Varning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
This is 50-year-old Matheau Moore. Police have just arrived at his home after he reported his wife, Emily Noble, missing.
A year earlier, Emily and Matheau’s son went missing,only to be found dead in a forest near their home.Emily’s ex-husband also died by self-inflicted means.
And just four months after this bodycam footage, Emily’s body was discovered in the exact same way as their son.
Most disturbing was that when Matheau first reported Emily missing, he somehow knew,down to every detail,how she would be found months later. This led detectives to suspect him of murder.
May 2020
On monday afternoon ,Westerville police received a call from a concerned husband reporting his wife missing,this left police immediately.
Just a year earlier, he reported his son missing, would turned up dead,when they arrived and start speaking with the man, something about him immediately feels of…
At this point,Emily Noble has been missing for 7 hours, and although Matheau has an idead of where she might be , he made no effort to search for her himself, his inaction is unusual.
Over the next few minutes,more red flags emerge, leading the officer to question Matheau’s possible involvement in Emily’s disappearance.
Matheau is already expressing concerns that something bad might have happened to Emily.
He compares it to the feeling he had a year earlier, wen his son Joey tragically died by self – inflicted means .
Joey was found in a local park near their home in Westerville.
The officer finds it strange that Mathew is making this connection so quickly with Emily missing less than a day.
Emily’s bed is made , suggesting she left the house after waking up, she also left her phone by the bedstand, which seemed unusual.
The officer heads out to speak with neighbors,hoping for any leads on emily’s whereabouts,when he returns with encouraging news from a neighbor down the street.
Mathew responds with something oddly specific and deepley troubling.
A neighbor reported seeing Emily in the garage earlier that day ,which shouldd have reasured Matheau, but instead, he points out a misplaced power cable,it seems odd and irrelevant at first, but when seen through the lens of staging self- inflicted death, it takes on a different meaning.
He could deliberately be highlighting an object that might plausibly explain Emily’s disappearance while letting the officer draw the conclusion on his own.
What troubles him more, however,is how certain Mathew already seems about her fate, with no evidence to back that claim , his certainty only makes him appear moore suspicious.
For the moment , the officer leaves Matheau’s house and the police begin searching for Emily across Westerville.
What they don’t realize, is that she’s been right under their noses all along…
2 days after Emily’s disappearance ,police are running out of options,with no clear leads,they still have no idea where she might be or what happened to her.
So while most of the Westerville PD continues searching , investigators bring Matheau in for a voluntary inverview,Hoping his insight might explain why Emily suddenly vanished.
But the interview quickly takes a turn , Mattheau never expected.
Matheau immediately quiestons the nature of this ” voluntary ” interview,even though detective had just reiterated that it was entirely voluntary,already giving them a reason to be suspicious,he declares he didn’t do it, and odd statement considering his wife was only missing for 2 days, and neither he,nor the police have any idea what might have happened to her.
with the formalities over , a second detective steps in,for Mattheau ,the questioning is about to get much tougher, and it wasn’t long before he started contradicting himself.
Mattheau gives conflicting answers about wheter Emily might have gone out overnight,something detectives quickly pick up on.
But when they later reviewed body cam footage from 2 days earlier,they noticed a flashlight sitting on top of the box where the misplaced power cable had been ,this suggested one of two things.
Either Matheau was being completely honest, or he had been extremely meticulous in his involvement with her disappearance.
He claims Emily was still at the house around 8:45 am ,pointing to a text she viewed from her sister and citing a neighbor who claimed to have seen her at that time,but that neighbor had already retracted his statement , admitting that he may have been mistaken about the day.
Stripping away one of the only details backing up Matheau’s story.
And it’s here that he begins making disturbingly specific assumptions about what might have happened to Emily.
Matheau speaks about Emily in the past tense, something dectetives quickly take note of , he also suggest she may have been contemplating self harm,yet, police had confirmed through interviews with friends and family that she had no history of mental health issues and wasn’t taking any medication.
