys were still in the ignition. There were no personal belongings anywhere near the vehicle. A search confirmed no one was inside.
The car was registered to Sarah’s grandmother, Lillian Stern, but Sarah was the known driver. Authorities contacted her cell phone carrier and found her phone had last registered near her home at 7:49 p.m. the previous evening.
Officers went to the house, entered through an unlocked front door after getting no response, and searched the entire property. Sarah was not there. Her dog, Buddy, had been left inside his cage, which immediately stood out to anyone who knew her.
Leaving him like that was completely out of character. Her father, Michael, was in Florida at the time. He got a call in the middle of the night and immediately started the long drive back to New Jersey.
Around 4:00 a.m., officers arrived at Liam’s address to speak with him. He told them the last time he had seen Sarah was earlier that afternoon when they had spent time together. He also said he had not been able to find his phone since leaving for work.
During the conversation, Liam stated that Sarah had been depressed, that her relationship with her father was strained, and that she had been talking about moving to Canada to get away. He did not mention the bank visit at all.
Separately, a neighbor told officers that Sarah had seemed depressed recently. Based on that information, along with the discovery of her abandoned car on the bridge, investigators began considering two early possibilities: that Sarah may have taken her own life or that she had chosen to leave on her own.
As the search expanded over the days that followed, the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, New Jersey State Police, and the United States Coast Guard all joined the effort.
Community members turned out in large numbers to search the area. A $5,000 reward was posted. Shark River, which the bridge crosses and which flows directly into the Atlantic Ocean, became a major focus for search crews.
Liam was brought in for additional questioning during this period. Each time, he told the same story. Sarah was depressed. Her father was difficult to live with. She had always wanted to go to Canada.
Preston was also interviewed and worked to distance himself from any close connection to Sarah while confirming Liam’s general account of events.
At one point during questioning, Liam asked investigators what the chances were that a body thrown from the bridge would have drifted out to sea. It was a strange question for a concerned friend to ask, and it did not go unnoticed.
Investigators obtained bank records and surveillance footage from the branch Sarah had visited on December 2. The footage showed her walking in calmly, smiling, and interacting normally with staff.
She withdrew some cash but left approximately $25,000 still in the safety deposit box. The idea that she would flee the country and leave that amount behind made little sense. A search of her home confirmed it further.
Her passport, social security card, and both American and Canadian currency were all still there. She had not gone anywhere. When detectives raised the bank visit with Liam, he downplayed both his knowledge of the money and the fact that he had been with her that day, despite having omitted it from every previous account.
In January 2017, seven weeks after Sarah disappeared, a former classmate named Anthony Curry came forward. Anthony had become friends with Liam in high school through a shared interest in filmmaking.
On Thanksgiving Day 2016, roughly one week before Sarah went missing, Liam approached Anthony with what he called a movie idea. The plot involved strangling a young woman and throwing her body off a bridge with the help of a friend. Anthony found it odd but eventually forgot about it.
When news of Sarah’s disappearance spread, the conversation came back to him. Around the same time, Liam messaged Anthony through Snapchat asking whether police had contacted him yet. Anthony immediately recognized the weight of both moments.
Knowing that taking a screenshot on Snapchat would alert the sender, Anthony used a separate camera to photograph his phone screen and preserve the messages. He brought everything to investigators.
Acting on this, detectives organized an undercover sting operation for January 31. Anthony agreed to meet Liam in person, using a story about a broken camera and a need for money as cover. He wore a recording device.
During the conversation, Liam confirmed he had killed Sarah. He said he had planned it for roughly six months. His motive was the money she had found. He described strangling her after they returned home from the bank.
He noted that her dog was present the entire time and did nothing. He also revealed that Preston had come to the house after he left for work to move her body, and that later that night the two of them transported her to the Belmar Bridge together and threw her over the railing.
On February 1, 2017, authorities arrested Preston Taylor. He cooperated immediately. He confirmed that he and Liam had been planning for months, but he explained that the original plan was only to rob Sarah, not kill her.
At some point, Liam decided that murdering her would make it easier to get away with the crime. Preston also told investigators where the stolen money had been hidden. A safe was recovered from Shark River Park, and approximately $10,000 in cash was dug up near a lighthouse at Sandy Hook.
Preston later accompanied detectives to Sarah’s home and to the Belmar Bridge, where he showed them step by step what had happened on both nights.
Liam was arrested shortly after and refused to speak with investigators. His trial began on January 23, 2019. The defense presented three main arguments. First, they claimed the recorded confession was not a real confession but rather a staged audition for a fictional film.
Second, they argued that without a body, Preston’s testimony could not be fully trusted and that Liam had been at work when Sarah was killed, which left room for doubt about who was actually responsible.
Third, a local man named Craig Hetzel testified that around 5:00 a.m. on December 3 he had seen a young woman he believed to be Sarah walking alone down a street. He was confident in the identification.
However, his account fell apart when the timeline was examined. He also claimed to have seen Sarah’s car still on the bridge at that hour, but the vehicle had been towed hours before 5:00 a.m., making his version of events impossible to reconcile with the established facts.
The prosecution built its case around the recorded confession, bank records, surveillance footage, the physical evidence recovered with Preston’s help, and testimony from multiple witnesses.
Among those who testified was Carly Draper, a lifelong friend and neighbor of Sarah’s, who confirmed that Sarah had told her about the money and had mentioned that Liam was one of the people she had informed.
Michael Stern also took the stand. In the final text exchange between him and Sarah, she had responded to a photo he sent from Disney World by saying the castle looked beautiful with the lights. It was not the message of someone planning to disappear.
On February 26, 2019, Liam McAtasney was found guilty on all charges. Four months later, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional ten years.
Preston Taylor received an 18-year sentence along with a $10,000 fine and became eligible for parole in May 2032. Both men later attempted to appeal their convictions. Both appeals were denied. Sarah Stern’s body has never been found.
Based on expert analysis of tidal conditions and ocean currents from the night she was thrown from the bridge, investigators concluded that her body would have been pulled approximately seven miles offshore within 24 hours, making recovery unlikely.
In her memory, her father, Michael, established the Sarah Lee Stern Scholarship Fund for the Arts, which supports high school students pursuing creative studies, the field that meant the most to her.
