Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 6: The Final Dominoes Fall

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It's a funny old expression, isn't it?

Fish or cut bait.

But everybody knows.

Everybody knows what it means.

Time to make a decision.

Charge ahead or walk away.

Sort of thing keeps a prosecutor up at night.

There was Matt Livers, who had confessed to killing his aunt and uncle, Wayne and Charmin Stock, and then unconfessed.

Convictable?

Maybe.

Confessions speak loud in court.

But then they had to release Nick Sampson, the cousin who obviously didn't take part.

And Jessica Reed, who most certainly was in on the murders with her boyfriend Greg Fester, refused a sweet deal to testify against either Nick or Matt.

And now the CSI chief who'd overseen the crime scene, David Kofod, had been accused of planting evidence.

Oh, and yes, there was that awkward business about the sheriff's office failing for months to tell Matt's attorneys that he had recanted his confession.

I mean, I've been making answers of it left tonight.

And now it truly was time to act, one way or the other.

Fisher cut bait.

I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in the Moonlight, a podcast from Dateline.

Episode 6, The Final Domino's Fall.

By the end of 2006, more than seven months after the stock murders, the problems with their case multiplying, prosecutors finally agreed with the defense lawyers, Matt Liver's confessions were, as they say, unreliable.

His attorney, Julie Baer.

I went over to the jail and Matt was in the cell and we told him, you know, this is over.

You know, you're going home.

And,

you know, I...

probably had the biggest hug from a man that I've ever had in my life.

Cass County prosecutor Nathan Cox was once again left to call in the press and make the announcement.

It's not my intention to try and convict somebody that is not guilty.

That's not why I'm in this business.

The winning isn't the issue.

The issue is whether justice is being done.

And with that, after more than seven months in jail, Matt Livers was free.

We did it.

All right.

We did it.

Free to speak to the press for the first time since his arrest.

I'm innocent.

I had absolutely nothing to do with this.

At least for him, the doubters in the town all around him seemed to vanish in the joy of it all.

I just went crazy.

Praise the Lord.

Praise, you know, thank you, thank you, praise the Lord type thing.

His girlfriend Sarah was there, of course, to take him home.

And not long after, they became Mr.

and Mrs.

Livers.

And we had a talk.

Best day of my life.

Best day besides marrying my wife here.

Sorry.

What was it like watching him come out of there?

Oh, it was awesome.

It was awesome.

He's like, I'm free.

I'm free, you know, and praise the Lord.

Great.

It was just great to be able to touch him and feel him and be with him again, you know, and everything.

It was a wonderful day.

But why in heaven's name had Matt confessed in the first place?

Finally, now that he was free, we could ask him.

This was back in 2010.

A lot of the audience will say, well, come on, nobody's going to confess to something they didn't do, especially something so horrible as the murder of your own relatives.

Well, they changed their tactics on me.

My rear end was going to be in the frying pan.

They were going to be going for the death penalty.

You're scared.

Yeah,

tremendously.

I'd been in there with them for a long time.

So, yeah, I started.

I believe that they, I mean, they're police, you know, on the side of their car, you know, it says to serve and protect, you know, and I just thought I was serving them.

I thought if I'd tell them what they wanted to hear, that I could get to go home.

How did Nick's name come up?

They asked me who else was involved, and

I started just throwing out names.

Finally, when I said Nick's name, then that's when they seemed they were happy and believe me.

So you just pull it out of your hat like a bunch of names and his was the only one that that stuck as it were yeah yeah pretty much why would you have mentioned him particular

you know i've been asked this question before and the only

answer i could give you is because i think it was i talked to him on the cell phone a few days before and his name was just fresh in my memory you know i'm terribly sorry for him i hated

hated it for him but when when I said his name, that's who

it stuck and they

ran with it more ran with it more or less, yeah.

But the damage was done.

The whole thing left Matt and his cousin Nick at a loss for words to each other.

What has this done to your relationship with Matt?

Ruined it completely.

It hurts knowing that he couldn't even

be man enough after all this happened to apologize.

And what's he chosen to do?

Forget all about it?

Forget all about you?

I think he just wants to forget it ever happened.

People give me shit about it all the time.

You know, I try and make a joke out of it, but it hurts every once in a while.

We wanted to know if their relationship has been mended.

We reached out.

They did not respond.

What will it take to convince them that you're an innocent man?

I don't think anything will.

You mean you're going to have to live under these

under this cloud for the rest of your life?

Probably?

How do you do?

Unless I move.

Yeah.

But I don't want to move.

I love Murdoch.

It's my home.

Nick and Matt, although at odds, were finally free.

As for Jessica Reed and Greg Fester,

well, it was time for Judgment Day.

