2/3/2023
In a ruling Friday in the
Sarah Stern murder case, an appellate court upheld the conviction and
life prison sentence of Liam McAtasney, the Neptune City man who unwittingly admitted on a secretly taped video that he strangled his childhood friend and threw her body off a bridge in a robbery that netted $10,000.
In perhaps the most highly publicized murder case in Monmouth County in recent times, a three-judge panel with the Appellate Division of Superior Court rejected McAtasney’s arguments for a new trial, among them that the jury should have been precluded from watching his chilling videotaped confession.
Judges Heidi Willis Currier, Jessica R. Mayer and Avis Bishop-Thompson, in a 63-page opinion, let stand McAtasney’s 2019 convictions for murder, felony murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, desecration of human remains, tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension.
The convictions, secured by assistant Monmouth County prosecutors Christopher Decker and Meghan Doyle, resulted from a jury trial that spotlighted a startling plot by Stern’s former high school classmates to kill her for her money, dispose of her body and stage her car on the Route 35 bridge between Belmar and Neptune to make it look like she committed suicide.
"Of course, I'm kind of elated that it's over, after waiting three years,'' said Michael Stern, the victim's father, upon learning of the appellate court ruling. "It's been hanging over me. It's always been there in the back of my mind for the past three years.
"He should have gotten the death penalty, as far as I'm concerned,'' Michael Stern said of his daughter's killer. "He took my daughter for no reason. His rationale and reasons were evil.''
McAtasney, now 25, is serving life in prison without the possibility of release on parole, the most severe punishment in New Jersey since the state abolished the death penalty in 2007.
His former roommate and accomplice, Preston Taylor, also 25, is serving an 18-year prison term after admitting he took part in the conspiracy to rob Stern - his date for the Neptune High School junior prom and helped to throw her body off the bridge.
Sarah Stern's killer Liam McAtasney's conviction upheld by appellate court
