Pod Insights The Binge Cases: Doctor Billions Watching You | 4. Caught on Tape About this episode Before any charges could be brought, investigators had to get through tens of thousands of recordings. What they didn’t find would lead to a breakthrough.
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
Transcript 5,692 words · 25 speakers
0:02 Speaker 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.
0:19 Speaker 01 Detectives arrive at Juliana Redding's house in Santa Monica, California.
0:23 Speaker 00 There was no pulse.
0:24 Speaker 02 We knew that it wasn't an accident.
0:27 Speaker 01 An alleged murder-for-hire fraud to the tune of $150 million.
0:33 Speaker 03 I need to see the doctor, and I need to see the doctor right frickin' now.
0:37 Speaker 01 Do what he says, or else. From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Doctor's Orders, available now on The Binge. Search for Doctor's Orders wherever you get your podcasts to start listening today.
0:51 Speaker 04 I haven't seen my son since 2012.
0:54 Speaker 05 This is Deborah Tice. The disappearance of her son, Austin, is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world.
1:01 Speaker 06 What do you want from me?
1:02 Speaker 05 I just have the mystery.
1:04 Speaker 07 I know that my son is somewhere alive.
1:07 Speaker 05 Listen to Where Is Austin Tice from NPR's Embedded and BBC Radio 4, on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:23 Speaker 00 Hey, y'all. Wanted to let you know verbal abuse and domestic violence are a part of the story. It's a cautionary tale to listen to with caution.
1:36 Speaker 00 Friday night into Saturday morning, and Nikki goes missing. A whole week passes where no one knows where she is. During that week, her husband Matt recorded a bunch of his own phone calls. He reached out to Nikki's dentist to ask if she called the office. He called Nikki's father to complain that Amy wasn't keeping him in the loop on how the missing posters should look. And when a doctor's office called and asked for Nikki, Matt sort of overshared.
2:08 Speaker 08 My name is Matt. I am her husband. Okay. She's incapacitated right now. We don't know where she is. All right. I'm sorry about that.
2:15 Speaker 00 But one fiery call stood out from the many he recorded that week. Matt called his older brother, Paul Liley.
2:24 Speaker 08 The police were just here. What happened? Apparently, her family has not only been calling the police, but have been secretly meeting with the police about me and foul play. Nobody found? No, of course not.
2:41 Speaker 00 Paul promised to come stay as soon as possible, to help give his brother reinforcements.
2:47 Speaker 08 Um, the family has now started a war.
2:50 Speaker 00 Matt means Nikki's family.
2:53 Speaker 08 Well, you have your big brother who's coming to war. Paul, I want to bury the bitch.
3:00 Speaker 08 Matthew? I want to bury the whole fucking family. Not say anything on the phone. I'm recording. I'm not worried. I'm not saying anything stupid. I want to go to war with them and meet them head on.
3:11 Speaker 00 By Monday, law enforcement heard about her disappearance. Nikki's family had contacted the police department, and they, naturally, had called her husband, Matt.
3:21 Speaker 09 Well, we did an interview with him on Monday, just over the phone. You know, two young kids at home, she leaves, leaves her phone behind, her purse, all her belongings. And, you know, he made it seem that she just had maybe some kind of a break with reality or something.
3:36 Speaker 00 Richter wasn't buying it.
3:38 Speaker 09 She would never leave. Two days now, you're into it. No phone.
3:44 Speaker 00 Something else stood out, too.
3:47 Speaker 09 He also mentions in that first recorded interview over the phone that they had an argument.
3:53 Speaker 00 Matt told cops he'd wanted to have sex. He'd expected it because it was date night.
4:00 Speaker 09 If she didn't want to, and we're fighting, and... Then, of course, three or four hours later, now she's missing. And he can't tell us when she left.
4:11 Speaker 00 After her body was found, some people in Nikki's circle immediately suspected Matt was responsible.
4:17 Speaker 10 I just was like, I'm not stupid. Like, I know what this is.
4:22 Speaker 10 He did it.
4:25 Speaker 11 There was a lot of animosity already growing between Nikki's family members and then Matt and his kind of side of the family.
