Watching You | 2. Danger Signs

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Hey, y'all, wanted to let you know verbal abuse and domestic violence are a part of this story. It's a cautionary tale to listen to with caution.

Leaving Georgia meant that the Liley family was on their own. They were away from the prying eyes of Nikki's sister Amy and her parents.
Matt's problems were now out in the open.

For one thing, he didn't see Alex as his own daughter. He wanted a child of his flesh and blood.
When Nikki got pregnant and they moved to Mississippi, Matt was elated.

Finally, he would have the family he wanted. He'd no longer be an outsider.

But that, as you may have surmised, was not enough for him.

Because Matt's obsessive need to surveil every aspect of the lives of the people he was closest to was taking over. Especially as the relationship between Matt and Alex only seemed to get worse.

Matt resented that Alex was a priority for Nikki more than him or their marriage.

One of their fights unraveled in front of the whole family when he demanded Nikki stop helping her little kid blow her nose. Mom was pregnant with Amanda

and there was a lot of fighting in Mississippi. There was a particular memory that is like burned in my brain.

Alex was around six years old when they moved to central Mississippi, Cosciasco. It's a tiny blip of a town, just about 7,000 people.

The family's new home was near downtown, if you want to call it downtown, a small strip of businesses, homes packed neatly next to one another.

It's one of my least favorite memories, but they had gotten into some huge fight about what I don't know.

Most of their fights, I couldn't tell you what they were particularly about, other than they were just screaming and fighting.

They got into it so much so that, I mean, she was like nine months pregnant.

A 90-pound woman carrying like a nine-pound baby. She picked me up on her hip.
And she punched the glass. It was one of those doors.
The top half of the door was glass panes.

She punched it with her fist, punched the window out, and screamed help. Blood running down her hands, glass everywhere.
He took her pregnant with me on her hip.

He shoved us and we both went flying on the floor because he didn't want her causing a scene with neighbors.

You were close enough to your neighbors that you could hear them if they raised their voice or... They could hear you.
You could hear somebody screaming.

Alex and her mom hit the the floor.

And I remember in that moment, one of them, that was one of the like pivotal moments for me that this man is dangerous.

He was willing to push his pregnant wife and her daughter on the ground, on the floor, just to keep from anyone knowing what was going on.

So I think for the rest of my life, it was like, I will never trust you. I will never...

I will always have eyes on you.

The arguments were louder, more intense. Alex was living in a war zone.
You know, they say that children who are exposed to domestic violence have brains like people who have seen military combat.

And Alex realized quickly that her mother was her responsibility. I had to grow up real fast.
I had to go, crap, I have to protect my mom.

From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to watching you. I'm Jonathan Hirsch.

Episode 2.

Danger Signs.

Nikki and Matt's first child, Amanda, was born after they'd arrived in Mississippi. And despite a harrowing birth, she was a ray of hope for Nikki and that.

The promise of a better life.

Nikki was thriving in her new job and as a result, she wasn't around very much.

She would

drive to the airport Sunday night, get back Friday night, spend the weekend, and then the next Sunday night, she's gone again for a week traveling for work. So

it was pretty much always

just us and our dad.

Amanda takes after her mom. Same fair complexion, reddish reddish blonde hair.
She was Alex's baby dog, her little sister. Despite being on the road often, Nikki made time for Amanda.

I played basketball starting like first, second grade-ish. Like every game, she was the loudest one in the stands.
She was standing and cheering and yelling and like

that continued. Every single game she was always there.
On the weeknights when Nikki was away, she'd check in. She would still call and we'd talk on the phone.
How's school? What are you doing?

Did you do your homework? Like, she'd help us with homework over the phone. So I was bullied a lot in school.
I was the smaller kid. I was smarter.
I was in the gifted program.

Our mom growing up, she was the same way. She was the small, quiet, flat-chested girl.
And she was like my rock in like being able to talk to her and like her genuinely understanding.

the pain I was feeling. And all the while, Nikki is putting food on the table.
Matt still doesn't have a job, but to the outside world, he's the stay-at-home dad.

He did, however, continue to stockpile equipment. Enough to power a small security business.
A business that didn't seem to be making any money. And what's more, Nikki was bankrolling the whole thing.

Tens of thousands of dollars of equipment. That,

and strange things happen at the house when Matt is left in charge.

Strange things that Alex would notice. But Amanda was younger.
She didn't know anything else. Like Matt's penchant for chasing kids around with a chainsaw? Something he thought was funny.

I don't think I ever really thought about it. Like, I think the, I don't even remember the first time it ever happened because it was kind of just one of those things of he did it very often.

Think about that. Running after his kids with with a live blade was just another Tuesday.

It wasn't like, oh, he did it once and never again. It was probably six, seven, eight times he's chased us around the house with chainsaw.
And it was one of those things where like

it almost became normal.

