I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateland.

Murder is so personal. She knew who was in the room with her. She trusted that person. The saddest thing is that the last person you look at in this world is not your loved one. It's your killer.

She was just driven. She loved defending those clients. She loved law.

She would walk into a courtroom and and she looked like she owned the place.

She's representing some really hardened criminals. Maybe somebody had a beef with her.

It was personal.

Her left hand was opened. There was a piece of hair in it.

It suggested that a female had maybe killed her, and she pulled the hair out.

Somebody wanted her out of the wing.

Somebody planned this murder.

Who done it? Who came up here and did it? I told her, I will make this I will make this right for you.

Here's Dennis Murphy with Shining Star. Cajun country is where the dreadful thing happened. Baton Rouge, the Louisiana State Capitol perched on the banks of the Mississippi. Three blocks off the river on a chilly Thursday night, a criminal defense lawyer was working late, drafting a rip for the big murder trial starting Monday. When did the killer take her? Sometime after eight o'clock was the best guess. The news led next morning's early drive.

I hear on a local news station, they interrupt to say that there is a downtown murder in a law office.

Attorney Prem Burns was on her way into work.

Which, of course, alerts me. Initially, my gosh, is an attorney.

The office, now strung with yellow crime scene tape, belonged to an up and comer named Shakeda Tate, a local woman just a few years out of law school, but already making a name for herself in the competitive pads and Helmets arena of litigation and criminal defense.

She had recently won a half million dollar jury verdict. That's pretty awfully good for somebody out such a short time.

Shakeda was one of seven, her father absent, raised by her grandma in a tired neighborhood of boarded up houses. Smart and determined, she rose above her impoverished early years, and once her fuse was lit, she became a rocket.

She was talented. She had overcome so very much in a short time period. She was the star of her family.

Shakeda was the first in her family to go to college. Then she enrolled in hometown Southern law school, got grabbed up by a law firm where she started clerking while studying for the bar. That's when she met Legal Assistant, Lesie Hookfin.

She was just driven, wanting to get that next, I'll call it that next high. And law school was that, being a lawyer was that, and she achieved it.

She passed the bar on her first shot.

On her first shot.

She eagerly lapped up the hard cases, the kind that made news. Accused killers, druggies, gangbangers. She seemed at ease in the spotlight, happily talking to reporters. Have a good one. Shakeda was enjoying such success. She opened her own firm in a nice building a few blocks from the Courts complex. Lesie Hookfin went with her. What areas did she start to stake out for herself? Criminal.

She wanted to do criminal so bad.

Prem Burns watched her in action. Shakeda was one to speak her mind and dress how she wanted. In conservative pantsuits one day and stilettos and spiky hair the next.

We always joked because Shakeda would wear four-inch heels and just strut in. You knew Shakeda Tate was in the courtroom.

Another thing, Shakeda was all about family family. She hired her sister Danita to help in the office. Danita knew better than anyone that hard-driving Shakeda could be sunny one minute and a Gulf Coast storm the next.

She fired me every week.

She fired you?

Every week, and then that night. You were her office assistant? Yeah. At night, she'll call me and say, We're talking. Then she'll say, See you in the morning. I'm like, I thought I was fired.

In fact, it was a skirmish with Chiquita that sparked the interest of a young man named Greg Harris, who almost literally bumped into her while they were both cruising around town. Greg's brother Mike says it started when Greg cut Chiquita off.

She's in a car bed. He's in a Mercedes. She's blowing the horn at him and, Oh, you don't cut me off. So they pull up to the red light. I heard a few smiles went from him, a few smiles went from her. And After that, it's all she wrote.

Greg Harris was doing well as a contractor. The romance blossomed, and Chiquita moved into Greg's home. They got married in a small wedding with family in 2008. And a year later, Chiquita was moving into that nice new office, furnishing the book shelves, proudly hanging out her shingle. Did anybody ever worry about her and her clients?

I don't think that it was to the point where either she had to worry or anyone else had to worry.

On February 19, 2009, Chiquita was working hard, prepping her defense in a double homicide case. She told Lesie she had to work late, just a couple of hours. But Chiquita never returned home that night. Her husband, Greg, called her office repeatedly but got no answer. Around dawn, he drove down to the office, troubled, he'd say later, to see his wife's Hummer parked where she'd left it. He couldn't get in the locked building, so he called 911. My wife, she was working late last night, but I can't get inside the building. I need a cop over here quick. Greg suddenly spotted a patrol car and flagged it down. An office worker let the policeman in the building while Greg called his sister-in-law, Danita, sounding frantic.

It was like, D, the home is still parked here, and they won't let me in the office.

Once upstairs, it took only a glance for the patrol officer to declare Chiquita's office a crime scene, a bad one. The shining starlight of Chiquita Tate had been cruelly extinguished. By whom and for what reason? When we come back, the first clues.

No blood in the elevator, no blood in the lobby. Her left hand was opened. There was a piece of hair in it. I was like, Oh, my Lord.

