Tonight, as part of ABC News’ 20/20, viewers will witness Preston Taylor’s recorded video interview with detectives, in which he reenacts for investigators how he and Liam McAtasney threw their friend, Sarah Stern’s, body over a bridge in 2016.
In the video, according to ABC, Taylor tells detectives that Stern was slumped in a corner of a bathroom when he went to her house in December 2016. His job was to “keep watch and make sure everyone went smooth.”
Liam McAtasney, who has been charged with Stern’s murder, strangled the 19-year-old to death in order to steal her inheritance money (her mother passed away a few years prior.) He then enlisted the help of Taylor to help dump her body over a bridge. To this day, Stern’s body has not been found.
Taylor was friends with Stern and was her date to the junior prom.
At first, authorities believed McAtasney’s death was a suicide. In January 2017, however, police set up a secret camera in the car of Anthony Curry, who was friends with McAtasney. One night, the camera captured McAtasney’s murder confession. In the video, he says, “We went to the bank. She took some money out — not all of her money … she goes to walk out the front door. I choke her out, dragged her… It took me a half an hour to kill her … then we threw her out the bridge.”
It was in the recording that police learned Taylor helped McAtasney dispose of the body. ABC News writes, “When detectives brought Taylor in for questioning, he cracked immediately, admitting that he knew McAtasney had killed Stern.”
Prosecutor Chris Decker tells ABC, “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone confess that quickly… He goes on for, you know, 52 pages or something in a transcript of describing [what] they did.”
After confessing to helping dispose of the body, Taylor brought police to the scene of the crime.
In court, he admitted to helping McAtasney dispose of the body. He said the robbery led them to $10,000, and he would receive $3,000 of that amount in exchange for helping McAtasney.
In the end, Taylor pleaded guilty to six charges– robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, disturbing or desecrating human remains, conspiracy to desecrate human remains, and two counts each of hindering apprehension.
According to App, Taylor graduated from Neptune High School in 2015. He went on to attend Stockton University. Reports indicate that he was friends with Stern in high school and even after graduating.
It was in August 2016 that McAtasney first approached Taylor about robbing Stern. “He came up with a few ideas to kill her and dispose of the body to get the money,” Taylor said in court.
Later on, McAtasney told Taylor he “strangled her body and hid her body in a downstairs bathroom,” reports App.
Be sure to hear Taylor’s first-hand accounts of events that transpired on that fatal day in December 2016 tonight on a new episode of ABC News’ 20/20.