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 is 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 richer 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 sexua
i love nique. nique was great. she was so great to work with, very smart. lots of energy. positive. wonderful. just a wonderful person. on the morning of the search, alison recalls that she and another colleague from work, a man named derek, were running late, and 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 an 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 woods together. and i remember having to walk up and go over a large tree. and there is this pile of leaves, and it s in the middle of where everything else
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
any obvious injuries to the body? lacerations? blunt force trauma, gunshot, stab wound? anything you could see? nothing. and of course at this point, there s no there is no identifying documents around it. so 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 nique leili. a telling factor was the bottoms of her feet were clean. what does that tell you? connect the dots for me. that tells you she didn t walk out there and put herself in those woods, and she sure wasn t going to cover herself up. later, lab analysis of nique s blood revealed something else that was odd. there was a high level of the date rape drug ghb in her system. so now you re thinking maybe sometime before this woman s death, almost immediately before, somebody gave her the date rape drug? that s a possibility. m. e. also finds semen. correct.
we went to get our nails done. day of beauty at the spa. mm-hmm. yep. we got manicures and pedicures and went and had lunch. nique had had her toenails painted pink that day. and though she sometimes had a difficult relationship with her teenage daughter, alex says that day at the spa felt like a turning point. a fresh beginning. everybody looks pretty happy. good girls day out. it was fun. i am beyond grateful now that we ve done it. two weeks later nique 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 could do. their response was, we don t even know where to start looking. she is not on the 11:00 news every night. no. because, frankly, a grown woman having left her house wasn t that interesting a story. well, a hundred people getting together all wearing red shirts. there is an interesting story. so they covered that. then the cameras we