Page 8 - Hasse Case News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Matching bullet theory. >> someone of different experience could come along and say they're not a match. is that true? >> yes, potentially that is true. >> if i could break the chain from the live round recovered from the storage unit and the mcclelland shooting scene, i might stand a chance. >> reporter: the defense didn't see the need to call any witnesses. >> our position was the state had not fulfilled their obligation to prove the elements of the indictment. it was just that simple. there is no known murder weapon in this case. there's no one who can place eric williams in that scene at t...

Suspected murderer ending up in texas was especially intriguing to investigators. >> it made people if perhaps there was a connection with the hassie murder. >> reporter: they did tests on the suspect's weapon, his bullets were identical to these killed the prison chief in colorado but they found out that his gun was not the weapon that killed mark hassie and what is more -- >> ebol was deemed to not have been in kaufmann at the time that hassi he was killed. >> reporter: so eight weeks in the investigation was going nowhere. the command post was shut down. leaving just a small group to work f...

>> any assistance that anybody can give us in finding the people who did this will be greatly appreciated. >> reporter: d.a. mcclelland had it tough, he an office to run while mourning a friend. how hard was it for him to come back. >> it was very difficult. he talked a lot about the case. >> reporter: and the case was about to get bigger with another murder. only this one crossed another line. a very sacred line. >> reporter: coming up, another member of law enforcement gunned down. >> the colorado head of the department of corrections was shot here in his front door. had mark cassie's killer...

A block from the courthouse. >> people in kaufmann are shocked by the deadly attack. out in the open in the town square. >> i just never in a million years would have expected one of our prosecutors, much less somebody i knew personally, to be laying on the ground dead. >> reporter: with one of their own down, lieutenant julie stewart quickly joined the swarm of law enforcement jumping on the case. >> we didn't have time to grief about it. we didn't have time to talk about our feelings. it was time to go to work. >> reporter: lieutenant stewart and others canvassed the area. but solid informat...

That has somebody upset? >> reporter: investigators looked in to every local case he prosecuted. there was robberies, drug prosecutions and a theft that involved an elected official that stole office equipment. they didn't immediately find anything that led them to a suspect. u.s. marshals pulled in anyone with an outstanding arrest warrant. nothing there either. so, the task force widened the scope of the investigation beyond kaufmann. >> we don't have a lot of violent crimes in va-- crimes i kaufmann, especially murders. so we assumed dallas. >> reporter: the big city less than 30 miles, but...