“[SBM]
McAtasney, 21, of Neptune City, was barely audible as he told Superior Court Judge Richard W. English he wished to remain silent and not testify in his defense.
Instead, the defense relied on testimony of three witnesses called over two days to assert that the state has not proven McAtasney strangled his childhood friend during a robbery in 2016 and threw her body off the Route 35 bridge from Belmar to Neptune.
[SBM]
[Craig] Hetzel testified Wednesday that he saw a woman duck into an alley in Bradley Beach about 5 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 3, 2016, and he told jurors he was certain the woman he observed was Stern — the same person he later saw pictured on missing persons posters and news reports. Hetzel said he then proceeded over the Route 35 bridge, where he saw a disabled car unattended near the top of the span.
[SBM]
Hetzel testified that he waited until February 2017 to reveal what he saw that December morning, only after learning that arrests were made in Stern's murder. He said he told his lawyer and a private investigator working for McAtasney's previous defense attorney about what he saw,
but he said he never talked to any detectives from the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office about seeing Stern that morning.
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[Detective Brian] Weisbrot, the lead investigator on the Stern case, testified that
he had in fact interviewed Hetzel by telephone on Feb.
21,
2017.
Christopher Decker, assistant Monmouth County prosecutor, asked Weisbrot if Hetzel said he was certain it was Stern he saw that morning.
‘No, he said that the girl that he saw in Bradley Beach resembled Sarah Stern,’ Weisbrot replied, referring to notes he had taken at the time of the phone call.
‘
He said that it appeared she had some type of scarf wrapped around her face and head area,‘ Weisbrot testified.
The detective also explained why he didn't pursue Hetzel's claims further. Hetzel said he saw the car on the bridge about 5:15 a.m., but Stern's car had been towed from the bridge hours earlier, the detective said.
‘It wasn't Sarah Stern's car because the car had already been impounded at that point.’” (BBM)
Sarah Stern murder: McAtasney won't take the stand, victim sighting rebutted