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 contin
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 leili 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. and i can only attribute that to 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
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 leili 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. when dateline continues. with frontline, you and your pet can go anywhere. no matter how you define it. frontline®. here. there. everywhere.
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 drugged 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
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 a 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.