Transcript of Bridge of Lies: A Bonus Conversation with Brad Mielke New

This is Deborah Roberts here with the final bonus episode of our latest true crime series from ABC 2020 and ABC Audio, Bridge of Lies. Next week, we'll be right back here to tell you about a whole new series about another heartbreaking case, so don't go anywhere. But for now, here's the final episode of Bridge of Lies.

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Hey, I'm Brad Milkey. I'm host of ABC's flagship daily news podcast Start Here, and welcome to a final special episode to close out Bridge of Lies. I'm here with your host, Juju Chang, to reflect on the series. Dig into the behind the scenes and examine some footage that has not been heard yet in this series. For many of you, this podcast is probably not your introduction to Juju. If at any point while listening to Bridge of Lies you thought, wow, that voice sounds really familiar, it's probably because she's been on your TV screen many times before. Juju is the co-anchor of ABC's Nightline. She's reported on countless editions of 20/20. She's anchored live coverage and special editions. And in fact, she just returned from Japan and South Korea with a few more stories for the network. So Juju, I'm out of breath just describing your job. Thank you for being here.

My Pleasure. You know, I'm the biggest fan of Start Here, so happy always to be with you, Brad.

Yeah, well, it's so great to see you. And like I said, you got this long resume. With Bridge of Lies, you actually add like a new feather to your cap. You're now podcast host. We'll talk more about that role later, but I want to just start with the story itself since I think so many of us have been listening to this whole series with bated breath. On just like a personal human level, Juju, how did this story kind of sit with you?

Well, Sarah Stern was just 19 when she disappeared, and I have 3 sons, as you know, and they're about this age range. And, you know, they have their entire lives out in front of them. They have so much promise. And she was a very talented artist and she had lots of friends. And just all of that mystery unfolding at the beginning of her life is really captivating. But in addition to that, you get to start seeing her relationship with her father, her relationship with her friends, and what this young adulthood felt like. It's just an incredibly riveting story.

Well, and obviously, like, she passed before any of this sort of came to the attention of the news media. You obviously never met Sarah Stern. It's been 10 years since she passed, I think. So as you're sort of starting to think about this multi-part story, how do you and your team think about painting that portrait of someone you haven't met?

Absolutely. I mean, you know, it's one of those things where you look at footage of her talking in Google Hangouts with her friends. You look at her picture, which is still memorialized on the bridge. She was a young woman who clearly had a lot of light in her life. But you also get a sense from a lot of the audio that we were able to delve into how the investigators approached approach this story. You know, we had all these 20/20 interviews with the search crews who went out initially when they thought maybe when they found her car on the side of a bridge, maybe she jumped, right? Maybe she had fled to Canada, and they were searching frantically for her body. Then you start getting the audio of the investigators interviewing all of her closest friends and family, trying to get to the bottom of it. And then of course, the mystery starts to unfold and you get real police interrogations. And I went onto the bridge where, you know, her car was found, and it's a really big, tall bridge. It's a working-class town. Everybody in the town sort of was riveted by the story because when she disappeared, it was such a mystery.

What's it like there?

Well, when you drive through the neighborhoods, it's a, it's a classic sort of working-class shore town, you know, small little neat gingerbread-type houses. And she came from an area called Neptune City. The suspects that emerge during this case are childhood friends of hers. They went to elementary school together. They hung out at the pizza shop. They were, you know, local kids.

Hey, and when we think about Sarah, like, she was very much part of this online community, kind of ahead of her time. If you look at how, like, just influencer-driven the media landscape is now, she was at the time following people that we would probably call content creators. It was clear that back then police did not know how to categorize, like, this world. She fancied the idea of becoming kind of an online personality herself. And your team, you mentioned, actually found Google Hangout videos that she and her friends would publish. Like, what did you kind of learn from these?

So we were able to uncover a lot about her. We found her old tweets and her Tumblr posts. We really got a sense of her humor. I mean, also we figured out how she decorates her bedroom and she had, you know, dimples when she smiled. And there are all sorts of, you know, details about how she loved Disneyland and, you know, just getting a sense. Of who she was. The cool thing about these Google Hangouts was that you get to see Sarah being a normal teenager, kind of being silly, kind of chill, hanging with her friends. And with this YouTube channel, you get to know her and the sound of her voice. But we have a little bit of tape actually of Sarah Googling her name to see what pops up. If you look up Sarah Stern, there's like no chance you'll see me. Sarah, Sarah Silverman. And then there's like Sarah Palin, just like, What?

