On Dec. 16, 2021, Darci Bass was standing in her local convenience store when the man who stood accused of the shooting death of her 19-year-old daughter Livye Lewis strolled in. “When he came in the door … I just went — started — started throwing whatever at him and went for him,” Bass told “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant in an interview for “The Blackout Murder of Livye Lewis,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, Jan. 4, at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
It all began in the early morning hours of Halloween 2020, when Lewis was discovered on the side of a road in the tiny town of Hemphill, Texas. She was draped over the steering wheel of her car, dead from a rifle shot to the neck.
Bass says she was not notified by police of her daughter’s death. Instead, she heard from a friend that Lewis was in trouble and showed up at the crime scene demanding answers. “I just needed to know is she alive or is she dead,” Bass told Van Sant. Her anguished cries for answers were caught on police bodycam video. “I wanna see my child,” she shouted. “Livye Lewis! Where is she?”
Sabine County Sheriff’s Investigator J.P. MacDonough says that the minute he saw Lewis’ body, he knew that Lewis’ killer was no stranger to her. “She was just sitting there with her legs crossed,” he tells Van Sant. “Well, it indicates to me she was not afraid … She was actually, to some degree, comfortable with who she was speaking with.”
MacDonough says he didn’t have to look very far for a suspect. Also discovered at the crime scene was Lewis’ boyfriend, 23-year-old Matthew Edgar. “He was found in the fetal position behind the vehicle that Lewis was found in,” says MacDonough. Beside Edgar was his rifle.
Edgar was rushed from the scene of the crime in an ambulance. Bloodied but not injured, he is seen on police bodycam footage lying in a hospital bed, being interviewed by MacDonough.
Sabine County Sheriff’s Office
“When was the last time you saw Livye?” MacDonough asks Edgar. “Tonight,” he answers, and then claims to have no memory of how he ended up at the crime scene. “You don’t know how you ended up on the ground behind the car … With the dead girl in it,” says MacDonough. “No, sir,” Edgar replies. “I have no clue.”
But for Edgar’s defense attorney Rob Hughes, it was not an open-and-shut case. “We got all the DNA results back and … there were some holes in the case,” Hughes tells Van Sant. “There were no fingerprints taken or DNA lifted off the gun.”
Shaun Dunn, who calls himself a close friend of Edgar’s, tells “48 Hours” that he believes Edgar when he says he can’t recall how he ended up at the crime scene. Dunn thinks that, like Lewis, Edgar was a victim and that someone else pulled the trigger. “I believe it was someone that was … close to Matthew,” he says. “Someone that was involved in events of that evening.”
But where Dunn sees a victim, MacDonough saw a suspect and arrested Edgar while he was lying in that hospital bed. Then, months later, Bass says that while she was praying for justice, Edgar was released. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the courts and with no grand juries being convened, Texas law required that a still-unindicted Edgar be allowed out on bail.
It was months after Edgar’s release when he walked into that convenience store in Bass’ neighborhood. “And I just remember saying, ‘You killed my daughter … you killed my daughter.'” According to MacDonough, Bass chased Edgar into the parking lot, where she grabbed a chain in the bed of his truck and started slinging it across his windshield. Bass says she just wanted some answers: “She loved you and she was good to you and your kids and to your family. What made you think that this was the answer to anything that was going on?”
Edgar called the sheriff’s office and filed a complaint against Bass, who was then charged with assault caused by bodily injury, retaliation and criminal mischief. An arrest warrant was issued and Bass turned herself in. The charges were eventually dropped.
On March 16, 2021, four-and-a-half months after his arrest, a grand jury heard the evidence against Edgar and indicted him for the murder of Lewis. But Edgar, who was still out on bail during his trial, was not done breaking the law. On the fourth day of trial, Edgar let the battery on his ankle monitor die and went on the run. His trial went on without him, and the jury found him guilty. But it took authorities 11 months to capture Edgar, so he could be sentenced to 99 years, with the possibility of parole after 30 years.
