reporter: early on the morning of saturday, january 7th, philadelphia s police s.w.a.t. team moved in, raiding the house and arresting ray dandridge and his uncle, ricky gray. richmond police chief rocky monroe held a new conference that morning to help calm the city s fears, but he only addressed the tucker-baskerville murders. the house has been ransacked, and numerous items appear to have been taken. at this time we are classifying the motive as robbery. we have good forensic evidence. we also have possible suspects who are now in custody in the state of pennsylvania. when we have more details, we will release the identities and information on the suspects. we were pretty happy they had them. a lot of people yelling and cheering and, you know, we felt good. felt like a lot of pressure was off.
also confessed to the tucker-baskerville murders. reporter: police also learned that ashley baskerville was a willing participant in the robbery of her mother and stepfather. part of their own little sick plan was to play a role in the robbery of her own family. reporter: ricky gray admitted, we had a robbery in progress, and things just went wrong. ray dandridge told the story a little differently. he got tired of the girl, so he decided to kill her and take her parents car so he could get out of there. that s why they died, too. ashley is who died. she used to be my girlfriend. later that day, chief rodney monroe held a second news conference to announce charges against gray and dandridge. these counts of conspiracy to commit murder stem from the new year slaying of the harvey family. my friend came in. he rushed in.
in the back of my mind i was waiting to hear the verdict involving the murder either of ruby or stella harvey because i figured those were the lynchpin cases. whethergit was stella or ruby, but the second involved one of the girls, and that was death. reporter: ricky gray was sentenced to death for the murders of stella and ruby harvey. and immediately i have a sense of relief. a nanosecond later i had a sense of sorrow because although i had taken a very integral role in securing a death sentence for this monster i shouldn t say that. for this guy. i was now part of a process that was going to culminate in another death. reporter: prosecutors decided not to try ricky gray for the tucker-baskerville murders after he received a death sentence for the harvey killings. a month later, in september 2006, ray dandridge went on trial for the three tucker-baskerville murders. prosecutors held off trying him
and then we found two more in the back bedrooms. reporter: the victims are 21-year-old ashley baskerville, her mother mary and stepfather percy l. tucker. they were bound, gagged, obviously had, some of them had trauma to the head and neck areas. reporter: the scene was eerily like the one in the harvey home. we re only a mile or mile and a half from the harvey house. and then to see something like that less than a week later. so i think there s a good chance that these are going to be related. reporter: meanwhile, emmett williams ran a check on the plates on that van he found down the street from the tucker-baskerville murders. came back to ricky gray, washington county, pennsylvania. first time i heard the name, but i knew we were looking for a ricky. unknown male. now i have ricky. now i know we have a ray, unknown male we re looking for, and we ve got seven people murdered in a week, and it looks like it s the same, at least, two people, and you know, i
instruction. and we knew that was a concern to the commonwealth at that point. and in virginia if he had been convicted of first degree the maximum punishment would have been life in prison. there would have been no death penalty on the table. reporter: ray dandridge was spared the death penalty. he received life in prison without parole in exchange for pleading guilty not just to the tucker-baskerville murders but also to the harvey family killings. relieved. whenever you can determine that your client is not going to be looking at the death penalty anymore, it s always a great relief. reporter: responsible for these eight death, ray dandridge and ricky gray are behind bars for good. i don t think it would have stopped. they were never going to look to leave another witness living. reporter: ray dandridge cannot appeal his decision, since he pleaded guilty to the tucker-baskerville murder. under virginia law, ricky gray s death sentence will automatically be reviewed by the