Even so, Matheau insists he isn’t involved in her disappearance and even offers to take a polygraph to prove his innocence, that chance would come soon enough,but instead of clearing his name,it does the exact opposite.
For now,detectives decide to confront Matheau with what they believe might have happened to Emily and that theory immediately casts him as the prime suspect.
When asked directly , Matheau downplays their intimacy,insisting that they didn’t really practice choking,detectives immediately challenge this with messages between Emily and a friend,only then does Matheau admit they engaged in it.
though he frames it as something mutual and consensual rather than abusive.
but now ,detecives are increasingly skeptical of his version of events and decide to put him through a lie detector test,a test he had previously claimed he was eager to take.
But it wouldn’t go the way he expected.
The (CVSA) test has now concluded and detectives escort Matheau out of the room, so they can assess it, and almost immediately,it’s clear something about his answers doesn’t add up.
The CVSA test flags signs of deception in Matheau’s responses , particularly when asked about Emily’s whereabouts.
while not definitive proof investigators consider the result significant enough to guide their next steps,with this in mind ,they bring Matheau back into the room,and this time their questioning takes on a far more confrontational tone reflecting how strongly they now suspect his involvement in Emily’s disappearance actually was.
Westerville police didn’t have evidence to hold Matheau,so he was released but they continued to watch him closely.
Inconsistencies in his story ,his repeated references to Emily in the past tense and the CVSA results all made investigators uncreasingly uneasy.
A full -scale search was launched.
Officers canvased the neighborhood , local parks Emily frequented,nearby bike paths, and the wooded areas,including the park where Matheau’s son had been found a year earlier, but they came up empty, and Emily’s whereabouts remained unknown.
September 16
That changed 4 months later when a group of women walng in a Westerville park near the couple’s home discovered a body.
The group of women immediately called 911 and officers rushed to the scene, they knew the dead body could be the very person they had searching for over the past several months.
But what they didn’t expect was that the body would be discovered exactly as Mathew had described months earlier.
Police find a woman dead, almost as if she was intentionally laid out under the base of a tree,one arm rested by her side near a black wather bottle containing a peachcoled alcoholic bevarage, nearby lay a wedding band and an engagement ring.
Somehow officers had missed the dead body despite searching for Emily extensively over the past 4 months.
The coroner’s examination confirmed that the body was indeed Emily.
Astonishingly, Matheau had predicted almost every single detail of how she would be discovered,close to home by apparent self -inflicted means and even using a cord similar to the one he had mentioned earlier.
By this point,the eerie accuracy of Matheau’s statements had become too much for the Westerville police to ignore.
The next morning , he was indicted on 2 counts of murder and 1 count of felonious assault in connection with Emily Noble death.
Officers went to his house to take him into custody,what they didn’t know yet was that Matheau wouldn’t remain in custody for long.
Matheau was taken into custody in june and remained in jail until his trial following August.
During that time, investigtors built their case, convinced he murdered his wife 52 year old Emily Noble and staged her death to lool self- inflicted.
Prosecutors pointed to his behavior after she went missing ,like not joining volunteer searches as evidence he knew she was already dead,they also stressed his past tense references to Emily in interviews and the CVSA tests that suggested deception,though those results were not admitted in court.
The defense countered that the case was built on speculation, there were no eyewitnesses,no DNA linking Moore to the scene and self- inflicted death was a real possibility.
Emily’s first husband had died the same way, and Moore’s teenage son had also taken his own life the year earlier.
They also pointed out investigative errors , mishandled evidence and Moore’s cooperation with police.
Expert testimony proved conflicting.
A forensic anthropoligist noted fratures consistent with strangulation or a staged scene, while the coroner ruled the death a homicide.
But defense experts showed the branch and USB cord could have supported a self-inflicted death,arguing the injuries were not definitive.
In closing arguments,prosecutors emphasized circumstantial evidence and timeline issues,while the defense urged jurors to focus on reasonable doubt.
After less than 3 hours of deliberation, the jury acquitted Matheau Moore on all counts,he broke down in tears as the verdict was read.
And a judge reminded the court that convicting the wrong person would never serve true justice…