Watching You | 4. Caught on Tape

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. 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. I'll get to the checkout and think, okay, here we go. 15 steps, passwords, okay, where's my wallet? Then I see it. That purple, shop, pay button. I genuinely feel relieved. I'm like, how will you? Because I know in about three seconds, I will be done. One tap. No log-inspiral. 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. 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, Shopify, even has AI tools that help write product descriptions, create headlines, and enhance your photos. You don't have to do everything by yourself. 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. It's amazing. It's basically like having a whole team behind you. Whether you're shopping or selling, Shopify just makes things smoother. See less carts 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. 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. Okay. She's in capacity 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 Lyle. The police were just here. Well, apparently her family has not only been cloning the police, but have been secretly meeting with the police about me and Southlake. Nobody found? No, of course not. Paul promised to come stay as soon as possible to help give his brother reinforcements. The family was now started a war. Matt means Nikki's family. You have your big brother who's coming to war. Paul, I want to bury the bitch. Matthew? I want to bury all fucking family. I'm not saying anything on the phone. I'm recording. I'm not worried. I'm not saying these two, but 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. Look, 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. 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 wanted to have sex. He'd expected it because it was date night. If she didn't want to and we're fighting, 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, there's a killer daughter. What? Harriet said, I think you killed my daughter and you were going to Rotten Hill and I'm going to do whatever I can to come after you. All right, all right. We need to call... This is fucking bullshit. It's one thing to believe, even in your heart, who the killer is. It's another thing to investigate that crime. To prosecute the assailant. In the medical examiner of the Gwyneth 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 dumped on one day and you find her six days later and the temperatures were in the thirties. 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 that death is undetermined because with the body being face down, there was a lot of pooling of blood because obviously the way to your body and your face is face down. I mean, it goes to your eyes. It goes to wherever. There was no gunshot, 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 Petika 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 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 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'd been painted. And so there wasn't like a bunch of dirt where she was clung 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's apparently she left the house between four and five. It's all me that she left herself on her purse. She didn't take her car. So where was she going? The police just told me in the past. She would sometimes be an old afternoon 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 lily 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. He could be that she got out of the house and he didn't know this 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 to suspect to go, you know, you never want to defend it 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 four. Caught on tape. Where to begin? No question that Matt and Nikki had been fighting that night and for a 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. And 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 I went downstairs and he's laying on the floor with an oxygen mask on, grabbing my arm. 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. Like I, 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. Cold days, big goals, no time to cook, right? That's been my reality lately. I start the week with the western tensions. 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, either that's 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. Here also makes it easy to keep things fresh. They have 100 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? Head 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. Eat like a pro this month with factor. New subscribers only varies by plan. One free breakfast item per box for one year while subscription is active. Carvana is so easy just to click and we've got ourselves a car. See? So many cars. That's a click-tastic inventory. And check out the financing options. Payments to fit our budget. I mean, that's... Clickonomics 101. Delivery to our door. Just a hop, skip, and a click away. And what? No better feeling than when everything just... Click. By your car today on... Carvana. Delivery fees may apply. John Richter knew what his job was with this case. That wasn't the problem. The problem was, how is he going to book the guy who he suspected? Did it? Kaki. Asshole. It was 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. And it lead us... Law's wife is missing. Nothing to suggest 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, 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 the 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 the 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 perimeter of the home. Investigators obtained a warrant to search the Lyle 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 five or six TV monitors with different camera shots on each one. And then the server was so big that our experts, our forensic guys, come in and take the server apart because it was something that you'd seen in the military. So yeah, it was impressive. They obtained the videos and soon realized there was a big problem on their hands when 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 files 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 roll through footage and look at it. You 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. 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 loyered up and wasn't cooperated with the investigation. He just wanted to take everything. That's what it felt like. It was that he was just taking everything from us and particularly from Alex. Would appear 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 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. So what does that mean? 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, cropped, 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, was 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. It's like they always make a mistake. They think they're perfect. They never are. So they're 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 ten years, I was a computer frizzest 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 and the coding logs of surveillance tape. You know, help 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 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 you said. You said eyes, look at it. We're at a standstill with the case. And I'm like, sure, I'll take a look at it. 