my heart is racing a million miles an hour, using boots to move leave, and that's when i screamed a blood curdling scream. >> a corporate executive who made time for romance and her three daughters. >> she was the best mom. >> then she disappears. dozens joined the search. >> we need nikki 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 step dad, matt, did it. the other said, no way. and matt, he had a theory all his own. >> this is not the first time she's run away, okay? >> had she taken off and found trouble? now you're thinking somebody gave her date rape drug? >> that's a possibility. >> the trail leads to this house of cameras. >> big server tower indicates a large amount of data store. >> what they discover, thousands of hours of tape. >> let me out of the frame. >> absolutely a torture to listen to. >> that would reveal one shattering truth. >> i got down on my knees and just started crying. >> i'm lester holt, and this is "dateline," this is dennis murphy with the house in sydney's cove. >> there's never a good day to

search for a missing woman, but this rainy day in the heat of july made an unhappy task all but unbearable. >> take some flowers with you. >> they decided, the friends and family, they'd all wear red shirts. they got themselves organized in the parking lot of a walmart in georgia, about an hour outside of atlanta. they set out to find any trace of a petite corporate executive. >> got three kids that would love to see her home. >> amy robinson told reporterers her sister, mother of three, was never one to up and disappear without a word to anyone. >> we are worried. we have no idea where she is or what's happened to her. >> as fate would have it, the question of where she 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 left behind is that she lived a troubled and tormented life. >> this is what i live day in and day out, keeping my mouth shut, my head down, and do exactly what is expected of me. >> tell me about her personality. >> she was very funny. you know, she and i used to laugh all the time, and she was very -- she was very fiesty. she would say what she meant. you know, she did not mince words. >> as sisters, amy robinson and nikki were ten years apart, but according to amy, they were always close. you two look alike in the old photos. >> we did. you are ten years apart. >> that didn't stop it from happening. i wore a lot of her hand moe downs. >> by the mid '90s, married and divorced twice, and she and her daughter, alex, shared an apartment.

>> we had a good time of that, laughing, putting up pictures. >> sounds like a sitcom. >> oh, yeah, at times it was. >> eventually, she moved out, remarried, and had two more daughters with her third husband, matt, a new yorker she'd met online. >> he made my sister laugh. and so, you know, we'd all laugh. >> after brief stays in oklahoma and mississippi, they returned to georgia and settled into this house on sidney's cove in lawrenceville. a well-regarded corporate money person was the primary breadwinner. matt, a computer guy, ran a small business out of the house. >> he started going to, like, government surplus auctions and buying pal lets of old used computer parts, and then, you know, rebuilding them and selling them on ebay. >> when was it was amy's turn to marry in 2003, her big sis was there, serving as matron of honor. >> i just want to toast amy, my

best friend, my sister, and to the love much her life that makes her head spin. >> then later that night, boogying to what else? "we are family." ♪ as the years past, the sisters remained close. in late june 2011, amy organized a spa day out for nikki and her three girls. >> no boys allowed, just a girls day. >> where? >> to get nails done. >> day of beauty at the spa. >> then had lunch. >> nikki had toenails painted pink that day, and though she sometimes had a difficult relationship with her teenage daughter, alex said that day at the spa felt like a turning point, a fresh beginning. >> snapshots, everyone looks happy. >> yeah. >> good girl's day out. >> yeah, it was fun. i'm beyond grateful now that we've done it. >> two weeks later, nikki

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 could 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, you know, a grown woman leaving her house was not that interesting a story. >> well, a hundred people getting together all wearing red shirts, there's an interesting story, so they covered that. >> then cameras were out. >> then the cameras came. >> and this is what the cameras saw. searchers armed with maps, literally beating the bushes around her subdivision for clues as to what might have happened to her. >> we'll figure it out, but if you see her, or anything, let them know you've seen her. >> every searcher with an assignment. >> oh, look, blue skies going to smile on us. >> harriet, the mother, had the job of going door to door leafletting the neighborhood with fliers picturing her

daughter. >> i don't think anybody's home, but we'll find out. >> even though southern hospitality was in short supply that day -- >> can i help you before i call the cops? >> harriet pressed on. >> good morning, sir. i'm harriet garret -- >> what do you have a camera for? >> my daughter's missing, and we're trying to get news coverage. >> like so many of the volunteers that day, alison r k rockwell was not a relative, but looking for her co-worker. >> i loved her. she was great. she was just such -- so great to work with, very smart. lots of energy. positive. wonderful. just a wonderful person. >> on the morning of the search, alison recalls 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 started searching. >> were you given a grid to look

at? >> yes, 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 woods together, and i remember walking up and going over a large tree, and there's this pile of leaves, and it's in the middle of where 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, and as i was doing that, i said, derek, he came over, and he heard the panic in my voice, and he started helping me. and that's when we saw blond hair. and i screamed this blood curdling scream. >> there was no question.