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Ruby and Jodi, a cult of sin and influence, premieres September 1st at 9 p.m.

Eastern on ID.

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jessica reed had given up the deal that could have given her a lighter sentence now almost a year after the stock murders the prosecutors offered her one more chance Not a get-out-of-jail free card.

Oh, no, no.

But a deal, just the same.

And this one she took.

Jessica said she would plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for her testimony at trial against her accomplice, Greg Fester.

Which meant, given she was still only 18 by then, she might get out of prison someday.

Have some sort of life.

Second-degree murder, by law, carried a sentence of 20 years to life with a chance for parole.

So, all said, apparently.

But then,

well, in this case, would you expect anything to go according to plan?

Because to all the mystifying moves by investigators and prosecutors in Cass County, Nebraska, add one more.

And this time,

it was a big one.

A judge ruled the county attorney had missed a deadline to announce his intention to seek the death penalty against Greg Fester.

And so first-degree murder was off the table.

There would be no chance to send Greg Fester to death row.

Another blow to the stark children, Tammy, Steve, and Andy.

Was that a disappointment to you?

It was to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So then we just asked, well, what's the guaranteed way to get them the worst possible thing that they can get for punishment?

Well, we think if we do it this way, that they're going to end up in prison for the rest of their life.

All right, well, if that's what you think is going to happen,

let's go to that because that's what they need to get.

It's the worst thing they could get to them.

I told the attorney, all I ask

is make them stand up and take responsibility

and

go for the most

that you can get.

So, before long, a new deal was reached.

Both Fester and Reed would plead guilty to murder in the second degree.

And in March 2007, not yet a year since the killings, they entered a courtroom to come face to face for the first time with the Stalks family.

You went to the sentencing?

We did.

It's the first time we saw.

And as three sat in the front row, we watched them both walk in

one at a time.

I didn't think I could feel so much anger

and sorrow

and

sadness.

And I thought, you know.

Triggered by the sight of them.

Yeah.

Kind of shocked me.

I didn't.

So I remember just thinking, I didn't know I could be this mad.

In the courtroom, the judge read the victim impact statements, which had been written by Wayne and Charmin's family members,

as if such an impact could be measured in words.

Jessica Reed and Greg Fester each apologized to the stock family,

and then the family held its breath.

Steve Stalk.

The whole thing itself was just kind of a blur.

It was so nerve-wracking and hard to

sit through.

And then when they got to the end, and you know, the judge went through the whole thing when he was actually talking.

There's a little part of me saying he's going to let these guys off easy.

But

no, that was not to be.

For Fester, the judge judge handed down two consecutive life terms, plus another 10 to 20 years for using a weapon.

For Jessica Reed, the first to the courthouse to make a deal, remember, there was, in fact, no break at all.

She got the same sentence for murder as Fester.

Two life terms.

To be served back to back,

if you can do such a thing.

Her attorney, Tom Olson.

Was that justice?

I didn't think so.

I thought that there was no question, I think everyone believed in the case that the individual most culpable was Fester.

No question about it.

That the only person who had cooperated was Jessica.

That the only person who

really did the right thing by exonerating Lyvers and Sampson was Jessica.

That she did show.

true remorse, that

she had done some constructive things

while she was incarcerated, and that

you would have thought

that something would have been given to her.

She might have had a date far in the future, 40 years away, maybe, where she might get a chance in front of the Perulo.

Well,

that's what we were hoping for.

I mean, she was only 17.

She really had no record to speak of of anything prior to this.

That the circumstances by which she came here, along with Fester,

he's older, you know, she loves him, they're going across country, and that this

occurrence, the murders, was not a planned thing.

They didn't go in there with the intent to go and shoot up the place.

At least she didn't.

That she would have gotten something for that.

And I was hoping at least for some type of term of years where she had a date.

And so we were disappointed.

I know Jessica was disappointed that she didn't.

She got the life sentence.

But at least she can go away with knowing that she did the right thing.

Faced with the opportunity to

probably write her ticket out of jail at some point in time,

she did the right thing.

She told the truth and

she didn't take the bait or fall into the trap of saying that these boys were there when they were not to save her own neck.

For the Stock family, ever graceful people, the sentences were a relief.

But later, when we sat down with Andy Stock and his siblings in 2010, a rare flash of anger directed toward the two who took his parents' lives.

I hope they live a miserable life.

Because

it's turned our lives upside down, and so many other people's lives.

They made

the choice to go into that house.

They made the choice to take guns in the house.

They made the choice to go upstairs when they knew someone was home.

They made the choice to go in the bedroom.

And

mom and dad had no choice.

Our kids

don't have a choice.

My son,

who

will never know his grandma and grandpa, doesn't have a choice.

