Pod Insights The Binge Cases: Doctor Billions Watching You | 6. Nique’s Girls About this episode The trial lays bare horrible truths. And for the first time in many years, Nique’s daughters come together to pick up the pieces.
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Transcript 5,927 words · 16 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.
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1:06 Speaker 00 The Binge.
1:12 Speaker 00 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.
1:25 Speaker 00 When I first came across the story of Nikki Liley, an old and familiar feeling washed over me. There's more to this story.
1:36 Speaker 00 Now, on its face, that has never been enough for me to take on a case, but this felt different. Not only were there missing pieces to the puzzle in the media reporting, there were missing pieces in the lives of these girls. Nikki's girls. And I'm not sure how I knew that, but I felt driven to bring closure for them. When I called up Amy, she'll tell you that she politely told me to kick rocks. "You seem like a nice person," she said. But no, we're not going to go through what we went through again when Matt went on trial.
2:12 Speaker 00 Amanda and Rebecca were just kids in the murder trial of their dad. They were on the other side of the aisle from their aunt and their own sister.
2:23 Speaker 04 I was 100% my dad's innocent. He didn't do this.
2:27 Speaker 00 Amanda, in the intervening years, had become Matt's unofficial counsel. She was there to defend him with a carefully scripted and rehearsed set of answers. Rebecca was also there to represent her dad in whatever way he saw fit.
2:42 Speaker 05 I remember I was the last one to go. I didn't look around at anybody. And I remember when the lawyer asked if I loved my dad, the blocking kicked in that I had been taught. And I remember saying, yes. And then I like, remember like, turning and looking at my dad. Like, it was like, that was the director. Like, it was like, at this point, I say this line and I look at my dad. And that's, and that's the moment that was created.
3:12 Speaker 04 While I was testifying, I'd be looking at him after I answered each question. And like, I'd feel good if he was smiling at me. And I was like, okay, that means I said what I should have said. I remember there was one time, like, I answered something and Lisa was tough. She did not take it easy on us.
3:30 Speaker 00 Lisa Jones, the assistant DA.
3:32 Speaker 04 I can't remember what exactly I said, but I said something in a way that allowed Lisa to kind of be like, oh, but you said this earlier. It caused me to trip up. And I remember looking over at my dad. He had this, like, almost disappointed look. And I was like, oh, I fucked up. I was like, okay, now how do I fix it? And so then I'd say something horrible about how I hated Alex or I hated granddaddy or Nana for trying to take us away. And then I'd look back over and he'd smile.
4:00 Speaker 00 What they said or didn't say on that day was a blur.
4:05 Speaker 04 I don't remember half of what I said. And the only thing I do know is probably 90% of it wasn't true.
4:14 Speaker 00 Amy was there for Amanda and Rebecca's testimony. It was the first time she'd seen them in a long time.
4:22 Speaker 06 It had been five years since we had laid eyes on them. You know, they were young ladies. That was stunning. I was like, wow, who are these people? We lost so much time. I had like this five-year hole where I don't even know what their life was.
4:40 Speaker 00 Amy said she avoided watching the YouTube videos the girls made. The way she also avoided drinking Drano. And on the stand, she was disgusted watching how the girls had been manipulated. But she also knew that they were more than what Matt had coached them to say. And on some level, too, Amanda knew what she was saying about Nikki's family wasn't quite right, even as she was in court saying it.
5:11 Speaker 04 I think there was like a brief moment, like I looked at them, I saw them, and I was like, I'm about to absolutely trash these people on the stand. I know that's what I'm going to have to say in order for my dad to be found not guilty.
5:29 Speaker 00 Something began simmering inside of Amanda that day. Rebecca, too. This trial would be a moment of truth for everyone involved, even if the truth was not what Matt wanted his daughters to believe.
5:43 Speaker 04 Looking back now, that's probably where a lot of the doubt started to creep in is seeing them again and having that feeling of I'm about to say these horrible things and I don't know if I actually believe them.
