for her if she refused to cooperate, and jessica reconsidered. this guy, i don t know why, but he does look kind of familiar. reporter: that s nick sampson, who looked kind of familiar. and from there, as the hours wore on, jessica s story shape shifted as did the players time and again.
and then first week of october, the county attorney nathan cox met the press. the murder case against nick sampson was dropped. sort of. since there s no statute of limitations on murder, the state reserves the right to refile the charges in the future. reporter: hardly the news the stock family expected or wanted to hear. reporter: but imagine being nick sampson. on that amazing day. he was cloud nine. it was incredible feeling. reporter: after five months in jail, he was free. it was incredible. i m finally out. reporter: but nick sampson, even free, was not carefree, not by any means. some things could never be the same again. i was constantly looking over my shoulder. seeing who was behind me. you know. reporter: because around this county in rural nebraska were a great many people perhaps a majority who were still quite certain of nick s guilt. after all, his own cousin matt admitted full out that they both killed those lovely people. i was upset, at a loss of
reporter: he agreed to take a polygraph. but again it wasn t quite what the accused hoped for. the polygrapher showed that sampson was deceptive when he denied being at the home when wayne was shot. and investigators seized on that to ratchet up the pressure. you were at the house when he was killed. no, i was not. your body s telling me otherwise. we need to get past that. what s going on there? i honest to god was not at the house when they were killed. reporter: but the investigators did not believe nick sampson. after all matt livers had already told them nick sampson was behind the whole thing, that the two of them actually planned the crime together on their cell phones in the two days or so before the murder. and so, said the detectives, they were pretty sure. matt livers was telling the truth. nick sampson was lying.
the children of wayne and sharmon stock were still reeling from their grief as they bury their parents less than a week after perhaps the most horrific murder their little town had ever seen. and then to grief add shock. late one evening son andy answered his phone and heard the news from one of the detectives. andy called his sister. about 12:30 at night. he says, tam, i need you to be awake. are you awake? i said, yeah, what s going on? he said, they arrested matt and nick. and i said, matt and nick who? and he said, our cousin matt and nick sampson. reporter: it was true. matt livers had confessed to the murders of his aunt and uncle. put the gun to her face and blew her away. reporter: and he d named an accomplice. 22-year-old nick sampson. a cousin of matt s on another
could grind forward, too, and the system provided defense attorneys, jerry soucie for nick sampson, julie bear for matt livers. first thing he says is, look, i told them i did this, but i didn t do this. and you ve got to believe me. reporter: they all say they didn t do it, right? i ve been lied to a lot as a defense lawyer. so the cynical side of me goes, mm-hmm, right. reporter: yet bear and soucie were puzzled, too. there were things that just didn t quite add up. both nick and matt and their live-in girlfriends swore up and down that on the night of the murder they were at home asleep 25 miles away. and nick claimed, despite what the cops believed, he d never talked to matt by phone or in person the week before the murders. what? the first thing i simply was concerned about was what was the evidence against nick sampson, regardless of whether he did it or not? i just had to know what the evidence was. reporter: then quite by