A suspect emerges, along with a theory of the crime. This episode originally published on February 17, 2025.
Chapter 1: What is the significance of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in true crime literature?
It was 1966 when the archetype of what would come to be known as the true crime novel barged into the culture. In no time at all, that book, in cold blood, was as famous as a book could be. And so was its author, Truman Capote. Unusual man, unusual book. In Cold Blood reads like a novel, though it was a true story, the mean, hard facts of it exhaustively reported.
Chapter 2: Who were the Stock family and what happened to them?
Literary critics called it a masterpiece, though the story was as disturbing as a story could be. Somehow, Capote's masterpiece caught the mood of those turbulent years. In Cold Blood tells the story of a wealthy farm family called the Clutters, Herb, Bonnie, and their two children, murdered during an apparent robbery at night in their farmhouse in Kansas in 1959.
The story was so influential, such a cultural touchstone, that even decades after its release, people just couldn't help but see the parallels between the Clutters and the Stock families. They were both good people, successful farmers in the middle of America, attacked in their sleep, murdered in cold blood.
One line in particular, penned by Capote, seemed fitting to describe what had happened to Wayne and Charmin's stock. They shared a doom against which virtue was no defense. Those days that followed the murders were dreadful ones for the three adult Stog children. There was shock and grief and confusion and anger, a whole catalogue of emotions. They tried to keep busy.
Chapter 3: How did the community respond to the Stock family murders?
There were arrangements to make, a funeral to prepare. It was apparent that the local Methodist church would be too small to accommodate all those who wanted to pay their respects, so it was decided they'd have the funeral in the Murdoch High School gym. It was the right thing to do. The place was packed to the rafters. There were speeches lauding the stocks and everything about them.
Daughter Tammy.
I call them pillars of the community.
There was over 2,000 people at the funeral. Wow. Son Steve. They filled the whole gymnasium and the floor and the stands and everything.
What was that like, that funeral?
It was a little overwhelming. We were off in a separate area, kind of secluded. And then when it started, they walked us in and it was just like, holy cow. It was just packed with people. It was really overwhelming.
It was a great tribute. They were good people and loved by many.
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Chapter 4: Who is Matt Livers and why is he a person of interest?
Leading that huge crowd of mourners were, of course, the many members of the Stock's large extended family. watched by a quiet, sharp-eyed contingent of people from the sheriff's office. Detectives scanning the crowd. And not long after, they began to focus on one particular member of the family. I'm on suspicions. Oh yes, families can be complicated with their secret feelings, their resentments.
and private rages. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Dateline's newest podcast, Murder in the Moonlight. First of all, the fellow investigators we're keeping an eye on was not Andy Stock. In fact, the police cleared the Stock's youngest son, and it didn't take very long. Andy's Easter weekend was entirely accounted for. He couldn't have been the one.
So they returned the grief-stricken man to his family. Now, the name of this man, this person of interest, was not Stock at all, even though he was family. His name was Matt Livers, and he was Wayne and Charmin's 28-year-old nephew. In fact, Matt attended the Easter dinner at the Stock Farmhouse a few hours before the murders. But he wasn't there by virtue of being a family favorite. No.
In fact, Matt Livers was considered something of a black sheep, quite unlike the industrious Stocks. Matt had bounced around from one dead-end job to another, never seeming to find his niche, never seemed that interested in having a niche. Instead, he lived with his grandmother, took advantage of her, in the opinion of the rest of the family.
Chapter 5: What was Matt Livers' relationship with the Stock family?
Him and Dad kind of had a lot of falling outs about him staying with Grandma, and Dad didn't think he should be here, that he needed to find a job of his own and get out and put a little more effort into things maybe or something, so they kind of butted ahead just a little bit.
Even so, Matt's Uncle Wayne had frequently gone out of his way to help the young man get going in life. Not that it did much good.
One time I was at work and dad called me and said, wanted to know if he could stop by and see me. So he did, and he had Matt with him. And he'd spent the whole day driving Matt around Lincoln, applying for jobs. And I was like, you know, wow. And there's another guy there working with me when they left. He's like, I don't know anybody that would do that.
I don't know anybody that would take their nephew out and drive all over town, helping him find a job. He goes, that's really cool that your dad would do that.
Still, when family members learned that detectives were looking at Matt, they had opinions. For one thing, they told police, he seemed a bit slow and different. But more to the point, some of them had noticed problems between Matt Livers and the Stalks. They described heated disagreements. Said Charmin disliked Matt. But, said the surviving Stalks, their parents didn't complain about him.
Not openly, anyway.
In our family, they didn't bother us with the little things. They never made anything into a big production. No drama household. No drama household.
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Chapter 6: How did police investigate Matt Livers after the murders?
Still, after the murders, well, everyone was a suspect. And Matt was no different in that respect. Again, the Starks' son, Steve.
I think in my head, I went to it a little bit, just knowing that they hadn't gotten along real well.
So, a few days after the murders, detectives visited Matt Liver's former employer, asked about his personality, asked about rumors that he had a temper. They assigned officers to keep watch on him. They even went through his garbage. And then, on April 25th, eight days after the murders, investigators asked Matt to come down to the station and answer some questions.
You're not being drugged in here, you were divided in here. Right, right. Came here of your own free will.
Certainly, said Matt, happy to help. And he took a seat in the interrogation room. The conversation was recorded.
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Chapter 7: What happened during Matt Livers' police interrogation and polygraph test?
You're free to leave at any time.
Well, I'm here to cooperate with you, gentlemen. Okay. He was, or seemed to be, courteous, deferential. He said, almost with a sense of childlike wonder, that he'd never been interviewed by police before. Things proceeded from there.
I'd like to know why, but who, what, when, where, how, and why?
Of course, the investigators wanted to know where Matt Libers was when the murders happened. Who could vouch for him? And he told them that after the big family Easter dinner with the Stocks, he drove to Lincoln, Nebraska, about a half an hour away, and tucked in with his girlfriend, Sarah. Stayed there all night. Sarah could confirm it, he said.
Oh, and Sarah's young son and a roommate were there, too. Mind you, he told the investigators, he hadn't always been in his uncle Wayne Stark's good books. He knew he was not exactly a family favorite. And he and his uncle had, well, they had disagreed about a thing or two. A tiff, Matt called it, a minor thing. But this questioning session went on for quite some time, five hours in fact.
So naturally, a lot of those questions were asked again and again and again. Just a different way of putting it each time. Why so long? Well, there was a reason for that. Matt seemed to know more than he was saying. It seemed like he was hiding something. So, finally, the detective asked him if he'd agree to take a polygraph. And Matt said, yes, he would. So they hooked him up.
And here he was, getting caught. and answering the big question. With that simple no, Mad Livers tried to put an end to it. Surely those cops who'd been badgering him for all these hours, who didn't seem to believe him, would be convinced by the polygraph, right? It would prove he was telling the truth, Matt believed. And now he could finally get out of there and go home.
And, well, the police believed in the polygraph. Yes, they did. But not quite the way Matt was hoping for. Because the polygrapher told Matt quite bluntly, he failed.
Your subconscious body is telling the machine you cannot fool it. I didn't have anything to do with this. You did. I did not. You did. I did not, Bill. You did. I did. I'm sorry. You did.
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Chapter 8: Why did investigators believe Matt Livers was lying about his involvement?
But the more he said it, and the more insistent he was... Guys, I need nothing to f***ing do with this.
Let's just get this out the open, okay?
The more sure the detectives were that Matt was lying, they were quite certain, in fact.
We've had so many people sitting in that chair, okay, that think that they're smarter than us, and you're not. No. Okay? We're not dumb as a brick. No, we're not dumb as a brick, okay? You made a mistake. You f***ed up. You did. You f***ed up, and now you've got to pay for it.
Why were investigators in Nebraska so convinced Matt Libers was lying? Well, in addition to the polygraph, there was a state profiler who suggested that this was the kind of crime committed by young males who knew their victims. And add to that, said the profiler, this was the sort of crime that appeared to be very personal to executions.
A crime very likely driven by intense personal emotion toward the victims. Feelings like jealousy, anger, revenge. Oh, and finally there was this. The Starks lived in the middle of nowhere, and it made sense that a family member would know exactly where to find them. But a stranger? A stranger would have no idea. If those factors were bells, Matt Livers rang more bells than a royal wedding.
Loudly. And in that interview room, detectives were losing patience.
Huh?
Eventually, they got quite explicit, telling Matt that he was headed for death row, unless he would start giving them what they knew to be true.
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