Juju, that's wild hearing that, because in some ways the internet is a reflection of what the world knows about you. And, you know, you Google yourself and you hear these Google searches bringing up other Sarahs like Sarah Silverman or Sarah Palin. She just sounds like almost disappointed.

Absolutely. You know, you also hear her voice. She's 19. She's, you know, she's a kid as far as I'm concerned, because I have children that age. And I feel like you get a glimpse into what her friends were doing at the time. And that is where a lot of the investigation is centered, is with her friends and how much they hung out, what they knew, what she trusted when she told them secrets. And that is how the mystery unfolds.

As a journalist yourself, like, what made this sort of a unique story? Like, were there particular aspects or components here that made you go like, whoa, this actually stands out in a different way than I'm used to?

So Sarah's mother died when she was younger, and it, it was the source of two issues. One was that obviously she was sad, but the other thing is that she then, after her mother passed, she discovered some cash, actually a lot of it, some of which that had been damaged because it was so old, right? That became a focal point of the investigation, obviously. What that cash did was incentivize the people who betrayed her. The thing that stuck out to me though, Brad, which is your question, is that there was another young friend who was in this same group of friends who decided that when this happened, his conscience made him step forward and say, you know what, I had information on what happened. And that is what led to this sort of daring sting operation. And he risked his life, right? You know, getting in the car with a suspected killer. And that to me really sort of hit my heart.

I gotta tell you, Juju, like listening to this episode with the sort of hidden camera and microphone in the car, I was walking my dog and I'm just stopped there on the sidewalk listening to this tape, because how often have you just heard a suspect bare it all like that? Like, what was it like when you heard that tape for the first time?

I felt the same way you did. It stopped me in my tracks because there are a couple of things on that tape, and that's what makes it such a great podcast, right? It all is audio, right? You hear him kind of nervously singing as he's on his way to the rendezvous point. His friend pats him down, bro, right before he starts to confess. Then the investigators say, I've never heard a confession spill out so fast.

Because it barely took any prompting.

It barely took any prompting. He admits to all of it, and he describes it in such horrible, gruesome detail. Then he talks about how the dog witnessed all of it, which was— really left me cold. And then finally, the sigh.

Mm-hmm.

At the end, where he gets out of the car, and he knows he's got the goods, and he just— exhales. And the sound of that, literally thinking about it, gives me goosebumps.

Well, and it feels like all of us in that moment, it's like, "What did I just listen to?" But obviously, so much more high stakes for him.

Completely.

And by the way, Juju, like this, you know, we edited it down in Bridge of Lies, of course, because it's like a 45-minute video that they took from that car. And there is material that did not make it into the episode. Anything that stuck out to you?

Absolutely. I can't imagine how much adrenaline is going through Anthony Curry's body, right, during this 45 minutes. But at one point, they're parked on a dark beach parking lot, and they're, you know, the glass is getting foggy, and they're in there together, and he's sitting with his friend who he thinks may have killed another friend. And then somebody knocks on the window. Somebody comes up to them and knocks on the window of the car, and they have to, like, deal with this woman. How do you roll this window down?

It's over here. Can you guys do me a huge favor?

Give me a ride, like, right down the road.

Nah, I can't. I got so much stuff. My back. I'm sorry, I can't.

Really?

Yeah, please. No, I really can't. I'm sorry about that. Yeah, no, no, hell no, I'm not giving you a ride. You could steal my equipment. You don't know who you're talking to about killing people. You're gonna ask me for a ride? Get the fuck out of here.

Oh, that's wild, Juju, that they're just getting interrupted in the middle of like the kind of the height of this.

Absolutely. And he even says, "I'm sitting here talking about killing people," and she knocks on the door. And it's just so real, because she says to them, "Really? You can't give me a ride?" In the middle of— I mean, it's just such drama. And the thing is, in that moment, Anthony later tells us that he thought that it was part of the operation, that maybe the whole sting was about to go up in smoke.

