- Pay attention to the woman coming out of her car in this footage. It was recorded in Lawrenceville, Georgia on July 8th, 2011. This is 44-year-old mother of three, Nique Leili. It might look like any normal evening being captured by her husband's security system but this footage hides a disturbing secret. Mere hours after it was recorded, Nique disappeared, and somehow none of the 21 security cameras hidden in and around the house managed to film what might have happened to her on this fateful night. All the police were able to recover was this haunting, half-corrupted audio recording. - 15 years earlier, in January 1996, five-year-old Alex was living with her then-single mother, Nique, in Athens, Georgia. Over the course of her short life, she has already witnessed her parents' divorce and her mother trying her luck with online dating. - I don't know that my parents were ever meant to be together. My dad dropped out of high school at ninth grade and made his way working through the world and she was getting her Master's degree, and so their lives were on different paths. Everything had been dark and hard with the divorce and being a single mom, so that just kinda was a light place for her to fall. - In the chat rooms, Nique meets Matthew Leili, a charismatic and tech-savvy New Yorker. After dating online for a while, he moved in with her in Georgia. Two years later, Nique's second daughter, Amanda, was on the way and on February 14th, 1998, the couple tied the knot. - It was kind of like one of those love stories that we would tell our friends. Like, "Oh, they got engaged and married on Valentine's Day." My parents always seemed really happy. It definitely seemed like we were doing really well. - But away from her young sister's eyes, Alex is going through a tough time living with their father. The man treats her differently from his own daughter, constantly mocking and verbally abusing her. But Alex wasn't the kind to let anyone walk over her. - Like my mother, I have a temper and it becomes this blurting anger. "Screw you. You're a blop, blop, bleep, bleep, bleep." I can honestly say there's never a point in my life where I truly cared or liked him. - As if this wasn't enough, their relationship went from bad to worse when Matthew decided to wire the entire house after Amanda's bike was stolen from under their porch, 21 cameras in total, some inside the house, some even recording audio. - I was very uncomfortable all of the time. You know, he had a camera in the living room that faced the couch, so if you wanted to sit down and watch TV, you were being monitored. It wasn't just surveillance, it was recording the entire time. - It didn't seem odd for me to have cameras around the house. It was always kind of cool because my dad would be checking the camera footage from the night before and be like, "Oh, Amanda, get in here! There were deer in the front yard last night." - Following the wiring of the house, Matthew became obsessed with home security and made plans to turn his newfound passion into a business. In an effort to support him and pay off some of the debts the family piled up over the years, Nique started working more, often over 65 hours a week. This seemingly trivial fact ended up having dire consequences. Somehow, Matthew convinced himself that Nique was having an affair. - I just remember there was a point where they started arguing almost every night and I'd be waking up a lot more. My mom would be yelling, she'd throw stuff, she'd scream and swear. - This situation was difficult for the three sisters, especially for Alex, who had endured Matthew's obnoxious behavior for years now. At 16 years old, she decided she had enough and packed her bags to go live with her biological father. - Alex told us, "I'm not gonna live here anymore. I'm moving out." I remember kind of just, all three of us just crying. - All I could think about was, "I'm leaving my mom, I'm leaving my mom." - After Alex left the Leilis' home, Nique's sister, Amy Robinson, tried her best to keep the family together. In 2011, she organized a spa day for Nique, Alex, Amanda, and their youngest sister, Rebecca, so that they could rekindle their relationships. Sadly, this would be the last time the three girls and their mother would be reunited. - Snapshots, everybody looks pretty happy. Good girls' day out. - Yeah, it was fun, and I'm beyond grateful now that we've done it, so... - Later that day, Alex explained to her little sisters that leaving was the only solution for her. Amanda assured her she wasn't resentful. In the three years since Alex left, she understood that the situation with her father was unbearable and that something had to be done. - She looked at me and said, "This is the best thing for you." - But with Alex out of the picture, the situation worsened for Nique, as Matthew, convinced she was hiding something, began spying on her. - And with this, Nique finally reached her limit. - She called me up and she just said, "That's it, I'm tired of all the mistrust. I'm done. I hate my husband. My marriage is over." - Two weeks later, Amanda heard her parents screaming at each other in the middle of the night. - Then, eventually she'd kind of just storm out. Then I woke up the next morning and Mom wasn't there. - Matthew