6:00 Speaker 00 From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to Watching You. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Episode six. Nikki's Girls.
6:17 Speaker 00 An emotionally difficult task was ahead for the prosecutor, Lisa Jones. This moment, the murder trial of Nikki Liley, was nearly five years in the making. But to be successful, Lisa would have to confront Amanda and Rebecca about their version of events, which they faithfully relayed on behalf of Matt. These girls were victims too, and the jury wouldn't take too kindly to a prosecutor eviscerating them on the stand.
6:47 Speaker 06 It was hard to watch them, and I was very grateful for Lisa Jones in that moment and her approach to those girls. She was so gentle with them because we all knew they were lying, or at least Amanda was lying. Lisa caught her in a lie, right? She said that, "No, I made the videos myself. My dad didn't tell me what to say. My dad didn't tell me what to do." And then Lisa played the phone call where he, from jail, was calling her and telling her exactly what to say and exactly what to do. We all knew she was lying,
7:31 Speaker 06 but we knew why. We weren't mad at her about it, and we knew, "These girls are just trying to survive this."
7:40 Speaker 00 Many of the details the prosecutor laid out, Amy was hearing in full for the first time.
7:46 Speaker 06 It starts with the mental abuse. It starts with emotionally just crushing someone to the point where they don't have footing to be able to push back.
8:04 Speaker 06 I had no idea how much of it there was. In particular, there was the recording they had where you hear him. He says, "God damn it, god damn it, god damn it." And, you know, "Lower your voice." And that was chilling to me. And after that happened, after we listened to that recording, and I get into the victim witness room, and I remember I picked up one of the big throw pillows from that couch,
8:42 Speaker 06 and I looked at Alex and I said, "I am going to punch this pillow repeatedly for a while." And then I did it. And I guess I was so livid. Oh, wow. I knew that they fought a lot, but I had no idea what she was living in, like what what kind of hell she was going through. Like, you can hear, because she's no longer talking at that point. She, and so he has done something to silence her right then. It was pretty clear he was physically assaulting her in some kind of way.
9:29 Speaker 03 When we got in that goddamn car. Goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it, goddamn it. Fucking damn it. Lower your voice. I am not gonna sit here and listen to this shit.
9:43 Speaker 06 I knew about the fight they had had three years prior, you know, because she called me and told me. And yeah, Matt tried to say that it never happened and that she made it up.
9:54 Speaker 00 Amy's talking about the time her sister called her and said Matt had put his hands around her throat. But even with all that she already knew about the terrible situation Nikki had with Matt, hearing the audio of their fights was almost too much for Amy to take.
10:10 Speaker 06 It was all this salacious awful audio. It was not her. It was not her normal self. It was not, it was not the her that I...
10:25 Speaker 06 Talk to. It was not the her that I just called and had conversations with and stuff. It was this awful version of her where, not that she was being awful, but where she was being treated so awfully. She was being so abused.
10:41 Speaker 00 Alex was there too, while Lisa Jones laid out the closing arguments. There was, according to the prosecution, a longstanding history of abusive and controlling behavior and signs of a cover up. The smoking gun was, in a way, the absence of a smoking gun. The deleted logs showed a willful act on Matt's behalf to remove the hours she went missing from the cameras. Hours, the prosecution argued. He'd spent murdering his wife and disposing of her body. Lisa Jones said Nikki had likely been drugged before she died. She was found face down in the dirt, naked.
11:24 Speaker 00 The soles of her feet were clean, suggesting that she'd been moved to that location. "What I'm going to tell you is he murdered her in that house," Lisa said. She noted he could have sat on her and she would have been unable to break free. A 98-pound woman against a 250-pound man. It would explain the absence of blunt force trauma or signs of strangulation, her nakedness, the drugs in her system. He silenced Nikki with the weight of his body and, in a way, the weight of his ego.
12:07 Speaker 00 Matt's defense rested on Nikki's character. They portrayed an unstable and crazy woman. The testimony of Amanda and Rebecca corroborated their father's innocence. This was not an open and shut case.
