Dateline NBC S32E03 The Clearing H 264

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00:00:09Tonight on Dateline.

00:00:11Do not move!

00:00:14It's pulse-pounding footage.

00:00:15Do not move!

00:00:16It's a train, you can't stop it.

00:00:18You're being railroaded.

00:00:19You're like, how do I stop this?

00:00:21Someone with a finger in my face,

00:00:22going, you killed your wife.

00:00:26These women had located a body.

00:00:28The woods is very thick and almost impassable.

00:00:31I kept pushing these vines.

00:00:33That's when I saw Emily.

00:00:35There's some sort of cord wrapped around her neck.

00:00:38The question is simple.

00:00:39Is this homicide or suicide?

00:00:41It didn't look like a suicide.

00:00:43This is a murder case.

00:00:44You killed her!

00:00:45No, I didn't, sir.

00:00:47They did this thing to try to rattle.

00:00:48You killed her, she's dead.

00:00:50They searched the house, the attic, the car.

00:00:53They find nothing.

00:00:54Why have the cops fixed on him?

00:00:55It's an easy fix and an obvious one.

00:00:57The first suspect is always the spouse, right?

00:01:00We don't know her journey.

00:01:01We don't know those last minutes.

00:01:03Did you do that, Matt?

00:01:04Did you kill your wife?

00:01:05What do you think?

00:01:07I want to hear you say it.

00:01:08Why do you feel the need for me to say that?

00:01:10I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

00:01:21Here's Dennis Murphy with The Clearing.

00:01:30She absolutely loved the woods.

00:01:33That's something everyone can agree on.

00:01:36Deep in the forest, Emily nourished her soul in the joyous quiet.

00:01:40It's where she found peace and even food for her table.

00:01:45Did she also go there to escape?

00:01:47People here in Westerville, Ohio still wonder about that.

00:01:51It is a big mystery.

00:01:53I would just love to know the details.

00:01:55What happened?

00:01:57What really happened that night?

00:02:02Take a look.

00:02:04What do you see?

00:02:05For most of us, it's just a snarl of bushes and brambles.

00:02:09Emily Noble saw that and something else.

00:02:12Maybe a salad and a soup for dinner and herbal tea.

00:02:16She was obsessed with foraging, the art of discovering food and nature.

00:02:20She shared her passion with friends like Celeste Groen.

00:02:23She had a book that was like four inches, maybe even thicker,

00:02:28and it had every single plant in it, and she could identify what they were.

00:02:34She liked to go out and forage around her neighborhood, which I think is really cool.

00:02:39Emily's friend Christa Williams bartends at Dick's Den, a music venue in nearby Columbus,

00:02:45one of Emily's favorite hangouts.

00:02:47She was way into live music and she used to love to come here.

00:02:50I've cut a rug with her on the dance floor many times.

00:02:54I would say Emily was very much a free spirit.

00:02:57She just was this little fairy, you know, she just had so much light and energy in her.

00:03:03People were drawn to her neo-hippie, tiny dancer spirit.

00:03:07Friends like Wendy Carney Hatch.

00:03:09Just really cute, really adorable, with dark curly hair and bright eyes and beautiful teeth.

00:03:17Great smile.

00:03:18And when she walked, there was a little, like a little rhythm to her step.

00:03:25It may have seemed that Emily was dancing through life, but it hadn't been easy.

00:03:30She'd survived a lot of crushing sadness over the years.

00:03:33And in 2020, as the pandemic took hold, life got particularly hard.

00:03:38Like so many of us, Emily and her husband Matt were in lockdown.

00:03:43But on Sunday, May 24th, Emily and Matt wanted to get out and celebrate.

00:03:47It was Emily's 52nd birthday.

00:03:50It was also Memorial Day weekend.

00:03:52So they dipped their toes back into the local nightlife scene with a trip to some bars.

00:03:57It was right after the bars reopened from COVID.

00:04:01And they were the only people I had for the time that they were there.

00:04:05They were there for about 45 minutes.

00:04:08Jessica Selfridge was tending bar that night.

00:04:11She had time to observe her only customers.

00:04:13We talked a little bit about, like, COVID things.

00:04:16Like, I had to wear a mask, for instance.

00:04:19And they told me that since it was her birthday, they were going to continue to kind of bar hop

00:04:24a little bit.

00:04:27Emily and Matt got home around 7.

00:04:30Night turned into morning, into afternoon.

00:04:33At 2.47 p.m. on May 25th, Emily's friend Celeste Grone got a call from Emily's phone.

00:04:39So I picked up and I said, hi, Emily.

00:04:44And it was Matt.

00:04:45And he said, is Emily over there?

00:04:48And I said, no.

00:04:50And he said that they were supposed to go to a party in the afternoon.

00:04:55And he hadn't seen her.

00:04:57And she hadn't returned from a walk in the morning.

00:05:01And he was assuming it was a walk.

00:05:04And I said, well, is this normal?

00:05:06And he said, no, it's not normal.

00:05:09And I said, call the police.

00:05:12Celeste jumped in her car.

00:05:13Matt got back on the phone.

00:05:15My wife has been missing all day.

00:05:19Her purse is here with her ID.

00:05:21Her car is here with her car keys.

00:05:24And her phone is here.

00:05:27With his body cam rolling, Officer Rob Hollis of the Westerville, Ohio Police Department arrived at Emily and Matt's home.

00:05:37There was some momentary confusion after Matt came to the door because Celeste was just arriving too.

00:05:42Matt did a double take.

00:05:45He's like, oh, there she is.

00:05:47You.

00:05:47He's looking at you.

00:05:49Thinking I'm Emily.

00:05:50You look just like her for like a second.

00:05:52Oh, my God.

00:05:53There she is.

00:05:54Okay.

00:05:55Matt Moore.

00:05:56Officer Hollis.

00:05:58Hello.

00:05:58Hi.

00:05:59Celeste.

00:06:00In a matter of minutes, Officer Hollis got most of the story.

00:06:03What's going on?

00:06:04He heard how Matt and Emily had gone out the night before, how they came home around 7 and went

00:06:09to bed early.

00:06:11Matt said he woke up after midnight.

00:06:12I get up in the middle of the night sometimes to go to the bathroom and I don't go back

00:06:20in with her because I don't want to wake her up so I can end up in this bedroom or

00:06:24second bedroom.

00:06:25He told the officer he was noodling around on his phone till the wee hours, not falling asleep again until

00:06:31around 6 and not out of bed until after 10 a.m.

00:06:35That's when he says he first noticed Emily was gone.

00:06:37He didn't go out to look for her but said he waited.

00:06:40Waited for hours.

00:06:42I was just waiting for her to tell me when we should go.

00:06:45I'd text her twice and say it was going to the party and she didn't get back to me.

00:06:49He used the phone finder app and learned her phone was still in the condo.

00:06:53He thought maybe she went to the woods nearby.

00:06:56She forages, she goes for walks and she picks wild edibles.

00:07:00That's kind of our hobby.

00:07:02She goes around here.

00:07:06It's a real short walk.

00:07:07It's 15 minutes the most.

00:07:09A lot of the time I was like, well, maybe she's just out doing that.

00:07:12The officer's quick check of the condo revealed nothing in disarray.

00:07:16No surprises.

00:07:17Emily, it turned out, was a housekeeper extraordinaire.

00:07:20That garage was immaculate.

00:07:22The house was immaculate.

00:07:23Uh-huh.

00:07:23Yeah, Emily was very neat.

00:07:26She's really meticulous.

00:07:28And she just, this is my character.

00:07:29She would never go somewhere and not tell you where she was from.

00:07:32So I see that the bed was made.

00:07:34Did you do that or she did that?

00:07:35That is, uh, I just noticed that.

00:07:38You're right.

00:07:39I didn't make the bed.

00:07:40She did.

00:07:41That bed was made when I got up today.

00:07:43I didn't make it.

00:07:45So she was, I'm guessing, here this morning.

00:07:48The officer took off for a few minutes to speak with colleagues outside, then returned with some news.

00:07:54Your neighbor saw her in the garage about between 9 and 10 a.m. this morning.

00:08:00Said she was just standing in the garage.

00:08:02Awesome.

00:08:02When he was leaving, he saw her.

00:08:04She was just standing there.

00:08:05He said hello.

00:08:05She said hello.

00:08:06So we know...

00:08:08She's around.

00:08:09Somewhere around.

00:08:11Okay.

00:08:11Awesome.

00:08:12That seemed reassuring.

00:08:14Maybe the case of the missing Emily Noble would be one big false alarm.

00:08:19She'd come waltzing through that door any minute.

00:08:21Wouldn't she?

00:08:37The town of Westerville, Ohio, was waking up to a brand new day.

00:08:41And Emily Noble was still missing.

00:08:43Her husband, Matt, hadn't seen her for more than 24 hours.

00:08:47And now Westerville PD Detective Steve Grubbs was reading the responding officer's report about the visit with Emily's husband, Matt

00:08:54Moore.

00:08:55On my own, I proactively pulled up that report and read the narrative to it.

00:09:00And something about it just didn't sit with me.

00:09:02What made your nose twitch about it, if that's the right word?

00:09:04Yeah.

00:09:05That inner gut feeling.

00:09:07It just felt like something was off.

00:09:10Turns out the neighbor's account of seeing Emily that Memorial Day morning had gotten fuzzy.

00:09:15Now he wasn't so sure when he'd seen her last.

00:09:18Detective Grubbs figured this missing woman story needed a deeper dive.

00:09:22He asked to be assigned to the case and then headed to the condo with some other officers.

00:09:28She ever been gone this long before?

00:09:30No.

00:09:31Not at all like this.

00:09:33So our next step was this bloodhound to see if we could get a track someplace.

00:09:37By noon, a bloodhound was tracking Emily's scent.

00:09:41The dog led investigators to a gravel drive between two houses just a few blocks away.

00:09:46They knocked on the doors. No one answered.

00:09:50Detectives asked Matt Moore to take them to the nearby woods where Emily liked to walk.

00:09:54Matt actually showed Detective Peachy and I that area that they would go and forage.

