The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Watching You | 1. Eyes On You

Episode Date: December 1, 2025

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

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Shop the same in-store prices online and enjoy unlimited delivery with PCX. Express Pass. Get your first year for $2.50 a month. Learn more at PCexpress.ca. Joel Domit, shall we tell these wonderful people about the new business that we're starting? Good idea, Ben Shepard.

Especially if we want them to come along for the ride. Which is exactly what we want. Quite simply, we are starting a business. We're starting a brand. This is not going to be a television show. There's no bright lights and makeup. This is very, very real, then. We've got no idea how to do it,

but we are going to share the whole journey. with you right here on our brand new podcast. The Businessmen podcast, out now. The Bench. Here's something I think about now and again. How hard it is to commit a crime today. Because wherever you are, you're being watched. cameras are everywhere.

Cell phones, live footage, traffic cams, CCTV. A walk in any American city and you'll end up in the background of a dozen Instagram reels, TikTok ticks. Everywhere, cameras are rolling. And if you've done something bad, somebody, somewhere has you on camera walking away from the scene of the crime. This is a reality that we accept in today's world. Outside our homes, all eyes are upon us.

Behind the curtains and closed doors, however, it's our kingdom. To have property is, in a way, to have privacy. But what if someone saw you as their property? And those inescapable recording devices were in your home. What if your comings and goings became the subject of round-the-clock surveillance? Every moment, every laugh, every tear, the mundane, the profound, every phone conversation. This is not some elaborate rumination or a scene from a spy movie. This is where our story begins, in a single family home, in the suburbs of Atlanta.

Nikki Liley is missing. No one has seen her in a week. It's the peak of summer, July 2011. A muggy, soupy afternoon heat blanketed the suburban Atlanta neighborhood of Lawrenceville. An army of concerned friends, family, and co-workers are preparing a search party to find Nikki. Her sister Amy and her oldest daughter, Alex,

are leading the efforts. The problem was they were having trouble getting anyone to run a new story about Niki. Nikki. Something that happens to many families when a loved one goes missing. Amy even knew someone at the local station. She pleaded with them to run a story about her sister. And I said, can you see if you can get this story in? And he called me back and he said, Amy, I'm really, really trying. But at this point, the story is basically a grown woman in her right mind left her house willingly.

Time was running out. She was beginning to fear the worst. Several days ago, flyers with Nikki's face and bright red lettering that read missing had been put up on the power poles in the neighborhood. Now, most of them were gone. And that's how Amy and Nicky's

oldest daughter, Alex, found themselves in the parking lot of a Walmart. If Nikki's disappearance wasn't enough of a news story on its own, well, And she was going to make a news story. Because that's the kind of person Amy is. She would never give up on her sister. And sure enough, news vans showed up.

It worked. The search party was enough of a story, even if her disappearance wasn't. We were all wearing red. That was the plan. We were all going to wear red shirts so that it was like, you know, a loud, very visible color. The group would split up and cover the entire neighborhood around where Nikki lived. Delilah family home was located on the far. end of a loop. The entrance to the neighborhood was surrounded by trees. Search parties rarely yield

results, and Amy knew that. It wasn't the point. They wanted the cameras there because if they could get this story outside of their small suburban community, maybe the word would spread. Maybe someone would have seen her. I got this call from Sophia Choi from Channel 2 News. She said, you know, she wanted to speak with me, and, you know, I'm like in the woods behind their house. It's raining and it's miserable, and I see the news truck pull up. And so I get out of the car, and I go, and I shake Sophia's hand, and nice to meet you, all of that. And then there's a blood-curdling scream from the woods. I just saw a huge big pile.

It just looked, it looked like it was covering up something. So I just started kicking away at it and then saw her body and her hair. Family members cry out as a co-worker. We're going to be roping this whole area off. Gwinnett County firefighters and police arrived just minutes after people looking for it. I run to the woods, and it's one of Nikki's co-workers, Allison. and she's clearly in a state. And she said, it's her, we found her.

