In Cold Blood

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Speaker 12 It was late past midnight. The moon was nearly full, and its pale ghost light spread across the great dark Nebraska plains.
Not quite enough to see much of anything.

Speaker 12 The moon had no competition, not out here, so far from the polluting light of a city or town of any size.

Speaker 14 A few farm buildings, caught in the muted glow, threw black moon shadows, and all around

Speaker 14 was silence.

Speaker 13 Almost.

Speaker 12 It was a pickup truck by the sound of it.

Speaker 14 Tires crunching over gravel, headlights poking at the night along the country road, as if the driver was looking for something.

Speaker 14 And there it was, rising out of the dark, a farmhouse.

Speaker 12 The pickup slowed down, turned in.

Speaker 12 The driver looked at his companion.

Speaker 14 This was the place.

Speaker 12 They gathered up their tools, got out, gently, gently shut the truck's doors, and walked across the yard.

Speaker 12 It was a big two-story place, old, established. Even in the moonlight, it showed off a little, like people cared about this house, about appearances.

Speaker 14 Was anyone home?

Speaker 12 Maybe, maybe not. No sign of life, no movement inside.

Speaker 13 No dog barked.

Speaker 12 One of them made a decision. They would not enter through the front door as family would.

Speaker 14 But in quick order, they found a window unlocked.

Speaker 13 So here it was, the way inside.

Speaker 14 No turning back now.

Speaker 14 This is a story about fear.

Speaker 16 I was sitting up in bed, and I said, Andy, should I be shaking? And he said, that's normal. The shock.

Speaker 14 The fight, flight, or freeze kind of fear that grabs you by the throat. So there was a real, genuine itch in your back that somebody was going to come after you.

Speaker 17 Come after me, come after my family.

Speaker 14 And it's a story about certainty.

Speaker 15 And I'm going to do my loving best to hang your ass from the highest tree.

Speaker 14 Certainty, right or wrong.

Speaker 14 I know what happened and no one will believe me.

Speaker 14 And it's about a secret hidden far, far away and all but forgotten. A secret that waited for the one who could find the golden key.

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

Speaker 14 Episode 1.

Speaker 14 In Cold Blood.

Speaker 14 Less than an hour south of Omaha, the prairie takes on a sweet rolling pitch as it tucks into a Nebraska corner.

Speaker 14 Here, the rich black topsoil has grown not only untold bushels of corn and soybeans and stands of alfalfa, but also generations of solid and faithful Americans, a tiny remnant of whom, fewer than 300 or so, planted themselves in a small town called Murdoch, sort of place where heads turn when a stranger drives by.

Speaker 14 Murdoch began, as did many towns like it, in the late 1800s, as a stop on the railroad, when the tracks of the old Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific were extended to this very spot.

Speaker 14 If you've ever gotten off the interstate and driven America's blue highways, those roads less traveled, you've surely passed through many towns just like Murdoch, Nebraska.

Speaker 14 The railroad is still there, of course, with an elevator and and water tower, Murdoch skyline.

Speaker 14 Here, junior and senior high schools share the same building, and there are more houses of worship than taverns, though the bar stools are about as worn as the church pews.

Speaker 14 A few miles away, this way and then that, down the gravel road outside Murdoch, in a big farm yard, on one particular Sunday, there was an Easter egg hunt, just like there was every year.

Speaker 14 That year was 2006, the 16th day of April.

Speaker 16 The grandkids ran around their yard.

Speaker 16 It was Grandma and Papa's yard.

Speaker 14 Or mom and dad to Tammy, who was 30 years old by then, and brought her own son, of course, like always, to join the many grandkids and nieces and nephews.

Speaker 16 They found their Easter eggs. They found their Easter baskets.

Speaker 16 Mom always...

Speaker 16 made every individual Easter basket special to that child.

Speaker 14 Mom was Charmon stalk. Her husband, Wayne, was dad.

Speaker 14 They were the fifth generation of stalks to work this land, the lifeblood from which their blessing sprang.

Speaker 14 The land, their land, was as holy to them as any religious relic or sacred chalice could ever be. Charmin was 55, Wayne 58, and they were generous and steady and always there for their children.