00:10:00Grubbs and two other detectives returned to the spot a little later, looked around, didn't see anything interesting.

00:10:07As police got to know Matt, they also learned more about Emily.

00:10:11Tell me about Emily Noble. Who is she turning out to be?

00:10:14She seemed to be a hard-working woman, worked for the state of Ohio.

00:10:19She worked at the Ohio Department of Medicaid.

00:10:22She and Matt had been married for two years.

00:10:25Matt had worked the tables in a Las Vegas casino before he left that job and moved to Ohio.

00:10:30Matt did not work, is that correct?

00:10:32He did not work.

00:10:34His mother had passed away and left him a sizable sum of money, so he didn't really need to work.

00:10:41The routine. He cooked, she took care of the house.

00:10:45They hung out, drank a bit, sometimes a lot.

00:10:48And when the COVID lockdown took hold, Emily started working from home.

00:10:53But life was rarely easy for Matt and Emily.

00:10:56He'd had a lot of death in her life.

00:10:58Yes, yes she had.

00:10:59She had a husband, right?

00:11:00Yep. She had a previous marriage and ultimately Mark committed suicide.

00:11:05By gun?

00:11:06Yes, sir.

00:11:06Wendy remembers how much Emily loved her first husband.

00:11:10How awful it was when he died in 2011.

00:11:14After Mark passed away, there was a couple years that were pretty dark.

00:11:19She would get just really sad, you know?

00:11:24Emily's parents died a few years later in sudden accidental deaths.

00:11:29Those who knew her say Emily turned to nature to heal herself.

00:11:33Chris Barton, a lifelong friend, said Emily put aside her own sadness by looking out for the people she loved.

00:11:40Thinking about them instead of thinking about what was going on with her I think a lot of the time.

00:11:44Gave her something to concentrate on if it wasn't, that it wasn't herself.

00:11:49She kept a photo collection of the edible plants she grew and collected.

00:11:53A visual progress report of her devotion to foraging.

00:11:57She often foraged in this woodland park.

00:11:59We took a lot of pictures with our phones.

00:12:02And it was just a place you could sit and just let nature be around you.

00:12:06She's a very good photographer.

00:12:07She really liked sunrise and sunset.

00:12:11She loved fog and water.

00:12:16Nature, obviously.

00:12:19She took a lot of selfies.

00:12:21So many selfies.

00:12:23Four years after her first husband died, she met Matt.

00:12:26And now he was part of the picture.

00:12:29Matt took this one showing him and Emily and his son Joey.

00:12:33This was their family unit.

00:12:35Because when Matt moved in with Emily, his teenage son did too.

00:12:40Police noticed that Joey was a painful subject for Matt Moore.

00:12:44The morning he reported Emily missing, he mentioned Joey right away.

00:12:48I have a gut feeling right here.

00:12:50When my son died, I'm sneaking.

00:12:53That was a terrible story.

00:12:55By the time Matt and Emily got married, Joey was suffering full-blown schizophrenia.

00:13:00Emily and Matt were doing their best with him.

00:13:03But nearly a year into the marriage, Joey died by suicide.

00:13:07Just 17 years old.

00:13:09He was found hanging in a nature preserve in Westerville.

00:13:13This was the second child Matt lost.

00:13:15The first son was only a toddler when he died of a sudden illness.

00:13:19I can't even imagine.

00:13:20Matt's friend, Arturo Ruggiroli.

00:13:23Tell me about losing Joey and what that meant for him.

00:13:26It was oblivion.

00:13:29There was nothing left of the person who he was for a while.

00:13:35Emily was also devastated by Joey's death.

00:13:38And now she was missing.

00:13:40Talented, complicated, beloved Emily.

00:13:43Westerville police are searching for a woman who has been missing since Memorial Day.

00:13:48Calls poured into the police tip line.

00:13:51Emily seemed to be everywhere.

00:13:53She was at the grocery store.

00:13:54She's at a homeless shelter.

00:13:56She's sleeping under a bridge.

00:13:57She's sleeping in a doorway.

00:13:59The Westerville PD chased down those tips, but nothing led to Emily.

00:14:04They headed to the bar where Matt and Emily were seen the night of her birthday.

00:14:07When I talked to the detective, he told me that she had gone missing and asked me how they were

00:14:14behaving that night and everything like that.

00:14:16They had the kind of banter that was like they were very lovey-dovey one minute and then they would

00:14:22be more so like there was tension the next minute.

00:14:27There wasn't much more to tell, but police did have one solid clue from those bloodhounds.

00:14:32Remember, they tracked Emily's scent to that driveway a few hundred yards away.

00:14:37Was that telling police something?

00:14:40Did she voluntarily get into a car in that driveway and take off?

00:14:44Was she dragged there and, you know, kidnapped?

00:14:47All good questions.

00:14:49Maybe police were looking at a stranger abduction.

00:14:51Or maybe the disappearance of Emily Noble had nothing to do with any stranger.

00:14:57Guys, I did not hurt my wife.

00:14:59I did not hurt my wife.

00:15:00I loved her.

00:15:17The Westerville PD was working the case of the missing Emily Noble, tracking down tips following leads.

00:15:23That driveway where bloodhounds lost Emily's scent, detectives went back to the two houses there and interviewed a homeowner.

00:15:31The people that resided there had no interaction with Emily, had not seen or heard anything, and they were ultimately

00:15:38cleared altogether.

00:15:41Dead end.

00:15:42I feel like we were trying to catch a ghost at that point because we didn't know what we were

00:15:47dealing with.

00:15:48You know, is she suicidal?

00:15:50Was she kidnapped?

00:15:52Did she run away with a boyfriend?

00:15:54All viable threads, theoretically.

00:15:55At that point, absolutely.

00:15:57Another viable thread, of course, was Matt.

00:16:00Investigators keyed in on the fact that he didn't even go out looking for Emily before he reported her missing.

00:16:06Didn't leave the house, didn't do any sort of searching on his own, just kind of hung out at the

00:16:12house.

00:16:13Police started hearing troubling things from her friends about her marriage to Matt.

00:16:18What is he doing during the day?

00:16:20Drinking.

00:16:21Really?

00:16:23Oh, Emily would get so mad.

00:16:25If he was drinking during the day, she said, do you need to wait till I get home from work?

00:16:31Wait till the bell hits five o'clock?

00:16:32Right.

00:16:33Emily's friend Wendy detected unhappiness in one of those photos from the night before Emily disappeared.

00:16:39She's looking at the camera, kind of steely-eyed, and he looks like he's crying.

00:16:45And I just think that picture's worth a thousand words.

00:16:49Others called the detectives with speculation about darker things.

00:16:53They felt that he was almost controlling.

00:16:57They felt that when Matt was in the picture, Emily was not her normal self anymore.

00:17:01There was never anything specific that Emily said that Matt has done this to me,

00:17:07but it just seemed to be a lot of speculation from the friends that something isn't right with Matt.

00:17:14Two days after Matt reported Emily missing, the husband agreed to sit down with detectives at the police department.

00:17:21This is a voluntary interview.

00:17:23Okay?

00:17:25Obviously, we need to do the best we can to get the full story. Anything you say can be...

00:17:31Detective Grubbs read him his rights, began probing about events before and after Emily's disappearance,

00:17:37and broke the news that John Kramer, the neighbor who said he'd seen Emily the morning she disappeared,

00:17:43now couldn't be sure of the timing.

00:17:45John, this one's backtracked on that.

00:17:47Okay.

00:17:48So...

00:17:48Yeah, that's kind of up in the air.

00:17:50And he read him for like eight to nine, and then he's now saying I can't...

00:17:54He's saying I can't swear to it.

00:17:55He can't swear to it.

00:17:56Maybe, maybe not.

00:17:57Could it be Sunday.

00:17:58So that makes it look bad for me, I guess.

00:18:02They turned to Matt's relationship.

00:18:04He'd handed over Emily's phone, and they'd been going through it.

00:18:08They asked Matt to rate his marriage.

00:18:10So the scale of one to ten, relationship with her, ten being bliss every day, honeymoon like a honeymoon,

00:18:17and one being...

00:18:18Did you read our text?

00:18:19Can't, can't, can't, can't stand each other.

00:18:20I'm just asking, which, what would you, what would you rate it?

00:18:22It would, it would fluctuate, like a sign graph, a sign wave, but we were on since six months, it

00:18:29was an eight.

00:18:30The last six months?

00:18:31Absolutely.

00:18:32An eight out of ten.

00:18:33Did you read our text?

00:18:34But then detectives shared a text they'd found from Emily to a friend.

00:18:38This was a month ago, okay?

00:18:39This is, this is heavy.

00:18:42Matt picked a flight with me yesterday and said some awful things.

00:18:45I'm not wearing my wedding ring.

00:18:49And that doesn't sound like somebody who's in a happy relationship.

00:18:52It was.

00:18:53I found out my wife texted that to somebody a month ago.

00:18:55I, I, I get it.

00:18:56I, I know, I know, I know, I'm not gonna say that that, those things, of course, there was a

00:19:00rollercoaster relationship,

00:19:02but it wasn't like anything that was, anything that you would think that someone would hurt someone over.

00:19:08It's not as heavy as you think it is.

00:19:10She would be like that at times because of her anger issues.

00:19:15It always swung back.

00:19:18What about some of the things they'd heard from Emily's friends?

00:19:20That maybe there was more going on than a burnt out romance.

00:19:24One even suggested Matt had hurt Emily.

00:19:27There was a, a time within the, the last year where she had bruises on her.

00:19:33And this friend, hold on, don't, don't, don't, don't I roll yet?

00:19:38I know.

00:19:38Let me, let me get it out.

00:19:42Where the friend was concerned that you were being physically abusive towards her.

00:19:46It never happened.

00:19:48Never.

00:19:49Let him finish.

00:19:49I, I don't know where you're going with this.

00:19:51Again and again, Matt insisted he would not harm Emily.

00:19:54Guys, I did not hurt my wife.

00:19:56I did not hurt my wife.

00:19:58I loved her.

00:20:00He took off his shirt when they asked and showed them he had no scratches, no bruises.

00:20:06And at the detective's suggestion, he agreed to take a voice stress analysis test, a type of lie detector.