12:22 Speaker 04 They finished closing arguments. And we asked his lawyer, like, what happens next? He says, OK, well, the jury's going to deliberate. It might take a while. Go back to the hotel, shower, eat. I'll call you if anything comes back. It might not be today. Like, it might not be until next week even. Like, this... Sometimes juries can deliberate for weeks. I'll call you if anything happens. So we went back to the hotel. I'm sitting in bed, and I'm watching the news. And the news says the jury came back. He was found guilty.
13:01 Speaker 04 After three hours... The jury deliberated for three hours.
13:05 Speaker 00 So you found out from the trial?
13:06 Speaker 04 I found out through the news.
13:09 Speaker 00 On February 5, 2016, the jury found Matt Liley guilty of malice murder and felony murder. He was also convicted of unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance. At the sentencing, victim impact statements were given, and the judge came forward. He sentenced Matt to life in prison without the possibility of parole for malice murder. Then, on top of that, three five-year terms for each count of unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance. Nikki's family cheered.
13:42 Speaker 04 I remember seeing them cheering. And I remember sitting in the courthouse. And I was, like, gutted. And then it created even more of this dynamic that he had created of my hatred for them. And I remember just, like, seething as I was sitting there. Like, how could they be so excited about this?
14:07 Speaker 00 Matt's fate was clear. But Amanda, Rebecca, and Alex? That part was far from over.
14:21 Speaker 00 Amanda, like her sister Rebecca, struggled with the verdict. A part of her still believed her dad was innocent. Until she saw herself on the stand when Nikki's case was covered on national TV.
14:34 Speaker 04 Pretty much what like really flipped a switch for me was when kind of 2020 and Dateline and all of those started happening. I think it was the 2020 episode, but I was watching it and they were playing like the recordings of the jail phone calls with my dad and me on the stand and like seeing how robotic I was and hearing my dad telling me to say this on the jail call and then me saying it, saying it pretty much word for word on the stand. During that time, I fully believed those were my words. Like when I was testifying, I 100% believe that's the truth. This is coming from my brain.
15:19 Speaker 04 I came up with all of this. But then seeing like the recording of it after, I was like, that's not me. Like that's my voice, but those aren't my words. Like it felt like I started coming out of this fog.
15:33 Speaker 00 Doubt crept in. Amanda still struggled to face the whole truth for a while.
15:41 Speaker 04 It started out as, oh, maybe he's not 100% innocent. Like maybe something happened. There was an accident and it got blown out of proportion. Like that's kind of where it started was he knows something? He's not 100% innocent?
15:56 Speaker 00 As soon as she started feeling this way, she told her grandfather, her guardian at the time.
16:00 Speaker 04 Hey, I'm feeling this way. Is there any information you have? And as soon as I did that, that night, there was a phone call with my dad. Papa told him like, hey, Amanda is having doubts. And it was like, nope, I'm disowned now. I am now an enemy.
16:21 Speaker 04 Yeah.
16:21 Speaker 00 And then when you said, "Hey, I'm not really sure. Feels like there's more to the story." He was like, "That's it. You're out."
16:29 Speaker 04 Mm-hmm.
16:31 Speaker 00 And is that, maybe, is that the point at which you realized that you believed he did it? Was that what broke the spell?
16:39 Speaker 04 It took a while. Like, I was still in that phase of, "Okay, he's not innocent. Like, I don't know what happened." And it was one of those things of, like, wanting to find the information. It was like, middle of my junior year. That was a really rough year because I wound up kind of in and out of the hospital in the inpatient ward for suicide attempts and kind of this feeling of, like, everything I've known is a lie. I trashed my dead mom on YouTube and to the news. I've trashed my mom to the world. I've made her out to be crazy. I've alienated myself from my mom's side of the family.
17:24 Speaker 04 Now, my dad, who I sacrificed my high school years for, playing lawyer, hates me. I have no one. Eventually, I just had to get out of the house, and I wasn't sure how. I started talking to the counselor at school. I was like, "Hey, I can't live at home anymore."
