Speaker 1: Welcome to Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. I'm Laura and I
Speaker 1: writer and I'm Steve Drisen. Sometimes farm life isn't as
Speaker 1: tranquil as it seems. Today we take you to small town, Nebraska,
Speaker 1: where to murders shattered a peaceful Easter Sunday. This is
Speaker 1: the story of Matt Liver's, a case with more plot
Speaker 1: twists than I've ever seen. A coerced confession, dirty cops
Speaker 1: who planted evidence, and a mysterious clue that led to
Speaker 1: a pair of natural born killers. This story gives Tarantino
Speaker 1: a run for his money. Horrible crimes can happen anywhere,
Speaker 1: even where you least expect it. And if you've learned
Speaker 1: one thing by listening to this podcast, I hope it's
Speaker 1: that false confessions can also happen anywhere and any time.
Speaker 1: I want them to learn a second thing, it's that
Speaker 1: a confession is only as good as the evidence the
Speaker 1: corroborates it. And in this case, it looked like there
Speaker 1: was perfect corroboration. There was evidence that seemed to prove
Speaker 1: the confession true. But what happens when new evidence surfaces
Speaker 1: that causes the confession to unravel? That makes the narrative
Speaker 1: seem to be false. What do you do in a
Speaker 1: case like this starts falling apart? Do you double down?
Speaker 1: Or do you fix it up? Today's story begins in Murdoch, Nebraska.
Speaker 1: It's a tiny town about halfway between Lincoln and Omaha.
Speaker 1: Murdoch is barely more than a few dozen homes, surrounded
Speaker 1: by fields of corn and the occasional outlying farmhouse. The
Speaker 1: population just two hundred and sixty nine people, only sixty
Speaker 1: six families, and one of Murdoch's most respected families was
Speaker 1: the Stokes, headed by Wayne and Sharman Stoke, both in
Speaker 1: their mid fifties. When our story starts on Easter Sunday
Speaker 1: two thousand six. Wayne and Sharman were good people, god fearing,
Speaker 1: well known Murdock residents who lived in an immaculate farmhouse
Speaker 1: near town. Wayne was a successful businessman for years, he'd
Speaker 1: run the Stoke Hay Company, growing bundling selling hay to
Speaker 1: all the local farmers, and Sharman was a teacher's aide.
Speaker 1: She ran a popular cake business out of their home.
Speaker 1: So it's that Easter Sunday, April sixteen, two thousand sex
Speaker 1: it unfolded like many holidays for the Stokes. It was
Speaker 1: a family occasion. That morning, Wayne and Sharman went to church,
Speaker 1: followed by Easter traditions. Right they had brunch with their family.
Speaker 1: They had an Easter egg hunt with their grandkids. It
Speaker 1: was a lovely but unremarkable day, and Wayne and Sharman
Speaker 1: went to sleep that night in their farmhouse as usual.
Speaker 1: The next day, April seventeenth, rolls around. Wayne and Sharman
Speaker 1: are early risers, but when their adult son, Andy arrives
Speaker 1: at the farmhouse about nine am, he doesn't see any
Speaker 1: sign of his parents. He goes inside. He moves through
Speaker 1: the tidy but sile first floor. He goes upstairs and
Speaker 1: he finds the worst, his dad's body in a blood
Speaker 1: spattered second floor hallway. Wayne's head had nearly been blown
Speaker 1: away by a gunshot last Now, Amy calls the police
Speaker 1: and the Cass County Police arrived. Murdoch's Way too small
Speaker 1: to have its own police force, and soon enough investigators
Speaker 1: find a double tragedy. Not only is Wayne dead, but
Speaker 1: Sharman's body is found in the bedroom, wedged between the
Speaker 1: bedside and the wall. She's been shot in the head too,
Speaker 1: and a phone cort is wrapped around her body like
Speaker 1: maybe she'd been trying to call for help. This was
Speaker 1: a double murder of the worst kind, something that Murdoch,
Speaker 1: Nebraska had never seen before. Seasoned crime scene veterans and
Speaker 1: officers in the area looked at this crime scene and
Speaker 1: it made them physically ill. They had never seen so
Speaker 1: much carnage before, certainly not in Murdoch, Nebraska exactly. So
Speaker 1: as local police are assessing this scene, processing this trauma
Speaker 1: that they're seeing in front of them, they realize they're
Speaker 1: in a bit over their heads, so they call in
Speaker 1: the big guns. They call in the Crime Scene Investigation