The thing

that I guess still gets to me

is they were put in prison for life

but

they can

still receive letters from their family mm-hmm they can still pick up the phone and call their parents they can still

live life to some degree

it's not a free life

but

kind of like they're still they can still talk for their family yeah

and they can still talk to their parents and we can't and I think that's what still gets me.

They were put away for life, but they still have life.

We don't.

There was another unresolved question, of course.

The big one, still not fully answered.

What really happened that night on the stock farm?

What led two Wisconsin teenagers to throw away their lives by so callously killing a Nebraska farm couple whom everyone loved?

perhaps only two people in the world know what happened inside that farmhouse and why.

So we gathered up our recording gear and checked ourselves into the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, where a convicted killer was waiting to talk to us.

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How close they seemed to each other, given the vast expanse of the Nebraska prairie.

It was perhaps an irrational thought, but somehow affecting.

There she was year after year, housed in a prison just an hour's drive from the scene of her crime.

It was here, on a cool windy day, that we were given one hour, no more, to talk to Jessica Reed, fresh off a shift working in what the inmates there call the dish room.

Meaning...

I would do the dishes, run all the dishes through the washing machine and all that.

It sucks.

How long have you had that job?

Oh, I've had it for a few months now.

Jessica Reed, at the time of this interview, was 21 years old.

She looked and carried herself and spoke more like some kindergarten teacher than a convicted killer.

Makes no difference.

She will very likely die in prison.

And she told us she will spend her life haunted by what happened in that farmhouse.

Two people are

dead because of me, you know?

And I have a very hard time with that still.

What was it like to watch those people die?

Hell.

And when you see it in your head,

it makes my heart drop.

It makes me very...

just

like really exhausted because

I can't change that.

That's one thing in this world that I can't go back and fix.

The truth about that night?

After so many lies, so many versions.

Here it is, said Jessica.

She She and Greg Fester, days without sleep or real food, had been driving aimlessly through Wisconsin and Iowa and Nebraska, breaking into homes along the way.

In one, she grabbed a shotgun, a 410.

So on Easter night, there they were, armed, drugged, and wired, bumping along a random country road.

And Greg said, stop.

Turned out to be the stock farmhouse, though they had no idea who lived there.

But in they went through that unlocked window, Fester found.

Greg was like, you know, follow me real quick.

So I followed him and I was wearing this coat that was making a lot of noise.

One of those coffee coats, right?

The windbreaker type deal.

Right.

It was making me nervous.

So I took it off and set it down on the floor

in the kitchen.

And

he went straight upstairs.

And so I followed followed him up the stairs.

Why did he go upstairs?

I don't know.

Didn't tell you?

He just told me to follow him, so I did.

Okay.

And we went upstairs.

And when I turned around, Greg had turned on the light in the room.

And I seen this guy laying in the bed.

And I said, Come on, let's go.

Let's do something.

Let's, you know,'cause there was people there.

What was the feeling you had as you said that?

Like, panic.

It was like craziness, like,

God, what if they wake up, you know?

But he just turned and went into that room

the guy had rolled out of bed and they were wrestling with the gun

and i just was like startled and my gun went off and i have no idea where that shot went

sources close to the investigation told dateline there is reason to believe that whether jessica knows it or not her shot might have been the fatal one that it may have struck wayne stalk in the head with evidence of the shot obliterated by another shot from Greg Fester's 12 gauge.

And then Greg shot the guy in the back of the head and he went back in that room and shot that lady.

He ran down the stairs and I ran after him and I picked up my coat on the way out

and that ring that they found

it flew off then.

When you picked up your coat?

Yes.

I didn't know until like way, way later when they showed me a picture of it because I knew I lost that ring, but I had no idea where.

What was it like in that truck on the way away?

We didn't say anything.

I mean, I started crying at one point, and Greg just looked at me and he was like, Don't do that.

You know?

But what about all those letters?

The words found later in that house with Jessica's belongings, with that cigarette box.

Words she wrote, boldly, admitting to her crimes.

I killed someone.

He was older.

I loved it.

I wish I could do it all the time.

If Greg doesn't watch it, I'm going to just leave one day and do it myself.

I don't understand it.

I hate hearing him because it's just kind of like

how everything was portrayed.

I hate hearing it.

Because it was how everything was portrayed.

Because I'm not like that.

Were you like that at the time?

No.

That was my way of showing Greg that I was okay with it too.

Because when he told me not to cry, it was like,

what?

I'm not supposed to feel bad about this?

I mean,

how can you have no remorse for this at all?

To them, it meant that you were a cold-hearted killer and that you enjoyed the process.

And people

saw you probably still see you as some kind of monster.

Yeah.

