Epilogue: Shattered trust

Another relative came perilously close to joining his brother and cousin in jail in connection with the murders, to which two Wisconsin youths, Jessica M. Reid, 18, and Gregory D. Fester II, 20, eventually pleaded guilty.

* * *

The moral of this story -- harrowing on its worst day and trust-shattering on its best -- shouldn't wait to the end.

A Lincoln couple who got caught up in a murder case in which they had no involvement believe the hard lesson was this: The many times a person is told growing up that an officer of the law can always be trusted -- not true.  

And they learned this: Unless you are certain you are sophisticated enough to tell the difference between We just want to ask you a few questions and an interrogation that could land you in handcuffs or jail, get a lawyer before you utter a single syllable.

For Will and Alynn Sampson, April 19, 2006, started with a pounding on the door of their apartment and led to a ride in separate cars to an interrogation room at a north Lincoln Nebraska State Patrol office, and then to surrendering Will's car for examination for blood or other incriminating evidence.

All of this without advice -- or protection of their rights -- from a lawyer.

A week later, they were rousted out of bed in a middle-of-the-night, high drama, come-out-with-your-hands-up search of their apartment.

Will Sampson seems not to know how close he came to joining his brother Nick and cousin Matt Livers in the Cass County jail, while spring turned to summer and then autumn and near winter, before they were set free from charges in a murder committed randomly by two Wisconsin teens.

* * *

It was a little before 6 on a Wednesday evening, two days after the murders of Wayne and Sharmon Stock.

Will's uncle -- his mother's brother -- is married to Wayne Stock's sister. Will grew up in Murdock, where the Stocks lived. But the last time he had seen them was around Christmas, he said. He saw them once or twice a year, on holidays, in church or at the town bar.

Will, 23 at the time, and Alynn High, then 21, lived in the apartment at 61st and Vine streets. They had been together four years and were talking about getting engaged when she graduated a month later from Nebraska Wesleyan.

He was on the road that evening in April, returning from his construction job in Omaha, when Alynn heard insistent knocking at the door. At 4-foot-11, she couldn't see through the peephole. She was hesitant to open it.

They kept knocking. She finally gave in.

Investigators Bill Lambert of the Nebraska State Patrol and Earl Schenck Jr. from the Cass County Sheriff's Office stood outside.

Lambert had been the first patrol officer at the scene on the Stock farm that Monday morning. Schenck was the first detective there.

* * *

At the door, the investigators introduce themselves and ask if Will is home. They ask Alynn if she'll go with them to answer some questions at a State Patrol substation. And could they come inside to make sure no one else is there while she grabs her shoes? 

Alynn doesn't feel threatened. She assumes she and Will are on a list along with many others who know the Stocks, and investigators are doing routine information gathering.

"We are so far detached from the situation and the family," Alynn recalls. "We thought ... we'll just answer a few questions. They'll realize we have very little connection to the family. It'll be quick, easy and over."

She was always taught the police were there to help. And she should do whatever she could to help them.

"We had nothing to hide."

Later, a patrol report of the interview would note: "Not once during introductions and the ride to ISO did either Sampson or High ask why they were being questioned or what interest the patrol had in them."

* * * 

As they are walking down the stairs, Will arrives home from his Omaha construction site and gets out of his tan 1998 four-door Ford Contour.

Schenck walks over to him. Will, do you remember me?

He didn't. He thinks the officer must remember him because of the people he associated with when he was younger and lived in Murdock.

"They were, like, joking around. It was ha, ha, small world, funny we should meet again," Alynn remembers.

Will also agrees to go to the station, even though everything they knew about the killings they had read in the newspaper or heard on TV. They take them in separate cars to 56th and Cornhusker.

"We thought that's weird, but that's fine," Alynn says.

* * *

Will and Alynn met in June 2002 as new customer service reps at an insurance company call center. She was 17, newly graduated from high school. He was 19 and "very cute." And he knew her sister.

But it was his purple Ford Ranger pickup that really got her attention. She had been wanting a purple Ford Ranger pickup since before she could drive, even had pictures of it stuck on the walls of her bedroom.

That was it, she said to herself. "This is totally the guy I'm going to marry."

Their first date was in July, to her sister's wedding. Their second was a week or so later, dinner and a movie and talking until 2 a.m. At the end of the date, he shook her hand.

All the while, she knew. He was the one.

So four years later, when investigators banged on the door and asked questions about a murder 33 miles away and down a country road, her faith in her boyfriend was unshakable. She knew him so well.

He was a small-town guy. His daily routine was predictable -- up early every morning, go to work, come home, eat dinner, hang around the house, go to bed, get up the next morning and do it again.

She was the girlfriend who had to know everything. She knew who was on his speed dial, who called him, who he called. She knew his passwords, when he went to bed, when he got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, when he left for work.

"I'm really nosy," she says. "Nothing gets by me,"

* * *

At the substation, Will goes with Lambert and Schenck into what he estimates to be a 7-by-7-foot room with a folding chair and a table in the corner. They ask questions, record his answers, take notes.