>> no. >> when we come back -- >> 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. >> that telling factor was the bottom of the feet were clean. >> what did that mean? they work fast and don't taste chalky. mmmmm...amazing. i have heartburn. alka seltzer heartburn relief chews. enjoy the relief. so with our ally cashback credit card, you get rewarded for buying stuff. like what? like a second bee helmet with protective netting. or like a balm? you know? or a cooling ointment for the skin. how about a motorcycle? or some bee repellant. i'm just spit-balling here. nothing stops us from doing right by our customers. ally. do it right. told you not to swat 'em.

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welcome back. then it was the hair that attracted attention. >> and i hear a scream in the words. >> you hear a scream? >> yeah, and i tore off running into the woods, and when i got into the woods, her coworker, alison, was there, and she said, oh, my god, it's her, we found her. there's her hair. >> how awful for you. >> yeah. >> nique leili's sister and friend, alison, felt sure the body beneath the leaves was hers. >> we were shocked, in crisis mode, and i called 911. >> within minutes, police ambulances, and news cameras were converging on the patch of woods where the body was found. her mother, harriet, heard the news when a cop told her she had to stop leafletting the neighborhood. >> someone in the neighborhood had complained and while he's talking to me, his radio goes

off, and it's a dispatch. body has been found. >> you hear it over the dispatch? >> yes, sir. yes, sir. >> do you go to the place in that little bit of woods? >> yes -- well, by the time i got there, they already had the crime scene tape up. i couldn't get any further. >> okay, we're going to move back on down, guys. >> they had a isolated by that time. i would -- i got to it as close as i could. soon, she had her oldest daughter, alex, on the phone. >> do you know it's her? >> well, i'm here, the police won't let me come, honey. they won't let me through. i'm right here with the police. they won't let me through. where are you? >> just remember fainting or something, but as soon as i came to, i took off running. i ran all the way to where the crime scene tape was.

>> come on, folks. >> you can't, baby. >> they didn't let me see her, grateful they did not now. >> as nique's family struggled to process the news, amy faced the microphones, and, again, became the family's voice. >> all we saw is her hair, but, you know, so 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 face down and tellingly appeared to have a fresh pink pedicure. given the decomposition, the heat, rain, investigators figured the body had laid there for a while. >> had been a there several days. >> the police detective, brad everyson. >> no clothing whatsoever. >> obvious injuries to the body? lacerations? blunt force trauma? gunshot? stab wound? anything you could see?

>> nothing. of course, at this point, there's no -- there's nothing around it, nothing around where the body's at, to indicate what happened. >> in the way of these things, dental records confirmed what everyone suspected. the body in the words was, indeed that of nique leili. >> the telling factor was the bottom of the feet were clean. >> telling us? >> that she did not walk there putting herself in the woods. she sure wouldn't have covered herself up. >> later, lab analysis of niq ur ue's blood revealed a high level of the date rape drug in her as much. >> now you're thinking sometime before the woman's death, immediately before, she was given a date rape drug? >> a possibility. >> and you also found see men? >> correct. >> had nique been abducted, raped, and dumped less than a mile from her home? the detective couldn't say, but

in the days before her body was found, while it was a missing person's case, nique's husband, matt, told everson something intriguing on the phone. this was not the first time nique walk out on him. >> 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 nique no one knew, stories of unstable behavior. and even violence. >> my father is a witness for her throwing a knife at my face. >> when "dateline" continues. it's feeling up thinking up living up. it's being in motion... in body in spirit in the now. boost. it's not just nutrition. it's intelligent nutrition. with 26 vitamins and minerals and 10 grams of protein. all in 3 delicious flavors. it's choosing to go in one direction...

