Dateline NBC - In the Dead of Night

Episode Date: September 20, 2021

The investigation into the murder of a prominent couple on their Nebraska farm is upended after the discovery of a small, gold ring at the crime scene. Keith Morrison has chosen this episode as one of his most memorable classic episodes. 

Hello, I'm Keith Morrison. Here at Dateline, we've encountered a strange phenomenon over and over again. The false confession. There is a science behind it, lots of supporting literature, but it just seems so counterintuitive. Are false confessions even real? Would you confess to murder if you didn't do it? Would you believe the stories you're about to hear about events that springtime in a farmhouse in Nebraska?

In the dead of night. It was late, past midnight, when the farmhouse loomed up in their headlights. No sign of life. Not to them, anyway. He hit the brakes. This was the place. They grabbed their weapons, headed for the house. A window unlocked.

Pay dirt. The prairie takes on a sweet rolling pitch as it tucks into a Nebraska corner an hour south of Omaha. Here the rich black topsoil has grown generations of solid and faithful Americans. A tiny remnant of whom have planted themselves in and around a place called Murdoch, the sort of place where heads turn when a stranger drives by. And a family's name is carved in the local stone. It was Easter Sunday afternoon, 2006. A big farmyard, and like every year, an Easter egg hunt. It was Grandma and Papa's yard.

Or Mom and Dad to Tammy, who brought her own son, like always. They found their Easter eggs, they found their Easter baskets. Mom always made every individual Easter basket special to that child. They were like that were Wayne and Charmin Stock. Generous, steady, always there for their children. The eldest, Steve, and daughter Tammy, the youngest, Andy. They were loving parents. Don't think they ever missed a game of any of ours. Dad would always stop farming just to be at a game, similar with Mom.

Wayne Stock was a businessman farmer, ran the Stock Hay Company, and a very successful business it was. Wayne owned 1,000 acres of land along with rental properties. Charmin was locally famous for her specialty cakes, wedding and otherwise. They were church youth leaders he'd served on the school board. These are busy people. Yeah. Very.

Very. They touch the lives of so many people. She was a teacher's aide for 17 years at a rural school, taught lessons also that didn't end in class. One thing I always heard from Mom was, take responsibility for your actions, be responsible. She would praise you and just keep pushing you to do better. She always wanted us to be better people. And then came that Easter Sunday, 2006.

Church services, a big family dinner, that Easter egg hunt for the grandkids. Their last day on this earth. At least we got that one day. I don't know, my kids remember it. They talk about it all the time. I suppose as the last days go, that wouldn't be a bad one. No, it wasn't.

Andy had missed the Easter party, spent the day with his future in-laws, but left his young puppy with his parents. Called Mom and Dad on my way home and said, well, I'm going to come get the dog. And they said, oh, no, he can just stay here and he'll be fine. He sleeps on the porch, and we'll watch him till Monday morning, because then I'll come get him.

Would history have been different had he listened to his parents? Hard to know, of course. They met me on the deck, on the back of the house, and we talked about Easter and what they did, and they each gave me a hug, and I went home. As you remember that moment, it makes you feel pretty emotional, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Next morning, Andy, who was being groomed to run stock hay himself someday, drove the half mile from his place to his parents' farm, ready to go to work. You know, I drove in, and I went in the shop, and Dad's pickup was there, which I thought was a little bit strange. And so I thought, well, I'll see if he took Mom's car somewhere and looked in the garage and her car was there. Picked up the phone in the house. There was no dial tone.

That's when my heart kind of sunk. That, for some reason, was a little bit of a trigger in my mind. Something was wrong. Something was wrong. I thought, well, I better go upstairs. As I started up the stairs, there was some blood on the walls. You know, I knew it was bad. It's got to be surreal, a moment like that.

Does your mind even register? No. I think, good Lord protects us. Until I rounded the corner and saw Dad laying there on the floor. And it was a horrible thing. It was, perhaps, the central moment in his life so far. Nothing would be the same after this. What did you do when you found them?

I never made it past the landing. My cell phone was out in my pickup, and I just turned around and went to call for help. The ambulance was there in 12 minutes, the first lawman in 20. Andy stood outside in shock, calling family without even knowing what happened or what to say. Andy's wife and I work together. She answered the phone call, and she didn't even recognize Andy's voice, and they've been together for nine years. Your own wife? She came in the back and said,

Tam, something's wrong. Andy just called and said, come quick. Dad's laying in a pool of blood. But like the rational farm folk they are, 30 miles away and close to the nearest hospital, they did not assume the worst, even when they tried to call back Andy, who now wasn't answering. And by 11, 1 and 30, both Cass and I were both like, something is really wrong. And the minister called and said, you need to come home. And I said, I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's wrong and they said you're mom and dad have been killed. I think I did start screaming and we headed towards the farm to be with Andy. Never in a million years would you think that

you'd see your parents house taped off by that yellow tape. It was a stunning crime. Big news throughout the Midwest. The stalks the most unlikely victims. Wayne found on the upstairs landing, dead of a shotgun blast. Wife Charmin murdered in her own bedroom, a telephone in hand as if trying to call for help. The county sheriff advised caution.

Right now this is an unsolved homicide. Whether it's somebody local or somebody from another town, we don't know at this time. Who could have murdered Wayne and Charmin Stock? And why? As an entire community struggles to absorb the horror in their midst, the Stalks' children face another stunning shock. It's like, is this really happening? Just a couple of hours after Wayne and Charmin Stock's son discovered their bodies in their rural Nebraska farmhouse on Easter Monday, 2006, the word got around. Law enforcement swarmed the scene.

Neighbors expressed shock in that understated Midwestern way. They're just typical Nebraska farm background people, and you wouldn't expect it. Andy Stark, as you can see in these pictures taken on that very day, stood next to his pickup in utter shock, waiting for his brother and sister to arrive, and he struggled to process it all, as his father's

words echoed in his mind. I'll never forget July of 05. Dad and I were working together. We were standing there, and he looked at me, and he said, son, he said, when it's my day to go, hold your head high, keep living life. I'll never forget that. But it was all happening so fast. Wayne and Charm and Stock had been gunned down in the safety of their own home,

the sanctity of their own bedroom. Why would anyone want them dead? And who? Andy was the last to see his parents alive, the one who found their bodies in the morning, which made him, bizarre though it sounds, a potential suspect. Before I even saw Steve and Tammy, they had put me in a car and took me to another town and questioned me in a room. Trying to establish whether or not you were involved.

Yeah, did gunshot residue tests. It was like, is this really happening? He questioned me in a room. Trying to establish whether or not you were involved. Yeah. Did gunshot residue tests. It was like, is this really happening? Andy Stock didn't realize it at the time, but investigators were soon looking hard right at him. After all, he was there, he had opportunity, and he may have had motive. He might have had something to gain from his parents' death.

Why? Andy Stock was the already designated heir to the Stock Hay Company, which some people might consider a family fortune. And as investigators questioned Andy, CSI units were busily working the crime scene as well. It was a very brutal crime scene. It was one of the worst I've ever seen. One of those leading the investigation?