Speaker 1: Division of the Douglas County Sheriff's Office. It's basically the
Speaker 1: state's leading crime scene forensic experts. Now, the investigators find
Speaker 1: several items of interest at the scene. They find shells
Speaker 1: from a twelve gage shotgun that are littered around the
Speaker 1: whole area. They find a silver flashlight with blood on it,
Speaker 1: and sitting in the Silks driveway. There's a red and
Speaker 1: silver marijuana pipe. Now, both the flashlight and the marijuana
Speaker 1: pipe are potentially DNA testable. There's also a damaged window
Speaker 1: in the Stokes laundry room. It suggests that maybe somebody
Speaker 1: had broken into the house, and inside police observe in
Speaker 1: the blood spray that had been left on the wall,
Speaker 1: there's a human silhouette. It implies that there had been
Speaker 1: two people present, one to shoot and one to get
Speaker 1: sprayed by all that blood. What a visual blood spray
Speaker 1: to human silhouette exactly. It's It's like a movie scene.
Speaker 1: And on the otherwise spotless kitchen floor, police find a
Speaker 1: golden ring with an unusual inscription, an inscription that didn't
Speaker 1: seem to relate to anyone in the Stoke family. It
Speaker 1: said love Always, Corey and Ryan. There's no signs that
Speaker 1: anything's been stolen from the house. Wayne and Charman's children
Speaker 1: can't pinpoint anything that seems to be missing. That leads
Speaker 1: the police officers to believe that this crime was not
Speaker 1: some random break in, but that it was personal, that
Speaker 1: it was an act of vengeance, and that whoever slaughtered
Speaker 1: the Stokes had an exe to grind with them. Police
Speaker 1: start asking Stoke family relatives who might have wanted to
Speaker 1: harm Wayne and Sharman, and some of Sharman's family members
Speaker 1: start wondering out loud about the person they thought of
Speaker 1: as the black sheep of the family Sharman's nephew Matt Livers.
Speaker 1: Matt was twenty eight years old and had no criminal
Speaker 1: record whatsoever, but he'd had his share of challenges because
Speaker 1: of his severe mental limitations. Matt had struggled with getting
Speaker 1: through school as a boy and trying to hold down
Speaker 1: a job as an adult. The Stokes were a family
Speaker 1: that prided themselves on their success and by their standards,
Speaker 1: Matt Liver's stuck out like a sore thumb. He'd also
Speaker 1: argued recently with Wayne and Sharman about whether he was
Speaker 1: getting a sufficient share of a family inheritance, and it
Speaker 1: was this feud that made police focus on Matt as
Speaker 1: a suspect in the Stokes murder. At about ten forty
Speaker 1: five pm on the day that the Stokes bodies are discovered,
Speaker 1: the police decided to interview Matt Liver's The interrogation lasts
Speaker 1: four hours until almost three o'clock in the morning, but
Speaker 1: Matt tells the cops he's there to cooperate and he
Speaker 1: has only good things to say about the Stokes. He
Speaker 1: downplays this idea of a family feud, and that makes
Speaker 1: officers bitious, and he does what many people who are
Speaker 1: innocent do he says, I want to cooperate. Take my DNA,
Speaker 1: take my hair, take my saliva, take my fingerprints. I'll
Speaker 1: even come back for a polygraph. I had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with this. I'm an open book and based on
Speaker 1: all that, for the time being, Matt Liver's is released. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the police are interviewing others too, and they do get
Speaker 1: a lead. Right there's a local newspaper carrier who tells
Speaker 1: the police that he had seen a car parked near
Speaker 1: the Stokes property on the morning of the murders. It's
Speaker 1: a tan four door midsize sedan. Now, this guy doesn't
Speaker 1: know whether the vehicle was related to the crime or not,
Speaker 1: but he did recall seeing an OH in the license plate. Now,
Speaker 1: Matt Liver's drives a red convertible, but his cousin, Will
Speaker 1: Sampson drove a tan four door Ford Contour, which made
Speaker 1: investigators become suspicious. Now, Will's Contour didn't have an O
Speaker 1: in its license plate, but oddly enough, it had been
Speaker 1: professionally cleaned and detailed right after the murders, and that
Speaker 1: gave the police reason enough to want to search Will's car.