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by the time researchers found the body, brad everson already knew bittings and pieces of the life story. working her case since she was reported missing a few days earlier. >> i had already talked to her dad, talked to her mom, talked to both her sisters, you know, talked to her oldest daughter. >> the picture that emerged was of a woman whose life had revolved around her work, her daughters and her husband, matt. >> he would come sometimes and do lunch with nique. >> did she ever talk about her girls? >> yes. yeah. she was very proud of all three

girls. yes. >> photos on the desk kind of thing. >> oh, absolutely. >> like most marriages, nique's had its ups and downs. early july 2011 when nique disappeared was one of the down times. matt freely admitted that when he talked to the detective the day after he reported her missing. >> this is not the first time she has run away, okay. she has run away and she's been gone for two hours. she has been gone for three hours, four hours one time. she has gone to work with a bag of clothes and then come back after work. you know. but she has never been gone overnight. >> so he's telling you this is just the latest of a continuing episode that my wife has. >> correct. >> matthew -- >> in this telephone call which the detective recorded, matt leili said his wife was mentally unbalanced. >> she is not very happy with her life. she has never felt accepted, okay. we've been in and out of therapists. there's a fear of intimacy. you know, she's got no problem with girls. but when it comes to a male, they are a threat.

they are -- all my life, guys have used me for sex. >> he is getting a host of information. i have a hard time getting a word in edgewise. >> she yells at me in front of the kids. she throws things at me in front of the kids. all i'm doing is sitting there going, please stop. please stop. do you remember what the doctor said. is this the person you want to be? >> matt leili said he considered getting a court order to protect him from his wife. >> has she ever been violent? >> yeah. i have pictures of myself with bruises on me. my father is a witness of her throwing a knife at my face. i am 250 pounds, 6'5". she's 98 pounds soaking wet. i'm being beaten up by my wife. who is going to believe me. >> he's telling you that she's bats. >> that's what he's saying. >> as for the night nique disappeared -- >> he stated the previous friday that they had actually gone out to eat and gone to a movie after she got home from work. >> we had a great time. we -- we came home. on the way home i said to her, you know, hey, you know know -- i want to have sex.

i said to her, hey, how about you put on an outfit. i think it might have set her off. >> he wanted her to put on a little sexy costume of some kind, huh? >> correct. >> the fear of intimacy that i thought she was working on getting over, it was gone. but apparently that set her off, because she picked a fight. >> as matt tells it, 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 touched on the way nique had supposedly been treating her father-in-law, matt asked his dad to weigh in. >> he called his father matthias into the bedroom and basically asked matthias to tell nique how he felt about being down there, and that matthias came out with a line that he hadn't felt welcome, that kind of stuff, and that nique reacted to that by basically saying he was lying. >> then matt said his wife did something off the wall. >> i mean, holy cow. she rips her shirt off with her

[ bleep ] hanging out, no bra, nothing, says maybe we should just [ bleep ]. throws her shirt on the floor and then says, isn't that what family does. >> you're kidding. she flashed her father-in-law? >> correct. >> my wife has done some weird [ bleep ]. that's the weirdest she's ever been. >> matt says the dust finally settled in the wee hours of saturday, july 9th. nique in the bedroom, he on his couch in the downstairs office. >> i wake up at 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 was still there. her keys, her phone. >> her purse was still there. >> correct. he assumed she had left on foot or somebody came and picked her up. >> matt told the cop it was then that he realized his home security system had been turned off. >> i have a camera system in the house because i sell cameras. to the dvr. she always shuts it off when she leaves. when she is pissed off. she knows it pisses me off.

>> that's the first you learned that this place is wired for sound and pictures? >> correct. >> when nique layly's body was found days later near her home, learning the story told by those cameras became most urgent. coming up, a treasure trove of evidence. >> quantify it. what are we talking about? >> thousands of hours of material. >> just what will it reveal? >> it's absolutely a torture to listen to. out! geico also gives you 24/7 access to licensed agents! booooyah. good game, you really crushed it. no son, geico crushed it. ♪ ♪ daddy! lets play! sorry kids. feeling dead on your feet? i've been on my feet all day.

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this is the hour's top stories, a breaking story from south korea this hour claiming that north korea fired four ballistic missiles 600 miles off the east coast into the ocean there. we'll keep our eye on that right here. fbi director is calling for the justice department to publicly reject president trump's latest claim that the bugging of trump tower telephone happened during the election. the president said that president obama ordered this wiretapping. now back to "dateline." >> within minutes of finding nique's body, police raced to the layly 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 'burbs. >> and when you first see the house from the road, you can see all these huge, big cameras on the eaves of the house, both sides. >> there were 21 security cameras in all, with a tricked-out control room to monitor and record everything. >> he sounds like one-man nsa. >> it was a low-crime area. it almost boggled the mind as to why he felt he needed quite so much surveillance coverage for the house. >> odd to be sure. an observation to tuck away for later. but the duty that day came first. notification. the officers telling matt leili that his missing wife had just been found, dead. >> the uniformed guys told me that he at one point seemed like he got sick. >> matt leili may well have been sick, sick of talking to the cops, because by now he had lawyered up and wasn't answering any of their questions.

