Post Mortem | The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis

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Not available in all states or situations. Welcome back to Postmortem.
I'm your host, Anne-Marie Green. And today we're discussing the case of Livvy Lewis, who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend, Matthew Edgar, following an argument at a party.
But then during his murder trial, he fled when his ankle monitor battery died, and he evaded authorities for nearly a year. So joining me now to discuss this is correspondent Peter Van Sant and producer Judy Ryback.
Thanks Thanks for joining us, guys. Hi.
Hey, Anne-Marie. Good to see you.
Okay. And as per usual, remember, everyone, if you haven't listened to this 48 Hours episode yet, head on over to your podcast feed.
You're going to find the episode just below this one right there. Go over there and listen and then come on back for this conversation.
All right. This murder occurs in Hemp Hill, Texas.
We've done some stories in some small communities, and having worked in small towns, what you find is that everyone knows everyone. This is a really small community.
About 1,000 people live there. What was it like visiting such a small town? I don't think I've ever been in a town that small, as you say.
Like, we've been in a lot of small towns, and, you know, there's not a lot to do. They do a lot of riding around, drinking, basically.
Right. Fishing, hunting.
Repeat. Yeah.
Right, right. And when friends heard that Livy was dead, they thought it was a car accident, because that's how most of their friends die.
So it turns out that before becoming Livy's boyfriend, Matthew Edgar had not one, not two, but three high speed chases in one day with law enforcement. Wow.
The last one ended up in an accident in which the deputy chasing him had a broken leg and he was arrested. But when we learned about this, we talked with Darcy, Libby's mom, about it.
And I said, you know, as a parent myself, I said, well, did you warn your daughter to stay away from Matthew Edgar? And she goes, no. If I did that, I'd be judging him.
And I don't like to judge people. And besides, I've made some mistakes in my life.
So it's just kind of a different way of thinking. Right.
Yeah, a lot of them have records. So the thing about a small town, though, clearly they've investigated their fair share of high-speed chases, but probably not murders, right? So were they prepared for this? Was this challenging for them? Oh, so challenging.
I just don't think they'd ever seen anything like this before. So they had to call in state troopers and, you know, reinforcement.
There were a lot of cops at the scene of the crime. We are taken at the very start of the hour to the death scene, and you're hearing the shrieks of Darcy, the mom, and where's my baby? Where is she? And it was so real and devastating.
Yeah, when I watched that video with Darcy, I could feel my hands clenching, and I was like, just tell her what's going on. How does Darcy feel about how it was handled? Oh, she's still so angry.
I mean, rightfully, right? She had to learn through the grapevine in town. They didn't call her right away.
I think Matthew's family knew before Darcy did, which is, yeah, because he was in the hospital too. But imagine being the last one to know.
And you're the mother. Right.
Most protocols with law enforcement, there would be an officer who would approach her, come over here, come sit in my squad car. We'll talk to you about the situation to allow her out there to just shout and scream and be ignored.
And those, you know, those cold stares back at her were just terrible. And she was sensing, of course, that her daughter was gone and no one was telling her, but it was torture.
And you counted how many times she asked. It was something like 23 times.
Yeah. Where's my baby? Where is she? Where is my daughter? What happened to her? What happened? And they just stared at her.
And that is not protocol. That was a mistake.
And they admitted later that that was handled very poorly. There was one character, though, that both of us just really fell for,

the Sabine County Sheriff's Investigator, J.P. McDonough.
J.P. was just right out of central casting.
He had the perfect Texas sound and voice, and his initial interviewing of Matthew Edgar on that stretcher that you'll see, if you haven't seen the hour yet, it's unlike anything I have had on 48 hours before.

Sheriff's body cams capturing this bloody... that you'll see if you haven't seen the hour yet.
It's unlike anything I have had on 48 Hours

before. Sheriff's body cams capturing this bloody suspect lying down.
And JP does a masterful job of connecting with him and getting him to open up. And the questioning went on and on.
And you're sitting there going, Matthew, you're digging yourself a hole here. And he eventually talked his way into getting arrested by the end of it.
But J.P. McDonough, he was a really smart, rural guy, knew how to talk to the locals, and he did a great job.
Yeah. He locked him into his story that day, you know, that he didn't remember what happened.
I want to talk to you guys about the DNA tests, because, you know, the case sort of feels straightforward. But one thing that was surprising to me and I'm sort of surprising to investigators is there's blood on Edgar's face and that blood does not actually match him or Libby.
So then, you know, whose blood is it? Any theories? This is one of the strangest aspects of this story for Judy and me. On that deputy's body cam and you're looking at Matthew Edgar's face, it is covered in blood.
And to this day, they still don't know whose blood it is. you know there was a theory that it was bobby ozan the this this man who they were partying at that house and they they had a little struggle outside by this automobile as uh matthew edgar