You didn't necessarily think it was wrong at the time.

And like, oh, this is just how things are. And if my dad thinks this is funny, then this must actually be funny even though i'm scared

the best thing and the worst thing about children is that they can get used to anything they adjust start to tell themselves it must be normal because this is my dad

a few years after amanda was born her sister came the third daughter of nikki rebecca

Rebecca is in her early 20s now, and all three of Nikki's daughters bear a striking resemblance to her in different ways. But you can no doubt see it with Rebecca.

She's got thick blonde curls and bright blue eyes. She's louder and in many ways the most expressive of Nikki's girls.
She lives in Virginia now.

Her childhood was of course different than that of her older sisters. She didn't have that heavy history with Matt that Alex did.

She remembers pool parties with neighborhood kids, riding bikes around the cul-de-sac.

I remember like as I got older and hearing them argue, seeing them argue, it became normal. That was what parents did.
They fought and they threw things and they screamed and that was normal.

And then it was like they were fine afterward.

And often the girls got roped into their arguments. He would bring us into it.
I can't remember specifics, but yeah, he would pull us into the arguments all the time. And like it would be against her.

Like it would be like him using us against her.

Against Nikki, that is.

Even Rebecca, the baby of the family, didn't escape her father's intense scrutiny. As I got older and he started to punish me more for like just random things.

And I remember he would make me stand in the corner with my face facing the corner for hours. At least like two, three hours.
I would have to be like standing facing the corner.

And so I learned I could choose my corner. And so I chose the corner by my mom's desk because she would keep an eye on him and would like let me know when he was coming.

And I could run back to the corner quickly and she would like let me go sit down and like eat something and like just sit down because I'm standing in a corner for hours.

Nikki clearly wasn't fully behind Matt's parenting methods. Amanda knew that.
Even when their friends came over, Matt didn't check himself. He took out his chainsaw.

I've only ever had one slumber party at our house. My dad did that.

It's one of those things kind of like where at the time, like, oh, a big group of girls over have it, like, we're screaming and running, like, oh, this is funny.

And then I never had friends over again.

And like, looking back, it's probably, oh, they've told their parents that this man chased around the house with the chainsaw and now they don't want them at that house anymore.

But this wasn't on Amanda's mind at the time. As far as she knew, her dad's behavior wasn't off and he wasn't a threat to her.
He was the one who was always home, taking care of her.

Even the computer stuff, she thought it was kind of cool.

I would build computers with him from like, here's the case, here's the motherboard, here's the power supply, here's the CPU, and here's like how you install everything and set it up.

And the cameras, the growing surveillance system around the house?

It was definitely something that like felt normal to me. Growing up with it, it slowly, like, it was probably

five over the course of like five years of like building up cameras until it was what it was. I always thought it was cool.
He'd call us into his office and be like, oh, hey, look at this.

There was a deer on the front porch last night. Come look at this.
Or hey, there's a raccoon in the driveway. Amanda also understands that her dad's computer room is completely off limits.

With baby sister Rebecca now exploring the house, Amanda has to keep her out of trouble. Rebecca kept running into our dad's office and like we weren't allowed in there.

There's computer stuff, all of that.

And in my mind, to stop a two-year-old from going anywhere, just shut the door.

And so I was running to get ahead of Rebecca to close the door and she had put her fingers like in the, like where the hinges are. And so when I slammed the door shut, her fingers were there.

I ran and hid in the linen closet because I thought I was going to get in trouble. Now they have to do a manhunt to find me because I'm hiding.

Computers aren't the only thing Matt keeps in the house. Amanda remembers also a gun.

It was a.40 caliber revolver. It was named Baby.

Baby.

By now, Nikki was seeing less and less of her family back in Georgia. Nikki never talked to me about that.
There were a lot of things in her past that were a complete surprise to me.

That's Doug Chatham, Nikki's dad. This was a recorded conversation from after the night Nikki went missing.

He said when her relationships hadn't worked out before, he didn't know about it until afterwards.

She kept things pretty close to herself.

I don't think she felt like she could talk to any of the members of

the family because she

would be admitting a failure. Well, I think she was judging herself, but I would hope that she would have felt that she could come to me with anything, but apparently she never felt that way.

He said that they were aware that the two would fight and that Matt would be controlling. But that was about it.
Amy and Nikki remained in close contact, though.

She went to visit her when they moved away.

So I go out there and I'm not, I mean, they have, they've set up this lovely house. She had this big, like blue sectional sofa.

And I was like, all right, you guys are doing okay.

And I remember her and Matt having all these fights. Like the whole time I was there.
And they're just fighting.

And I remember thinking, oh, good. She finally, now she's going to see it.
Right. She's going to see it.
And he's going to be gone.

When Amy and Matt and Nikki all lived together in Athens, she said her sister had on rose-colored glasses when it came to Matt. She didn't see the worst of him, nor did it seem that she wanted to.

