FREEHOLD - The young man who took Sarah Stern to her junior prom and later helped his roommate throw her body off a bridge for a share of the $10,000 she was murdered for was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison.

Before Preston Taylor, 22, of Neptune learned his punishment for his role in the 19-year-old Neptune City woman’s demise, he apologized for taking part in the deadly scheme with former roommate Liam McAtasney, Stern’s childhood friend, who was found guilty in February of her murder.

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Michael Stern, Sarah's father, didn't want to hear anything Taylor had to say. He got up and walked out of the courtroom with his girlfriend, Kristine Eckert. They returned only after Taylor had finished his statement.

“There's so many things about this scenario I wish I could take back and make right,” Taylor said. “I should have known better and done something to stop this, and I wish more than anything I had. I’m sorry.”

Taylor directed his apology to "Mr. Stern and all those who had the blessing of knowing Sarah." He also apologized to the victim herself, who he said was "a very beautiful young woman who didn't in any way deserve the end you met."

Minutes earlier, Michael Stern told Superior Court Judge Richard W. English that what Taylor did was "wrong" and "pure evil."

The judge said plotting to rob a friend whom you've known since freshman year of high school and took to the prom "doesn't even make sense to me."

English ordered Taylor to serve 85 percent of the 18-year prison sentence, or 15 years and three months, before he can be considered for release on parole.

"Mr. Taylor, it's clear, did not commit the murder here," the judge said. "He did everything but put his hands around her neck."

Taylor’s sentencing was the final chapter in a riveting story that unfolded after Sarah Stern, a budding artist, went missing on Dec. 2, 2016. Her body has never been found, but Taylor’s admission that he helped McAtasney throw it off the Route 35 bridge between Neptune and Belmar helped explain what may have happened to her remains.

Taylor, McAtasney and Stern were close friends and classmates at Neptune High School, graduating in 2015. Taylor took Stern to the junior prom the year before.

Stern’s disappearance was investigated by authorities as a missing persons case until January 2017, when filmmaker Anthony Curry, another classmate of theirs, came forward to police and told them McAtasney had told him the previous Thanksgiving of a plan to rob and kill Stern for some money she recently had found.

McAtasney and Taylor were arrested Feb. 1, 2017, a day after Curry met with McAtasney on Ocean Avenue in Bradley Beach and secretly recorded McAtasney confessing chilling details of strangling Stern and, with Taylor’s help, throwing her body off the bridge.

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Following his arrest, Taylor immediately cooperated with authorities.

On April 21, 2017, Taylor took a plea bargain and agreed to testify against McAtasney, with whom he had shared a cottage in Neptune City at the time Stern went missing.

In pleading guilty to robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, desecrating Stern’s remains, conspiring to desecrate her remains, and hindering his and McAtasney’s apprehension, Taylor admitted that he and his roommate had planned for months to rob Stern of the large amount of cash she had found in a shoebox in a house her family owns in Avon, presumably left there for her by her deceased mother.

Eventually, the plot turned to murder, and when McAtasney called him on Dec. 2, 2016, to tell him he had gone through with the plan to kill Stern, Taylor said he went to the victim’s house to move her body outside while his roommate worked a shift at Brennen’s Steakhouse in Neptune City.

Later that same night, he said he returned to the house with McAtasney, and the two of them placed Stern’s body in the passenger seat of her grandmother’s 1994 Oldsmobile 88, the car she usually drove, for McAtasney to bring it to the crest of the Route 35 bridge while Taylor followed in his own car.

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Taylor revealed that they had taken trial runs to the bridge before that night. He said they used walkie-talkies to communicate with each other during the operation.

When he saw McAtasney atop the bridge, struggling to throw Stern’s body off as traffic approached, Taylor said he made a U-turn and went up to help him. With Stern’s body successfully over the bridge and in the Shark River Inlet, the pair returned home in Taylor’s car to count the money McAtasney had stolen from Stern, he said.