00:20:13The tension in this tiny room was about to explode.

00:20:16You f***ing killed her.

00:20:18No, I didn't, sir.

00:20:19F***ing I didn't.

00:20:20I didn't kill her.

00:20:21You killed her.

00:20:37After an hour and a half in a cramped interview room, the detectives prepared to give Matt a kind of

00:20:42lie detector test, called a voice stress analysis test.

00:20:46I want you as relaxed as possible.

00:20:50I'm with the microphone.

00:20:51Okay.

00:20:51What's up?

00:20:52I just need to be nervous.

00:20:54You can just clip that to your shirt.

00:20:55Detective Grubbs told Matt a computer would measure the stress in his voice when he answered questions, some random, some

00:21:00not.

00:21:01Do you know where Emily is?

00:21:03No.

00:21:04Is this the month of May?

00:21:06Yes.

00:21:07Did you kill Emily?

00:21:09No.

00:21:10Voice stress analysis tests are considered unreliable by many experts.

00:21:14Still, the police told Matt the results of his test indicated deception.

00:21:18I don't know what happened to Emily.

00:21:20I don't know what happened to her.

00:21:25I failed this test.

00:21:26I failed it.

00:21:27The detectives kept returning to the question at hand.

00:21:30What do you think happened to Emily?

00:21:43Emily had been surrounded by suicides, so Matt was guessing that's what might have happened.

00:21:49She would do it where she would be easily found.

00:21:53They kept pressing him, prodding, until the pot boiled over.

00:21:57You f***ing killed her.

00:21:59No, I didn't, sir.

00:22:00F***ing didn't.

00:22:01I didn't kill her.

00:22:02You killed her, and it was an accident, and we need to get this resolved today.

00:22:06It didn't happen.

00:22:07It did happen.

00:22:08I'm going to tell you.

00:22:08She's dead.

00:22:10Where is she?

00:22:11What are you talking about?

00:22:12That's why we have you here.

00:22:13People are saying they've seen her.

00:22:15At that point, Emily was still a missing person, gone only two days.

00:22:20Was it too soon to hit him with the big stuff?

00:22:22I don't think so.

00:22:23You didn't have evidence that she was even dead, not to mention murdered.

00:22:27That's correct, but we also don't know what we're dealing with,

00:22:30and if Emily is alive and needs help, time is of the essence,

00:22:34and we are trying to recover her as quick as we can.

00:22:38But there'd be no more talking to Matt Moore.

00:22:40He refused to communicate directly with the police after that interview.

00:22:45Instead, he called his friend Arturo.

00:22:47When he spoke to me, he told me he went and did an interview,

00:22:52and by the end of the interview, they had accused him of murdering his wife.

00:22:57They were right in his teeth, weren't they?

00:22:58The way he made it sound was very much of a panic, of a fear of,

00:23:06I'm looking for help from these people.

00:23:08They're accusing me of murder.

00:23:10Now I don't know what to do. I need help.

00:23:13Help did come pouring in, but not for Matt.

00:23:17We're going to focus on the Alum Creek area today.

00:23:19As May 2020 ended and June began, the country was still in the grip of the first wave of COVID,

00:23:26with millions in lockdown.

00:23:28But in Westerville, scores of people took part in a socially distanced activity that might do some good.

00:23:34Searches, organized by the Facebook group Finding M Noble, started by her friend Wendy.

00:23:39A lot of us became really obsessed with the whole thing.

00:23:44I had a lot of time on my hands.

00:23:46So I would go to searches and do whatever I could to try to get Emily home,

00:23:50because she would do that for anyone.

00:23:52We will continue this until we get some kind of closure.

00:23:57Lisa Gordish, one of Emily's acquaintances from high school, signed up to search early on.

00:24:02They had a public search that met at the high school where we had graduated from.

00:24:07And I showed up and went on that search.

00:24:11It was exhausting work.

00:24:12But Lisa did it again and again, even organizing her own searches.

00:24:17Her sister, Sherry Reynolds, joined her.

00:24:19It was just this thing that kind of grabs ahold of you and you can't let go.

00:24:24It's sort of like what you did in the summer of 2020, right?

00:24:26Yes, yes.

00:24:27We'd have probably five, six, seven people on most searches with us.

00:24:33But you know who was not out there on those public searches?

00:24:35Matt.

00:24:37The cops thought that was odd.

00:24:40Celeste, often out searching herself, asked Matt directly, where was he?

00:24:44And he said, oh no, those people hate me.

00:24:46He wasn't entirely wrong at that point, was he Celeste?

00:24:48No.

00:24:50No surprise, social media had picked up the story.

00:24:54And many posts were negative about Matt, even cruel.

00:24:58Comments like this, can we all just agree the husband is guilty as F and hope the police act.

00:25:04And this, and his 17-year-old son hung himself almost a year ago.

00:25:08My daughter was close friends with him and said Matt was an awful father.

00:25:14Cameron Kissel, Joey's good friend, had stayed in touch with Matt after Joey's death.

00:25:19He says Matt was far from an awful father and had tried everything to help his son.

00:25:24And in the months after Emily disappeared, Cameron says Matt was searching in his own way.

00:25:30Every Monday I would get off of work and we would go out searching for Emily,

00:25:36hanging flyers, passing out these business cards he had made,

00:25:39brainstorming where she could have been, what could have happened.

00:25:43Matt's brother traveled to Westerville to help out, so did Arturo.

00:25:48We held out hope all the way through that this was some kind of mental break, perhaps,

00:25:55that she needed some time away and she's going to turn up.

00:25:59The drumbeat of negative comments in town continued.

00:26:02There was even a rumor going around which police heard,

00:26:05that Arturo and Matt's brother had come to Westerville not to help find Emily,

00:26:10but to help Matt cover up some nefarious deed.

00:26:13This is episode 246 of The Vanished.

00:26:16After his police interview, Matt was getting legal advice to stop talking.

00:26:21But he did speak to The Vanished, a true crime podcast about missing people.

00:26:26Even then, he didn't say much.

00:26:28I feel horrible because I can't help. I can't help find my wife.

00:26:32It's this thing I want to. They told me to shut up and I can't.

00:26:34I can't shut up because I'm just trying to find her.

00:26:37If he'd been trying to help his case, it didn't work.

00:26:40A podcast producer spoke to Detective Grubbs after she interviewed Matt.

00:26:44She told the detective she believed Matt killed his wife.

00:26:48The dark cloud that had settled on Matt would not budge.

00:26:52And Emily's whereabouts were still unknown.

00:26:54But that was about to change.

00:27:13It was a long, hot summer of fruitless searching.

00:27:16Detective Grubbs kept a progress report that reads like a litany of dead ends.

00:27:2011.20am, searched the area underneath the bridge on Polaris just west of Cleveland Avenue.

00:27:27I traveled to the UDF to follow up on a previous tip line call.

00:27:31I checked Confluence Park for Noble.

00:27:33As the summer waned, the tips did too.

00:27:37The big searches weren't so frequent.

00:27:39But sisters Lisa and Sherry were still out there searching every week.

00:27:43We grew up with a family of puzzle solvers.

00:27:48And so once that puzzle was there, it became very difficult to stop.

00:27:53Over that summer, the sisters picked up another teammate, Sue Sexton.

00:27:57Sue was happy to search anywhere and motivated for a particular reason.

00:28:0222, 23 years ago this year, a neighbor of mine named Patty went missing.

00:28:07And to this day, she hasn't been found.

00:28:10But not resolved, huh?

00:28:11Never resolved.

00:28:11This time she hoped it would be different.

00:28:14On a late summer day, they came across something that looked like evidence.

00:28:18It was a ceramic Christmas ornament.

00:28:21Was it connected to Emily?

00:28:23They sent pictures to Emily's family, but no one recognized it.

00:28:26The family and friends of missing Westerville woman Emily Noble continued their search for answers.

00:28:32In September, local media covered another big community search for Emily.

00:28:37Another exercise in frustration.

00:28:40But with fall coming, Lisa, Sue, and Sherry believed time was running out.

00:28:45I was afraid when the leaves started to fall that that evidence would be covered up.

00:28:50So I felt this urgency.

00:28:52You know, we have to go now.

00:28:53We have to go now.

00:28:54We can't wait.

00:28:55So one day in mid-September, they decided to go back to where they'd spotted that ornament.

00:29:00Maybe it meant something.

00:29:02And we had talked to Detective Grubbs the week before that.

00:29:05And he said to us specifically, don't be afraid to go someplace we've already gone.

00:29:14They showed me around the spot they were intent on researching.

00:29:18The first thing we did was look for the ornament.

00:29:21After all this time, they thought it might still be there.

00:29:27Lisa, you found it?

00:29:30Remarkably, it was.

00:29:32Here's the little ceramic angel that we found.

00:29:36I'll be.

00:29:37You found that very piece here?

00:29:39Yeah.

00:29:39It was right here on the ground.

00:29:42But on that day back in mid-September 2020, they wanted to push past this spot.

00:29:47It was getting close to dark.

00:29:48Yeah, it's September.

00:29:49It's getting chillier.

00:29:51My feet were soaking wet.

00:29:53Oh.

00:29:54Um, we were tired.

00:29:57And I said to Sue, when we were here before, there's an area that goes down over that way

00:30:03that we haven't done yet.

00:30:06And before it got dark, I just needed to go that way.

00:30:10They split up.

00:30:12Sherry peeled off to check one area.

00:30:14Sue headed to the creek.

00:30:15And Lisa headed to a spot she'd noticed before.

00:30:18It looked all but impassable.

00:30:20Even with a bustling four-lane highway just yards away, right over there,

00:30:25this particular section of woods was thick with branches and vines.

00:30:29Clearly no one thought to wade in.

00:30:31But on that early evening, September 16, 2020, Lisa Gordish did.

00:30:36So you're walking and pushing?

00:30:37Mm-hmm.

00:30:38Until I come to this clearing and stopped and turned and jumped.

00:30:46Because there was what I thought was a little girl sitting on her knees facing away from me.

00:30:52And I said, hi there.

