Chapter 1: What events led to the tragic drowning of Taylor Searing?
It's the middle of the night in a small town on the Jersey Shore. Someone reports an abandoned car on a bridge. A search gets underway for the missing driver, 19-year-old Sarah Stern.
Is it a missing person? Is it a suicide? At this point, nobody knows.
Old friendships, buried cash, and a sinister plot that was once pitched as a movie plays out in real life. I'm Juju Chang from 2020 and ABC Audio. Listen now to Bridge of Lies, wherever you get your podcasts.
Step into the 2020 True Crime Vault. Listen to our most gripping stories. How often do you think about that tragic day? Every day. Every day. I even have nightmares about it. What's your name? Lauren.
How Laura would come off to people was from the old sitcom, Three's Company as Chrissy, the bubbly, you know, bleach blonde.
She had told me for her it was love at first sight. We met each other at a time in our life where our marriages were falling apart. What is it with marrying all these men? She wanted it to just be us. We're gonna be together forever, and you're not gonna be with anyone else ever. I was so wrapped up and tangled up in all of this that so many red flags escaped me. I blame him. I do blame him.
He knew about her past. This case involves a love triangle. There's anger. There's resentment. It is no surprise that somebody wound up dead. Okay. This is the first interview you've done, right? Yes, and now is the right time to do it. This is Laura Day, once a soccer mom and a wife, now behind bars, accused of an unthinkable crime that she says she did not commit.
How would you describe your life before you got here? I lived in paradise. And then it all came crashing down. Correct, yes. Corpus Christi, South Texas. It's the hometown of Selena, the queen of Tejano music. And just across the water from her statue is North Padre Island. What's this island like?
Well, as you can see, it's not a bad place to live at all.
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Chapter 2: How did Laura Day describe her life before the incident?
I was going through a rough patch with Kelly and Laura was very friendly. She was married too. She would explain to me the issues that she had in her marriage and seemed as though neither one of us were really happy with our spouse. What attracted you to David in the first place? He was kind. He was fun. We had a lot in common. What was the attraction? She didn't act her age.
She acted, if anything, probably younger than me. She was 10 years older than you. 12 years, actually. When David and Laura started dating, I was worried that David was giving up something for something that may not really be what it was. How did it become a full-blown affair? I don't know, things just happened so fast. One thing led to another.
I thought Laura was more about making sure that she was getting what she wanted, that it was more about her than about him. It's kind of how I thought personally about her. You know, you give somebody some attention that's not used to getting attention, and they will bend over backwards to do whatever you want them to do, and I always felt Laura was that type of person.
It's around the beginning of the new year when David reveals to his wife, Kelly, that he's been having an affair. And by May 2012, their marriage is over. How acrimonious was the divorce between you and David? It was not easy. I was still very much in love with him. He was very angry. How was Taylor affected by the divorce? He was heartbroken. What would he say? He just started crying.
He just sat in my lap. And we tried to reassure him that, you know, we both love you very much. You know, that's never going to change.
At the time Laura begins dating David Searing, her son Cameron is very much in the picture. And at a certain point, Laura's relationship with Cameron becomes strained.
She says that you're going to live with your father, Philip Day, who really didn't live very far away. But it left her with David alone in the house. Barely a few months after their divorces are finalized, David and Laura visit the wedding capital of the world, Las Vegas. Got married in Vegas. What was that like? Oh, it was fun. It was like, let's just go to Vegas and get married, you know?
You got divorced and then married pretty quickly. Divorced in May of 2012. Correct. And then married in August of 2012, three months later. Yes. Now part of that was in my divorce decree, Kelly had wanted it to be put in there that there was to be no overnight guests I wasn't married to around Taylor. He had a morality clause in his divorce.
That meant that Taylor couldn't spend the night if I was in the house, which kind of rushed our marriage along. Taylor was at a very, very sensitive age of six. So it's perfectly understandable that Kelly would say, look, uh-uh, not until you're ready to introduce a woman who's actually your wife. I do not want to confuse my son further. I mean, we felt like we wanted to get married.
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Chapter 3: What was Laura's relationship with Taylor like?
I never met her in person. Never did? Mm-mm. You were the mother of his baby. I know.
Oh.
I didn't handle things properly with the way our relationship ended. But there was issues because it seemed like Kelly wanted to make it hard, especially for Laura. Kelly did not want Laura picking Taylor up from school. And Laura was fighting and saying that, hey, you need to let her know that I am going to be picking him up from school. What did you think of his wife, Kelly?
I really didn't get a chance or an opportunity to get to know her better. I wanted to. You were caught in the middle. Yes. And Laura was afraid that, given my close bondness to Taylor, I would eventually one day maybe go back to Kelly. You weren't worried that Taylor would bring his parents back together again? No, absolutely not.
As a matter of fact, David hired an attorney, we both did, to get full custody of Taylor.
David claims that there was a dispute over his medical care that prompted David and Laura to try to get full custody over Taylor.
We had been instructed that it was going to be hard to try to get grounds that were serious enough to get custody.
Lauren knew that Taylor was David's world. Regardless of what else happened, Taylor was David's world.
I was very secure in my relationship with David at the time. I was not jealous of anybody. Do you love me more than you loved Kelly? Despite me telling her over and over that I was there with her. She wanted it to just be us.
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