reassured Amanda and Rebecca, saying that their mother probably only left for a little while. However, two days passed with no signs of her. As the girls' concern deepened, they pressed Matthew to call their Aunt Amy, believing Nique most likely had gone there after their last fight. - So I answered and it was Matt, and he said, "Have you talked to Nique?" I said, "No. Why, what's going on?" And he said, "Nique's missing." I said, "What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean, she's missing?" I said, "How long has she been gone?" And he said, "I haven't seen her since Friday night." And I said, "What?! You need to call the police." - Matthew declared Nique missing on July 11th and explained his theory concerning her whereabouts to Amy, Nique's sister, and the officers. - Maybe she has run off with somebody, who knows? She made all the money, maybe she was socking away money in a secret account that he didn't know anything about and she took off. - For the following days, Matthew stuck to his story and added new details, painting Nique in a bad light. This didn't make sense to Amy and Alex. - Matt said, "She's been having breakdowns," and she'd been just kind of losing her mind. - My mother was the farthest thing from crazy you could get. - Two weeks went by without much investigation and no media coverage, until Alex had an idea; if they organized a massive search party, the news would be forced to cover her mother's disappearance. - Frankly, you know, a grown woman having left her house wasn't that interesting a story. Well, 100 people getting together, all wearing red shirts, there's an interesting story. So they covered that. - And we met at the Walmart near her neighborhood. 100-plus people came. - Fifteen minutes after the search started, as a news crew started rolling, a piercing scream came from the woods. - Linda, we were just about to interview the missing woman's sister when we started hearing screaming coming out of just inside of those woods. - [Crying] - And I blacked out, I just remember hitting the ground. But as soon as I came to, I took off running and I ran all the way to where the crime scene tape was. - Oh, I need to see her! - No, you can't. - You can't, baby. - He waited two days to even report her missing and he told me that they'd had a huge fight and that, you know, she wasn't well and that she'd been having breakdowns and stuff. But I saw her two weeks ago and she was fine. - I'm just praying it's not her, but if it is then I know she's with- she’s with her Jesus. - Okay, we're gonna be roping this whole area off. - Investigators are talking with Leili's husband and searching the couple's home but police say he is not a suspect. - Even Amy, who is extremely close to Nique, didn't suspect her husband. On the contrary, his calm demeanor and focus on sheltering his young daughters seemed honorable at the time. - Matt's attitude about it was, "Keep everything calm and keep the girls from, you know, being panicked about their mom being gone." You know, he was trying to protect them. - We didn't really know what happened to her. We were just told she was found dead. - At only 19, Alex became the family spokesperson in the aftermath. Day after day, she appeared on TV, reliving the struggle of her mother and dealing with the everlasting guilt she felt for leaving her three years ago. - It was the worst experience and I hope I never experience that kind of pain in my life again. Ever. This has taken all the strength from within me just to stand here now, because at 19, I never felt this would be a reality. - Immediately after Nique's body was found, authorities put Sergeant Richter, District Attorney Jones, and Detective Everson in charge of the case. The three were then sent to examine the scene of the discovery. - When I saw her laying there on the ground, you know, in the elements, the heat of July, underneath a pile of leaves, naked, I couldn't accept it. - The detectives were surprised to find two major clues from the autopsy report. One, Nique's feet were completely clean, indicating that she didn't walk to the forest and was likely dropped there. Two, the presence of drugs in her blood. - She tested positive for an abnormal level of gamma-Hydroxybutyric acid, which is commonly known as GHB, which is called the Date-R*** Drug. Did somebody give Nique Leili this drug in order to overpower her or ultimately to kill her? - Detective Everson took it upon himself to look into Matthew, who still wasn't a suspect at the time. When he learned that the man had a full security system at his disposal, filming in and outside the house 24/7, the detective went to the Leilis' to see what he could find. - I'd never seen anything like this in somebody's house before. I realized that this could be a gold mine of evidence because it showed every vantage point you could from leaving the house. - But sadly, it wouldn't be that easy. On the contrary, after copying over Matt's hard drive, Everson realized that over half a million video files were on it. They all had no titles, no dates, and no time. - It was like looking for a needle in a stack of needles, because, I mean, you couldn't even tell what you were looking for. There was so much video that literally the only thing that I did for four