4:34 Speaker 00 That's Lisa Jones, the DA who happened to be there when they found her body. In fact, when Nikki was missing, her mother, Harriet Garrett, had apparently confronted her son-in-law. Here's Matt complaining about her accusation.
4:47 Speaker 08 Harriet thinks I killed her daughter.
4:50 Speaker 02 What?
4:51 Speaker 08 Harriet said, "I think you killed my daughter, and you were going to rot in hell, and I'm gonna do whatever I can to come after you."
4:57 Speaker 02 All right, all right. We need to call-
4:59 Speaker 08 This is fucking bullshit.
5:00 Speaker 00 It's one thing to believe, even to know in your heart, who the killer is. It's another thing to investigate that crime, to prosecute the assailant. And the medical examiner of the Gwinnett County PD quickly realized that the true cause of Nikki's death might be harder to determine than it seemed. Lisa Jones, who was working at the DA's office at the time, laid out why.
5:24 Speaker 11 It would have been different if Nikki had been dumped on one day, and you find her six days later, and the temperatures were in the 30s. But it was July in Atlanta.
5:35 Speaker 00 The summer heat, the position of the body, worked against investigators.
5:40 Speaker 11 And so that prevented the medical examiner from being able to really give a definitive cause of death. So she had to rule the death as undetermined, because with the body being faced down, there was a lot of pooling of blood, because obviously the weight of your body and your face is faced down. I mean, it goes to your eyes, it goes to wherever.
5:58 Speaker 00 There was no gunshot, no blunt force trauma, but beyond that, her death remained something of a mystery.
6:05 Speaker 11 My layman's understanding of it was, because of that, you couldn't really see pettica in her eyes that you look for when somebody's been strangled.
6:15 Speaker 00 But no one in law enforcement doubted for a moment that this was homicide.
6:23 Speaker 11 It's very rare that anybody walks down their streets in their neighborhood naked. Okay, so she's nude. That's a huge indicator that she didn't get that way willingly or didn't go there willingly. The bottoms of her feet were absolutely clean. So she didn't walk herself there. I remember this very distinctly is that one of the things that Nikki's sister said was that Amy and Nikki, and I think the girls maybe had gone to get their nails done, like right before this had happened, looking at the body itself. Her nails were pristine and they had just like they'd been painted. And so there wasn't like a bunch of dirt where she was clawing or anything like that.
7:00 Speaker 00 All of this led police investigators to focus their attention on Nikki and Matt's home and the hours leading up to when she left. Doug Chatham, Nikki's dad, told the police what Matt had told him.
7:13 Speaker 06 He said that they had had a fight the night before and that apparently she left the house between four and five. He told me that she left her cell phone, her purse. She didn't take her car.
7:30 Speaker 00 So where was she going?
7:33 Speaker 06 He has told me in the past, she would sometimes, you know, after an argument, she would sometimes get out and walk around the block.
7:42 Speaker 00 Walking around the block just as she exited the view of the cameras. Cameras that caught her last recorded moments, sitting on the deck, the front of the Liley house, smoking a cigarette.
7:59 Speaker 09 Anyone would believe that he has 19 cameras outside, three or four cameras on the inside, a command center, and he didn't pick up anything. You kidding me? That she got out of the house and he didn't know is ridiculous.
8:14 Speaker 00 And he wasn't the only one who thought that.
8:16 Speaker 11 There were so many things that pointed that Matt may have had some involvement. You never want a suspect to go, you know, you never want a defendant to get away with murder. You never want anyone to get away with murder.
8:31 Speaker 00 From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to Watching You. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Episode four, Caught on Tape.
8:47 Speaker 00 Where to begin?
8:50 Speaker 00 No question that Matt and Nikki had been fighting that night and for a long time. Matt said it was after that fight that she exited the frame, made her way with a toothbrush down the street and out of his life.
9:03 Speaker 11 He filed for divorce during that week, leading up to Nikki's body being found. And so he had tried to portray her as being unstable and that sort of thing and get her civilly committed.