Speaker 1: They even go to the auto detail shop itself. They
Speaker 1: go through the vacuum bags that were used when Will's
Speaker 1: card was cleaned, but they find zero incriminating evidence. Now
Speaker 1: this is strange. The crime scene was incredibly bloody. It
Speaker 1: would have been almost impossible even for the most professional
Speaker 1: detailers to erase every molecule of evidence, but the investigators
Speaker 1: found nothing. Despite all this, police are still suspicious. Now
Speaker 1: they discover that Will Samson, the guy who owns the contour,
Speaker 1: did have an alibi on Eastern night, which is when
Speaker 1: the crime presumably occurred. But Nick Sampson, another one of
Speaker 1: Matt Liver's cousins, did not have an alibi, and soon enough,
Speaker 1: Matt Liver's and Nick Sampson become the prime suspects. Fast
Speaker 1: forward to eight days after the Stokes bodies are discovered.
Speaker 1: It's April. Police ask Matt to come in for questioning
Speaker 1: a second time, but this time they take him an
Speaker 1: hour away to the Cass County Law Enforcement Center. He
Speaker 1: is held there for questioning a total of eleven hours,
Speaker 1: most of it video recording. Now Matt doesn't know it
Speaker 1: at the time, but he wasn't going to return home
Speaker 1: for months because here comes the interrogation. The line of
Speaker 1: questioning designed to break, Matt Liver's we're gonna watching after
Speaker 1: your years, you were involved in it. We need to
Speaker 1: know what happened. As typical in these interrogations, the investigators
Speaker 1: start by accusing that of killing his aunt and uncle.
Speaker 1: It's not whether or not you committed this crime, they say,
Speaker 1: we already know that. You have to tell us why
Speaker 1: you committed this crime, and Matt denies it right He says,
Speaker 1: I'm not that kind of person. All I remember is
Speaker 1: sleeping in my bed that night. He goes on to
Speaker 1: deny and deny and deny eighty six times, and then,
Speaker 1: just as in so many other cases, he offers to
Speaker 1: try to prove his own innocence. He agrees to take
Speaker 1: a polygraph, which the police build up to him as
Speaker 1: fool proof that you're lost about. Matt takes the exam.
Speaker 1: He's excited. He thinks he's going to pass the exam
Speaker 1: and this will all be over, But the polygrapher comes
Speaker 1: into the room and tells him that he had failed
Speaker 1: this test miserably. This way, when he continues denying his involvement,
Speaker 1: the police can point to his test results as evidence
Speaker 1: of his guilt. They tell him that these polygraph charts
Speaker 1: leave absolutely no doubt and holding the results in his hand,
Speaker 1: the Nebraska State Patrol officer says to mattution, we ask
Speaker 1: you a question that specifically has to do with the
Speaker 1: death of Wayne, you fly off the chart. Now, this
Speaker 1: is a lie. Like in so many of these other cases,
Speaker 1: Matt did not actually fail this polygraph exam. It was
Speaker 1: confirmed after the fact by a polygraph expert. But we
Speaker 1: know as always that police are allowed to lie during interrogations,
Speaker 1: and that's what they're doing here, lying to him about
Speaker 1: lying again. It's like seeing the same script play out
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. In these stories. The
Speaker 1: whole point is to bring Matt Liver's down to this
Speaker 1: place of hopelessness. Nebraska is a death penalty state, so
Speaker 1: what do the interrogators do. They introduce the idea to
Speaker 1: Matt that he's going to get the death penalty unless
Speaker 1: he confesses to this crime. If he doesn't, then they
Speaker 1: promise him they're going to go the hard route, and
Speaker 1: they get graphic, they get specific. When I first saw
Speaker 1: this tape, my jaw dropped. Matt Liver's is told by
Speaker 1: one of the Cast County investigators that he's going to
Speaker 1: personally make sure that Matt is executed for this crime.
