Transcript of The Search

Osterfreude für alle zum Aldi-Preis. Milani Milchsnack, 10 mal 28 Gramm für nur 1,79 Euro. Oder Dr. Oetker Vitalis Müsli, ab 516 Gramm für nur 2,22 Euro. Aldi, Gutes für alle. At 4:50 AM on December 3rd, 2016, Franny Hines got a call. It was the Belmore Police.

The department that they were requesting our, uh, our water rescue team and our water assets to, uh, search for someone who possibly had gone off the Highway 35 bridge. They found it.

Franny ran the Belmar First Aid Squad. By daybreak, he and his crew scrambled boats and divers to search the water under the bridge where Sarah Stern's Oldsmobile had been found the night before. Other members of his team began to search along the shore.

So by the time the sun came up, we had a full search of all this area here, basically under the bridge and under all the docks. And on the outside, we searched all the way out to the Ocean Avenue Bridge as well. So it was a pretty big operation.

Franny spoke to ABC News to give us a sense of the operation. He took our team out on a small motorboat marked RESCUE in big yellow letters above the windshield. It was quiet on the river. Many of the fishing boats were still parked in their docks.

See that yellow sign? That's where we think she went over, up on the top.

From the water, Franny pointed up to a yellow hazard sign right in the middle of the bridge before guiding the boat underneath.

So we searched all the way out to the ocean inlet and all the way into the back bay here. We searched all of it.

The river here runs about 11 miles long. Some areas can be as deep as 18 feet. In the summer, the Shark River is a popular spot for fishing boats and kayakers. It runs through residential neighborhoods in Belmar and Neptune City before it spills out into the Atlantic Ocean less than a mile away. But on that day, it was too cold for fun on the water.

I think the water temperature was some 38 degrees, something like that.

The boats and divers looked under docks and around old pilings in the river, pieces of old concrete from a previous bridge. Around 8 o'clock that morning, they ended up calling in more reinforcements to help.

And we also called in the Monmouth County Sheriff's Office dive team who brought some more expertise to the search.

At the start of the search, Franny had no idea who he was looking for. All he was told was that there might be someone in the water. But then he learned the missing person's name.

It kind of sent a tingle down my spine because Sarah was our neighbor for her entire life.

Franny and Sarah's father, Michael, were friends. They'd lived across the street from each other for 25 years. Sarah even walked her dog Buddy past Franny's house every day.

I've been on a lot of searches for a lot of people, and— but this is the first time We were searching for somebody that we knew.

Franny thought that a jump or fall off the Belmar Bridge was survivable. He actually used to jump off a similar, smaller bridge as a kid for fun. But staying alive in water that cold is another thing altogether.

We're pretty sure that after a little while, an hour, if someone's in the water, that we're probably not going to find them alive.

So if there was a chance Sarah was alive, he wanted to make sure he was there.

I wanted to find her, and I wanted to make sure that, uh, I wanted to be there because it was, it was very personal to me for sure.

As night turned to day, police started to form theories about what could have happened to Sarah Stern, narratives that start to form the basis of a full-on investigation. Did Sarah park her car on the Belmar Bridge and jump? Did she abandon her car and life in Neptune for parts unknown, or were officers being steered away from a darker truth? From ABC Audio and 20/20, I'm Juju Chang, and this is Bridge of Lies, Episode 2: The Search. Around 10 AM, officers were at Liam McAtasney's mom's house looking for him, just hours after they first visited him that same morning. On the police body camera footage, we can see it was a bright sunny day. Liam had switched out his gray pajamas for blue jeans, a plaid shirt, and dark sunglasses. Liam's roommate and cousin were with him. They sit staggered on different steps of the front porch. Liam's mom's dog looked through the screen door.

What was she wearing yesterday, the last time you saw her? Um, I know when I got to her house at 1 or 2 o'clock, she was just wearing a red t-shirt and, uh, black, like, running shorts or something.

Police were trying to piece together what Sarah did the day she went missing and what her mindset could have been. The officers were stern. They wanted to make sure Liam got the severity of the situation. A 19-year-old girl was missing. No one had heard from her since the day before, and Liam might be the only one who could help.