Speaker 14 The kind of people for whom the phrase salt of the earth seemed perfect.

Speaker 16 Don't think they ever missed a game of any of ours. Dad would always stop farming just to be at a game, similarly with mom.

Speaker 14 The stalks also had two sons. Steve, the tall and quiet one, was 38 back then, and Andy, the youngest, sturdy, baby-faced, was 27.

Speaker 14 This is Andy.

Speaker 15 They were loving parents. I remember, you know, both of them just always saying, live life to the fullest.
Just live life. And they did every day.

Speaker 14 Wayne Stock, dad, had a degree in building construction. He was a former member of the National Guard.
He and Charmin ran the Stock Hay and Grain Company, and a very successful business it was.

Speaker 14 The stocks owned a thousand acres of land, along with rental property. Family was everything to Charmin Stock.
Everything.

Speaker 14 She stayed home when the kids were little, but when the youngest went to kindergarten, she took a job as a teacher's aide at their country school.

Speaker 14 Did it for 17 years until it was time to take care of her own elderly mother.

Speaker 15 These are busy people.

Speaker 16 Very. They touched the lives of so many people.

Speaker 14 They were good examples to all of how to live moral, godly lives with high standards.

Speaker 15 One thing I always heard from mom was

Speaker 15 take responsibility for your actions, be responsible.

Speaker 16 She would praise you and just keep pushing you to do better. She always wanted us to be better people.

Speaker 14 And that included keeping the house meticulously clean for company, as she did on that Easter Sunday.

Speaker 14 Their last day on this earth.

Speaker 14 When they went to church and then put on a big family dinner. And the highlight of it all, the Easter egg hunt for the grandkids.
This is their son, Steve.

Speaker 15 At least we got that one day. My kids remember, they talk about it all the time.
I suppose as last days go, that wouldn't be a bad one.

Speaker 16 No, it wasn't.

Speaker 14 Except?

Speaker 14 Well, except their youngest wasn't there. Not that Andy didn't love the farm and its rituals, much as any of them.
In fact, they all figured he'd be the one to take over the place one day.

Speaker 14 But that Easter Sunday, he'd agreed to spend the day with his future in-laws, and so he missed the party. But he left his young puppy with his parents for the day.

Speaker 14 He said he'd pick up the dog that night.

Speaker 15 Called mom and dad,

Speaker 15 I want to say about

Speaker 15 9 o'clock that night. I'm all the way home.
And

Speaker 15 so, well, I'm going to come get the dog and get him out of your hair for a little while.

Speaker 14 It was past dark when Andy pulled up to the old farmhouse to pick up his dog.

Speaker 15 So came in about, I want to say 9.30, 10 o'clock, if I recall.

Speaker 15 that night and they met me on the deck on the back of the house and we talked about Easter and what they did, and played with the dog a little bit. And

Speaker 15 dad and I were going to start planting corn the next day.

Speaker 15 And so we talked about the farm a little bit, and

Speaker 15 they each gave me a hug, and I went home.

Speaker 12 As you remember that moment, it makes you feel pretty emotional, doesn't it?

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 The next morning, Andy drove the half-mile from his place back to his parents' farm, ready to go to work. Spring planting awaited.

Speaker 15 I drove in and I went in the shop on the farm.

Speaker 15 Dad's pickup was there, which I thought was a little bit strange. Normally, he went to the post office about nine o'clock every day.
So I thought, well, you know, maybe he's not

Speaker 15 gone yet, or maybe he took mom's car to put gas in it for

Speaker 15 the day.

Speaker 14 Confusing. He walked across the farmyard to the house and went inside.

Speaker 15 Had some paperwork for dad.

Speaker 15 Went in the house, laid it on the kitchen table, turned around and left.

Speaker 15 Looking back, I thought it was strange there was no coffee made.

Speaker 15 But at the time,

Speaker 15 I didn't

Speaker 15 connect. Went to the shop and getting things ready for the morning.
And

Speaker 15 got to thinking that, you know, it was

Speaker 15 kind of strange. There wasn't a lot of movement around.

Speaker 15 The back door was open, but the screen door was shut. Sure.

