FREEHOLD - Liam McAtasney plotted long and hard how to bring about the demise of childhood friend Sarah Stern and get away with it, he said in a chilling video secretly recorded by a friend.

He spent a lot of time with the 19-year-old Neptune City woman before her death to make it look like they were better friends than they actually were, to deflect suspicion from him once she went missing, McAtasney said.

He said he observed her pulling her car out of her driveway so that when the time came, he could drive just like her while transporting her body in the passenger seat of her car to the Route 35 bridge to dispose of it.

But when the plan was put into effect, the fortune he was expecting to net in a robbery of Stern turned out to be only a fraction of the $50,000 to $100,000 he had anticipated, and the money was useless.

"She only had 10G, and this money, I don't know if it's burnt or something, it's old money, terrible quality. I don't even think I can put it in the bank," McAtasney said on the video.

So, he said he buried it at Sandy Hook.

"I did something really dumb and planned it out for a half a year," McAtasney said.

WATCH: See Liam McAtasney's full confession video

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McAtasney, 21, of Neptune City, told those things to his high school friend, Anthony Curry, on Jan. 31, 2017, a little less than two months after Stern, his childhood friend, went missing.

"I don't feel any different," McAtasney told Curry after describing for him how he killed Stern.

"I don't think about it," he said. "You always think you're going to try new things and change. It just don't do anything."

Then, he added, "It's your life. You might as well make it one. You gonna live some boring-a-- life?"

Curry, 21, of Brooklyn, secretly recorded the conversation at the behest of police while the two sat in Curry's car on Second Avenue in Bradley Beach.

A jury that will weigh murder and other charges against McAtasney viewed the video in court Thursday as the state's case neared an end.

The courtroom of Superior Court Judge Richard W. English was packed as observers waited with great anticipation to view the video.

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The victim's father, Michael Stern, hung his head and silently wept while the video was being shown on a large-screen television in the courtroom. It was the first time the recording was made public, and Michael Stern said he hadn't seen it before.

Curry, who said he is a filmmaker, was on the witness stand at the time. In testimony leading up to the video being shown, Curry said he went to police in January 2017, more than a month after Stern went missing. He testified that McAtasney, with whom he was good friends since they went to Neptune High School together, told him on Thanksgiving 2016, a little more than a week before Stern went missing, of his plans to murder her.

Curry, who downed bottles of water on the witness stand while facing a man he says he is no longer friends with, said McAtasney told him that Thanksgiving night that Stern had found some money, and he was going to kill her for it. McAtasney said he was going to choke her and throw her body off the bridge, and have his roommate, Preston Taylor, waiting there to drive "the escape vehicle," Curry told the jury.

"He said it would be a great idea for a movie," Curry testified.

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Curry said he didn't take the conversation seriously, until the following January, when McAtasney sent him a message on Snapchat, a social media platform on which messages disappear after they are read. Curry said he took a picture of the message to show to police.

McAtasney had asked him if the police had questioned him, and when Curry told him they hadn't, McAtasney responded, "They talked to everybody by now. If they haven't, they will," Curry testified.

Curry said he became worried and went to his childhood home in Neptune to talk to his father about it, and then he went to the police, who asked him to secretly record a conversation with McAtasney.

In a recorded phone call played for the jury, Curry set up the meeting with McAtasney on the guise that he wanted to borrow money from him to buy a camera, telling McAtasney he had ruined his camera when he dropped it in a bucket of blood on a movie set.

Curry asked to borrow $2,000. McAtasney turned him down.

"I only have seven, and that was months ago," McAtasney told him.

"I have like 5Gs left," he said.

He added, "My cash is low quality. they won't take it."

After declining to lend the money to Curry, McAtasney told him, "We need to talk about that," and they arranged to meet in Bradley Beach.

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With Curry recording the meeting, McAtasney got into the passenger seat of Curry's car, and Curry asked him, "What's up?"

McAtasney responded, "Hiding from the cops."

He said the police had been questioning him, and now the FBI was in on the case.

"What about?" Curry asked him.

"Killing Sarah," McAtasney responded.

Then McAtasney went into detail about how he had killed her, saying he timed how long it took with his phone, which he lost at her house. He said he later brought Stern to the bridge, threw her over and buried the robbery proceeds at Sandy Hook.

"Her dog laid there and watched while I killed her, and didn't do anything," McAtasney told Curry.

"I had timed everything out," he said.

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"I choked her out, dragged her to the back, put her in the bathroom, and then I had to go to work," McAtasney said.

Later in the conversation, McAtasney went into more detail.

"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."

McAtasney said he took a shirt and stuffed it down Stern's throat so that she wouldn't throw up, and he held finger over her nose.

After work, he said he returned to Stern's house with Taylor to get rid of the body. McAtasney told Curry he placed Stern in the passenger seat of her car and then backed it out of the driveway the way she would do it.

"I had to act like her," McAtasney said. "So I backed up exactly like she did."

At the Route 35 bridge, he said he needed Taylor's help. Cars were coming over the bridge as he struggled with Stern's body, he said.

"The weight of her body made me fall," McAtasney said, explaining that he needed "superhuman strength" to throw her back into the car as motorists proceeded over the bridge.

Taylor, meanwhile, made a U-turn and showed up to help, he said.

"The two of us threw the body over, and then we're out," McAtasney said.

McAtasney told Curry it was part of his plan to be questioned by police afterward and to make it seem like he was good friends with the victim, so he began spending more time with her before he killed her.

"I needed to make it seem like we were better friends than we were so they wouldn't question my behavior," McAtasney told Curry.

"The worst part is, we threw her off the bridge, and the body never showed up," he said.

McAtasney told Curry he was the only person other than Taylor who knew what happened to Stern, but that he wouldn't let Taylor know that.

"I don't want Preston to think he has to kill you and take you out because you're the only person who knows," McAtasney told Curry.

McAtasney's attorney, Carlos Diaz-Cobo, said at the onset of the trial that the video was not a confession, but rather an audition by someone who wanted to impress the filmmaker.

Diaz-Cobo questioned Curry at the conclusion of the video.

"You have a slogan. Was it, 'Kill it all and film it?'" Diaz-Cobo asked the witness.



"Not those exact words, but yes," Curry responded."It's all fiction, yes."

Curry conceded that McAtasney sometimes made things up and would give him ideas for movies, but he added, "I never filmed any of them."

Meghan Doyle, assistant Monmouth County prosecutor, asked Curry, "Do you think he was telling you a movie plot at any point in the car?"

Curry responded, "No."



The Asbury Park Press and USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey will be covering the Sarah Stern trial regularly. Check back at APP.com and follow us on social media for the ongoing coverage, which picks up Tuesday, February 12..

Kathleen Hopkins: 732-643-4202; Khopkins@app.com