Page 27 - Assistant Da News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

To fascinate me despite what we heard from the assistant da in that news conference last week or the week before. what does that tell us that it's the public corruption unit and not the unit that's typically tasked with investigating crimes like this? >> i'll say two things on that. one, it tells us that the manner in which this case came to the southern district of new york means that there was a public corruption aspect to the case. that's why the unit got the case. and that case could have come to the southern district of new york because of the investigation into the npa into -- >> what's ...

Please. >> and before we got a chance to talk to him, his defense lawyer ushered him out down the hallway. >> what did you think? did you take it all in? i'm not sure he took it all in. >> i'm not sure i took it all in at first. >> that this is over. >> it was super exciting. everyone was so happy. everyone was in tears. >> not quite everyone. assistant d.a. bill gargen was fuming. >> you were willing to get arrested over this. >> i was more than willing to have handcuffs placed on me to argue my point. i didn't cross any lines. >> what recourse do you have? >> there's no appeal. that i know o...

>> we wish that hadn't happened but the kid deserves a break. >> the community felt that very strongly. >> so when the trial began less than a year after the shooting, the sworn representative of the people with a murder case to prove found herself in an odd spot. >> the biggest problem was the defendant himself, because he did appear to be, you know, an upstanding, nice young man. >> monroe county district attorney sandra dorley. >> from the very beginning, people were disappointed that an indictment was filed against charlie tan and that we're taking this to court. but, you know what? we hav...

Saying, "god, i just killed their mother." >> reporter: by-and-by, ariel and eva woke up. todd kept them out of the room where their mom lay dead. then, he said, he cleaned up the house as well as he could. and at 10:26 am, 7 hours after rachel died, he phoned a lawyer friend and asked him to inform the authorities. >> tell me exactly what you heard from your neighbor. >> what i'm willing to tell you is that i'm an attorney. i received a call notifying me of the situation. >> reporter: about the same time, 10:30 am, todd took his children to the neighbor's house. >> i said, "there's been --" i...

>> well, we learned that they had conducted surveillance at ashlea's apartment weeks before that. they had a picture of her apartment. her actual door to her apartment, and they had pictures of her vehicle, the white dodge ram pickup. >> reporter: in early december, 2014, carter cervantez and david mallory were arrested and charged with the murder of ashlea harris. cold comfort for ashlea's sister. >> it's just such a loss and it's so pointless. i just don't understand how people could do that. >> reporter: they were tried separately, but the cases against them were virtually identical. assist...