9:16 Speaker 00 And you could hear him in one recording dripping with pathos, like he was exhausted by some long, drawn-out drama that he no longer had the time for, like he was cutting short some elaborate ruse Nikki was performing. Not what we now know to be the truth. Nikki was lying dead, just a few blocks away. That night, the night they found her body, Amanda and Rebecca were at home without a clue.
9:47 Speaker 12 Then, all of a sudden, now we look outside and there's an ambulance out there and hear a bunch of commotion downstairs.
9:55 Speaker 00 At some point, a police officer came upstairs and said to Amanda, "Your dad wants to see you."
10:01 Speaker 12 And so like, I went downstairs and like, he's laying on the floor with an oxygen mask on, grabbing my arm, like, "Was it her? Was it her?" I'm like, "I have no idea what the hell you're talking about." Like, "Was what her?" Like, the first thought in my mind was, "Oh, someone saw her." I wasn't thinking she was dead. I couldn't handle it anymore. Like, this was terrifying. Like, I have no idea what's going on. I was like, "I can't do this."
10:28 Speaker 00 The girls didn't know what Matt was talking about. No idea that their mother had been found, let alone that she was dead.
10:38 Speaker 12 We were like sitting, watching out the windows towards the front of the house. And like, we see more police coming and like now news reporters are out there.
10:47 Speaker 00 Before they could ask their dad or go outside and ask their big sister, the two girls were taken away.
10:54 Speaker 12 Then eventually, it was basically like, hey, pack some bags up. And so we're packing bags to go somewhere we don't know. My dad's, I think it was the divorce lawyer came and picked us up.
11:09 Speaker 00 Alex was just outside, right by the curb of the house. Amy was there too.
11:16 Speaker 13 I remember Alex desperately wanting to go back up to the house and saying, I remember her like crying and saying, no, they're my sisters. I need to get them. I need them. They're my sisters. And I was like, maybe you can't, just simply because number one, there's no way Matt would have allowed her to talk to them or see them or anything. And number two, who knows what would have gotten said that would have been somehow damaging or whatever, like when everything is in crisis.
11:45 Speaker 00 Looking back, this wasn't just the day the girls lost their mother. It was the day they lost each other. This was the moment the girls were split permanently. Because as things went on, battle lines would be drawn. Words would be said. Things you can't take back.
12:17 Speaker 00 John Richter knew what his job was with this case. That wasn't the problem. The problem was, how was he going to book the guy who he suspected did it?
12:28 Speaker 09 Cocky asshole was a good word. You could tell right away he was a narcissistic type of person, controlling. You know, he even wanted to be in control of the interview and how it progresses and what we were gonna do, trying to lead us while his wife is missing. Nothing to suggest that he was upset or anything. It was just another day.
12:51 Speaker 00 Another day followed by another. What evidence was there to prosecute? Even the cause of death remained undetermined.
13:00 Speaker 11 The problem was, was that there just wasn't enough. You can suspect it all day long, but there was no way that I could prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that he was the person that did it without more. I could think his behavior was ridiculous. I could think that he set it all up, you know, trying to portray his wife as being crazy. That he had all these security cameras and just miraculously she turned off the security camera that night.
13:28 Speaker 00 That's what Matt told investigators. Nikki flipped off Matt's cameras on her way out the door and then somehow ended up dead down the street. There was no smoking gun that they could see. But there was all the years of footage, the surveillance state Matt had set up around the perimeters of the home. Investigators obtained a warrant to search the Liley house and Matt's war room.
13:57 Speaker 09 Well, it's just a small room, maybe the size of this room, 15 by 15 and monitors, and a big, like five or six TV monitors with different camera shots on each one. And then the server was so big, they had to have our experts, our forensic guys come in and take the server apart because it was so, you know, something they said that you would see in the military. So yeah, it was impressive.
14:23 Speaker 00 They obtained the videos and soon realized there was a big problem on their hands, one they hadn't anticipated. These videos, there were thousands of hours to sift through.
14:38 Speaker 00 Before any charges could be brought, Lisa Jones, one of the prosecutors in the DA's office, would need to sign off from the investigators.
14:47 Speaker 11 Ultimately, there was, I think around like 55,000 short videos that were discovered.
