The Final Dominoes Fall

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 Charm 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 up left and right.
And now it truly was time to act one way or the other. Fish or 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.
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.
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.
Praise the Lord. It was just 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 believed me.
So you just pulled it out of your hat, like a bunch of names, and his was the only one that stuck, as it were. Yeah, yeah, pretty much.
Why would you have mentioned him in 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, his name was just fresh in my memory you know I'm terribly sorry for him I hated hated it for him but 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 that apologized.

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 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. What do you do? Unless I move.
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, it was time for Judgment Day. The End 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.

Is 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. We're like, 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 them.

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 side of them.
Yeah. Kind of shocked me.
Shocked me. Had it in you, did you? 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 Stalk 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.

But then when I got to the end,

the judge went through the whole thing.

When he was actually talking,

there was 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 handed down two consecutive life terms

plus another 10 to 20 years

for using a weapon.

For Jessica Reed,

the first of 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 Livers and Sampson was Jessica.
That she did show true remorse. That she had done some constructive things while she was incarcerated in 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 a parole. That's what you're hoping.
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, 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 of going to 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. 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 they can still talk to 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.

Hey everyone, I'm Jenna Bush Hager from the Today Show, and I'm excited to share my podcast, Open Book with Jenna. Like a good book, you'll leave feeling inspired and entertained.

Join me for my podcast, Open Book with Jenna.

Listen now on Amazon Music.

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

dishroom. Meaning?

I would do the dishes.

Run all the dishes through the

washing machine and all that.

It sucks.

How long 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 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 puffy coats, right? Like a windbreaker type deal.
Right. It was making me nervous, so I took it off and set it down on the floor.
Yeah. In the kitchen.
And he went straight upstairs, and so I 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, you know, because 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?

What?

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 Stock 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 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 all right.

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

we're 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 if 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 Stalk 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 & 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. Do 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 appearing to be particularly remorseful.

The sentence? After 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 Blyvers 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 Martino 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 Laudeen, 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 as senior executive producer.

From NBC News Audio,

sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau.

Bryson Barnes as head of audio production.