17:43 Speaker 04 My husband, now boyfriend at the time, we went to high school together and I pretty much moved in with him. He and his family were a godsend. I was able to kind of have a safe place to kind of process through everything I was feeling of, "Okay, he's not, he's definitely not innocent, but how much, did he know something? Did he actually do it?" There's been so many different thoughts that go through my head of what did happen, what could have happened, and... It's just one of those things that also sucks because, unfortunately, the only person who truly knows what happened will never say what actually happened.
18:28 Speaker 04 I don't even think there would even be a deathbed confession or anything. I think he'll go to the grave that he's innocent.
18:37 Speaker 00 Matt never spoke to his daughter again. Never reached out. That was it.
18:50 Speaker 00 Amanda was left to unravel her own complex feelings about her dad, the man who killed her mother. She says she still can't see a red Ford Expedition and not have this irrational fear that it's him following her. Not long after Amanda left, Rebecca came to a similar realization.
19:13 Speaker 05 Between the phone calls and video calls and everything, he also had an email. And he would email us. Yeah, he had like a little like iPad type thing and he would email me. I don't remember what he did, but I remember I composed an email that was basically, "You can't treat me the way that you've been treating me. How you've treated me is not a father. You have not treated me and loved me as a daughter." And I remember I closed it and I said, "I wanted a father and not a chess player." And I never heard from him again. And when I think on that moment more, it's the typical like sociopath.
19:57 Speaker 05 As soon as they no longer have that hold over someone, "You're done, you're gone, you're useless to me." And that was very much what it felt like. It felt like I stood up to him and I was done. He was, "You were never my daughter. I never loved you, you're done."
20:13 Speaker 00 Meanwhile, the money Nikki had wanted to provide for her family in case of her death finally got paid out to her children, split between the three of them.
20:23 Speaker 07 We didn't settle the life insurance for years after he was convicted. Like it took a while.
20:28 Speaker 05 I think it was 2020?
20:31 Speaker 07 Yeah, it was a while.
20:32 Speaker 05 That it was finally kind of paid out?
20:33 Speaker 07 Yeah, it was. That's when I bought my house. They paid it out and I used it to buy my house.
20:49 Speaker 00 It makes sense to me now why Amy didn't see the point in making a podcast about her sister's case. The family had been through so much. And to her mind, the defense had twisted a domestic abuse situation into a he-said, she-said dogfight. And the media ate it up.
21:10 Speaker 08 So you're hearing domestic violence, Sarah?
21:14 Speaker 09 Well, she is completely unstable. I think she's completely crazy. And I think that the 500,000--
21:22 Speaker 08 I think she's completely dead.
21:23 Speaker 09 Yeah, she's completely dead. But before she died. And I think that-- I think there's been a whole slew of incidents where she's tried to stage some kind of domestic violence on herself. And that-- and he's taping all this to protect himself. I mean, why would you have 500,000-plus--
21:42 Speaker 08 Because you're a control freak. Because you're trying to coercively control your life.
21:46 Speaker 09 I know, obviously. But he's the one that's usually calm. I mean, you played one where he isn't. But often, he's the calm one, and she's the one that's out of control.
21:53 Speaker 08 He knows he's recording.
21:58 Speaker 00 These so-called "trial experts" got it terribly wrong. But there's something else I now better understand. Having reviewed over 25,000 files from this case, what we see with Matt and Nikki is a frightening, cautionary tale. To meet someone, to fall in love, to have a relationship. It's about a connection, yes, but anyone who's been in a serious relationship will tell you it's also about sacrifice. Meeting in the middle for the sake of that love. But where's the line?
22:40 Speaker 00 When does sacrifice become abuse? It's not always easy to see. And with Nikki, she was already in too deep when she started to fight back. There's this three-hour recording I came across in reporting this story that chills me to the bone. I don't think I'll ever be the same after hearing it because it reveals both Matt's cruelty towards Nikki, his obsession with owning every part of her narrative, and her continually sacrificing herself in service of their relationship. The recording is called Nikki: Life Confessions. And in it, Matt interviews Nikki about her personal sexual history.
