there's this pile of leaves and it's where everything else is clear and flat. my heart is racing a million miles an hour. i was using my boots to move leaves and that's when i screamed this blood curdling scream. nicky liley.

she disappeared. dozens joined the search. >> we need nicky to come home. then they found her. launching a mystery that would divide this family. >> i suspected him from the beginning. one daughter thought her stepdad matt did it. the others said no way. and matt, he had a theory all his own. >> it's not the first time she's run away okay. had nicky taken off. >> now you are thinking somebody gave her a date rape drug. >> it would lead this house with cameras. what they discovered thousands of hours of tape. >> let me out of this room. >> it's absolutely a torture to listen to. >> and reveal one shattering truth. >> i got down on my knees and started crying.

>> welcome, to dateline extra i'm tamron hall. nikki lylely was a mom with a thriving career. detectives turned to those closest to nikki for information including her husband who had a lot of to stay. an astonishing discovery, her last months had been caught on camera. here's dennis murphy with the house on sidney's could he have. >> there's never a good day to search for a missing woman but this day in the heat of july made an unhappy task unbearable. they decided the friends and family that they would all wear red shirts. they got themselves organized in

a parking lot in lawrenceville, georgia, and set out to find a woman named nicki leili. amy robinson told reporters that her 44-year-old sister, mother of three would be the kind of person to disappear without a word to anyone. >> i'm so worried about my sister. we have no idea where she is or what's happened to her. >> as fate would have it, the question of where nikki was would be answered soon enough. but even now, the question of what happened to nikki remains unclear. >> i'm sick of playing your games. >> what is clear from the recording she left behind is that nikki leili lived a troubled life. >> this is what i live in day in and day out, keep my head up

down and do what's expected of me. >> she was very feisty. she would say what she meant, you know. she didn't mince a lot of words. >> as sisters, amy robinson and nikki leili were ten years apart. >> you two look alike in photos. i was thinking you swapping out old clothes. >> i wore a lot of her hand-me money downs. >> mid mid 90s, she had been married and divorced twice. >> we had a good time. it sounds like a sitcom. >> eventually, nikki moved out, remarried and had two more

daughters with matt leili. after brief stays in oklahoma and mississippi, nikki and matt returned to georgia and settled into this house on sidney's could he have in lawrenceville. nikki was the primary bread winner. matt a computer guy ran a small business out of the house. >> he started going to like government surplus auctions and buying these pallets of old used computer parts and rebuilding them and selling them on ebay. >> by this ring -- >> by this ring. >> when it was amy's turn to get married in 2003, her big sis was there serving as matron of honor. >> i was to toast my best friend, approximate my sister, and the love of her life, amy and dalal. >> later that night, boogeying to we are family.

as the years passed, the sisters remained close. in late june, 2011, amy organized a spa day out for nikki and the girls. >> no boys allowed. >> where did you go? >> you went to get our nails down. we got manicures and pedicures. >> nikki had her toe nails painted pink. though she sometimes had a difficult relationship with her teenage daughter, alex said she felt like that was a turning point. >> it was fun. beyond grateful now that we've done it. >> so two weeks later, nikki had apparently left home in the middle of the night without a word to anyone. when the family reported her missing two days later, the police advised them there was little they can do. >> their response was we don't even know where to start looking. >> she's not on the 11:00 news every night? >> no, because frankly, grown

woman having left her house wasn't that interesting a story. well a hundred people getting together all wearing red shirts, there's an interesting story, so they covered that. >> so then the cameras were out. >> then the came raz came. >> and this is what the cameras saw, searchers arm with maps, literally beating the bushes for clues as to what might have happened to her. >> keep your eyes open, if you see her or anything, definitely call 911. >> every searcher had an assignment. >> we had blue skies, going to smile on us. >> harriet garrett had the job of going door to door. leafletting the neighborhood with flyers picturing her daughter. >> i don't think anybody is at home but we'll find out. >> even though southern hospitality may have been in short supply that day. >> get out of here before i call the cops. >> harriet pressed on. >> good morning, sir, my name is harriet garrett.

