Watching You | 1. Eyes On You

At first, Matt only had eyes for Nique. Then tracking her every move became his single-minded obsession. Binge all episodes of Watching You ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. Join The Binge’s free newsletter – Patreon.com/TheBinge From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Watching You is brought to you by Sony Music Entertainment. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:02Speaker 00

  Listen to all episodes of Watching You ad-free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page, or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge: Feed your true crime obsession.

• 0:21Speaker 01

  Two Girls, One Ghost. Two Girls, One Ghost is the most haunted podcast in America. Where each week, we dive into all things strange, spooky, and supernatural, and share stories of paranormal encounters from our community of listeners. Satisfy that spooky itch and entertain your inner witch with Two Girls, One Ghost. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, and check us out on YouTube at Two Girls, One Ghost. But be warned, side effects might include a haunting or two. Listen at your own risk.

• 0:50Speaker 02

  When you put your body in the hands of a surgeon, you assume your doctor will do you no harm.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  I'm looking at the surgery board for tomorrow, going, "These people are [BLEEP]."

• 1:03Speaker 02

  But when your doctor's in it just for the money, something absolutely insane happens. One doctor says, "Yeah, I did a lumbar fusion. My kickback was $25,000." And the other doctor's going, "Well, I only got $12,000 because I did a neck." This is a story about a massive web of fraud and deception. Dozens of doctors all over Southern California. A fraud worth over $1 billion.

• 1:30Speaker 04

  Patients were committing suicide, losing their homes, losing their marriages.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Dr. Billions, available now on The Binge. Search for Dr. Billions wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes all at once, ad-free.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Here's something I think about now and again. How hard it is to commit a crime today.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Because wherever you are, you're being watched. Cameras are everywhere. Cell phones, live footage, traffic cams, CCTV. A walk in any American city and you'll end up in the background of a dozen Instagram reels, TikTok tics. Everywhere, cameras are rolling. And if you've done something bad, somebody, somewhere, has you on camera, walking away from the scene of the crime.

• 2:40Speaker 00

  This is a reality that we accept in today's world. Outside our homes, all eyes are upon us. Behind the curtains and closed doors, however, it's our kingdom. To have property is, in a way, to have privacy.

• 2:56Speaker 00

  But what if someone saw you as their property? And those inescapable recording devices were in your home? What if your comings and goings became the subject of round-the-clock surveillance? Every moment, every laugh, every tear, the mundane, the profound. Every phone conversation.

• 3:22Speaker 00

  This is not some elaborate rumination or a scene from a spy movie. This is where our story begins, in a single-family home in the suburbs of Atlanta.

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Nikki Liley is missing. No one has seen her in a week. It's the peak of summer, July 2011. A muggy, soupy afternoon heat blanketed the suburban Atlanta neighborhood of Lawrenceville. An army of concerned friends, family, and coworkers are preparing a search party to find Nikki. Her sister Amy and her oldest daughter Alex are leading the efforts. The problem was, they were having trouble getting anyone to run a news story about Nikki. Something that happens to many families when a loved one goes missing. Amy even knew someone at the local station. She pleaded with them to run a story about her sister.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  And I said, can you see if you can get this story in? And he called me back and he said, Amy, I'm really, really trying. But at this point, the story is basically a grown woman in her right mind left her house willingly.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  Time was running out. She was beginning to fear the worst. Several days ago, flyers with Nikki's face and bright red lettering that read "missing" had been put up on the power poles in the neighborhood. Now, most of them were gone. And that's how Amy and Nikki's oldest daughter, Alex, found themselves in the parking lot of a Walmart. If Nikki's disappearance wasn't enough of a news story on its own, well, then she was going to make a news story. Because that's the kind of person Amy is. She would never give up on her sister.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  And sure enough, news vans showed up.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  It worked. The search party was enough of a story, even if her disappearance wasn't.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  We were all wearing red. That was the plan. We were all gonna wear red shirts so that it was like, you know, a loud, very visible color.

• 5:30Speaker 00

  The group would split up and cover the entire neighborhood around where Nikki lived. The Liley family home was located on the far end of a loop. The entrance to the neighborhood was surrounded by trees. Search parties rarely yield results, and Amy knew that. It wasn't the point. They wanted the cameras there because if they could get this story outside of their small suburban community, maybe the word would spread. Maybe someone would have seen her.

• 5:58Speaker 05

  I got this call from Sophia Choi from Channel 2 News. She said, you know, she wanted to speak with me and, you know, I'm like in the woods behind their house. It's raining and it's miserable. And I see the news truck pull up. And so I get out of the car and I go and I shake Sophia's hand and, "Nice to meet you. All of that."

• 6:24Speaker 05

  And then there's a blood curdling scream from the woods.

• 6:32Speaker 06

  I just saw a huge, big pile. It just looked, it looked like it was covering up something. So I just started kicking away at it and then saw her body and her hair.

• 6:47Speaker 07

  Family members pry out as a coworker.

• 6:49Speaker 08

  Man, we're gonna be roping this whole area off.

• 6:51Speaker 07

  Gwinnett County firefighters and police arrived just minutes after people looking for it. Nikki Liley make a shocking.

• 6:57Speaker 05

  I run through the woods and it's one of Nikki's coworkers, Allison.

• 7:04Speaker 05

  And she's clearly in a state. And she said, "It's her. We found her."

• 7:15Speaker 05

  I'm pretty sure it was her cameraman that caught the footage of me running out of the woods and hugging my stepmom and crying.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  Alex, Nikki's daughter, was on the far side of the neighborhood, near the family's home.

• 7:30Speaker 09

  My grandmother pulled up with her husband and she looked at me and she said, "They found a body." And I remember just completely blocking out, like I hit the pavement, blocked out, like completely on the ground.

• 7:43Speaker 00

  And when she came to, she took off, towards the woods, towards her mother.

• 7:49Speaker 09

  It was almost like I was not in my own body, if that makes sense. Like I just probably ran faster than I've ever ran in my entire life. And went up, the police were already there, crime scene already put up by the time I got up there. And I hit the crime scene tape and this clock like caught me mid-air. And I was like, "Let me go. Like, I need to know."

• 8:11Speaker 00

  This is the story of a family torn apart by jealousy, lies, and the need for control so shocking, it's hard to put into words.

• 8:25Speaker 08

  Low temper, more affection, attention, and effort into this marriage.

• 8:32Speaker 00

  A marriage that became defined by one man's sick obsession.

• 8:38Speaker 10

  That's not what I said and how I said it.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Inside the four walls of this family's story, so many people knew something was wrong, but nobody really knew until they heard it for themselves.

• 8:53Speaker 11

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

• 9:01Speaker 00

  From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to Watching You. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Episode one, Eyes on You.

• 9:18Speaker 12

  Ally here with cash when you need it. Like when your stylist just did the most. Fresh cut and zero cash. Don't be an asshole. Ally has 75,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide, so you're never without cash. Ally Bank Member FDIC.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Nikki, spelled N-I-Q-U-E, short for Dominique. She's the middle child of three girls. She was hard-nosed, beautiful, with strawberry blonde hair, the butt of the family jokes, but in on every one of them. She was also her younger sister Amy's favorite person in the world.

• 10:01Speaker 05

  So she had red hair. It was like, not like fire engine red, but it was like strawberry blonde, you know, orangey red hair. And she had that eighties dew where it was like, you know, kind of feathered, little bit, little bit mullet-ish, but you know, with the rollers and the, you know, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, like blue eyeliner. And she used to wear like a members only jacket. There's this one picture she had on like this like lavender sweater with like the puffy sleeves because like all the sleeves back then, either you had shoulder pads or you had to have like the ruched puffy sleeves. I thought she was the coolest person

• 10:45Speaker 05

  on the planet. All the 80s stuff that I love is all because of Nikki. Peter Gabriel and Def Leppard.

• 10:58Speaker 00

  Maybe it was because she was the middle child, but Nikki's life always seemed to be under the microscope of the family. Nikki got a scholarship to Vanderbilt. She was no slouch, but her mother and grandmother thought less of her when she gave up the scholarship to marry John, her high school boyfriend. He had a Pontiac Firebird at the age of 18.

• 11:22Speaker 00

  John and Nikki were madly in love. Young love, almost too young. Nikki found herself in her early 20s divorced.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  I just grew up hearing about how Nikki didn't have the sense, quote unquote, "God gave a mule."

• 11:39Speaker 00

  Then Nikki met Mike. He was much older, 15 years older. Amy remembered meeting him for the first time. She was a teenager and her big sister was still the coolest person she knew.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  He was working as like a maintenance man at an apartment complex and his name was Mike. Apparently, they were dating. I can remember her asking me, "Do you think he's too old for me?" In my head, I was like, "Oh, yeah, but I don't want to say that." It's like, that sounds mean. If there was ever anybody whose approval I wanted, it was hers. I always wanted Nikki's approval. I valued her opinion, I think, over most everybody else's. But at the same time, I didn't want my family saying the things about me that they had said about Nikki.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Nikki's relationship history matters because you have to understand where her head was at, what kind of pressures she felt from her family, and how those pressures could lead her to make decisions she would later regret.

• 12:47Speaker 05

  She and I actually had a running joke that she made mistakes so that I didn't have to.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  Nikki and her older man move in together. They had a property on the outskirts of Athens, a little town called Bogart. Rural, they had room for the dogs to run around. Nikki was getting a master's degree to become a teacher. They got married, and that's when they had their daughter Alex. That relationship was also short-lived. When Alex was just a few years old, they decided to get a divorce. By now, Amy is going to the University of Georgia in Athens, the closest big town.

• 13:30Speaker 05

  So here's Nikki and Alex, and I'm told she and Mike are getting a divorce. And she's staying at my grandmother's house. And it just so happened, like, oh, okay, you need a place to live. I also need a place to live. Let's find a place together.

• 13:52Speaker 00

  It was perhaps the most significant moment the two of them shared together as young adults. Amy, just starting out in life, and Nikki, starting over with little Alex in tow. And it felt in a way that the story of Nikki as the sister with poor judgment might have been coming true. She felt judged for living like, even though they were lifetimes apart from one another. He worked a blue collar job, and she was college educated, trying to make it as a professional. This history weighed heavy on Nikki as she entered into this new phase in her life. She wanted to make the right choices, because now she had a child to care for, too. Amy and Nikki's reunion was a new moment for them both.

• 14:37Speaker 05

  We found a little duplex that was on the east side of Athens. It was in a nice, quiet neighborhood. Wasn't super expensive or anything, but it was, it was clean. So we moved in together, and Alex was, I think, like, three or four at that time. We had so much fun putting that place together. That was like one of the best times I can remember having with her. You know, I mean, it was just, it was just this little bitty place. It was like a three bedroom, little duplex. When we first moved in, it was, it was winter. So it was like January. We had nothing. We had, I had, I had a TV, but we had no furniture.

• 15:19Speaker 05

  And I was working at a Longhorn Steakhouse, waiting tables. And she was working as a teacher. She said, I'm gonna go to the liquor store. You go to the grocery store and get the hot chocolate and the marshmallows. We had those old folding lawn chairs they used to have. There were like those cheapy aluminum things, plaid straps. So we had two of those. My TV was sitting on a card table. So we sat on these crappy lawn chairs and were like, you know, bundled up underneath blankets, drinking hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps and watching ER.

• 15:55Speaker 00

  Two sisters, there for each other yet again, conquering the world, ready for a brighter future.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  It's 1996. ER is on TV and Seinfeld and Friends. Bill Clinton is elected to a second term. And all across America, people are getting these circular packages in the mail with a CD enclosed that you could place in your personal computer and sign up for this new service called AOL.

• 16:39Speaker 05

  So this was right at the, really the birth of what we think of as the internet. So there was AOL. Everybody had like the discs and the, you know, you can all, every, I say AOL and everybody can hear it in their mind that, you've got mail. You can hear all of that.

• 16:58Speaker 00

  And Nikki was into it. She signed up and started using the internet to connect with people from all over the world.

• 17:04Speaker 05

  She was on AOL a lot. There were chat rooms. She was spending a bunch of time in a couple of particular chat rooms.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  She was also single, raising Alex, living with her sister, putting herself through grad school. It was a welcome diversion.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  So then along comes this guy calling himself LJ1NOnly, like one N only. The LJ apparently was ostensibly supposed to stand for LoJack because he was this guy, he was living in Connecticut at the time. And he talked about the fact that he had worked for LoJack, the vehicle, stolen vehicle recovery system. LJ1NOnly. And she calls herself Unique One2You.

• 17:59Speaker 00

  Of all the people Unique One2You met in the chatrooms, LJ1NOnly caught her attention. She'd stay up for hours chatting with him about everything. His real name was Matt, and he was going through a transition too.

• 18:15Speaker 05

  She starts telling me that she made this friend in a chatroom, and he was between jobs. And would it be okay with me if we gave him a place to crash for a little bit while, you know, until he got back on his feet? Was the way she framed it to me.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  Nikki didn't even know who he really was.

• 18:38Speaker 05

  That's what the internet affords you, is you can, you can pretend to be anything you want.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  And Nikki liked this guy. She went up to Connecticut to meet him. He was an acquired taste. Matt could be abrasive, loud. He'd suck up the air in the room.

• 18:59Speaker 05

  I think she did genuinely find a lot of, a lot of his humor funny. He had a very large, brash New York personality. He was always laughing about something.

• 19:15Speaker 00

  And like we were saying earlier, Nikki wanted for this new relationship to last. That kind of hopefulness can cause a person to gloss over red flags, miss warning signs. Here's an example. Amy said that the first time Matt and Nikki met, he jokingly refused to speak to her until she barked like a dog. She passed it off as a joke at the time, but it stayed with Amy. She didn't see a jocular flirtation. She saw this as a test. When he first came down to Athens, Amy was under the impression this guy just needed a place to crash. He'd maybe be around for a bit, but then head on his way.

• 19:57Speaker 05

  And that was very much not what happened.

• 20:00Speaker 00

  Matt picked on Amy like she was his little sister from the get go. After he moved all of his stuff into the apartment, at one point, he shoved Amy into an empty box.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  I am claustrophobic. Let me out of this box. And he like looked over at Nikki and was like, is she really? And Nikki's like, yeah. And so then he let me out.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Amy was bothered by Matt, but Nikki shrugged it off. She kind of liked his sarcastic vibe. He was a dick, but he was funny. More importantly, she'd been doubted about her relationships for years.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  She was protective of him because I think she was like, this was the choice she was making and she was protecting that choice.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Amy felt like Matt was taking over this new life they had together. And she saw a different person when Nikki wasn't around.

• 20:56Speaker 05

  Well, at the time, we all smoked, including me. At one point, I, I had run out of cigarettes. And so I asked him, can I bum a cigarette? He said, notably when she was in the room, oh yeah, you don't even need to ask. From then on, if I ran out of cigarettes, I'd just go get another pack from the carton. Dude said, you don't need to ask. Well, then, months later, when I'm challenging him, she's stealing my cigarettes. It was, I'm stealing the cigarettes. But that was like my first hint that he was really super manipulative.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  It might not seem like that big of a deal. And in a way, it wasn't. Who cares whether Matt actually wanted to share his cigarettes? But what Amy noticed in that situation was someone who changed his story whenever it served his purpose. And so he went from generous roommate to accusing Amy of stealing.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  The sense I have from this story and stories like it about Matt was that at first, he just seemed annoying, a little bit too much, put on, whatever you want to call it. But he knew how to drive a wedge between people.

• 22:11Speaker 05

  He was this person that was standing in front of me and frankly, standing between me and my sister.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Matt stayed with Amy and Nikki and her daughter for six months. During that time, he was mostly at the house. And while he claimed to be looking for a job, Amy says she never really saw him working. Then Nikki got an offer she couldn't refuse, a new job opportunity to work in the accounting and finance team for a big company in Oklahoma. The money was really good, and it was a step up for her career-wise.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  At one point, I remember having an argument with her, and I remember thinking, "Oh, dear God, please don't take this guy with you."

• 22:58Speaker 00

  But she would take him with her.

• 23:09Speaker 03

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• 23:33Speaker 03

  Still haven't started? Hey, better late than ever. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pickup fees may apply.

• 23:39Speaker 12

  Ally here with cash when you need it. Like when your stylist just did the most. Fresh cut and zero cash. Don't be an asshole. Ally has 75,000 fee-free ATMs nationwide, so you're never without cash. Ally Bank Member FDIC.

• 23:59Speaker 00

  Alex was around five when the family picked up and left Athens. Nikki had started to gain more opportunities, working in finance and accounting for large companies. It was well-paying work with plenty of room to grow. When they arrived at their new home in Edmund, there was a surprising delivery at the door.

• 24:17Speaker 09

  One of my favorite memories, we moved to Oklahoma. This truck drives by and dumps a puppy off the truck. And the puppy came just running into the garage into my lap. And I just was like, "Mom, please let me keep it, please let me keep it." And she's looking at me like, "We can't take a dog. We just moved to Oklahoma or like, starting this whole new life." And I was like, "Nope, its name is Molly and it's mine." And she just was like, "All right, we're gonna figure this out." Just looked at me like, "You need this, we're gonna figure this out." And we did, we kept her.

• 24:48Speaker 00

  Alex is now in her 30s. Some say she takes after her dad. Long, dark hair, the same nose and brow line, not as fair as her mother. They were always incredibly close.

• 25:00Speaker 09

  She was the person that always knew how to say it, when to say it. And sometimes I'd get mad that I just didn't pass it on. Spunky, very spunky. She was probably 90 pounds soaking wet, you know, red hair. Her body was covered in freckles, like, just covered in freckles. She was really witty, really smart. You know, she always had a response for anything.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  She was the kind of person you'd feel comfortable telling anything to.

• 25:30Speaker 09

  Like even when we're talking about life problems, I'm like, "What would Mom say? I can't find it, I can't find it." Like, where is that Nikki response? That's the first person I told that I lost my virginity at 16. I went straight to my mom. I didn't go to my best friend, I went straight to my mom. And then she took me to a random bathroom and made me take a pregnancy test. I didn't feel fear of like, her punishing me for it or giving me some lecture. She showed genuine interest of like, my safety and my emotional safety with having sex for the first time. Like, that was the person you could tell that stuff to.

• 26:06Speaker 00

  By the time the family had moved to Oklahoma, Matt wasn't a stranger anymore. He was kind of her stepdad.

• 26:17Speaker 00

  Alex had already been through a lot when they got to Oklahoma, and Nikki knew that. She was clearly trying to move her young family in the direction of stability, but had to tussle with some key complications.

• 26:29Speaker 09

  There was a few times where she did leave me alone with him. He's very bully-ish. He would think it was funny to sit on me, and I was four years old. Now, Matt is a 6'4", 250 maybe. I mean, I don't know, he's pretty big, big guy. And I'm a four-year-old, so, you know, 35, 40-pound four-year-old. He would think it was funny to sit on me, to the point where I felt like I was suffocating, and he thought it was funny.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  It was confusing. What was with this guy?

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Alex was wary of him, and Nikki was trying to keep the peace, to hold a new relationship together with a blended family, and with a partner who kept encroaching on the boundaries, the people around him, her people. Alex now divided her time between Nikki and her dad, who was back in Athens, a 14-hour drive away.

• 27:22Speaker 09

  So, not great memories. I really don't have any positives of Oklahoma. I've kind of just buried them all away.

• 27:31Speaker 00

  Still, on some level, there was a childish antagonism to Matt's pranks. He could pass them off as harmless. Nikki was gone frequently for work, so couldn't speak to what she'd never seen happen. Alex's grandparents were concerned, too, but it was hard to nail down what to do about it. Is he just obnoxious?

• 27:52Speaker 09

  I would say our grandparents kind of had that foggy view of him, of like, trying to figure out, is he dangerous, not dangerous? Like, he's just annoying? But they also were trying to respect, like, okay, this is the man our daughter chose.

• 28:06Speaker 00

  We reached out to Matt Liley to get his comment, but never heard back. Nikki and Matt started fighting now as well, a lot.

• 28:17Speaker 13

  How do I feel? I feel that it's either Alex or me.

• 28:23Speaker 08

  Alex is not a problem.

• 28:27Speaker 09

  I know they fought about me. And so if my mom even remotely had to communicate with my dad, it was a problem. I mean, a big problem. Fights would ensue, and it got to a point where my parents couldn't communicate other than through me.

• 28:44Speaker 00

  It seemed that one of the key sticking points for Matt was that he didn't feel like Alex respected him, that perhaps she never would, seeing as he wasn't her biological dad. Matt wanted kids of his own with Nikki. So if he wasn't working, and he didn't really seem to be spending quality time with Alex, what was Matt doing?

• 29:17Speaker 13

  This is your recorder. It's on right now. I'm gonna make the first file.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  From the time Nikki first met Matt, he'd expressed an interest in security and security systems. Remember his AOL screen handle? LoJack1andonly?

• 29:34Speaker 13

  There's eight hours of recording. Obviously, you want to keep it to a minimum so you don't have too much to go through. All you do is, it's a spring-loaded switch that turns it on.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Well, that idea of being a sort of security professional continued to evolve in the years since he and Nikki met. Matt wanted to start his own private security technology business, where he would outfit customers and companies with security surveillance systems.