months, about 60 hours a week, was watching video on my computer. - Eventually, Everson found something, but this discovery left the detective with more questions than answers. - I finally found one, like July the 8th, the night of Nique's disappearance. I'm thinking, "Okay, maybe I've gotten to the right block." And no matter how much I looked, I didn't find anything else past that point. Shortly after midnight, that is the last footage we ever had of Nique. - 48 hours of footage were missing. The cameras were only turned back on after Matthew had declared Nique missing. Naturally, this tipped of the detective. - That was a little odd. For there to be a whole weekend of footage missing, that seemed to indicate there was something to hide. - Matthew was quick to claim Nique was responsible for the missing footage. It was around this time that Amy and the rest of the family realized that a pattern was emerging. Every time the police found a hole in Matthew's story, he would blame Nique for it. - I ran inside to check the camera system and that's when I realized the cameras were off. And she always shuts it off when she leaves, when she's pissed off. - Matt had told us that Nique pulled out the wires and messed up the whole system. It was clear he was trying to paint this picture that Nique had gone 'round the bend and had lost her mind. - But Everson wasn't duped, and from then on Matthew was the prime suspect. He took in his phone as evidence and was surprised to learn that he not only tracked and recorded the phones of Nique, but also Alex, and even his own. The detective singled out many suspicious calls from the records. Three of them were particularly concerning. After Nique disappeared, but before he declared her missing, Matthew told his brother-in-law that he had filled out the paperwork needed to divorce her. - The following day, in another call, he went on to explain that he planned to commit his wife to a mental institution. - However, a week earlier, in another call, Matthew had a completely different tone, going as far as to manipulate Amanda into calling her mother to convince her not to file for divorce herself. - Everson couldn't help but feel like Matthew's tone was threatening. The next call in the record was to 911. - Everson knew they didn't have enough for an arrest but felt like he needed to question Matthew regarding all of these calls happening mere days before his wife's disappearance. When he showed up at his doorstep, he was surprised to learn that Matthew, Amanda, and Rebecca had all moved to Vermont. After seven months of investigation, and no hard evidence to arrest him, the detective dropped the case and presented his findings to his sergeant, John Richter, who decided to take over the case himself. - He literally started over so that he could see if there's anything that anybody might have missed. - Richter sent all of the computer equipment and copies they received from Matthew to his department's Digital Forensic team. Eventually, they came back with some restored data from the computer. They uncovered a folder named “Fights” containing thousands of audio clips. Similar to the video Everson had looked into, none of them were identified in any way, so for almost two years, the sergeant and the DA dug through the seemingly endless records of arguments between Nique and Matthew captured by the latter. - It was absolutely awful to listen to those audio recordings. - At first, Richter and Jones were of diverging opinions. The audio recording clearly focused on Nique's outbursts, with Matthew always sounding more reasonable. - You get this sense of maybe she is volatile and he's really the calm one in the relationship. - But to me, I could tell right away what he was trying to do, he was just trying to manipulate her to act like that. - And Richter was right. Upon closer inspection by the forensic team, they determined that almost every recording had pauses in them. Matthew was selectively recording only parts of their arguments. - He would start the recording after a huge blow up that they had had and then when he's calmed down, he wants to have a conversation about it. - He would talk to her for six hours. He would bring her into a room and discuss whatever rules he had in place that she was breaking. - When they eventually finished going through the audio files, the pair had found multiple incriminating clips. To the murder accusation they planned to charge Matthew with, the District Attorney added eavesdropping, illegal surveillance, and sexual assault. - There was evidence on the recordings that he was physically abusing her and he was getting more and more frustrated, he was getting more and more violent. - As the evidence kept piling up, the police still had nothing concerning the murder. That's when Richter had an idea. He asked the Digital Forensic team to virtually rebuild Matthew's surveillance system and locate where he would log his daily activities. Once they found it, they were able to determine what he had been doing with his computer in the days surrounding Nique's disappearance. Written there, clear as day, were two heavily incriminating operations. On the day Matthew reported her missing, and the day she was found, Matthew deleted dozens of video and audio recordings from his