Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 4: About Face

Transcript

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Speaker 13 If there's anything like a holy grail, a gold standard, in a high-pressure murder investigation, then surely that must be the confession.

Speaker 13 Skilled interrogator leads tormented killer to an inevitable and satisfactory conclusion, thus saving everyone a lot of time and trouble.

Speaker 13 Not to mention, giving the family the answers they so desperately need.

Speaker 13 But three confessions? This was very good indeed. Four would have been even better, of course, there being four suspects after all, but three would certainly do for now.

Speaker 13 Confessions from family cousin Matt Livers. I did the shooting, he said.

Speaker 14 I just stuck it to him and blew him away.

Speaker 13 Confessions to having been there from the two hopped-up kids in the stolen red truck, Jessica Reed and Greg Fester.

Speaker 14 Shut again.

Speaker 14 We all run out of the house.

Speaker 13 The fourth, Nick Sampson, was a holdout, yes.

Speaker 14 Oh, I wasn't there

Speaker 14 to swear to God's true.

Speaker 13 But a little triangulation by two states' worth of detectives ought to put him in the frame, too.

Speaker 13 First, the Wisconsin investigators would have to dredge up evidence to support or refute the stories Greg and Jessica were telling.

Speaker 13 Both of them, remember, said they witnessed but did not commit the gruesome murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock on an Easter evening six weeks before in Murdoch, Nebraska.

Speaker 13 It was Jessica who fingered Nick Sampson after they showed her a picture of the guy. At least, he looked familiar, is how she put it.

Speaker 13 Which, if she was telling the truth, would back up Matt Liver's confession rather nicely. Now, it was the job of the Wisconsin detective, Jim Rohr, to find out if she was telling the truth.

Speaker 13 They had a confession in Nebraska. If she recognizes a picture of one of the people who were the subject of the confession in Nebraska, that's their verification of the original story, right?

Speaker 14 That helps. It certainly helps.

Speaker 13 Jessica's accomplice and paramour, Greg Fester,

Speaker 13 confessed that they had been directed to the Stocks farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska by someone he called Thomas.

Speaker 13 Detective Rohr found that helpful, too.

Speaker 14 It would help explain how

Speaker 14 two teens from Wisconsin end up at such a remote location.

Speaker 14 That there is somebody else that's involved, that there is somebody directing them to this remote farmhouse to do this murder.

Speaker 13 So, while Jessica was being held in jail, the detective went over to the house where she had been staying, a sort of flophouse flophouse for teens, as he called it.

Speaker 13 Seemed like a good place to start his search for some explanation.

Speaker 14 What we were looking for was anything at all that would tie them to Nebraska or any other location that they were at during their crime sprees.

Speaker 13 Like a cell phone.

Speaker 13 And like a piece of low-hanging fruit, there it was.

Speaker 13 And happily, Jessica had given him permission to get into it, into the cell phone. phone, take a look at her calls and contacts.

Speaker 14 I had a signed consent form from her saying I could have that phone. Where was it? Right where she said it was, in her little corner of that house where we performed the search warrant.

Speaker 13 But the phone was not the only thing Jim Rohr found in that flop house, though the rest of it wasn't quite so obvious.

Speaker 13 There was a picture on the wall near Jessica's little corner, a framed picture, and the frame itself stuck out a little bit.

Speaker 14 So the detective looked behind it, and,

Speaker 13 well, what do you know? There was a cigarette box hidden in there.

Speaker 14 He opened it,

Speaker 13 and inside the box,

Speaker 13 a shotgun shell, 12 gauge, the same gauge as used in the murders.

Speaker 13 And alongside the shell, folded up in that cigarette box, was a letter written by Jessica Reed, apparently to Greg Fester. It read, quote,

Speaker 13 And this bullet, well, Bunny, it's the only thing left, and I loved it, but that's something we'll talk about one day.

Speaker 13 But it's here also because that's something I did for you, me,

Speaker 13 and for you to love me as much as I love you.

Speaker 13 That is the end of the quote.

Speaker 13 Detective Rohr read it again, took it in.

Speaker 13 Astonishing.

Speaker 14 When you read the material that you found, what did you think? This was so bizarre. That gives you a mindset of the type of person we were dealing with.

Speaker 13 Rohr went back to his task, excited about it now, and pretty soon he found something else. It was a notebook.
A diary of sorts.

Speaker 13 But no ordinary diary.

Speaker 13 Here were words penned by Jessica Reed herself. I killed someone.
He was older. I loved it.
I wish I could do it all the time.

Speaker 13 If Greg doesn't watch it, I'm going to just leave one day and I'll do it myself.

Speaker 14 Pretty scary.

Speaker 13 17 years old.

Speaker 14 What this is telling us with this letter is her motivation, how she's feeling, and that she truly was involved in pulling the trigger on at least one of the people there.