David Kofo, the head of the CSI squad in Douglas County. From Omaha, Nebraska's largest city, an hour away, he was called in to help the smaller Cass County Sheriff's Department. What really bothers me is that these two people were just sleeping in bed, and the male victim was apparently crawling away, and he was shot in the head, clearly an execution. Close-up. Close-up.

And the female victim was along the side of the bed holding a phone in her hand, and she had been shot in the eye at close range. Investigators found out pretty quickly how the Starks' killer, or killers, had entered the house. A screen had been lifted. A window appeared to have been forced open, leading into the laundry room. From there, it appeared, the killer's route might have gone past the now-empty Easter basket Charmin had made, through the well-kept kitchen, and then up the stairs to where the Starks lay sleeping.

Four 12-gauge shotgun shells leaving a trail to the bodies. By the look of it, the Starks woke up. Wayne tried to get up but was shot first in the knee. The gun fired so close to him it left this huge powder burn on the bed. Then Wayne was shot in the head. Charman killed two as she tried to call 911. And then it became apparent. It wasn't just one killer, but at least two.

When we did the blood pattern analysis, we saw a void area at the top of the steps. Which could only mean one thing. As one of the killers fired at Wayne Stock from behind, this area, called a void area, was where another killer would have been standing. The second killer sprayed with blood spatter instead of a wall. called a void area, was where another killer would have been standing. The second killer sprayed with blood spatter instead of a wall. Kofod and his team found a wealth of evidence outside the house, too. It was a big farm operation.

There was a lot of outbuildings, and it was complicated by the fact that they'd had an Easter egg hunt the day before, so we had a lot of shoe prints and stuff. But one print stood out. I saw a shoe print in the mud that was unusual by a flower bed near the front door. And beyond the flower bed, there was a virtual trail of evidence left by the likely killers. In a gravel driveway, there was a marijuana pipe, and about 10 feet from it, there was a flashlight. And those two things were obviously out of place.

You can sort of imagine the television show, CSI. Some guy, there's a light. Oh, there's a, you know, it's just too easy. But there it was. It was there. I think one thing I knew pretty much right at the beginning was that I could see, visibly see blood on the outside of the flashlight. So we knew that had to be involved.

And then a real breakthrough. A newspaper carrier called in to report that he and his girlfriend saw something. They'd been driving down this country road, middle of the night, about a mile from the stock farmhouse down there. And just here, outside this cemetery, they saw a car just parked here. Strange cars just don't get parked on country roads outside Murdoch, Nebraska, at three o'clock in the morning. It was tan or light brown four-door sedan, said the young man. And what really stuck out was that this car later passed them in the same area that same night. This time driving 60 or 70 miles an hour, it was in a rush, it appeared, to get away.

Investigators now had a number of clues. That car seen by the newspaper carrier, the flashlight with what appeared to be blood on it, the marijuana pipe, and detectives were probably looking for more than one killer. But a motive? Who knew? Not a thing was missing. Wallets, purses, gun collections, even a safe hidden in the bedroom floor, all untouched. But all that evidence, and asking questions of those closest to the stocks would soon pay off because just a week later an arrest and a confession and another shattering blow to the stock family

stories surface of a long simmering feud between the beloved farming couple and the family's black sheep. Just knowing that they hadn't got along real well had my own suspicions. Was the killer at his own family's dinner table at Easter Sunday? Andy Stock was, and still is, a grief-stricken man. And it wasn't long before investigators restored him to his family and dropped him from their list of possible suspects in the awful murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock. Besides, as detectives questioned the couple's large extended family,

another relative's name came up, quite often, actually. Matt Livers. Livers was Wayne and Charmin's nephew, 28 years old. In fact, Livers attended that Easter dinner the afternoon leading up to the murder. But he wasn't there by virtue of being a family favorite. In fact, Livers was considered something of a black sheep. He bounced from job to job, never seeming to find his niche. Family members told police Matt was, well, slow, different. He had no criminal record, but there was, they said, an ongoing problem between Matt and the Stalks. They described disagreements, sometimes as heated. They said Charman had a dislike for Matt, the Stalks' oldest son, Steve. I think in my head, I went to it a little bit,

just knowing that they hadn't gotten along real well. I had my own suspicions. So, just two days after the murders, detectives visited Matt Liver's former employer, asked about his personality, rumors that he had a temper. They put a watch on Liver's, went through his garbage, too. This was at his house in Lincoln,

about 30 miles from the murder scene. And then on April 25th, eight days after the bodies were discovered, they asked Matt Liver's to come in and answer some questions.

You're free to leave at any time. Well, I'm here to cooperate with you, General. And he was unerringly courteous, deferential even to the two detectives questioning him. Said he had never been interviewed by police before. What do you think happened? I don't, I don't know. I really don't have any idea.

I'd like to know why. Who, what, when, where, and how, and why. You know, why would somebody do this to such good people, very Christian people, very loving and likable people? Livers told them that after the big family dinner with the Stocks, he drove home the half hour to Lincoln, where he stayed all night with his girlfriend Sarah and Sarah's young son and a roommate. He did admit to having disagreements with his Uncle Wayne

over the various family issues, but those were minor, he said. A couple of years ago, we kind of had a tiff, family issues, but those were minor, he said. After five hours of questions, Matt Livers agreed to take a polygraph. But if Livers was looking to clear himself of suspicion by taking that test, it did not quite have the desired effect. Your subconscious body is telling the machine you cannot fool it. I didn't have anything to do with this. You did. I did not.

You did. I did not, Bill. You did. I did. I'm sorry. You did. For more hours, the detectives locked horns with Livers. And despite his continued denials of involvement, they knew, they said, he was lying.

We've got so many people sitting in that chair, okay, that think that they're smarter than us and you're not. No. Okay? You're not dumb as a brick. No, you're not dumb as a brick, okay? You made a mistake. You f***ed up. You did. You f***ed up and now you've got to pay for it.

Why were investigators here in Nebraska so convinced Matt Livers was lying? a brick, okay? You made a mistake. You f***ed up. You did. You f***ed up and now you're going to pay for it. Why were investigators here in Nebraska so convinced Matt Libers was lying? Well, besides the polygraph, there was the state profiler who suggested that this is the sort of crime committed by young males who know their victims. How else would they know to find the farmhouse way out in the middle of nowhere if they didn't know them. And add to that, said the profiler, this was the sort of crime that appeared to be very personal, an execution. Matt Livers rang those bells, all of them, and rang them loudly. Eventually, detectives got quite explicit, telling Livers he was headed for death row. At last, he would start giving them what they knew to be true. This is your one shot.

We'll put the autobranch out right now and attempt to help you, okay? Leclerc chair, gas, lethal injection. That's what that case is. And it was that technique that finally produced the desired effect. Rough, perhaps, yes. But Matt Livers started confessing. You got a gun. Right or wrong? Right.

And you took that gun back to your uncle in Aunt Sharma's house, right? Right or wrong? Come on, man. Right. Now that the cat was out of the bag, Livers began filling in more of the blanks. How the murder went down, for example. Put the gun to her face and blew it away. Okay. And then as I headed out, I just stuck it up to him and blew him away.

And then, a bonus. Remember how that blood spatter indicated a second killer was involved? Well now, before they trooped him off to jail, Matt Livers gave them a name to match the void on the wall. So perhaps it's not so surprising that in the elation of the moment, detectives had no idea, not a clue, that they had just jumped down an Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole.