14:56 Speaker 00 Even if they were convinced that Matt had murdered his wife Nikki, they'd need to review all the evidence first. And just reviewing the evidence would take them countless hours. It took them a while to even open up the files they'd recovered.
15:11 Speaker 11 And so the police department had spent the time sending it off to, I think we sent it off to the FBI, maybe?
15:18 Speaker 00 On top of that, the videos weren't categorized by date and time.
15:23 Speaker 11 So it wasn't like you could just like roll through footage and look at it. It made no sense. So then you were trying to put together like, when did this happen? And kind of go through it and see if you found anything that mattered.
15:35 Speaker 00 The detectives on the case hadn't encountered anything like this before. There was a mountain of surveillance tape to now pour through and no clear sense of how to evaluate it. Many of the files obtained from Matt's computer were unreadable to forensics investigators at the time. After some months, Matt left Georgia. He took his two girls to a cabin in Vermont. At this point, he'd lawyered up and wasn't cooperating with the investigation.
16:05 Speaker 13 He just wanted to take everything. That's what it felt like, was that he was just taking everything from us and particularly from Alex.
16:16 Speaker 00 What appeared to be an open and shut case stalled out. What exactly makes a case go cold? The exhaustion of leads? The failed pursuit of time-worn investigative measures? Or is it simply that pieces don't fall together in the right way at the right time?
16:34 Speaker 13 The investigation had been going on for a year and they had hit a wall. And I remembered I called and spoke to Detective Everson on my birthday. And he said, well, we're almost through going through all the video, but it doesn't look like we're going to find anything. I didn't know what to say to that. I said, what, so what does that mean? That he just gets away with it? That was when Detective Richter came in and he said, "This is my case and I'm,
17:14 Speaker 13 I'm gonna leave no stone unturned and I'm not gonna rest until we know we've done everything we possibly could."
17:30 Speaker 00 John Richter is a big guy, short crop, salt and pepper hair. This case had stayed with him from the moment he was across it. He'd been there on the day they found her. He'd made a vow then to himself, his words, to find justice for Nikki.
17:47 Speaker 09 Because I was invested in this case. From the day I saw her laying there in the woods, right? I was invested. So I wanted it bad.
17:56 Speaker 00 But no one on his staff had been able to recover all the materials they'd gained through searching the house.
18:03 Speaker 09 And I would go back to them every six months, every two months, every three months. "Please look again, give me something."
18:11 Speaker 00 Two years passed without an indictment or a meaningful break in the case. Richter was convinced that those files had the answers he needed. The truth about what had happened that night seemed to be in danger of slipping away.
18:28 Speaker 13 They were combing through all this evidence, trying to, trying to find the one place where he, he made a mistake. And that was the thing that they said to us is like, "They always make a mistake. They think they're perfect, they never are." So they were like, "Don't give up."
18:52 Speaker 00 Digging into the surveillance tape was their best shot. So investigators turned to a man who knew his way around computers.
18:59 Speaker 14 My name is Chris Ford. I'm an investigator with the District Attorney's Office. Currently, I'm an Assistant Chief, a supervisor in the DA's office, but for 10 years, I was a computer physicist examiner.
19:10 Speaker 00 Chris Ford is a bulky guy, a buzz cut of silver hair and broad shoulders. Looks more like someone you'd imagine running a boot camp at the gym. Ex-military, reserved, not examining ones and zeros in the coding logs of surveillance tape.
19:25 Speaker 09 You know, he helped me get to where I needed to be.
19:27 Speaker 00 John Richter approached Ford about the materials found on Matt's computer.
19:32 Speaker 14 I know these two guys are right. Looked at it. Hey Ford, why don't you look at this case for me? And just, you know, just a new set of eyes. That's what he said. I just needed a new set of eyes to look at it. We're at a standstill with the case. I'm like, sure, I'll take a look at it. That's where I started with it.
19:46 Speaker 00 Pretty quickly, Ford discovered some things that the investigators had no idea about.
19:52 Speaker 09 He goes, oh, do you want any of those digital recordings? Are there any of those audio recordings that are on this? And I'm like, what? I had no idea. And he goes, yeah, there's just thousands of hours of just random. He's like, I listened to a little of it, but I go, yes, I want them. And that's when it started.