Speaker 15 Didn't connect with that.

Speaker 15 Went inside again.

Speaker 15 And,

Speaker 15 you know, didn't really see anything unusual, I guess. I think I tried to call dad's cell phone.
He didn't answer. And that's when I thought, well,

Speaker 15 where could they have gone? Picked up the phone in the house, thought, well, I'd try him again.

Speaker 15 And

Speaker 15 there was no dial tone.

Speaker 15 And that's when

Speaker 15 my heart kind of sunk. I guess that, for some reason, was a little bit of a trigger in my mind.
Something was wrong. That was something was wrong.
I thought, well, I'd better go upstairs.

Speaker 15 As I started up the stairs, there was some blood on the walls and whatnot. And, you know, I knew it was bad.

Speaker 14 But really?

Speaker 14 He had no idea.

Speaker 14 How could he?

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Speaker 14 It was perhaps the central moment in the life of Andy Stock when he rounded the staircase that morning in that farmhouse he knew so well, the one he'd grown up in, and saw blood on the walls.

Speaker 18 It's gotta be surreal to a moment like that.

Speaker 15 I mean, could you.

Speaker 15 Does your mind even register one?

Speaker 15 No, you know, I don't.

Speaker 15 I think

Speaker 15 good Lord protects us. Yeah.

Speaker 15 Our body's kind of going to shock, I think.

Speaker 15 And,

Speaker 15 but, you know, even at the time I saw the blood in the stairway, I thought, well,

Speaker 15 gosh, maybe something happened and they left in the ambulance. You know, they wouldn't have wanted they said, oh, we'll call in the morning, you know, it wasn't that bad.
So,

Speaker 15 you know, that

Speaker 15 was kind of my process of thought, I guess, at that point.

Speaker 15 Until I rounded the corner and saw dad laying there on the floor. And

Speaker 15 it was

Speaker 15 a horrible thing.

Speaker 14 There is only what came before and what came after.

Speaker 15 What did you do when you found them? I never made it past the landing. My cell phone was out in my pickup and just turned around and went out of the house.
Went to call for help.

Speaker 15 That's all there was. Never went back in.
Didn't see your mother's body. No.

Speaker 15 No. Didn't know where she was at.
Didn't know if she was home. I didn't know.

Speaker 14 The ambulance was there in 12 minutes, the first lawman in 20. Andy stood outside next to his pickup truck, in shock, calling family, without even knowing what happened or what to say.

Speaker 14 Andy's sister, Tammy.

Speaker 16 Andy's wife and I work together. She answered the phone call.

Speaker 16 And she didn't even recognize Andy's voice. Didn't even know.
She came in the back and said,

Speaker 16 Tim, something's wrong. Andy just called and said, come quick.
Dad's laying in a pool of blood.

Speaker 14 But like the rational farm folk they were, 30 miles away and close to the nearest hospital, they did not assume the worst, even when they tried to call Andy back,

Speaker 14 and he didn't answer.

Speaker 16 By 11. 11.30, both Cass and I were both like, something is really wrong.
Something is wrong.

Speaker 16 And

Speaker 16 the minister called and said, you need to come home. And I said, I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's wrong.

Speaker 16 And they said, you want to end up being killed.

Speaker 16 I think I did start screaming. And we headed towards the farm to be with Andy.

Speaker 16 Never in a million years would you think that you'd see your parents' house taped off, the farm taped off by that yellow tape.

Speaker 14 The crime scene people people had taken over the house. It was they who saw the worst of it.
They found Wayne on the upstairs landing, dead of a shotgun blast, pretty much point-blank.

Speaker 14 Charmin was in the bedroom. A shotgun got her, too.

Speaker 14 She was still holding a telephone in her dead hand as if she had been trying to call for help.

Speaker 14 It was stunning.

Speaker 14 The stalks were the most unlikely victims anyone could imagine. The Cass County Sheriff knew right away, of course, it was going to be big news.
So he advised caution.

Speaker 14 Do not jump to conclusions, he said.

Speaker 17 Right now, this is an unsolved homicide. Whether it's somebody local or somebody from another town, we don't know at this time.

