1890
Established in 1890 when the railroads extended there.
about 0:06:35The story
In April 2006 Wayne and Sharman Stock were shot to death in the upstairs bedroom of their farmhouse about two miles west of Murdock, Nebraska, a village of 227 people in Cass County. Wayne, 58, sold hay and grain through his own business, Stock Hay and Grain, sat on the board of the Nebraska Hay Association and had served on the school board. Sharman, one of fifteen children, had worked as a teachers' aide for the Manley School District and made wedding cakes at home. They had married on 17 August 1968, when she was 17 and he was 20, and had three children, Steve, Tammy and Andrew, and four grandchildren. They were known as a hard-working farm couple who cared for both their elderly mothers.
On Easter Sunday, 16 April 2006, the family gathered at the farmhouse. Among the guests was Wayne's nephew Matt Livers, 28, the son of Wayne's sister Barb. Livers had an IQ measured between 63 and 68, had been a special education student, had no criminal record and was recently laid off from his job as a security guard; he lived in a rented house in Lincoln and was engaged. He had asked to move into the farmhouse to live with his grandmother, Lorain Stock, and family members believed he hoped to inherit the house. Wayne and the other relatives refused, and some called him a leech who stressed his grandmother. There was an argument about it at the party, which broke up around ten that night.
The next morning, 17 April, Sharman's mother Gwen Drake telephoned Andrew Stock because Sharman had not come over to care for her as usual. Andrew drove to the farmhouse, walked in, sensed something wrong and went upstairs. He found his parents' bedroom covered in blood and called the police. Both had been shot at close range in the eye with shotguns; Wayne had also been shot in the knee, and Sharman was found on the floor behind the bed. More than one shotgun had been used. The medical examiner put the deaths between 10.15 on the Sunday night and 9 a.m. on the Monday.
There were no signs of forced entry. The town panicked: people who had never locked their doors began buying deadbolts and leaving lights on. Among the items recovered from the scene were a red and silver bowl used as a marijuana pipe, a silver LED flashlight and a gold ring inscribed "Love always Corey and Ryan". The family said none of them belonged to the Stocks.
A paper carrier reported a light brown or tan four-door sedan with a flat tail lens parked by the fence between the farm and the cemetery, and another witness had seen a car speeding in the area the night before. The description led investigators to a 1998 Ford Contour belonging to William Samson, whose brother Nicholas was a friend of Matt Livers. Douglas County crime scene investigators swabbed the car and found nothing; it was impounded in Omaha anyway.
Livers was questioned in a patrol car from about eleven at night until three in the morning, and gave hair, saliva and fingerprints. On 25 April the Nebraska State Patrol picked him up again. Over eleven hours he denied any involvement 102 times. At one point they asked whether he considered himself a man and told him to stand up; he stood up. Eventually he said he had done it and named Nicholas Samson as his accomplice.
In early May the ring was traced to a Walmart in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin. Cory Zastro had bought it for her boyfriend Ryan Krenz, who kept it in his Dodge Ram pickup. DNA from the bowl, the ring and the flashlight matched them. He was older. I loved it. I wish I could do it all the time."
They broke into the Stocks' farmhouse at random, thinking nobody was home, and woke Wayne. They then shot Sharman in the face.
Kirby Drake, Sharman's brother, said afterwards that he thought law enforcement had done a very good job, a remark the hosts criticised. Livers's interrogation is now used to train detectives, including by the Washington homicide detective Jim Trainum and at the Nebraska Law Enforcement Training Center in Grand Island. The farm, 1,300 acres of alfalfa, corn and soybeans, was left in trust for the three children and is run by Andrew.