our dispatch had received confirmation from a parish down in louisiana that they had the stolen truck. narrator: stolen in wisconsin and abandoned way down in louisiana. that s a long way to go. what did you think? a couple kids on a joy ride. somebody taking it that needed to get back down south for whatever reason. narrator: it wasn t long before they fingered the suspected thieves. there were several bikes vehicles taken over a short period of time and the police department developed information that gregory fester and vanessa reed were responsible. there were two of them. the guy was greg fester, age 19, with a history of drug use, suicide attempts, anger issues. fester was on probation for weapons and disorderly conduct convictions.
ridiculous trip across the country. as for the murder in the farmhouse, that was the guy they met outside bulldog s bar, he said, who squeezed into their stolen pickup truck, led them to the stocks farmhouse, went upstairs and just started shooting. he kind of ran into the room and he i heard this scream and he shot again. we all run out of the house. narrator: but then, surprise, surprise, fester insisted the man who committed the murders was not nick sampson. wasn t even matt livers, who had already confessed that he was the killer. no, greg fester said, it was some friend he communicated with via text message. a guy he called thomas. so a little confusing perhaps, but for the investigators from nebraska, it seemed to be starting to come together. what was their sense of things after that first day of
the murder weapon, stolen from the same wisconsin farmhouse where reid and fester stole the red pickup truck. blood found on reid s clothes and fester s shoes matched the victim, wayne stock. and icing on the cake. dna found on the gold ring and the marijuana pipe matched only fester and reid. both were charged. first degree murder. of course, as all this was happening, back in nebraska, no one outside law enforcement knew a thing. the stock children were certainly in the dark, as they struggled to grip the wheel of their new strange lives. we have just lost both our mom and our dad. to lose one is horrible, but to lose both of them. and not have those parent figures that kept this family going. where do we go? how do we help andy with the farm? how do we how do we let our children have a normal life?
said the main shooter, the guy that led them to the farm was a local named thomas, with whom fester had been communicating by phone before the murder. but detectives could find no evidence whatsoever against this thomas or anyone else. and meanwhile, jessica reid kept trying to persuade investigators that nobody else was there besides her and fester, of course. i am not lying! if i was lying, i would not still be going on about this. narrator: she d been saying that for months. i know what happened and no one will believe me. narrator: and though she was right about that, the detectives did not believe her. they still suspected livers and sampson of some involvement. why? remember way back at the beginning of our story, that speck of evidence that csi chief kofoed had found in a car connected to nick sampson and spotted near the murder scene?