computer. - In order to do the deletion of the files, you had to be an individual that knew a password to the system. We knew that Matt Leili deleted the footage off the surveillance camera. We had enough evidence to charge Matt Leili with the murder of his wife. - At this point, four years had passed since Nique's body was discovered and Amanda, Rebecca, and Matthew had been away from Georgia for a while. Following the loss of their mother, the girls needed the support of their father and weren't aware of the details of the suspicions surrounding him. - Rebecca and I just kind of clung onto my dad after losing her. - But as they grew older, they eventually realized why their family was split apart. - We just knew that my mom's side of the family thought my dad had killed her. - On her end, Alex kept trying to process the immeasurable guilt she felt for leaving her mom with Matthew. But as she, too, grew older, she slowly came to terms with the fact that at the time there wasn't much she could have done. - I don't think she knew how to get out and at the time I was so young, I didn't know how to help her get out. - Now in her 20s, Alex wanted to do everything she could to bring justice for her mother. She had no idea this opportunity was just around the corner. - There was something I wasn't doing to help fight for justice. There was something I was missing. You just wanted to scream at the rooftop, you know, "He did it. Do something." - In an ironic twist, Matthew came back to Georgia to claim Nique's life insurance money. As he was walking out of the building, he came face-to-face with Sergeant Richter, waiting for him with an arrest warrant. - The look on his face when we placed the cuffs on him and told him he's under arrest, it's just a great feeling. - I grabbed my phone and looked it up and I'm like, "Holy s***, my dad was just arrested!” - This is a prepaid collect call from: - Matt. - An inmate at: - Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Department. - Unaware of the evidence accumulated against her father, Amanda created a YouTube channel called “Nique Leili's Kids Speak Out.” - It’s finally time for us to tell the truth and for us to call them out on their lies. - In her videos, she followed her father's instructions to the letter. - The family is making sure that we can't say anything to keep their dirty laundry from being aired. - Matthew also insisted that anytime a journalist approached her, Amanda should tell them about the YouTube videos. And soon enough, every news channel in Georgia was reporting on them. As the public opinion shifted between Amanda and Alex's side, the latter couldn't believe her own sister betrayed her. - It breaks my heart, to be completely honest. I know they said some hateful things about our family, they painted our mom like someone she really wasn't. - As angry as I had been with them because, you know, they had posted those YouTube videos, I knew where it was all coming from, I knew that they had been manipulated. - The way my dad put it to us was they're trying to take us away from him, but we still 100% believed that he was innocent. - As the date of the trial approached, Matthew began exposing Amanda to things no 14-year-old girl should ever have to deal with, in preparation for his session. - He would make me listen to all the recordings of him and my mom arguing and I would have to take notes on them. *** damnit! *** damnit! *** damnit! *** ****-ing damnit! LOWER YOUR VOICE! - Traumatized by what she was hearing, but still under the influence of her father's manipulation, Amanda was at a crossroads. Either she continued to help him, wishing he was honest when he told her that, even though he and Nique had their share of fights and issues, he wasn't the one who killed her, or she could refuse and end up alone, rejected by both sides of her family for her inaction. Lost, she attempted to convince her dad to leave her out of this. - Whenever I would ask him like, "Why can't your lawyer do this?" He would just say, "Don't you love me? Don't you want me to come home? You're the only one I can trust to do this." - Crushed by the pressure her dad put her under, and the unbearable loneliness she was going through without the support of her family, Amanda resigned and accepted to be her father's key witness at the upcoming trial. - Like, I still love him. Like, he's my dad and I have good memories of him. It's just really hard to think of, like, my dad as doing something like that. - The idea of losing the only parent she had left was overwhelming. With the fate of her entire family weighing on her shoulders, the teenager reluctantly began preparing for her testimony. - It was kind of just constantly feeling guilty. So I always just kind of felt like I was alone. - On January 27th, 2016, Matthew's trial began. District Attorney Jones opened her address by playing a short clip of Nique talking to her husband after one of their fights. - Alex was eager to finally tell the jury and the judge what she had on her mind for all these years. - 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've never left her girls. - She was the first called to the stand and her testimony lined up perfectly with what the authorities found in the recordings recovered from Matthew's