The Disturbing Death of Emily Noble

November 24, 2025

Trigger Warning: This episode contains sensitive content, including discussion of suicide. Please listen with care. On this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Emily Noble, a woman who vanished in Ohio under mysterious circumstances. As investigators dug deeper, the case revealed twists that nobody saw coming.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder With My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.
And I'm Garrett Moreland.
And he's the husband.
And I'm the husband.

Two people in this household like Cheez-Its. Can you guess who?

Me and Daisy.

If you're not watching on YouTube, Daisy is currently about to jump over these chairs to get over to Garrett, who’s eating his—oh, you got a little piece.

Sorry, I'm eating Cheez-Its as we record. Hopefully you can't hear me chewing.
I'll make sure you don't, because I know someone out there will complain and give me a one-star review because Garrett was eating Cheez-Its while they were talking about—anyways. But you have to include that second part.

Sorry. Hope everyone's doing great. Thank you for being here, thank you for being back, listening to another episode.

Thanksgiving, for those who celebrate it, is Thursday. Payton's birthday is Tuesday. That's what we’ve got going this week. We’re going to celebrate Payton’s birthday. We’re going to hang out with some family.

And yes, if you're watching on YouTube, I'm eating Cheez-Its. One of these days, they will sponsor us.

Babe, turn that back around. Don't even let them get that.

Yeah, I feel like they don't really sponsor people. I'm eating white cheddar Cheez-Its right now. I don't think they understand how many Cheez-Its I eat. I think that if everyone in the world stopped buying Cheez-Its, they would still be in business because of me. So maybe one day they’ll sponsor us.

Just a reminder for those who are curious: we do bonus episodes and we do ad-free content. You can subscribe on Apple, you can subscribe on Spotify, or you can subscribe on Patreon and you can get that content.

Literally, if you're listening on Apple, it's just a quick double-click. Can't tell you how many shows I now get to support ever since they implemented that.

It's true.
Because I just do a quick double-click.

The double-tap is dangerous. Spotify has it too now. It's like—even just ad-free, I'm like, double-click.
Patreon has it too, actually, on their app.
Oh really?
Yeah. It's dangerous. There’s no excuses now.
It's like Shop Pay.
Yeah, just like Shop Pay for my ten seconds.

Payton and I went on a date night the other night. It was fun. I just love a good steak.

And for those that don't eat meat, I'm sorry. No, I'm not coming at you—I just personally love a good steak. We went out to eat some steak. It was good. We had a good time.

That's my ten seconds. I don't really have anything else other than that. Do you have anything, babe?

No.
You sure? You usually have something.
I know. I can't believe you're giving me permission. I'm good to go. What do you got? Anything good?

I got a steak and Brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes, and I got dressed up.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was fun. Garrett got dressed up. He looked—
It looked amazing. We had a good time. He walked out, I said, “Zooie, mama.” We were in love.

And now we're here recording the next day. And this is kind of getting long, so I'm going to end it here. We're going to jump into today’s case and hope you guys enjoy it.

Our sources for this episode are Oxygen.com, Dispatch.com, 10TV.com, NBC4i.com, ABC6onyourside.com, UFM996.com, CourtTV.com, People.com, and NBCNews.com.

Just a warning before we begin: this episode includes discussions of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, resources are available. You can call 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

And one thing I've learned from doing this show for as long as we have is that you never really know what’s going on with someone behind closed doors. We have covered a lot of relationships that look perfect from the outside, only for cracks to reveal themselves down the line—illicit affairs, whispers of abuse, secret insurance policies.

It is easy to conceal the issues in a relationship from the outside world, but it's even easier to conceal the demons in our own hearts and minds. We've obviously seen this a lot on this show when talking about suicide: that you never really know the darkness and despair someone is dealing with. You might not think they're capable. You might think they seemed happy or that they would never leave their loved ones behind. But when someone is in that state of mind, it can be hard to see the light without critical help. And sometimes no one knows how bad it was for that person until it's too late.

On a serious note, going off of that—I think the same is true with social media. I think sometimes we compare our lives, our relationships, the things we have, the things we don't have, the things we want, our jobs. Try not to compare on social media, because 99% of it is a front. You're not actually seeing people's lives, people’s relationships, what's going on behind the scenes.

I think it's just a good reminder because as much as I love social media, I think there’s a harmful side to it. So I think it's important to keep in mind not to compare yourselves with others on there, including us, ’cause we're insane.

Unfortunately, we can't really talk true crime without mentioning this, because when we are so focused on what we believe couldn’t have happened, we begin to look for alternate explanations—even if it means pointing the finger at people.