00:30:54Because I just was startled that there was another person here with me.

00:30:59And then it started to sink in?

00:31:01Yeah.

00:31:02That something's wrong.

00:31:03Like this isn't what I think it is.

00:31:05The small figure was clothed, upright, with long dark hair, and terribly still.

00:31:11In one of those split-second moments that seemed to take forever, the truth dawned on Lisa.

00:31:17It had to be Emily Noble, the little that remained of her anyway.

00:31:21I made my way back to behind that log to have a sense of protection.

00:31:27Protection?

00:31:28My first feeling was really fear.

00:31:31She called out to Sue and Sherry.

00:31:34I could tell by the pitch of her voice that it was getting higher and higher.

00:31:37And that alarmed me.

00:31:38And I knew something was wrong.

00:31:41And it took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at.

00:31:44And I realized that my brain was telling me it was a small, skeletal thing, but I still

00:31:50couldn't completely wrap my eyes around it.

00:31:53So I pushed through just a little bit further.

00:31:56That's when I could put it together that I was seeing smaller, skeletal remains.

00:32:03Tess would later confirm what the searchers knew to be true.

00:32:06This was Emily Noble.

00:32:09She wasn't going to let us leave without her.

00:32:11Yeah.

00:32:11You thought there was a spiritual dynamic here, huh?

00:32:15I think there had to be.

00:32:17Yeah.

00:32:18Emily wanted to be found.

00:32:19Yeah.

00:32:21911, what is your emergency?

00:32:23Hi.

00:32:25We are searching for Emily Noble.

00:32:27We are in the wooded area.

00:32:29There's a person here.

00:32:31I don't know if it's for a dead body.

00:32:33It is a dead body?

00:32:34It is.

00:32:41Do we need guns or nothing?

00:32:43The sun was setting when the police pulled up.

00:32:45Body cams rolling.

00:32:47Shock all across the county.

00:32:48Yeah.

00:32:49Mm-hmm.

00:32:49All this time.

00:32:51Mm-hmm.

00:32:51Law enforcement hasn't found her.

00:32:52The dogs haven't found her.

00:32:54You guys, searching on a Wednesday, have found missing Emily Noble.

00:33:02Yeah.

00:33:02Like straight ahead.

00:33:03Like straight, straight ahead.

00:33:05We were there quite a long time.

00:33:07Yeah.

00:33:08Gave our statements.

00:33:09I'm going to need information from you guys.

00:33:11Yes, absolutely.

00:33:12What were you guys doing back here?

00:33:13Looking for Emily.

00:33:15Okay.

00:33:19What do we got?

00:33:20It's Emily.

00:33:21The image of Emily's remains is blurred in this police video.

00:33:26With more officers arriving, the police took stock of the awful scene.

00:33:31Detective Grubbs arrived about an hour later.

00:33:34I would say let's keep this dark right now since we're so close.

00:33:37At that point, are you starting to worry about blowback?

00:33:40My goodness, she's been here for almost four months and we missed her.

00:33:43Absolutely.

00:33:45It's, it was, the blowback is a good word for it, but it was almost, it was embarrassing.

00:33:55Because now he knew what Lisa, Sherry, Sue, and everyone else knew.

00:33:59After that long summer of searches big and small from downtown Columbus to rural areas

00:34:04miles away, Emily never got very far.

00:34:08Those houses, that's right where she lived.

00:34:11And that's where Matt Moore was that very night when he got the news.

00:34:16Next, he tells us his story.

00:34:18My sister called me and she's like, they found a body by your house.

00:34:21And I was just like, what?

00:34:25What?

00:34:26Where?

00:34:40Yeah.

00:34:41Lock it down.

00:34:42Lock this woods down for now.

00:34:4246.

00:34:43Make it as big as we can.

00:34:45After Emily Noble's remains were discovered in a tiny clearing in the woods, Westerville police

00:34:51officers and emergency responders worked into the night processing the scene.

00:34:55Yeah.

00:34:55That's a computer cord.

00:34:59That's a USB.

00:35:00That's a USB.

00:35:01Yep.

00:35:02Emily's skeletal remains were found in a kneeling position.

00:35:05A USB cord suspended from a branch was looped around her neck bones.

00:35:10And a water bottle containing alcohol was lying nearby.

00:35:14Emily, it seemed, had hanged herself.

00:35:17Can you imagine her finding her way down to that clearing in the woods and that dense brush

00:35:21and doing what she did?

00:35:22She was a brave person.

00:35:24Brave.

00:35:25Extremely brave.

00:35:26It was just, she had enough.

00:35:29Matt Moore wanted to share his side of the story.

00:35:32To tell us of the grief and guilt and terrible sadness he says he felt when Emily's body was

00:35:37discovered.

00:35:38Another apparent suicide.

00:35:41Emily's first husband, Matt's son, and then Emily herself.

00:35:47I've never been more in love with a person in my entire life.

00:35:50I feel awful that I didn't spend more time thinking about how she felt that she would do

00:35:55something like this.

00:35:56But, she wasn't sick like Joey.

00:36:00It was Emily.

00:36:02From the moment Emily disappeared, Matt was well aware that he was the subject of intense

00:36:07scrutiny.

00:36:08That he was seen as a killer.

00:36:09He wanted to tell us he's not the bad guy he was made out to be.

00:36:13And he wanted to talk about the good times with Emily.

00:36:16Starting with their love story.

00:36:19Emily and Matt were together for the better part of five years.

00:36:22They met online.

00:36:24It was 2015.

00:36:25He called her, but he says she picked him.

00:36:29Tell me, first impressions about you.

00:36:30She's an online name to you, huh?

00:36:32She was, yeah, this mysterious.

00:36:34Is this one of these click right, click left kind of things?

00:36:36Dark-eyed, small, petite, kind of, who's that?

00:36:40And we met.

00:36:41And we just right immediately, she picked me.

00:36:44You know how girls, they pick you.

00:36:47I got picked.

00:36:48So, I became Emily's boyfriend.

00:36:52Two years into the relationship, Matt moved back to Las Vegas, the romance apparently over.

00:36:58Matt says he was focused on Joey, struggling with his signs of serious mental illness.

00:37:03He went from being an amazing guitar player to not being able to play anymore.

00:37:07And then he would all of a sudden get better again.

00:37:10It's, it's a weird, it's just, it's horrible.

00:37:13Hearing voices, that kind of thing?

00:37:15Sure.

00:37:15Yeah, by then he was in the hospital.

00:37:18When you got someone that's sick like that, I needed help.

00:37:21And she just, there she was one night.

00:37:24She?

00:37:24Emily.

00:37:25She's what, on the phone or your messaging?

00:37:27No, yeah, text me and just, hey, what's going on?

00:37:29I'm just like, hey, I need help.

00:37:33You want to get married?

00:37:34She's like, yeah.

00:37:35Really?

00:37:36Just as simple as that?

00:37:37Mm-hmm.

00:37:37Yeah.

00:37:38It was like magic.

00:37:39It literally was like magic.

00:37:40She knew that offer was sort of, you get Joey too, right?

00:37:42Yes.

00:37:42She knew I was, I needed help with Joey.

00:37:45She knew.

00:37:46That's when Matt and Joey packed up the car and drove east to Emily's tidy little condo in Ohio.

00:37:52As Matt tells it, the three of them made it work.

00:37:54She taught us so much.

00:37:56This is the way I want things done here.

00:37:57And we did it.

00:37:58It sounds like she's Charles in charge here, huh?

00:38:00She is.

00:38:01She ran the show.

00:38:02Every aspect of it.

00:38:03Emily has rules and they will be followed.

00:38:05They will.

00:38:05And it was a good, they were good rules.

00:38:07We needed it.

00:38:07They were structured.

00:38:08It was folding laundry, loading the dishwasher.

00:38:12That was one of his jobs.

00:38:13Everything.

00:38:14Then after the dreadful event, Joey hanging himself, Matt and Emily struggled.

00:38:19Both grieving, Matt drank heavily, Emily saw a therapist fighting anxiety and depression.

00:38:26I knew she had serious problems, but it was just, I didn't have the bandwidth in my head to deal

00:38:31with her.

00:38:32She was suicidal.

00:38:33She made it apparent.

00:38:35She said, she would say it, I'm going to kill myself if you leave me.

00:38:38That was conversations spoken out?

00:38:41I don't know, like three times she said it.

00:38:42She would just come into the room.

00:38:43What triggered that thing?

00:38:44Because I just wasn't paying attention to her, I think.

00:38:47This is after Joey?

00:38:48She would say things, yeah, and just like, you know what?

00:38:51You've got to leave me be.

00:38:53Had you ever said, I'm out of here?

00:38:54No, absolutely not.

00:38:55I was never going to go anywhere.

00:38:56I was so in love with her and I was just, I couldn't have made it without her.

00:39:00No, I needed her.

00:39:00Did you also love her?

00:39:02To death.

00:39:02Different things, needing and loving.

00:39:04To death.

00:39:06She was perfect.

00:39:09That's how Matt says he saw the relationship, but what about Emily?

00:39:13Matt said some awful things I'm not wearing my wedding.

00:39:14Remember that text police confronted him with?

00:39:17The one Emily sent a friend saying she wasn't wearing her wedding ring.

00:39:21In fact, when her body was found, her wedding ring was nearby.

00:39:25As Matt recalled, it was just part of the back and forth of life with Emily.

00:39:30Emily would go from this extreme, I'm taking my wedding ring off.

00:39:34And then the next day would be right back to everything was fine.

00:39:38Fine and even fine.

00:39:40Like the day Matt flew a drone inside the condo just two weeks before Emily disappeared.

00:39:48That's Emily laughing in the background.

00:39:51And then she was gone.

00:39:54And the police refused to believe that he wasn't involved.

00:39:57You killed her and it was an accident.

00:39:59They did this thing to try to rattle me.

00:40:01But there was nothing to rattle because I didn't do anything.

00:40:04He says at first he did want to help police find his wife.

00:40:07I took a lie detector test.

00:40:09Why'd you agree to that?

00:40:10Why'd you agree to a lie detector?

00:40:11Why would you be afraid of a lie detector test if you don't have anything to lie about?