Questions focus on his cousin Matt, Will's brother Nick and others who have less association with the family than even he does.

What do you know? What have you heard? What are the rumors?

"It sounded like they didn't know where to begin," Will says.

Then they begin to ask what he and Alynn did between Sunday and Monday mornings.

He went to bed at midnight as the Easter weekend ended and the work week approached. Alynn went to bed two hours later. He got up and left for work at 5.

When it's Alynn's turn, investigators ask a lot about Matt and the Stocks. What is their relationship to him? Does Matt know where they live? Does he ever come to their apartment? What do they think of him? Does he get angry?

They both mention Will got his car cleaned early that Monday morning -- prearranged with a friend's brother because the friend wanted to pay Will back for rides to work.

"Once that came out, I was like, 'Oh, that probably looks pretty bad,'" Alynn says.

But knowing it was an innocent action -- like the scrapes he had gotten on his arms that weekend when shimmying up a tree to retrieve a Frisbee -- and that they had nothing to hide, neither thought much about it.

After more than 2 1/2 hours of questioning, Will and Alynn give investigators permission to search their apartment and both their cars and, later, to take Will's car for testing with Luminol, a substance used to detect blood.

Yeah, they say, take whatever you want, guys. Get us off your list.

It is approaching midnight when the questioning and searching wrap up.

What they didn't know then was that a newspaper carrier had told investigators she saw a four-door tan car at a cemetery adjacent to the Stocks' property at 4:15 on the morning they were killed.

The investigators left but called back just hours later to say a couple of spots came up in the testing. They were keeping the car, they said, and wanted to cut a couple of pieces out of the carpet.

Sure, that's fine. 

They figured the "spots" had to be from a friend who threw up in the car a couple of weeks ago and from a dog that had been a frequent passenger.

* * *

Days pass.

Preliminary Luminol tests indicate blood evidence, but Douglas County CSI Chief David Kofoed advises investigators it's a false positive, likely the result of debris transferred into the car from Will's construction site.

Then a master's level crime scene investigator searches and tests the car for six hours. And investigators examine the vacuum bags from the detailer who cleaned the car. Still nothing.

Will's brother Nick and Matt Livers are arrested Tuesday, April 25. Will and Alynn learn about it from a 10 p.m. phone call. It takes them by surprise.

"We said, ‘What? That is so weird and random,'" Alynn says. "At that point we thought ... 'This is serious. What the hell?'"

They are about to find out.

* * *

In the dead of night -- 2:22 a.m. -- their cell phones ring. It's Lambert and Schenck.

We're outside. We have a search warrant. Turn on all the lights in the apartment. Get dressed. Step outside the door with your hands in the air.

They're groggy, but Alynn calls her mom, who says she's coming over.

The phones ring again.

What are you guys doing? Where are you?

"We're like, ‘We're freakin' turning on the lights and coming down.'"

They get to the bottom of the stairs and open the door. Eight officers wait, one on his knee, guns drawn. Flashlights, spotlights and swirling car lights blaze in the darkened neighborhood.

Embarrassing. Really embarrassing.

"God, it was horrible. ... It was, like, turn around, put your hands on your head, get on your knees."

They are handcuffed, just like on TV, taken back into their apartment and told to sit on the couch. The officers pull out drawers, throw their clothes out, go through boxes on closet shelves. Tear the place apart.

Will tells Lambert the cuffs are too tight. Could he loosen them a little?

Lambert walks over and flicks Will's fingers.

Can you feel that?

Yes.

Then you're fine.

Other than those minor exchanges, Will does not answer questions. He has a lawyer by now who has advised him to stay silent.

Lambert asks, Why don't you want to talk to me? Why do you have a lawyer? Are you guilty?

They finally walk out the door, with Alynn's tennis shoes, Will's dress shoes, a bong and some related items.

By then, Alynn is mad.

They have cooperated, given them everything they wanted.

Why are you still bugging us? Move on. If you're here, then you're not where you should be. Quit wasting your time on us.

* * *

Alynn is paranoid. Every time she hears a car door, she looks out the window, expecting another visit.

Investigators have their phone records. They monitor their calls. Still, they find no connection. No calls to or from Matt Livers. No calls to Nick for months.

Will and Alynn hear rumors Matt has confessed. They don't believe them.

In early May, investigators show up again, this time at Will's job site in Omaha.

They have a warrant to collect DNA and fingerprints.

They walk through the site, asking multiple people: Where is Will Sampson?

They put him in handcuffs and parade him 300 yards, in front of 50 subcontractors and his bosses.

"I hung my head so no one would see my face."

Lambert calls Alynn, too, to get DNA and fingerprints. He tells her he thinks she knows more.

You really need to think about your future. You're graduating. I don't know what you see in this guy, but he's trouble.

* * *

Alynn thought it would be a miracle if Will made it to her graduation. She was sure they were coming for him.

But they had to move on with their lives.

She graduated. They got engaged. She started a new job in July.

"Our theory was we have to keep going. ... We have to keep pushing through. We're not going to let this hold us down."