20:10 Speaker 11 Ford was able to realize that there were tons of audio files on one of the computers that had been seized.
20:19 Speaker 00 For years detectives had been focused on the surveillance tape. A dizzying, uncataloged tic-tac-toe board of silent footage.
20:27 Speaker 11 And somehow, I think the focus in the beginning had been so much on the video files. Can we see what happened? Because there's so many surveillance cameras. There's gotta be something that we could see that was odd. And so I think the focus at that point was there.
20:41 Speaker 00 And now, they discovered a massive archive of recordings too. It's as though they'd been watching a movie in black and white that suddenly burst into color.
20:51 Speaker 11 So we found all these audio files that had been there, but just hadn't been listened to.
20:57 Speaker 00 And the recordings weren't just inside the house. It was clear that some of them were Nikki's car. And Matt's obviously not there because she's talking to somebody about him.
21:13 Speaker 15 It's like I say, my marriage is over. It's never good enough.
21:18 Speaker 15 Everything I do is suspect and I'm just, I'm just fed up. I'm fed up with trying to meet his expectations. I'm fed up with the bullshit.
21:28 Speaker 15 I just, you know, I just told him and I was nice about it. I said, Matt, look, you know, I do the best I can do.
21:39 Speaker 09 So that's when I start, me and my analyst, Amy McLeod, a saint. My partner, probably because, you know, it was just me. So she sat across from you, she was the analyst. You'd go to her for, hey, analyze these phone records or help me look at this. And she always would help me like, so I said, you take this half, I'll take this half. And these are the notebooks, I know, I got maybe 10 of these, 100 page notebooks. So we just started from the beginning and started taking notes and the, the information was just unbelievable.
22:07 Speaker 00 Unbelievable because of what was on the tapes, no doubt, something you've already heard, but also because of the sheer volume. A story suddenly locked into place where there hadn't been one before. A record of years of Matt's controlling behavior.
22:22 Speaker 09 Eight hours a day for at least a year. You know, I was consumed. I didn't work a lot of other things at the time. I just did this. So, you know, you're living her life.
22:34 Speaker 00 Detective Richter's life, day in and out, was defined by this puzzle that he began to unravel as he listened to the countless hours of recordings. Who was Nikki and what happened to her?
22:51 Speaker 09 So it would just start. Hey, you know, the recording would start, he's, we're going to talk about all the things you did wrong today or didn't do right. This is your recorder. It's on right now. I'm going to make the first file. And now this is after her work day. You can tell she just got home from work because she's, I'm tired and just want to. He didn't work all day. He's just, and I remember one, he'd just say, oh, you passed me. I was sitting on the couch watching TV and you walked down the hall and you didn't give me a kiss. And she said, I give you a kiss. He's, yeah, but not, not a, not a real kiss on the lips, like, you know, passionate. You just gave me a little peck. I guess each time she passes like a ship in the night, she has to. Yeah, passionately kiss this slob of a man.
23:35 Speaker 09 Coincidentally, you forget to say you love me.
23:38 Speaker 16 It's because you make me feel guilty.
23:41 Speaker 09 Stuff like that, right? And that would go on for hours and hours until she had to go to work. It's you could tell how frustrated she would be and just mentally drained. Like it would go from midnight to six in the morning. And then she would just go to work and then come back and then that that conversation would start again. I don't ask for much.
23:58 Speaker 16 Matt bullshit.
23:59 Speaker 09 All you have to do is not fucking lie to me.
24:01 Speaker 16 Matt?
24:01 Speaker 09 Give me attention.
24:02 Speaker 16 I'm not lying to you.
24:03 Speaker 09 And not treat me like a piece of shit.
24:04 Speaker 16 And give you all the attention you demand.
24:07 Speaker 00 Imagine being a homicide detective, John Richter. Being reasonably convinced that this man, Matt Liley, had something to do with his wife's death. And then, years after her body is found with still no conviction, having to listen to these recordings eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, every week.
24:26 Speaker 09 I was not a happy person for that year because I was listening to this stuff, right? And my girlfriend at the time was not my wife, thank God. Um, she could have left because I was just an asshole. I was mad. I was frustrated. Right? I mean, hearing all that, it's just...
24:43 Speaker 09 Nobody knows, like me and the analyst Amy, the amount. Nobody listened to any of it, really, except us.
24:53 Speaker 00 Just listening to these recordings was messing with Richter's mind. Nikki was living through it. And as Richter listened, what started to come into focus was how unrelenting and impossible the situation was. And how patient Nikki was.
25:14 Speaker 09 I heard it. First few years before she's killed. And she's beautifully calm. Could you imagine sitting in the command center with this doof? About all the things you did wrong this week? You talked to your mom too much. You were on Facebook too much. You this and she would go, okay, I'm sorry, man. I'll try to... You didn't give me enough oral sex this week. Oh, I... Well, three times, you think, oh... Three times! In a week? Ugh! Think about that part of it. She had to do that. She probably hated him.
25:50 Speaker 09 I know the real of her.
25:52 Speaker 00 He also could see that she was running out of options.
25:56 Speaker 09 She's a ninety-five-pound, five-foot-three or something. He's six-five, two, two-sixty, right? So, so what defense does she have against him? Other than her voice? Get the fuck away from me. Leave me the fuck alone. That's all she has. Because he could physically... So think about it. She, that's her only way is to scream. He was an asshole. And she dealt with him for a long time. So, anybody who says that it was an equal thing where she was loud and feisty and yelling at him. Are you kidding me? There might be one or two out of two thousand that are like that. The rest are him. With his mind control and his manipulation and his torture.
26:42 Speaker 17 You hate me. You trash me around town. You trash me with your family. You call the cops on me in a second. You have called the cops on me. You lie about me. You lie to me. But I'm the one disrespecting you.
27:00 Speaker 09 How do you listen to that kind of thing and then not be emotionally involved? Now, I didn't realize to the extent it was affecting my...
27:10 Speaker 09 But it affected my personal life, friends, family. You know, you just withdraw a bit. And I'm not like that usually. Especially if you get a couple of beers in me. You know, whiskey or two, you know, I'll talk. And we'll have some fun.
27:26 Speaker 00 It wasn't just a rough year. It was a year that changed him forever.
27:31 Speaker 09 She's dead. I've never met her, but I know her better than the other person I've ever met. I know her, her attitude. I know her little traits. I know how intelligent she is, witty, a great mother, all these things, just from these recordings. But I know the end.
27:51 Speaker 09 And I think she knew the end too. And she protected those girls.
28:06 Speaker 18 Shaq here. What's it like to buy a car from Carvana 100% online and get it delivered to your door? Let me tell you. Your car is here, Mr. Shaq. Thank you, Mr. Carvana guy. Can't wait to take it for a spin. Only the best for you, Mr. Shaq. Hey, have you always been so big, tall, and handsome? Not always. I was 6'10" once. Seven days to love it or return it, Mr. Shaq. Not that I would. You never do. No, I never do. So buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. See our seven-day return policy at carvana.com.
28:37 Speaker 19 One day last year, police entered a mansion in LA County and discovered the couple that live there had almost two dozen children. Nearly every one of them born through surrogates. But those surrogates had been deceived.
28:53 Speaker 20 I started crying. I was like, what the heck did I just get myself into?
28:58 Speaker 19 I'm Eva Kaufman. The Journey is a new series from In the Dark and The New Yorker. Find it now in the In the Dark podcast feed.
29:12 Speaker 00 The recordings between Matt and Nikki showed a relationship in turmoil. And in Matt, a spouse who had become obsessed with tracking every micro-movement of his family's whereabouts. Up until, of course, Nikki and her toothbrush allegedly disappeared without a trace. And Matt announced his plans to file for divorce. To investigators and the county prosecutors, there was now a clear motive for Matt to kill Nikki. A controlling husband with a long, now documented history of manipulative and abusive behavior. Here's Lisa Jones again.
29:48 Speaker 11 Not only was there emotional abuse, there was physical abuse, which led us to, you know, start thinking like, oh, he's capable, you know, without question. He's absolutely capable of physical violence as well.
