The mom of a 19-year-old who was murdered by her ex-boyfriend after a Halloween party turned sour, yelled four words at her killer when she next saw him.
On October 30, 2020, Livye Lewis visited a friends house for a party in Hemphill, Texas, that carried on into the early hours of the morning on October 31, but at 2.30am things got heated.
At the gathering was Lewis, her ex-boyfriend Matthew Edgar - who was 24 at the time - and his ex-wife Montana Bockel, and then Bobby Ozan whose house it was.
Advert
According to Ozan, Lewis and Bockel both spent much of the night ignoring Edgar - with Lewis having only broken up with Edgar just a few weeks before.
After the majority of the party had gone, Edgar overheard Lewis' plans to stay the night with Ozan and so began assaulting Bockel for not preventing her and Ozan getting together.
Ozan then restrained Edgar, while both the women made off. Bockel drove to Edgar's grandparents home, but it wasn't clear where Lewis was driving.
Advert
Edgar managed to catch up with Lewis and when Bockel text him asking 'Where is she?' at 3.34am, he replied seconds later 'Dead'.
Roughly an hour and a half later, a woman pulled over at the side of the road after seeing Lewis' car. After walking over to it she checked her pulse and called 911 at around 5.15am to report her death - with Lewis having a gunshot wound to her neck.
When officers arrived, they discovered Edgar curled up in the fetal position behind the car and he claimed to have no recollection of what had happened - due to him allegedly drinking a bottle of whiskey.
"He was found in the fetal position behind the vehicle that Lewis was found in," says MacDonough.
Advert
Sabine County Sheriff's Investigator J.P. MacDonough said when he saw Lewis' body, he knew that Lewis knew her killer.
"She was just sitting there with her legs crossed,
"Well, it indicates to me she was not afraid ... She was actually, to some degree, comfortable with who she was speaking with."
Advert
Officials then found a rifle nearby and blood on Edgar's clothes and arrested him but he claimed he didn't know how he ended up at the crime scene.
While he lay in hospital the same day, he was interviewed by MacDonough: "You don't know how you ended up on the ground behind the car ... With the dead girl in it," said MacDonough. "No, sir," Edgar replies. "I have no clue."
Edgar was released on bail later due to the Covid-19 pandemic and all courts being shut down, no grand juries convened.
Just months after his release he bumped into Darci Bass, Lewis' mom, in a convenience store in Hemphill. She yelled four heartbreaking words at him: "You killed my daughter!"
Advert
Bass then proceeded to throw anything she could at him and chased him into the parking lot and smashed his truck up with a chain that was in the back of Edgar's truck.
On January 4, 2022, he went on trial but just days into it he did not return and instead went on the run. The trial continued and Edgar, who is now 27, was found guilty of Lewis' murder - but it took almost an entire year before he was captured on December 29, 2022.
He was found in a house just yards away from his grandparents home.
Topics: Court, Crime, Gun Crime, Police, Texas, Sex and Relationships
Joe Yates