Then they heard another check of the car had revealed a speck of blood. Wayne Stock's blood.

Alynn knew the only way it could have gotten there was if someone put it there after the fact. Hours of searching and testing before had turned up nothing.

Now, people -- even some family members -- were starting to doubt their innocence.

* * * 

Will and Alynn didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. They only heard rumors.

But investigators had gone to Wisconsin to interview teenagers Jessica Reid and Gregory Fester, and as court documents will show later, Lambert and Schenck had shown pictures of Will to Fester, and in rambling interviews, he had said Will was the shooter at the Murdock crime scene, and that he had worn surgical gloves.

Investigators were pressing Cass County Attorney Nathan Cox to call a grand jury and indict Will or charge him with participating in the murders, court documents show, but it never happened. Cox said no.

* * *

What Will did in the initial contact with investigators was appropriate, defense attorney Jerry Soucie said. He cooperated, as most people would, knowing family members had been murdered.

Will didn't know the attempt to drag him into the case was being made against him for no other reason than that he had a tan car, Soucie said. Nothing else matched.

His mistake, the attorney said, was not demanding his car be returned as soon as he learned tests revealed nothing. If he had, there would have been no opportunity to plant evidence against him, Soucie said.

"I've been doing this business 30 years. This is the darnedest case I've ever seen."

It has everything, in Soucie's opinion. Police misconduct, planted evidence, investigators doing interviews in a manner that results in an unreliable confession.

Even the reports on Will's and Alynn's interrogations were "incredibly strange," he said. Instead of straightforward recounting, using the word "said" as is normally done, the reports are laced with accusatory wording.

"Will claimed (he) last saw and spoke to Matt around Christmas."

"Will confessed he did not see his grandmother or his mother while in town that night (two weeks before the murder)."

"Will claimed he had a good relationship with the Stocks, yet professed to never have been in their house."

"(Alynn) High admitted Will can become frustrated like most men when trying to fix things around the apartment that become broken."

* * *

In January 2007, Will filed a motion to get his car back, saying whatever probable cause may have existed when the search warrant was issued had long since disappeared with the arrest of Fester and Reid and the release of Matt Livers and Nick Sampson. When the car was returned in February, Will said, he had to sign a paper saying he accepted it "as is" and could not hold the car's condition against the state or ask for money for damage.

The battery was dead, he said, and a tire was flat. The seats and carpet were cut up, the rear seat broken and unattached, and the gas tank was empty.

He also was told the investigation was ongoing, and at any point law enforcement could take the car back.

Eventually, when it was clear the car was useless to him, he told attorneys he was selling it. He got $300.

* * *

Will and Alynn married Oct. 5, 2007. They had a son a year later.

Today, Will still works as a construction framer, gets up early, goes to work, comes home, hangs out and goes to bed, then starts again the next day.

Alynn has a career with a nonprofit.

Fester and Reid pleaded guilty to the Stocks' murders and are serving two life sentences each. Reid maintains Matt Livers and Nick Sampson weren't there and had nothing to do with the crime she and Fester committed.

David Kofoed, the former Douglas County CSI director, was convicted of evidence tampering and is serving 20 months to four years in Lincoln Community Corrections. Cass County District Judge Randall Rehmeier said he didn't believe Kofoed's excuse that the victim's blood ended up in Will's car because of a sloppy mistake. There was enough evidence, he said, to show Kofoed planted fake evidence.

Bill Lambert is still an investigator with the Nebraska State Patrol.

Earl Schenck Jr. was reassigned to Cass County Jail duty. He got divorced, and last year, he was charged with drunken driving. He says he's working as a special education teacher assistant at a Glenwood, Iowa, school. On the weekends, he sings and plays with a country band.

Nick Sampson and Matt Livers have filed lawsuits against investigators in the case, Kofoed and the Cass County and Douglas County sheriffs' offices. Trials are set for November.

* * *

Most important to Will and Alynn Sampson, they say, is that investigators and others involved in their treatment acknowledge they messed up and apologize.

They're not holding their breaths.

The events of 2006 made Will and his brother Nick closer, he says. They were not allowed to talk to each other during the six months Nick was in jail, and that was the hardest part.

They believe the Sampson name has been damaged, and some family members and others still believe they were involved.

"The unfortunate part of this is that the investigators took off on this theory and filled everybody's minds with something early on, and now people want to hold onto that and they truly believe it," Alynn says.

The Stocks' son Andy declined to comment. But he said in an interview with NBC's "Dateline" that aired in December that he hopes someday to know the "honest truth" about who was involved and whether the blood was planted in Will's car.

"I don't believe we will ever have those answers," he told "Dateline," "but I hope someday we'll know."

Alynn says the case wasted taxpayer money, and that they spent thousands, too.

Her mom, Alissa High, says what happened set off shock waves that are rippling still.

"It rattled my belief system to the very core," she says.

She will always resent that investigators weren't held accountable for taking advantage of Will and Alynn's youth, inexperience and value system, she said.

"It was the best example," she says, "of how badly the system can behave."