I'm pretty sure it was her cameraman that caught the footage of me running out of the woods and hugging my stepmom and crying. Alex, Nikki's daughter, was on the far side of the neighborhood, near the family's home. My grandmother pulled up with her husband. husband, and she looked at me and she said they found a body. And I remember just completely blocking out. Like, I hit the pavement, blocked out, like completely on the ground. And when she came to, she took off towards the woods, towards her mother. It was almost like I was not in my own body. If that makes sense, like I just probably ran faster than I've ever ran in my entire

life. And went up to, the police were already there. Crime scene already put up by the time I got up there, and I hit the crime scene tape, and this cop, like, caught me mid-air. And I was like, let me go. Like, I need to know. This is the story of a family torn apart by jealousy, lies, and the need for control so shocking it's hard to put into words. I.F.4. No temper.

More affection, attention, and effort in this marriage. A marriage that became defined by one man's sick obsession. That's not what I said and how I said it. Inside the four walls of this family's story, so many people knew something was wrong, but nobody really knew until they heard it for themselves. Welcome to my world. You killed me a long time ago. From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to watching you.

I'm Jonathan Hirsch. Episode 1. Eyes on you. Joel Domit. Shall we tell these wonderful people about the new business that we're starting? Good idea, Ben Shepard, especially if we want them to come along for the ride. Which is exactly what we want. Quite simply, we are starting a business.

We're starting a brand. This is not going to be a television show. There's no bright lights and makeup. This is very, very real, man. We've got no idea how to do it, but we are going to share the whole journey with you right here on our brand new podcast. The Businessmen Podcasts out now. of three girls. She was hard-nosed, beautiful, a strawberry blonde hair, the butt of the family jokes, but in on every one of them. She was also her younger sister, Amy's, favorite person

in the world. So she had red hair. It was not like fire engine red, but it was like strawberry blonde, you know, orangey red hair. And she had that 80s do where it was like, you know, kind of feathered, a little bit mullet-ish, but, you know, with the rollers and the, you know, you know what I'm talking about, yeah, like blue eyeliner, and she used to wear, like, a member's only jacket. There's this one picture she had on, like, this, like, lavender sweater with, like, the puppy sleeves, because, like, all the sleeves back then, either you had shoulder pads or you had to have, like, the rooshed puffy sleeves.

I thought she was the coolest person on the planet. All the 80s stuff that I love is all because of Nikki, Peter Gabriel and Def Leppard. Maybe it was because she was the middle child, but Nikki's life always seemed to be under the microscope of the family. Nikki got a scholarship to Vanderbilt. She was no slouch. But her mother and grandmother thought less of her when she gave up the school. scholarship to marry John, her high school boyfriend, hit a Pontiac Firebird the age of 18.

John and Nikki were madly in love, young love, almost too young. Nikki found herself in her early 20s, divorced. I just grew up hearing about how Nikki didn't have the sense, quote unquote, God gave a mule. Then Nikki met Mike. He was much older, 15 years. years older. Amy remembered meeting him for the first time. She was a teenager and her big sister was still the coolest person she knew. He was working as like a maintenance man at an

apartment complex and his name was Mike. Apparently they were dating. I can remember her asking me, do you think he's too old for me? In my head, I was like, oh yeah, but I don't want to say that, you know, because like, that sounds mean. If there was ever anybody whose approval I wanted, it was hers. I always wanted Nikki's approval. I valued her opinion, I think, over most everybody else's. But at the same time, I didn't want my family saying the things about me that they had said about Nikki. Nikki's relationship history matters because you have to understand where her head was that. What kind of pressures she felt from her family? And how those pressures could lead her to make decisions she would later regret. She and I actually had a running joke that she made

mistakes so that I didn't have to. Nikki and her older man move in together. They had a property on the outskirts of Athens, a little town called Bogart, rural. They had rural, they had room for the dogs to run around. Nikki was getting a master's degree to become a teacher. They got married. And that's when they had their daughter, Alex. That relationship was also

short-lived. When Alex was just a few years old, they decided to get a divorce. By now, Amy is going to the University of Georgia in Athens, the closest big town. So here's Nikki and Alex, and I'm told she and Mike are getting a divorce.

and she's staying at my grandmother's house. And it just so happened, like, oh, okay, you need a place to live. I also need a place to live. Let's find a place together. It was perhaps the most significant moment the two of them shared together as young adults. Amy, just starting out in life, and Nikki, starting over with little Alex and Toll. And it felt in a way that the two of them shared together as young adults. the story of Nikki as the sister with poor judgment might have been coming true.

