Matt Livers

I just went crazy. Praise the Lord, praise you now, thank you, thank you, praise the Lord type thing.

Best day of my life. Best day besides marrying my wife here. Sorry. Was it like watching him come out of there?

It was a wonderful day.

Nobody's going to confess to something they didn't do, especially something so horrible as the murder of your own relatives. Well, they changed their tactics on me. My rear end was going to be in the frying pan. They were going to be going for the death penalty. You're scared. Yeah, tremendously scared. I'd been in there with them for a long time.

So yeah, I started, I believe that they, I'm in their police, you know, on the side of their car, you know, it says to serve and protect. And I just thought I was serving them. I thought if I'd tell them what they wanted to hear that I could get to go home. How did Nick's name come up? They asked me who else was involved, and I started just throwing out names.

Finally, when I said Nick's name, then that's when they seemed they were happy and believed me. So you just pulled it out of your hat, like a bunch of names, and his was the only one that stuck, as it were. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Why would you have mentioned him in particular?

You know, I've been asked this question before, and the only answer I could give you is because I think it was I talked to him on the cell phone a few days before, and his name was just fresh in my memory. You know, I'm terribly sorry for him. I hated it for him, but when I said his name, that's who it stuck, and they...

Ran with it more or less, yeah.

I mean, I've been making answers, though, left and right.

Nick was in really, really bad shape. And so at that point, I'm holding him together. It's going to work out. It's going to work out.

Number one, you had two lead investigators who had never done first-degree murder cases before this one as lead investigators. Number two, having made the arrests, holding the press conference, they were committed to trying to build a case against Livers and Samson. And then when Reed and Fester showed up, I think it was just beyond their ability to comprehend that they had made a mistake.

And so that somehow, someway, they needed to fold Reed and Fester's cross-country crime jaunt into somehow having some contact with the Nebraska people, whoever they were.

I'd been a nice guy up to that point. Trying to encourage the county attorney to dismiss the charges is the right thing to do. At that point, then, I had to shift to be much more aggressive, saying, you know, coming at him and here's all the stuff. And I'd prepared a kind of an extensive motion outlining all of the information pointing to Reed and Fessler's acting alone.

That must be a good feeling. No, it wasn't. It's a good feeling to know your client's innocent. It's a bad feeling to know that your client's still in jail. You can't get him out. The cops are coming up with every other kind of theory they can think of to drag him in.

And then when we get the Reed and Fester interviews, we see how they're bending over backwards to basically show him a picture of my client and say, isn't that the guy that you met?

There was every indication in there that there was a problem. When people confess accurately... I mean, the resistance you have from somebody who is innocent, the resistance you have from somebody who is guilty, from an interrogator standpoint, looks the same. But at the point at which they finally get over that moral hump and say, you know, you're right, I really did do this.

At that point, you can't shut them up. They then have to morally justify, okay, I killed my wife because she was cheating on me, and let me tell you what I did. And then they give you facts and information that you didn't know. I mean, that's how you verify it. Mm-hmm.

With Matt Livers, what you had was, at the point at which he makes the baby step portion of his interrogation, they then asked that open-ended question, so tell me what happened, Matt. I don't remember.

People ask, is this a closure on the case? It's not. I think it's another chapter, a turn in the page. There's still a lot of work to be done.

She kind of got me into going with her, just, you know, because that seemed like a good idea.

He walked, like, kind of ran into the room. And he heard a scream, shot a gun. We all run over the house.

He wanted to go home.

Put the gun to her face and blew it away. Then as I headed out, I just stuck it to him and blew him away.

I think there's some relief at the same time some hurt.

I was already fired up, and yes, I have a grudge to settle.

Huh?

Put the gun to her face and blew it away. Okay. And then as I headed out, I just stuck it to him and blew him away. I was already fired up and, you know, had a, yes, I had a grudge to sell, I guess.

I just went crazy. Praise the Lord, praise you now, thank you, thank you, praise the Lord type thing.

Best day of my life. Best day besides marrying my wife here. Sorry. Was it like watching him come out of there?

It was a wonderful day.

Nobody's going to confess to something they didn't do, especially something so horrible as the murder of your own relatives. Well, they changed their tactics on me. My rear end was going to be in the frying pan. They were going to be going for the death penalty. You're scared. Yeah, tremendously scared. I'd been in there with them for a long time.

So yeah, I started, I believe that they, I'm in their police, you know, on the side of their car, you know, it says to serve and protect. And I just thought I was serving them. I thought if I'd tell them what they wanted to hear that I could get to go home. How did Nick's name come up? They asked me who else was involved, and I started just throwing out names.

Finally, when I said Nick's name, then that's when they seemed they were happy and believed me. So you just pulled it out of your hat, like a bunch of names, and his was the only one that stuck, as it were. Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Why would you have mentioned him in particular?

You know, I've been asked this question before, and the only answer I could give you is because I think it was I talked to him on the cell phone a few days before, and his name was just fresh in my memory. You know, I'm terribly sorry for him. I hated it for him, but when I said his name, that's who it stuck, and they...

Ran with it more or less, yeah.

I mean, I've been making answers, though, left and right.

Huh?

Put the gun to her face and blew it away. Okay. And then as I headed out, I just stuck it to him and blew him away. I was already fired up and, you know, had a, yes, I had a grudge to sell, I guess.