Watching You | 1. Eyes On You

Listen to all episodes of watching you. Add free right now by subscribing to the binge. Visit the binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The binge. Feed your true crime obsession. The big secret, all savvy shoppers know, Rakuten makes your money go further. Shop with Rakuten to get cash back on top of seasonal sales. Discover fashion, tech, beauty and more at hundreds of your favorite shops. Like boots, eBay and Lego. It's free and super easy to use. Just shop as normal and stack cash back on top of sales and savings. Join for free at Rakuten.co.uk or download the Rakuten app. That's r-a-k-u-t-e-n. Rakuten.co.uk. So I've noticed this pattern lately in my life. I'll be shopping online. Doesn't matter if it's closed, something for the house or something I absolutely don't need, but suddenly deeply want. And I'll get to the checkout and think, okay, here we go. 15 steps, passwords, okay, where's my wallet? And then I see it. That purple, shop, pay button. And I genuinely feel relieved. I'm like, how will you? Because I know in about three seconds, I will be done. One tap. Inspiral. No typing. My entire address for the 10,000 time is just done. That button is powered by Shopify, which is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses worldwide and about 10% of all e-commerce in the US. That's right. And what's cool is Shopify isn't just making checkout easier for shoppers. It's making easier for people to actually start and run their own businesses. You can build a beautiful online store with ready to use templates that match your brand and Shopify even has AI tools that help write product descriptions, create headlines, and enhance your photos. So you don't have to do everything by yourself. You know, we got some help. They also help you find customers with built-in email and social media tools and manage everything in one place from inventory to payments to analytics. I mean, it's amazing. It's basically like having a whole team behind you. So whether you're shopping or selling, Shopify just makes things smoother. See less cards go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash cases. Go to shopify.com slash cases. That's shopify.com slash cases. 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. Cellphones, live footage, traffic cam, CCTV, a walk in any American city and you'll end up in the background of a dozen Instagram wheels, TikTok tips, everywhere cameras are rolling. 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 Lyle 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 Nikki. Something that happens to many families when a loved one goes missing. Many even knew someone of the local station. She pleaded with them to run a story about her sister. And I said, can you see if you can get the 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 Nikki's oldest daughter, Alex, found themselves in the parking lot of a Walmart. If Nikki's disappearance wasn't enough of a new story on its own, well, and she was going to make a new story. Is that the kind of person Amy is? She would never give up on her sister. And sure enough, newsvans 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. The Lyle 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 like it was covering up something. So I just started kicking away at it and then saw her body and her hair. Family members pry out as a coworker. When at county firefighters and police arrive just minutes after people looking for it, Nikki Lyle make a shocking. I run 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 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 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. Time has come forth. Low temper, water texture, and feeling true, and effort is the same age. 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, 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 one. Eyes on you. Hey, Sal. Hank, what's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy, too easy. Think something's up? Shoot, tell me. They got thousands of options. Found a great car, a great price. And it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed. Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. Whole days, big goals, no time to cook, right? That's been my reality lately. I start the week with the best intentions. I'm going to cook. I'm going to be healthy. And then suddenly it's late. I'm exhausted. And I'm standing in my kitchen, hoping food will just magically appear. That's why factor has been such a game changer for me. It makes healthy eating easy, with fully prepared meals designed by dieticians and crafted by chefs. So you can eat well without the planning or cooking. What I love is that these meals are built with quality, functional ingredients. Lean proteins, colorful vegetables, whole food ingredients, healthy fats, no refined sugars or artificial sweeteners or refined seed oils. And they're designed to actually support your goals with that eating healthier, managing calories or just getting enough protein in your day. One meal that really caught my eye recently is the African style chicken peanut curry with sweet potatoes, broccoli and rep peppers. Sounds so good. It has 34 grams of protein, six grams of fiber and comes in around 520 calories. So it's incredibly satisfying, but still a very balanced meal. And it's exactly the kind of flavorful, interesting meal I wouldn't normally make for myself on a busy weeknight, but I would be so excited to eat. Factor also makes it easy to keep things fresh. They have a hundred rotating meals every week, with options like high protein, calorie smart, Mediterranean, GLP1 support, and they have ready-to eat salads and a muscle pro collection for strength and recovery. So you're not stuck eating the same thing over and over. And the convenience is huge. Everything is always fresh, never frozen. It's ready in about two minutes. No prep, no stress, no cleanup, which honestly removes the biggest barrier to eating while, am I right? Visit to factormules.com slash binge cases 50 off and use code binge cases 50 off to get 50% off in free breakfast for a year. E-LIGA Pro this month with factor. New subscribers only, varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. She's the middle child 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 a younger sister, Amy's favorite person in the world. So she had red hair. It was like not like fire engine red, but it was like strawberry blonde, you know, orangey red hair. She had that 80s do where it was like, you know, kind of feathered little bit, 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 members-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 either you had shoulder pads or you had to have like the roost-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 Deaf Leopard. 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 scholarship to Mary 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, gave a mule. Then Nikki met Mike. He was much older, 15 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 as he 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. Yeah, oh kids, that sounds mean. If there was anybody who's 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 at. 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 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 the little Alex until. And it felt in a way that 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 like three or four at that time. We had so much fun putting that place together. That was one of the best times I can remember having with her. I mean it was just this little bit of place. It was like a three bedroom, little duplex. When we first moved in, it was winter. So it was like January. We had nothing. I had a TV, but we had no furniture. And I was working at a longhorned stay-couse waiting tables. 