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

Transcript

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Speaker 14 It's a funny old expression, isn't it? Fish or cut bait.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 But then they had to release Nick Sampson, the cousin who obviously didn't take part.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 And now the CSI chief who'd overseen the crime scene, David Kofod, had been accused of planting evidence.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 5 I mean, I've been making answers of it left tonight.

Speaker 14 And now it truly was time to act, one way or the other.

Speaker 14 Fisher cut bait.

Speaker 14 I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in the Moonlight, a podcast from Dateline.

Speaker 14 Episode 6, The Final Domino's Fall.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 His attorney, Julie Baer.

Speaker 15 I went over to the jail and Matt was in the cell and we told him, you know, this is over.

Speaker 5 You know, you're going home.

Speaker 15 And,

Speaker 15 you know, I probably had the biggest hug from a man that I've ever had in my life.

Speaker 14 Cass County Prosecutor Nathan Cox was once again left to call in the press and make the announcement.

Speaker 16 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.

Speaker 14 And with that, after more than seven months in jail, Matt Livers was free.

Speaker 5 We did it. All right.
We did it. You did it.

Speaker 14 Free to speak to the press for the first time since his arrest.

Speaker 5 I'm innocent. I had absolutely nothing to do with this.

Speaker 14 At least for him, the doubters in the town all around him seemed to vanish in the joy of it all.

Speaker 17 I just went crazy. Praise the Lord.
Praise, you know, thank you, thank you, praise the Lord type thing.

Speaker 14 His girlfriend Sarah was there, of course, to take him home. And not long after, they became Mr.
and Mrs. Livers,

Speaker 14 and we had a talk.

Speaker 17 Best day of my life.

Speaker 17 Best day besides marrying my wife here. Sorry.

Speaker 5 What was it like watching him come out of there?

Speaker 18 Oh, it was awesome.

Speaker 15 It was awesome.

Speaker 19 He's like, I'm free. I'm free, you know, and praise the Lord.

Speaker 5 Great.

Speaker 19 It was just great to be able to touch him and feel him and be with him again, you know, and everything.

Speaker 17 It was a wonderful day.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 17 Well, they changed their tactics on me. My rear end was going to be in the frying pan.
Uh, they were going to be going for the death penalty.

Speaker 5 You're scared. Yeah, tremendously.

Speaker 17 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,

Speaker 17 on the side of their car, you know, it says to serve and protect, you know, and I just thought I was serving them.

Speaker 17 I thought if I'd tell them what they wanted to hear, that I could get to go home.

Speaker 5 How did Nick's name come up?

Speaker 17 They asked me who else was involved, and

Speaker 17 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.

Speaker 14 So you just pull it out of your hat, like a bunch of names, and his was the only one that stuck, as it were.

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker 5 Why would you have mentioned him in particular?

Speaker 17 You know, I've been asked this question before, and the only

Speaker 17 answer I 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,

Speaker 17 hated it for him, but when I said his name, that's who

Speaker 17 it stuck, and they

Speaker 17 ran with it more or less. Ran with it more or less, yeah.

Speaker 14 But the damage was done. The whole thing left Matt and his cousin Nick at a loss for words to each other.

Speaker 5 What has this done to your relationship with Matt? Ruined it completely?

Speaker 21 It hurts knowing that he couldn't even

Speaker 21 be man enough after all this happened to apologize.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 21 People give me s ⁇ about it all the time. You know, I try and let...
make a joke out of it, but it hurts every once in a while.

Speaker 14 We wanted to know if their relationship has been mended. We reached out.
They did not respond.

Speaker 5 What will it take to convince them that you're an innocent man?

Speaker 21 I don't think anything will.

Speaker 5 You mean you're going to have to live under these

Speaker 5 under this cloud for the rest of your life? Probably?

Speaker 5 Unless I move. Yeah.
But I don't want to move. I love Murdoch.
It's my home.

Speaker 14 Nick and Matt, although although at odds, were finally free.