30:04 Speaker 00 Still, as of yet, no one had seen or heard Matt carry out the act of murdering his wife in a fit of rage. Nikki's sister Amy was beyond frustrated.
30:16 Speaker 13 I was angry because I was like, are you kidding me? We all know he did it. And you're going to let him get away with it because he didn't leave you a videotape of him strangling her? That's what you need? Yeah, I mean, and I realize how petulant and childish that sounds now. But that was the emotion I was having at the time was I was like, are you serious? You're going to throw in the towel because he didn't leave you video of him actually killing her?
30:45 Speaker 00 But there was no evidence of Matt carrying out the body from the house and driving off towards the woods. Ford looked for just that.
30:55 Speaker 14 Once I got the audio files and I started thinking, okay, here's the, here's the working theory, right? That he killed her, removed the body from the house and dumped in the, you know, nearby woods, right? So it was either a crime of passion or a crime of just, you know, accident or something where he panicked, right? So he's not thinking straight. He takes the body, wraps it up, carries out in the woods. There's got to be video of this. And the video was probably destroyed or he destroyed it. And I talk about this all the time. There's never a clean crime scene. Same thing with computer forensics. There's always a digital crime scene at every crime scene. There's always some kind of digital footprint there. And no matter how hard you try to scrub, clean or not involve, you know, digital forensics is always there.
31:40 Speaker 14 Cell phone towers, hits, Wi-Fi hotspots, just everything that tells on you.
31:47 Speaker 00 Ford knew that for the prosecutors to bring a case against Matt, the digital crime scene needed to be tied to the physical one.
31:55 Speaker 14 So I started thinking, how would he hide this? What would he do to get rid of it? What would he have to do to try to clean up this crime scene? Not just physically, but digitally as well.
32:05 Speaker 00 And that's when Ford realized that the smoking gun in this case wasn't going to be an image of Matt exiting the house with Nikki's body or DNA at the scene of the crime. It was going to be the absence of that evidence. And who made it go away?
32:23 Speaker 09 He says that footage was deleted. I go, what? He's like, it was deleted. Someone had to physically go in there and delete the camera footage. And I said, deleted, huh? Not corrupted? So that's when I knew.
32:37 Speaker 00 The key to solving this case would be finding who covered up Nikki's murder.
32:46 Speaker 00 Next time on Watching You. Nikki left behind life insurance. After her death, a new front opened up in the war between Matt and his stepdaughter.
32:57 Speaker 13 Matt contested Alex being a beneficiary. And so there's this huge legal battle that went on for years. He wanted the money for himself, but mostly he just didn't want Alex to have it. He hated her that much.
33:14 Speaker 00 Meanwhile, Nikki's daughters take sides. Two take to social media to defend their father.
33:22 Speaker 21 Honestly, we can't wait to face this family in court and call out their lies. And they've done nothing but cause us pain and torment. And our day in court will come and hopefully my dad will be able to come home.
33:39 Speaker 13 He is the only parent they have left in the world. And so they're clinging to him. It doesn't matter that he was a monster. They don't care. That's their dad.
33:50 Speaker 00 And Alex is surprised to find herself on the other side of the aisle from her sisters.
33:57 Speaker 22 It was hard to feel like I couldn't rescue them. It was hard to feel like I cared for these kids for so many years of my life. And now I have no way to help them.
34:21 Speaker 23 Hit pause on whatever you're listening to and hit play on your next adventure. Get double points on every qualified stay. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for complete terms and conditions.
34:45 Speaker 00 Watching You is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It's hosted and reported by me, Jonathan Hirsch. Jason Hoak 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 Ballance-Kolazny 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.
35:51 Speaker 24 The wilderness can hide a lot, but it can't hide the truth forever. I'm Delia Diambra, host of Park Predators. And every week I investigate true crime cases hidden in national parks, forests, and beaches. I follow every lead, every clue, and every overlooked detail. Because even when a trail seems to disappear, the truth has a way of resurfacing. Listen to Park Predators wherever you get your podcasts.
Previous Watching You | 3. The Last Night Next Watching You | 5. Breaking Point Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated