Daughters Defend Father on Trial for Allegedly Killing Their Mother
— -- The teenage daughters of a man who is on trial in Georgia for killing their mother say he "could never have killed her."
Matt Leili was arrested in March last year, nearly four years after the nude body of his wife Dominique was found covered in leaves in a wooded area near their suburban Atlanta home.
"We just want our dad home," daughters Amanda and Rebecca say in a YouTube video last year after his arrest. "My dad loves my mom, he still does."
Police said Matt Leili waited two days to report his wife missing in July 2011, and then filed for divorce two days later. They say in 2012, he moved to Vermont with his daughters, cutting off contact with much of the family.
From the start, Dominique’s family blamed Leili for the murder, saying that the couple fought bitterly before she disappeared. But his daughters said they never believed their father was guilty.
“They’ve never liked my dad. I can read on the news the hatred they have for my dad, and it’s ridiculous the lies they are spreading," Amanda says in the YouTube video.
Leili was arrested after police took another look at a computer seized from the home that contained files from the family’s surveillance system.
The medical examiner ruled the cause of death as “inconclusive,” only saying that it’s possible she died by “strangulation or asphyxiation.”
Leili has pleaded not guilty.