Speaker 13 I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Murder in the Moonlight, a podcast from Dateline.

Speaker 13 Episode 4,

Speaker 13 About Face.

Speaker 13 Detective Jim Rohr was driving back to the station in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, still shaking his head over what he found in that flophouse used by Jessica Reed.

Speaker 14 What did you think? I thought jail was the safest place for this girl.

Speaker 14 She said she loved killing, wished she could do it all the time.

Speaker 13 Just don't expect to hear that from a young girl. No.

Speaker 13 Clearly, the detective needed to talk to Jessica again, and so he called the jail.

Speaker 13 And sheriff's deputies once again escorted Jessica from her cell to that dingy, gray interview room, where this time there was no holding back.

Speaker 15 You got some explaining to do, And I'm going to tell you right now.

Speaker 15 I am at the end of my rope over this whole thing between you and young Gregory.

Speaker 15 I am giving you one opportunity and one opportunity alone to come completely clean with every bit of your involvement in this. So you quit dancing around with me because I know the truth.

Speaker 16 Craig blew the guy's head up.

Speaker 16 And he shot a hole through the lady's face.

Speaker 13 Laughing about murder?

Speaker 13 Well, anyway, there. She'd said it.
It was Greg Fester who killed the stalks. But why did she write that note? The one found by Detective Roar?

Speaker 15 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 go do it myself.

Speaker 15 You're in a lot of trouble, young lady. I didn't kill this guy, though.

Speaker 15 I didn't have a gun. How am I supposed to kill somebody without a gun? I watched Reich do it.
I didn't kill anybody.

Speaker 16 I am not kidding. I did not kill anybody.
I promised you guys this.

Speaker 15 You know what?

Speaker 15 17 years old and you've just thrown the rest of your life away.

Speaker 13 She tried again to explain the words and in doing so she changed her story. Again.

Speaker 13 Confessed to firing one gunshot.

Speaker 14 It depended on the day you interviewed Jessica. One day she's pulling the trigger and shooting the man above his eye.
The next day Greg did it all.

Speaker 14 It just was so back and forth with her. It was a very, very difficult time in every interview with her to really determine how much truth she was giving.

Speaker 13 Well, the detective absolutely found Jessica Reed to be credible when she admitted one thing,

Speaker 13 that she enjoyed it.

Speaker 17 Okay, I'll tell you guys what I did like. I liked the adrenaline rush.

Speaker 16 I know you did.

Speaker 17 I didn't like what caused the adrenaline rush, but I liked the adrenaline rush. I don't want that adrenaline rush again.
I liked it, but I liked it too much. It's like heroin.

Speaker 17 That's why I've never tried heroin in my life, because I have heard that you like it too much when you do it. So I won't ever do it because I don't want to get addicted to it.

Speaker 13 And that, investigators believe, might have been the most honest thing Jessica Reed said. The rest of the story, the Jessica and Greg part of the story, was told by the science.

Speaker 13 Ballistics tests confirmed that the shell found in Jessica's cigarette box matched the spent shells found at the murder scene. And the murder weapon?

Speaker 13 Well, that turned out to be a gun stolen from the same Wisconsin farm where they stole the red pickup truck. The truck they drove from Wisconsin to Nebraska and then dumped down in Louisiana.

Speaker 13 And then the forensics lab found blood still clinging to Jessica's clothes and shoes, and so they ran tests and confirmed that blood had once flowed through the veins of victim Wayne Stock.

Speaker 13 And also, while they were there, while they were at it, they teased out DNA from the gold ring and that marijuana pipe the cops found on the ground near the farmhouse.

Speaker 13 And there was no doubt whose DNA it was: Jessica Reed on the ring, Greg Fester on the pipe. So both of them were charged.
First-degree murder.

Speaker 13 But over in Nebraska, with the exception of law enforcement, no one knew a thing about the discoveries in Beaver Dam.

Speaker 13 Even Wayne and Charminstock's three adult children were kept in the dark as they struggled to grip the wheel of their new, strange lives.

Speaker 13 One thing to try to move on, quite another to actually do it.

Speaker 13 His daughter Tammy.

Speaker 1 We have just lost both our mom and our dad. To lose one is horrible, but to lose both of them and not have those parent figures that kept this family going,

Speaker 1 where do we go? How do we help Andy with the farm? How do we let our children have a normal life?

Speaker 13 Terrible questions. None of them ever thought they'd have to contemplate.

Speaker 13 And that second set of confessors, Reed and Fester, they might have done their talking on the moon for all the family knew about it.

Speaker 13 Same for the accused killers, Matt Livers and Nick Sampson. Not a word of the confessions in Wisconsin cost of them.

Speaker 13 And then, a few days later, Sampson's defense attorney Jerry Souce answered the phone, and everything changed.