So, let's turn back the clock to May of 2020. Garrett and I were sitting in a basement just starting this podcast.
That's true. Literally.

And we are going to travel to a small town outside of Columbus, Ohio, called Westerville. That is where 51-year-old Emily Noble is living with her husband, 48-year-old Matthew Moore.

Now, everyone who knew Emily said she was a lover. She was a lover of nature, a lover of people—someone who would go to the ends of the earth for those in her life. And she found peace in the outdoors. She loved to hike, to jog, swim. She especially loved capturing the beauty of the natural world through photography.

All of this to say, Emily was a woman of many hobbies, and she had a lot of energy. She worked at the Ohio Department of Medicaid as a financial analyst, but she seems like someone who really lived for the weekend and did everything to the fullest. By day, she was outdoors soaking up the sun. And by night, you could find Emily at one of the music venues in nearby Columbus catching a live set.

Emily was wild about live music and never turned down the opportunity to get on the dance floor. She was said to be a free spirit, a bit of a hippie, but one of her absolute favorite things to do was forage. Emily loved going out into the woods near her home to look for naturally grown herbs, fruit, and vegetables. Nothing brought her more joy than being able to go out, find these items, and put them on the plate for dinner.

She was so into it, she even kept a giant diary of all the edible plants she grew and collected. For Emily, this meant more to her than the rest of her hobbies. It was a way for her to escape a lot of the noise, because there had been a lot of heartbreak and devastation at this point in her life.

Back in 2011, Emily's first husband, Mark, died by suicide. A few years after that, Emily lost each of her parents suddenly in what seemed to be different accidents. I can't imagine how Emily felt or how she was able to keep going, but in 2015 was when she found someone who helped her pick up the pieces—and it was Matthew Moore, her soon-to-be husband.

In 2015, the two were introduced through a dating website, and after they met up, sparks flew, and they quickly began calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend. Though it wasn't long before Emily learned Matthew was dealing with his own history of family tragedies. His firstborn son was only a toddler when he died from a sudden illness. And while he and his wife were now divorced, their second son, a teenager, was struggling with mental health issues.

So shortly after he started dating Emily, Matthew decided to move back to his previous home of Las Vegas to be closer to his son during this difficult time. Emily and Matthew kept in touch throughout, and that's when Matthew realized he wanted to make things more serious with Emily—so he asked her to marry him.

Thinking a change of scenery might do his son some good, Matthew and his son packed their bags and traveled back to Ohio to live with Emily in her condo for a bit. And Matthew said the structure was good for them for a while. Matthew and Emily got married in 2018. And then Matthew’s mother passed away around that time, leaving him a sizable inheritance. So Matthew decided to take some time off of work.

But then in 2019, life took another unimaginable turn. While they were living with Emily, Matthew's son—the teenager—died by suicide. He was only 17 at the time.

Okay. Now, this has been a lot of tragedy in these two people's lives. This was now the second person close to Emily to go that way, and the second son Matthew had lost. And just when things seemed like they couldn't get any worse, COVID hits. It was like life was delivering blow after blow to Emily and Matthew. But they got by with celebrating the little wins in life, like Emily’s 52nd birthday in May of 2020.

On May 22nd, Emily spent time with the couple’s good friend, Celeste Groan, at their condo. She and Emily walked around the neighborhood that day, went into the woods behind the homes to do Emily’s favorite activity. And two days later, May 24th, was Emily’s actual birthday—and it also happened to be the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.

So that day, she and Matthew went to this town called Buckle. It’s about an hour and a half away. Afterward, they drove back to Westerville to have a picnic in the park. And on the way, they even stopped to admire the view and how beautiful the sun was shining in the sky.

Matthew did notice Emily was a little quiet that day, but it wasn’t unlike her to internalize a bit, and she seemed fine by the evening.

Even though it was still the height of COVID, the couple decided to stop by a few of their favorite bars around the downtown Columbus area. They had been itching to get out for some time, and with bars reopening with some restrictions, they felt like this was the perfect excuse to just get out of the house for a bit. They spent the evening dancing and taking selfies, seemingly having a good night.

And then they went home pretty early, around 7:00 p.m. Matthew said that he got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but when he went back to sleep, he didn't want to disturb Emily. He knew she was a light sleeper, and him getting in and out of bed often woke her up. So he decided to just sleep in the guest room for the rest of the night.

And then he wakes up the next morning. And when he does, he notices Emily is no longer in their bedroom. Actually, he can't find her in the house at all. Even stranger, Matthew noticed that her wallet, her phone, keys, and car were all still there.

So he figured, “Okay, maybe Emily just went out for an early morning walk, kind of like she often did.” But around 2:47 p.m., when Emily still wasn't back, Matthew began to worry. He called their friend Celeste from Emily’s phone—because remember, it's back at the house—and he asks her if Emily is over at her house. He told Celeste that they were planning to go to a party that afternoon, but Emily hadn’t come back from her morning walk yet.

And that's when Celeste told him to hang up and call the police. She was going to be right over.

Now, when the police arrive minutes later, their entire interaction is caught on body cam footage. While talking to Matthew, a woman starts walking up the driveway, and Matthew says something like, “Oh, there she is. Is this her?”

“Yeah, that’s your wife.”
“No, no, no—oh, okay. I’m her friend.”

“You look just like her for a second. I thought oh my god, there she is.” Thinking it's his wife Emily, but then he realizes it's actually Celeste, her friend, who had arrived there to help. The two do look a bit alike, and Matthew acknowledges that and says something to Celeste like, “I thought you were her.”

Then he tells police his version of events. He tells them how he got up around midnight to use the bathroom, then went to sleep in the guest room and couldn’t fall back asleep. So he played on his phone until about 6:00 a.m., when he finally got tired. He woke up around 10:00 a.m. and realized Emily was gone.

He says he didn’t go out to look for her because she often woke up early to go into the woods behind their house looking for stuff. It wasn’t until hours passed with no sign of her that he had started to worry. He says just a few minutes before, he used the Finder app and realized her phone was still inside the house, and that was when he grabbed it and called Celeste and then the police.

Now, police do a quick search inside the house, and Matthew seems totally cooperative, and they think there's no sign of a struggle or anyone having been in distress. In fact, the house is pretty spotless. However, this isn’t unusual—Celeste even admits this to police because Emily was a total neat freak. She liked everything to be spotless all the time. So it’s also no surprise that Emily’s bed was made that morning, too.

Now, at first glance, this looks either like someone willingly left the home or someone is covering something up, but it's too soon for the police to make any assumptions.

And I think this is hard, because think about the other body cam footage we have watched of husbands whose wives are missing—and most of the time in the true crime cases we're talking about, they have done something to their wife.
Correct.

So when I was researching this, it just took me for a little pause, because usually I’m immediately like, “Oh my gosh, okay, the police need to zero in on the husband.”
Mhmm.

But when you don't—like, it could actually be innocent, it kind of just shows you the difficult situation police are in.
Yeah. It’s hard, because I mean, you're supposed to speculate. You're supposed to obviously hone in on your instincts. But yeah, I mean, you have your outliers, I guess I would say.
Yeah.
Where sometimes people don’t do stuff.

So, police start going around questioning Emily and Matthew’s neighbors, and they find one neighbor who says he actually saw Emily in her garage that morning, just standing there as he was leaving his house. It was sometime around 9 or 10 a.m., so right before Matthew said he got up and noticed Emily wasn’t home.

Apparently, Emily and the neighbor both waved to each other, but that was it. No one else had seen or heard from Emily since that morning. And while the police promised to open an investigation, they were already feeling like Matthew knew more than he was letting on.

Not only did they think it was strange the house was so clean, they also believed it was weird that Matthew never once left the house to go look for Emily—especially if he thought she was just out in the woods behind their home.

They were like, “Why did he call police and not just go out and call and look for her a little bit?”
I don't find that extremely weird for some reason. I think people just have different personalities.
That's just my opinion. I try to think, would I go look for you? Probably. But if I found your phone in the house, I think I would be pretty freaked out, right? ’Cause who would leave—I'd be like, “Wait, I can't find my wife and her phone’s in the house.”
Yeah. I probably would, yeah. Honestly, if like 30 minutes passed by, I’d probably call the police.

And as we just mentioned, police are obviously being as skeptical as they can be. And something else that triggered some alarm bells for them was that when they were searching the house—just kind of looking around—when they moved into the garage, Matthew went in there with them and he was moving some items around while they were looking. Just kind of in his garage while they were there.
Okay.

Now, before you know it, 24 hours had passed and police were no closer to finding Emily. Search teams had obviously begun to assemble, scanning the area around Emily's home for any sign of her or where she might have gone. They follow leads and tips—everything from people spotting Emily at a shelter for the unhoused, to sleeping under a bridge, to trips to the grocery store. They even visited the bars the couple were last seen at, where one bartender said their situation was hard to read. He said one minute the couple the night before she went missing had seemed lovey-dovey, and the next it seemed like there was some tension between the two, but it was nothing that stood out as alarming to her in the moment.

And by day two, teams came out with bloodhounds to try and track Emily’s scent around her home. And one dog finds that her smell stops about a few hundred yards away from her house at another driveway.

So, okay—police begin to wonder: could Emily have gotten into a car and driven off with someone else? A stranger? A secret lover? I mean, at this point, anything’s possible. But the main person of interest to them still seemed to be Matthew Moore.

Two days after reporting his wife missing, Matthew finds himself under the spotlight of an interrogation room. And there he's told the neighbor who confessed to seeing Emily the morning she disappeared—between 9 and 10 a.m. in the garage—said that now, after sitting on it for a couple of days, they actually weren’t sure anymore. He was now thinking he might have seen her the day before, which is why things begin to fall back on Matthew.

He does his best to be cooperative. He hands over Emily’s phone so police can go through it. But during this interrogation, they ask Matthew some interesting questions that do make him sweat a little bit. Things like: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your marriage? Ten being the honeymoon phase.” And he said what you’d expect most people to say—you know, it fluctuates. It goes up and down like any marriage. Though he does say the last six months had been pretty good, about an eight out of ten.

You have to remember this is a couple who had just lost their son and stepson to suicide the year before. There’s not going to be a whole lot of eight, nine, or ten in there.

Still, the police dig through Emily's phone, and they confront Matthew with one text message they find alarming. It’s from the month before, and it’s a text that Emily had sent to a friend. It says, quote, “Matthew picked a fight with me yesterday. Said some awful things. I'm not wearing my wedding ring.”

Now, Matthew agrees, saying, “Yeah, we obviously weren’t perfect all the time.” He says, “My wife had some anger issues. We had a lot going on. We weren’t perfect.”

Still, police continue to do their due diligence. They ask him to take off his shirt so they can see if he has any injuries—maybe from a struggle—but he doesn’t. There’s no bruising, no cuts, nothing alarming.

Next, they ask him to take a voice stress test. It’s kind of like a lie detector, though also not admissible in court. But in their minds, this will be telling, and here’s what happens:

First, they start off with simple questions. Is it the month of May? Do you know where Emily is? Then it turns into something much more aggressive. And this is all on tape, so you do get to see how intense the detectives begin to get with Matthew, which is interesting because, I mean, I’m sure he’s trying to cooperate—but he didn’t have to agree to this.
No.
But I also think a lot of people don’t realize that they can be like, “Oh, sorry, I’m not—” because they think it’ll make them look guilty.
Yes. I’d be like, “I’m stressed. I’m not doing this test.” I also think, you know, like, my wife is missing. Like, nah, that’s not happening right now.

You would hopefully be able to trust that the police are just investigating.
Yes.
Which—you know what I mean? Which I would, but I think I just don't trust anyone in general.
Yeah.
So I'd be like, “Sorry, Payton’s gone. Getting an attorney. Don’t talk to me. Gotta find her. Gotta find her.”
Yeah. Yeah. Just my two cents. But I do get—I mean, you want to cooperate, you want to help. You want to obviously believe that people are trying to help you and figure out where your wife is.

Okay, so this whole thing’s on tape, right? And I'm going to try to explain it to you, but they start asking him if he killed Emily. And over and over he's like, “No, I didn’t.” Over and over. And eventually it gets to the point where one of the detectives is screaming at him:

“You effing killed her. You killed her.”
“No, I didn’t, sir. I didn’t— I didn’t kill her.”
“You killed her, and it was an accident, and we need to get this resolved today.”
“It didn’t happen. It didn’t happen.”
“Telling you, she’s dead.”
“How—where is she? What are you talking about?”
“That’s why we have people here. People are saying they have seen her.”

And Matthew is staying calm and respectful. He leans in and says, “No, I didn’t, sir.” And when they ask him, “Okay, what do you think happened to your wife?” he says, “This is just a guess, but I'm pretty sure maybe she did something to hurt herself.”
Yeah.

Now, in the end, they tell him that the results of his test indicate that he’s been deceptive with them. But what's weird is they’re telling Matthew that his wife is dead—that he killed her. And if he’s being honest, at this point, he doesn't even know if she's dead. They don't have a body. They don't have any evidence of foul play. Matthew is still hearing tips that people have seen her around town. And whether those tips are accurate or not, he thinks it's weird that detectives are like, “She's dead.”

