Dateline Originals - Murder in the Moonlight - Ep. 3: The Ring

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Investigators find a key piece of evidence that sends the case in a surprising direction. This episode originally published on February 24, 2025.

It was pretty impressive, all things considered, the investigation that is, into the murders of Wayne and Sharman Stock. The people of Murdoch, Nebraska had been deeply shaken and quite understandably so. If the Stocks weren't safe in the sanctity of their own bedroom, then who in Murdoch was safe? And so when the Cass County Sheriff's Office announced just two weeks after the murders, that one of the most shocking crimes in this part of Nebraska in decades had been solved,

well, you can hardly blame them for calling in the press and taking a victory lap. I think there's some relief at the same time, some hurt. And of course just about everyone was shocked that the culprits would turn out to be who they were. But there it was. Wayne and Charmond Sucks' own nephew, 28-year-old Matt Livers, that actually told the whole ugly story, confessed to shotgunning his own aunt and uncle. I was already fired up, and yes, I had a wrench to sell.

And if his 21-year-old cousin Nick Sampson had managed to resist the confessional urge, well, that wouldn't be unexpected, would it? But Matt had fingered him, and that was that. And now that itch in the back uncertainty, the fear that vicious killers were on the loose, had been put to rest. Meanwhile, said Cass County Sheriff Bill Brueggemann, they could get on with the legal stuff, button up the case. People ask, is this get on with the legal stuff, button up the case. People ask, is this a closure on the case?

It's not. I think it's another chapter, turn in a page. There's still a lot of work to be done. But the message was clear. Everybody could relax. And nobody was thinking of Voltaire just then. Ridiculous thought. Why in heaven's name would they?

It was so far off and long ago when that famous French philosopher scribbled in his notebook, while doubt is not an agreeable condition, certainty is an absurd one. Or as somebody in Murdoch might have said, don't count your chickens. I'm Keith Morrison and this is Dateline's newest podcast, Murder in the Moonlight. Episode 3, The Ring. The arrests of Matt Libivers and Nick Sampson brought a measure of relief to the Stalk children.

Even though Matt was a member of the family, there had been issues. And Nick, Matt's cousin, well they didn't know him as well, but now at least they could try to move on, as they knew their parents would have wanted them to. Daughter Tammy. 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 as Andy, the youngest sibling, put it... It's not going to bring them back, so why agonize over it? It is what it is. And with Livers and Sampson behind bars, the slow grind toward their inevitable trial could begin. Naturally, the same system that had caught the alleged killers also provided them with competent legal counsel, as the law requires. For Matt Livers, Attorney Julie Baer.

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. Right, right. You know, I've been lied to a lot as a defense lawyer. So, the cynical side of me goes, uh-huh, right. After all, that confession was very graphic. Very.

Put the gun to her face and blew it away. Then as I hid it out, I just stuck it to him and blew him away. And yet, when Julie Bear asked around a bit, she started to hear things. Things like this. Both Matt Livers and Nick Sampson and their live-in girlfriends swore up and down that on the night of the murders,

they were at their respective homes, sound asleep, miles away from the Stock Family farmhouse. And for what it was worth, although Matt said, remember, that they planned it all out on their cell phones in the two days or so before the murders, Nick Sampson swore up and down that he didn't see Matt or talk to him on the phone, in person, or any other way during that time. Not once, but how could that be? Nick Sampson got a defense attorney, too.

His name is Jerry Sousy. 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. Of course, as the law requires, the investigators were getting ready to tell him and show him what they had on his client. They were just in the aforementioned

mop up mode at that point, and well, that's when the MacGuffin showed up. A MacGuffin, of course, much loved by writers everywhere, is some object or device, often apparently insignificant, that can flip a plot upside down. They came across this thing in Sharman Stock's kitchen. And not during the first few CSI type go-rounds, right after the murders. In fact, not the next day either.

After, who knows how many dozens of investigators and first responders had tromped through the place. It was after all that, when a sharp-eyed young cop noticed, just lying there on the kitchen floor, a gold ring. Well, that could have been anybody's, of course. One of the cops, probably, probably or well, who knew? But there it was. And now crime scene investigator chief, David Kofod,

would have to find an explanation for it. I thought, well, somebody took it off to wash their hands and it fell down somehow they forgot about it. But at the time could have belonged to the victim. Right. Could have belonged to anybody. It could have. Exactly.