She felt judged for living like, even though they were lifetimes apart from one another. He worked a blue-collar job, and she was college-educated, trying to make it as a professional. This history weighed heavy on Nikki as she entered into this new phase in her life. She wanted to make the right choices, because now she had a child to care for, too. Amy and Nikki's reunion was a new moment for them both. We found a little duplex that was on the east side of Athens. It was in a nice, quiet neighborhood. Wasn't super expensive or anything, but it was clean.

So we moved in together, and Alex was, I think, like three or four at that time. We had so much fun putting that place together. That was like one of the best times I can remember having with her. You know, I mean, it was just, it was just this little bitty place. It was like a three-bedroom, little duplex. When we first moved in, it was, it was winter. So it was like January. We had nothing.

I had a TV, but we had no furniture. I was working at Longhorn Steakhouse, waiting tables, and she was working as a teacher. She said, I'm going to go to the liquor store. You go to the grocery store and get the hot chocolate and the marshmallows. We had those old folding lawn chairs they used to have. There were like those cheapy aluminum things, plaid, straps. So we had two of those. My TV was sitting on a card table.

So we sat on these crappy lawn chairs and were like, you know, bundled up underneath blankets drinking hot chocolate and peppermint schnops and watching ER. Two sisters. There for each other yet again. conquering the world, ready for a brighter future. It's 1996. And ER is on TV and Seinfeld and friends. Bill Clinton is elected to a second term.

And all across America, people are getting these circuit packages in the mail with a CD enclosed that you could place in your personal computer and sign up for this new service called AOL. So this was right at really the birth of what we think of as the internet. So there was AOL. Everybody had like the discs and the, you know, you can all, every, I say AOL and everybody can hear it in their mind that you've got mail. You can hear all of that.

And Nikki was into it. She signed up and started using the internet to connect with people from all over the world. She was on AOL a lot. There were chat rooms. She was spending a bunch of time in a couple of particular chat rooms. She was also single, raising Alex, living with her sister, putting herself through grad school. It was a welcome diversion. So then along comes this guy calling himself LJ1N only, like 1N.

only. The LJ apparently was ostensibly supposed to stand for LoJack because he was this guy who was living in Connecticut at the time and he talked about the fact that he had worked for LoJack, the vehicle stolen vehicle recovery system. LJ. One In only. And she calls herself unique one to you. Of all the people unique one to you met in the chat rooms, LJ one and only caught her attention. She'd stay for hours chatting with him about everything. His real name was Matt, and he was going through a transition too. She starts telling me that she'd made this friend in a chat room, and he was between jobs,

and would it be okay with me if... If we gave him a place to crash for a little bit, while, you know, until he got back on his feet was the way she framed it to me. Nikki didn't even know who he really was. That's what the internet affords you, is you can, you can pretend to be anything you want. And Nikki liked this guy. She went up to Connecticut to meet him. He was an acquired taste.

Matt could be abrasive, loud. He'd suck up the air. in the room. I think she did genuinely find a lot of, a lot of his humor funny. He had a very large, brash, New York personality. He was always laughing about something. And like we were saying earlier, Nikki wanted for this new relationship to last. That kind of hopefulness can cause a person to gloss over red flags, miswarning signs.

Here's an example. Amy said that the first time Matt and Nikki met, he jokingly refused to speak to her until she barked like a dog. She passed it off as a joke at the time, but it stayed with Amy. She didn't see a jocular flirtation. She saw this as a test. When he first came down to Athens, Amy was under the impression this guy just needed a place to crash. He'd maybe be around for a bit, but then head on as well. And that was very much not what happened. Matt picked on Amy, like she was his little sister, from the get-go. After he moved all of his stuff into the apartment, at one point, he shoved Amy into an empty box.

I am claustrophobic, let me out of this box. And he had, like, looked over at Nikki. I was like, is she really? And Nikki's like, yeah. And so then he let me out. Amy was bothered by Matt. But Nikki shrugged it off. She kind of liked his sarcastic vibe.

He was a dick, but he was funny. More importantly, she'd been doubted about her relationships for years. She was protective of him because I think she was like this was the choice she was making and she was protecting that choice. Amy felt like Matt was taking over this new life they had together. And she saw a different person when Nikki wasn't around. well at the time we all smoked including me at one point I had run out of cigarettes and so I asked him can I bum a cigarette he said notably when she was in the room oh yeah you don't even need to ask from then on if I ran out of cigarettes I just go get another pack from the carton dude said you don't need to ask well then months later when I'm challenging him she's stealing my cigarettes it was was, I'm stealing the cigarettes.