Speaker 1: If he doesn't confess, I do, and you're meant to
Speaker 1: me exactly what you've done. I'm gonna do my best
Speaker 1: to hang your ass. I'm going to do my level
Speaker 1: best to hang your ass from the highest tree. You
Speaker 1: are done, I will go after the death penalty. They're
Speaker 1: reciting all the different ways the death penalty can be administered,
Speaker 1: electric chair, gas, lethal injection. They tell him his asses
Speaker 1: on the line, and you're in the frying pan right now.
Speaker 1: Push and push until I get everything I mean to
Speaker 1: make this. Make no mistake about it. Matt is beginning
Speaker 1: to break down, and make no mistake about this as well.
Speaker 1: These investigators know that Matt has intellectual disabilities exactly. He's
Speaker 1: giving them these really clear signals during the interrogation that
Speaker 1: he's limited. At one point, one of the police says
Speaker 1: to him, you know many people have tried and failed
Speaker 1: to outsmartest. Matt turns to him and assures him that
Speaker 1: he's not trying to do that. I'm dumb as a brick,
Speaker 1: he says. And when one of the interrogators urges Matt
Speaker 1: to confess, to stand up and to be a man,
Speaker 1: Matt takes him literally. He is a concrete thinker, and
Speaker 1: he interprets that to actually mean that he's going to
Speaker 1: stand up and get up out of his chair. These
Speaker 1: are terribly frightening, terribly coercive interrogation tactics, and it's not
Speaker 1: the way someone with these kinds of disabilities should be questioned.
Speaker 1: I am so tired of law enforcement officers pretending that
Speaker 1: they didn't know the person they were interrogating had some disabilities.
Speaker 1: This wilful ignorance on their part has got to stop.
Speaker 1: There were strong signs that they were dealing with somebody
Speaker 1: who was disabled, and they just treated him like he
Speaker 1: was any other normal adult, and they plowed ahead and
Speaker 1: used the same tactics and got false confessions away. This
Speaker 1: is a high profile case. This pressure builds actually goes
Speaker 1: on for about six and a half hours until we
Speaker 1: start to see signs that Matt is finally beginning to
Speaker 1: crack under the pressure. He looks up at his interrogators
Speaker 1: and he says, all I want to do is go
Speaker 1: home now. The interrogators take that as their cue and
Speaker 1: they start telling Matt that he must have been tired
Speaker 1: of being put down, shut out, kept out, of the
Speaker 1: family inheritance by his aunt and uncle, and slowly Matt
Speaker 1: begins to respond affirmatively agree with a series of leading
Speaker 1: questions from officers who literally start walking him through the story.
Speaker 1: The truth is, you got a gun, right or wrong? Right,
Speaker 1: and you took that gun back to your uncle Wayne
Speaker 1: and aunt Sharman's house, right right. Eventually they come around
Speaker 1: to the murder itself, and you fired a shot at
Speaker 1: your uncle Wayne. Matt gives a series of one word
Speaker 1: wrote answers, agreeing to the suggestions of these interrogators about
Speaker 1: how this crime took place. All the answers to these questions,
Speaker 1: they've scripted it, and Matt is just agreeing to it.
Speaker 1: You know, you listen to this and you get the
Speaker 1: impression that if the next question was and this crime
Speaker 1: happened on the moon, right, Matt, he would say right too.
Speaker 1: He was that much under their controls in our house
Speaker 1: after hours. Originally, he takes soul responsibility for the murders,
Speaker 1: but remember, these investigators have good reason to think that
Speaker 1: at least two people were involved in the crime, right
Speaker 1: because of the silhouette and the blood sprayed wall. So
Speaker 1: after another lengthy series of questioning, Matt finally imp Kate's
Speaker 1: his cousin, Nick Sampson too, saying that it was Nick
Speaker 1: that gave him the murder weapon and the keys to
Speaker 1: the Ford Contour. Based on this statement, both Matt Liver's
Speaker 1: and Nick Sampson are arrested and charged with murder. Now,
Speaker 1: the very next day, Matt is facing yet another polygraph exam.
