The Binge Cases: Denise Didn't Come Home - Watching You | 4. Caught on Tape

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

Before any charges could be brought, investigators had to get through tens of thousands of recordings. What they didn’t find would lead to a breakthrough. Binge all episodes of Watching You ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access. Join The Binge’s free newsletter – Patreon.com/TheBinge From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Watching You is brought to you by Sony Music Entertainment. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, y'all. Wanted to let you know verbal abuse and domestic violence are a part of this story. It's a cautionary tale to listen to with caution. Friday night into Saturday morning, and Nikki goes missing. A whole week passes where no one knows where she is. During that week, her husband Matt recorded a bunch of his own phone calls. He reached out to Nikki's dentist to ask if she called the office. He called Nikki's father to complain that Amy wasn't keeping him in the loop on how the missing posters should look. And when a doctor's office called and asked for Nikki,

Matt sort of overshared. My name is Matt. I am her husband. She's incapacitated right now. We don't know where she is. All right. I'm sorry about that. But one fiery call stood out from the many he recorded that week.

Matt called his older brother, Paul Liley. The police were just here. Whatever. Apparently, her family has not only been calling the police, but have been secretly meeting with the police about me and foul boy. Nobody found? No, of course not.

Paul promised to come stay as soon as possible, to help give his brother reinforcements. The family has now started a war. Matt means Nikki's family. Do you have your big brother who's coming to war? Paul, I want to bury the bitch. Matthew? I want to bury the whole fucking family.

Can I say anything on the phone? I'm recording. I'm not worried. I'm not saying. anything stupid. I want to go to war with them and meet them head on. By Monday, law enforcement heard about her disappearance. Nikki's family had contacted the police department, and they, naturally, had called her husband, Matt. When we did an interview with him on Monday, just over the phone, you know, two young kids at home, she leaves, leaves her phone behind her purse, all her belongings.

And, you know, he made it seem that she just had maybe some kind of a break with reality or something. something. Richter wasn't buying it. She would never leave two days now you're into it. No phone. Something else stood out too. He also mentions in that first recorded interview over the phone that they had an argument.

Matt told cops he'd wanted to have sex. He'd expected it because it was date night. If she didn't want to and we're fighting, and then, of course, three or four hours later now she's missing, and he can't tell us when she left. After her body was found, some people in Nikki's circle immediately suspected Matt was responsible. I just was like, I'm not stupid. Like, I know what this is. He did it. There was a lot of animosity already growing between Nikki's family members and then Matt and his kind of side of the family. That's Lisa Jones, the DA, who happened to be there when they found her body.

In fact, when Nikki was missing, her mother, Harriet Garrett, had apparently confronted her son-in-law. Here's Matt complaining about her accusation. Harriet thinks I killed her daughter. What? Harriet said, I think you killed my daughter, and you were going to rot in hell, and I'm going to do whatever I can to come after you. All right, all right. This is fucking bullshit.

It's one thing to believe, even in a number of people. know in your heart who the killer is. It's another thing to investigate that crime, to prosecute the assailant. And the medical examiner, the Gwinnett County PD, quickly realized that the true cause of Nikki's death might be harder to determine than it seemed. Lisa Jones, who was working at the DA's office at the time,

laid out why. It would have been different if Nikki had been, you know, dumped on one day and you find her six days later and the temperatures were in the 30s. but it was July in Atlanta. The summer heat, the position of the body, worked against investigators. And so that prevented the medical examiner from being able to really give a definitive cause of death. So she had to rule the death as undetermined because with the body being faced down,

there was a lot of pooling of blood because obviously the weight of your body and your face is face down. I mean, it goes to your eyes, it goes to wherever. There was no gunshot wound, no blunt force trauma. but beyond that, her death remained something of a mystery. My layman's understanding of it was, because of that, you couldn't really see Patica in her eyes that you look for when somebody's been strangled. But no one in law enforcement doubted for a moment that this was homicide. It's very rare that anybody walks down their streets in their neighborhood naked.

Okay, so she's nude. That's a huge indicator that she's. She didn't get that way willingly or didn't go there willingly. The bottoms of her feet were absolutely clean. So she didn't walk herself there. I remember this very distinctly is that one of the things that Nikki's sister said was that Amy and Nikki, and I think the girls maybe had gone to get their nails done, like right before this had happened. Looking at the body itself, her nails were pristine and they had just like they had been painted.