Speaker 14 As Andy Stock waited for his siblings to arrive, he struggled to process it all, as his father's words echoed in his mind.

Speaker 15 I'll never forget

Speaker 15 July of 05.

Speaker 15 Dad and I were working together. We were standing there and he looked at me and he said, son,

Speaker 15 he said, when it's my day to go,

Speaker 15 he said, hold your head high, keep living life.

Speaker 15 I'll never forget that.

Speaker 14 But it was all happening so fast. Wayne and Charmin Stock had been gunned down in the safety of their own home, in the sanctity of their own bedroom.
Why would anyone want them dead?

Speaker 14 And who?

Speaker 16 The investigators asked us a whole bunch of questions. What I can't,

Speaker 16 I don't, I don't remember. And I think at that time, I think Andy's right.

Speaker 16 You go into shock. Yeah.

Speaker 15 You,

Speaker 16 I don't remember conversations. I don't remember how.

Speaker 16 I've tried to figure it out how I got from talking to the investigators. And the next thing I remember, I was at Andy and Cassie's house.
And then from there, we went to grandma's.

Speaker 16 Grandma lived a quarter mile away.

Speaker 16 How we got there, I don't know. How long we were at grandma's,

Speaker 15 I don't know.

Speaker 16 You pretty much just

Speaker 16 shut down.

Speaker 16 It's all a blur.

Speaker 14 Andy, however, did not get to leave.

Speaker 14 He was the last to see his parents alive, the one who found their bodies in the morning, which made him, the way these things go, at the very least, a person of interest.

Speaker 15 Before I even saw Stephen Tammy, they had put me in a car and took me to another town and questioned me in a room.

Speaker 18 Trying to establish whether or not you were involved.

Speaker 15 Yeah, did

Speaker 15 gunshot residue tests. It's like, is this really happening?

Speaker 14 Andy Stark didn't realize it at the time, but investigators were soon pointing hard right at him. After all, he was there.
He had opportunity, and he may have had motive.

Speaker 14 Something to gain from his parents' deaths. After all, Andy was the already designated heir to the Stock A Company, which some people might consider a family fortune.

Speaker 12 As investigators questioned Andy, CSI units were busily working the crime scene.

Speaker 14 One of those leading the investigation was a man named David Kofod.

Speaker 18 It was a very brutal crime scene. It was

Speaker 18 one of the worst I've ever seen.

Speaker 14 Kofod was the head of the crime scene investigation squad in Douglas County, way off in Omaha, a good hour away.

Speaker 14 But the Cass County Sheriff's Office wasn't used to this sort of thing, and so Kofod was called in to help. He certainly carried himself like a man used to being in the lead.

Speaker 14 He was bald, bespectacled, a serious man.

Speaker 14 And even he was shaken by what he saw in that house. Here he is telling me about it.

Speaker 18 It was very much an execution, and there was a lot of blood impact spatter, high-velocity spatter fragments, and it was a biological kind of a nightmare.

Speaker 14 It didn't take but a few minutes to figure out how the killer or killers had entered the house. In the laundry room, a screen had been lifted and a window appeared to have been forced open.

Speaker 14 From there, it appeared the killer's route might have gone past the now empty Easter baskets that Charmin had made, through the well-kept kitchen, and then up the stairs toward the bedroom, where the stalks were fast asleep.

Speaker 14 All investigators had to do was follow four 12-gauge shotgun shells that had left a trail to the bodies. By the look of it, the stalks woke up.

Speaker 14 Wayne tried to get up, but the killer fired a round straight into his knee, so close to him it left a huge powder burn on the bed, and fired again, hit Wayne above his eyes.

Speaker 14 Charmin tried to call 911, but then the shooter killed her too.

Speaker 14 And then, no surprise, it became apparent for a very curious reason that it wasn't just one killer, but at least two.

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Requires qualifying gig package. Other restrictions apply.

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Speaker 14 With the practiced eye of a man who'd seen plenty of violent death, CSI Commander David Kofod, on the stair landing of the Stocks farmhouse, made an observation that would change the course of the investigation.