The case snares a second suspect, not just with an accusation, but with what appears to be damning evidence. Now that was the real smoking gun. I mean, you've got him. The children of Wayne and Charman Stark were still reeling from their grief as they buried their parents less than a week after perhaps the most horrific murder their little town had ever seen.

And then, to grief, add shock. Late one evening, son Andy answered his phone and heard the news from one of the detectives. Andy called his sister. It was about 12.30 at night. He says, Tam, I need you to be awake. Are you awake? And I said, yeah, what's going on? And he said, they arrested Matt and Nick.

And I said, Matt, Nick, who? And he said, our cousin Matt and Nick Sampson. It was true. Matt Livers had confessed to the murders of his aunt and uncle. Put the gun to her face and blew it away. And he'd named an accomplice, 22-year-old Nick Sampson, a cousin of Matt's on another branch of the family tree. My husband had given me the phone and I was sitting up in bed.

And I said, Andy, should I be shaking? And he said, that's normal. The shock. But Matt Livers had been with them at Easter dinner just a few hours before. Now he said he and Nick had returned to kill his aunt and uncle. Our first reaction was, somebody needs to tell our grandma. She had just lost her only son. And her grandson is being arrested for this.

And just like us, she's like, I don't understand. And I said, Grandma, none of us understand any of this. Did it give you any sense of, well, at least somebody has been found responsible? Did it make you feel any better? I was like, well, at least we're moving on to the next phase of this. We're not going to wonder for the rest of our lives. So I was relieved, I guess, to know that they had somebody. With Livers already in jail, police descended on Murdoch to arrest Nick Sampson.

Sampson was a cook at Bulldog's Bar in Murdoch. He had a minor criminal record, was a guy who, by his own admission, liked to drive too fast, had a problem with marijuana as a teenager, had done two separate stints in boys' homes, and now Sampson had been printed and processed. a problem with marijuana as a teenager, had done two separate stints in boys' homes, and now Sampson had been printed and processed and then, like livers, questioned on videotape. What do you think you're here for? I think they think that I'm involved in the murders. But Nick Sampson, unlike his co-defendant, It doesn't have absolutely nothing to do

with this. During three hours of questioning, did not confess to anything. If something's left of that house, with your DNA and all your prints, how are you going to explain how it got there? Well, no.

Because I don't think he had my DNA for anywhere near that house. Because I've never been in that house. Never, ever, once in my entire life have I ever been inside their house. Like Livers, Samson volunteered to take a polygraph. But again, the result wasn't quite what the accused had hoped for.

The polygrapher said the tests showed Sampson was deceptive when he denied being at Wayne Stock's home when Wayne was shot. And investigators seized on that to ratchet up the pressure. You were at the house when he was killed. Your body's telling me otherwise. So we need to get past that. What's going on there? My honest to God was not at this house when they were killed.

But the investigators did not believe Nick Sampson. After all, Matt Livers had already told them Nick Sampson was behind the whole thing, that the two of them actually planned the crime together on their cell phones in the two days or so before the murder. And so, said the detectives, they were pretty sure. Matt Livers was telling the truth. Nick Sampson was lying. You were there when he was shot. I was not there.

I want you to understand how the system works. I do understand. I'm getting framed for something I didn't f***ing do. But it didn't look good for Nick Sampson. He denied being a marijuana user anymore, but he had had trouble with the drug before, and investigators found that marijuana pipe at the scene. When detectives visited Nick's grandfather in Murdoch, the old man told them that a month ago, Nick borrowed a 12-gauge shotgun from him,

the same gauge weapon that was used in the murders. Then investigators executed a search warrant at Samson's home in Palmyra. Among the items seized, from under the bed, that 12-gauge borrowed from his grandfather, and a pair of blue jeans, examined by CSI chief David Kofitz's team. And we had a pair of pants, and the pair of pants had looked like blood on them.

We had tested that with phenolphthalein, and that was positive. Now, that was the real smoking gun. I mean, you've got him. And then there was more. Remember that car, apparently seen by the newspaper carrier, parked just a mile from the farmhouse the night of the murders? Detectives had found it, they believed. A 1997 Ford Contour owned by Nick Sampson's brother. And it had been cleaned, in details actually, at 5.30 Eastern Monday morning, just hours after it had apparently been used in the murders. Who details a car at 5.30 in the morning?

That's exactly why the detectives thought it was pretty suspicious. But wait, it gets even better. The car had been searched for evidence once and nothing was found, but then CSI chief Kofod got a call from one of the lead investigators. When Matt confessed, he said they threw the shotgun in the backseat of the Ford Contour. And he said, maybe you can find some, you know, transfer evidence there. Maybe just take another look at it, you know. And I said, well, maybe we missed it.

So they examined the car again. And this time, lo and behold, a stain was found just below the steering wheel on the dashboard. A stain found by CSI Chief Kofod himself. I just took it along that edge and wiped it because I figured that way I wouldn't miss anything. And it reacted. So you got a hit, though. I got a presumptive positive, yes. And before long, tests confirmed that what the CSI chief found under the dashboard was indeed blood.

The blood of Wayne Stock, the victim. Only one way it could get there, carried by Lyra's and Samson. With a confession and now real physical evidence to back it up, Many in the community thought, case closed. Oh, but they were mistaken. A piece of evidence that had gone unnoticed turned the case upside down.

Is this the ring of Truth? As April turned to a Midwest May, less than two weeks after the murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock, Cass County Sheriff's investigators were in mop-up mode. They had arrested 28-year-old Matt Livers. He'd confessed. And he'd named an accomplice his cousin, 22-year-old Nick Sampson. So the Cass County Sheriff's Department called in the press and announced that one of the most shocking crimes in this part of Nebraska in decades was solved. People ask, is this a closure on the case? It's not. I think it's another chapter, a turn in the page. There's still a lot of work to be done. And oh, he was right. The sheriff had no clue just how much work there was yet to be done. But for the Starks children, the arrest brought a small measure of relief. At least they decided they could try to move on, as they knew their parents

would have wanted them to. I can hear mom and dad say, Tammy, you can let this eat you alive, or you can go on and be the best that you can be and do what needs to be done, and that is family. So we can dwell on it, but we choose not to, because that's not what mom and dad would want. And now the system could grind forward, too. And the system provided defense attorneys, Jerry Soucy for Nick Sapson, Julie Baer for Matt Livers. First thing he says is, look, I told them I did this, but I didn't do this, and you've got to believe me. They all said they didn't do it. Right. You know, I've been lied to a lot as a defense lawyer, so the cynical side of me goes, uh-huh, right. And yet, Baer and Soucy were puzzled, too. There were things that just didn't quite add up.

Both Nick and Matt and their live-in girlfriend swore up and down that on the night of the murder, they were at home, asleep, 25 miles away. And Nick claimed, despite what the cops believed, he'd never talked to Matt by phone or in person the week before the murders. What? The first thing I simply was concerned about was what was the evidence against Nick Sampson, regardless of whether he did it or not. I just had to know what the evidence was. And then, quite by chance, this tiny piece of what

seemed to be evidence showed up. Police missed it the morning after the murder, but one sharp-eyed cop just happened to notice it a couple of days later. It was this gold ring on the kitchen floor. I thought, well, somebody took it off to wash their hands, and it fell down, so now they forgot about it. But at the time, it could have belonged to the victim. Right. It could have belonged to anybody. It could have.