00:40:14I didn't think anything of it.

00:40:15I didn't know.

00:40:16While the police in much of the town had branded him a killer,

00:40:19he says he was clinging to hope that Emily had decided to take off on her own.

00:40:24He even gave $10,000 to Crimestoppers so they could offer a reward for information.

00:40:30The dogs took them to this guy's driveway and lost her scent in the middle of the road like she

00:40:35had gotten in a car.

00:40:36I'm hopeful that's what happened.

00:40:38Were you a little hesitant to go over to the parking lot at the church and join all the searchers?

00:40:42The police.

00:40:43Yeah.

00:40:44You don't join police on searches after you've been accused of murder.

00:40:47Was this the case that law enforcement had left the station and could not be slowed down?

00:40:51Yeah.

00:40:51It's like a train comes pulling out of the road.

00:40:53Is that what you were feeling?

00:40:54Yeah.

00:40:55And you can't.

00:40:56It's on a train track.

00:40:56It's a train.

00:40:57You can't stop it.

00:40:58You're being railroaded.

00:40:59You're like, how do I stop this?

00:41:01Well, they found her.

00:41:03Maybe that would stop it.

00:41:06Emily found.

00:41:07And it looked like she died by suicide, not murder.

00:41:11Those cruel accusations from the police and the court of public opinion were all behind him.

00:41:16Right?

00:41:17Remember, you're watching Dateline.

00:41:19There's more to come for Matt right around the corner.

00:41:36The question, what had happened to Emily Noble, had been answered.

00:41:41At least as far as Matt Moore and his friends were concerned.

00:41:45I remember the day they found her body, that's when things like, you know, definitely changed

00:41:50because now we knew what happened.

00:41:53He was lying on the couch with his hands over his eyes, hands over his head because he couldn't

00:41:59believe it.

00:41:59He didn't want to believe it.

00:42:00What details of the discovery stuck with you?

00:42:04That she had hung herself.

00:42:08That it was somewhere she was familiar with.

00:42:12That USB cord, the kneeling position.

00:42:15Matt Moore says the awful truth was clear, to him anyway.

00:42:20She put the thing around her neck and she just leaned into it.

00:42:24It's a partially suspended hanging.

00:42:26Looking back on her last day before their birthday night out, he wonders if he missed the signs.

00:42:32They had taken a drive out to the country.

00:42:34We collected spring water on the way back.

00:42:37Halfway through, we stopped.

00:42:38It's gorgeous.

00:42:39The sun's shining.

00:42:40It's just a beautiful day.

00:42:41She was a little quiet.

00:42:43And when using that word quiet, what was different?

00:42:45What were you thinking?

00:42:46I would say things, because I'm a clown, to try to make her laugh.

00:42:50And she didn't laugh at all.

00:42:51She just like looked out the window.

00:42:53And now, maybe Matt thought that discovery in the woods would put an end to all the questions.

00:42:58But police were not ready to declare this case closed.

00:43:02Just seeing her finding the remains, did it explain what had happened here?

00:43:05Did it tell its story?

00:43:07At that point, no.

00:43:08And it still didn't seem right.

00:43:12It just, it's that inner gut feeling that you have.

00:43:15It just, it seemed like there was more to the story than what we were seeing at this point.

00:43:18She took off, she went into the woods, and she hung herself.

00:43:21That, that's one theory, absolutely.

00:43:23And, you know, another theory is that this was staged to, to look like a suicide.

00:43:28The question quickly took shape.

00:43:30Was it suicide or homicide?

00:43:33The only way that we're going to be able to get a better feel for that is through Emily's body

00:43:38itself.

00:43:39She'd been out in the elements all summer.

00:43:41That's correct.

00:43:42Her remains were mostly bones by then.

00:43:44Okay.

00:43:45There's no going back.

00:43:46But if you had found her two days in, it would have been a different story.

00:43:49Absolutely.

00:43:50You could have had visible bruising.

00:43:52You could have had marks around the neck, any defensive wounds.

00:43:56You know, any other evidence that, that could have been there was just gone due to the passage of time.

00:44:02Emily's friends, the ones we spoke to, didn't need an autopsy to confirm what they already believed.

00:44:09Despite what Matt had said about Emily, they were convinced she would never, ever end her own life.

00:44:15It's just not in her nature to me, you know.

00:44:18I just don't, of all the things that she's been through, I can't think of anything that would bring her

00:44:23to do that.

00:44:24You know, or anybody could drive her over the edge like that, you know.

00:44:32And remember, Emily's last night was her birthday.

00:44:35Friends say she wouldn't harm herself on that day of all days.

00:44:39Her sister's birthday is the day after hers.

00:44:42So they always talked on the 25th, because they were the same age for a day.

00:44:47And she promised her sister she would not kill herself.

00:44:51So I, I know she didn't kill herself.

00:44:55Despite her past troubles, many friends say she loved her life too much to end it.

00:45:00She was always full of life and love and bubbly and just so much fun.

00:45:07Detective Grubbs was listening to Emily's loved ones and their concerns were mirroring his own.

00:45:12He knew Emily had been ripped up by Joey's death.

00:45:15But his takeaway, Emily was dealing with it.

00:45:19Matt was not.

00:45:20She had been seeing a counselor.

00:45:22And the most striking thing with that is that she was concerned about Matt's mental health after Joey's suicide.

00:45:32And she was trying to figure out the best way possible to help Matt through all this.

00:45:38So she's telling the therapist, he's, I'm worried about my guy here.

00:45:41Yes.

00:45:43Delaware County Assistant Prosecutor Mark Sleeper was looking hard at the Emily Noble case and noticing even little details.

00:45:50Remember how the bed was made the morning Emily was reported missing?

00:45:54So I see that the bed was made. Did you do that or she did that?

00:45:57That seemed to be a clue for investigators.

00:45:59They suspected Emily never actually got to bed that night because she was already dead.

00:46:05I find it ultimately very ridiculous to think that Emily woke up that morning after having a nice evening out,

00:46:11decided to make her bed before she wandered off into the woods to hang herself.

00:46:14On the other hand, she is a neatnik. There's a house that you could literally eat off the floor.

00:46:18I mean, I don't think that's totally inconsistent.

00:46:21I find it in light of all the other evidence to be an absurd version of events.

00:46:27So if not suicide just because it couldn't be, it had to be homicide.

00:46:31That notion started percolating through social media and took hold.

00:46:36And all of a sudden the Facebook page that read Finding M Noble changed to Justice for Emily Noble.

00:46:42Matt felt law enforcement was bearing down on him. His friends did too.

00:46:47The police started following him around everywhere.

00:46:50You'd see him on his security cameras. They would just pull up and wait right outside of his house at

00:46:54weird hours.

00:46:55In the morning, in the night, he became very paranoid of going anywhere.

00:47:01Because he, I mean, he was afraid something was going to happen to him.

00:47:04There he is.

00:47:04Matt Moore had every reason to worry.

00:47:07Put your hands on your eyes!

00:47:08Hands on your face, no!

00:47:09Do not f***ing move!

00:47:11Put your hands back on your head!

00:47:12A takedown in sleepy Westerville.

00:47:31The Westerville Police Department, in a suburban village with tidy houses and manicured lawns, takes pride in its community relations

00:47:39and crime prevention.

00:47:41Steve Grubbs had been a full-time detective about two and a half years when he asked for the Emily

00:47:46Noble case.

00:47:48This was his first time leading a homicide investigation.

00:47:52Police had already searched Matt and Emily's neighborhood, their cars, their home, all just a short distance from the woods

00:47:59where she was found.

00:48:00Was there any reason to believe that she had been killed somewhere and then brought to that place?

00:48:04No, we didn't.

00:48:05And strung up?

00:48:06We, you know, the condo obviously had been thoroughly searched at that point.

00:48:11With no trace of a crime anywhere else, Detective Grubbs operated on the theory that Emily was killed in the

00:48:18woods and that Matt was clearly the killer.

00:48:21Even Celeste, who Matt considered a friend, had come around to the police point of view.

00:48:26Did you believe at that point, Celeste, that she was in fact murdered and had not committed suicide and that

00:48:32Matt had something to do with it?

00:48:33Maybe the person who killed her?

00:48:34Yes.

00:48:35I have a friend who is a former homicide detective and she went through the fact that usually when a

00:48:45person disappears, the killer is the spouse or someone very close to them.

00:48:53Put together your theory in one place of what happened to them, say from the time they returned from their

00:48:58evening of birthday celebration and the drinks.

00:49:00I would suspect that Emily might have got a little snippy because sometimes she does, you know, we're all human.

00:49:06And it probably just kind of backfired.

00:49:10Court of Public Opinion calls these things pretty quickly.

00:49:12I mean, I...

00:49:12We don't need to go to trial, we've got it figured out.

00:49:14You've done enough of these shows, I mean, you know, the spouse is always a suspect, right?

00:49:18That's the bias out there, right?

00:49:19Yeah, for sure.

00:49:19Does it bleed into official investigations, I wonder?

00:49:22Um, I don't think so.

00:49:23I mean, I think that law enforcement knows that that's a person that they have to look at and either

00:49:29clear or figure out that they've got a real suspect there.

00:49:31And, um, but I don't think that had any impact in this particular case.

00:49:37For now, public opinion had to wait in the wings.

00:49:40The mechanics of strangulation were about to take center stage.

00:49:44I think it's a story going to be told by Bones.

00:49:46This is going to be an expert and experts duel.

00:49:49Yeah, I think that's fair.

00:49:50Once the remains were found, uh, they ultimately ended up with, uh, Ohio State.

00:49:55Emily's remains were so dried out and decomposed, the coroner decided they needed a special kind of examination.

00:50:01So he called on some experts at the Ohio State University to analyze Emily's bones.

00:50:07They issued this report, which concluded that Emily suffered fractures in her neck and her face, some old, some from

00:50:14around the time of death.

00:50:16It's called perimortem trauma.

00:50:18A fracture along, uh, the nasal bones.

00:50:21Um, and the second is the perimortem fracture of, uh, in the neck.

00:50:27No surprise, perhaps, that the bones in her neck were fractured.