23:24 Speaker 00 Everything she's ever done with another man is laid out in this conversation.
23:33 Speaker 10 Coming where you want me to start?
23:36 Speaker 11 But I don't know about your childhood and high school and everything else that you feel I have to know.
23:41 Speaker 10 High school was a lot of feeling, always feeling, never adequate, never having any confidence in myself, being small, being little.
23:50 Speaker 00 She talks about her sexual partners in college and in her twenties.
23:55 Speaker 10 Yes, he's been connected. Yes, we did some heavy-duty partying and some stupid shit.
24:00 Speaker 11 Like?
24:00 Speaker 10 I can tell you, I never slept with him, never wanted to.
24:03 Speaker 11 You're being specific, saying you never slept with him. What did you do?
24:07 Speaker 10 I didn't do anything other than strip poker, he's been connected, and a bunch of drug partying.
24:14 Speaker 00 And throughout, Matt demands she be explicit, exhaustive.
24:19 Speaker 11 Who were you flirting with and who'd you go see?
24:22 Speaker 10 Uh, the only person I ever met was [BLEEP] and [BLEEP]. You know about that?
24:29 Speaker 11 You haven't told me everything.
24:31 Speaker 10 I haven't told you everything, okay? I've met, I've flirted with [BLEEP]. We talked on the phone a couple times. When I went out to California, I called and told him I was coming. We hooked up for dinner.
24:47 Speaker 00 Matt saw Nikki as his property. He had a right to know every sordid detail. And Nikki is fighting throughout to be understood, to be loved by Matt.
25:03 Speaker 10 And I have done the lion's share of things wrong in this relationship. I am asking for some very simple things. And the only thing I've asked for in this entire conversation is, by innuendo, I've asked for the opportunity to prove that I can be honest. On top of that, I've asked for just simple comfort and the leeway and the latitude to be who I am and be emotional just because I'm emotional.
25:40 Speaker 00 Then there's the contract. Nikki wrote a contract and gave it to her husband. The contract gave him complete rights to her breast implants. To Matt, it was a sign of her undying love.
25:56 Speaker 11 So she wrote a contract voluntarily. She handed me this just for surgery. I, Dominique C. Lyle, do hereby agree to allow my loving devoted husband, Matt J. Lyle, to obtain full and sole ownership of the breast implants that I am receiving on April 15, 2008. He has earned the right to have full ownership of the implants and can, in his discretion, request that they be removed, which I would never do, and I told her that, including but not limited to any marriage or separation's belief of infidelity or any other reason he may deem.
26:28 Speaker 00 John Richter remembered seeing this contract, too.
26:31 Speaker 12 It's a piece of paper that says, "These implants belong to my husband, Matt, and he has complete control if at some point he doesn't like, if someone else is getting joy from my breast implants, he can have them removed." And she signed it.
26:45 Speaker 00 The end of the three-page contract read, quote, "By way of this letter/contract, I am giving full control and ownership of the memory gel implants that I am receiving to my adoring husband to have and to do with as he pleases, including demand their removal should he see fit for any reason he decides is appropriate and at any time."
27:10 Speaker 11 I love you, Matt. You are my one and only. And no man will ever stand in your place. If you died tomorrow, it would simply be a hole there forever, and I would never want to feel it with anyone. It would be futile effort to try to... to try, because no one else would ever be able to be who you are and be feel the way you are. I love you always, always and forever. Thank you.
27:33 Speaker 00 The contract is in force and binding as of April 15, 2008.
27:40 Speaker 12 Can you imagine? And if he's not happy with... if someone gives her... if someone is caught looking at her or something, he's gonna have him removed and she signs his... like, he's in control, like... but that's the level of, you know, craziness.