Except one thing people should know about the stockhouse, nothing was ever out of place. So, one of the investigators picked up the ring, bagged it, and tagged it as evidence. It was a size 10, a man's ring, bearing a message. The inscription said, love always Corey and Ryan. So they wanted to find out who's a Ryan, who's a Corey. Who was Corey? Who was Ryan? Detectives asked the Stalks' children.

None of them knew anybody by those names. Didn't recognize the ring either. But as Livers was confessing, and as he and Sampson were arrested and put in jail, one of Cofood's officers kept puzzling over that little ring. On the inside were three tiny letters. A-A-J. The manufacturer, perhaps?

Well, yes. Turned out to be a place called A&A Jewelers, Buffalo, New York. I remember one of the girls in shipping had indicated that there was a call from somebody in the Nebraska Police Department. Barry Martino was running what was left of Buffalo's A&A office just then. Why, what was left? The place was going out of business. Massive layoffs, 200 jobs lost.

By the time Nebraska cops started calling, Mary was one of only three people left to clean up the Buffalo office and close it down. And now, here was this investigator asking Mary to track down a ring the company had likely shipped years ago. And you said what? You gotta be kidding. I said that's like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, she mentioned homicide. And that's when Mary Martino heard about the ring and the double homicide and the fact that nobody else at the

company seemed able to help. She said she had made several attempts and no one was willing to assist her. So Mary Martino said she'd see what she could do. Certainly her company would have taken the order, made the ring, inscribed it Love Always, Corey and Ryan, and shipped it. But where?

Mary went to the warehouse where tens of thousands of back orders were kept. So I started with just box number one, stores one through 25, then box number two, stores 25 through 30. And you went through each one? Yes. Until I got to like 100 and... I believe it was 108 or 118,

I said, this is going to be impossible. So Mary asked for help. Had a colleague make a computer grid of the more than 3,000 stores A&A shipped to across the country, a block of dates when the ring might have been ordered, and cross-matched that with the inscription. How long did that process take? It took me probably three days and two nights.

Does that seem a little over the top? I mean, you could look for an hour or so and say, well, I can't find it, sorry, and that would be that. I heard homicide. I heard it was important. And lo and behold, after three days of searching, suddenly there it was. I got up from my chair and I said, bingo, I found it. I found it. Any specifics about what you found out on that order form, where it was sent? Do you remember that? It was Wisconsin. I do know that. Wait, Wisconsin? Not Nebraska? Actually, it was quite specific. The ring was sent to the town of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin,

to this Walmart store. This is where a girl named Corrie bought the ring for a boy named Ryan. But it wasn't love always, and the ring was soon gathering dust in the cab of Ryan's red pickup truck. But then the strangest thing happened. The truck was reported stolen from here on Ryan's red pickup truck. But then the strangest thing happened. The truck was reported stolen from here on Ryan's farm just a few days before the murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock in far off Nebraska. Really nothing more than a standard missing vehicle. Jim Rohr was back then

a detective in Dodge County, Wisconsin. When the call came in, Experian suggested probably some local joyride. They'd find it nearby. Instead, what a surprise. Our dispatch had received confirmation from a parish down in Louisiana that they had the stolen truck. Stolen in Wisconsin and abandoned way down in Louisiana.

That's a long way to go. What did you think? A couple of kids on a joyride, somebody taking it that needed to get back down south for whatever reason. It wasn't long before they fingered the suspected thieves. There were two of them. The guy was Greg Fester, age 19, with a history of drug use, suicide attempts, anger issues. Fester was on probation for with a history of drug use, suicide attempts, anger issues. Fester was on probation for weapons and disorderly conduct convictions.

Greg was a little odd. He seemed a bit slow. He just didn't seem to grasp things quite as well as a typical person. Fester's alleged accomplice was a 17-year-old named Jessica Reed, a former honor roll student and cheerleader turned troubled teen after a divorce. She'd become mixed up with drugs and, by extension, fester. Not exactly master criminals, were they? No, not by any sense of the word. Two teenagers from Wisconsin...

Whacked out on drugs and not knowing what the hell they were doing. Out of control. But the detective had no idea just how out of control these two had been or where their jaunts in the stolen truck had taken them. And that, a few weeks later, is where the ring came in. That's when Rohr got a call from Nebraska. Heard how that ring turned up at the scene of a double murder. Heard how they tracked it back to the Walmart in Beaverdale.

And then to Corey and Ryan and the stolen truck. That must have been a shocker to get that information, to have it across your desk. A huge shocker. That pretty much sends a chill down your spine. What was going on? How were these two teenagers, Reed and Fester, tied to the murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock?

Or were they at all? An interrogation of one of the teens provides a chilling first glimpse of what may have happened inside that farmhouse. And so I freaked out and left because obviously that guy's up there killing somebody. Unless, of course, she's lying. Spring arrived. The stock farm turned from brown to green.

And Wayne and Charmant's children struggled best they could to put their lives back in place. They both wanted us to strive for so much more and said, you know, you can always do better. And so they may not have noticed so much the riddle that sprouted along with the corn. Two towns, Murdoch, Nebraska, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, more than 500 miles apart,

now united undeniably by a single band of gold. That ring, sold in a Beaver Dam Walmart and found days after the murder in the kitchen of the Stock farmhouse. How did it get there? Matt Livers never said anything about a ring when he confessed to killing Wayne and Charmin Stock. Nothing about a stolen truck or out-of-control Wisconsin teenagers either. One of whom, Jessica Reed, out on bail over the vehicle theft,

responded to an invitation to visit the Wisconsin detective, Jim Rohr. She had to know somewhere in the back of her mind that maybe they know more or want to talk to me about more than just a stolen truck. Did she? In fact, as she settled in, young Ms. Reed seemed to view the police interview as little more than a nuisance

to be endured. My grandma's coming into town and I kind of, I want to do this, but I want to do it a little bit faster and I know this is going to take forever. Jessica was all of 17. Did she wonder why the Wisconsin cop was joined by investigators from Nebraska? I really want to know what Nebraska has to do with this. I don't even think we entered Nebraska. Didn't go to Nebraska, didn't know anything about a gold ring, she said. She and Fester just stole a truck, she said, and fueled by pot and massive doses of over-the-counter cough syrup, went off in search of the ocean before running out of gas and money

and leaving that pickup truck in Louisiana. But then they showed her a picture of a marijuana pipe, which along with the gold ring turned up at the stock farmhouse. And Jessica Reed's mantle began to crack. Okay, I did steal. I stole a whole bunch of money from somebody. I don't know who, I don't know where. I just remember stole a whole bunch of money from somebody. I don't know who, I don't know where. I just remember stealing a whole bunch of money.

And yes, we did lose that pipe when we stole this money. Reed then blurted it out. At this farmhouse, now apparently to her surprise in Nebraska, Greg Fester sneaked in through a window and let her in the back door. In the kitchen, she said she found $500 in an envelope. And then, she said, they left. And the ring? Well, now she admitted finding it in that stolen pickup, putting it on, and then feeling it slide off her thumb inside that house. Where was all this going? The reason I ask you is that the two people upstairs in their bed were shot to death.