Speaker 1: Right questioning is continuing for him even after he's arrested
Speaker 1: and charged. But the very next day he can'ts on
Speaker 1: videotape the whole thing. He says, you know, I've just
Speaker 1: been making things up to satisfy you guys and basically
Speaker 1: fitting in answers to what you guys have been asking.
Speaker 1: He later explained to a court appointed psychologist that he
Speaker 1: confessed because he wanted to go home. Case closed. This
Speaker 1: is front page news in both Lincoln and in We
Speaker 1: got our men exactly. They're facing charges both in the
Speaker 1: courtroom and the court of public opinion, but the case
Speaker 1: against them is problematic because there's no physical evidence implicating them.
Speaker 1: Police try to match those twelve gage casings that they
Speaker 1: found at the crime scene to a shotgun that they
Speaker 1: found in Nick Sampson's bedroom, but there is no match.
Speaker 1: What about the marijuana pipe that they found in the
Speaker 1: Stokes driveway, Well, there was DNA on it and it
Speaker 1: excluded both Matt and Nick. And the same thing goes
Speaker 1: for that strange golden ring that was found in the
Speaker 1: Stokes kitchen. It did contain DNA from two unknown people,
Speaker 1: but that DNA did not belong to Nick or Matt.
Speaker 1: The police were in desperate need of some corroboration for
Speaker 1: Matt Liver's confession. So what do they do? They call
Speaker 1: in David co Fode. Now, David Kofode was the commander
Speaker 1: of the Douglas County Sheriff c s I Unit. He's
Speaker 1: widely viewed as a statewide law enforcement hero. He was
Speaker 1: also a shameless self promoter. He was not only a
Speaker 1: legend in law enforcement circles, but he was also a
Speaker 1: legend in his own mind right. David was a guy
Speaker 1: who had the magic touch. He had a reputation for
Speaker 1: closing cases by finding forensic evidence that all the other
Speaker 1: officers had overlooked. And David co Fote was brought in
Speaker 1: and asked to take a second look at will Samson's
Speaker 1: forward contour. Now, co Fote examines the contour personally and
Speaker 1: true to his reputation, he claims to have found blood
Speaker 1: under the dash. He swabs the blood and it tests positive.
Speaker 1: The blood belongs to Wayne Stoke. The case against matt
Speaker 1: Iver's and Nick Sampson just became devastating, or so it seemed. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: other officers were continuing their investigation and they focused on
Speaker 1: that strange golden ring from the Stokes kitchen. Now, there
Speaker 1: were two marks on that ring. The first one was
Speaker 1: the inscription that we already talked about, Love Always, Corey
Speaker 1: and Ryan. But there was also a jeweler's mark on
Speaker 1: the inside of that ring, a mark made by the manufacturer,
Speaker 1: and police were able to trace that mark to a
Speaker 1: jeweler in New York. This jewelry business is going out
Speaker 1: of business, and the Nebraska investigator calls up and gets
Speaker 1: a woman on the phone who was closing down the office,
Speaker 1: and she says, can you help me track this ring?
Speaker 1: Where did this ring go after it was manufactured? And
Speaker 1: do you have any idea about this inscription? And on
Speaker 1: the day before this jeweler is literally closing its doors
Speaker 1: in New York, it's employees tell investigators that that ring
Speaker 1: was shipped off to a Walmart in beaver Dam, Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: where it was hurchased by a woman named Corey for
Speaker 1: her boyfriend Ryan. Had this phone call come a day later,
Speaker 1: they may never have been able to trace that rank,
Speaker 1: and we might never know who actually killed Wayne and
Speaker 1: Sharmon Stoke. It was a miracle, was a break, and
Speaker 1: it was a break that was generated by really good
Speaker 1: police work, unbelievable that traces ring them from Nebraska to
Speaker 1: New York to Wisconsin, where they discovered the story about
Speaker 1: Gregory Fester and Jessica Reid stealing the truck in which
Speaker 1: the ring had been left. Now, who are these two?
Speaker 1: Jessica Reid grew up in Wisconsin in a small town
Speaker 1: called Horicon. Jessica was an honors student when she fell
Speaker 1: in love with greg who was an older, really troubled teenager.