And so there wasn't like a bunch of dirt where she was clawing or anything like that. All of this led police investigators to focus their attention on Nikki and Matt's home, and the hours leading up to when she left. Doug Chatham, Nikki's dad, told the police what Matt had told him. He said that they had had a fight the night before, and that apparently she left the house between four and five. He told me that she left her cell phone, her purse. She didn't take her car.

So where was she going? The East has told me in the past, she would sometimes, you know, after an argument, she would sometimes get out and walk around the block. Walking around the block just as she exited the view of the cameras. Cameras that caught her last recorded moments, sitting on the deck, the front of the Lylee house, smoking a cigarette. He would believe that he has 19 cameras outside, three or four cameras on the inside, a command center, and he didn't pick up anything. You kidding me? That she got out of the house and he didn't know.

It was ridiculous. And he wasn't the only one who thought that. There were so many things that pointed that Matt may have had some involvement. You never want a suspect to go, you know, you never want to do. You know, you never want a defendant to get away with murder. You never want anyone to get away with murder. From Sony Music Entertainment, you're listening to watching you. I'm Jonathan Hirsch.

Episode 4. Caught on tape. Where to begin? No question that Matt and Nikki had been fighting. That night, and for a lot of... long time. Matt said it was after that fight that she exited the frame, made her way with a toothbrush down the street and out of his life. He filed for divorce during that week leading up to Nikki's body being found. And so he had tried to portray her as being unstable

and that sort of thing and get her civilly committed. And you can hear him in one recording dripping with pathos, like he was exhausted by some long, drawn-out drama. that he no longer had the time for. Like he was cutting short some elaborate ruse Nikki was performing. Not what we now know to be the truth. The Nikki was lying dead

just a few blocks away. That night, the night they found her body, Amanda and Rebecca were at home without a clue. Then all of a sudden, now we look outside and there's an ambulance out there

and hear a bunch of commotion downstairs. At some point, a police officer came upstairs and said to Amanda, your dad wants to see you. And so, like, I went downstairs and, like, he's laying on the floor with an oxygen mask on, grabbing my arm. Like, was it her? Was it her? I'm like, I have no idea what the hell you're talking about, like, was what her? Like, the first thought in my mind was, oh, someone saw her. I wasn't thinking she was dead. I couldn't handle it anymore.

This was terrifying. I have no idea what's going on. I was like, I can't do this. The girls didn't know what Matt was talking about. No idea that their mother had been found, let alone that she was dead. We were like sitting, watching out the windows towards the front of the house, and like we see more police coming, and like now news reporters are out there. Before they could ask their dad or go outside and ask their big sister,

the two girls were taken away. Then eventually it was basically like, hey, pack some bags up. And so we're packing bags to go somewhere. We don't know. My dad's, I think it was the divorce lawyer, came and picked us up. Alex was just outside, right by the curb of the house. Amy was there too. I remember Alex desperately wanting to go back up to the house

and saying, I remember her, like, crying and saying, no, they're my sisters. I need to get them. I need them. They're my sisters. And I was like, baby, you can't. Just simply because, number one, there's no way Matt would have allowed her to talk to them or see them or anything. And number two, who knows what would have gotten said

that would have been somehow damaging or whatever, like when everything is in crisis. Looking back, this wasn't just the day the girls lost their mother. It was the day they lost each other. This was the moment the girls were split permanently. Because as things went on, battle lines would be drawn. Words would be said. Things you can't take back.

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. John Richter knew what his job was with this case. That wasn't the problem. The problem was, how was he going to book the guy who he suspected did it? Cocky, asshole, it was a good word. You could tell right away he was a narcissistic type of person. Controlling, you know, he even wanted to be in control of the interview and how it progresses

and what we're going to do, trying to lead us. While his wife is missing, nothing that suggests that he was upset or anything. It was just another day. Another day followed by another. What evidence was there to prosecute? Even the cause of death remained undetermined. The problem was that there just wasn't enough. You can suspect it all day long, but there was no way that I could prove beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law that he was the person that did it without more.

I could think his behavior was ridiculous. I could think that he set it all up, you know, trying to portray his wife as being crazy. That he had all these security cameras and just miraculously she turned off the security camera that night. That's what Matt told investigators. Nikki flipped off Matt's cameras on her way out the door and then somehow ended up dead down the street. There was no smoking gun that they could see. But there was all the years of footage. The surveillance state Matt had set up around the perimeters of the home.