Speaker 14 I got a call saying they've arrested Reed and Fester up in Wisconsin, and we got no details on it at all.

Speaker 13 So he waited,

Speaker 13 not patiently. And then, then, in his frustration, Jerry Susi tried something unorthodox.
And suddenly.

Speaker 14 Everything clicked. You knew exactly what the case was at that point.

Speaker 13 Well,

Speaker 13 maybe.

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Speaker 13 It's a tenet of police work, an important and accepted principle, though sometimes adhered to grudgingly.

Speaker 13 When big things happen in murder cases like the one in Murdoch, the public needs to be told at least something.

Speaker 13 It's understood, however, that crucial details are to be withheld. The arrests of Livers and Samson have been trumpeted far and wide.

Speaker 13 But now, two more murder charges in a case that apparently had been solved?

Speaker 13 The arrests of teens Jessica Reed and Greg Fester in, of all places, Wisconsin, were announced so quietly that the news, the little of it that was revealed, didn't even get to the people in Murdoch, Nebraska.

Speaker 13 They mostly remained in the dark. Even Nick Sampson's defense attorney, Jerry Souci, knew only the barest of detail.

Speaker 13 which did not sit well with him at all.

Speaker 13 So.

Speaker 14 I called a newspaper reporter. I said, you won't believe this, but they arrested two other people.

Speaker 14 He called me back about three hours later and he says, you won't believe this, but I got the arrest warrant from Wisconsin. And he said, you want to read it? I says, oh, yeah.

Speaker 13 And you got that from a newspaper reporter?

Speaker 14 I got it from the newspaper reporter.

Speaker 13 It didn't come from the prosecutor's office.

Speaker 14 No, it was being sealed. We would have gotten it later, but I wouldn't have gotten it that quick.
Yeah.

Speaker 14 And so I met him at a bar and for the price of a Budweiser, I ended up being able to read the affidavit for the arrest warrant of Reed Reed and Fester.

Speaker 13 Those affidavits were a revelation.

Speaker 13 All those details culled from the hours and hours of police interviews with Greg Fester and Jessica Reed.

Speaker 16 Craig blew the guys out.

Speaker 13 Defense Attorney Souce just couldn't believe his eyes as he read the story of the cigarette case, the shells which matched the shotgun.

Speaker 13 the marijuana pipe those two teenagers had dropped along the way, the gold ring that set off a whole new investigation. And most tellingly, DNA irrefutably linking Reed and Fester to the crime.

Speaker 13 Suddenly, it was all beginning to make sense. Remember, Susie's client Nick Sampson professed his innocence from day one.

Speaker 14 I'm getting framed for something I didn't do.

Speaker 13 Meantime, Defense Attorney Julie Bear's client, Matt Libras, confessed, but then told her he didn't do it.

Speaker 13 So for weeks after the arrests, these attorneys had been asking themselves the very same simple question.

Speaker 13 Where was the evidence?

Speaker 13 And they had found,

Speaker 13 well,

Speaker 14 none.

Speaker 13 In fact, the evidence seemed to be pointing to the very real possibility that both Livers and Samson were

Speaker 13 factually innocent. Why?

Speaker 13 Well, for one, both accused killers had pretty good alibis.

Speaker 13 Matt Livers' girlfriend, a woman with an impeccable reputation, insisted that Matt was home all night with her, 30 miles away in Lincoln, Nebraska, night of the murders.

Speaker 13 Same with Nick Sampson's girlfriend, who swore he never left their house that night. She took a polygraph and she passed it.

Speaker 13 Sampson's attorney, Jerry Souce.

Speaker 14 If she would have thought that Nick had done this, she would have thrown him under the bus in a heartbeat. There was just no doubt about that.

Speaker 14 She said he was home with me the entire night, 35 miles away.

Speaker 13 Then the defense lawyers went looking for evidence of those alleged phone calls between Matt and Nick in the days before the murders, calls in which they supposedly planned it all, as Matt told detectives during his confession.

Speaker 14 Did you talk about it over a cell phone, or did you talk face-to-face? Cell phone.

Speaker 13 But phone records don't lie. And they revealed there wasn't one call, not one, between Matt and Nick in the days before the murders.
Matt's defense attorney, Julie Bear.

Speaker 1 That phone communication never took place. You know, it simply didn't occur.

Speaker 13 Because you can check all this phone record.

Speaker 14 Right.

Speaker 13 But couldn't they have used Jerry, you know, those kind of phones you can buy that you can't trace?

Speaker 14 That's theoretically possible, but there's no evidence of that.

Speaker 14 I mean, it gets worse than that because what actually happened with Matt's phone was Matt during this period of time when the murder is is supposed to be taken place is texting back and forth with a roommate they had and there's this this kind of high school argument about you were rude to me at dinner you can't talk to me like that way so I mean you have to have a situation in which he's texting back and forth to the roommate about this argument they had picks up his other phone plans this murder coordinates the meeting in Lincoln.