so you now have probable cause to get a search warrant? >> correct, correct. >> do you think, man, maybe this is going to help us? maybe these cameras saw and recorded something that tells us the story of what's up with nique? >> that was my hope. we're mainly going for anything in the house that has any sort of memory. be it computers. be it -- he had a dvr hooked up to the 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're completely shocked by this -- this version of events that matthew layly is giving me. >> are any of them suspicious of matt, the husband? >> yes, they were all suspicious of matt.

>> nique's daughter alex had lived with her mother and matt until she was 16, and there was plenty she had to say to the detective. >> i wanted him to know what was going on in the house. i wanted him to know that i suspected him from the beginning. that my mom would have never left her girls. and i wanted him to know he would restrain her, lock her in bathrooms. >> why did he do this? the whole thing with the cameras. >> he is just extremely controlling. >> still, despite the family's suspicion and the fact that the semen found on nique's body proved to be matt's, the police didn't feel they had enough evidence to make an arrest. there is no ankle bracelet on this man. you haven't taken his passport. >> no. >> does anybody say, if you're moving around, tell us where you're going to be. is it that kind of relationship with the authorities? >> no. there is not really a relationship with us. >> what about all the 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 investigators could come up with was this. it's a clip of nique leili walking onto the front porch to have a smoke just after midnight on july 9, 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. >> we could see footage, but what it was, it was very disjointed. most of it was not time stamped or it was not date stamped. so it was not in a manner that you could just go in and click play and just play through everything. >> the bottom line, the police had zero, nada, zilch. and so with no compelling reason to stick around lawrenceville, matt layly moved back up north to vermont, to be closer to his family. that was in february of 2012, almost seven months to the day after nique's body was found. nique's stepmother, betty chatham, says the move effectively ended all contact between nique's family and her

two youngest daughters amanda, 12, and rebecca 9. >> he was to provide us with a telephone number. he was to set up a skype account so that we could 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 richter. >> i was actually in the homicide unit as a corporal when her body was found. >> does that stay with you? >> yeah, i would say that certain cases that stick with you. and this is one. >> at first richter did what all cold case detectives do. he re-interviewed witnesses. when that went nowhere, richter took another look at matt leili's computer hard drives. do you think somewhere in there is the nugget that will get you to the next step in the investigation? >> i think at the minimum we needed to redo it to see if technology had advanced. so i needed new forensic guys to look at the video, or whatever else he could find on the computer.

>> turns out the techie richter needed was just down the hall. corporal chris ford had been an i.t. guy before joining the police force. >> richter came down and said, hey, do you mind taking a look at this? i start looking for what we call low-hanging fruit. what's easily available. that's when i started digging through and finding the audio files. >> nobody had listened to the audio files before because investigators were so focused on finding video from the night nique disappeared. that's just what ford did at first too. >> i basically looked at the video in raw format, which is basically computer language. >> something was recorded there. >> yes. it just wouldn't play. >> eventually ford determined the screwed up files were no accident. someone had defeated those files and then run a cleanup program to clear the data base logs. not once, but twice. >> the only two times the cleanup drives were run were the days that he reported her missing and the day her body was found. >> i'll never forget the day he comes to my cube and says, these videos were deleted.

this wasn't corrupted. he turns to leave and he looks back and goes oh, i got a bunch of audio files on there, too if you're interested. >> quantify it. what are we talking about? >> thousands of hours of material dating back from 2008 up to 2011. >> the audio recordings are probably best described as cringe-worthy scenes from a very bad marriage. >> that's not what i said and how i said it. don't take my words out of context. when we got in that [ bleep ] car -- [ bleep ] [ bleep ]. >> damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it. [ bleep ] lower your voice! >> it's absolutely torture to listen to because we have a woman i know is now deceased and i'm hearing how she's living for the years preceding her death. and how she's just 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 nique had, sergeant john richter planned to be waiting. >> coming up, could investigators have it all wrong? nique's youngest daughters paint a picture of their mother's inner battles. >> she was hearing voices in her head, and they were telling her people were talking bad about her. >> and why they're furious with their mom's side of the family. when "dateline extra" continues. and relieve foot, knee or lower back pain from being on your feet. dr. scholl's. whfight back fastts, with tums smoothies. it starts dissolving the instant it touches your tongue. and neutralizes stomach acid at the source. ♪ tum -tum -tum -tum smoothies! only from tums