27:57 Speaker 13 I know that I've made my fair share of mistakes, and I've done things wrong, and I've done big things, and I've done things I shouldn't have done.
28:07 Speaker 13 Since I left Aspen, since I moved to Oklahoma, the only thing I have done is reach out and try to do the best I could do, and reach out and help who I could help. That's all I have done.
28:21 Speaker 13 But I don't deserve this.
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29:34 Speaker 00 You know, they say there are two ways in which we live and die. The physical death, of course. And we all know that Nikki is no longer with us. But there is another way in which we do or don't survive. It's in the memory of others. Well, something Amanda said to me.
29:54 Speaker 14 They said the door is open, so hello. How are you? Hey, what's up?
30:03 Speaker 00 Hi.
30:08 Speaker 00 On November 8th, just a few weeks before wrapping this series, we met all three girls in Richmond, Virginia. Amanda and Alex had driven up from Georgia the day before. It had been five years since the three of them had been together.
30:23 Speaker 05 Well, I called her short. The first thing I did was I said I forgot how short you are.
30:27 Speaker 00 I asked them about last night.
30:30 Speaker 05 We also bought a bottle of wine and we were sitting on these couches and talking and everything. And it was a lot of, I remember this and oh, do you remember this happened? And oh my God, you did this. And then we jumped to like, oh, you have this health condition or like, we were all over the place. It was very much when you see someone after a long time and then you're always worried about the building up. And you're like, oh, well, what are we going to talk about? Like, it's going to be awkward. Her wedding was the last time I've seen them. And so it did feel a lot like just jumping in. Like, we just like jumped in and hung out and talked.
31:14 Speaker 00 They'd stayed up all night. When we walked in, they were all squished up on a two-seater couch together where they had fallen asleep. It's not like their Airbnb didn't have bedrooms. They just couldn't bear to be apart. They are all in therapy now. Alex has kids of her own. They're rebuilding their relationship, but they are nowhere near as close as they'd like to be. Their lives were each blown apart by what happened to their mother. Blown apart in different directions. They're still tussling with some impossible issues like, is it okay to have positive memories of Matt?
31:53 Speaker 05 Something that I wrestle with when I do remember things are, can I still remember this good memory of my father with the shadow that he killed my mother? Like, am I allowed to enjoy this memory still?
32:13 Speaker 04 There was a night.
32:14 Speaker 07 Yes.
32:15 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was a night.
32:17 Speaker 07 Let me answer that for you, yes.
32:19 Speaker 00 Big Sister is gonna drop in for that one. Yes, you can.
32:23 Speaker 04 Um, we, so me and my husband went over to Alex's house. There was a lot of alcohol consumed.
32:33 Speaker 04 For me, I struggle with those feelings all the time of like, he did it, he did this horrible thing, but he's still my dad. And I still have good memories of him and I,
32:46 Speaker 04 there is some part of me that loves him in some way, whether that's the idea of him or, and then there's Alex who like, her version of it is like, he did this horrible thing, he did absolutely horrible things to her and horrible things to her mom and she never loved him, I don't think.
33:04 Speaker 00 For Alex, there was a kind of clarity from the start. Amanda recognizes that now.
33:10 Speaker 04 So like she doesn't want to trash hawk my dad to me and I don't wanna come across as defending my dad to her and so like it felt like there was always kind of that tension of, we could never really talk about it with each other.
33:25 Speaker 07 It did take two bottles of wine.
33:26 Speaker 04 Yeah, that night, two bottles of wine kind of helped break through that wall. But.
33:32 Speaker 07 I was so intoxicated that I spilled wine all over my rug, my wall.
33:38 Speaker 04 And then you poured baking soda all over it.
33:41 Speaker 07 I thought that would clean the wine stains in my drunken state, but we were like in like crying breakthrough, so.
33:51 Speaker 00 And here they were, Amanda, Alex and Rebecca, together, keeping the memory of their mother alive, trying to.
34:02 Speaker 07 I hope what comes out of this is closer relationships between the three of us. I just hope that we don't go through this and then just settle back into...
