Judy Rybak

Right. Somebody tipped them off that they must have seen him or heard something. Because again, you know, small town, it's going to happen sooner or later. But he was right in their backyard. And I did not realize this, that most people who run stay fairly close to home. Unless they're going over the border or they don't have, you know, family to support them.

But if they have a support system, they're not going anywhere.

What's the current status of her case? The case just keeps going on and on and on. It's, you know, one hearing after another. Iris and I went to one of the hearings to try and convince her to talk to us. And she emphatically said no. Her lawyer literally, like, put himself between us and her. But yeah, she's either gonna have to make a deal or it's gonna go to trial.

But this could go on for some time, I think.

So, in order to get out at that point, he's gonna have to confess to the murder. I mean, you go before a parole board, they're not letting you out until you show remorse and confess to the... You know, he's got 30 years to think about it. And at that point, he might just, you know, he might just do it to get out. You just don't know. Right.

Such a sliding door moment, right?

Gather your people. We're going to need every one of them.

I don't think I've ever been in a town that small, as you say. Like, we've been in a lot of small towns. And, you know, there's not a lot to do. They do a lot of riding around, drinking, basically. Right. Fishing, hunting. Repeat. Yeah. Right, right. And when friends heard that Livvy was dead, they thought it was a car accident because that's how most of their friends die.

So were they prepared for this? Was this challenging for them? Oh, so challenging. I just don't think they'd ever seen anything like this before. So they had to call in state troopers and, you know, reinforcement. There were a lot of cops at the scene of the crime.

Oh, she's still so angry. I mean, rightfully, right? She had to learn through the grapevine in town. They didn't call her right away. I think Matthew's family knew before Darcy did. Which is, yeah, because he was in the hospital too, but imagine being the last one to know.

Right.

And you counted how many times she asked. It was something like 23 times. Yeah.

He locked him into his story that day, you know, that he didn't remember what happened.

They suspect it was Bobby's, but they never bothered to test to see if it was Bobby's. Right.

I think he feels guilty about what happened. But our field producer Iris and I went to town early to convince J.P. McDonough to do an interview, to meet with Bobby and convince him to do an interview. It wasn't easy. It's never really easy, but yeah.

Yeah.

It was pretty clear. Yeah. We know that Matthew Edgar was abusive to Libby, not just emotionally, but there was that picture that her cousin showed us of her bloody nose. And, you know, there was a history of violence. The prosecution said there was a mountain of evidence that pointed at Matthew Edgar. He's found at the crime scene, you know, unharmed. He's not... injured in any way.

You know, there was that text to Montana. It's his ex-wife. Yeah. And saying Livvy was dead. There were multiple texts. And they had that huge fight that night.

You know, Bobby told us, we just don't call the cops on each other because, as Peter has said, it's, you know, this is a pattern, and so he just thought they would all wake up the next day and start over again.

It's kind of a crazy story. So... the pants that he was wearing when they found him had her name written inside, like on the label. You know how when you label kids' clothes when they go to camp? So it had her name, not his. And what they thought was that she had gone down there and brought him clean clothing. Right.

But then they later found out that she was the one who took all the clothing to the cleaners, to the laundromat, and so she had written her name in everything.

Did Montana take that text seriously, or what did she think of that text? She wouldn't talk to us. She's left town and wants nothing to do with any of this.

Yes.

Oh, yeah. We always try to get interviews with everybody. We want to talk to everybody. But yes, I spoke to his new wife. His new wife? Yes. He is married, got married while he was in prison, but he knew her before he went to prison. Is she from the same town? Yeah, yeah. I got her number. I spoke to her. She said, yeah, he wants to talk to you guys.

So we sent him a letter, and the day that they gave him the letter, he said no. He didn't want to do it. And then the next day, he changed his mind, but then there's like this weird procedure where they had to wait another 30 days or 60 days to ask him a second time. They had to give him time to think about it. But in the interim, the family just circled the wagons around him and said,

no, he's not talking to you. We're not talking to you. None of us are talking to you.

Yeah, so Texas law was that they could only hold him for so long. And if he was still unindicted, they had to let him go. Well, he was still unindicted. And the law states that it has to be a reasonable bond. So they set the bond at $50,000. And, you know, the family, I think, went to a bail bondsman and got him out. Right.

No, no. They dipped back into the case, right? So that same night he had assaulted Montana. So they wanted to try and get him back behind bars. So they charged him with assaulting Montana. That made Livvy's mother, Darcy, crazy too. Like, you know, murder gets a $50,000 bond and assault gets a $325,000 bond. But I think they were trying to make up for the $50,000 mistake.

It didn't make much of a difference because he still managed to post anyways.

No, I think it's prejudicial and you don't really know why he's run and it's not sort of not fair, I guess. But in the state of Texas, once a trial starts, it doesn't stop.

So he's not there, though. He's not there. His family's not there. The jury had to know something strange was happening.