was trying to give chase to livy they suspect it was bobby's but they never bothered to test to see if it was bobby's right i actually was surprised that bobby was willing to talk to you guys because i felt like they're at his house partying she's gonna stay over there is what we're getting. And I just thought he would want to have nothing to do with this case because everyone involved he's well acquainted with and it must have been tough.
I think he feels guilty about what happened. But our field producer Iris and I went to town early to convince J.P.
McDonough to do an interview, to meet with Bobby and convince him to do an interview. It wasn't easy.
It's never really easy, but yeah. And it was a great get by Judy because he had the front row seat, as we like to say, to all of this.
And he knew the intricacies of these relationships. And he's also a great storyteller.
And it's a quick aside, by the way. He has a hobby on the side.
He catches giant catfish with his bare hands. And he showed us the video.
No, I've seen that before. He goes underwater.
He said he can hold his breath up to two minutes. And then all of a sudden he comes out and he's put his arm all the way down the throat of a giant catfish that may weigh 25, 30 pounds and pulls it out of the water.
It's the darndest thing you've ever seen. That's quite a scale.
Welcome back. When Livy's family and friends find out that she has been killed, did they think of anyone else who could possibly be responsible for this? They were focused.
Yeah, they know who did it. It was pretty clear.
Yeah. We know that Matthew Edgar was abusive to Livvy, not just emotionally, but there was that picture that her cousin showed us of her bloody nose, and there was a history of violence.
The prosecution said there was a mountain of evidence that pointed at Matthew Edgar. He's found at the crime scene, you know, unharmed.
He's not injured in any way. You know, there was that text to Montana.
It's his ex-wife. Yeah.
And saying Livy was dead. There were multiple texts, and they had that huge fight that night.
This relationship that these people had and the fact that he had beaten her in the past, it was the drink and argue and fight, make up, rinse, repeat, do it again. Right.
But no one ever thought this would lead to murder. So is this why at that party, Montana doesn't call the police, Bobby doesn't call the police when, you know, they can see that Edgar is drunk, that things are ratcheting up.
No one even thinks like he shouldn't get behind the wheel. You know, Bobby told us we just don't call the cops on each other because as Peter has said, it's, you know, this is a pattern.
And so he just thought they would all wake up the next day and start over again.

They take care of their own.

They take care of their own circumstances.

We don't need a deputy here.

You and I will take care of it.

It may end up in a fistfight.

It may end up in some slapping around, some screaming and shouting.

But eventually they'll sort it out.