>> what is the camera? >> my daughter is missing and we're trying to get some news coverage. >> like so many of the volunteers that day, allison rockwell wasn't a relative. she was looking for nikki her coworker. >> i loved nikki. nikki was grade. so great to work with. very smart. lots of energy. positive. wonderful. just a wonderful person. >> on the morning of the search, allison recalls that she and another colleague from work, a man named derek were running late. that would turn out to be an important twist of fate. >> 40 minutes late, actually. everyone else had started searching. >> were you given a grid or area to look at? >> yes, we were given the front of the neighborhood, the very front of the neighborhood, on the right. >> it was one of the last unassigned sections of the organizers search grid. a patch of woods near a busy road. >> derek and i went into the roads together, and i remember

having to walk up and go over a large tree and there's this pile of leaves and it's in the middle of where efergs else -- everything else is clear and flat, and my heart is racing a million miles an hour. i go up to the pile of leaves, i was using my boots to move leaves at the bottom of the pile. as i was doing that, i said derek, derek came over and he heard the panic in my voice and he started helping me. that's when we saw blonde hair and i screamed this blood curdling scream. >> ask there was no question? >> she said oh, my god, it's her. we found her. there's her hair. >> how awful for you? >> yeah. >> a body and a vital clue. >> the telling factor was the bottoms of her feet were clean. >> what did that mean when date

line extra continues. [ clock ticking ]

time. you only have so much. that's why we wanna make sure you won't have to wait on hold. and you won't have to guess when we'll turn up. because after all... we should fit into your life. [ laughing ] not the other way around. [ clock ticking ]

where was nikki leili, the suburban mom had been missing for a week when volunteers formed a search team. volunteers combed the neighborhood, looking for any sign of her. then, a heart-breaking discovery in the woods not far from her home would turn the area into a crime scene. here's dennis murphy with the house on sidney's could he have. >> at first, it was the unnatural the way the leaves were clumped. >> you heard a scream into the woods. >> when i got into the woods, her coworker allison was there and she said oh, my god, it's her. we found her. there's her hair.

>> how awful for her. >> nick ki sisters amy and her friend allison felt sure the body beneath the leaves had to be nicky's. >> it was terrible. i think everybody was a little bit shocked. i went into crisis mode and i called 9/11 -- 911. >> within minutes, police, ambulances and news cameras were converging on the path of woods where the body was found. she heard the news when a cop told her she would have to stop leave letting the neighborhood. >> while he's talking to me, his radio goes on. it's the dispatch, body has been found. >> you hear it over the dispatch. >> yes, sir, yes, sir. >> do you actually go to that place in that little bit of woods? >> well, i couldn't, by the time i got there, they already had the crime scene tape up and i couldn't get any further. >> we're going to move back. we're going to move back on

down, guys. >> they had it isolated by that time, but i got to it as close as i could. >> soon, harriet had nicky's oldest daughter alex on the phone. >> you know it's here. i'm right here, the police won't let me come, honey. they won't let me through. i'm right here where the police are. they won't let me through. where are you? >> i just remember fainting or something, but as soon as i came to, i took off running and i ran all the way to where the crime scene tape was. of course, they wouldn't let me see her and i'm grateful that they didn't now. >> as nicky's family struggled to process the news, amy faced the microphones and once again became the family's voice. >> all i saw was her hair, but you know, we're just waiting for the police to do their job and we'll find out more soon.

>> inside the police tape, investigators carefully uncovered the body of a middle aged female. she was nude, lying facedown and tellingly appeared to have a fresh pink pedicure. given the composition, the heat, the rain, investigators figured the body had lane there for a while. >> it had been out there several days. >> gwinnett police detective. >> no clothing whatsoever. >> any lacerations to the body, gunshot, stab wound, anything you could see? >> nothing and at this point there's no -- there's no identifying documents around it, there's nothing around where the body is at that would indicate what happened. >> in the way of these things, dental records confirmed what everyone suspected. the body in the woods was indeed that of nicky leili. >> the telling factor was the bottoms of her feet were clean.

