stop the rumor mill. was it just small-town gossip or something else? here with more of our story is keith morrison. reporter: little colusa, california, was dumbstruck. paul moore arrested for the killing of roberto ayala. few even knew he was a suspect. mary, paul s cousin and pete s sister, got a barrage of texts at work. it was bittersweet. there was a part of me that was relieved that it was over for pete or that he wasn t, you know, mixed in with it. and at the same time i was sad because it was my cousin that we grew up with, you know, and it was part of my family. my youngest sister mary called me on the phone and she said, they just arrested paul for the murder of robert ayala. and i was in the middle of the parking lot, and i fell to my knees and just started screaming. reporter: but human nature is a funny thing. suspicion once embedded is remarkably resistant to actual
something to do with roberto s murder. which placed eduardo in the hitchcockian situation of working side by side with the man who may have murdered his brother. i d look at him just like i m looking at you, talked to him just like i m talking to you, and in the back of my mind i m thinking, you re the one that did it. reporter: while that dna result from the stamp wasn t strong enough to hold up in court, it was significant enough to get a warrant to search paul s home. for whatever that was worth, five long months after the bombing. he had done some kind of major cleaning of his house. so we d actually had conversation about this and reporter: like a what s the point conversation? that was one of the things that was talked about. and the decision was made. i didn t want to leave it untouched. reporter: sure. but your expectations were not that high. no, they weren t. reporter: with just this one crack at paul s house, detective salm wanted to make sure they
i think the president wants to notch victories ahead of next november. and i think you have to look at everything through that lens right now. so he is very well aware that the war in afghanistan is this longest engagement that the u.s. has had. that voters are tired of it and he knows that he campaigned in 2016 on a promise of ending that. that s where he s coming from. as we saw, there s not much evidence that talks are actually really resuming or that there s even a framework for anything taking place. i think what is so curious about this, much like the announcement of the withdrawal from areas in syria, surprising your military commanders and the pentagon is that a good idea? we ve already seen this play out. so around the president, why does this keep happening? i would say with syria it was a different situation. with seria, he was on a phone call with erdogan and by all accounts of it, he basically, as one person close to the president put it to me, wasn t strong enough.
that came back as a partial match to paul moore was not enough to get him charged with roberto ayala s murder. far from it. but it was enough to get some people in town whispering. rumors run. rumors are like bad smell. they move fast. reporter: eduardo heard those rumors. heard that maybe paul had something to do with roberto s murder. which placed eduardo in the hitchcockian situation of working side by side with the man who may have murdered his brother. i d look at him just like i m looking at you, talked to him just like i m talking to you, and in the back of my mind i m thinking, you re the one that did it. reporter: while that dna result from the stamp wasn t strong enough to hold up in court, it was significant enough to get a warrant to search paul s home. for whatever that was worth, five long months after the bombing. he had done some kind of major cleaning of his house. so we d actually had conversation about this and reporter: like what s the
just like i m talking to you, and in the back of my mind i m thinking, you re the one that did it. reporter: while that dna result from the stamp wasn t strong enough to hold up in court, it was significant enough to get a warrant to search paul s home. for whatever that was worth, five long months after the bombing. he had done some kind of major cleaning of his house. so we d actually had conversation about this and reporter: like what s the point conversation? that was one of the things that was talked about. and the decision was made. i didn t want to leave it untouched. reporter: sure. but your expectations were not that high. no, they weren t. reporter: with just this one crack at paul s house, detective salm wanted to make sure they did a thorough search. so he cobbled together a team of investigators from various law enforcement agencies. before we served the search warrant, we had a briefing. reporter: one of the cops helping him was a detective from