Speaker 14 They get another car, drive out, do the murder, and then get rid of the evidence. I mean, it was beyond their capability to fake that kind of evidence.

Speaker 14 But he's texting during the time the murder is supposed to be taking place.

Speaker 13 That's something altogether different.

Speaker 14 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 13 Add to that two more test results. Ballistics tests confirmed that the gun found under Nick's bed was not the murder weapon.

Speaker 13 And do you remember, detectives found a spot of what looked like blood on Nick's genes?

Speaker 13 So that was tested,

Speaker 14 And it was not human blood at all.

Speaker 13 And now the arrests of those teenagers from Wisconsin, two people clearly present at the crime scene, but never mentioned at all in any of Matt Liver's hours and hours of police interviews.

Speaker 13 Julie Bear knew what she had to do. She marched over to the jail to ask Matt Livers face to face about these alleged accomplices, Reed and Fester.

Speaker 1 Present him with, you know, this is what's being said. Do you know these people?

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Speaker 13 It's a bit of a cliché that some defense attorneys won't ask their clients if they committed the crime they're charged with. Some attorneys just don't want to know.

Speaker 13 In this case, Julie Bear had been assigned as Matt Liver's defense attorney, knowing full well that he had already confessed to the gruesome double murder of Wayne and Charmin Stock.

Speaker 13 Matt had since changed his story, insisting that he hadn't killed anyone.

Speaker 13 And Julie had been dutiful in her evaluation of the evidence, looking for anything that would confirm the truth of the confession or any proof of his guilt. And she found none.

Speaker 13 And now, hearing about the arrests of Gregory Fester and Jessica Reed in Wisconsin for the same murders, she went over to the jail and asked Matt Livers directly if he knew who these two teenagers were.

Speaker 14 And?

Speaker 1 Not a clue. Not seen them, never spoke to them.

Speaker 14 Maybe he was lying to you.

Speaker 1 Not a chance.

Speaker 13 It would take another month for copies of those videotaped interrogations of Jessica Reed and Greg Fester to inch their way over to the defense attorneys in Nebraska. But when they finally did,

Speaker 13 well, now this certainly caught their attention. Jessica Reed had just been asked, who was with you? Who helped you commit the murders? Here was her response.

Speaker 17 I know there was nobody else there. It was just just me and Greg.
That's what happened.

Speaker 17 I am not kidding. And if no one believes me, then I really want to go back to myself.

Speaker 13 There were no other killers. Just her, just Greg.

Speaker 13 And that whole story about meeting Nick Sampson at Bulldog's Bar, she had made it up, she said, after detectives showed her a picture of Nick. and asked her if it looked familiar.

Speaker 13 And she said yes back then, that he looked like the guy who helped them, and that turned out to be Nick.

Speaker 13 So, was Jessica telling the truth in that first interrogation? Or now, when she flipped the script 180 degrees, said she'd never seen the guy in her whole life.

Speaker 13 That's when the prosecutor decided it was time to try a new tactic with Jessica. A very common tactic, by the way, often used because it often works.

Speaker 13 And not to mention one that saves a lot of time and trouble and money.

Speaker 13 They would offer Jessica a deal, which was essentially this.

Speaker 13 If she would agree to testify against Matt Livers and Nick Sampson, if she would reveal once and for all that those two were in fact there at the murders, then the prosecutor could allow Jessica to plead guilty to a lesser charge, serve less time in prison, and potentially send Matt Livers and Nick Sampson to death row.

Speaker 13 The prosecutor prosecutor set up a meeting with Jessica and her lawyer. His name is Tom Olson.
Here he is.

Speaker 14 We sat down in the conference room and they laid everything out.

Speaker 14 And Jessica, tell us the truth. We need to know right now it's time to let us know who was there.
When they were there, how long they were there, everybody.

Speaker 14 Right now, put it all on the line. Tell us who was there.
And Jessica looked at me and asked if we could step outside.

Speaker 14 And so we stepped outside and

Speaker 14 I'll never forget it. She looked at me and she said, I'm screwed.

Speaker 13 Next, on Murder in the Moonlight. Who was telling the truth about that awful night on the farm? And what would happen to Matt Libers and Nick Sampson now when Jessica told her tale?

Speaker 14 And I told her, I said, you just got to tell the truth. That's all you can do at this point.

Speaker 13 Murder in the Moonlight is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Shane Bishop is the producer.

Speaker 13 Brian Drew, Kelly Laudine, Bruce Berger, Marshall Marshall Hausfeld, and Candace Goldman are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer.
Leslie Grossman is program coordinator.

Speaker 13 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.

Speaker 13 Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.

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