And tomorrow's another day. So early on in this investigation, investigators believe that Montana helped Edgar maybe cover up the crime scene.
They didn't find any evidence that she participated at all though, but what made investigators initially suspect her? It's kind of a crazy story. So the pants that he was wearing when they found him had her name written inside, like on the label.
You know how when you label kids' clothes when they go to camp? So, it had her name, not his. And what they thought was that she had gone down there and brought him clean clothing.
Right. But then they later found out that she was the one who took all the clothing to the cleaners, to the laundromat, and so she had written her name in everything.
Yeah, when they were married, she put her name on his clothes and hers. The other thing, though, the connection that they had was that, remember, Edgar had texted Montana that Libby was dead.
Did Montana take that text seriously, or what did she think of that text? She wouldn't talk to us. She's left town and wants nothing to do with any of this.
Montana was thoroughly investigated, right? Yes. There was a multi-agency investigation into this murder, and all of the investigators concluded that Montana had nothing to do with the death of Livvy Lewis.
So Edgar is arrested in the hospital just hours after Livy's murder. I'm wondering, did you guys try to get an interview with him? Oh, yeah.
We always try to get interviews with everybody. We want to talk to everybody.
But yes, I spoke to his new wife. His new wife? Yes, he is married, got married while he was in prison, but he knew her before he went to prison.
Is she from the same town? Yeah, yeah. I got her number.
I spoke to her. She said, yeah, he wants to talk to you guys.
So we sent him a letter, and the day that they gave him the letter, he said no. He didn't want to do it.
And then the next day, he changed his mind, but then there's like this weird procedure where they had to wait another 30 days or 60 days to ask him a second time. They had to give him time to think about it.
But in the interim, the family just circled the wagons around him and said, no, he's not talking to you. We're not talking to you.
None of us are talking to you. So in February of 2021, the COVID pandemic shuts down the courts.
That's been happening with a lot of the cases that we've been covering lately. In this case, Edgar's released on a $50,000 bond.
It feels light for a murder suspect. Yeah, so Texas law was that they could only hold him for so long.
And if he was still unindicted, they had to let him go. Well, he was still unindicted and the law states that it has to be a reasonable bond.
So they set the bond at $50,000 and, you know, the family, I think, went to a bail bondsman and got him out. And after he was released on bail, he was arrested again for assaulting Montana.
And this time, was set at $325,000 and the family, they were able to pay that bond. Now it's usually 10% down, but that's $32,000 they'd have to come up with to get him out.
Wait, he's out on bond accused of killing his ex-girlfriend and he assaults his ex-wife? No, no, they dipped back into the case, right? So that same night he had assaulted Montana. So they wanted to try and get him back behind bars.
So they charged him with assaulting Montana. That made Livvy's mother Darcy crazy too.
Like, you know, murder gets a $50,000 bond and assault gets a $325,000 bond. But I think they were trying to make up for the $50,000 mistake.
It didn't make much of a difference because he still managed to post anyways. So then the big twist in this story comes when the battery on Edgar's ankle monitor, it dies and he goes on the run in the middle of the trial.
The jury was not told this though, that he fled. I mean, you would think that would be a factor that the jury should be able to consider.
I mean, if you're not guilty, why are you running? One could argue. No, I think it's prejudicial, and you don't really know why he's run, and it's sort of not fair, I guess.
But in the state of Texas, once a trial starts, it doesn't stop. Yep.
So he's not there, though. He's not there.
His family's not there. The jury had to know something strange was happening.
This is the second time this season I've had that happen on a story where the defendant just didn't show up. And yeah, they're looking around and obviously, where'd he go? And imagine being the defense attorney in this case, too, where you're trying to come up with something that can spare him, and he flees its curtains after that, to say the least.
They ultimately find him, but it takes like a year, because he's out on the run. He's actually found guilty while he's on the run, and now investigators have to figure out how to find him, which this was so fascinating.
He's ultimately found hiding in plain sight, right? He's... Right.
Somebody tipped them off that they must have seen him or heard something. Because again, you know, small town, it's going to happen sooner or later.
But he was right in their backyard. And I did not realize this, that most people who run stay fairly close to home.
Unless they're going over the border or they don't have, you know, family to support them. But if they have a support system, they're not going anywhere.
So Edgar's mother, Cindy Hogan, was actually at the house. We see it in the hour and eventually charged with hindering apprehension.
What's the current status of her case? The case just keeps going on and on and on. It's, you know, one hearing after another.
Iris and I went to one of the hearings to try and convince her to talk to us, and she emphatically said no. Her lawyer literally, like, put himself between us and her.
But yeah, she's either going to have to make a deal or it's going to go to trial. But this could go on for some time, I think.
January 3rd of 2023, Edgar is formally sentenced to 99 years in prison with the possibility of parole after serving 30 years. What is the likelihood that he could actually get out in 30 years? So in order to get out at that point, he's going to have to confess to the murder i mean you go before a parole board they're not letting you out until you show remorse and confess to the you know he's got 30 years to think about it and at that point he might just you know he might just do it to get out you just don't know right um and remember matthew edgar's defense and his story was so outrageous and offensive to the family that he was so drunk that he doesn't remember this killing.
Right. Despite the fact that while he was inebriated, he was sending text messages and talking to people and driving an automobile and stuff.
It was a ridiculous story. We talked about Livy a little bit earlier.
And the sense that I got from her is that she would have been going places. She would have eventually left that town, it felt like anyways.
Yeah, and she was an outlier in that she was academically accomplished. She had goals in life.
She was going to university, and she had her escape. It was right there in front of her, And yet that culture pulled her back in.

Such a sliding door moment, right?

Absolutely.

It's clear that Darcy loved her daughter, obviously.

Peter, you went with her to a memorial that she had put up for her daughter.

What was that like?

It was really heartbreaking.

We got to know Darcy, who admits in her own life she's made a lot of mistakes, but Livy for her was her accomplishment. Gaving birth, raising that young girl who became successful, she was her dream child.
And it was everything in her life that gave her meaning is that I raised this extraordinary person. With all the mistakes that I made along the way, Look what I've produced.
And to have that taken away. When you're at that little memorial for Darcy, it means just everything.
It's just precious. And she tends to it.
And she feels the presence of her daughter there. And it's just awful.
At the end of the day, murder reverberates and destroys so many other people's lives. And poor Darcy.
I hope she can get back on the rails. But this is such a blow.
Because her daughter was everything. Yeah.
Well, it was a great hour, as usual. Thank you.
Peter, Judy, thank you so much. Thank you.
Thank you, Anne-Mar-Marie and of course, I want to remind you guys

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