Investigators obtained a warrant to search the Liley House and Matt's warm room. Well, it's just a small room, maybe the size of this room, 15 by 15, and monitors. And a big, like they had five or six TV monitors with different camera shots on each one. And then the server was so big. of our experts, our forensic guys come in and take the server apart because it was so, you know, something they said that you would see in the military. So, yeah, it was impressive. They obtained the videos and soon realized there was a big problem on their hands,

one they hadn't anticipated. These videos, there were thousands of hours to sift through. Before any charges could be brought, Lisa Jones, one of the prosecutors in the DA's office, would need to sign off from the investigators. Ultimately, there was, I think, around like 55,000 short videos that were discovered. Even if they were convinced that Matt had murdered his wife, Nikki, they'd need to review all the evidence first. And just reviewing the evidence would take them countless hours. It took them a while to even open up the five.

they'd recovered. And so the police department had spent the time sending it off to, I think we sent it off to the FBI maybe. On top of that, the videos weren't categorized by date and time. So it wasn't like you could just like roll through footage and look at it. It made no sense. So then you were trying to put together like, when did this happen and kind of go through it? And see if you found anything that mattered. The detectives on the case hadn't encountered anything like this before.

before. There was a mountain of surveillance tape to now pour through, and no clear sense of how to evaluate it. Many of the files obtained from Matt's computer were unreadable to forensics investigators at the time. After some months, Matt left Georgia. He took his two girls to a cabin in Vermont. At this point, he'd lawyered up and wasn't cooperated with the investigation. He just wanted to take everything. That's what we were. what it felt like was that he was just taking everything from us and particularly from Alex. What appeared to be an open and shut case stalled out. What exactly makes a case go cold? The exhaustion of leads, the failed pursuit of time-worn investigative measures, or is it simply

that pieces don't fall together in the right way at the right time? The investigation had been going on for a year, and they have had hit a wall. And I remembered, I called and spoke to Detective Everson on my birthday. And he said, well, we're almost through going through all the video, but it doesn't look like we're going to find anything. I didn't know what to say to that. I said, what does that mean? That he just gets away with it. That was when Detective Richter came in. And he said, this is my case, and I'm going to leave no stone unturned, and I'm not going to rest until we know we've done everything we possibly could.

John Richter is a big guy, short, crop, salt and pepper hair. This case had stayed with him from the moment he was across it. He'd been there on the day they found her. He'd made a vow then to himself, his words, to find justice for Nikki. Because I was invested in this case. From the day I saw her laying there in the woods, right? I was invested. So I wanted it bad.

But no one on his staff had been able to recover all the materials they'd gained through searching the house. And I would go back to him every six months, every two months, every three months. Please look again. Give me something. Two years passed without an indictment or a meaningful break in the case. Richter was convinced that those files had the answers he needed.

The truth about what had happened that night seemed to be in danger of slipping away. They were combing through all this evidence, trying to find the one place where he made a mistake. And that was the thing that they said to us, is like, they always make a mistake. They think they're perfect. They never are.

So they were like, don't give up. Digging into the surveillance tape was their best shot. So investigators turned to a man who knew his way around computers. My name is Chris Ford. I'm an investigator with the district attorney's office. Currently, I'm an assistant chief supervisor in the DA's office. but for 10 years I was a computer physics examiner. Chris Ford is a bulky guy,

a buzz cut of silver hair and broad shoulders. Looks more like someone you'd imagine running a boot camp at the gym. Ex-military, reserved, not examining ones and zeros in the coding logs of surveillance tape. You know, he helped me get to where I needed to be. John Richter approached Ford about the materials found on Matt's computer. I know these two guys have already looked at it. Hey, Ford, why don't you look at this case for me?

And just, you know, just a new set of eyes. That's what he said. I just need a new set of eyes to look at it. We're at a standstill with the case. I'm like, sure, I'll take a look at it. And that's where I started with it. Pretty quickly, Ford discovered some things that the investigators had no idea about. He goes, oh, do you want any of those digital recordings or any of those audio recordings that are on this?

And I'm like, what? I have no idea. And he goes, yeah, there's just thousands of hours of just random. He's like, I listen to a little of it. But I guess, I want them. And that's when it started. Ford was able to realize that there were tons of audio files on one of the computers that had been seized.