I said to you before, we have a lot of resources out there, and we need to find her and make sure she's safe and okay. And this is why I'm really hammering this home to you, Liam. You're young. I want to make sure you get how important this is. This young girl is off the grid all of a sudden, and nobody knows why. And you were basically the last person had any contact with. I completely understand that. So we're trying to get a little time frame, more of a time frame.

Liam assured officers that he understood his friend was missing and he wanted to be helpful. So Liam walked them through what he had done the day before.

Yeah, between 1 and 2, we went to Taco Bell. I went to the neighbor's house at one point.

For the most part, Liam repeated what he told officers when they first visited his house earlier that morning. Normal teenage stuff. He drove to Sarah's house to hang out. They went to Taco Bell for lunch. Then he helped her drop off a box of Sarah's stuff at her neighbor's house. He said she'd been trying to move some things out of her house over the past week or so. He even had some of her stuff at his house.

Okay. And I actually have a few of these in my basement right now. Of hers? Of hers, yeah. If you guys want to go through those. She, uh, she's just been trying to get stuff out of the house away from her dad over the past week or whatever. You seem to have a pretty good relationship.

What's the—

what's her reasoning for wanting to get the stuff out of her father's place? I know she definitely has a lot of trust issues with her dad, so I've just been trying to help her out with that. I've, I've been friends with her since first grade, so we have a pretty good friendship.

Liam said they had the kind of relationship where Sarah felt she could confide in him, and she told him that things between her and her father had been tense over the past few months.

She's been telling me how, um, bad her relationship with her father is and how she just needs to get out of here. Why was it bad? What made it bad? Fighting. Arguing. Fighting. Doing fighting constantly.

Okay. Liam said that Sarah and her father would fight over trivial things, that he watched them argue over the phone a few weeks ago, going back and forth over replacing a broken key in the house.

Just arguing for the sake of arguing. Because the other day when the key broke, he called her 4 times and they had the same exact conversation, same argument, like they never had it, over and over again.

This was what Liam told the officers. According to investigators, Michael, Sarah's dad, told them he and Sarah actually had a pretty normal father-daughter relationship. Yes, they'd argue and wouldn't always agree, but it didn't affect how much love they had for each other. But at least according to Liam, Sarah was desperate to get away because of her dad. She was even thinking about moving to Canada.

I know she's been there before. I don't know if it was Montreal. She, uh, she's obsessed with these YouTubers and she goes to, like, conventions.

The mention of YouTube and Sarah going to conventions, this really seemed to throw the police. Remember, it was 2016. YouTube was the platform where artists, comedians, makeup gurus, vloggers, essentially anyone could become an internet celebrity and gain a following. And people would go to fan conventions to meet their favorite creators and connect with other fans. At this point, YouTube was over a decade old, but police told Liam that they just didn't get it.

I don't know how many— I'm not, I'm not clicking on this, uh, it's doing a thing. Yeah, so you can see YouTube or one of the people that like to put post up on YouTube. Yeah, just people, they have a channel and they post videos. Liam, the, the thing on your YouTube conventions or whatever, you don't have any idea what they are?

Officers were curious about the friends Sarah made through her online community and the YouTube personalities she followed, trying to determine if her life online could have influenced her decision to leave.

I think they're just like, uh, just panels where they sit down and ask— I don't know too much about it. They could be shows. I'm not really good at that. Yeah, that YouTube thing's all new to me. I haven't been to bloggers.

Liam said he didn't know much about that part of her life, just that Sarah went to these conventions often, and YouTube comedian Grace Helbig was her idol. Police stepped away to watch a few of Helbig's videos and came back skeptical.

I mean, I just pulled it up. I'm gonna be honest, I just pulled it up on the car. Yeah, and she's talking about making ugly Christmas sweaters with, with bells on it and like that. Does that sound familiar? Is that what— is that basically what Sarah's following around? They sit in front of a camera doing a little podcast type of thing of her talking about stupid. That's exactly what they do.

Officers were pretty dismissive about what they saw, but they were wondering if it could be a clue to Sarah's whereabouts.

That's going to help us try and figure out where the hell she's at. Yeah, I'm interested in it big time.

They saw it as teenage nonsense. Even Liam admitted it's weird, but they decided the videos could be important to understanding Sarah's motivations. It could help explain why she would have run away and where she might be. But Liam also presented the police with a second theory about what could have happened to Sarah.