>> what does that tell you? >> that tells you she didn't walk out there and put herself in the woods. and she sure wasn't going to cover herself up. >> layer, lab analysis of her blood revealed something else of something odd. there was a high level of the date rape drug ghb in her system. >> now you are thinking someone gave her a date rape drug. >> that's a possibility. >> and the me finds semen. >> correct. >> had nicky been drugged, raped? while this was still a missing person's case. >> my wife has a long history of some kind of mental imbalances, okay, and i've been finding out the past two days everything she's been telling me in therapy

all these years has been a lie. >> coming up, the nicky no one knew. stories of unstable behavior. >> it's not the first time she's run away, okay? and even violence. >> my father is a witness for her throwing a knife at my face. >> when "dateline extra" continues.

welcome back to dateline extra. it didn't take long for police to confirm the body discovered in a neighborhood search was in fact nikki leili. lab tests would reveal something abnormal. she had high levels of a date rape drug in her system. had nikki been abducted or had she run off as her husband matt suggested and run into trouble. we return with the house on sidney's could he have. >> by the time searchers found nikki leili's body. detective already knew her life story. he had been working her case she had been missing a few days

early. >> i talked to her dad, mom, both her sisters, oldest daughter. >> the picture that emerged was a woman whose live revolved around her work, her daughters, and her husband matt. >> he would come sometimes and do lunch with nikki. >> did she talk about her girls? >> yes, she was very proud of all three of her girls. >> photos on the desk. >> absolutely. >> like most marriages, nikki's had its ups and downs, early july 2011 was one of the down times. matt freely admitted that when he talked to the detective the day after he reported her missing. >> it's not the first time she's run away. she's run away and she's been gone for two hours. she's been gone for three hours, four hours one time. she's gone to work with a bag of clothes and then come back after work, you know, but she's never been gone overnight. >> so he's telling you this is the latest of a continuing episode that my wife has. >> correct.

matthew, this is -- >> in this telephone call which the detective recorded, matt leili said his wife was mentally unbalanced. >> she's not very happy with her life. she doesn't feel accepted. we've been in and out of therapy. there's a fear of intimacy. she's got no problems with girls. a male, they are a threat. all my life, guys have used me for sex. >> he's giving you a host of information. >> she yells at me in front of the kids. throwing stuff at me in front of the kids. please stop. >> he even considered getting a court order to protect him from his wife. >> she ever been violent? >> yeah. i got pictures of myself with bruises on me. my father is a witness for her throwing a knife at my face. i'm 250 pounds, 6'5'.

she's 95 pounds soaking wet. >> he's telling you that she's bats. >> that's what he's saying. >> as for the night nikki disappeared. >> he stated the previous friday they had actually gone out to eat and gone to a movie after she got home from work. >> we had a great time. we came home. on the way home, i said to her, hey, you know, let's have sex. how about put on an outfit? i think that might have set her off. >> he wanted her to put on a costume. >> correct. she picked a fight. >> the fight continued at home and ramped up. matt's father who was visiting from new york was just down the hall when the argument on the way nikki had been treating her father-in-law. matt asked her father to come

in. >> mathias came out with a line that he had felt welcome that kind of stuff and nikki reacted to that basically saying he's lying. then matt did something off the wall. >> i mean, holy cow. she rips her shirt off with her [ bleep ] hanging out. no bra, nothing and maybe we should [ bleep ] and throws it on the floor and says isn't that what family does. >> she flashed her father-in-law. >> my wife has done some weird things. that's the weirdest she's ever been. >> the dust finally settled. >> i wake up about 6:00 to go to the bathroom. the light is on in the bedroom. i can see it upstairs. so i go upstairs to see what's going on. she's not there. >> all her stuff was still there. her car, her keys her phone.