Speaker 18 When we did the blood pattern analysis, we saw a void area at the top of the steps.

Speaker 14 A void area.

Speaker 14 In other words, when the shotgun blast was fired, that is the one that killed Wayne Stock, the blood spattered everywhere, except where it appeared that another person had to have been standing.

Speaker 14 So the second killer was sprayed with blood spatter and like light hitting an object, it created a shadow on the wall behind it. It left a void where there was no blood.

Speaker 18 Somebody had to be blocking the blood spatter from impacting the wall and stuff.

Speaker 14 Outside the farmhouse, Kofod and his team found a wealth of evidence, too.

Speaker 14 The trick was to sort what was innocent and what wasn't.

Speaker 18 It was a big operation. There was a lot of outbuildings and it was complicated by the fact that they'd had an Easter egg hunt the day before so we had a lot of shoe prints and stuff.

Speaker 14 But one print stood out. It was different than the others.

Speaker 18 I saw a shoe print in the mud that was unusual by a flowerbed near the front door.

Speaker 14 And beyond the flowerbed, just like the shotgun shells left leading to the stairs, there was another trail of evidence left by the apparently sloppy killers.

Speaker 18 In the gravel driveway, there was a marijuana pipe, and

Speaker 18 about 10 feet from it, there was a flashlight. And those two things were obviously out of place.
You can sort of imagine a television show, CSI, some guy from it.

Speaker 15 there's a light. Oh, there's a, you know, it's just too easy.
But there it was. It was there.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 18 I think the one thing I knew pretty much right at the beginning was that I could see visibly see blood on the outside of the flashlight. So we knew that had to be involved.

Speaker 14 And then a real breakthrough. A newspaper carrier called in to report that he and his girlfriend had seen something odd.

Speaker 14 They'd been driving down a country road middle of the night when the murders occurred, about a mile from the stockhouse, and they saw a car just parked on the side of the road.

Speaker 14 Strange cars just don't get parked on country roads outside Murdoch, Nebraska at three o'clock in the morning. It was tan or light brown.
It was a four-door sedan, said the young newspaper carrier.

Speaker 14 And what really stuck out, he said, was that this same car later passed them in the same area that same night, and this time it was driving 60 or 70 miles an hour. In a rusty itaway, maybe?

Speaker 14 So there were certainly clues.

Speaker 14 The car seen by the newspaper carrier, the flashlight with what appeared to be blood on it, the marijuana pipe, and the void on the wall that told them they were looking for at least two killers.

Speaker 14 But a motive?

Speaker 14 Who knew? Not a thing was missing. No wallet or purse or gun collection was taken.
There was even a safe hidden in the bedroom floor, and it was untouched.

Speaker 14 But all that evidence and asking questions of those closest to the stock family would soon pay off. Because just a week later, there would be an arrest, a confession.

Speaker 14 And it was, indeed, from a member of the family.

Speaker 14 So the great wheel of justice began to turn. While far away, the secret remained for the moment quite undisturbed.

Speaker 14 Coming up in future episodes of Murder in the Moonlight.

Speaker 15 Him and Dad kind of had a lot of falling outs. They kind of butt ahead us a little bit.
Well, I was

Speaker 15 upset.

Speaker 15 At a loss of

Speaker 17 why my own cousin could do this to me.

Speaker 18 And you said, What?

Speaker 12 You gotta be kidding.

Speaker 20 I said, That's like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, she mentioned homicide.

Speaker 15 Because all I remember hearing in this house was bang, bang, bang, bang.

Speaker 18 Everything clicked. You knew exactly what the case was at that point.

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 Candace 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.

Speaker 2 Comcast Business is celebrating the holidays by giving your business the $1,000 holiday bonus when you switch to a gig speed internet package.

Speaker 5 Just imagine the possibilities, like possibility number 192, new equipment for the new year.

Speaker 6 Switch to Comcast Business, designed for 100% reliability with business internet and wireless connect, plus advanced cybersecurity, and now get the $1,000 holiday bonus.

Speaker 3 Comcast Business Powering Possibilities.

Speaker 10 Instead 121425, new customers only with two-year agreement, requires qualifying the gig package, other restrictions apply.