On December 16, 2021, Darcey Bass was standing at her local convenience store when the man accused of shooting and killing her 19-year-old daughter, Livi Lewis, walked inside. “When he came to the door… I just went – started – started throwing anything at him and went for it,” Bass told “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant in an interview. “The Blackout Murder of Livy Lewis,” The all-new “48 Hours” premieres Saturday, January 4 at 10/9c on CBS and streams on Paramount+.
It all started in the early morning hours of Halloween 2020, when Lewis was discovered on the side of a road in the small town of Hemphill, Texas. She was found clinging to the steering wheel of her car, dead from a rifle shot to the neck.
Bais says that the police did not inform him about his daughter's death. Instead, she heard from a friend that Lewis was in trouble and rushed to the crime scene to demand answers. “I just need to know if she's alive or dead,” Bass told Van Sant. Her anguished screams for answers were captured on police bodycam video. “I want to see my baby,” she screamed. “Livi Lewis! Where is she?”
Sabine County Sheriff's Investigator JP McDonough says as soon as he saw Lewis' body, he knew Lewis' killer was no stranger to him. “She was sitting there with her legs crossed,” he tells Van Sant. “Well, that tells me she wasn't scared… in fact, she was somewhat comfortable with who she was talking to.”
McDonough says they didn't have to look very far for a suspect. Lewis's boyfriend, Matthew Edgar, 23, was also found at the crime scene. “He was found in the fetal position in the back of the vehicle in which Lewis was found,” McDonough says. Next to Edgar was his rifle.
Edgar was taken from the crime scene in an ambulance. Bloodied but uninjured, he is seen lying in a hospital bed on police bodycam footage as McDonough interviews him.
“When was the last time you saw Livy?” McDonough asks Edgar. “Tonight,” he replies, and then claims to have no memory of how he arrived at the crime scene. “You don't know how you ended up on the ground in the back of the car… with the dead girl,” McDonough says. “No, sir,” Edgar replies. “I don't have a clue.”
Sabine County Sheriff's Office
But for Edgar's defense attorney Rob Hughes, it wasn't an open-and-shut case. Hughes told Van Sant, “We got all the DNA results back and … there were some holes in the case.” “No fingerprints were taken or DNA was taken from the gun.”
Shawn Dunn, who calls himself a close friend of Edgar's, tells “48 Hours” that he believes Edgar when he says he can't remember how he got to the crime scene. Dunn thinks that, like Lewis, Edgar was a victim and that someone else pulled the trigger. “I believe it was someone who was…close to Matthew,” he says. “Someone who was involved in the events of that evening.”
But where Dunn saw a victim, McDonough saw a suspect and arrested Edgar as he lay in a hospital bed. Then, months later, Bass says while she was praying for justice, Edgar was released. With courts closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and no grand jury convened, Texas law requires Edgar, who has not yet been indicted, to be released on bail.
A few months after Edgar's release he went to that convenience store in Bass's neighborhood. “And I just remember saying, 'You killed my daughter…You killed my daughter.'” According to McDonough, Bass followed Edgar into the parking lot, where he shot her truck. Grabbed a chain in K's bed and started tossing it. His windshield. Bass says she just wanted some answers: “She loved you and she was good to you and your kids and your family. Why did you feel like that was the answer to everything that was going on?”
Edgar called the sheriff's office and filed a complaint against Bass, who was charged with assault causing bodily injury, retaliation and criminal mischief. An arrest warrant was issued and Bais appeared in court in person. The charges were eventually dropped.
On March 16, 2021, four and a half months after his arrest, a grand jury heard evidence against Edgar and indicted him for Lewis' murder. But Edgar, who was still out on bail during his trial, had not violated the law. On the fourth day of the trial, Edgar let the battery in his ankle monitor drain and ran away. His trial proceeded without him and the jury found him guilty. But it took authorities 11 months to capture Edgar, so he could have been sentenced to 99 years in prison, with the possibility of parole after 30 years.