Speaker 1: And the more detectives dug into Greg and Jessica, the
Speaker 1: more there was to learn. It turns out they'd stolen
Speaker 1: a twelve gage shotgun and the pickup truck where Corey
Speaker 1: and Ryan had left that golden ring. Greg and Jessica
Speaker 1: had gone on a drug fueled interstate crime spree, breaking
Speaker 1: into houses in rural Iowa and Nebraska, They eventually ran
Speaker 1: out of money and abandoned the truck in Louisiana on
Speaker 1: April eighteenth. Somehow they made it back to Wisconsin, where
Speaker 1: they were arrested a week later for car theft. Police
Speaker 1: questioned Greg and Jessica and began connecting the dots. According
Speaker 1: to Jessica, she and Greg started their bender in Wisconsin
Speaker 1: and we're passing through Nebraska when the truck began running
Speaker 1: out of gas. They were tired, cranky, coming down from
Speaker 1: a cough syrup high and looking for a house to rob.
Speaker 1: That's when Greg and Jessica came across the Stoke Holme
Speaker 1: in Murdoch. Greg goes in through a downstairs window, Jessica said,
Speaker 1: and he lets her in at the front door. They
Speaker 1: go upstairs and are confronted by Wayne and Sharman Stoke.
Speaker 1: Greg lift up his shotgun and he fires once at Wayne,
Speaker 1: hitting him in the knee. He and Jessica back out
Speaker 1: of the room. They get into the hallway and Jessica
Speaker 1: looks at Greg and says, do something. So one of
Speaker 1: them goes back into the room, we don't know which one,
Speaker 1: and finish his Wayne off with a shotgun blastic close
Speaker 1: range to the back of his head. Meanwhile, Sharmon is
Speaker 1: calling the police, and one of these two natural born
Speaker 1: killers opens fire and charman and shoots her in the
Speaker 1: face and her body falls down next to the bed
Speaker 1: and it's wedged between the bed and the wall. Greg
Speaker 1: and Jessica don't steal a thing. They just get out
Speaker 1: of that farmhouse, get back into their vehicle, and drive
Speaker 1: off into the night. Now, Jessica's story smacked of truth,
Speaker 1: and it was soon corroborated. Wisconsin detectives in Jessica and
Speaker 1: Greg's DNA to Nebraska and lo and behold, their DNA
Speaker 1: was consistent with the DNA on the marijuana pipe and
Speaker 1: on the Golden Ring. Investigators also found Wayne Stokes blood
Speaker 1: in the truck and on clothes and shoes that had
Speaker 1: belonged to both Greg and Jessica. They even found a
Speaker 1: chilling entry in Jessica Read's diary, I killed someone, She wrote,
Speaker 1: I loved it. I wish I could do it all
Speaker 1: the time. And they find a cigarette box in Jessica's
Speaker 1: home containing a letter to Greg and has spent twelve
Speaker 1: gage shell casing from the murders. In the letters, she wrote,
Speaker 1: this was something I did for you for you to
Speaker 1: love me as much as I love you. This is
Speaker 1: a crazy story. It's something straight out of Natural Born Killers.
Speaker 1: This was a thrill kill by two drug craze teens
Speaker 1: who actually thought they were in Iowa, not Nebraska. Needless
Speaker 1: to say, the discovery of Jessica and Greg up ends
Speaker 1: the case against Matt Livers and Nick Sampson. After Jessica
Speaker 1: and Greg are arrested and implicated in the Stoke murders,
Speaker 1: Nebraska investigators travel out to Wisconsin to question them, and
Speaker 1: they do so because Jessica and Greg are telling a
Speaker 1: story that doesn't involve Matt Livers and Nick Sampson, so
Speaker 1: they played the same card they played with Livers. Wisconsin
Speaker 1: is not a death penalty stage, they say, but Nebraska is.