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 that used to have those cheapy aluminum things, plaid straps. We had two of those. My TV was sitting on a card table. We sat on these crappy lawn chairs and were like bundled up underneath blankets, drinking hot chocolate and peppermint schnapps and watching ER. Two sisters. There for each other. Yet again. Conquering the world. Ready for a brighter future. It's 1996. ER is on TV and Seinfeld and Friends. Bill Clinton is elected to a second term. And all across America, people are getting these circular 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. This is right at the really the birth of what we think of as the internet. So there was AOL. Everybody had the disks and you know, 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 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 low jack because he was this guy. He was living in Connecticut at the time and he talked about the fact that he had worked for low jack. The vehicle stolen vehicle recovery system, LJ1N only. And she calls herself unique one to you. Of all the people unique one to you met in the chat rooms, LJ1N 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 made this friend in a chat room and he was between jobs and would it be okay with me if we gave him a place to crash for a little bit while he got back on his feet was the way she framed it to me. Nicky didn't even know who he really was. That's what the internet affords you as you can pretend to be anything you want. And Nicky liked this guy. She went up to Connecticut to meet him. He was an acquired taste. That could be abrasive. Loud. He'd suck up the air in the room. I think she did genuinely find 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, Nicky wanted for this new relationship to last. That kind of hopefulness can cause a person to gloss over red flags. Miss warning signs. Here's an example. Amy said that the first time Matt and Nicky 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 his way. 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 closer to a big lipy out of this box. And he looked over at Nicky. It was like, is she really? And Nicky's like, yeah. So then he let me out. Amy was bothered by that. But Nicky 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 Nicky 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 bump a cigarette? He said, notably when she was in the room, oh, yeah, you don't even need to ask. And 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, 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. Infamous is the gossip show that's smart. We talk about Tyra Banks and bringing down top model. We talk about Jenna Jamison and how she dominated the 90s. You know, she's horny and she's in charge. She just was very smart about marketing herself. We talk about celebrities who maybe shouldn't be celebrities like the Beckham guy. Brooklyn is their first kid. He's had a little bit of the nepot baby curse. We investigate orgasm cults. A woman's erotic power can unlock many other powers in her life. And of course, we discuss people who have gotten into lots of trouble. My name is Molly McLaughlin. I am one of Jen Shaw's many victims. She was defrauding the elderly and her tagline was the only thing I'm guilty of is being shamazing. Listen to infamous the gossip show that's smart, the show's called infamous. 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 is truck drives by and dumps a puppy off the truck. And the puppy came just running into the garage into my lap and I 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 where like starting this whole new life. And I was like, nope, its name is Molly and its mine. She just was like, alright, we're going to figure this out. Just looking at me like, you need this, we're going to figure this out. And we did, we got a week up 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, wouldn't say it. And sometimes I get mad that I shouldn't pass it on. Spunky. Very spunky. She was probably 90 pounds soaking wet. Red hair, her body was covered in freckles, like just covered in freckles. She was really witty, really smart. She always had a response for anything. Should the kind of person you'd feel comfortable telling anything to? Like even when we're talking about life problems, I'm like, what mom's saying? I can't find it. I can't find it. Like, where is that nicky response? 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 I made me take a pregnancy test. I didn't feel fear of like her punishing me for it or giving me some lecture. She showed genuine interest of like my safety and my emotional safety with having sex for the first time. Now is the person you can tell that stuff to. 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 nicky 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 was very bully-ish. He would think it was funny to sit on me and I was four years old. Now Matt is a 6'4", 250. 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 nicky 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 nicky and her dad who was back in Athens a 14-hour drive away. So, 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. Nicky 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 like 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 lightly to get his comment, but never heard back. Nicky and Matt started fighting now as well. A lot. 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 were in sue, and I 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 Nicky. So if he wasn't working, and he didn't really seem to be spending quality time with Alex, what was Matt doing? Unlock all episodes of watching you, ad free right now by subscribing to the Binge podcast channel. Matt only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you will get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts all ad free. Plus on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series. That's all episodes all at once. 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. This is your recorder. It's on right now. I'm going to make the first file. From the time Nicky first met Matt, he'd expressed an interest in security and security systems. Remember his AOL screen handle? Low Jack one and only? He's eight hours of recording. Obviously, you want to keep it to a minimum so you don't have to go through. 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 Nicky 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 and 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 when you... Without this equipment, we 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 Nicky began to purchase large amounts of surveillance equipment, which meant that over time, the Lyle House became stuffed with state-of-the-art cameras in recording care. And while Matt was fiddling with his new security apparatus, Nicky 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. And once at this time, with one key difference, Nicky was pregnant with Matt's baby. In the summer of 2011, Nicky 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 Nicky 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 had tick-tack tow 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 Nicky? 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 Lyle family. I don't think that it's a fair thing if I'm spending parental time on all three children. We're just as adults are arguing the kids pop in to say goodnight. Where Matt seems to be in a perpetual struggle for control. We have a responsibility for a productive conversation. When Nicky is desperately trying to hold her family together, I'm aware of the danger that placed her in. I am happy. Let me share that happiness with you. But the center of the Lyle family would not hold. What the 45-year-old mother should be in front of me? This has to live from the right realm where your room is. What's the real and the real world in front of yourself? In the gradual dissolution of a marriage, when it did fall apart, would take everyone down with it. Do I have regrets? Yes, lots of them. 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. Is it, Dantily, 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 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. In one family's desperate attempt to escape this dark bubble. 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. I'm Sony Music Entertainment. The executive producers are Catherine St. Louis and Jonathan Hirsch, Sound Design and Mixing by Scott Somerville. We use music from Epidemic Sound and APM. Our fact checker is Naomi Barr. Our production managers are Tameka Balanced Klasni and Sammy Allison. Our lawyer is Minakshi Krishnan, special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rossak, 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.