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Sarah Goode was a 21-year-old mother from Long Island who disappeared in June 2014. A week later, her body was found in a wooded area near where she lived. On Friday, May 15, Dateline NBC is rebroadcasting an episode about the crime that features Goode’s friends and family, plus prosecutor Janet Albertson.
Here is what you need to know about Goode’s disappearance and murder.
1. Sarah Goode Disappeared June 6, 2014
Six years ago, Sarah Goode dropped her 4-year-old daughter Jocelyn off at her brother-in-law Nick Gianetto’s house and went out with a group of girlfriends. Gianetto told Dateline correspondent Andrea Canning that she was happy because she was “going out for the first time in a long time” after having recently broken up with a man she had been seeing for two years.
Goode, who worked as a medical technician, said goodbye to her brother-in-law and her daughter, said I love you, and that was the last time he saw her. The next day, she was supposed to pick up her daughter at a family birthday party, but she never showed up.
“In your mind and in your heart and in your soul, you’re saying to yourself this is not normal, this is not Sarah,” said Gianetto.
He added, “She was very outgoing and talkative and very fun to be around. Whenever I’d cook something, she’d be right next to me, wanting to learn how to do it, to taste it. I was always there for her. If someone bothered Sarah, Sarah would definitely come to me and let me know.”
2. Goode’s Friends Remembered Seeing Her at a Party
When she went out, Goode and her friends ended up at a party.
“Last we’d seen her was at the party and that’s about it. Nobody knew anything,” said one friend on Dateline and another added, “That could’ve been me or any of my friends.”
After they lost track of her and she didn’t show up at the family gathering the next day, a week-long search began. They put up posters and combed the nearby woods.
“We went out all hours of the night … if we heard a police car, we were going,” said one of her friends.
Goode’s 1999 gray BMW was later found abandoned about a mile from the home she shared with her mother and daughter, according to WPIX. It was covered in her blood. Almost a week after the night she disappeared, the search party found a body in the woods that was later identified as Goode’s
After she was confirmed dead, a GoFundMe was set up by the family to “pay for funeral and burial costs, and any additional funds raised beyond that will be used to support Sarah’s four-year-old daughter, Jocelyn,” according to Long Island News.
3. Dante Taylor Was Arrested For the Crime in July 2014
According to CBS News, prosecutor Janet Albertson said Goode had been raped and beaten with something that left a chunk of metal in her skull. According to an ABC7 report, Goode had also been stabbed more than 40 times.
“He set upon her with such brutality that he broke the tip of a cutting instrument off and it embedded in her skull,” said Albertson.
Investigators arrested Dante Taylor, a 19-year-old former Marine, in July 2014 and charged him with the crime. They maintained that he met Goode at the party she was at with her friends and then killed her after she rejected his advances.
“She was a good girl,” Goode’s sister, Elizabeth DeMuria, told CBS News. “Everybody loved her. She was the one who lit up the room when she came in the door, and now she cannot do that anymore.”
4. Taylor Was Sentenced to Life in Prison Despite Prosecutorial Misconduct
At the trial, Justice John Collins sanctioned the prosecution for withholding evidence from the defense, including a threatening message from the man with whom Goode had recently broken up and some CrimeStoppers tips naming other potential suspects, according to NewsDay.
But Taylor was still found guilty by a jury of first- and second-degree murder and attempted rape in the first degree. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“You may make marks on the cell block on your walls in the cage in which you will live and they will have no significance,” said Collins during the sentencing. “You may circle dates on the calendar but they will mean nothing because there is no date for you to get out. There shall be no hope for you.”
After Taylor was sentenced, Goode’s mother told CBS News, “She was just a beautiful girl, life cut short now, and I’ll never have her again. I don’t know what I am going to tell her little daughter when she gets older.”
Goode’s sister added, “She had her little daughter to take care of, she was always willing to do things for everyone else, put herself last. Sarah got justice. He took her life. I hope Sarah’s face haunts him for the rest of his life.”
5. Taylor Died in Prison in 2017
In October 2017, at the age of 22, Taylor was found dead in the Wende Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York. Taylor’s attorney, John Lewis Jr., who had always argued that Taylor and Goode had consensual sex and then someone else killed her, said that Taylor’s death was the latest injustice in this case.
“It’s a tragedy. His death is just another injustice in a string of injustices. I just hope someone is held accountable for his death. Now Suffolk County will not be held accountable for the injustices it committed in getting his conviction,” Lewis told Newsday.
Goode’s family posted a message to Facebook upon learning the news that read:
The news has recently reported that the monster who so violently ended Sarah’s young life will no longer breathe another breath, will no longer see another day, will no longer have the privilege of living a life; something he made certain she could not do.
Sarah’s beauty is eternal. Her laugh is unforgettable. Her memories are carved in the hearts of all whom she met.
Remember Sarah.
Her face, Her smile.
Her laugh, she wit.Plaster her beauty for everyone to see.
Forever Remembering Sarah Patricia Goode
Dateline NBC airs Fridays and Saturdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
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