I always thought that was like a detective, but everybody's saying it wasn't. It was just some random lady. I thought it was like they were just checking up. I didn't know how this works. I never had to go through something like that before. I thought they were like checking up, but it apparently wasn't. It was just some random lady.

It's wild. What are the odds, right?

Unbelievable moments. And when we're talking about stuff that was sort of on the cutting room floor, when we come back, let's focus on our host. Let's talk about Juju Chang and where she kind of fits into this whole story. We're back after this.

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And we are back, and I'm extra excited for this part because Juju, I want to talk about you because you've been with ABC News since well before me. You've been covering huge stories. You've been the face of the network in so many ways. You're a pro now with Bridge of Lies. You add something new. You're podcast host all of a sudden. How different is an audio podcast from the TV work that you've always done?

Well, I have to say, hats off to the podcasting team here at ABC Audio. This is my, as you say, my first voyage into the world of podcasting. And it's such a different kind of storytelling, which I respect so much because, you know, I love the idea of sound design, right? Because you're just sort of able to layer it with sound and music and audio, and you get to live in the audio of it in a different way. And, you know, the one cue that I kept getting from our producers, like, "Juju, slow down." Like, you know, "Think about what you're saying, build a visual picture." And it was really helpful because I'm used to doing it in a broadcast voice where you can see the picture that I'm describing, right? But now we're slowing down and asking you to create those images images in your own head. And it's a stirring, different kind of podcast. And you know, Brad, I'm a huge fan of podcasts. I listen to Start Here every day. I'm constantly emailing you.

You text me after episodes you like, right?

Exactly, I constantly text you after episodes. And I'm a girl who listens to podcasts on my dog walk every day. So I understand and appreciate this level of detail when it comes to this kind of storytelling.

Yeah, but Juju, for people who don't know, like what is the actual process like? Like how does the actual pod come together? In your eyes?

Well, to my mind, I am incredibly impressed by our producers because they're leapfrogging each other on episodes, right? And they know this material cold. I mean, I've worked on a lot of 2020s and the 2020 producers are phenomenal as well. But these podcast producers have literally read every transcript. They've read every court document. They're constantly like schooling me on, "No, no, you can't change that word, Juju." And it's incredibly layered, right? Not just the editorial, but the sounds and the music and everything else that helps create this richness of the scenery that goes into this kind of podcasting.

It is interesting how much of a team operation it is that I think people don't quite understand, right? Oh, absolutely.

Plus, I get to wear, like, sit in the studio and wear sweatpants and, you know, not worry about what my hair and makeup look like. Yeah, exactly.

Hey, and in a broader, like, news sense, like, because you've covered lots of different types of stories, what draws you to a true crime story? Like, what do you look for?

00:19:02

You know, it's interesting. I have done a lot of 2020s, and I've done a lot of true crime for Nightline as well, which is the show, as you know, that I co-anchor. But I've always looked for true crime stories as a means to an end, like to talk about mass incarceration, or to talk about criminalized survivorship when domestic violence survivors, you know, get overpenalized, or talk about consent, or talk about different types of crimes, or redemption arcs, right? But I recently signed on to help develop a comedy about true crime. And I was Googling up, why do people love true crime, including myself? And I think I know the answer. But then when I Googled it up, it said, actually, women like it because they like to be able to find the sort of COVID narcissist in their lives. So it's called a defensive posture psychologically. They're watching. To protect themselves because like—

I see these behaviors in my life. Right, right.

The husband who is accused of trying to pummel and throw his wife off of a Hawaii cliff, the husband who this, the husband who that, or frankly, the wife who was convicted of maybe fentanyl poisoning her husband with a Moscow Mule. I mean, like, these are like things that you kind of are taking mental notes on, but also for women, who are true crime enthusiasts, and I count myself among them, you also love the stories. To me, the heroism of the investigators. I have interviewed so many investigators, Brad, who've left me with tears in my eyes because their dedication and their desire to do what's right and to find justice and to get some comfort for victims' families and to be able to bring these people to life. You know, Sarah Stern's life was snuffed out at 19, and to be to talk about her art and to be able to talk about the scholarship they endowed in her name, to be able to talk about who she was, who she wanted to be, is really a gift. And, and so for me, the podcast allowed us to delve into all that.