00:50:30But a new nasal fracture, that was interesting.

00:50:33Could it have been an old ski accident or a car accident or something?

00:50:36And it just healed itself?

00:50:37No, according to the doctors, it happened around the time of her death.

00:50:40So, something she's been beating about the face?

00:50:43That's correct.

00:50:44Prosecutors sent the report to an emergency physician with special training in forensic medicine.

00:50:50His name is Bill Smock.

00:50:52He produced his own report with an illustration, concluding that Emily Noble was murdered.

00:50:57This, he said, was a staged suicide.

00:51:00After Dr. Smock's report came back, I think it, uh, confirmed what I, what I believe, that we had a

00:51:06homicide and it was worth prosecuting.

00:51:07Is Smock the most important development in your case?

00:51:10Oh, he's very important, for sure.

00:51:13The Westerville police also knew this.

00:51:16Matt's first wife had accused him of domestic violence two decades earlier in Las Vegas.

00:51:21She told police he choked her.

00:51:23It was wrong. I shouldn't have put my hands on her, but, you know, it was a long time ago.

00:51:27It was what it was. They came, arrested me. They let me go. I went home.

00:51:31No charges?

00:51:31No. No, they dropped everything. And there wasn't any problem after that.

00:51:34We had, we had Joey. There wasn't any violence after that.

00:51:39But that old story looked bad 20 years later.

00:51:42Now, armed with those forensic reports, the Westerville police and prosecutors figured they had what they needed.

00:51:49I think that, uh, there were no other suspects in this universe that could have committed this crime on that

00:51:54timeline.

00:51:55On June 17th, 2021, law enforcement descended on Matt Moore, like SEAL Team 6.

00:52:02The police video looked like an action movie takedown on a suburban street.

00:52:06Put your hands over your eyes!

00:52:07Hang on your face now!

00:52:08Do not f***ing move!

00:52:10Use your left hand and unlock the door!

00:52:13Put your hands back on your head!

00:52:16Do not move!

00:52:18They were ready for me. Perfect.

00:52:20It's pulse-pounding footage.

00:52:22Yeah.

00:52:22It's porn for the Blue Line crowd.

00:52:24It got over a half million views, just that alone, on YouTube.

00:52:27All right. Step on out, man.

00:52:29I mean, here are these guys. Body armor, tactical weapons.

00:52:31You guys could have just called me. It's kind of a joke, right?

00:52:33I was like, what are you doing? What's with all this?

00:52:36You know, literally, you could have just called me.

00:52:40And then you were charged with first-degree murder?

00:52:43Two counts of murder and one count of felonious assault.

00:52:48With that, Matt Moore was issued a jail jumpsuit and waited for trial.

00:52:52More than one year later, his fate would hang on the opinion of forensic experts.

00:52:58One in particular was prepared to tell the jury that Emily's bones proved she was murdered.

00:53:04This death is a homicidal death based upon the nature of the fractures in Emily's neck.

00:53:27On August 17th, 2022, the courthouse in Delaware County, Ohio, was abuzz as TV cameras began covering the trial of

00:53:36Matthew Moore.

00:53:37This is a staged suicide scene.

00:53:41I watched as much of the trial as I could stand to when I wasn't there.

00:53:45It was just a sad story. It was really sad to see it unfold.

00:53:52It had been more than two years since Emily Noble's disappearance, and the case against her husband, according to the

00:53:58prosecution, was clear.

00:53:59Emily's bones showed she was murdered, and Matt Moore's behavior gave him away.

00:54:05I was dispatched to an address on a report of a missing person.

00:54:09Sergeant Robert Hollis, the responding officer with a body cam, testified the first day.

00:54:14Hey, how you doing?

00:54:15He told the jury about his conversation with Matt Moore, how Matt actually described the spot where Emily would eventually

00:54:22be found.

00:54:23We're on that bridge. There's where she likes to go, where a lot of the edibles are.

00:54:28So literally, that's her walk.

00:54:30Did you go there today looking for her?

00:54:32No, I didn't.

00:54:33If your wife is missing and you think you know where she is, why not just go walk that path?

00:54:38Emily's loved ones testified, of course.

00:54:40I was called to the stand.

00:54:42Tell me about that moment. You're here, he's there, you're looking in his eye, what's going on?

00:54:46Do you see him in the courtroom today?

00:54:49I had to look around. He was all shaven and his hair short and dressed nicely.

00:54:57Yes.

00:54:59It wasn't Wild Mountain Matt?

00:55:00No, it wasn't. No.

00:55:02I love Celeste. She was Emily's best friend, absolutely.

00:55:06It broke my heart when I finally came to realize that she thought I did something to her.

00:55:12Celeste told the jury that Emily seemed just fine a couple of days before she disappeared, certainly not depressed.

00:55:18And what was Emily's demeanor while you guys were together?

00:55:22She was very happy while we were together.

00:55:25Another friend, Suzanne Cavanaugh, testified that if Emily had a problem, it was Matt.

00:55:30She said he drank to excess and seemed possessive of Emily.

00:55:34What's more, the last time she saw Emily, there were bruises on her arms.

00:55:38Did you ask Emily about it?

00:55:41I did.

00:55:42And could you describe for the jury her emotional state based on what you asked her about the bruises?

00:55:54Very defensive.

00:55:59Our conversation became very heated.

00:56:02The prosecution continued to build its backdrop story of a marriage in trouble.

00:56:07They used text between Emily and Matt to bolster their theory.

00:56:11This is one of the exchanges Detective Steven Grubbs read to the jury, starting with a text from Emily.

00:56:17It's difficult to impossible to talk with you when you have vodka brewing.

00:56:22And what was the defense response to that?

00:56:24Matthew Moore says that is an excuse.

00:56:27You are afraid to be confronted with things you don't agree with.

00:56:30Your intellect is shallow.

00:56:33Prosecutors showed the interrogation, not the part where police accused Matt of murder, but this part, where Matt, early on,

00:56:40seemed to bring suspicion upon himself.

00:56:42I want to get this going because I didn't do it and I want you to find whatever the hell

00:56:46happened to her.

00:56:47Me too.

00:56:47I want it to happen.

00:56:51Detective, as you began that discussion with Mr. Moore, anything stand out to you about your initial interaction with him?

00:56:57Yes, he stated he didn't do it.

00:57:01Had you accused him of doing anything in particular at that time?

00:57:05No, sir.

00:57:07The jury heard that Matt stopped talking directly to police and didn't participate in the public searches.

00:57:13And, remember the public speculation that Matt's friend and brother helped him in some mysterious, possibly nefarious way?

00:57:20The prosecutor didn't get specific, but he did tell the jury that Matt wrote each man a check for $5

00:57:26,000.

00:57:27This is another copy of a check that was filled out and signed by Matthew Moore.

00:57:32And who was that check written to?

00:57:35Arturo Rogaroli.

00:57:37On day five of the trial, the prosecution got down to the all-important science.

00:57:42The state's expert, Amanda Agnew, director of the Skeletal Biology Research Lab at The Ohio State University, issued the report

00:57:50that jump-started the case against Matt Moore.

00:57:52She concluded there were four fractures in Emily's neck bones.

00:57:56The hyoid bone, which is very high in the neck, sort of underneath your jaw, as well as the laryngeal

00:58:09cartilages that surround your voice box, essentially.

00:58:15She also testified, see those red arrows, that Emily's nasal bones were fractured around the time of death.

00:58:22There was some perimortem trauma in the, or on the nasal bones, and around the nasal aperture, or where the

00:58:32nose is on the face.

00:58:34So we call the next witness?

00:58:35And then came the prosecution's star witness, Dr. Bill Smock, who serves as medical director for the Training Institute on

00:58:42Strangulation Prevention.

00:58:44He told the jury Emily suffered what he called an acute fracture to her face.

00:58:49Ms. Emily Nobles is saying significant blunt force trauma to her face.

00:58:53If there is enough force to create a fracture, even a small fracture, that says there is significant blunt force

00:58:59trauma to the nose.

00:59:01And you see that?

00:59:02Yes.

00:59:03His point, Emily was punched in the face when she died. That's certainly not consistent with suicide.

00:59:09But the overriding question was, did Emily kill herself with that USB cord?

00:59:14Dr. Smock's answer was, no way.

00:59:17He used that illustration from his report, along with a model, to demonstrate the location of those fractured bones.

00:59:24They are too far apart, he said, to have been broken by one thin cord.

00:59:29So you've got a significant distance between these four and or two on either side, anatomical structure here and here.

00:59:40Smock testified someone's hands broke those bones in Emily's neck, not a ligature.

00:59:46Then he added some details that didn't appear in his original report.

00:59:50Now, in your training and experience, have you ever seen the same fracture pattern to a woman weighing less than

00:59:59110 pounds?

01:00:00No, ma'am. I've never seen it personally and it's not in the medical literature.

01:00:05Nowhere in the history of forensic medicine are there fractures like Emily had in her neck associated with an incomplete

01:00:12hanging for somebody that's her weight.

01:00:15Never been reported.

01:00:16Where is this database? Where do you go to?

01:00:18You go to the forensic medical literature.

01:00:20Do you trust that database, doctor?

01:00:22I do. It's the only database that we have.

01:00:24Ultimately, as we sit here today, I still believe the strongest piece of evidence is Dr. Smock saying that those

01:00:29quadruple fractures could not have been caused by that ligature.

01:00:33This was making sense to friends like Wendy.

01:00:35She didn't weigh enough to break her own hyoid bones by hanging from a little bush on her knees.

01:00:45So at this point, you may be wondering, experts, okay, but where's the good stuff that all juries want to

01:00:51hear?

01:00:51The DNA, the blood evidence, crime scene analysis, maybe a witness or surveillance camera shot.

01:00:57Nope, they had none of that.

01:01:00And if you're going into trial with a physical evidence-like case, as this was, you certainly don't want to

01:01:06be opposed by this lawyer.

01:01:07She has a fearsome success record in loss-caused cases.

01:01:12Up next, Diane Manashi for the defense.

01:01:15Detective, how are you?

01:01:31Matt Moore's defense attorney got straight to the point in her opening statement.