Is this still a missing person’s case? Like, have they decided to turn it over to a homicide?
Yeah.

So why are the police trying to get Matthew to confess to a murder they don't even know has happened yet? It's weird to him. Clearly, there’s a lot of pressure on law enforcement to solve this case. But keep in mind, Emily has only been missing for two days. Though it seems they've pretty much already made up their mind about what’s happened.

Now, after this, like Garrett said, Matthew stops talking to the police.
He—sorry, no. He lawyers up, understandably so.
I mean, smart. Which is good, because also I would assume the DA for wherever they’re at would be like, we don’t have enough—like also, this is crazy. This evidence is only going to look good if he’s actually the one who killed her.
Yeah.
Like, this is wild. Everyone needs to chill out a little bit.

And again, with this case—I don't know why, but it just made me feel like it's so hard to be a cop.
It’s hard. It’s hard because yes, majority of the cases we do cover, I want them to dig in and do that. And is it usually the husband?
Yeah.
Yeah. A lot of the cases like this, it is. Or is it someone—a friend or a significant other—whatever? Yes. A lot of the cases it is. So yeah, it's hard.
It's hard.

But also we do need to remember that innocent until proven otherwise. And yeah—we just gotta… it's a line. It's a hard line. It’s a very hard line.

So he's being accused of murder, which—Matthew also doesn't join in on the searches with law enforcement over the next several weeks. Obviously, according to him, he doesn't want to be anywhere near the police right now, so he is putting space between them. Unfortunately, that decision only makes him look more guilty, especially to the people who knew him.

Meanwhile, Matthew is still insisting he did nothing to Emily, that this is all some giant misunderstanding. So he tries to help in other ways. He gives $10,000 to CrimeStoppers for reward money. Matthew then goes on a podcast called The Vanished at the end of August, early September, to give his side of the story.

But even the host and producers do seem to think Matthew sounds a bit guilty during his interview, and they do actually tell police that.

However, on September 16th, 2020, there is a massive break in the case—one that should change everything.

So at this point, it has been five months since Emily Noble was last seen. By this point, the official searches for Emily have died down to pretty much nothing. But her sisters, Lisa and Sherry, haven't given up. That September afternoon, they’re back out in the woods near Emily’s home with another friend named Sue Stexon.

They had picked this particular spot because over the summer, they had found a ceramic Christmas ornament randomly out in the brush around here. It kind of looked like a small angel. And they didn’t know if it was a sign—physical, spiritual, or even just evidence that Emily had been to this area at some point.

Now, during this day, at one point, the women split up, and Lisa heads to this very thick patch of brush that no one would really go into. It's very overgrown. Still, Lisa’s pushing through it, and eventually she comes to this small clearing in the trees and she sees this tiny human. She thinks it's a little girl at first, sitting on her knees facing away from her. In fact, she's so startled that she says hi to the child that’s in the clearing with her.

But then it doesn't take long for her brain to process—this probably isn't a child. Why am I even out here? She takes a few steps closer, and that’s when she sees it is a clothed figure sitting upright with long dark hair, and she’s just sitting still.

Okay. So in that moment, she realizes that she is looking at basically skeletal remains of her sister, Emily Noble—which is why she thought it was a child.
That's sad.

Lisa starts screaming for Sherry and Sue, who rush over and confirm what she’s seeing. And this is so heartbreaking to me.
Oh, yes.
That it was family members and friends who were still out searching months later and came across the body.

I guess the only silver lining is—why were they out there in the first place? You found a body.
Yes.

So they race out of the woods. They call 911. The police arrive just before sunset, and some of them must have been a bit baffled by the discovery simply because this area had allegedly been searched a couple times with dogs. But it’s pretty easy to miss stuff, especially in a forest or woods area. And apparently they just figured they had stopped short of where Emily’s body was finally discovered because it was through that thick brush.

Now, perhaps the most shocking discovery though was the position in which they found Emily’s body. Her mummified remains are still in a kneeling position. She has a USB cord wrapped around her neck.
Oh man.
Which is tied to a tree behind her.
Okay.

Her right hand is clutching her right ankle, and her left hand is on a black water bottle that is sitting next to her leg. Okay. A water bottle that, when later tested, is found to have alcohol inside.

So at first glance, when you stumble across this body, it does appear as though Emily Noble might have died by suicide after all.

Now, Matthew hears the news later that night that Emily’s body has been found. And for him, this is now a third major loss that he’s had in his life, at least. His first son dies to an illness. His second son to suicide. And now it seems like his second wife has also allegedly died by suicide.
Horrible. Absolutely heartbreaking.