Speaker 1: And if you don't come clean to having committed this
Speaker 1: crime with Matt and Nick, we're gonna seek the death
Speaker 1: penalty against you as well. And for a brief moment,
Speaker 1: Jessica comes up with a wild story about how she
Speaker 1: had met Nick Sampson at a bar and had gone
Speaker 1: with them into the Stoke house. But she immediately were
Speaker 1: cants once those Nebraska investigators leave the room. As soon
Speaker 1: as she's alone with this Wisconsin investigator. She says to him,
Speaker 1: these guys keep wanting me to pin this murder on
Speaker 1: two people I have never met. During one of my
Speaker 1: many searches of cases with the words false confession, I
Speaker 1: came upon this case and I knew the psychologist who
Speaker 1: had been hired by Matt Liver's attorney, Julie Bear. So
Speaker 1: I reached out to Julie and played a sort of
Speaker 1: behind the scenes consulting role. She didn't need me. This
Speaker 1: case was beginning to crash on its own. That psychologist
Speaker 1: Steve knew. His name is Scott Bressler. Scott's report for
Speaker 1: the defense team gave a fuller picture of the motivations
Speaker 1: behind Matt's confession. I have results that clearly showed that
Speaker 1: Matt was very vulnerable and low functioning and had personality
Speaker 1: characteristics in which he wants to please other people, wants
Speaker 1: to be complying with other people, and has a very
Speaker 1: low tolerance for stress. And when he didn't do well
Speaker 1: on particular kinds of tests, it's because he didn't understand it,
Speaker 1: so he would make up stuff, which is interesting because
Speaker 1: he confabulated the whole scenario that the police took Cookline
Speaker 1: and Sinker, which they thought indicated that he was guilty.
Speaker 1: Scott also presented his analysis of Matt's personality to an
Speaker 1: expert from the prosecution side, and that expert was shocked
Speaker 1: by what he saw and he said, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I think that this is a real false confession. It
Speaker 1: becomes clear Jessica and Gregg committed this crime on their own.
Speaker 1: So I'm off this meeting with the prosecuting attorney and
Speaker 1: he's visibly emotionally shaken by everything that's happened. Right after
Speaker 1: that meeting ended, he announced his decision to release math.
Speaker 1: So I was right there when Matt walked out of jail,
Speaker 1: who and all the press were there and saw match
Speaker 1: reaction to seeing his family, and of course he gave
Speaker 1: me a big hug and thanked me. It was a
Speaker 1: very emotional same. You know, this case shows the difference
Speaker 1: between bad police work and good police work. On the
Speaker 1: one hand, we have cops trying to solve this case
Speaker 1: by breaking an obviously vulnerable man through an insanely coercive interrogation.
Speaker 1: Compare that to the gumshoe investigator who focused on the
Speaker 1: physical evidence. That investigator traced the golden ring to the
Speaker 1: New York Jewelers, which led to the Wisconsin Walmart, which
Speaker 1: led to Corey and Ryan and their pickup truck getting stolen,
Speaker 1: the ring in the glove compartment, and that twisted path
Speaker 1: finally ends with Greg and Jessica. That's great police work,
Speaker 1: and we know it's great because in fact, Greg and
Speaker 1: Jessica's DNA and forensic evidence was found all over the scene.
Speaker 1: We know they're guilty because the science tells us that
Speaker 1: they are. Without that dogged investigative work, these two young
Speaker 1: men very well might have been on death row. Both
Speaker 1: Jessica and Greg went on to be prosecuted for the
Speaker 1: murders of Wayne and Sharman Stoke. They were convicted and
Speaker 1: sentenced to life in prison. But hang on a second,
Speaker 1: because there's one other question here, right, what about that
Speaker 1: blood stain in the forward contour? How did that bloodstain
Speaker 1: get there if the car had nothing to do with
Speaker 1: this crime. Well, it turns out the blood had been
Speaker 1: planted by none other than the States Star crime scene
Speaker 1: investigator himself, David co Fode. Turns out the guy with
Speaker 1: the magic touch was in this case a little more
Speaker 1: than a odd. Nebraska prosecutors ended up charging co Fode
Speaker 1: with planting that blood in the contour. He was convicted
Speaker 1: and sentenced to spend between twenty months and four years
Speaker 1: behind bars. Prosecutors called it poetic justice. Let's talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about David cofone because he's one of the
Speaker 1: interesting figures in this case. You know, why would someone
Speaker 1: do something like this. He literally framed two innocent men
Speaker 1: by claiming that he had found Wayne Stokes blood in
Speaker 1: the contour. This is what happens when someone believes the
Speaker 1: end that they're pursuing is just, and that therefore they
Speaker 1: can cut corners and do unethical things in service of
Speaker 1: the just goal. I don't buy that he did this
Speaker 1: because he never imagined that that confession would be false.
