thomas cloudt is a texas assistant attorney general.n't involved in the trial, he knows the facts of the case. >> jason payne committed this murder beyond a reasonable doubt. >> reporter: in january of 2010, jason went to trial. prosecutors told the jury they thought he shot both nichole and taylor in the morning. they think he then placed the rifle on taylor's body to frame him for the murder of his mother. lieutenant miles tucker testified he believed taylor died first. >> his body was getting stiff. so -- which is normally an indication of a body being deceased for several hours. and her body was warm to the touch. that gave me a conclusion that he had been killed before her. >> reporter: prosecutors argued one motive for jason to commit the murders was money. there was a $100,000 life insurance policy on nichole. and investigators said, they discovered the paynes were having funnel troubles. >> the defendant was running out of cash, running out of liquid money. he had assets, his house and a car. but his bank account had gone down t

thomas cloudt, who prosecuted the second trial, was just as confident payne would remain behind bars. are you trying to get everything you can for this second trial? >> yes. we want evidence. evidence tells you the truth. evidence tells you what happened. >> reporter: cloudt felt he had a powerful piece of new evidence for this second trial. he played co of mysterious jailhouse phone calls made between jason and his mother. >> i'm talking about these tapes, and there was one that was me and nichole. >> reporter: the phone calls were made about three months after jason's second trial was granted in 2013. jason asked his mother to find tapes, stored at her home. >> i want you to just tear those up. >> you don't want them anymore? okay, i can do that. >> like, pull the insides out, and then throw them on the leaves and just burn it or >> reporter: do you know what was on them? >> no, no, i never heard them. >> reporter: his mother, faye payne, says she never did find those tapes, but to the prosecutors, it didn't matter. because they wanted to leave jurors with the impression jason was t