01:01:35The evidence will show that the state's theory is based on speculation and inferences.

01:01:40Diane Manashi said prosecutors didn't have any evidence that Matt Moore killed his wife.

01:01:45And simply members of the jury, their theory doesn't make sense.

01:01:52Even so, Matt Moore became the only suspect within days of Emily's disappearance.

01:01:58Why have the cops fixed on him? What's happened?

01:02:00Well, because it's an easy fix. You know, it's an easy fix and an obvious one.

01:02:05And I think that you can't just focus on one person, right?

01:02:08You need to exhaust all possible avenues in suspects. And they just didn't do that.

01:02:12Detective, how are you?

01:02:14I'm okay, ma'am. How are you?

01:02:15So when it came time to cross-examine lead investigator Steve Grubbs, the defense attorney zeroed in on basic things

01:02:22she said the police failed to do.

01:02:24And the shirt that is pictured here was found in the hamper.

01:02:30Yes, ma'am.

01:02:32In other words, the very shirt Matt was wearing on his last night with Emily.

01:02:36That shirt, was that submitted for testing?

01:02:41Um...

01:02:44I don't think it was, no.

01:02:47Investigators never found anything to connect Matt to the crime.

01:02:50No blood, no tissue, no fibers.

01:02:53And remember the dogs that tracked Emily's scent here?

01:02:56Did the investigators drop the ball when it came to following up?

01:02:59Just want to make sure the jurors know that you never conducted any surveillance with respect to that house that's

01:03:06located where the bloodhounds tracked on two different occasions.

01:03:10Is that correct?

01:03:11That's correct.

01:03:12I didn't see in your police report either that you ever requested any CCHs or criminal histories on anyone that

01:03:19lived in that house or in and around that area.

01:03:23Would you agree with me on that?

01:03:25That's correct.

01:03:27And what about those text messages that Emily and Matt sent one another?

01:03:31Prosecutors presented them as proof of a failed marriage, evidence of a motive for murder.

01:03:36On cross, the defense lawyer dug in.

01:03:39Let me be very clear.

01:03:41Messages from Matt Moore's phone do not include the following words.

01:03:47Let's go through this.

01:03:48I hate you, correct?

01:03:50That's correct.

01:03:51I want you dead, correct?

01:03:54Correct.

01:03:55That is never in there.

01:03:56I am going to kill you, correct?

01:03:59Correct.

01:04:00I am going to divorce you, not in there, correct?

01:04:05No.

01:04:06In fact, the one message you did read was where he said, if you, if you want to divorce me,

01:04:15let me know.

01:04:17Isn't that correct?

01:04:18That's correct.

01:04:20As for the very first lead police had, the across the street neighbor who said he saw Emily on Memorial

01:04:26Day morning.

01:04:26Your neighbor saw her in the garage about between 9 and 10 a.m. this morning.

01:04:32Police said the neighbor, John Kramer, later changed his story.

01:04:35But when defense attorney Menashe sent her own investigator to talk to him, the investigator reported that Kramer just wasn't

01:04:42100% certain he saw Emily that morning.

01:04:45John Kramer, for the record, did not retract his testimony or his statement to police.

01:04:51What he said is he can't be positive.

01:04:55He's not positive now that he saw her on the morning of the 25th.

01:05:00That's what he said.

01:05:02When she wasn't going after testimony, Menashe was picking away at the prosecutor's actions, saying they put up evidence without

01:05:09explanation.

01:05:11What about those checks?

01:05:13What about those checks?

01:05:15Like those $5,000 checks Matt wrote to his brother and his friend Arturo.

01:05:19It's like that expression that we all know when you just throw things up and you see what'll stick.

01:05:26And the rumor mill had it to hear the guy from Vegas coming in, hating and abetting.

01:05:30Maybe helping him clean up and move things around.

01:05:33You know, a good fella coming out there and money transacting over a missing person.

01:05:38Hmm, something weird must have happened.

01:05:40But if I was that guy, would I have accepted a check?

01:05:44In the end, Arturo says Matt was just helping him with his expenses during a tough time.

01:05:50One by one, the defense attorney went after the prosecutor's witnesses.

01:05:53When she crossed Emily's friend Sue Cavanaugh, who testified she'd seen bruises on Emily's arm,

01:06:00Menashe made the point the two women were no longer close.

01:06:03February of 2019 is the last time you see Emily in person. Is that right?

01:06:10Yes.

01:06:11You're aware that she went missing on May 25th of 2020?

01:06:17Correct.

01:06:18As his attorney chipped away at the state's case, Matt started to feel that maybe, just maybe, this would all

01:06:25be behind him soon.

01:06:26As you watched her work the case, work the room, what were you seeing?

01:06:31She, there was things, I can't be real specific about it, but there was things that she would figure out

01:06:35on the fly.

01:06:36They would do what they were doing and she would get up there and be like, wow, that's, there's things

01:06:40that I need to tell her,

01:06:43so that she can get up there and argue that point that they just made.

01:06:45And she would get up there and she knew exactly what to say. I'm like, how would she know that?

01:06:48That said, the defense faced a huge challenge taking on the renowned expert who insisted that Emily Noble died by

01:06:56manual strangulation after a punch in the face.

01:06:59But what if that wasn't what really happened?

01:07:02I did not see any skeletal evidence that she was punched in the face.

01:07:19Emily Noble had a lot of friends and almost everyone we spoke to was rooting for the state.

01:07:25I was hopeful there would be a conviction.

01:07:27I thought he killed her.

01:07:28I thought he was guilty and I thought there was enough evidence to convict him.

01:07:33They heard the forensic evidence that Emily was punched in the face and strangled by someone's hands, presumably Matt Moore's.

01:07:40You can't punch yourself in the face.

01:07:43And then they watched as Diane Menashe attempted to take apart the prosecution's forensic evidence bit by bit.

01:07:50You're only as good as the information you get.

01:07:53In court, she suggested that the first scientist to handle Emily's delicate remains may have damaged them.

01:07:58Well, the bones were soaked in bleach and we know that bleach weakens and whitens bones.

01:08:04We also know that the bones were moved everywhere.

01:08:06They were moved to the morgue, to a cooler, to the slab, to a cooler, to OSU.

01:08:12If you get the bones that haven't been properly handled and preserved and are more brittle than they should be,

01:08:18right, you're getting garbage.

01:08:20This is not rubbish.

01:08:22It's an expression Diane Menashe likes, garbage in, garbage out.

01:08:26Meaning when you put bad data in the pipeline, you get bad results.

01:08:30So when she got a crack at the prosecution's star witness, Dr. Smock.

01:08:34Have you ever heard the expression garbage in, garbage out?

01:08:37Yes, ma'am.

01:08:38She suggested all his damning conclusions were based on faulty and certainly not first-hand information.

01:08:44You were not at the scene to see how the ligature was around her neck, correct?

01:08:50That is correct.

01:08:52There is no one that saw that, right, well, the pictures we don't have, and you were not there.

01:09:00That is correct, I was not there.

01:09:02You also were not there and do not know if, over the course of four months, the ligature began in

01:09:11one place and ended up in the other as the corpse went from a 90-pound woman to being 18

01:09:19pounds of skeleton.

01:09:20You do not know that either because you were not there.

01:09:23That is correct.

01:09:25Once the defense was through with the prosecution witnesses, she got started on her own.

01:09:30There were only two, and this was the one who counted.

01:09:34I'm Dr. Heather Garvin.

01:09:36And where do you work?

01:09:37I am a full professor of anatomy at Des Moines University.

01:09:41Dr. Heather Garvin is also a board-certified forensic anthropologist, someone who analyzes skeletal remains to help solve criminal cases.

01:09:50She examined hundreds of photos of Emily Noble's remains and came to at least one surprising, case-altering conclusion.

01:09:57Emily wasn't punched in the face when she died.

01:10:00She saw old fractures from a broken nose that had healed years before, but found no evidence of perimortem, time

01:10:07-of-death fractures in her face.

01:10:09No evidence of perimortem fractures to the craniofacial region.

01:10:13I did not see any skeletal evidence that she was punched in the face.

01:10:16If you could take out the blow to the face, right, that was just one more thing to take out

01:10:22of the theory.

01:10:23And remember how Dr. Smock demonstrated that a USB cord, the ligature, could not break those bones in Emily's neck?

01:10:30Well, the defense argued he's getting his anatomy all wrong, starting with the drawing he used in his report.

01:10:36So it was in response to this drawing that you included these images in your report?

01:10:44Yes, because I felt it was misleading.

01:10:46Misleading, she says, because the bones that were broken in Emily's neck look far apart in this picture, and in

01:10:53Dr. Smock's model.

01:10:55Dr. Garvin pointed out that's not what the human neck looks like.

01:10:58She showed us a 3D printout, a model, of the throat structure that's very close to real-life scale.

01:11:04These bones are close together and connected with a membrane.

01:11:08Dr. Garvin says given the right circumstances, those bones could break with a USB cord.

01:11:14If the ligature is going around the neck and puts pressure right here on either side,

01:11:21you're going to get bending of the bone and a fracture of the hyoid bone here and a fracture of

01:11:25the thyroid cartilage there.

01:11:27Dr. Garvin says no one can say for sure how Emily's neck bones were fractured, no matter what Dr. Smock

01:11:33says about the medical literature.

01:11:35I'm trained at looking at skeletal material and determining what kind of mechanism would cause those fracture patterns.

01:11:42In Emily Noble's case, the two fractures on either side appear to occur from some source of compression,

01:11:48but you're going to get that same compression whether there's a ligature there or manual strangulation.

01:11:53You can't differentiate between them.

01:11:56Nothing further.

01:11:58Watching in court, Matt Moore says he was still wondering when the proverbial other shoe would drop.

01:12:03I didn't know. There had to have been something. I'm arrested for murder.

01:12:07There must be evidence. Something. There must be something that's there.

01:12:12If he was waiting for a moment of truth, it happened, sort of, at the prosecution's closing argument.

01:12:18Only then did assistant prosecutor Mark Sleeper offer the state's theory of when and where Matt Moore killed Emily Noble.