And you're saying that me and Greg did it? was all this going? The reason I ask you is that the two people upstairs in their bed were shot to death. And you're saying that me and Greg did it? What I'm telling you is that you're telling us you're in this house, okay? Did you not tell them? Oh my God. I've never killed anybody, okay? I really didn't. This is so serious, please.

I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I took money, that's all I did. I swear to God, all I did was take money. I don't wanna go to jail for murder because I didn't do it. I took money. That's all I did. I swear to God, all I did was take money. I don't want to go to jail for murder because I didn't do it. Then who did? Remember, Matt Livers had already confessed and named Nick Sampson as his accomplice.

Tell us who you were with. I was with Craig. That's all I was with. I was with Craig. But wait a minute She must have known Matt and Nick So the investigators showed her pictures No idea who they were

She said Never saw them before If they did I swear to God There's some dumb people And then the visiting investigators From Nebraska informed her That Nebraska's electric chair Stood ready for her if she refused to cooperate.

And Jessica reconsidered. This guy, I don't know why, but he does look kind of familiar. That's Nick Sampson, who looked kind of familiar. And from there, as the hours wore on, Jessica's story shapeshifted, as did the players, time and again, until it evolved eventually into a tale that began Easter night at Bulldog's Bar in Murdoch, where Nick Sampson, you'll recall, worked and ended at the Stock Farmhouse. Because all I remember hearing in this house was, bang, bang, bang, bang. And so I was like, oh, that's not good.

And so I freaked out and left because obviously that guy's up there killing somebody. I don't want to stick around and have to do this. Excuse my language, I'm sorry, but I don't know what happened up there. And then, with that off her chest, Jessica looked again at the photo of Nick, the man she claimed was the mastermind of the murder. I know this sounds really dumb, but I wish he wouldn't have been a murderer. Why? He's really hot. Why is the hot one going to be the dumb ones? And with that, Jessica Reed's well-planned day, in fact all of her plans, evaporated in a jail cell.

Well, detectives focus next on Jessica's partner in crime, Greg Fester. She kind of got me into going with her. It was all Jessica's idea, said Fester, stealing the truck, the ridiculous trip across the country. And as for the murder in the farmhouse, that was the guy they met outside Bulldog's bar, he said, who squeezed into their stolen pickup truck, led them to the

Stalks farmhouse, went upstairs, and just started shooting. He walked, like, kind of ran into the room, and he, I heard the scream and shout again. We all run over the house. But then, surprise, surprise, Fester insisted the man who committed the murders was not Nick Sampson. Wasn't even Matt Livers, who'd already confessed that he was the killer. No, Greg Fester said it was some friend

he'd communicated with via text message, a guy he called Thomas. So, a little confusing perhaps, but for the investigators from Nebraska, it seemed to be starting to come together. What was their sense of things after that first day of questioning? I think a sense of accomplishment, mainly because we do have confessions from Greg and Jessica for the homicides. Let's go out and have a beer time.

Well, it's a reason to pretty much do a high five. That's just what these investigators did. Now with Greg Fester and Jessica Reed in jail, detectives set about finding physical evidence to back up their claims. And incredibly, once again, one little thing, not a ring this time, but a cigarette box, was about to turn the whole business upside down all over again. Inside the box. What? A letter from Jessica Reed.

And what she wrote stunned investigators. I killed someone. He was older. I loved it. As spring mellowed into summer in southeast Wisconsin, Detective Jim Rohr looked for evidence to support or refute the stories told by those teenagers, Jessica Reed and Greg Fester. Stories that they had witnessed but did not commit. The gruesome murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock on an Easter evening six weeks before in Murdoch, Nebraska. Rohr went to Reed's place, a sort of flophouse for teens, as he called it.

What we were looking for was anything at all that would tie them to Nebraska or any other location that they were at during their crime sprees. Oh, and he found it all right. Here, hidden behind a picture frame, was this cigarette box. And inside, a shotgun shell, 12 gauge,

the same gauge as used in the murders. And there was more folded up in that little box. This letter, apparently meant for Greg Fester. It said, quote, and this bullet, well, Bunny, it's the only thing left, and I loved it. But that's something we'll talk about one day. But it's here also because that's something I did for you, me, and for you to love me as much as I love you. That's the end of the quote. When you read the material that you found, what did you think? This was so bizarre. That gives you a mindset of the type of person we were dealing with. And then Rohr found a notebook, incredibly, with more words penned by Jessica Reed.

I killed someone. He was older. I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time. If Greg doesn't watch it, I'm going to just leave one day and I'll do it myself. Pretty scary. 17 years old. What this is telling us is that she truly was involved in pulling the trigger on at least one of the people there.

Time for another meeting with Jessica. You got some explaining to do, and I'm going to tell you right now. I am at the end of my rope over this whole thing between you and young Gregory. I am giving you one opportunity and one opportunity alone to come completely clean with every bit of your involvement in this. So you quit dancing around with me, because I know the truth. Greg blew the guy's head off. And he shot a hole through the lady's face.

There, she'd said it. It was Greg Fester who killed the stocks. But why would she then write that note? I killed someone. He was older. I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time. If Greg doesn't watch it, I'm going to just leave one day and go do it myself. You're in a lot of trouble, young lady. I didn't kill this guy, though. I didn't have a gun. How am I supposed to kill somebody without a gun? I watched Greg do

it. I didn't kill anybody. I am not kidding. I did not kill anybody. I promised you guys this. You know what? 17 years old and you've just thrown the rest of your life away. She tried to explain the words, changed her story again, confessed to firing one gunshot, then admitted something else quite shocking, that she had enjoyed it. Okay, I'll tell you guys what I did like. I liked the adrenaline rush.

And I know you did. I didn't like what caused the adrenaline rush, but I liked the adrenaline rush. That's a real shocker for you. I mean, you don't run into that in this little town too often. Well, no, and you don't run into it with a young girl either. Ballistics tests soon confirmed that the shell found in Reed's cigarette box matched spent shells found at the murder scene.

The murder weapon? Stolen from the same Wisconsin farmhouse where Reed and Fester stole the red pickup truck. Blood found on Reed's clothes and Fester's shoes matched the victim, Wayne Stock. And icing on the cake, DNA found on the gold ring and the marijuana pipe matched only Fester and Reed. Both were charged. First degree murder. Of course, as all this was happening, back in Nebraska, no one outside law enforcement knew a thing. The Stock children were certainly in the dark as they struggled to grip the wheel of their new strange lives. We have just lost both our mom and our dad. To lose one is horrible, but to lose both of them and not have those parent figures that kept this family going, where do we go?

How do we help Andy with the farm? How do we let our children have a normal life? Meanwhile, in their cells in the county jail, Matt Livers and Nick Sampson knew not a whit about these developments. And then, well into June, defense attorney Susie heard the words that changed everything. I got a call saying they've arrested Reed and Fester up in Wisconsin, and we got no details on it at all. But when they did, the lawyers just knew their clients were innocent. Everything clicked. You knew exactly what the case was at that point. Or did they? If the attorneys for

Matt Livers and Nick Sampson thought their clients were suddenly in the clear, they had some more to do. Because now the question was, were Matt and Nick in it together with Jessica and Greg? Talk to him. Present him with, you know, you know these people. And? Not a clue. Maybe he was lying to you. Summer, 2006. A rain of confusion washed over the farms and furrows around Murdoch, Nebraska.