They left Stern’s Oldsmobile abandoned on the bridge, with the keys inside, to make it look like she had committed suicide, he said.

Taylor said he took part in the scheme for a promise of $3,000 of the $10,000 McAtasney had stolen from Stern, money he said he never received.

When McAtasney’s trial started on Jan. 23, Taylor was the state’s first witness against his former roommate. He displayed no emotion as he went on to recite the same set of facts in vivid detail for the jury.

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When Taylor entered his guilty plea, prosecutors said they would recommend he receive a 20-year prison term. They promised not to prosecute him for felony murder if he cooperated fully in the case and testified truthfully against McAtasney.

With Stern’s body still missing, McAtasney’s attorney, Carlos Diaz-Cobo, argued that McAtasney had simply made up the story he told Curry because he was trying to impress his filmmaker friend. But a jury on Feb. 26 found McAtasney guilty of murder, felony murder, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery, desecration of human remains, tampering with evidence and hindering apprehension.

McAtasney a week ago was sentenced to life plus 10 years in prison, with no chance for release on parole.

Before Taylor was sentenced, his attorney, John Perrone of Long Branch, asked the judge to impose a 10-year prison term, the lowest sentence he could receive. Perrone said McAtasney may never have been convicted of Stern’s murder without Taylor’s cooperation.

Taylor’s cooperation included going with detectives to Stern’s house to show them how he had moved her body outside to some bushes after McAtasney killed her and to the spot on the bridge where he and McAtasney disposed of her remains.

He also directed detectives to locations where he and McAtasney had buried two safes. One of the safes, buried in a remote mortar battery at Sandy Hook, contained the cash McAtasney had stolen from Stern. The other safe was one belonging to Stern, from which the stolen cash had been removed. That safe was buried at Shark River Park in Wall.

The cash found in the safe at Sandy Hook provided key corroboration to McAtasney’s confession to Curry on the secretly recorded video — that the bills were old and deteriorating to the point where they were useless.

"He has an attitude where he's showing extreme remorse and he's trying to make his life a model of atonement," Perrone said of Taylor before he was sentenced.

"He chose to cooperate, he did cooperate, but he knows what he did — he knows he's going to have to live with it," Christopher Decker, assistant Monmouth County prosecutor, said of Taylor.

"It's about the desecration, it's about the friendship that existed," Decker continued. "It's about the facade, that charade that went on. ... The level of that charade, that facade, that was created to make Sarah think these were her friends was cruel and heinous."

Decker asked the judge to impose no less than a 15-year term, saying that although Taylor cooperated with authorities, he could have stopped Stern’s murder and didn’t.

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“But for Preston Taylor, Sarah Stern would still be here,” Decker said.

“There’s nothing to excuse his conduct,” he said.

Michael Stern asked that Taylor get the full 20-year term, pointing out that without the benefit of a plea bargain, Taylor was looking at more than 50 years in prison.

"He took Sarah’s lifeless body and moved it not once, not twice, but three times and dumped it in the Shark River,” Michael Stern said of Taylor. “No words can be said to anybody who does anything like this to someone’s child.”

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Michael Stern silently nodded when he heard the judge hand down the 18-year term.

Addressing the news media after the sentencing hearing, Michael Stern said, "I have one thing to say. Justice for Sarah, finally.

"I don't know if I'll get any rest, but at least this part of Sarah's murder is over," Michael Stern said.

He said he hopes to focus now on keeping Sarah's memory alive through art scholarships. He said Sarah was liked by everyone who knew her and loved by many, and was a talented artist.

"She was going places," Michael Stern said of his only child. "She was just a wonderful, wonderful individual. Everybody liked her. A lot of people loved her."

Perrone said afterward that he plans to appeal the sentence that Taylor received, saying he thought it was unfair, given his client's substantial cooperation in the case.

Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues, unsolved mysteries and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com; 732-643-4202.