Speaker 14 As for Jessica Reed and Greg Fester,

Speaker 14 it was time for Judgment Day.

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Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 Not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Oh, no, no.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 Which meant, given she was still only 18 by then, she might get out of prison someday, have some sort of life.

Speaker 14 Second-degree murder, by law, carried a sentence of 20 years to life with a chance for parole.

Speaker 14 So, all said, apparently. But then,

Speaker 14 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,

Speaker 14 it was a big one. A 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.

Speaker 14 There would be no chance to send Greg Fester to death row.

Speaker 14 Another blow to the stark children, Tammy, Steve, and Andy.

Speaker 5 Was that a disappointment to you?

Speaker 18 It was to me.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 18 So then we just asked, well, what's the guaranteed way to get them the worst possible thing that they can get for punishment?

Speaker 18 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,

Speaker 18 let's go to that because that's what they need to get. It's the worst thing they could get to them.

Speaker 5 I told the attorney, all I ask

Speaker 5 is make them stand up and take responsibility

Speaker 5 and go for the most

Speaker 5 that you can get.

Speaker 14 So, before long, a new deal was reached. Both Fester and Reed would plead guilty to murder in the second degree.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 5 You went to the sentencing? We did.

Speaker 20 It's the first time we saw. And as three sat in the front row, we watched them both walk in,

Speaker 20 one at a time. I didn't think I could feel so much anger

Speaker 20 and sorrow

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 20 sadness.

Speaker 25 And I thought, you know.

Speaker 16 Triggered by the sight of them. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Kind of shocked me.

Speaker 5 I didn't.

Speaker 18 So I remember just thinking, I didn't know I could be this mad.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 Jessica Reed and Greg Fester each apologized to the Stock family.

Speaker 14 And then the family held its breath. Steve Stalk.

Speaker 18 The whole thing itself was just kind of a blur. It was so nerve-wracking and hard to sit through.

Speaker 18 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.

Speaker 14 But,

Speaker 14 no, that was not to be. For Fester, the judge handed down two consecutive life terms, plus another 10 to 20 years for using a weapon.

Speaker 14 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,

Speaker 14 if you could do such a thing. Her attorney, Tom Olson.

Speaker 5 Was that justice?

Speaker 16 I didn't think so.

Speaker 3 I thought that there was no question, I think everyone believed in the case that the individual most culpable was Fester.

Speaker 3 No question about it.

Speaker 3 That the only person who had cooperated was Jessica.

Speaker 3 That the only person who

Speaker 3 really did the right thing by exonerating

Speaker 3 Lyvers and Samson was Jessica.

Speaker 3 That she did show true remorse that she had to

Speaker 3 she had done some constructive things

Speaker 3 while she was incarcerated and that

Speaker 23 you would have thought

Speaker 5 that

Speaker 5 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 parole well that's that's what you're hoping that's what we were hoping for I mean, she was only 17.

Speaker 3 She really had no record to speak of of anything prior to this. that the circumstances by which she came here, along with Fester,

Speaker 5 he's older,

Speaker 3 she loves him, they're going across country, and that this

Speaker 13 occurrence, the murders, was not a planned thing.

Speaker 3 They didn't go in there with the intent to go and shoot up the place, at least she didn't.

Speaker 3 That she would have gotten something for that, and I was hoping at least for.

Speaker 3 some type of term of years where she had a date. And so we were were disappointed.
I know Jessica was disappointed that she didn't. She got the life sentence.

Speaker 3 But at least she can go away with knowing that she did the right thing. Faced with the opportunity to

Speaker 3 probably write her ticket out of jail at some point in time,

Speaker 3 she did the right thing. She told the truth and

Speaker 3 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.

Speaker 14 For the Stock family, ever graceful people, the sentences were a relief.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 5 I hope they live a miserable life.

Speaker 5 Because

Speaker 5 it's... It's turned our lives upside down and so many other people's lives.

Speaker 5 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.