01:12:25Emily Noble comes home and goes on a walk while the defendant's on a long phone call and playing around

01:12:31on his phone.

01:12:32After he gets off that, there's a 40-minute gap of time where there's no activity on his phone.

01:12:38Between 8.42 p.m. and 9.23 p.m., a 40-minute gap.

01:12:44The defendant knows the place where Emily goes to forage, knows where he could find her.

01:12:52Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that's an opportunity at that time for him to go leave the house

01:12:56and to go confront her in the woods.

01:13:00And where the physical evidence shows she was struck in the face, causing fractures to her nose, and then she

01:13:06was manually strangled, causing four fractures to her neck.

01:13:11The prosecution offered no new physical evidence as it laid out its theory of a murder in the woods.

01:13:17I heard, no, no, you heard, for the first time, that the state thinks Emily was killed in the woods.

01:13:26If the state doesn't know until the end of their case, in closing, where they believe, you know, this alleged

01:13:32murder happened, I mean, if that isn't reasonable doubt, what is?

01:13:35Our justice system has to be better than this.

01:13:38Was it coming out of the blue late?

01:13:40No, I think, I think the point taken, let me just explain it this way.

01:13:44So, is it possible that the homicide or murder would have occurred inside the condo? Yes.

01:13:51Is it possible the murder had occurred in the woods? Yes.

01:13:54We didn't have any evidence that said definitively which one of those two places.

01:13:59If I had to bet, I would bet it happened in the woods.

01:14:01I think that makes the most sense given the other evidence.

01:14:03So I'm going to say this. 24 years, over 150 jury trials, I've never had a harder closing argument than

01:14:09this.

01:14:11Because honestly, at most, I've got evidence to attack.

01:14:15This case is totally speculation.

01:14:20Menashe said police and prosecutors were laser focused on anything that made Matt Moore look guilty, and they ignored behavior

01:14:26that suggested he was innocent.

01:14:28Not only did he tell police where Emily liked to forage, he also brought them right to the edge of

01:14:33the woods where her remains were later found.

01:14:35If he had killed her, why would he have directed police to the evidence?

01:14:39He takes them to the exact area and says this is where she forges, and then even the state of

01:14:48Ohio in their closing argument just now had to concede that, do you know what he says?

01:14:52You might want to go in.

01:14:55Oh, that's a bad fact, right?

01:14:58And you know why he wouldn't want to go in?

01:15:00Is it because he doesn't want to find her?

01:15:04Actually, I agree with that.

01:15:07You know why he doesn't want to find her?

01:15:09Because 10 months earlier, his son was hanging from a tree in the woods.

01:15:19I wouldn't want to go in a wooded area either.

01:15:22Once the closing arguments ended, Matt Moore's fate was in the hands of the jury.

01:15:27Matt Moore, guilty of homicide or no?

01:15:43He'd sat in jail for 14 months thinking about how he got to this point, the case against him.

01:15:50And that question everyone was asking.

01:15:52They say you punched her in the face and then put your hands on her throat and manually choked the

01:15:57life out of her.

01:15:59And then strung her up in this...

01:16:00And then dragged her in the woods 60 feet in the dark and found a branch and did all this

01:16:05weird...

01:16:05Did you do that, Matt? Did you kill your wife?

01:16:08What do you think?

01:16:09I want to hear you say it.

01:16:10Why? Why do you feel the need for me to say that?

01:16:13Well, did you do it?

01:16:15No. I mean, no. There would be evidence of it.

01:16:18Wouldn't you think?

01:16:20So the case is all made up?

01:16:23It's not made up.

01:16:25Police do what they do.

01:16:26They're like any other business.

01:16:28They look for a crime.

01:16:31And it was an opportunity for them to spend money.

01:16:37It's the only way I can put it in an easy way.

01:16:39I mean, you'd have to talk to them.

01:16:42But as far as me killing him now, I loved her.

01:16:44Why would I do that?

01:16:46After seven days of testimony, the jury faced the same question.

01:16:51Guilty or not?

01:16:52Oh, my gosh. I was so eager to hear what the other jurors were thinking because...

01:16:57We spoke with three jurors from left to right, Connie, Carol, and Jen.

01:17:01They told us that more than half the jury came to deliberations thinking Matt was innocent.

01:17:06The rest thought he might have killed Emily.

01:17:09I thought she was a homicide victim.

01:17:11You did?

01:17:12To me, it did look staged.

01:17:15Matt Moore. Guilty of homicide or no?

01:17:17Absolutely not.

01:17:19Carol, Matt Moore. Did he kill his wife or not?

01:17:21If he did, he is a mastermind.

01:17:24And I just don't think... I think he's an average Joe.

01:17:28But on this they agreed. The prosecution's case had problems.

01:17:33It was all little pieces and trying to knit them together into a particular view.

01:17:42And I just felt that it was just too incoherent.

01:17:48They had particular problems with the prosecution's star witness.

01:17:52It was a stretch for him. He was more concerned with giving his resume than trying to...

01:17:59We're talking about smocking it.

01:18:00Than to help with the case.

01:18:03I felt like he was stretching quite a bit to make some of these assumptions.

01:18:09Jurors deliberated for a short time on day one, then returned the next day.

01:18:13You come back that next morning and you do have what I call a straw vote.

01:18:16You go around the table. Were you surprised at the result?

01:18:20Um, I think I was a little bit surprised.

01:18:24They had a verdict. As they filed back into court, Matt Moore took one look at them and feared the

01:18:30worst.

01:18:31It's like they're not looking at you. It was too quick. I was just like, they need time to think

01:18:35this through.

01:18:36They didn't spend a lot of time doing that.

01:18:38So I was just, I was ready to go.

01:18:40You thought that was it?

01:18:41That was it. I was done.

01:18:42Verdict on count one.

01:18:44We, the jury, being duly impaneled and sworn, find a defendant, Matthew L. Moore, not guilty of murder as he

01:18:50stands charged...

01:18:51Not guilty on all three counts, murder and felonious assault.

01:18:55After more than a year in jail, Matt Moore was a free man.

01:19:00I didn't want to cry in public.

01:19:03You did. You were holding your head and your hands weeping.

01:19:06Yeah. And, but I caught myself and I gathered myself up and I was just, okay, great. Let's get out

01:19:12of here.

01:19:12I was just very, very happy for Matt. And so for me also, it was just such a joyous moment.

01:19:18At the other table, a bitter defeat.

01:19:21It was very difficult.

01:19:23You were certain he'd killed his wife.

01:19:25Yeah. Still am, frankly.

01:19:28As for Emily's friends, Celeste didn't see it coming.

01:19:32Um, dumbfounded. Dumbfounded. Like, how did this happen?

01:19:37Wendy kind of did.

01:19:39I just had a feeling of dread that it wouldn't end in a conviction.

01:19:43Maybe Krista spoke for many.

01:19:45Yes.

01:19:46Based on the evidence presented, I wasn't surprised that he wasn't found guilty, even though in my, in my heart,

01:19:52I think he's guilty.

01:19:56And it's not just because I'm malicious or anything, but I 100% don't believe she would ever take her

01:20:04own life, ever.

01:20:09With the verdict rendered, the judge addressed Matt directly.

01:20:12Mr. Moore, I think from day one, everyone's wanted justice for your wife, Emily.

01:20:20But I think the jury has also said, uh, justice for Emily is not injustice for you.

01:20:27Despite the jury's verdict, Emily's death certificate still reads, homicide.

01:20:32Do you think there's a chance that Emily Noble was murdered?

01:20:36I do. I do. Not by Matt.

01:20:39Not by your guy?

01:20:40No. But I, it's, it's, and I think this goes back to all things are possible.

01:20:45And the only thing that, that isn't possible and wasn't shown beyond a reasonable doubt is that Matt did it.

01:20:52Matt knows he'll live with some level of whispers and suspicions for the rest of his life.

01:20:57The people who were out there think you got away with murder and some of those include the old friends.

01:21:01Sure. And probably some family.

01:21:03What do they not get? What do they not get? What do they not understand?

01:21:08Well, they, I mean, they've known me for so long. It's just hard for me to believe. I'm not a

01:21:11violent person.

01:21:12I'm not, I don't get upset. I'm like really laid back.

01:21:14But if they think what they think is because of what the media and police, what they're capable of, they've

01:21:22manipulated you.

01:21:25Freedom gave Matt a chance to live his life again, but also the space, he says, to grieve for Emily.

01:21:32I didn't have any time to think about her because I had all this police pressure and community pressure and

01:21:38all this, just this weird thing.

01:21:40And when he said not guilty and it's just like the, all of a sudden Emily just, I could deal

01:21:45with it.

01:21:45I could, okay, now it's time for Emily, you know.

01:21:48His old life is gone. He's broke, trying to scrape together a new life.

01:21:53And he's angry, mostly at the police. He's written an ebook called Emily, A Stage Suicide in Ohio.

01:22:00I needed to write my story for me more than anything, because I wanted people to know what happened.

01:22:11He's back in the Las Vegas area now, far from Westerville, Ohio, where most of Emily's friends still live and

01:22:18still think about her.

01:22:22I miss her laugh and her smile. She was just fun to be around.

01:22:31Everybody was her friend and all of her friends were her best friend.

01:22:36I miss her being here. I miss her laugh for sure.

01:22:43Throwing her head back and just, yeah.

01:22:52She left behind images for her loved ones to ponder.

01:22:55Exquisite skies, her collections of edible plants, the wood she loved.

01:23:01And her own face, gazing back into the camera.

01:23:05What was she thinking in the days and weeks before her death?

01:23:09Years after she went into the woods, it's the biggest mystery of all.

01:23:18That's all for this edition of Dateline.

01:23:21We'll see you again Thursday at 10, 9 central.

01:23:24And of course, I'll see you each week night for NBC Nightly News.

01:23:28I'm Lester Holt.

01:23:29For all of us at NBC News, good night.

01:23:32We'll see you at NBC Nightly News.

01:23:37If we had it, we'll see you next time later.

01:23:37We'll see you next time.

01:23:38We'll see you next time soon.

Dateline NBC S32E03 The Clearing H 264

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