Except remember one thing people knew about the stock farmhouse. Nothing was ever out of place. The meticulous housekeeper, Sharman, made sure of it. Anyway, they bagged that gold ring and they tagged it as evidence. It was a size 10, a man's ring, 10 carat gold, and it was engraved with a very personal message. The inscription said Cory and spelled C-O-R-I and Ryan love always Cory and Ryan. Who was Cory?

Who was Ryan? Detectives asked the stalk children, of course, and well, none of them knew anybody by those names. They didn't recognize the ring either. It was a sort of glitch within a mystery that will keep bugging a man, or a woman. By which I mean one of the women on Kofod's detective squad, who noticed on the inside of the ring three tiny letters. AAJ. This is actually really good detective work. She had gotten a jeweler's manufacturing book from Borschheim's here in Omaha. There was only two manufacturers that had AAJ stamps. One of them had been out of business

since I think the 90s. And the other one, she got a hold of them. That manufacturer turned out to be a place called A&A Jewelers. It stamped all the products it made in Buffalo, New York with the letters AAJ for A&A jewelers. And so it was in Buffalo where Kofod's investigator found a woman working at AAJ by the name of Mary Martino.

I remember one of the girls in shipping had indicated that there was a call from somebody in the Nebraska Police Department. Mary Martino was running what was left of Buffalo's A&A jewelry office just then. Why what was left? Because the place was going out of business. They'd already laid off the workforce, 200 jobs, gone, just like that.

By the time that Nebraska investigators started calling, Mary was one of only three people left. Their job was to clean up the Buffalo office and close it down. And right in the middle of that crushing and depressing work, Mary gets a request to track down a single, not very fancy, not very unusual ring that the company had likely shipped away somewhere years ago. And you said what? You've got to be kidding. I said that's like looking for a needle in a haystack. However, she mentioned homicide. And that is when Mary Martino heard that the ring had been found at the scene of the double homicide of Wayne and Charmin Stock

in far off Nebraska. And it might be important. And then the Nebraska cops said that she, Mary, was literally the last person on Earth who could, at least possibly, solve that last vexing little mystery. She said she had made several attempts and no one was willing to assist her. No surprise there, wild goose chase like that. Because even if there was still a record of that ring, Finding it in the chaos of that office, right in the middle of closing

it down forever? Well, good luck. And anyway, she already had a mountain of depressing work ahead of her. But Mary Martino, dependable Mary, said she'd see what she could do. It was possible, after all, the company might have taken the order, might have made that very ring and inscribed it, Love Always, Corey and Ryan, and shipped it somewhere. That's what the company did for a long time. So Mary went out to the warehouse, where tens of thousands of old order forms were stuffed into hundreds of boxes, just waiting for Mary to throw them all away.

Instead, she opened up the first one and page by yellowed page started reading. 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 a hundred and, I believe it was 108 or 118, and I said, this is gonna be impossible. 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 can look for an hour or so and say, well, I can't find it, sorry. And that would be that. I heard homicide. Oh. I heard it was important.

And then, well, then she had a thought. There might be one more way to go about it. So she abandoned the warehouse and asked one of the few colleagues she had left to help her narrow down the search on the company computer, make a kind of grid. First she entered the stores A&A shipped to, more than 3,000 of them coast to coast, which didn't narrow it down at all, of course. But then she took a guess that the ring was ordered within the past few years, and she entered those dates, and well, that narrowed things down quite a bit. And then she input the inscription,

Love Always, Corey and Ryan. And out came a printout. And lo and behold, after three days and two nights of searching, 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 in Nebraska? What in the world would a ring sold in Wisconsin have to do with a double murder at Day's Driveaway in Nebraska. When Mary Martino finally found the record that made her say bingo, she picked up the

phone and she called back that investigator who'd asked her to somehow track down the origins of the gold ring found on the floor of the stock farmhouse. Now all these years later, we can only imagine the look on the Nebraska investigator's face when Mary mentioned where the ring had been sent. It was Wisconsin. Actually, she was far more specific than that. ANA had sent the ring to a Wisconsin town about 500 miles from the farm where the murders occurred.

They sent it to the town of Beaver Dam. Beaver Dam bills itself as a sort of outdoor paradise. Fishing, boating, snowmobiling, that sort of thing. It's northwest of Milwaukee. And in Beaver Dam, as in thousands of other towns like it across rural America, there was a Walmart. That store is where Mary's Company sent the gold ring. And so, investigators from Murdoch contacted the Walmart

in Beaver Dam and unearthed a sad and oft-repeated story. Once upon a time, learned those detectives, there was a girl named Cory, who thought the world of a boy, named Ryan, and she bought him that symbol of permanence, the gold ring. She had it engraved with the words, Love Always. But it was not Love Always. And after Cory and Ryan broke up, the gold ring gathered dust in the cab of Ryan's red pickup truck. And that is where the strangest thing happened and why it appears in our story. That red pickup truck was stolen. Somebody just took it from Ryan's farm outside of Beaver Dam. Naturally, Ryan filed a police report.