The arrests 500 miles away in Wisconsin of two teenagers in connection with the savage shotgun murders of prominent farm couple Wayne and Charmin Stock sowed seeds of doubt in the official version of events. That version had this an open-and-shut case against two local men, confessed killer Matt Livers, and the accomplice he named Nick Sampson. Their arrests trumpeted weeks earlier in banner headlines and news conferences.

Now, these latest arrests of teens Jessica Reed and Greg Fester announced so quietly, had many wondering what was the connection among these four alleged killers. I called a newspaper reporter. I said, you won't believe this, but they arrested two other people. Samson's defense attorney, Jerry Soucy, and Liver's attorney, Julie Baer, spread the word themselves to local reporters. He called me back about three hours later, and he says, you won't believe this, but I got the arrest warrant from Wisconsin. And he said, do you want to read it? I says, oh, yeah. And you got that from a newspaper? I got it from a newspaper reporter.

It didn't come from the prosecutor's office? No, it was being sealed. I met him at a bar, and for the price of a Budweiser, I ended up being able to read the affidavit for the arrest warrant of Reed and Fester. Those affidavits slipped to attorneys by a reporter, contained details culled from the hours and hours of police interviews with Greg Fester and Jessica Reed. Greg blew the guy's head off. And told the story of the 12-gauge shotgun,

the shells, the ring, the marijuana pipe, and most tellingly, that DNA, irrefutably linking Reed and Fester to the crime scene. Suddenly, it was all beginning to make sense to those public defenders. Remember, they'd been skeptical when their new clients professed innocence, but ever since then, they'd been asking themselves one very simple question. Where was the evidence? And in their six weeks of looking for it, they had found, well, none.

After all, Liver's girlfriend, a woman with an impeccable reputation, insisted Matt was home all night with her, 30 miles away, in Lincoln, the night of the murders. Same with Nick Sampson's girlfriend, who swore he never left their house that night. And she passed a polygraph. If she would have thought that Nick had done this, she would have thrown him under the bus in a heartbeat. There was just no doubt about that. Then the lawyers went looking for evidence of the phone calls Matt described in his confession, calls in which he and Nick supposedly planned the murders. And the records revealed there wasn't one call, not one, between Matt and

Nick in the days before the murder. That phone communication never took place. You know, it simply didn't occur. But couldn't they have used, you know, those kind of phones you can buy that you can't trace? That's theoretically possible, but there's no evidence of that. Add to that, a ballistics test confirmed the gun found under Nick's bed was not the murder weapon.

The spot on Nick's jeans, thought to be blood, wasn't human blood at all. And now the arrests of these teenagers from Wisconsin, two people clearly present at the crime scene, but never mentioned at all in any of Matt Liver's hours and hours of police interviews. All this led Julie Bear to head over to the jail to ask Matt Liver's face-to-face about these alleged accomplices, Reed and Fester. Present him with, you know, this is what's being said. Do you know these people? And?

Not a clue. Not seen them, never spoke to them. Maybe he was lying to you. Not a chance. It would take another month for copies of those videotaped interrogations of Jessica Reed and Greg Fester to inch their way over to the defense attorneys. But when they finally did, more surprises. Like this comment during the interrogation of Jessica Reed.

I know there was nobody else there. It was just me and Greg. That's what happened. I am not kidding. And if no one believes me, then I really want to go back to myself. There were, she said, no other killers. Just her. Just Greg.

And that whole story about meeting Nick Sampson at Bulldog's bar, she made it up, she said, after detectives showed her a picture of the place and asked her if it looked familiar. For Nick Sampson's lawyer, the case was now as good as done. That must be a good feeling. No, it wasn't. That's a good feeling to know your client's innocent. It's a bad feeling to know that your client's still in jail. You can't get him out.

The cops are coming up with every other kind of theory they can think of to drag him in. Oh, yes. There was, remember, that blood from victim Wayne Stock found in a car connected to Nick Sampson and spotted near the murder scene. So the prosecutor wasn't about to drop charges against Mr. Sampson. And he, sitting in jail, had become suicidal. Nick was in really, really bad shape. And so at that point, I'm trying to do mesh psychiatric holding him together. It's going to work out. It's going to work out. But would it? The summer dragged by, followed by a depressing September. And then, first week of October, the county attorney Nathan Cox met the press.

The murder case against Nick Sampson was dropped. Sort of. Since there is no statute of limitations on murder, the state reserves the right to refile the charges in the future. Hardly the news the Stock family expected or wanted to hear, though they handled it with surprising grace. It's not for us to judge or, you know, to make a statement on that because we don't know. It was this and then it was that and then it was this and then it was that. But imagine being Nick Sampson on that amazing day. It was cloud nine. It was an incredible feeling. After five months in jail, he was free. It was incredible. I'm finally out.

But Nick Sampson, even free, was not carefree, not by any means. Some things could never be the same again. I was constantly looking over my shoulder, seeing who was behind me, you know. So there was a real, genuine, itch in your back fear that somebody was going to come after you. Come after me, come after my family? You know, revenge? Because around this county in rural Nebraska were a great many people, perhaps a majority, who were still quite certain of Nick's guilt. After all, his own cousin Matt admitted full out that they both killed those lovely people. I was upset at a loss of why my own cousin could do this to me. Why would he do it to you if it wasn't true?

To make himself look better. Just using me as a scapegoat. Nick Sampson was now off the hook. But what about Matt? True, he'd confessed to the murders. But was there more to the story? A tape surfaces of what he said to investigators the very next day. I've been just making things up to satisfy you guys.

The autumn moon in Nebraska, that troubled year of 2006, watched over a crop of confusion. Nick Sampson struggled with the bitterness the long jail-bound nightmare had planted in his soul. While the children of Wayne and Charmin Stock tried to make sense of the release of a man they'd been told killed their parents. It's a difficult situation.

None of us are attorneys. None of us are in law enforcement. And you're just sitting there trying to take it all in, trying to figure out, okay, how does this work? Why does this happen? Hadn't their cousin Matt Livers confessed? At least he was still in custody, as were those two teens from Wisconsin. So it wasn't as if the whole case was falling apart. At least, not yet. But if anyone did not feel confused in the October chill, it was defense attorneys Baer and Soucy, who were as sure as the summer day that both Nick Sampson and Matt Livers were innocent, despite what Matt told

police during his interrogations. It was just screaming, to me, false confession. There was every indication in there that there was a problem. What made it look like a false confession? As reports start coming in, you know, we start learning that none of the details that Matt provides are accurate. There was something else investigators may not have understood, but perhaps should have. Matt Livers, as his friends and family knew very well, was slow.

He had a low IQ, at least the sort of IQ people can measure. In a conversation with authority figures under pressure, Matt Livers was prone to being led. He was gullible. There was a portion of the questioning where they won't let him finish a sentence. They're belittling him. They're screaming at him. They're threatening him with a death penalty. And he believed them when they said those things?

Yes, very much so. And one moment stood out, defense lawyers say, when detectives should have realized just how little Matt Livers understood what was happening to him. Here it is. Watch what happens when they ask him to be a man and take responsibility. You consider yourself a man? Then stand up. He takes them very literally and starts to rise up out of his chair. He's going to stand up? He's going to stand up. No, stand up and be a man, okay? Were those detectives even paying attention to the sort of man they were talking to?

Maybe not. Just after Nick Sampson's release, Julie Bear received a DVD she'd never seen before, even though she'd asked months earlier, as was her right, for all the available material. This is a tape of Matt Liver's in a second interview, the day after his confession. Once he'd had a chance to regain his equilibrium. The absolute truth is, I was never on the scene.

I don't know if Nick is the actual person involved in this. I've been just making things up to satisfy you guys. How long was that second tape withheld? And by whom? Months and months and months after, because he said those things the day after his confession. Right. I don't know that Nick is involved in this,

because we never, I mean, you can check my phone records. We never talked on Thursday or Friday about this. And the only reason I picked him out of the crowd was I'd heard through the grapevine that his brother's car was used. What are you telling me this now for? What do you think is going to accomplish this now? Nothing. I mean, I'm just trying to... complain, I mean. Now that was a bombshell. Liver's own attorney had never been told by authorities that he'd recanted his confession.

So basically, from the official story, his recantation simply disappeared. Right. The Cascotti Sheriff's Department declined Dateline's request for interviews or explanations of how this happened, or for that matter, anything else about the case. But in December 2006, seven months after the murders, prosecution experts finally agreed to.

Liver's confessions were deemed unreliable. I went over to the jail and, you know, Matt was in the cell and we told him, you know, this is, it's over, you know, you're going home. And, you know, I probably had the biggest hug

from a man that I've ever had in my life. Cass County Prosecutor Nathan Cox was, once again again left to make the announcement. It's not my intention to try and convict somebody that is not guilty. That's not why I'm in this business. The winning isn't the issue. The issue is whether justice is being done. And with that, after more than seven months in jail, Matt Livers was free.

I'm innocent. I had absolutely nothing to do with this. And the doubters in the town all around him vanished for him in the joy of it all. I just went crazy. Praise the Lord. Praise you now. Thank you. Thank you. Praise the Lord type thing. Sarah was there, of course, to take him home. They are now, by the way, Mr. and Mrs. Livers. Best day of my life. Best day besides marrying my wife here. Sorry. Was it like watching him come out of there?

Oh, it was awesome. It was a relief. It was just great to be able to be with him again, you know, and everything. It was a wonderful day. But why in heaven's name did he confess in the first place? Finally, now that he was free, we could ask him. A lot of the audience watching will say, well, come on. Nobody's going to confess to something they didn't do, especially something so horrible as the murder of your own relatives. Well, they changed their tactics on me. My rear end was going to be in the frying pan. They were going to be going for the death penalty. You were scared?

Yeah, tremendously. I thought if I'd tell them what they wanted to hear, that I could get to go home. How did Nick's name come up? They asked me who else was involved and I started just throwing out names. Finally when I said Nick's name then that's when they seemed they were happy and believed me. But the damage was done. Although they've patched things up a bit. For years Matt and his cousin Nick barely spoke. I think he just wants to forget it ever happened. People give me s*** about it all the time

you know I try and let, make a joke out of it but it hurts every once in a while. What will it take to convince them that you're an innocent man? I don't think anything will. You're gonna have to live under this cloud for the rest of your life, probably.

Unless I move. But I don't want to move. I love Murdoch. That's my home. But if it seems strange to you that an innocent man could remain so long under suspicion, imagine how bizarre it was about to become as the accused and the accuser

played out a truly disturbing drama we'll call Trading Places. Troubling accusations about one of the lead investigators. So, you wake up one morning and they say you're a criminal. And then there were two. In the county jail in Plattsmouth, Nebraska, that is.

Only those two teenagers from Wisconsin remained behind bars, charged with murdering Wayne and Charmin Stock. The DA had let Matt Libers and Nick Sampson go, drop the charges, which to a suspicious county and Stock family was both upsetting and puzzling. After all, hadn't the head of CSI, David Kofod, found a blood sample that tied them to the crime? It must have seemed to you as if they were letting two murderers back out on the street. Yeah, that was kind of what, the way I felt. It did seem that they were just letting them go, but I guess nobody knew any different.

In fact, some of the investigators remain convinced Samson or Livers or both had to be involved somehow. They didn't buy the notion that two drug-addled teenagers just happened to stumble on the place by pure chance in the dark. And anyway, Fester, remember, said the main shooter, the guy who led them to the farm, was a local named Thomas, with whom Fester had been communicating by phone before the murder. But detectives could find no evidence whatsoever against this Thomas or anyone else. And meanwhile, Jessica Reed kept trying to persuade investigators that nobody else was there, besides her and Fester, of course. I am not lying, though. If I was lying, I would not still be going on about this.

She'd been saying that for months. I know what happened and no one will believe me. And though she was right about that, the detectives did not believe her. They still suspected Livers and Sampson of some involvement. Why? Remember way back at the beginning of our story, that speck of evidence that CSI chief Kofod found in a car connected to Nick Sampson and spotted near the murder scene? Here's the stain. Right here on the filter paper, Kofod swiped under the dashboard of that car. A second search of the car, by the way. The first by an officer under Kofod turned up nothing.

This was blood from the murder victim, Wayne Stock. How would it get there? It was the FBI that started asking that question. Not of Leibers or Sampson. The FBI's investigation was aimed at the local investigators who handled the case. In fact, at CSI Chief David Kofod himself. And after months of digging, the FBI concluded Kofod must have planted that swipe of blood himself. Phony evidence to nail down a shaky case.

It was a bombshell. David Kofod, division commander of the CSI unit in Douglas County, Nebraska, was indicted on four federal charges, including falsifying records and violating Livers and Sampson's civil rights. Kofod pleaded not guilty to all charges, defiantly told reporters he'd rather go to prison than resign, even passed a polygraph and was cleared in an internal sheriff's department investigation. So, you wake up one morning and they say you're a criminal. Well, it kind of was like that, but it was more of a long process, and I didn't do it. I just didn't, and it doesn't make any sense. Kovold blamed the stain on accidental contamination. Somehow, he

said, blood from the victim, Wayne Stock, ended up on that filter paper, probably out at the murder scene, and somehow, the kit containing that same filter paper was what he later used on the car. But Kofo did admit he broke the rules,

failed to log the evidence properly, even misstated the report. I did make a mistake. I didn't follow procedures. And that bothers me, and there's no way around that. That was wrong because I'm a boss, because I'm supposed to set the example. It's a little disconcerting, though. It is disconcerting. But it is also the reason why I say this is ridiculous to accuse me of planting evidence.

Why would I screw it up? Why wouldn't I log the evidence in? Why would I make mistakes that point the finger at me? A federal jury in Omaha heard the case and took just an hour to acquit Kofod of all counts. But the state of Nebraska wasn't satisfied, appointed a special prosecutor and charged Kofod with evidence tampering. And this time, after a week-long trial before a Cass County judge on what one headline called a dark day for law enforcement,

Kofod was found guilty. Do you understand what you were convicted of? Yes, Your Honor. At sentencing, the career law enforcement man stood up and again denied planting any evidence, said the truth would eventually come out. I don't believe this is the last of this case for me. I want to continue on, and that's nothing personal with you.

But the judge, acknowledging he was moved by letters written by Livers and Sampson, asking him to throw the book at Kofod, did just that. The defendant has not acknowledged any wrongdoing. He's not appeared to be particularly remorseful. Kofod would serve two years in state prison. He maintains his innocence to this day. You can talk about forgetting to write your report, but you don't forget about logging in the evidence.

And he not only forgot, but he falsified a lot of stuff on the report. It's a bad thing to say it's okay to plant evidence just because the guy's guilty, because how else do you know who's guilty and who's not guilty? No matter whom you believe on the blood issue, there are two people who know in living technicolor exactly what happened to the Stock Farmhouse that night. And one of them is about to tell us. Jessica Reed on the evil of Easter night.

Two people are dead because of me. It's a virtual given in legal circles. When it comes to cutting a deal for a lighter prison sentence, the first criminal to the courthouse wins. And in Cass County, Nebraska, the first to the courthouse was accused killer Jessica Reed. Jessica agreed to plead guilty to second-degree murder charges in exchange for testimony against her accomplice, Greg Fester. When it came to him,

it seemed prosecutors were certain to seek the death penalty. When in Charmanstock were roused, terrified from their sleep, sanctity of their own bedroom, Easter Sunday night, and shot to death in cold blood, if ever a case warned of the ultimate punishment, thought many Nebraskans, then this surely was it. But to all the mystifying moves by police and prosecutors, add one more. A judge ruled the county attorney actually missed a deadline to announce his intention to seek the death penalty. So first-degree murder for Greg Fester was off the table. Before long, a new deal was reached. Both Fester and Reed pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree. And in March 2007,

not yet a year since the killings, they entered a courtroom. You went to the sentencing? We did. It's the first time I saw him. I didn't think I could feel so much anger and sorrow and sadness. Well, I remember just thinking, I didn't know I could be this mad. Yeah. In the courtroom, Jessica Reed and Greg Fester each apologized to the Stock family, and then the judge handed down their sentences. For Fester, two consecutive life terms,

plus another 10 to 20 for using a weapon. For Reed, the first of the courthouse, remember, no break at all. The same sentence, two life terms, back to back, no parole ever. And for the Stock family, ever graceful and remarkably forgiving people, afterwards, a rare flash of anger. I hope they live a miserable life because it's turned our lives upside down. They made the choice to go into that house. Mom and Dad didn't have a choice. My son, who we'll never know, his grandma and grandpa doesn't have a choice.

What really happened that night? What led two Wisconsin teenagers to throw away their lives by so callously killing a Nebraska farm couple whom everyone loved? Perhaps only two people in the world know what happened inside that farmhouse. And why? And one is now speaking out. Two people are dead because of me, you know? And I have a very hard time with that still.

Jessica Reed is in her 30s now. Her demeanor, her presence as she sat with us in 2010, could as easily have been that of a kindergarten teacher. Instead, she knows she will die in prison and says she's haunted by what happened in that farmhouse. What was it like to watch those people die? Hell. And when you see it in your head?

It makes my heart drop. That's one thing in this world that I can't go back and fix. The truth about that night? Here it is, says Jessica. She and Fester, days without sleep or real food, had been driving aimlessly through Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, breaking into homes along the way. In one, she too grabbed a shotgun of.410.

So on Easter night, there they were, both armed, drugged, and wired, and they drove down another back road completely at random, and Greg said, stop. And at what turned out to be the stock farmhouse, in they went. Greg was like, you know, follow me real quick. So I followed him, and we went upstairs, And they went. Greg was like, you know, follow me real quick. So I followed him, and we went upstairs, and when I turned around, Greg had turned on the light in the room,

and I seen this guy laying in the bed, and I said, come on, let's go, let's do something, you know, because there was people there. What was the feeling you had as you said that? Like, panic. It was like craziness. It was Like, God, what if they wake up, you know? But? He just turned and went into that room. The guy had rolled out of bed, and they were wrestling with the gun,

and I just was, like, startled, and my gun went off. And I have no idea where that shot went. Sources close to the investigation, though, tell Dateline there's reason to believe that whether Jessica knows it or not, her wild shot may have been the fatal one. That it may have struck Wayne Stock in the head with evidence of the blast obliterated by another shot from Greg Fester's 12 gauge. Then Greg shot the guy in the back of the head, and he went back in that room and shot that lady. He ran down the stairs, and I ran after him. And that ring that they found, it flew off then. I didn't know until, like, way, way later when they showed me a picture of it,

because I knew I lost that ring, but I had no idea where. Yeah. What was it like in that truck on the way away? We didn't say anything. I mean, I started crying at one point, and Greg just looked at me, and he was like, don't do that, you know? But what about those letters?

The words found later in that house with Reed's belongings, with that cigarette box, words she wrote, boldly admitting to her crimes. I killed someone. He was older. I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time. If Greg doesn't watch it, I'm going to just leave one day and do it myself. I don't understand it. I hate hearing them because it's just kind of like how everything was portrayed. I hate hearing it.

Because it was how everything was portrayed? Because I'm not like that. Were you like that at the time? No. That was my way of showing Greg that I was okay with it. Because when he told me not to cry, it was like, what? I'm not supposed to feel bad about this? I mean, how can you have no remorse for this at all?

It's all a black hole of regret now, of course. Except, she says, for one good thing she did. She refused to implicate two men who had nothing to do with the murders. Turned down a golden chance to cut herself a better deal with prosecutors by lying and nailing Nick and Matt. Do you kick yourself about that sometimes? No. Why not?

Because when I wake up in the morning, I can look at myself and be okay. They're where they should be on the streets because they didn't do anything. And I'm where I should be, you know. A lot of the members of their family believe that they got away with it. What would you say to those people with their suspicions? To stop being suspicious. Because? They weren't there. They had nothing to do with this. But for the Stock family, it's just not that simple. Can you believe Jessica, they ask? They're driven, they say, by a common sense instilled in an early age by their murdered parents.

And so they still keep asking who and why. Who did this? I'd like to know the honest truth about everything. I hope someday we can all sit down and look at each other and say, were these two involved? Yes or no? Definitely. Was the blood planted? Yes or no? Definitely. I don't know that we'll ever know those answers, but I hope someday we'll know. A postscript? Andy has taken over the farm now, built a new house where he hopes to make some

better memories. Matt Livers and Nick Sampson filed lawsuits against Douglas and Cass counties and the state of Nebraska, claiming evidence was fabricated and withheld. Without admitting wrongdoing, the government settled the cases for $2.6 million. The citizen who went way beyond the call to find the critical evidence that saved them shrugs as if it was no big deal. I heard homicide. If it was somebody in my family, I would have wanted the assistance. And two defense lawyers still marvel that poor police work almost did their clients in, even as the very same cops brilliantly tracked the one piece of evidence that saved them

and finally identified the real murderers. A simple gold ring. Had they not been able to trace that ring to its owner in Wisconsin, I'm really afraid we'd have two guys sitting on death row for something they didn't do.