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An ex-cop named steve lee had noticed something about 6:30 that morning. so you re out here on on the deck having a cigarette. what did you see? saw a vehicle parked there that i d never seen before. reporter: what was that vehicle? it was a black, older infiniti sedan. reporter: to the observant ex-cop that seemed worth noting. did it stay there for a long time? it was there when i left for work at about 7:40. reporter: detectives also talked to a neighbor who lived directly below ashlea. he had heard noises, heavy breathing coming from ashlea s apartment just before 8:00 a.m. a few minutes later the fire alarm started goin off. water started comin down into his apartment. reporter: and that s when the neighbor saw a black infiniti g-35 driving away. armed with this new information, cedillo went back to alexis torres. i asked her if she knew anyone or if ashlea knew anyone that drove a infiniti g-35. ....
But, unlike ashlea, she wasn t a very friendly assistant manager. she did, however, make an impression on some younger clerks like liza schoenthal. carter was very smart. very deep. she was good at reading people and knowing how to converse with them. you could tell that she was well educated. just had a lot more to her than most sales/retail managers do. reporter: but detective cedillo knew something else about carter and david mallory. something very important. reporter: remember that burglary at american eagle three months earlier? carter and david mallory were the primary suspects. and ashlea harris was the one who discovered the money missing. and when ashlea came in to open the store, she found the safe open. reporter: ashlea knew that it was carter who closed the night before. and when she showed her boss the security video view of the burglary. she pointed at the monitor and she said, that s david ....
reporter: prosecutors believe the original plan was to kidnap ashlea, kill her, and put her body in that grave. she was killed in her apartment, the prosecutors thought, because she fought so hard. what is that? this is a glock 19 semiautomatic pistol. reporter: in fact, investigators believe ashlea harris was pistol whipped. so when this glock 19 was found in the black infiniti, prosecutor deener had it tested. the results were both sad and conclusive. it came back positive with ashlea s dna on the gun, so that was very significant. there was blood adjacent to her bed. and blood splattered on the bed. this was not an easy death. reporter: hearing all this was so hard on ashlea s mother monica and loved ones like april. i thought i could handle it. huh-uh, nope. so i went out and i went back ....
Into the room where monica was. and she was consoling me. and she shouldn t be consoling me. reporter: the brutality of the murder was never far from the prosecutors minds. i think i just thought how painful and how awful the last few minutes of her life would ve been on this earth reporter: how terrifying. and absolutely terrifying. absolutely terrifying. reporter: even that, they said even that appeared to be part of the plan. this wasn t just about robbery, or even revenge, said prosecutor rousseau. it was discussions that carter cervantez had had with people where she expressed certain i guess you would call them fantasies involving killing people. reporter: liza schoenthal remembers one such discussion at work. it was just us. and we were folding clothes, and she mentioned that she had thought about killing someone before and whether or not she could watch them die. reporter: as if the murder wasn t shocking enough, prosecutors were pretty sure ashlea s mu ....
Even when you couldn t see it, she could see it. she had such a big heart. and this world is worse off, at least, mine is. reporter: both david mallory and carter cervantez received mandatory sentences of life in prison with no possibility of parole. it wasn t enough for ashlea s mom and stepdad. reporter: you wanted to see the death penalty? death penalty was what i wanted, is what monica wanted. and but it wasn t to be. reporter: now they cling to memories of their ashlea. reporter: tell me about the last time you saw your daughter, physically, in person. it was november. reporter: about a week before she died, ashlea had invited ....