And now that Amy wasn't there to pick on, Alex, this little girl, became his target.

It was always Alex.

The problems in the Liley household always seemed to revolve around Matt's relationship with his stepdaughter, Alex.

Nikki would later regret that she didn't step in and tell Matt he didn't need to be the disciplinarian when she was gone. But he had taken that on, became the rule setter, and, well,

Alex did not take it well.

Matt felt like she didn't respect him, that Nikki gave her special treatment. She was, in all aspects, in his way.

And he had no qualms in taking the matter into his own hands.

One of my first boyfriends, he started like texting him weird crap and his mom got a hold of it and that relationship ended. As a 14-year-old with her first little boyfriend, it was very traumatizing.

Like, oh my gosh, I don't want to go to school. I want to crawl in a hole because I just got broken up with because you just sent him like ridiculously inappropriate stuff.

And it wasn't like this was the first situation Matt muscled muscled his way into with the girls.

So I mean it just like stuff like that would happen where you would like get a friend and then you would think you were safe to like have them around your family and then suddenly no

friends just stopped coming over there and

yeah

I think you've learned to like go okay if I'm gonna have friends they need to be at their house away from my house.

But most bizarre in all of the strife in the Liley house was that it never really went away. In fact, so much of it would be there forever.
Recorded.

You asked me why I was unhappy. The reason I'm unhappy is because I am still sitting here.

Even Matt and Nikki's fights were recorded.

And I'm still sitting in the same unhappy position.

I'm nowhere.

I'm nowhere different.

So efforts are not, well me or not.

They didn't do anything to change anything, did they?

And these conversations reveal something so important about Nikki's story. A map of a relationship's descent into chaos.
A cautionary tale that you must listen to with caution.

These recordings are not easy to hear.

We can't move forward until the Alex situation is arrived.

You can't try because you're so upset about Alex.

Are you going to put an effort into this marriage? I already am.

If I'm claiming Alex is such a problem,

and obviously you're claiming Alex has such a problem.

You think it's going to help our marriage and our situation to force her down my throat and give me alpha matos.

This was more than a couple struggling behind closed doors. This was Nikki's desperate attempt to appease Matt, to find any solution that would just calm him down.

I would say to Nikki, like, I can't believe that you're okay with him treating her this way.

And at one point, she was considering also like taking another job, but it would have meant moving again.

And she said, Well,

if I did that,

I would have to send Alex to live with her dad because I can't do that to Alex again. And I said, There's your answer.
Like, why is this even a question?

It was more than a question. Nikki was prepared to do it.
She and Matt even went to see an attorney to talk about it.

When they came in together,

I was really,

I was shocked by the way he treated her. This is Suzanne Laird, an attorney that Nikki and Matt had hired to discuss the transfer of custody of Alex from Nikki back to her father.

He was so controlling. He wouldn't even let her speak.

I can't explain it, but you know, it was a very bad feeling I had.

But I know that after she left my office and she went home, I was so concerned that I got on the

on the phone and called her back and asked her if she was being abused in her marriage.

She told me no.

Most of them do.

Nikki had to work around Matt just to support her daughter in the way most parents want to support their kids. And at one point, Nikki wanted to surprise her with a car for her 16th birthday.

Her dad had the same idea.

And before she could get around to buying her daughter the car, Alex's dad beat her to it.

They didn't communicate. I look back and I'm like, wow, I cannot imagine how heartbreaking that was for her.

And Nikki was torn up about it. That's true.
She wanted to do something nice for her daughter. And when the car had already been purchased, she called up a friend of hers to vent about her situation.

He said, Well, what are y'all going to do about all that car? And I said, Well, Matt doesn't think it's a good idea right now. That's all I said.

Well, that means I'm bad-mouthing him to his dad and made him out through the building.

I'm like, All I said was, you didn't think it was a good idea right now. He said, I lied.

It's like that was everything. everything.

Turns out Nikki did try to buy that car for Alex. She was searching online and Matt walked by her computer.
And I told it I'm subscribed because I just, you know, I don't want to hear his bullshit.

You know what? I don't want to hear his bullshit about I'm going behind your back to buy her a car. I just don't want to hear it.

Well, he launched into a tirade, the likes of which he's never seen, called me a cuss, a lying piece of shit, blow the live rename you can make drunk in the bush.

I let him right away.

And I said, you know what, Matt? I'm sorry to go that way.

I said, I'm not lying to you. I didn't go out and buy her and saw her behind her back.

Matt didn't trust her to be honest with him. She knew he kept a watchful eye over her relationship with Alex.
What she didn't know was that he was watching everything,

not just the deers in the backyard. He was watching her.
He was listening to the phone call you just heard, recording them without her knowing.