Speaker 5 They made the choice to go in the bedroom

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 mom and dad had no choice. Our kids

Speaker 5 don't have a choice. My son

Speaker 5 who

Speaker 5 will never know his grandma and grandpa doesn't have a choice. The thing that I guess still gets to me

Speaker 5 is they were put in prison for life,

Speaker 5 but

Speaker 5 they can

Speaker 5 still receive letters from their family.

Speaker 5 They can still pick up the phone and call their parents. They can still

Speaker 5 live life to some degree.

Speaker 5 It's not a free life,

Speaker 5 but

Speaker 5 they can still talk to their family. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And they can still talk to their parents, and we can't. And I think that's what still gets me.

Speaker 5 They were put away for life, but they still have life.

Speaker 3 We don't.

Speaker 14 There was another unresolved question, of course. The big one, still not fully answered.

Speaker 14 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?

Speaker 14 Perhaps only two people in the world know what happened inside that farmhouse and why.

Speaker 14 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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Speaker 14 How close they seem to each other, given the vast expanse of the Nebraska prairie. It was perhaps an irrational thought, but somehow affecting.

Speaker 14 There she was, year after year, housed in a prison just an hour's drive from the scene of her crime.

Speaker 14 It was here, on a cool windy day, and 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.

Speaker 5 Meaning.

Speaker 25 I would do the dishes, run all the dishes through the washing machine and all that.

Speaker 25 It sucks.

Speaker 5 How long have you had that job?

Speaker 25 Oh, I've had it for a few months now.

Speaker 14 Jessica Reed, at the time of this interview, was 21 years old. She looked and carried herself and spoke.

Speaker 14 More like some kindergarten teacher than a convicted killer.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 25 Two people are

Speaker 25 dead because of me, you know?

Speaker 25 And I'm. I have a very hard time with that still.

Speaker 5 What was it like to watch those people die? Hell.

Speaker 5 And when you see it in your head,

Speaker 25 it makes my heart drop. It makes me very

Speaker 25 just

Speaker 25 like really exhausted because

Speaker 25 I can't change that. That's one thing in this world that I can't go back and fix.

Speaker 14 The truth about that night? After so many lies, so many versions.

Speaker 14 Here it is, said Jessica.

Speaker 14 She and Greg Fester, days without sleep or real food, have been driving aimlessly through Wisconsin and Iowa and Nebraska, breaking into homes along the way. In one, she grabbed a shotgun, a 410.

Speaker 14 So on Easter night, there they were, armed, drugged, and wired, bumping along a random country road. And Greg said, stop.

Speaker 14 Turned out to be the stock farmhouse, though they had no idea who lived there. But...

Speaker 14 In they went through that unlocked window, Fester found.

Speaker 25 Greg was like, you know, follow me real quick.

Speaker 25 So I followed him and I was wearing this coat that was making a lot of noise.

Speaker 5 One of those puffy coats, right?

Speaker 25 Like a windbreaker type deal. It was making me nervous.
So I took it off and set it down on the floor

Speaker 25 in the kitchen.

Speaker 25 And he went straight upstairs.

Speaker 25 And so I followed him up the stairs.

Speaker 18 Why did he go upstairs?

Speaker 5 I don't know.

Speaker 5 Didn't tell you?

Speaker 25 He just told me to follow him, so I did. Okay.

Speaker 25 And 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.

Speaker 25 You know, because there was people there.

Speaker 5 What was the feeling you had as you said that?

Speaker 25 Like, panic. It was like craziness.
Like,

Speaker 25 God, what if they wake up, you know? But he just turned and went into that room.

Speaker 25 The guy had rolled out of bed and they were wrestling with the gun

Speaker 25 and I I just was like startled and my gun went off. And I have no idea where that shot went.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 That it may have struck Wayne Stock in the head with evidence of the shot obliterated by another shot. from Greg Fester's 12 gauge.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 25 And that ring that they found,

Speaker 25 it flew off then.