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 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, uncatalogged, tic-tac-toe 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 gotta 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 says though, they've been watching a movie in black and white that's 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. It's a lot of stuff, saying I'm an air agent over. It's never been enough. Everything I do is suspect. I'm just fed up. I'm fed up with trying to meet this expectation. It's I'm fed up with the bullshit. I just told him. And I was not just about it. I said, Matt, look, I do the best I can think. So that's when I start. Me and my analyst, Amy McLeod, is Saint. My partner probably, because it was just me. So she sat across from you. She was the analyst. You go to her for, hey, analyze these phone records or help me look at this. And she always would help me. So I said, you take this app. I'll take this app. And these are the notebooks. I got the 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 this sheer volume. A story suddenly locked into place where they hadn't been one before. A record of years of Matt's 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 we just started, hey, you know, the recording was starting. We were 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 going to make the first file. And now this is after her work day, you can tell if you just got on for work because I'm tired and just want to, he didn't work all day. You just, I remember wanting to 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 said, yeah, but not a real kiss on a lips like, you know, passionate. You just gave me a little pack. I guess each time she passes like a ship in the night, she has to, you know, passionately kiss this slob of a man. Who incidentally you forget to say you love me. It's because you make me feel guilty. Stuff like that. And that would go in for hours and hours until she had to go to work. If you could tell how frustrated she would be and just mentally drained, like it would go from midnight to six in the morning and they'd just go to work and then come back and then that conversation would start again. I don't ask for much. That both said, what you have to do is not fucking lie. Matt, give me a tension. I'm not lying. I'm not going to like a 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 Lyley, had something to do with his wife's staff. 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 cut a lot because I was just an asshole. I was mad. I was frustrated, right? We hear all that. I was just nobody knows was like me in the analyst, Amy, the amount. Nobody listened 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 for a few years before she's killed. And she's beautifully calm. Can you imagine sitting in the command center with this doof about all the things you did wrong this week? You called to your mind too much. You were on Facebook too much. You this and you go, okay, I'm sorry, Matt, I'll try to. You didn't give me enough oral sex this week. Oh, well, three times you think, oh, three times in a week. Oh, think about that part of it. She had to do that. She's very hateful. I know the real her. He also could see that she was running out of options. She's a 95 pound, five foot three or something. He's 65 to 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 could physically, so think about it. That's her only way is to scream. He was an asshole and she doubled it for a long time. So anybody who says 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 two thousand that are like that. The rest are him who has 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 disrespecting you. And then 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 go with draw a bit. And I'm not like that usually, especially when you get a couple of years in me. You know, whiskier too. You know, I'll talk. And 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 talented she is. Whitty, a great mother. All these things just for these recordings. But I know the end. And I think she knew the end too. She protected those girls. 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 nepotbaby 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 shum-a-zing. Listen to Infamous, the gossip show that's smart. The show's called Infamous. I want to tell you guys about a podcast that is near and dear to my heart. And I cannot believe it already came out a year ago. And you can all go listen to it. Add free by subscribing to the Binge podcast channel. What podcast can tell us? It's called Blink, Jake Handel's story. I created it about a man named Jake Huaymet who is the only survivor of a terminal brain illness brought on by heroin use. But there is a lot of mystery and medical malpractice and true crime elements that are very shocking and surprising and even some supernatural elements. So this is definitely an amazing story. It's very unique. Did such an incredible job telling the story and tearing it with a world. So if you have not listened to it yet, my goodness, where have you been because Blink is so freaking good. Thank you. Search for Blink wherever you listen and subscribers to the Binge will get the entire season, add free. Plus, you'll get exclusive access to the over 60 other true crime stories on the Binge podcast channel. Hit subscribe on Apple podcasts or head to getthebinge.com. 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 start thinking like, oh, he's capable, you know, 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. Nikki 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. Yeah, I mean, and I realized 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 audio files and I started thinking, okay, here's the, 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 crime of passion or crime of just accident or something where he painted, 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 with this and the video was probably destroyed or he destroyed it. And I talk about this all 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, a 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 this 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 said, it was deleted. Someone had to physically go in there to delete the camera footage. And I said, deleted, huh? Not corrupted. So that's what 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 because us pain and torment and our day in court will come. And hopefully my daughter will be able to come home. He is the only parent they have left in the world. And so they're 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 in my life. And I have no way to help them. And so I'm going to go back to the next episode of the Binge podcast. And I'm going to go back to the Binge podcast channel. Not 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 podcast and hit subscribe at the top of the page. And then you'll get the Binge.com to get access wherever you listen. 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. We use music from Epidemic Sound and APM. Our fact checker is Naomi Barr. Our production managers are Tameca Balanced Colasney and Sammy Allison. Our lawyer is Minakshi Krishnan, special thanks to Steve Ackerman, Emily Rossick, Jamie Myers, and the whole team at Sony Podcast. If you're enjoying the podcast, please rate and leave us a review. Thank you so much for listening. Sabrina Karen. I have been listening to a new show from the Binge called Fatal Fantasy. I am obsessed. Wait, I need to know more. Tell me everything. I will. It's a very shocking. It's this ultra-weird crime story of a murder for a higher plot that, wait for it, leveraged the dynamics of the underworld and underworld being a medieval fantasy game. Wait, so it's live action role playing Gone Wrong? Horribly wrong. And you can binge all episodes now. Oh, man, that sounds so good. I know what I'm doing on my drive home today. Search for Fatal Fantasy and subscribe to the Binge Podcast channel on Apple Podcasts or at GetTheBinge.com. And then once you're done, you can listen to one of the over 60 true crime and investigative podcasts, a part of the channel while you wait for the next month's drop. I really need to know what happens. Selfishly, you do so that we can talk about it. So whenever you listen, search for Fatal Fantasy and hit subscribe to the binge to get all episodes. And then let's add free.