And while this means of death comes as a shock to a lot of Emily’s friends and family, Matthew isn't totally blindsided by it. He had told police, you know, we've had a really rough year. Emily was fighting depression, especially after the teenage son took his own life. He told police that she would say things out loud that suggested suicidal ideation and behavior.

And now it would appear that Matthew’s been honest all along. He did nothing to his wife. She unfortunately died by suicide like he had believed. And as heartbreaking as it is, he tries to move forward with his own life. He even has a remembrance party for Emily when the anniversary of her disappearance and 53rd birthday come around.

But the police don’t close the case on Emily after finding her body. It’s quite the opposite, actually. And mainly because there are a lot of people who tell the police there was no way Emily would have taken her own life. She was going to therapy—which is so hard. I think it’s changed. I think it definitely used to be a thing like, “No way. I know that person. They were always happy. There’s no way they would do something like that.” And I think we've really come to realize, we don't—you just don't know what is going on in someone’s head.
You don’t. I don’t care who you are, you have no idea what someone else is going through.
I agree with you.

That being said, I also believe family members have a right, for sure, to grieve. And I think you should follow every avenue. And I also think it's extremely hard to wrap your mind around something like that when you are thoroughly convinced—like no, there’s no way. Or when your family member hadn't personally gone to you and basically said, “Hey, this is how I'm feeling.”

But Matthew’s saying, no, she had said those things to me.

But I do think it's good that we've—as a society—come to a point where we’re like, “Okay, you know what? We actually don't know what’s going on in someone’s head.”
Yeah.

I also do think, just as further evidence of suicide—besides the positioning of the body and Matthew saying she had disclosed to him—birthdays are very common. A very common hard time, all that stuff. And then also therapists do suggest that suicide can be contagious in a way. So if it happens a lot around you, there can be some struggling with that as well.

Some point out even that her sister’s birthday was just the day after hers. So they believe there was no way she would have died by suicide without celebrating her sister’s birthday first.

It seems like a lot of people who knew Emily were finding evidence to support these theories. For example, Emily’s friends and family began coming forward to say Emily would get really upset with Matthew because he was drinking during the day. Some told police that he seemed to be overly controlling of Emily, that Emily hadn’t been her normal self ever since she had met Matthew. One friend even claimed to see bruises on Emily in the weeks and months before she died.

So police also track down Matthew’s ex-wife, a woman named Lisa, to see what she has to say about him—and she doesn’t exactly help Matthew’s situation either. They found that back on New Year’s Day 2001, just a few months after they got married, Las Vegas police had responded to a domestic violence incident at their home. Lisa said that during that incident, Matthew put his hands around her neck and started choking her. Now, Lisa did tell police it was a one-off. It never happened before or after that, and the case was dismissed in court.

That's really interesting, though. That kind of changes things a bit.

But police can’t help but wonder—did the same thing happen to Emily?

Well, if you ask the experts who helped with Emily’s autopsy, they actually say it looks like it. That Emily was most likely killed by someone and her death was staged to look like a suicide.
No way.
Am I wrong? I just—I want to show you how hard it is.
Yeah, it’s hard when it’s… this is the question. And it does come up often in true crime.
Yeah.

I mean, it’s hard, but at the end of the day, if there's no evidence, you can’t convict somebody.
Correct.

Let me tell you about the autopsy.

Okay, the autopsy was really hard to get an accurate read on, considering how decomposed Emily’s body was at the time.
And—sorry to interrupt—I will say I feel like I've seen this a lot. Someone does an autopsy and they think they found X, X, and X. Then someone else does an autopsy and they're like, “Well, no, actually I found X, X, and X.” And then, “No, I found X, X, and X.” And it’s like, okay… also often times in cases like this.
Yes.

Like, how can we have five different people do the same thing and all disagree? And you know, that’s also when things get complicated where it’s like… what are we supposed to do? It's always shocking to me when manner of death is changed multiple times.
Correct.

That—based on who? When that happens, to me, that’s when I start to get a little… I don’t know, weary. Speculate a little bit and get weary and go, “Okay, what’s going on, guys? What are we doing here?”

So her body is badly decomposed. There is no way for pathologists to see if there was visible bruising, cuts, defense wounds—anything to indicate that there was a fight. Though there were a couple of details they did find suspicious.

Emily’s autopsy revealed she had multiple neck and facial fractures. So they call in an expert named Dr. William Smock to take a look. And after doing his analysis, he comes to two conclusions about Emily’s death.