But that was, like, my first hint that he was really super manipulative. It might not seem like that big of a deal, and in a way, it wasn't. Who cares whether Matt actually wanted to share his cigarettes? But what Amy noticed in that situation was someone who changed his story whenever it served his purpose. And so he went from generous roommate to accusing Amy of stealing. The sense I have from this story and stories like it about Matt was that at first, he just seemed annoying, a little bit too much put on, whatever you want to call it.

But he knew how to drive a wedge between people. He was this person that was standing in front of me and frankly standing between me and my sister. Matt stayed with Amy and Nikki and her daughter for six months. during that time he was mostly at the house and while he claimed to be looking for a job Amy says she never really saw him working then Nikki got an offer she couldn't refuse a new job opportunity to work in the accounting

and finance team for a big company in Oklahoma the money was really good and it was a step up for her career-wise at one point I remember having an argument with her and I remember thinking Oh, dear God, please don't take this guy with you. But she would take him with her. Alex was around five when the family picked up and left Athens.

Nikki had started to gain more opportunities working in finance and accounting for large companies. It was well-paying work with plenty of room to grow. When they arrived at their new home in Edmund, there was a surprising delivery at the door. One of my favorite memories we moved to Oklahoma, this truck drives by and dumps a puppy off the truck. And the puppy came just running into the garage into my lap, and I just was like, Mom, please let me keep it, please let me keep it. She's looking at me like, we can't take a dog, we just moved to Oklahoma or starting this whole new life. And I was like, nope, its name is Molly. She just was like, all right, we're going to figure this out.

Just looked at me like, you need this, we're going to figure this out. And we did. We kept her. Alex is now in her 30s. Some say she takes after her dad. Long, dark hair, the same nose and brow line, not as fair as her mother. They were always incredibly close. She was the person that always knew how to say it, when to say it.

And sometimes I get mad that I shouldn't pass it on. Spunky Very spunky She was probably 90 pounds soaking wet You know red hair Her body was covered in freckles Like just covered in freckles

She was really witty Really smart You know she always had a response For anything To the kind of person You'd feel comfortable Telling anything to Like even when we're talking about

Life problems I'm like What would mom say I can't find it I can't find it Like where is that That's the first person I told that I lost my virginity at 16. I went straight to my mom.

I didn't go to my best friend. I went straight to my mom. And then she took me to a random bathroom and made me take a pregnancy test. I didn't feel fear of her punishing me for it or giving me some lecture. She showed genuine interest of my safety and my emotional safety with having sex for the first time. Like that was the person you could tell that stuff too. By the time the family had moved to Oklahoma, Matt wasn't a stranger anymore. It was kind of her stepdad.

Alex had already been through a lot when they got to Oklahoma, and Nikki knew that. She was clearly trying to move her young family in the direction of stability, but had to tussle with some key complications. There was a few times where she did leave me alone with him. He's very bullyish. He would think it was funny to sit on. me and I was four years old. Now, Matt is a six, four, two, fifty, maybe. I mean, I don't know. He's pretty big. Big guy. And I'm a four-year-old. So, you know, 35, 40-pound four-year-old. He would think

it was funny to sit on me or to the point where I felt like I was suffocating and he thought it was funny. It was confusing. What was with this guy? Alex was wary of him and Nikki was trying to keep the peace to hold a new relationship. together with a blended family, and with a partner who kept encroaching on the boundaries, the people around him, her people. Alex now divided her time between Nikki and her dad, who was back in Athens, a 14-hour drive away. So, um, not great memories. I really don't have any positives of Oklahoma.

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

I would say our grandparents kind of had that foggy view of him of trying to figure out, is he dangerous, not dangerous? Like, he's just annoying, but they also were trying to respect, like, okay, this is the man our daughter chose. We reached out to Matt Lyley to get his comment, but never heard back. Nikki and Matt started fighting now as well, a lot. How do I feel? I feel that you're Alice for me?