computer. - They'd be arguing and he would end up locking her in a bathroom. She'd 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." - But the defense also had its own key witness. Amanda flew all the way from Vermont to take the stand for her father. During her testimony, she went with his version of the events, claiming that Nique was at fault for being allegedly insane. - She was pacing back and forth, saying that she was hearing voices and, like, the voices in her head were telling her that people were talking bad about her. - But Jones wasn't afraid to call into question the young teenager's reliability. - We made our own decision. We don't like that said of the family, so we wanted to stay away. It's not his, him forcing us to stay away from them. - The fact that Amanda immediately mentioned her father when Jones cast doubt upon her raised a few eyebrows in the courtroom. Her defensive testimony, when added to all the circumstantial evidence gathered by Richter and Jones, only amplified the jury's impression that Matthew was a master manipulator ready to push anyone to get what he wanted, even his own daughter. - He murdered her in that house, in that room, when he had his way with her. - Prosecutor Jones let the victim's own words fill the courtroom just before jurors were given the case. - You telling me you should've killed me, putting your hands around my throat? - I should've let you kill y*******. Why should I bother to be the one to do it? - After over three hours of deliberation, the jury declared Matthew guilty of malice murder, felony murder, illegal surveillance, and eavesdropping. - Nique Leili's family looked shocked and cried as that verdict came down in the short 3 1/2 hours from when the jury began deliberations. - As soon as I heard guilty, I probably squeezed her hand so hard, I'm surprised it didn't break because I was just so, like, "Did he just say guilty? Did he say guilty? Are you sure?" - What ultimately convinced the jury, on top of the deletion of footage and the audio clips, was the story uncovered by Jones that put all the pieces together. - Matt Leili and Nique, they did go out that evening. They came back shortly after midnight. Do I think he drugged her? I do. I think he gave her the GHB. He just wanted to absolutely gain control over her. Why did he do it? Because she was leaving him. Based on his controlling personality, he wasn't going to let her leave. "If I can't have you, no one will." - Following the sentencing, Alex was saddened by Amanda's refusal to make peace. She went on with her life, hoping that one day her sisters would listen to reason and reunite with her and Amy. - We had lost not only Nique, but both of them too. - They were my girls. I still love them to this day. I taught them how to read, got them ready for school in the morning. 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's always open. - Away from her father's influence, Amanda eventually took back control of her own thoughts and was able to reevaluate the situation. She had listened to the clips herself, she saw the pictures of her mother's injuries, she heard the DA explain that Nique was drugged, and on top of it all, she saw that her father deleted the footage of that night. There was no way around it, even though she loved him, Amanda had to face the truth once and for all. - And then once I started feeling like he wasn't innocent, I was kind of almost disowned in a way. Then I just started crying. And, like, that was the first time I had really started crying in years about, like, my mom and my dad and everything that was going on. - In the wake of this cathartic experience, Amanda reached out to her long lost sister. For over eight years, the two had been totally estranged, not even talking to each other. However, thanks to the truth being revealed and justice finally being served, they now had an opportunity to start anew. - Now that we've rekindled our relationship, it has been incredible. Last year, I went up to help Amanda move into her dorm for the first time and when I got on the plane I bawled like a baby because I said, "I wasn't supposed to do that." - Amanda had been holding her grief inside for all this time, but now that she had been reunited with Alex and her aunt, she was finally able to process her pain and think of her mother in a new light, without her father's incessant hatred. - Now that, like, I've reconnected with my mom's side of the family, like, I'm able to think about her a lot more now and I definitely feel like she'd be proud of who I am. I feel like if I was able to speak to her... Just tell her how much I miss her. - For everybody who knew her, Nique was always considered to be a fighter, a fierce woman with ambition and a tenacious personality. But as strong as she was on the outside, she was secretly suffering at home, proving that abuse can happen to anyone, as so many of its victims are suffering in silence. To honor her memory, Amanda, Alex, Amy, and Rebecca want every victim of abuse to know that there is always a way out. - There's this shame that goes along with being a victim of abuse. You are not the person who's done anything wrong, the abuser is who's wrong. You are worthy of love and respect. Make sure to tell someone,
"You're not alone."