Matt and Nikki decide to leave Mississippi. They move back to Georgia, in the suburbs near Atlanta.
Matt was still recording everything outside of the house, sometimes inside too.

It got to the point where Nikki and the girls really didn't know when they were being recorded and when they were not.

He's always had like computers per se, but I don't remember the extensiveness until we got to Lawrenceville.

If you were to ask him, he would tell you that he was testing these security systems on our house.

There was probably 16 or more on the outside. Like every corner of the house was covered.
They did record, so you could go back and look at them.

There was one in the living room, so if you were sitting on the couch, you were being recorded or watched. So if you were watching TV, it was really uncomfortable.

There was even one camera trained on a fridge. We had a fridge in the basement where they would, like, we used to go to Sam's every month and do the like giant spend $2,000 at Sam's kind of family.

We'd have fridge downstairs that was stocked with the sodas and the beers and all the things. So I would sneak down there and get cokes.

And I would get busted because there was a camera down there watching me go down and get a coke.

And for that, she'd get punished. Oh yeah, I'd get my phone taken away for getting a coke.

It appeared as though the subject of Matt's frustration and surveillance always seemed to be the things he couldn't control about Nikki.

Her ex, her child.

I know they fought about.

Me.

If Nikki even tried to reach out to her ex-husband, Matt would fly into a rage.

It got to a point where my parents couldn't communicate other than through me.

Because he, I mean, he tracked everything she did. He

read every text message or call or whatever. Anything she did, he tracked.

Here I sit again.

Another fight, hundreds of fights later. And how do I feel? I feel that

it's either Alex or me.

You're telling me

you cannot be happy without Alex. You can't be happy unless this family is together with Alex.
Matt didn't just see Alex as a problem in their marriage. He saw her as the problem.

But clearly, there was a lot more going on.

I asked for

low temper,

more affection, attention, and effort into this marriage. I've asked for me five or six things,

all of which you told me comes naturally. I deserve them.

It's something that comes natural in a man. Should come natural in a man.
That I shouldn't even have to ask for.

How many days, just in the past two weeks alone, have you disengaged and taken off in this marriage? Have you not been, okay?

Have you not been my great goodness? Maybe not disengaged. I'm starting.
This conversation

over.

I think

for

me

as a 13, 14 year old being very dramatic in the sense of, mom, what the hell are you doing? Get rid of this guy. He's doing this.
He's done this to me. Like, hello.

And this is what is so puzzling, frustrating. about the case of Dominique Liley.
Was the conversation really over?

Did anybody in this family know when to call it quits before things started to get really dark?

It's impossible to second-guess them.

And yet, what's so arresting about these recordings is that you can hear Nikki struggling to draw a line with Matt, and Matt's crossing that line over and over again.

I tried to shift gears on Tuesday,

not asking you to do anything.

I was simply asking you to see me differently.

I knew you saw me in strike mode and were expecting something from me.

And all I wanted to ask from you

was for you to see me differently.

Let it go. You didn't.
Oh, yes, I did. Please do not tell me I did.
No, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't tell me I didn't let it go. I know for a fact though.
For her, she was, one, there was a level of fear. There's a level of

like, I think she was genuinely scared of him to an extent. Um, and

balancing that between trying to, like, appear normal. I don't, I can't go through another divorce.

Listen to how bad it got.

Lower your voice. Shut up and listen.
No, I got your voice. You're not going to tell me what I did.
I got it on tape. On tape in the car? What you did to me in the car? I got it on tape.

What have you got on tape?

She was the only one bringing in money into the house. She was keeping all four walls up, and

he sat on a couch monitoring his 15 security cameras. I look back on it, and it wasn't rebellion.
It was protection.

Like the way that I look at it now as an adult is it's how I protected myself and probably why I'm alive.

In this next recording, I'm not sure, but it sounds like Matt struck Nikki.

That's not what I said and how I said it. And don't take my words out of context.

When we got in that goddamn car, you're fucking goddamn it. God damn it.
God damn it. God damn it.
God damn it. God damn it.
God fucking damn it. Lower your voice.

I am not going to sit here and listen to this shit.

You're driving me fucking nuts.

Welcome to my world. You killed me a long time ago.

Next time on watching you, Nikki goes missing.

And Matt does something unexpected.

Hey.

How are you? My good.

What's going on? I'm filing for the voice.

I'm not waiting around.

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Watching You is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It's hosted and reported by me, Jonathan Hirsch.

Jason Hoke of Waveland Media is our lead producer and co-reported the series with me. Katherine St.
Louis is our story editor. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Catherine St.

Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville.
We use music from Epidemic Sound and APM. Our fact-checker is Naomi Barr.

Our production managers are Tamika Balance-Kalasny and Sammy Allison. Our lawyer is Minakshi Krishnan.
Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rosick, Jamie Myers, and the whole team at Sony Podcasts.

If you're enjoying the podcast, please rate and leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening.