In a chilling, secretly videotaped confession played Thursday as part of his ongoing murder trial, a New Jersey man, standing trial forallegedly murdering a childhood friendfor the inheritance she’d received following her mother’s death, vividly and calmly recounted strangling her before dumping her body off a bridge — and even complained about the amount of money he walked away with.
The father ofmurdered art student Sarah Sternsat with relatives, who slowly traced their hands across his back, consoling him as he listened to the accused, Liam McAtasney, 21, detailing his alleged crimes.
“She only had 10Gs, and this money, I don’t know if it’s burnt or something, it’s old money, terrible quality,” he tells his friend, Anthony Curry, who approached police weeks after Stern’s slaying. “I don’t even think I can put it in the bank.”
He continued: “I did something really dumb and planned it out for a half a year.”
The Asbury Park Pressrecorded the video evidenceand posted it to their website.
Sarah Stern/Facebook; Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office/AP
McAtasney continues opening up to his friend Curry. “Her dog laid there and watched while I killed her, and didn’t do anything,” he said. “I choked her out, dragged her to the back, put her in the bathroom, and then I had to go to work.”
In the footage, McAtasney says he strangled Stern and used a stopwatch app on his phone to gauge how long it took for her to die.
“I picked her up and had her just dangling off the ground,” he told Curry. “She pissed herself, said my name. It took me a half-hour to kill her. I choked her out, and she was just laying there, having a seizure.”
He said he stuffed a towel down her throat to prevent her from vomiting, and then pinched her nose for 30 minutes.
In late 2016,McAtasney allegedly killed Sternat her Neptune City, New Jersey, home before driving the body, which he’d placed in the passenger seat of her own car, and drove to a bridge in Belmar.
He told Curry — an amateur filmmaker he had approached a month before the killing for help — he’d parked the car, and started lugging her corpse towards the edge of the bridge when three cars started approaching. He said he tossed her back into the car, and waited for the vehicles to pass.
His roommate, Stern’s former prom date Preston Taylor, was there to drive McAtasney back, andhelped him throw Sarah off the bridge. They left her car behind to make it look like a suicide.
Taylor, now 21 but 19 at the time of the killing, has pleaded guiltyand had previously testified against McAtasney.
• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Clickhereto get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.
McAtasney has denied having anything to do with Stern’s presumed murder; her body has never been found.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to life without parole.
McAtasney’s attorney did not immediately return PEOPLE’s request for comment.
source: people.com