>> her purse was still there. >> correct. he assumed she left. >> the home security was turned off. >> i have a security camera. she always shutting it off when she leaves because she's pissed off. >> that's the first you've learned this place is wired for sound and pictures. >> correct. >> when her body was found days later, learning the story told by those cameras became more urgent. coming up, a treasure trove of evidence? >> thousands of hours. >> what will it reveal? >> it's absolutely a torture to listen to. >> when "dateline extra" continues.

hi, everyone, i'm todd piro with breaking news on an explosion in new york city, 29

people are injured after a device cloeded near a trash bin in the city's chelsea neighborhood. none of the injuries appears to be life-threatening. the mayor says at this point there's no evidence linking the blast to terrorism. police later discovered what appeared to be a pressure cooker nearby. it has been taken to a remote location for investigation. we will keep you apprised of the latest. now, back to date line. nikki leili was dead and her husband was telling police that this seemingly happy mom had a dark side. he claimed she was violent and mentally unstable, especially on the night she disappeared. investigators didn't know it yet but they were about to get a better view of the home into the home than they could have ever

imagined. here's dennis murphy with the house on sydney's could he have. >> within minutes of finding nikki's body, police raced to the leili home about a mile away. what they observed right away was astounding. the home security system that matt leili had casually mentioned to detective everson a few days earlier, appeared more appropriate to fort knox than a house in the burbss. >> you can sees these cameras on the eaves of the home. >> 21 security cameras in all, with a tricked out control room to monitor and record everything. >> he sound like a one-man nsa. it bogled the mind as to why he felt he needed quite so much surveillance coverage for the house. >> odd to be sure, and observation to tuck away for later but the duty that came first, notification. the officers telling matt that

his missing wife had been found dead. >> the uniformed guys told me that he at one point -- he got sick. >> matt leili may have been sick. sick of talking to the cops because by now he had lawrd up and wasn't answering any of their questions. >> you now have probable cause to get a search warrant. >> correct, correct. >> you think man, this is going to help us, maybe these cameras saw and recorded something that tells the story of what's up with nikki. >> that was my hope. we're mainly going for anything in the house that has any sort of memory, be it computers, be it, you know, he had a dvr hooked up to his surveillance system. >> the detective knew it would take time to review and catalog all of that material. so since the police had found no sign of blood nor any signs of struggle in the house, the detective reviewed the evidence he did have, particularly matt's claim that his wife was bonkers. >> are any of her family members

corroborating this emotional instability issue that's raised by the husband? >> none whatsoever. >> this is not a woman off her meds? >> no. they are completely shock by this version of events that matthew leili is giving me. >> any suspicions of matt, the husband? >> yes, they were all suspicious of matt. >> nikki's lawyer al -- daughter alex had lived with them until 16. there was plenty they had to show. >> i wanted them to know that i suspected them from the beginning. that my mom would have never left her girls and i wanted to let him know that he would restrain her in the bathrooms. >> why would he do this with the cameras? >> extremely controlling. >> the semen on her body proved to be matt's, the police didn't feel they had enough evidence to have an arrest. >> there's no ankle bracelet on this man. you haven't taken his passport. >> no.

>> does anybody say if you are going to be moving around, tell us where you are going to be. >> there's not really a relationship with us. >> what about all that computer evidence, the video files from matt's hard drives? they appeared to be useless. after months of reviewing more than a half million video clips, the best they could come up with is this, it's a clip of nikki leili walking on to the front porch to have a smoke just after midnight on july 9th, 2011, the day she went missing. after that. nothing. >> what happened after midnight in that house? >> exactly. that was the million dollar question. >> the video files from midnight until 6:00 in the morning that day were corrupted, according to the tech guy who examined them. >> he could see footage, but what it was, it was very disjointed. most of it was not time stamped or date stamped. so it was not a manner that you could go in and click play and play through everything. >> bottom line, the police had

zero, nada, zilch. with no compelling reason to stick around lawrenceville, matt leili moved back up north to vermont to be close to his family. that was february 2012, seven months to the day after nikki's body was found. that move removed left with no contact. >> he was to set up a skype account to talk with the girls. nothing. packed up, moved. >> five months later, in the summer of 2012, the investigative file passed to cold case detective sergeant john rickter. >> i was in a homicide unit as a corporal when her body was found. >> does that stick with you? >> there are certain cases that stick with you and this is one. >> at first, he did what cold case detectives do.

he reinterviewed witnesses. he took another look at the computer hard drives. >> do you think somewhere in there is the nugget to get you to the next step in this investigation? >> i think at minimum we need to redo it to see if technology had advanced. i needed the forensic guy to look at the video and whatever else he could find out. >> turns out, that person was down the hall. >> he came down and said do you mind looking at hi. i looking for hanging fruit. i started digging through and finding all these audiophiles. >> no one had listened to the audio files before. that's just what ford did at first. >> i basically looked at that video in raw format. >> something was record thrd? >> yes, they just wouldn't play. >> eventually, ford determined the screwed up files were no accident. someone had deleted those files

and then run a clean up program to clear the database logs not once, but twice. >> the only times they were run the day herp reported missing and day she was found. >> he said these videos were deleted. oh, i got a bunch of audio files. >> what are we talking about in terms of like hours of material? >> thousands of hours of material that date back from 2008 up to 2011. >> the audio recordings are probably best described as cringeworthy scenes from a very bad marriage. >> that's not what i said and how i said it and don't take my words in context. when we got in that [ bleep ]. >> dammit, dammit, lower your voice. >> it's absolutely a torture to listen to. we have a woman who i know is

now deceased and i'm hearing how's she's living for the years preceding her death and how she's being beaten down psychologically and mentally. >> it took the detective nearly a year and a half to listen to all of the recordings and by then he had heard more than enough. when he learned that matt leili would be returning to georgia to testify in a civil suit concerning the payout from some life insurance policies nikki had, sergeant john ricters planted to be waiting. >> nikki's youngest daughters talked about their mother's battles. >> why they are furious with her mom's side of the family.

welcome back, for years matt leili had been recording almost everything that went on inside

his home with security cameras. it was thousands of hours of footage but suspiciously the video from the short period surrounding his wife's disappearance was gone. cold case investigators believe it had been deleted intentionally. they wanted to ask matt some questions. they were about to get their chance. back to dennis murphy with the house on sydney's could he have. >> in march 2015, matt leili returned to georgia officer the first time since he left the state three years later. it was money that brought him back. a court proceeding regarding a payout of her life insurance policies. >> i knew he was coming down. that mailed -- made me creeped up. what we didn't know the whole federal courthouse was crawling with plain clothes police. >> they were taking him down that day. >> they were. i had no idea. >> the plain clothes cops waited

all day for the right moment to make their move. >> get him on the outside of the courthouse. we put the handcuffs on him. it felt pretty good. >> nikki's family knew the feeling. >> i raised my hands and said praise god that was my reaction. >> in addition to facing a murder charge, matt leili was eventually charged with sexual assault and multiple counts of eavesdropping. a few weeks after his arrest, nikki leili's daughters, amanda and rebecca posted an edited video in youtube in support of their dad. in the video, the girls claimed that her mother hated her own family and those same spiteful relatives were the primary reason their dad was in scbral. for nikki's family, that video was devastating. what they wondered what had happened to those girls in the four years in vermont. >> as far as i can tell, he poisoned them against us, and i can only attribute that to them

living in a house with a master manipulator. >> the notion of matt leili as a master manipulator would become a central theme when his murder trial began in january 2016. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen. >> in her opening statement to the jury, prosecutor lisa jones depicted matt leili as a couch potato, sponging off his hard-working wife. >> nikki leili was the bread winner. that that family was in debt, up to $300,000 in debt. >> furthermore, joins said, matt leili tried to control his wife by turning their home into a virtual north korea, with cameras and recording devices everywhere. lenses aimed at them as they sat on the couch and watched tv. >> you will take a look into this marriage, ladies and gentlemen, in this case. you will hear the voices of nikki leili and the defendant in this case arguing. >> nikki's murder, she claimed, was simply matt leili's final act of control.

>> i think they got into an argument. that he wanted to have sex. that he drugged her. that he has his way. she's not able to resist as much as it progresses. that he silences her. that he strangles her, he sits on her, affix 80s -- as fix yates her so she can't breathe. >> the state's first witness was alex. >> they would be arguing and locked in the bathroom. she had been shoved downstairs. there were several nights that i would lay up at night and listen to her say please get off of him, get off of me. you are hurting me. >> next, amy told the jury about the constant monitoring at the leili house. >> we knew that he would record phone conversations that came into or out of the house. >> were you aware at any time whether there were gps trackers or tracking devices on any types

of phones or vehicles of the residence? >> yes. i knew that he had trackers on nikki's phone and when alex was old enough to have a cell phone that he tracked her phone as well. >> then the prosecution gave the court a fly on the wall look inside the leili home by playing those promised recordings of the couples fights. >> let the record show i am now locked in a room again. i don't want to be here. i don't want to have this conversation. i've -- >> the record show she's being an absolute [ bleep ]. wants her way no matter what. >> hard to listen to. bitter screaming matching frequently about sex. >> i know that when we go two days without sex, you are going to automatically assume i am on strike mode, no matter what else is happening. don't touch me. sit down if you want to sit down. >> i'm reaching out to you. >> i don't want to hold your hand right now. >> in retrospect for the prosecution, the recording

seemed to have the ring of frof 'fess si. >> the hands around my throat. >> don't get it into your hand. they were not throat. >> [ bleep ]. threatened to kill me. >> nikki's best chance for leaving her marriage came 12 days before she disappeared after yet another argument, nikki had called 911. >> gwinett 911. >> my husband won't let me me leave the house. >> officers offered to help her leave. she wouldn't budge from the front porch. >> she wanted him to go. he didn't want to go. he wanted her to go. she wasn't going to leave without the girls, so the argument, they were pretty much at an impasse. >> two weeks later, she was dead. in a house where practically everything was recorded, the

prosecutor claimed it was no accident that the video covering the hours she was missing was somehow corrupted. >> the surveillance system was in fact recording during that time period, is that correct? >> that's correct. >> the prosecutor countered matt's claim that nikki had turn off the security system. >> detective, did an individual have to go in and purposefully corrupt and delete those files? >> that's correct. yes. that's the only way i can explain out of all the dates and video that i can recover, that's the only date range i can't recover from. >> though no one knows exactly what was on that missing video, the prosecutor suggested that it was probably video of matt leili carrying his wife's body out of the house. >> did you hurt her? in closing the prosecutor let nickly leili have the last word. >> you need to listen to what she says and what she lived. >> welcome to my world.

you killed me a long time ago. >> welcome to my world. you killed me a long time ago. find him guilty. because that's exactly what he is. >> coming up, has the prosecution really proved anything? >> i think their gut feeling was she's buried close to the house, it's got to be him. >> what you call a circumstantial case? >> yes. >> then nikki and matt's daughters, in their parents' marriage, matt was the victim. >> she took a heel and threw it and i myself had to duck from it. >> was it being thrown at your dad? >> yes. >> when dateline extra continues.

welcome back. here's dennis murphy with the conclusion of the house on sydney's cove. >> by early february 2016, the

prosecution had rested its case against matt leili. the husband was portrayed as an eavesdropping control freak who killed his wife during an argument. leili's defense attorney tom clegg insisted he was an innocent man, falsely accused by the state of georgia. >> they have the theory and the theory is nothing more than a hunch. it is a guess. if you were to ask yourself questions that might have been posed of you, if you were to have gone to journalism school, who, what, where, why, and how, you will find that during the course of this trial the state of georgia will fall willfully short in proving the allegations they are making against this man. >> come on, thes snaked -- she's naked buried this close to the house, hidden, it's obviously

him. >> a circumstantial case. >> the defense attorney concedes he had difficult circumstances to overcome in this case. he insists his client did not erase those files as the prosecution claims. >> the video surveillance system was shut off at some point in the morning. matt believes that nikki shut it off. he's insistent that he did not shut off. it was shut off my nikki. >> whatever happened, the cameras did not see it. >> as for those audio recordings in the couple's screaming arguments, it was pointed out that most were recorded in 2008 and 2009. two years before she died. matt made the recordings with the encouragement of a marriage therapist that the couple had been seeing at the time. >> he is talking and he is con sill i can't tell tory in my money, he is trying to calm things down and it is impossible

to calm nikki down. >> please don't do this. >> you do not want to do this with me right now. i mean it. you do not want to tangle with me right now at all. >> what did i do? >> according to clegg, the prosecution cherry picked the scenes from the marriage, highlighting the bad and down playing the good. they renewed their marriage vows on that trip. >> the tapes reflect both of them at their worst. now the flip side is when they are getting along well, when they are affectionate toward one another, when they renew their wedding vows in hawaii. they don't tape that stuff. >> it's always the darkest side of the moon. >> darkest side, yes. >> as for the night that kick any -- nikki disappeared, the defense tried to show once again she was unstable and behaving erratically. the defense called mat's father

mathias to talk about the last fight. >> she tore off her family and come on let's go, let's f like a family. >> were you expecting any sort of comment like that? >> never, never. >> once she disappeared, matt leili inquired about having his wife involuntarily committed and hire a divorce attorney. >> he wanted to divorce her. he wanted to let her know look, here are your options. you can go get help for yourself or i'm going to go forward with a divorce. >> the defense wrapped up its case by calling their two daughters, rebecca, 14, amanda 17. >> did you ever see your dad hit your mom? >> no. >> did you ever see any obvious

injuries or bruises to your mom? >> no, sir. >> according to the girls, their mother was the one with the violent temper. not their dad. >> she took a heel and threw it and i myself had to duck from it. >> was it being thrown at your dad? >> yes. >> on the day nikki made that 911 call, amanda said her mother complained about hearing voices in her head. >> she was pacing back and forth and said she was tired of people talking bad about her behind her back and my dad asked her who was talking about her and she said that she was hearing voices and the like the voices in her head were telling her that people were talking bad about her. >> throughout, neither girl made eye contact with their mother's relatives who hadn't seen them in four years. whatever affection that once existed seemed to be gone now. >> we made our own decision. we don't like that side of the family. we wanted to stay away.

it's not him forcing us to stay away from them. >> in closing, it was argued that while the state might have proved matt leili unlikable, it had not answered those basic journalism questions, who, what, where, why, and how. >> in closing, the state cannot answer any of these particular questions. what does that tell you? that tells you they have fallen woefully short of proving matt's guilt. >> after eight days of testimony, both sides of the family prepared for a long and anxious wait for a verdict. turns out, they didn't have to pace long. after three hours of deliberation, the jury announced it had reached a verdict. >> i'm going to ask you at this time if you would stand and read the verdictout loud. >> as to count one, the we the jury find the defendant guilty of malice murder. >> though not a sound came from nikki's families, their expressions said it all. >> thank you, sir. >> before passing sentence, the

judge gave matt leili one last chance to have his say. >> mr. leili, is there anything you want to say? >> i didn't do it, and i'll be filing an appeal. >> with that, the judge asked matt leili to rise and receive his sentence. >> i am going to follow the state's recommendation as to count one and have you sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. >> it was a bitter sweeteneding for nikki's family. they will likely never see matt leili again but as nikkinikki's youngest girls left to go back north, it seemed just as likely they would never see them again either. >> they were my girls. i still love them to it this day. taught them how to read. got them ready for school. >> would you like to have a relationship with them? >> i would like to have a relationship again. i don't know if that day will ever come. my door is always open but i don't know if that day i will will ever come. >> one murder, so many victims. that's all for this edition

of "dateline extra". i'm tam ron, hall. thanks for watching. i learned that he was arrested. i was shocked. i was just so confused. i didn't think it was real. i didn't think it was possible. >> in the rarefied world of the ivy league, he was the package. star student, gifted athlete, wildly popular. >> he is one of the nicest guys ever. >> no one could understand how a weekend visit to his parents' house december. >> did you say