For years, detectives had been focused on the surveillance tape, a dizzying, uncatalogued, Tick-Tac-Tow board of silent footage. And somehow, I think the focus in the beginning had been so much on the video files. Can we see what happened? because there's so many surveillance cameras, there's got to be something that we could see that was odd. And so I think the focus at that point was there. And now, they discovered a massive archive of recordings, too.

It's as though they'd been watching a movie in black and white that suddenly burst into color. So we found all these audio files that had been there, but just hadn't been listened to. And the recordings weren't just inside the house. It was clear that some of them were Nikki's car. And Matt's obviously not there. because she's talking to somebody about him.

So I'd say my marriage is over. It's never good enough. And everything I do is suspect. And I'm just fed up. I'm fed up with trying to meet his expectations. I'm fed up with the bullshit. And I just told him. And I was nice about it.

I said, Matt, look, you know, I do the best I can take. So that's when I start. Me and my analyst, Amy McLeod, a saint, my partner probably because, you know, it was just me. So she sat across from me, you know, she was the analyst. You'd go to her for, hey, analyze these phone records or help me look at this. And she always would help me. Like, so I said, you take this half, I'll take this half.

And these are the notebooks. I know. I got maybe 10 of these, 100-page notebooks. So we just started from the beginning and started taking notes. and the information was just unbelievable. Unbelievable because of what was on the tapes, no doubt, something you've already heard, but also because of the sheer volume.

A story suddenly locked into place where there hadn't been one before. A record of years of maths controlling behavior. Eight hours a day for at least a year, you know, I was consumed. I didn't work a lot of other things at the time. I just did this. So, you know, you're living her life.

Detective Richter's life, day in and out, was defined by this puzzle that he began to unravel as he listened to the countless hours of recordings. Who was Nikki? And what happened to her? So it would just start, hey, the recording would start. We're going to talk about all the things you did wrong today

or didn't do right. This is your recorder. It's on right now. I'm gonna make the first file. And now this is after her work day. You can tell, she just got home from work, because she said, I'm tired, I just wanna, he didn't work all day.

He's just, and I remember one, and he just say, oh, you passed me, I was sitting on the couch watching TV and you walked down the hall and you didn't give me a kiss. And she said, I give you a kiss. He's just, yeah, but not a real kiss on the lips, like, you know, passionate.

You just gave me a little peck. I guess each time she passes like a ship in the night, she has to, you know, passionately kiss this slob of a man. Coincidentally, you forget to say you love me. It's because you make me feel guilty. Stuff like that. And that would go on for hours and hours

until she had to go to work. You could tell how frustrated she would be and just mentally drained. Like it would go from midnight to 6 in the morning and then she would just go to work and then come back and then that conversation would start again. I don't ask for much.

Matt, bullshit. All you have to do is not fucking lying. Matt, give me attention. I'm not lying to you. piece of shit. And give you all the attention you demand. Imagine being a homicide detective, John Richter, being reasonably convinced that this man, Matt Liley, had something to do with his wife's death. And then, years after her body is found with still no conviction, having to listen to these recordings, eight hours a day, Monday through Friday, every week. I was not a happy person

for that year, because I was listening to this stuff, right? And my girlfriend at the time was not my wife, thank God. She could have left because I was just an asshole. I was mad. I was frustrated. Right? I mean, hearing all that, it's just, nobody knows, like me and the analyst, Amy, the amount.

Nobody listened to any of it, really, except us. Just listening to these recordings was messing with Richter's mind. Nikki was living through it. And as Richter listened, what started to come into focus was how unrelenting and impossible the situation was, and how patient Nikki was. I heard it the first few years before she's killed, and she's beautifully calm. Could you imagine sitting in the command center with this doof about all the things you did wrong this week? You talked to your mom too much. You were on Facebook too much.

You this. And she would go, okay, I'm sorry, man. I'll try to. You didn't give me enough oral sex this week. Oh, well, three times you'd think, oh, three times. In a week. Ugh. Think about that part of it.

She had to do that. She probably hated him. I know the real of her. He also could see that she was running out of options. She's a 95-pound, 5-foot-3. or something? He's 6-5-2-260, right? So what defense does she have against him, other than her voice? Get the fuck away from me. Leave me the fuck alone. That's all she has, because he can physically, so think about it. She, that's her only way is to scream. He was an asshole, and she dealt with him

for a long time. So anybody who says that, it was an equal thing where she was loud and feisty and Yelling at him, are you kidding me? There might be one or two out of 2,000 that are like that. The rest are him with his mind control and his manipulation and his torture. You hate me. You trash me around town. You trash me with your family. You call the cops on me in a second.

