A man accused of strangling his friend and throwing her body off a New Jersey bridge allegedly made up stories about planning to rob and kill the victim as part of a horror film plot, his attorney said Wednesday.
Liam McAtasney’s attorney, Charles Moriarty, claimed his client often told stories to help an acquaintance develop ideas for an upcoming horror film to be produced. The information was presented as part of an unsuccessful attempt to have a judge dismiss the murder indictment against McAtasney, CBS News reports.
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The acquaintance told detectives that McAtasney was “always making things up to be more interesting,” Moriarty relayed to Superior Court Judge Richard English.
The acquaintance also secretly recorded McAtasney’s confession of robbing, killing and disposing of a body, but Moriarty is seeking to have that recording excluded as evidence in the upcoming trial.
Monmouth County, New Jersey prosecutors said that 20-year-old McAtasney killed 19-year-old Sarah Stern, his childhood friend, during a robbery that netted $10,000 on December 2, 2016.
Stern’s body has not been found, but her car was discovered with the engine running along the side of the Route 35 bridge the following day.
McAtasney’s friend, Preston Taylor, has plead guilty to playing a role in the robbery plot and to tossing Stern’s body from the bridge. He has agreed to testify against McAtasney.
During Wednesday’s proceedings, the judge also watched footage of McAtasney’s interviews with police filmed before his arrest, ones Moriarty sought to exclude as evidence in his client’s trial.
According to NJ.com, body camera footage shows McAtasney telling police he doesn’t know where Stern is and speculated she may be in Canada. He told authorities his childhood friend had a tumultuous relationship with her father and talked about harming herself, information authorities say was an attempt to mislead investigators.
McAtasney and Taylor remain behind bars in the Monmouth County jail. No trial date has been set for McAtasney, but if convicted of Stern’s murder, he faces 30 years to life in prison.