It was dated just a few days before Wayne and Sharman Stock were shot to death in far off Nebraska. But of course it was a Wisconsin detective who took the theft report, name of Jim Rohr. We treat it just as a simple missing vehicle. When it's recovered, if it's somebody taking it for a joy ride, you know, we'll get it back. So really nothing more than a simple missing vehicle. When it's recovered, if it's somebody taking it for a joy ride, you know, we'll get it back.

So really nothing more than a standard missing vehicle. Experience suggested police would likely find the truck somewhere nearby. But instead, there was another surprise. Day after I get the case handed to me for the stolen vehicle for follow-up is when we get the phone call from Louisiana saying we have a recovered truck and what do you want us to do with it? Louisiana? That was a thousand miles from Beaver Dam. How do they know to call you because of the registration to your town? Well it's

Wisconsin registration so they comes up as stolen on a national computer. So they call the originating agency who entered the truck as stolen and let us know that they have the vehicle and ask what our wishes are with it. It was found abandoned. So it's not like it was pulled over on a traffic stop where now we have a suspect for who stole the vehicle.

They're going to have a toad. So it's basically a matter of trying to get the truck returned to its rightful owner. But then, somebody from Nebraska called him about that gold ring. And suddenly Jim Rohr was in a whole other mystery altogether. That's when we get a phone call saying a ring was located at a double homicide scene. When that ring gets tracked back as to being last in the possession of the owner of this truck that was stolen, it's not going to be a simple stolen vehicle anymore. That must have been a shocker to get that information, to have it cross your desk. A huge shocker.

That pretty much sends a chill down your spine. There's an old saying that prisons are full of criminals who thought they were smarter than they really are. And that old adage would seem to apply here. It didn't take Detective Rohr very long to figure out who the truck thieves were, and well, they were not exactly members of Mensa. They left quite a trail.

Rohr followed it and discovered that before they swiped the pickup truck with the ring in it, inscribed from Corey to Ryan, they stole an SUV and side-swiped a couple of cars with it, which drew the attention of a crowd, and so they abandoned the SUV. And since they were in a hurry, they left some personal stuff behind. Some of the belongings consisted of IDs, marijuana pipes, drug paraphernalia of sorts. They left their calling card right there. And so finding the thieves was the easy part. In fact, they had already made their way back from Louisiana to Wisconsin,

where somebody saw them hanging around a cemetery right near the farm where they stole the truck. There were two of them, a guy and a girl, and what a pair they were. The guy was Greg Fester, age 19, with a history of drug use and suicide attempts and anger issues. Fester was on probation for weapons and disorderly conduct convictions. Greg was a little odd. He seemed a bit slow, not real educated. Now with the slowness, I don't know if that's from heavy drug usage or just basic education, but 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,

cheerleader. Well then her parents got divorced and she didn't do so well anymore. She got herself mixed up with drugs and then by extension with the lovely Mr. 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 Detective Rohr had no idea just how out of control these two had been.

No one did, really. Not yet, anyway. In the spring of 2006, investigators in two states sought to solve a 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 Wal-Mart, and then found days after the murders of Wayne and Charmin Stock, lying on the floor in the kitchen of the Stock farmhouse near Murdock, Nebraska.

What a lot of mischief that size 10 ring was getting up to. Good mischief, bad mischief that size 10 ring was getting up to. Good mischief? Bad mischief? Well, here is that part of the story. The main suspect was, of course, Matt Livers. He confessed, remember, rather colorfully about what he said he did to Wayne and Sharman Stalk. But nowhere in his confession, or in his answers to lots and lots of questions, did he say a single word about a ring. Ditto about a stolen truck, or out of control Wisconsin teenagers, not a hint, not a word about them.

Like none of that even existed. Meanwhile, way off in Wisconsin, something kind of amazing happened. When Detective Jim Rohr invited Jessica Reed to come in for a chat, and she said, Sure. If all she had to do was cop to stealing a truck or helping to steal it, she couldn't be in too much trouble. Hello? Here's Rohr again. 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 her visit to the police interview room as little more than a nuisance to be endured. In fact, this is her saying that very thing. 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 don't know if it's going to take forever. Jessica, you'll recall, was all of 17. Did she wonder why the Wisconsin cop was joined by investigators from Nebraska? She certainly seemed to. 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. Then the detective showed her a picture of a marijuana pipe which along with the gold ring Then the detective showed her a picture of a marijuana pipe, which along with a gold ring turned up at the stock farmhouse. And Jessica Reed looked and paused. One of those, uh oh, caught me kind of pauses. Because then she said, 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 stealing a whole bunch of money. And yes, we did lose that pipe when we stole this money. And then, well then Jessica just blurted it out. At that 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.