You ever wonder about Greg Fester and whatever happened to him?

I hope he's okay, you know?

Because I don't wish anything bad on him.

I hope he's alright.

You still feel like he's a friend?

A love?

I have love for him.

But as far as any of that other stuff, not really.

It's all a black hole of regret now, of course.

Except, she said, for one good thing she did.

She refused to implicate two men who had nothing to do with the murders.

Turned down a golden chance to cut herself a better deal with prosecutors by lying and nailing Nick Sampson and Matt Livers.

Do you kick yourself about that sometimes?

No.

Why not?

Because when I wake up in the morning, I can look at myself

and be okay.

They're where they should be on the streets because they didn't do anything.

And I'm where I should be, you know.

A lot of the members of their family believe that they got away with it, that they were involved, and that somehow, I don't know, you protected them, but that they're guilty.

What would you say to

those people with their suspicions?

To stop being suspicious?

Because they weren't there.

They had nothing to do with this.

But for the Stock family, it wasn't that simple.

Can you believe, Jessica?

They asked.

They were driven, they told us, by a common sense instilled at an early age by their murdered parents.

And so they still were asking, who and why?

Who did this?

I'd like to know

the honest truth about everything.

You know, I hope someday

we can all sit down and look at each other and say,

were

these two involved?

Yes or no?

Definitely.

Was the blood planted?

Yes or no?

Definitely.

I don't know we'll ever know those answers.

I don't know if there's any way to prove those answers, but

I hope someday we'll know.

We wanted to know how the Stock family feels about Matt and Nick today, but they did not respond.

As for Jessica Reed, since that day we spoke to her in prison, she's had a bit of an epiphany, she explained in a TED talk taped behind prison walls.

What if my real purpose is to never get out of prison, but change the way imprisoned women come in broken and leave mended?

All I ever wanted to do was just get out of here, leave all this behind and never look back.

That one thought changed my whole paradigm.

I stopped living solely for my own outcome, and I started living for those around me.

What if, indeed?

At this point, Jessica has served 18 years behind bars.

She is not eligible for parole.

Her accomplice, Greg Fester, did not respond to our interview requests.

He, too, has served 18 years.

No parole for him either, ever.

A postscript?

Andy Stock now runs Stock Hay and Grain.

He knocked down the home where the murders occurred and built a new house where he made some better memories.

Matt Livers and Nick Sampson have gone through many struggles to get back their good names.

They settled lawsuits against state and local authorities, as well as CSI Chief David Kofod, for something north of $7.5 million.

As for Kofod, he was acquitted of federal evidence tampering charges.

But then the state of Nebraska took up the case, and at his second trial, Kofod was found guilty of evidence tampering.

You understand what you were convicted of?

Yes, Your Honor.

At his sentencing, the career law enforcement man again denied planting evidence and told the judge the truth would come out eventually.

I don't believe this is the last of this case for me.

I want to continue on, and that's nothing personal with you.

But the judge had a somewhat different perspective.

He told the court he'd been moved by letters from Livers and Sampson asking him to throw the book at Kofod, and that is just what he did.

The defendant has not acknowledged any wrongdoing.

He's not

appeared to be particularly remorseful.

The sentence of to four years in prison, Kofod served two.

In the end, two defense lawyers still marvel that poor police work almost did their clients in, even as investigators on the same case brilliantly tracked the one piece of evidence that saved Bivers and Sampson and finally identified the real murderers.

A simple gold ring.

Had they not been able to trace that ring to its owner in Wisconsin, I'm really afraid we'd have two guys sitting on death row or

locked up for the rest of their lives for something they didn't do.

As for that citizen who went way beyond the call to find the critical evidence that saved Matt Livers and Nick Sampson, that gold ring with the inscription on it, she shrugs as if Mary Martinu still believes it was no big deal.

I heard homicide.

If it was somebody in my family, I would have wanted the assistance.

Murder in the Moonlight is a production of Dateline and NBC News.

Shane Bishop is the producer.

Brian Drew, Kelly Laudine, Bruce Berger, Marshall Hausfeld, and Candace Goldman are audio editors.

Brittany Morris is field producer.

Leslie Grossman is program coordinator.

Adam Gorfane is co-executive producer.

Paul Ryan is executive producer.

And Liz Cole is senior executive producer.

From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau.

Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

Paragold is the destination for luxury home.

We've brought the world's best design brands together in one place.

From traditional to modern, indoors to out, our curated selection of furnishings and home improvements transforms every space.

Get inspired with our go-to edits, featuring expert styling tips and exclusive designer shops, where trusted tastemakers pick products they love.

With fast, free, full-service delivery on most items, we make it easy to bring your vision to life.

Ready for extraordinary?

Shop now on paragold.com.