Has she been different than normal lately? Well, and for how long? In the past, she has had a tendency to have self-destructive suicidal behavior.

In later interviews with police, Sarah's friends and family said she seemed fine. They said they'd never heard her talk about attempting suicide or hurting herself. According to authorities, her dad told investigators that she's never been diagnosed with any mental health issues. But Liam told police that Sarah expressed suicidal thoughts when they were in high school. He talked about a time when Sarah became very dependent on one of his ex-girlfriends. The two were close friends, but when Sarah was having a crisis, he told police she'd demand Liam's ex come over and made comments that she'd kill herself if she didn't. This was all happening around the time of her mother's death. A few years earlier. So police were hearing that Sarah had a history of suicidal thoughts, and if tensions were running high between her and her father, could it have led to Sarah struggling with those feelings again? Liam then went through how he said he spent the rest of the day with Sarah. He told officers that after they dropped off the box of her stuff at her neighbor's, the Drapers, they went back to Sarah's place. And watched A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He told them that he left around 4:45 PM to make his shift at the local steakhouse. Liam and Sarah said their goodbyes. He said he remembered telling her, "I'll see you later." Liam told the officers he got off work early, went home, and ended the night there, getting drunk with his roommate. Officers were nearing the end of their house visit with Liam, but before they went, they left him with one more heavy reminder.

Listen, this is— this is— I'm going to throw this out to you. The resources that are out there right now looking for her, the amount of manpower— we have people swimming in the Shark River in this cold weather, cold water, everything else. We have boats, we have helicopters. Dude, if you know anything about where this girl is or have had any contact with with her, you need to let us know.

Liam assured them that he'll reach out if he heard anything about Sarah's whereabouts, and the officers left with two possible theories to consider. Theory number one: Sarah ran away to Canada. Liam told police that Sarah and her father had a difficult relationship, and as detectives talked to more of Sarah's friends and family, they learned that she and Michael didn't always get along.

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Police knew one of the best ways to figure out what happened on the Belmar Bridge that night was to look for security cameras and found a few right by the bridge.

Uh, it's a very important law enforcement tool, and it's one of the first things as investigators that we, uh, seek to find.

Detective Brian Weisbrodt of the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office got assigned to the investigation a couple days after Sarah went missing, but Weisbrodt quickly struck out. The cameras by the bridge weren't working. Turns out they hadn't worked in years. No easy answers there. So investigators started knocking on doors. They went to restaurants and other businesses in the surrounding area to see if their cameras captured Sarah's car. But none of the footage they collected gave officers a clear enough picture of the highway going towards the bridge. So they turned to Sarah's neighborhood.

Not only do we do neighborhood canvases in an effort to speak with and identify people who may have information to provide pertaining to an incident. We also do canvases for video surveillance recordings. More and more people have cameras on their homes, which certainly assists law enforcement in investigating in crime.

Michael Stern, Sara's dad, had also been doing his own canvassing, his own desperate search.

Michael Stern was out in the community. He was going into businesses. He was talking to anybody that he could talk to in an effort to find her.

He discovered that his neighbor across the street had a security camera that would have caught Sarah coming and going from the house. Detective Weissbraut reviewed hours of footage. The camera showed a wide view of the stern street. He saw cars passing by and people walking their dogs. In the upper right-hand corner, in the distance, he saw Sarah's house. There were tall hedges obscuring part of the home. For most of the day Sarah went missing, the house was quiet. But there were these brief moments of activity. In the early afternoon, Weissbrodt saw Sarah and Liam leave the house around the time Liam said they went to Taco Bell. Sarah's car pulled out of the driveway again that afternoon and then came back. The last time the video showed her car backing out of the driveway was around midnight. At this point, the footage was dark and grainy. You can't see who's inside the vehicle. All you can really see was the shape of the car and its lights.

We see, uh, Sarah's car backing out of the driveway and traveling south away from the home and away from the video surveillance camera. The fact that that car traveled south piqued our interest because all other times Sarah's car and Liam's car had traveled north and drove directly past the camera.