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you'll see what a fair price is, and you can connect with a truecar certified dealer. now you're even smarter. this is truecar. >> in march 2015 matt leili returned to georgia for the first time since he'd left the

state three years earlier. it was money that brought him back. a court proceeding concerning a payout from his wife nique's life insurance policies. >> i knew he was coming down. that made me uneasy. it made me feel really creeped out. >> this was three years later. >> mm-hmm. what we didn't know was that the whole federal courthouse was actually crawling with plain-clothed gwinnett county police. >> they were taking him down that day. >> they were. we had no idea. >> sergeant john richter says the plain-clothed cops waited all day for just the right moment to make their move. >> get him on the outside of the courthouse. >> who makes the collar? how does it go down? >> myself and detective washington were there. put the handcuffs on him. felt pretty good. >> nique'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, nique's daughters, amanda and rebecca, posted an edited video on youtube in support of their dad. in the video the girls claimed that their mother hated her own family and those same spiteful relatives were the primary reason their dad was in jail. for nique's family, that video was devastating. what, they wondered, had happened to those girls in the four years they had been in vermont. >> as far as i can tell, he poisoned them against us. i can only attribute that to, you know, 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. >> 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. >> nique leili was the breadwinner. the family was in debt, up to $300,000 in debt.

>> furthermore, jones 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 nique leili and the defendant in this case arguing. >> nique'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 drugs her, that he has his way. she is loud, she is not able to resist as much as it progresses, that he silences her. that he strangles her, he sits on her, he asphyxiates her to where she can't breathe. >> not meaning to, maybe. >> i think he meant to. i think he had it. i think he knew she was leaving him. she made it clear she was done. >> raise your right hand, place. >> the state's first witness was nique's oldest daughter alex. >> they would be arguing.

he would end up locking her in a bathroom. she had been shoved down stairs. there were several nights that i would lay up at night and listen to her say, please get off of me. get off of me. you're hurting me. >> next, nique's sister 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 ever gps trackers or tracking devices on any types of the phones or vehicles at the residence? >> yes. i knew that he had trackers on nique's phone and when alex was old enough to have a cellphone 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 couple's 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 asked -- >> let the record show that she is being an absolute [ bleep ]. wants her way no matter what. >> it was hard to listen to. bitter screaming matches, frequently about sex. >> i know that when we go two days without sex, you're 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 am reaching out to you. >> i don't want to hold your hand right now. >> in retrospect for the prosecution, the recordings seemed to have the ring of prophecy. >> your hands around my throat. >> my hands were not on your throat. >> i don't care what the [ bleep ] you think. but it was my throat they were around. >> they were not around your throat. stop telling that story like that. >> bull [ bleep ]. you threatened to kill me. >> the prosecutors said nique leili's best chance for leaving her marriage came 12 days before she disappeared. after yet another argument nique had called 911. >> 911. >> yes, my husband won't let me

leave the house. >> my wife is yelling and screaming and just woke up the children. >> officers dispatched to the leili home that day offered to help nique leave. but, as this still photo shows, she wouldn't budge from the front porch. >> she wanted him to go. he wouldn't 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 nique leili was dead. in a house where practically everything was recorded, the prosecutor claimed it was no accident that the video covering the crucial hours when nique leili went missing was somehow corrupted. >> the surveillance system was in fact recording during that time period. is that correct? >> that is correct, yes. >> the prosecutor countered matt's claim that nique had somehow turned off the security system by calling the police department's i.t. guy, chris ford, as her last witness. >> so detective, in your professional opinion, then, 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 why, 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 the missing video, the prosecutor suggested that it was probably video of matt leili carrying his wife's body out of the house. >> you heard her -- >> in closing, the prosecutor let nique 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 is buried this close to the house. it's got to have been him. >> what you call a circumstantial case. >> yes. >> and then, nique and matt's

daughters say that in their parents' marriage, matt was the victim. >> she took a heel and threw it. i myself had to duck from it. >> was it being thrown at your dad? >> yes. >> when "dateline extra" continues. lding you back or is it your allergy pills? break through your allergies. introducing flonase sensimist. more complete allergy relief in a gentle mist you may not even notice. using unique mistpro technology, new flonase sensimist delivers a gentle mist to help block six key inflammatory substances that cause your symptoms. most allergy pills only block one. and six is greater than one. break through your allergies. new flonase sensimist. ♪

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their competitors' rates alongside their direct rate to save you money. but what's really going on? when played backwards at 1/8th speed you can clearly hear... what could that mean? woman: tom? tom! they're just commercials. or are they? you're waking the neighbors. well, mom, maybe the neighbors need to be woke. i think it's actually "awoken." no, that doesn't even seem right. no, it's "awoken." revealing the truth to help you save.