• 30:00Speaker 13

  As soon as it turns on, wait for the main screen to come up. Record, you're recording. If you hit record again while it's recording, it pauses. If you hit stop, it stops that recording and then goes to the next file.

• 30:13Speaker 00

  Without this equipment, he had nothing. And to outfit it for customers, he needed to use it. It's the reason so much of their lives was caught on tape, recordings that eventually we gained access to by the Gwinnett County Police Department. And that's how he and Nikki began to purchase large amounts of surveillance equipment. Which meant that, over time, the Liley house became stuffed with state-of-the-art cameras and recording gear. And while Matt was fiddling with his new security apparatus, Nikki was moving up in her career. She'd gotten an opportunity to take a bigger role at a company based out of a small town in Mississippi. So once again, the family found themselves on the move.

• 30:57Speaker 00

  Except this time, with one key difference. Nikki was pregnant with Matt's baby.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  In the summer of 2011, Nikki had gone missing. The local news had caught a member of the party running out of the woods screaming. The cops arrived and immediately made their way over to Nikki and Matt's house. What they saw took them by surprise. Something they'd never, ever seen in a family home. It was a kind of control room. Inside were monitors, one of them a tic-tac-toe board of multiple video feeds covering both the inside and outside of the house. The room itself was stuffed with networking equipment, power supplies, and servers. That power bill alone must be crazy.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  This wasn't just a hobbyist's camera setup. This looked like a war room. Investigators didn't have any idea what to make of it. But they still had one question on their minds. What happened to Nikki? What they found that day wouldn't answer that question. But it would open a shocking and eerie portal into the private lives of the Liley family.

• 32:23Speaker 14

  I don't think that it's a fair thing if I'm spending parental time on all three children.

• 32:32Speaker 00

  Where just as adults are arguing, the kids pop in to say goodnight.

• 32:37Speaker 14

  Goodnight.

• 32:39Speaker 00

  Where Matt seems to be in a perpetual struggle for control.

• 32:44Speaker 13

  We have a responsibility for a productive conversation.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  And Nikki is desperately trying to hold her family together, unaware of the danger that placed her in.

• 32:55Speaker 08

  I am happy. Let me share that happiness with you.

• 32:59Speaker 00

  But the center of the Liley family would not hold.

• 33:03Speaker 08

  What the fuck, Matt? You can't trust me? I'm supposed to live where my life right around Warner, where it reporter is. What's now to be arranged? Well, fuck that all herself.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  And the gradual dissolution of a marriage that when it did fall apart, would take everyone down with it.

• 33:22Speaker 14

  Do I have regrets? Yes, lots of them. Am I sad that I can't talk to my husband about the fact that I'm sad? Yes.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  A real-life Truman Show, and recordings, footage that would reveal a twisted knot of insecurities, ego, and obsession.

• 33:42Speaker 13

  Incidentally, you forget to say you love me.

• 33:44Speaker 14

  It's because you make me feel guilty.

• 33:48Speaker 14

  I told you why. Every minute I spend doing something I want to do or chose to do, if it wasn't with you or for you, I am forced and made to feel guilty for it. It's pointed out to me in logs, it's pointed out to me in phone covers, in phone records, it's pointed out to me on recorders.

• 34:09Speaker 00

  And one family's desperate attempt to escape this dark bubble.

• 34:16Speaker 08

  So, hold your hands where a real life person should have been paired to the fucking wall.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Next time on Watching You. Matt wants his stepdaughter Alex out of their lives, and she has a realization.

• 34:32Speaker 09

  This man is dangerous.

• 34:35Speaker 00

  So Alex made herself a promise.

• 34:38Speaker 09

  I had to grow up real fast. I had to go, crap, I have to protect my mom.

• 35:01Speaker 00

  Watching You is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It's hosted and reported by me, Jonathan Hirsch. Jason Hoke of Wavelength Media is our lead producer and co-reported the series with me. Catherine St. Louis is our story editor. 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 Manokshi Krishnan. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rossek, 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.

• 36:06Speaker 15

  You're smart, right? You should get paid up to two days early. With Ally's early direct deposit, you can better manage your funds and have money for when life is actually happening. So go ahead, make Wednesday the new Friday, level up Thursday's date night, and be ready when those tickets go on sale Friday. Ally, banking built for life today. Ally Bank, member FDIC.