Was that a coincidence, or was someone trying to maybe avoid the camera? Just a few hours later, her silver Oldsmobile was reported abandoned on the Belmar Bridge. In the days after Sarah disappeared, the Stern family created a Facebook page to share any updates and posted a collection of her photos. In one of the pictures, she's at New York Comic-Con. She just got out of a long meet-and-greet line. Sara's excited, holding up a gold autographed sword that's as big as she is. But mixed in with that album of photos were missing person posters of Sara. A picture of her in a blue and white t-shirt, smiling, took up almost half the page. The poster listed her identifying features. Age, 19. Eyes, brown. Hair, dark brown. And there was now a $5,000 reward for any information on her whereabouts. Rescue teams were still searching the river, and the operation had only gotten bigger. The New Jersey State Police and the Coast Guard were now involved. Investigators were also talking to more of Sarah's friends, including Liam's roommate.

Ultimately, we, uh, wanted to speak with Preston Taylor, who was Liam McAtasney's roommate at the time.

Preston Taylor and Liam were close friends and roommates. They'd moved in together a few weeks before Sara went missing. Preston was out on the front lawn with Liam when police came to talk to him the day after Sara's car was found. Preston's tall, kind of lanky, with shaggy brown hair. And a 5 o'clock shadow. Preston and Liam met in algebra class during their freshman year at Neptune High School, and they'd been good friends ever since. Remember how Sarah won the yearbook superlative for most artistic? Well, Liam and Preston won the superlative for best friends. Reporter Jessica Easthope said Preston and Sarah ran in the same friend circles.

They were good friends.

Sarah and Liam and Liam's roommate Preston Taylor bonded over things like movies and video games and comic books. Sarah really wasn't too much of a girly girl.

And so she got along with these other 19-year-old boys because they had common interests.

Sarah and Preston even went to the junior prom together just as friends. There was never anything romantic between the two. On the evening of December 6th, 3 days after police first came by, they visited Liam and Preston's house again, this time to see Preston. They asked if he'd be willing to answer some questions. Preston said yes and was driven to the Belmar Police Department to talk to Detective Weisbrodt.

Yeah, um, so we, uh, as you know, we have the The job to, um, find out what happened to Sarah.

Preston sat across from detectives at a long wooden table in a conference room. The royal blue seats stood out against the powder blue walls. To Preston's left were shelves stacked with papers and binders, and high on one of the walls, there was a camera pointing down at them, recording the conversation.

Your first name is P-R-E-S-T-O-N? Correct. What's your last name?

Detective Weissbrodt started the interview by asking Preston a couple background questions. Preston said he worked in construction with his dad. Like Liam, he was taking classes at a nearby community college. Detective Weissbrodt asked Preston about Liam.

Sarah's friendship with Liam, how would you describe that? I mean, they're good friends. Like, obviously pretty close, especially with how upset he's been. Okay. He's upset about her. The phone scenario.

The detectives asked Preston what he did on Friday, the day Sarah went missing. He said he was at a job site in a different town that day, about 30 minutes away. What time did he get home?

I got home around 5.

Was Liam there?

Liam was getting ready for work, trying to find his phone. As soon as I walked in, he was like, dude, I gotta get to work.

What did Preston do after he left?

I took a nap. I got up. I ran back to my parents' house because I left this coffee drink that I got at, uh, He ate his lunch, went back to the house, just played Xbox until he got back.

Detectives ran through a long list of very detailed questions, and Preston answered every single one. Police even asked about what kind of coffee he drank and how it was packaged.

Um, it comes in a can or a bottle or a bottle. It's got a yellow label, like a lady on the front. I called it a bottle.

Throughout it all, Preston made eye contact with investigators and his hands were calmly folded on the table. He told investigators that Liam came back from work around 11 PM. They stayed at home for the night and went on to have what was a pretty normal evening for them— drinking, listening to music, and playing video games— before going to bed around 1 in the morning. And just a few hours later, police were knocking on their door at 4:00 AM, looking for Sarah.

Preston Taylor provided information that was relatively consistent with that of Liam, in that Liam had been with Sarah on Friday afternoon and that Liam had left to go to work. Preston had confirmed that when Liam got home from work, that he— the two of them socialized together, had a few drinks, and ultimately went to bed.

The entire time, Preston had the same reserved but relaxed demeanor. But there's one moment when Detective Weissbrodt noticed Preston's mood changed.

