HEMPHILL, TX – A Texas man who was convicted of murder while on the run after cutting off his ankle monitor mid-trial has been sentenced to 99 years in prison for the 2020 killing of his 19-year-old ex-girlfriend.
Matthew Edgar was found guilty of murdering Livye Lewis, a recent high school graduate with dreams of becoming a physician’s assistant. Her body was discovered in her vehicle around 5 a.m. on October 31, 2020, with a gunshot wound to the neck.
The night before, Lewis had attended a pre-Halloween party in Sabine County where tensions flared between her and Edgar. According to court testimony, Edgar became enraged after learning Lewis planned to spend the night at the party host’s home. He attacked his ex-wife, Montana Bockel, and kicked her car before being restrained, allowing both women to flee the scene.
Hours later, Bockel texted Edgar asking about Lewis’s whereabouts. His chilling response: “Dead.”
Investigators found Lewis sitting in her car with her legs crossed, suggesting she wasn’t afraid of whoever approached her vehicle. A rifle recovered near the scene was linked to a bullet fragment found inside her car, and a trace amount of Lewis’s blood was discovered on Edgar’s pants.
Edgar claimed he blacked out after drinking an entire bottle of whiskey and woke up in an ambulance. But during his January 2022 trial, he made a dramatic escape by disabling his ankle monitor on the third day of proceedings. The judge ordered the trial to continue without him, and jurors returned a guilty verdict.
U.S. Marshals finally caught up with Edgar on December 29, 2022, nearly a year after he fled. He was found hiding at a home just yards from his grandparents’ residence with his mother present at the location.
Edgar will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years of his sentence.