First, there was no way she got these specific injuries from a USB cord, okay? Which is what was wrapped around her neck. He says these injuries look a lot more like manual strangulation.

Now, I won’t get too into the weeds about why—we've talked about the hyoid bone in the neck in previous cases—but it’s the small horseshoe-shaped bone located in the middle of your neck. Essentially, Smock says because there are bilateral fractures to this bone as well as the thyroid cartilage, he doesn’t think it was caused by a hanging. Mainly because he’s never seen injuries like this before from a death by hanging.

But—
Yes. Not that I'm disagreeing, I'm just curious how many have used USB cords? And is hanging different than from the position her body was in? And I'm not trying to sway one way or the other, I'm just genuinely curious, asking questions.
Anyway—speaking of…
I think everyone in the case is curious. I think that’s why there are so many different opinions, because it’s confusing.
Yes.

Also, he says he has seen these injuries many times when someone is strangled by another person. So he's like, I've never seen these injuries with a hanging, but I've seen them many times with manual strangulation. It’s basically putting pressure on both sides of the neck.

And then there are the facial fractures. This is confusing. Okay. Smock reported seeing trauma in the nasal cavity. He believed this was caused by a significant—in quotations—blunt force injury around the time of her death.
Wow.
Which wouldn’t have… it’s hard to imagine what would have caused that alone.

So in his eyes—this expert’s eyes—he says this is not a suicide. He believes this is a homicide.
Oh my gosh, this changes everything.

So he's now validating the police’s theories that this is a homicide, although they are very zeroed in on Matthew.
It is hard. ’Cause we're just getting, you know, these bits and pieces of information.

In order for—like for me—to form an actual conclusion, I would have to talk to the husband. I'd have to see their demeanor, see how they act, see what they're like.
You’d want to be on a jury.
Yeah. It would be too hard just to form it from this. Obviously even the jury, though—like you’re only getting the time in court. Like no, no, no. I need to spend a month with you and understand who you are, what you’re like, how you speak, just how you think. It’s hard. It’s hard.

I also will say when members of the victim’s family are supporting that this is a homicide and backing that it was potentially the husband, it is hard not to…
Agree.
Respect that and believe that.

So by June of 2021, they finally have enough evidence to get an arrest warrant. On a Thursday morning, June 17th, 2021, police show up at Emily’s condo where Matthew is still living. They place him in handcuffs. And as he’s put in the back of a police cruiser, he tells police over and over, “You are making a huge mistake.”

And he might be right, because there are some problems with this case.

For starters, they turned that condo over when Emily first disappeared. They did not find a single shred of evidence that Matthew had done anything to harm Emily inside the condo—or that anyone else had done anything to harm Emily inside the condo. They don’t have a single eyewitness saying he harmed her. They don’t have any surveillance showing him going into those woods or transporting her body somewhere. And they checked his and Emily’s cars, too. They don’t even have a motive. They don’t have a confession. Matthew has been insisting he’s innocent from day one.

Really, the only thing they have are:
• people in Emily’s life saying she would never take her own life,
• a previous record for domestic assault—but not with Emily,
• and Dr. Smock’s assessment of the autopsy.

This is the evidence they are moving forward with. And yet, a grand jury indicted Matt of murder and assault.

Now, a year later—August of 2022—Matthew Moore’s trial begins.

The prosecution argues that Matthew followed Emily out that morning when she went into the forest, and he trailed her into the woods, attacked her there, before staging her body to look like a suicide. This is their theory. They say this is why Emily didn’t leave a suicide note or say goodbye to any of her loved ones—because she wasn’t planning on dying that day.

They call on witnesses like Matthew and Emily’s friend Celeste, the one Matthew called to come to the house when Emily disappeared. And she says that in the days before her death, Emily didn’t seem depressed. She seemed in really good spirits.

Another friend, Suzanne Kavanaugh, testified about seeing bruises on Emily’s arms before she died, and that when she would ask about them, Emily didn’t want to share. In fact, she would become a little defensive.

And then, of course, comes the star witness: Dr. William Smock, who says Emily could not have received these injuries from a USB cord alone—that she was, quote, “strangled manually and then placed in the tree.” He also said, quote, “If there was anything even close in the medical literature, it has never been reported. No woman of her size, her stature, has ever had those sorts of fracture patterns from leaning forward into a ligature.” He said on the stand, “It just doesn’t happen.”

But the defense also makes a good point: that these fractures could have easily come from a suicide.

