Nique Leili

Case background and investigation

Dominique "Nique" Leili, 44, lived with her husband, Matthew Leili, and their two younger daughters in a subdivision in unincorporated Lawrenceville, Gwinnett County, Georgia. According to the Georgia Supreme Court's summary of the trial evidence, she was last seen in the early morning hours of July 9, 2011, after the couple had returned from dinner and a movie. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in July 2011 that she had called 911 on June 28 of that year and told the dispatcher that her husband would not let her leave the house.

The court's opinion states that her husband did not report her disappearance. Her father tried to reach her by telephone on Monday, July 11, learned that she was gone, and filed a missing-person report with police. The Journal-Constitution reported that Matthew Leili filed for divorce on July 13, asking for sole custody of the children. Some news accounts, including an ABC News report, say he was the one who reported her missing; the appellate opinion attributes the report to her father.

On Saturday, July 16, 2011, relatives and friends organized a volunteer search. According to the court opinion, two members of the search party found her unclothed body face down beneath a mound of loose dirt and vegetation near the front of the neighborhood. The autopsy found no obvious cause of death. The medical examiner described injuries consistent with strangulation and considered the death highly suspicious for homicidal violence, but concealment and decomposition prevented a definitive finding. ABC News reported that the cause of death was officially undetermined and that toxicology results indicating GHB were part of the prosecution's theory.

Police seized computers and home surveillance equipment early in the investigation, but no arrest followed at the time. FOX 5 Atlanta reported that a later re-examination of that equipment led Gwinnett County police to announce murder and eavesdropping charges in March 2015; ABC News gives the arrest date as March 5, 2015. A grand jury indicted Matthew Leili in May 2015 on malice murder, two counts of felony murder, two counts of aggravated assault and three counts of unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance.

The trial ran from January 25 to February 5, 2016. The jury found him guilty of malice murder, one count of felony murder, one count of aggravated assault and all three eavesdropping counts, and acquitted him on the remaining two counts. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus three consecutive five-year terms on the eavesdropping counts.

His motion for a new trial was denied on August 31, 2018. On appeal he argued that evidence should have been suppressed, that testimony from his former wife about other acts was wrongly admitted, and that his trial lawyers were ineffective. On October 21, 2019, the Supreme Court of Georgia found no reversible error and affirmed the convictions.