Alice is not a problem. I know they fought about me, and so if my mom even remotely had to communicate with my dad, it was a problem, I mean a big problem. Fights would ensue and got to a point where my parents couldn't communicate other than through me. It seemed that one of the key sticking points for Matt was that he didn't feel like Alex respected him, that perhaps she never would, seeing as he wasn't her biological dad. Matt wanted kids of his own with Nikki.

So if he wasn't working and he didn't really seem to be spending quality time with Alex, What was Matt doing? Don't want to wait for that next episode? You don't have to. Unlock all episodes of watching you. Add free right now by subscribing to the binge podcast channel. Search for The Binge on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple.

Head to get thebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge action. access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the binge channel on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. This is your recorder. It's on right now. I'm going to make the first file.

From the time Nikki first met Matt, he'd expressed an interest in security and security systems. Remember his AOL screen handle, low jack one and only? There's eight hours of recording. Obviously, you want to keep it to a minimum so you don't have so much to go through him. All you do is it's a spring-loaded switch

that turns it on. Well, that idea of being a sort of security professional continued to evolve in the years since he and Nikki Matt. Matt wanted to start his own private security technology business, where he would outfit customers and companies with security surveillance systems. As soon as it turns on, Wait for the main screen to come up.

Record, your recording. If you hit record again while it's recording, it pauses. If you hit stop, it stops that recording and then goes to the next file. Without this equipment, he had nothing. And to outfit it for customers, he needed to use it. It's the reason so much of their lives was caught on tape. Recordings that eventually we gained access to by the Gwinnett County Police Department. And that's how he and Nikki began to purchase large amounts of surveillance equipment,

which meant that over time, the Lili House became stuffed with state-of-the-art cameras and recording care. And while Matt was fiddling with his new security apparatus, Nikki was moving up in her career. She'd gotten an opportunity to take a bigger role at a company based out of a small town in Mississippi. So once again, the family found themselves on the move. except this time with one key difference. Nikki was pregnant with Matt's baby. In the summer of 2011, Nikki had gone missing.

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

That power bill alone must be crazy. This wasn't just a hobbyist camera setup. This looked like a war room. Investigators didn't have any idea what to make of it, but they still had one question on their minds. What happened to Nikki? What they found that day wouldn't answer that question, but it would open a shocking and eerie portal

into the private lives of the Lylea family. I don't think that it's a fair thing if I'm spending parental time on all three children where just as adults are arguing the kids pop in to say good night good night where Matt seems to be

in a perpetual struggle for control we have a responsibility for a productive conversation and Nikki is desperately trying to hold her family together unaware of the danger that placed her I am happy. Let me share that happiness with you.

But the center of the Liley family would not hold. What the fuck you find out of that you can't want to be? I'm supposed to live on my mind right around, where a reporter is. What's the moment being raised? And the gradual dissolution of a marriage that when it did fall apart would take everyone down with it. Do I have regrets?

Yes, lots of us. Am I sad that I can't talk to my husband about the fact that I'm sad? Yes. A real-life Truman Show and recordings, footage that would reveal a twisted knot of insecurities, ego, and obsession. Incidentally, you forget to say you love me. It's because you make me feel guilty. I told you why. Every minute I spend doing something I want to do or change.

chose to do if it wasn't with you or for you, I am forced and made to feel guilty for it. It's pointed out to me in logs. It's pointed out to me in phone covers, in phone records. It's pointed out to me on recorders. And one family's desperate attempt to escape this dark bubble. Your honk your hand were around my right. Jackie, here's for the fucking logs. Next time on watching you, Matt wants his stepdaughter Alex out of their lives.

And she has a realization. This man is dangerous. So, Alex made herself a promise. I had to grow up real fast. I had to go, crap, I have to protect my mom. Watching You is an original production of Sony Music Entertainment. It's hosted and reported by me, Jonathan Hirsch. Jason Hoke of Waveland Media is our lead producer and co-reported the series with me.

Catherine St. Louis is our story editor. From Sony Music Entertainment, the executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch. Sound design and mixing by Scott Somerville. Epidemic Sound and APM, our fact checker is Naomi Barr. Our production managers are Tamika Balance Kalasni and Sammy Allison. Our lawyer is Minakshi Krishnan. Special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rasek, Jamie Myers, and the whole team at Sony Podcasts.

If you're enjoying the podcast, please rate and leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you.