Speaker 1: So we figured, I'll just strengthen the case and I'll
Speaker 1: get away with it and I'll be a hero and
Speaker 1: nobody will think twice about it. But he got caught,
Speaker 1: Thank god for that. I helped Matt Livers get an
Speaker 1: attorney to bring a civil suit against the Cass County
Speaker 1: officers and the others involved in his arrest. When that
Speaker 1: case settled, something was said by Nebraska Attorney General John
Speaker 1: Brunning that bothers me to this day. He said, the
Speaker 1: only reason we're settling the civil suit is because of
Speaker 1: David Coopodes criminal activity. My investigators did nothing wrong here.
Speaker 1: They acted honorably. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Speaker 1: They threatened Matt Liver's with the death penalty to get
Speaker 1: him to confess. They threatened Jessica Reed with the death
Speaker 1: penalty to get her to implicate Livers and Sampson. There's
Speaker 1: nothing honorable here about what these detectives did. Jessica Reid
Speaker 1: was more honorable than they were. She told the truth
Speaker 1: I believe it or not. In the Annual False Confessions
Speaker 1: there are other cases of people who have been wrongfully convicted,
Speaker 1: only later to be exonerated when it turns out the
Speaker 1: people on a multi state crimes where you're responsible. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's the interesting thing about so many cases that we're
Speaker 1: talking about on this podcast, because you have innocent people
Speaker 1: going down for these horrific crimes based on false confessions,
Speaker 1: while people who really need to be stopped right, whether
Speaker 1: they're serial rapists, serial killers, rights are out there doing
Speaker 1: terrible things while the innocent person does their time. Justice
Speaker 1: was eventually done here, but for Matt and for Nick
Speaker 1: scars remain. Matt moved to Texas, but the legacy of
Speaker 1: these murders still haunts him. His relationship with Nick and
Speaker 1: other family members has been forever fraid. Nick Sampson drifted
Speaker 1: apart from his cousin. He could never accept that Matt
Speaker 1: had falsely implicated him during that interrogation. Both of them
Speaker 1: sued the state of Nebraska and ended up recovering some
Speaker 1: compensation for their ordeal, although of course nothing can properly
Speaker 1: repay them for the harm that they underwent. Matt, Nick,
Speaker 1: you both endured ordeals that would test anyone. Your stories
Speaker 1: stand both as a warning for those police officers who
Speaker 1: want to breach trust and cut corners, but also as
Speaker 1: a testament to the justice that can be brought by
Speaker 1: good police work, the work done by those who trace
Speaker 1: that golden ring. To Greg and Jessica, we wish you
Speaker 1: peace and happy futures. Thanks for listening as we've told
Speaker 1: the story of Matt Livers and Nick Samson. Next week,
Speaker 1: we're going to tackle the story of Tana Porra, a
Speaker 1: story that hails all the way from New Zealand. Because
Speaker 1: falesse confessions aren't just a problem here in the US,
Speaker 1: It's a global problem until them. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions. Wrongful Conviction, False Confessions is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number One. Special thanks to our executive producer Jason
Speaker 1: Flom and the team at Signal Company Number one Executive
Speaker 1: producer Kevin Wardace, Senior Producer and Pope, and additional production
Speaker 1: and editing by Connor Hall. Our music was composed by
Speaker 1: j Ralph. You can follow me on Instagram or Twitter
Speaker 1: at Laura night Rider and you can follow me on
Speaker 1: Twitter at s Driven. For more information on the show,
Speaker 1: visit Wrongful Conviction podcast dot com and be sure to
Speaker 1: follow the show on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook
Speaker 1: at Wrongful Conviction Podcast, and on Twitter at wrong Conviction