Speaker 5 When you picked up your coat.

Speaker 25 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.

Speaker 5 What was it like in that truck on the way away?

Speaker 25 We didn't say anything.

Speaker 25 I mean, I started crying at one point, and Greg just looked at me and he was like, don't do that.

Speaker 25 You know?

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 5 I killed someone. He was older.
I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time.

Speaker 5 If Greg doesn't watch it, I'm going to just leave one day and do it myself.

Speaker 25 I don't understand it i hate hearing him because it's just kind of like how everything was portrayed i i hate hearing it

Speaker 25 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

Speaker 5 what

Speaker 25 I'm not supposed to feel bad about this?

Speaker 25 I mean,

Speaker 25 how can you have no remorse for this at all?

Speaker 5 To them it meant that you were a cold-hearted killer and that you enjoyed the process and people

Speaker 5 saw you probably still see you as some kind of monster. Yeah.
You ever wonder about Greg Fester and whatever happened to him?

Speaker 25 I hope he's okay, you know,

Speaker 25 because I don't wish anything bad on him.

Speaker 5 I hope he's alright. You still feel like he's a friend? A love?

Speaker 25 I have love for him.

Speaker 25 But as far as any of that other stuff, not really.

Speaker 14 It's all a black hole of regret now, of course.

Speaker 14 Except, she said, for one good thing she did. She refused to implicate two men who had nothing to do with the murders.

Speaker 14 Turned down a golden chance to cut herself a better deal with prosecutors by lying and nailing Nick Sampson and Matt Livers.

Speaker 5 Do you kick yourself about that sometimes?

Speaker 5 No. Why not?

Speaker 25 Because when I wake up in the morning, I can look at myself and be okay.

Speaker 25 They're where they should be on the streets because they didn't do anything.

Speaker 25 And I'm where I should be, you know.

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 they're guilty. What would you say to

Speaker 5 those people with their suspicions?

Speaker 6 To stop being suspicious?

Speaker 5 Because

Speaker 25 they weren't there. They had nothing to do with this.

Speaker 14 But for the stock family, it wasn't that simple. Can you believe, Jessica? They asked.

Speaker 14 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?

Speaker 14 Who did this?

Speaker 5 I'd like to know

Speaker 5 the honest truth about everything.

Speaker 5 You know, I hope someday

Speaker 5 we can all sit down and look at each other and say,

Speaker 5 were

Speaker 5 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

Speaker 5 I hope someday we'll know.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 She explained in a TED talk taped behind prison walls.

Speaker 27 What if my real purpose is to never get out of prison, but change the way imprisoned women come in broken and leave mended.

Speaker 27 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.

Speaker 27 I stopped living solely for my own outcome, and I started living for those around me.

Speaker 14 What if, indeed?

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 No parole for him either, ever.

Speaker 14 A postscript?

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 Matt Livers and Nick Sampson have gone through many struggles to get back their good names.

Speaker 14 They settled lawsuits against state and local authorities, as well as CSI Chief David Kofod, for something north of $7.5 million.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 28 You understand what you were convicted of?

Speaker 5 Yes, Your Honor.

Speaker 14 At his sentencing, the career law enforcement man again denied planting evidence and told the judge the truth would come out eventually.

Speaker 29 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.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 28 The defendant has not acknowledged any wrongdoing. He's not

Speaker 28 appeared to be particularly remorseful.

Speaker 14 The sentence of to four years in prison, Kofod served two.

Speaker 14 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 Livers and Samson and finally identified the real murderers.

Speaker 14 A simple gold ring.

Speaker 15 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

Speaker 15 locked up for the rest of their lives for something they didn't do.

Speaker 14 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 Martinez still believes it was no big deal.

Speaker 4 I heard homicide.

Speaker 16 If it was somebody in my family, I would have wanted the assistance.

Speaker 14 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 Candice Goldman are audio editors.

Speaker 14 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.

Speaker 14 From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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