You have called the cops on me. You lie about me. You lie to me. But I'm the one distressed. how do you listen to that kind of thing and then not be emotionally involved now I didn't realize to the extent it was affecting my but it affected my personal life friends family you know you just withdraw a bit and I'm not like that usually especially if you get a couple of beers in me in a whiskey or two you know I'll talk we'll have some fun it wasn't just a rough

year. It was a year that changed him forever. She's dead. I've never met her, but I know her better than the other person I've ever met. I know her attitude. I know her little traits. I know how telling she is. Witty, a great

mother, all these things, just from these recordings. But I know the end. And I think she knew the end, too. And she protected those girls. The recordings between Matt and Nikki showed a relationship in turmoil. And in Matt, a spouse who had become obsessed with tracking every micro movement of his family's whereabouts. Up until, of course, Nikki and her toothbrush, allegedly, disappeared without a trace. and Matt announced his plans to file for divorce.

To investigators and the county prosecutors, there was now a clear motive for Matt to kill Nikki, a controlling husband with a long, now-documented history of manipulative and abusive behavior. Here's Lisa Jones again. Not only was there emotional abuse, there was physical abuse, which led us to, you know, start thinking, like, oh, he's capable, without question.

He's absolutely capable of physical violence as well. Still, as of yet, no one had seen or heard Matt carry out the act of murdering his wife in a fit of rage. Nicky's sister Amy was beyond frustrated. I was angry because I was like, are you kidding me? We all know he did it and you're going to let him get away with it because he didn't leave you a videotape of him strangling her. that's what you need. I mean, and I realize how petulant and childish that sounds now,

but that was the emotion I was having at the time was I was like, are you serious? You're going to throw in the towel because he didn't leave you video of him actually killing her. But there was no evidence of Matt carrying out the body from the house and driving off towards the woods. Ford looked for just that.

Once I got the audiophiles and I started thinking, here's the work in theory, right? That he killed her, removed the body from the house and dumped in the, you know, nearby woods, right? So it was either a crime of passion or a crime of just, you know, an accident or something where he panicked, right?

So he's not thinking straight. He takes the body, wraps it up, carries out in the woods. There's got to be video of this. And the video was probably destroyed or he destroyed it. And when I talk about this all the time, there's never a clean crime scene. Same thing with computer forensics. There's always a digital crime scene at every crime scene.

There's always some kind of digital footprint there. And no matter how hard you try to scrub, clean, or not involve, you know, digital forensics is always there. Cell phone towers, hits, Wi-Fi hotspots, just everything that tells on you. Ford knew that for the prosecutors to bring a case against Matt, the digital crime scene needed to be tied to the physical one. So I started thinking, how would he hide this? What would he do to get rid of it? What would he have to do to try to clean up his crime scene? Not just physically, but digitally as well.

And that's when Ford realized that the smoking gun in this case wasn't going to be an image of Matt exiting the house with Nikki's body or DNA at the scene of the crime. It was going to be the absence of that evidence. And who made it go away? He says that footage was deleted. I go, what? He's like, it was deleted. Someone had to physically go in there and delete the camera footage.

And I said, deleted, huh? Not corrupted? So that's when I knew. The key to solving this case would be finding who covered up Nikki's murder. Next time on watching you, Nikki left behind life insurance. After her death, a new front opened up in the war between Matt and his stepdaughter. Matt contested Alex being a beneficiary, and so there's a huge legal battle that went on for years.

He wanted the money for himself, but mostly he just didn't want Alex to have it. He hated her that much. Meanwhile, Nikki's daughters take sides. Two take to social media to defend their father. Honestly, we can't wait to face his family in court and call out their lives. And they've done nothing but cause us pain and torment. And our day in court will come. And hopefully my dad will be able to come home.

He is the only parent they have left in the world. And so they are clinging to him. It doesn't matter that he was a monster. They don't care. That's their dad. And Alex is surprised to find herself on the other side of the aisle from her sisters. It was hard to feel like I couldn't rescue them. It was hard to feel like I cared for these kids for so many years of my life, and now I have no way to help them. Don't want to wait for that next.

episode, you don't have to. Unlock all episodes of watching you, ad-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 getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber, you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge channel on Apple Podcasts or getthebinge.com to learn more. 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.

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