Experts take the stand for the defense and claim—

So, this is my problem, and this happens a lot in—honestly, it happens a lot in science. This happens a lot with things such as this, where experts contradict each other.
Yes.
And that gets so, so utterly confusing. Like, how do you have the defense expert say one thing, then the prosecution expert say another? How does the jury even—so, okay.
So which one of you is an expert? You’re both experts saying completely different things. Cuz I’m sure you’re going to say the opposite. I’ll let you go first and we can revisit it.

So, these experts for the defense say fractures are a lot more common in women over 40. They were like, she could have gotten them from something like a USB cord.

They also call on a woman named Heather Garvin. She’s a board-certified anthropologist who claims bones in the neck—like the hyoid bone—are actually extremely fragile. She also has something to say about Smock’s assessment of Emily’s facial trauma.

So they ask her questions about the other expert.
Mhm.

Remember, Smock said she showed signs of significant blunt-force trauma to her face around the time of her death, and that this couldn’t have happened just by herself.
Yes.

Heather Garvin says it didn’t take her very long to determine that this just simply wasn’t true. The trauma looked a lot more like someone who had healed from a broken nose—which Emily did break her nose and heal from.

And on top of that, the defense points out how investigators handled the crime scene, leaving bones and teeth apparently there the first time they gathered evidence—and then coming back and getting it later. How they were not able to find Emily’s body with the dogs.

The defense even chips away at the prosecution’s witnesses, pointing out that Suzanne Kavanaugh, who said she’d seen Emily with bruises on her arms, couldn’t be telling the truth because she hadn’t seen Emily since 2019—the year before she died.
Bro, okay.

Even the motive the prosecution put forth didn’t make sense to the defense. The prosecution said Matthew was after Emily’s money, the condo, everything. But then they’re like, “Hey, jury, Matthew inherited a couple hundred thousand when his mother died, and he had deposited that money into his joint savings with Emily, which went from $96,000 to nearly half a million.”

So, after closing arguments, it is time for the jury to deliberate. It’s August 26th, 2022. It takes them only three hours. The jury comes back, and they say they believe Matthew Moore was not guilty. Not guilty on all charges.

Yeah.

Fifty-one-year-old Matthew was acquitted of murder before he left the courtroom that day. The judge said this, quote, “You are freed to go, Mr. Moore. I think from day one, everyone has wanted justice for your wife, Emily. I’ve heard that phrase a lot. I think everyone truly desires that, but I think the jury has also said that justice for Emily is not injustice for you, and they reaffirmed that.”

Matthew said that since he’s been acquitted, he has finally gotten a chance to grieve his wife’s death now that he’s no longer in a state of fight-or-flight about it. And if there’s one person who understands that suicide can be unpredictable, it’s Matthew Moore. Not only did he lose his son to suicide, but now his wife—and Emily had lost her stepson and her previous husband to suicide.

Mental health struggles were personal to these people. It’s very obvious that many people in this story were fighting an uphill battle daily. And if there’s one thing to learn about this case, it is that sometimes there are signs that we don’t want to see. And sometimes there are absolutely no signs at all.

As Matthew’s defense attorney, Diane Manashi, put it, quote, “That’s the thing about mental health. You don’t see it coming.”

And again, if you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, resources are available. You can call 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.

And that is the case of Emily Noble.

That’s crazy confusing. I think the right decision was probably made.
Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if her family agreed with that, so I’m truly sorry if they don’t. I’m truly sorry in general, because no one should have to go through this in general. It’s just—it’s really hard, too, because also, what if Matthew didn’t have the ability to hire a good attorney? What if Matthew—
No, he’d be in prison.
Well, or they wouldn’t have gotten the experts they got. They wouldn’t have gone through all this stuff. Like, it’s really… the justice system in general—it’s hard, it’s complicated, it’s not black and white, it’s biased. There’s so much to it, and it’s… dang. What a crazy case. What a crazy case.

Like, stumbling across this case, it felt so important to talk about, seeing that we do talk about true crime every single week, because how much over the years that we have done this show have we realized that mental health is so entangled with true crime.
Yeah.
So entangled. And there are so many cases where different people involved in the case believe different things about mental health, and suicide is talked about so often in missing-person cases. And so I just felt like it was a good case to highlight, and also just show that there are many victims here. Many, many victims—whether it’s suicide or not.

So my thoughts go out to everyone involved in this case, because it is unfair, and no one should ever have to deal with what has happened. And my thoughts also go out to Emily, who shouldn’t have had to go through what she went through either.

And that is our episode for this week. Please keep them in your thoughts, and we will see you next time with another one.

I love it.
And I hate it.
Goodbye.

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