34:16 Speaker 07 It's not that we haven't kept in contact, it's just, you know, life has lifeed. And I hope that in a way, we find ways, because to her point, there's so many good memories, I can't, I can't even find them in the back as part of my brain. And I know that they've gotta be there, like, there's times that Amanda will be like, "Do you remember when this?" And it'll be a good memory, and I don't. Like, I can't, I can't grab it, I don't remember it, I have no idea what she's talking about. And it makes me really sad, and I know that they live there, and I'm hoping there's ways that we can grab them back and find them.
34:51 Speaker 00 There's still a lot to be rebuilt between these three women. They know it, it will take years. There are so many difficult conversations yet to have, so many memories to sift through.
35:05 Speaker 00 But I had a strange feeling as we sat there, something I can't say I've felt before or since, and Alex told me she felt it too.
35:18 Speaker 00 That we weren't alone, that in some way, that I can't quite explain, Nikki was there, with her girls, who were together,
35:34 Speaker 00 remembering their mother, and safe, perhaps for the first time.
36:04 Speaker 00 Thank you so much for listening to Watching You. Not sure what to listen to next? Check out My Fugitive Dad, a podcast I hosted for The Binge about the shocking true story behind Ohio's most infamous bank robbery. It's a story with a surprising twist. Inspired by his favorite movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, 19-year-old vault teller Ted Conrad stole over a million dollars and was never apprehended. Then, over a century later, a man with a completely different name and life story confessed to the crime shortly before he passed. Together with his daughter Ashley Randall, we try to make sense of it all. How her dad got away with it, and why he chose to commit the crime in the first place. Here's a sneak peek.
36:50 Speaker 00 Hey, Ashley.
36:51 Speaker 15 Hi, Jonathan.
36:53 Speaker 00 Tell me about your dad.
36:56 Speaker 15 Well, my dad's name is Tom. He's one of the most charming men you'll ever meet.
37:04 Speaker 15 He's a car salesman, a scratch golfer. You wanted Tom on your team because he's a ringer. He was unreal. The love of my mom's life and my best friend.
37:16 Speaker 00 But Ashley's dad had a massive secret.
37:21 Speaker 15 And he said, "If I tell you, you have to promise you will not look into it. I don't want you telling anybody."
37:30 Speaker 00 A secret he kept for more than half a century, not just from his family.
37:36 Speaker 15 And she looked at me like I'd hit her in the face with a brick.
37:40 Speaker 00 But from the world.
37:42 Speaker 15 Ted Conrad walked out of the bank he worked at. He disappeared with a paper bag containing $215,000.
37:51 Speaker 00 He devaded authorities for 52 years. So where is Teddy Conrad today?
37:58 Speaker 02 Who knows? The Conrad Trail is cold. Has marshals looked to generate some kind of heat?
38:05 Speaker 00 A father and son duo made catching him their life's mission. Some people portrayed Conrad as a Robin Hood, and my dad called him nothing but a thief. This is the story about trying to make sense of a wonderful life based on a terrible lie.
38:25 Speaker 15 My dad wasn't Tom Randall.
38:26 Speaker 00 Right.
38:27 Speaker 15 I mean, he was Ted Conrad.
38:29 Speaker 00 He was a wanted fugitive hiding in plain sight. I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Join me and Ashley together as we tell the real story of her dad, Ohio's most infamous fugitive, for the first time. We'll not only reveal how he did it, but why. From Neon Hum Media and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Smokescreen: My Fugitive Dad. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now or listen weekly wherever you get your podcasts. Want the rest of the story? Search for My Fugitive Dad wherever you get your podcasts to listen now.
39:13 Speaker 00 Subscribe to The Binge to get access to all episodes ad-free today.
39:20 Speaker 01 At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward. The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
40:00 Speaker 00 Watching You is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It's hosted and reported by me, Jonathan Hirsch. Jason Hope 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 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.
41:05 Speaker 01 At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich. Edward Jones. Member SIPC.
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