>> by early february 2016, the prosecution had rested its case against matt leili.

the husband was portrayed as an eavesdropping control freak who had killed his wife during an argument. leili's defense attorney, tom clegg, insisted that matt leili was, in fact, an innocent man, falsely accused by the state of georgia. >> they have a theory, and that theory is nothing more than a hunch. it is a guess. so 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 woefully short in proving the allegations that they are making against this man. i think their gut feeling was, come on, she's naked, she's buried this close to the house, she's obviously hidden. it's got to have been him. >> what you call a circumstantial case. >> yes. >> the defense attorney concedes

he had some difficult circumstances to overcome in this case, beginning with the six hours of missing surveillance camera video from the night nique leili disappeared. clegg insists his client did not erase those files as the prosecution claimed. >> the video surveillance system was shut off at some point in the morning. matt believes that nique shut it off. he is insistent that he did not shut it off, that the system was shut off by nique. >> so whatever happened to her, the cameras didn't see it. >> the cameras did not see it. that is absolutely correct. >> as for those audio recordings of the couple's screaming arguments, clegg pointed out that most were recorded in 2008 and 2009, two years before nique died. according to the defense attorney, 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 conciliatory in my opinion. he is trying to calm things down, and it is impossible to calm nique down. >> please, don't do this.

please, nique. >> 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 scenes from the leili marriage, highlighting the bad and downplaying the good. bright spots like the 2010 trip matt and nique took to hawaii. they even renewed their marriage vows on that trip. >> the tapes reflect both of them at their worst. now, the flip side is, when they're getting along well, when they are affectionate towards 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? >> the darkest side, absolutely, yes. >> as for the night nique disappeared, the defense tried to show that nique leili was once again acting unstable, behaving erratically. the defense attorney called matt's father, matthias, to verify his son's version of the last fight between matt and

nique. the one where she allegedly flashed him. >> she tore off her top and says, come on, let's go, let's act like a family. >> were you expecting any sort of comment like that? >> never. i -- never. >> once nique disappeared, clegg says, matt leili inquired about having his wife involuntarily committed and even hired a divorce attorney. a man who knows his wife is already dead, he says, wouldn't have done either of those things. >> he did not really want 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 matt and nique's two daughters, rebecca, now 14, and 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. i myself had to duck from it. >> was it being thrown at your dad? >> yes. >> on the day nique made that 911 call, amanda said her mother complained about hearing voices in her head. >> she was pacing back and forth saying that 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, um, she was hearing voices and like the voices in her head were telling her 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 might once have existed seemed to be gone now. >> we made our own decision. we don't like that side of the family.

so we want to stay away. it's not him forcing us to stay away from them. >> in closing, tom clegg argued that, while the state may have proved matt leili unlikable, it had not answered any of the basic journalism questions. who, what, where, when, why or how. >> in closing i said, you have heard all of this evidence. the state still 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 just 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 verdict out loud. >> as to count one, we the jury find the defendant guilty of murder. >> though not a sound came from nique leili's family, their expression said it all. >> thank you, sir.

>> before passing sentence, the judge gave matt leili once 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'm 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 bittersweet ending for nique's family. they'll likely near see matt layly again. but as nique layly's youngest girls left the courthouse to go back north with their grandfather, it seemed just as likely that they would never see them again, either. >> they were my girls. i still love them to this day. taught them how to read. got them ready for school in the mornings. >> you'd like to have a relationship with them. >> i would love to have a relationship with them again. i don't know that that day will ever come. but i want them to know my door is always open. but i don't know if that day will ever come. >> one murder, so many victims.

i'm lester holt and from all of us at nbc news, good night. due to ma sure subject matter, viewer discretion is advi advised. locked down, in a cell, one comes out, don't look very good. >> weeks away from completing his sentence, an inmate is accused of murder. >> front page news, i am. holy cow. looks like i'm a real topic, huh? >> one month later, an unrelated killing occurs in the jail. >> if you'd ask