Swear to God. Oh, in the ring? Well, now Jessica Reed admitted, yes, she found it in that stolen pickup and she put it on. But then, inside the night dark farmhouse as they were making their getaway, she felt it slide off her thumb in the kitchen. Didn't stop to look for it. And where was all this going anyway?

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.

It's a different story. That's why we're here. I took money. That's all they did. I swear to God. All I did was take money. I don't want to go to jail. 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 wanna go to jail for murder because I didn't do it.

Well, somebody did it. And remember, two men, Matt Livers and Nick Sampson, had been arrested and were already in jail. Matt said they committed the murders, confessed in excruciating detail, and then Nick Sampson as his accomplice, though Nick denied it, which led to a puzzle investigators had to ask Jessica about. 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 of them, and she said, no idea who they are, never saw them before. 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. She pointed to one of the photos.

This guy, I don't know why, but he does look kind of familiar. That was Nick Sampson, who looked kind of familiar. And from there, as the hours wore on, Jessica's story shape shifted, as did the players, time and again, until it evolved eventually into a tale that began Easter night at Bulldog's Bar in Murdock, where Nick Sampson worked, remember?

And then they followed Nick out to the farmhouse where they stole the money and Nick got crazy. 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 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 had claimed was the mastermind of the murders. I know this sounds really dumb, but I wish he wouldn't have been a murderer.

Why? He's really hot. I think the hot ones gotta be the dumb ones. What? It was really hot. I knew that hot one was going to be the dumb one. And with that, Jessica reads well-planned day with her grandmother. In fact, all of her plans evaporated in a jail cell. Well, detectives focused next on Jessica's partner in crime, Greg Fester. Again, Jim Rohr. You were in that interview room.

I was. Tell me about the atmosphere in there. Tense. I mean, when you're looking at something as serious as a double homicide and you know this is a prime suspect, you really want to see a good confession come out of this so the case is done. What was his attitude when he came in and sat down? Greg's attitude was just, he was very quiet.

Greg was never one that was very outspoken. He seemed to be in a little bit of a shell, scared, and I think rightfully so, but he was fairly well reserved. Reserved and to the surprise of no one, Greg Fester wanted to blame it all on Jessica. She kind of got me into going with her just because that seemed like a good idea. I don't know.

It's a womanly ways thing. Yeah. It was all Jessica's idea, said Fester, stealing the truck, the ridiculous trip across the country, and as for the murders in the farmhouse, well, after investigators showed him photos of Murdoch and Bulldog's bar. Fester told a story of meeting a guy there who, he said, squeezed into their stolen pickup truck and led them straight to the Stokes farmhouse. And then, he said, and the guy went upstairs and just started shooting. He walked, he kind of ran into the room and he knelt at the screen and shot a gun. We all run over the host. But then? Well, surprise surprise, Fester insisted the man who committed the murders was

not Nick Sampson. And it wasn't even Matt Livers either, who'd already confessed that he was the killer. No, Greg Fester told detectives that it was some friend he'd communicated with by a text message, a guy he called Thomas. He wanted to go off with some people. Thomas wanted to go off with people? Yeah. Okay. to go off some people? Yeah. Okay.

To fight off. Kill him. Well, that was all just 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. Let's go out and have a beer time. Well, it's a reason to pretty much do a high five.

Now, with Greg Fester and Jessica Reed in jail, detectives set about finding physical evidence to cross-reference with their stories. And, incredibly, once again, one little thing. Not a ring, that key piece of evidence found on the stock's kitchen floor. But this time, a cigarette box was about to turn the case upside down all over again. Next on Murder in the Moonlight. I killed someone. He was older. I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time. 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. Murder in the Moonlight is a production of Dateline and NBC News.

Shane Bishop is the producer. Brian Drew, Kelly Laudeen, Bruce Berger, Marshall Hausfeld and Candice Goldman are audio editors. Brittany Morris is field producer. Leslie Grossman is program coordinator. Adam Gourfain is co-executive producer. Paul Ryan is executive producer and Liz Cole is senior executive producer. From NBC News Audio, sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Katie Lau. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.