which to a suspicious family was puzzling. after all, hadn t the head of csi, david kofoed found a blood sample that tied them to the crime? it must have seemed to you as if they were letting two murderers back on the street. that was the way i felt. it did seem like they were just letting them go, but i guess nobody knew any different. reporter: in fact, some of the investigators remained convinced sampson or livers or both had to be involved somehow. they didn t buy the notion that two drug-addled teenagers just happened to stumble on the place by pure chance in the dark. and anyway, fester, remember, said the main shooter, the guy that led them to the farm was a local named thomas, with whom fester had been communicating by phone before the murder. but detectives could find no evidence whatsoever against this thomas or anyone else.
her chest, jessica looked at the photo of nick the man she claimed was the mastermind of the murder. it sounds really dumb, but i wish he wouldn t have been a murderer. why? he s really hot. why do the hot ones got to be the dumb ones? reporter: it evaporated in a jail cell. while detectives focus next on jessica s partner in crime, greg fester. conned me into going with her. reporter: it was all jessica s idea, said fester, stealing the truck, the ridiculous trip across the country. as for the murder in the farmhouse, that was the guy they met outside bulldog s bar, he said. who squeezed into their stolen pickup truck, led them to the stocks farmhouse, went upstairs and just started shooting. he kind of ran into the room and he i heard this scream
her demeanor, her presence, as she sits with us here, could easily be that of a kindergarten teacher. instead, she knows she will die in prison and says she is haunted by what happened in that farmhouse. what was it like to watch those people die? hell. reporter: and when you see it in your head? it makes my heart drop. that s one thing in this world that i can t go back and fix. reporter: the truth about that night? here it is, said jessica. she and fester, days without sleep or real food, have been driving aimlessly through wisconsin, iowa, nebraska, breaking into homes along the way. in one, she, too, grabbed a shotgun, so on easter night there they were both armed, drugged and wired when they drove down another back road completely at random. and greg said stop. and at what turned out to be the stock farmhouse, in they went.
before long, a new deal was reached. both fester and reid pleaded guilty to murder in the second degree. and in march 2 thousand 2007 not yet a year since the killing they entered a courtroom. reporter: you went to the sentencing. i did. the first time i saw them. i didn t think i could feel so much anger and sorrow and sadness. i remember thinking i didn t think i could be this mad. yes. reporter: in the courtroom, jessica reid and greg fester each apologized to the stock family. and then the judge handed down their sentences. for fester, two consecutive life terms plus another 10 to 20 for using a weapon. for reid, the first to the courthouse, remember, no break at all. the same sentence. two life terms back-to-back. no parole, ever. and for the stock family, ever graceful and remarkably forgiving people, afterwards?
reporter: ballistics tests soon confirmed that the shell found in reid s cigarette box matched spent shells found at the murder scene. the murder weapon, stolen from the same wisconsin farmhouse where reid and fester stole the red pickup truck. blood found on reid s clothes and fester s shoes matched the victim, wayne stock. and icing on the cake. dna found on the gold ring and the marijuana pipe matched only fester and reid. both were charged. first degree murder. of course, as all this was happening, back in nebraska, no one outside law enforcement knew a thing. the stock children were certainly in the dark, as they struggled to grip the wheel of their new strange lives. we have just lost both our mom and our dad. to lose one is horrible, but to lose both of them. and not have those parent figures that kept this family going.