the victim had her name tatooed on her rib cage, ashlea harris. outside ashlea's friends were totally in the dark. >> we were asking, um, if we could talk to ashlea or where she was at, they just said that she's unavailable right now. >> reporter: ashlea's boss, chris cravey had just arrived and was trying to get some answers. >> for a couple hours, we just assumed that she was being taken care of. >> reporter: and while they waited for information, investigators were realizing this was no accident. >> it was obvious that she had been beaten due to the amount of blood that we found. and then we observed that her arms were bound behind her back, and her ankles were also bound. >> reporter: it looked, said the detectives, like ashlea had been fighting back against a truly vicious attack. >> she had been beaten and possibly tortured. we later discovered that her neck had been slit. >> reporter: not only that, the fire looked suspicious, so veteran arson investigator, wallace hood, was called to the scene. >> i noticed that there was fire damage on the

>> this is a glock 19 semiautomatic pistol. >> reporter: in fact, investigators believe ashlea harrisas 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