But I think it's so valuable that what you described is so many of these stories that we think of them as individual stories, but they do have these sort of universal— I don't know if they're lessons or just like reflections of the culture. And that's so valid. Even in this, like, you're hearing somebody with like these psychopathic tendencies that you might not have known about in real life, and yet it's there lurking the whole time. Totally. That tells you something. Totally.

And that is drama. That is pathos. That is, you know, King Lear. That is Shakespearean or Greek epic tragedy. It is storytelling as it has been for millennia. And podcasting is just a modern, you know, view of that. And I think true crime is, you know, it is expanding for a reason. I think it allows us to dive into psychology, and sometimes it's a psychopath, and sometimes it's a cold cold-blooded killer who's trying to do something, you know, and thinks he or she can get away with it.

You kind of just mentioned several examples, so I don't want to put you on the spot, but I mean, if you had a Mount Rushmore of sort of true crime stories in your time at ABC, what are they? Like, there's been so many.

I mean, honestly, I recently went to LA and did the story of the Menendez brothers' appeal. And that is a story that has been in our media echo chamber for 35 years. And— Like our collective consciousness, right? Exactly. And I think that the reexamination of that prosecution, the reexamination of what sex crimes against children do, the trauma of that is seen in a different light today than it was 35 years ago. And I think it, again, it brings up all these issues. I have gone to Bedford Women's Prison and talked to Pamela Smart repeatedly, because as you know, before the O.J. Simpson trial, her trial was the trial of the century. It was at the dawn of court TV. She was convicted of aiding and abetting a group of young men, one of whom she had an affair with, who killed her husband. And that now, again, 35 years later, that redemption arc, or the attempt at a redemption arc, is really fascinating because she has been a model citizen behind bars for 30-plus years. My name is Pamela Smart. I'm accused of being an accomplice to the murder of my husband, Greg. But I am not guilty.

You've been through many appeals processes. Your new lawyer is arguing that your constitutional rights were violated. They were. During trial. And that you didn't get a fair trial. I did not. So it, again, it raises a lot of questions, um, in our minds when we tell these stories. Right. The other one is the Murdoch. Yes. Story. We interviewed the stars of the sort of scripted series based on it. And the level of attention— talk about knowing the trial details. They knew every iota of that case. But also talk about Shakespearean. That was an epic family that was brought to its knees with this controversy. And you could see the decline of this The House of Murdoch, as it were. And then finally, I think near-mythological, and that is the Black Dahlia case and the Zodiac Killer's case. And I interviewed Alex Baber, and he is the true crime sleuth. You know, an amateur detective on some level, who set out to crack the Zodiac code. What does all this circumstantial evidence say to you?

Marvin Margolis is the Zodiac Killer and the Black Dahlia Avenger.

And believes, you know, to his mind, he has proven that the Zodiac Killer was also responsible for the Black Dahlia killing. Hear that? Sure.

Without sounding cocky or arrogant, I have to say yes, I am undoubtedly sure that this is the right guy.

And he has made all sorts of breakthroughs, and he has law enforcement interested. And that story was told on Nightline, and also on Impact by Nightline, which, shameless plug moment, was also, gives us an opportunity ability to dive deeper, kind of like this podcast does, to go behind the headlines, to go deeper and more layered into this kind of storytelling.

And featured on Start Here, of course. Of course. Just like such good reporting in this podcast in particular on Bridge of Lies. Juju, really impressive work. And thank you so much for doing this. I think it really helps us learn a little bit more about the host who's been guiding us for these 6 episodes.

Thank you so much, Brad, for having me. But honestly, one of my favorite parts of the podcast is being able to read the credits because it's so fun to like say my friends' names and my colleagues' names and, and give credit where credit is due.

All right, well, with that in mind, I should say Juju Chang is the host of Bridge of Lies. She's the co-anchor of Nightline. Congrats on the series. And if you are listening to this right now, you've probably listened to the rest of the series, but make sure to rate and review the show wherever you're listening. Juju and the whole team will thank you for it. You want to listen for the next true crime series from ABC Audio? It's called Blood Blood and Water. It's the story of a mother who's murdered in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Her case remained unsolved for two decades, and the shocking truth about the killer stayed hidden until very recently, when new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. Blood and Water, hosted by Stephanie Ramos. It's coming April 28th. I'm Brad Nilkey. Thanks for listening.

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