Updated on: January 18, 2026 / 1:10 AM EST
/ CBS News
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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 encore of the broadcast airs Saturday, Jan. 17 at 9/8c on CBS and 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.
Darci Bass with her daughter, Livye Lewis
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.
“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.”
Matthew Edgar, seen in a still from bodycam video, is questioned by a Sabine County sheriff’s investigator about what happened on Oct. 31, 2020.
Sabine County Sheriff’s Office
But for Edgar’s defense attorney Rob Hughes, it was not an open-and-shut case. “We got all the DNA results back and …