At the end of the interview with Preston, and I had asked him what his thoughts were as to what happened with Sarah, he got somewhat emotional. What do you think's happened? I think she jumped.

Preston said he thinks Sarah jumped. It took him a few seconds to get those words out. His voice cracked. He wiped his eyes and stared down at the table in front of him.

Okay, why do you think she jumped? Just from the stories that I've heard about what goes on with her and her dad, and Sarah's being put in charge of the house, taking care of her grandma.

Like Liam, Preston told police that Sarah had struggled with her mental health, especially after her mom passed a few years ago, that she threatened to kill herself. He described a tense relationship with her dad, and he said that in recent weeks, Sarah had been packing her belongings and moving them out of the house. In fact, Preston told police the last time he saw Sarah was a little over a week ago when she was moving some of her stuff into their basement. According to authorities, Michael told police that after he got home from his Florida vacation, he learned that Sarah had moved some things to a neighbor's house. He thought it was unusual. In his interview with detectives, Preston says he didn't know why Sarah was giving away boxes of her things. He didn't know what happened to Sarah, and he believed Liam when he said he had no idea either. The interview lasted roughly 2 hours. Police said Preston's account seemed consistent with the timeline Liam gave them, but everyone was still desperately wondering what happened to Sarah. The search grew, but police were still unsure if they were looking for a runaway or a body.

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Our top story this half hour, the mystery of a missing 19-year-old from Monmouth County. Sarah Stern was last seen late Friday night.

Now, her car was found.

Sarah's disappearance became a huge local news story on the Jersey Shore. About a week since she'd gone missing, police still hadn't released any significant updates, and the Stern family wasn't any closer to finding out where Sarah might be or what could have happened to her. So they decided to organize a community search. Sarah's dad Michael made the rounds on local media outlets to get the word out about the search. He told NJ.com that his family was desperate to bring Sarah home.

Everybody that talked to her in the days leading up to that, she seemed just fine, and I just don't understand why we haven't heard from her.

The search started early Saturday morning. Over 250 people showed up. Volunteers were given hot coffee and water to fight the frigid 30-degree temperatures. They were a mix of family, friends, teachers, neighbors. Sarah's dad Michael was there too, of course. So were her friends Liam and Preston, but also community members who heard about Sarah's disappearance through the news and social media. The volunteers broke up into groups and scoured the shoreline and surrounding areas. Authorities told volunteers to look out for a red sweatshirt, a green iPhone, and Sarah's driver's license. Reporters were also on the scene. Local news station FIOS News One covered the search and talked to Liam, trying to find any signs pointing to the missing 19-year-old who her friends say is an exceptional person.

She's pretty strong, so hopefully we're gonna find something today.

For days, there is search parties going up and down the New Jersey coastline looking for Sarah's body or anything that connected, you know, to Sarah.

Carly Draper was Sarah's neighbor and childhood friend. She was also part of the search. Sarah had given Carly's mom, Robin, a few boxes of her stuff. Carly had known the Sterns her entire life. Unlike what Liam told police, she said Sarah and her dad, Michael, were close.

They became even closer after her mother passed away. I mean, they had fights, but every, like, daughter or son has fights with their parents. Like, you don't always get along, but they were very close and they both loved each other.

Carly wanted to help Michael find his daughter, but she felt uneasy because she thought she knew what happened to Sarah.

And I remember walking in with my, my rain boots And it was low tide, and I was underneath the 35 Bridge in Belmar, like, in the muck, and thinking to myself, like, we're never going to find anything because she's in Canada.

Carly thought Sarah ran away to Canada because of something Sarah said the last time she'd seen her. It was the day before Sarah's car was found on the Belmar Bridge. Carly was home from college for the weekend. To go to see a Christmas lights show with some friends.

So I was in my room getting ready to go out, and I heard, like, the kitchen door open, and I heard Sarah's voice, like, calling for my mom.

Robin wasn't home, so Carly went downstairs and caught up with Sarah. They hadn't seen each other in a couple of weeks.

And then Liam McAtasney walked in behind her, and she had a bin. And, like, a little cardboard box. And she had told me that my mom said that she could leave it at our house. So she set it down, and she was talking to me. And she seemed very happy, and she asked me to hang out that night. And she was telling me that she wanted to move to Canada.

Carly knew Sarah loved Canada, but this was the first time she was hearing that Sarah had plans to move there. And it sounded like she suddenly had the means to do so.

Liam had an apartment there that she could stay in and that she had found money that she had in the Avon House that they have in a safe.

The Avon House was the Stern family's second home. Avon is a small beach town just a few miles east of Neptune City.

And she told me not to tell anyone.

Secret money? Carly was surprised. It sounded like Sarah had found more than just a few hundred dollars forgotten in an old house. It seemed like enough for a new life, or at least the start of one. And Sarah didn't want anyone to know, not other friends, not even her dad. But then it was time for Carly to head out for the night, so they said their goodbyes. Sarah asked Carly again if she wanted to hang out later.

But I told her I was going to the Christmas light show, and she hugged me, and I was like, love you. She's like, love you too. And that was the last time I saw her.

Early the next morning, Carly woke up to her mom talking on the phone, crying.

She went downstairs to see what was wrong, and she was like, they can't find Sarah. And I was like, what? And she's like, they They found her car on the bridge, the Belmar Bridge, on Route 35. And I was like, oh my God. So I got in my car and I went straight down there to go see, but it had already been towed away when I got there. So I just sat there for a while and I was like, oh my God, like, what is happening?

Carly couldn't accept that her friend was missing. They just saw each other the day before. When Carly drove back to her house, Her street was lined with police cars and detectives talking to neighbors. She thought back on her last interaction with Sarah. What stood out to her was just how carefree she seemed, almost determined. So to Carly, Sarah couldn't have died by suicide because she was making plans to move to Canada.

She had asked me to hang out that night. Like, you, if you know you're going to commit suicide, you don't ask someone to hang out with you. And she seemed really happy. Like, she was happy. She was laughing, smiling, gave me a hug. She probably went to Canada because she was talking about it. Like, she said she— Liam had an apartment there she could stay in, and she had found money.

Carly even thought maybe Sarah left her car behind to make people believe she jumped off that bridge so she could leave the country and truly have a fresh start. Nothing would be holding her back. Carly told her mom, Robin, about the money Sarah had found, and Robin called the police. The money changed everything. Detectives started reevaluating their original theories. Police also realized that Sarah's discovery wasn't much of a secret. Again, Detective Weissbrodt.

We had spoken with several of Sarah's either family members or friends who had reported that that she had told them that she had found money inside of a home that her dad had owned.

Could Sarah's new cash have been the push she was waiting for to move to Canada and start a new life? Or was there something more sinister at play? It sounded like more people knew about the money than Sarah intended. Could someone else have been interested in Sarah's money and taken it?

Police start to believe that something violent happened to Sarah.

But one of the biggest questions is why.

And that answer starts being filled out the more they find out about this money that Sarah found in her parents' house in Avon.

That's next time. If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, substance use, or any other mental health crisis, please call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You'll reach a trained crisis counselor for free, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can also go to 988lifeline.org. Bridge of Lies is a production of ABC Audio and 20/20. Hosted by me, Juju Chang. Produced by Sabrina Fang, Audrey Mostek, and Camille Petersen. Fact-checking by Annalisa Linder. Tracy Samuelson is our story editor. Our supervising producer is Sasha Azlanian. Music and mixing by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Katie Dendos, Janice Johnston, Joseph Diaz, Avery Brook, and Michelle Margulis. Josh Cohen is our Director of Podcast Programming. Eamon McNiff is our Executive Producer. Okay, Nicola, Quizfrage: Homeofficepauschale oder Fahrtkosten? Was bringt uns mehr? Moment, ich check das kurz. Oha, Homeoffice gewinnt, bringt uns 150 mehr im Jahr. Ja, richtig. Aber wieso weißt du so was? Weil WISO Steuer die Erstattung live anzeigt. Das ist einfach die Steuer-App für alle Fälle. Ja, und Fragen beantwortet sie auch. 24/7 und ohne Beamtendeutsch. Das ist einfach die App, die uns versteht. Steuern erledigt? Safe!

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Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman for Miami, gunned down. The key to this case, it's Brian. An hour before he died, he was on the phone arguing with somebody.

This might be a hit.

You want the truth? They just want a conviction. Being placed under arrest. We had a killer amongst us. Murder at the U, listen now.