As the sun was coming up over the Mississippi that cold February morning, the family and friends of Chiquita Tate were converging on the street below her office.

So I tried to run in the office and the police grabbed me. They was like, Ma'am, you can't go in there. I said, That's my sister in there.

Just like Danita, Shakeda's legal assistant, Lesie Hookfin, was stopped on the street outside by an officer.

He saw me coming, so he came toward me and grabbed me, pretty much to hold me up because I was going down. That's when he told me she was dead.

Shakeda's loved ones were huddled together when veteran Homicide Detective Chris Johnson and Elvin Howard rolled up to the scene. So the responding officer has told you that's the husband over there, but he's on the edge of things for you. You haven't approached him yet.

That's correct. He was upset to the point where Uniform Patrol had to put him in the back of the unit. So do you go up at that point? No. At that time, we try to gather as much information as possible.

The police wanted to create a timeline of Chiquita's last day. At one point, she'd gone to court, even talked to reporters about a recent case. The statute is the question that I would like the appellee court to review. After a quick chat, she headed back to office where workers were refinishing a bookcase. Lesley left at her regular time, about 5:30, and she remembers being concerned about the smell of varnish.

I said, Chita, don't stay in here too late because the smell was just overpowering. She said, Les, I'm not going to stay in here late. I'm just going to read this.

But she did stay late. Shakeda's husband, Greg, told police his wife called him around seven or so and asked him to please bring her something to eat. So he set out from their home in Baker, about 25 minutes away.

Then he said he went to McDonald's in Baker and got some hamburgers and fries and brought it to Chiquita in her office.

Greg told the cops he encountered a number of tenants in the building working late that night. He remembered running downstairs on a small errand for his wife.

Shakeda had a client that was coming over to pick up some money, so he went downstairs to pay this client and pick up some paperwork from this person for Shakeda.

Greg said Shakeda had more work to do and yet another client to see. So he said he took off for home. It was sometime around 8:30. What happened next was a bloody mystery. It would be up to the detectives and also Prem Burns to figure out. The attorney hearing the awful news on her car radio that morning, the one who got such a kick out of Chiquita in court, was in fact a legendary Baton Rouge prosecutor.

My boss, the district attorney, was out there. There were so many police officers there. The crime scene van was there. I went into that and immediately said to my boss, I want this. I want this case.

Prem insisted, as she always does, on viewing the crime scene. As she entered the office, she noticed Chiquita had been fixing things up.

But then when you proceeded into the next room where her body was, I was like, Oh, my Lord. She was butchered. She was butchered. She was laying on the floor. She had little slipper socks on her feet, the way all of us would be if we stay after work. We're not going to keep our heels on. She basically had a law book that I think she had been reading that was in her hands at the time the attack began.

Shikita had been stabbed 43 times. The attack was brutal and messy. The blood stained wall suggesting a fight to the death. Did you have a murder weapon? No, we didn't. Did you get lucky with a footprint or a partial print or anything in blood, anything like that?

No, we did not get lucky with a footprint.

No blood in the elevator, no blood in the lobby, no blood on the buttons.

The killer had him probably vanished without leaving a trail, and at first glance, hadn't taken anything either.

She had expensive jewelry still on her hands. She had earrings in her ear.

This is starting to tell you some stuff about the nature of this killing, huh? That's correct. It didn't look like a robbery. However, as crime scene techs process the scene, the investigators realized Chiquita's wallet was missing from her purse. And there, in the victim's hand, what looked like a major clue.

And her left hand was opened. There was a piece of hair in it, actually 91 strands of hair in it, and her right arm was over her head, and she just died like that.

Had she pulled it from killer's head, the hair was long had the killer been a woman. What were your theories? What do you think had happened?

I actually did not come to any conclusions because I couldn't think of a soul who would have wanted her dead.

Shakeda's father-in-law, Silver Ray Harris, admired her courage but wondered about the clients who came with her line of work.

Being a criminal lawyer, that's what you deal with criminals. So you have to accept a degree of bad people.

They come looking for-She had some of the toughest of the tough.

That's what I hear, that if you went to her, she'd try to help you.

The list of potential suspects could be as long as her client list. Yet, Shikita's brother-in-law says he can't understand how anyone could do such a thing.

Heartless. Completely.

To do her that way.

When I get on my knees that night, I pray he'll get justice.

Police were confident they would get their man or or woman, and something up a street pole gave them hope. Outside Shikita's office were city surveillance cameras and traffic cams. Did one of several cameras see someone enter after Greg left? There may not have been a trail of blood, but with a little luck, those cameras just might give them a portrait of their killer or killers suitable for framing. Coming up.

She sees the wallet on the side of the road.

The missing wallet and that mystery clump of hair. What might it reveal?

If you're in a fight and pull someone's hair out, you're going to find root hairs.

So the scenario that occurs to me is this is a woman that's in this society.

Exactly.

When Dateland continues. Shakeda Tate's vicious killing, stabbed and slashed dozens of times, had shaken her friends and family to their very roots. And as an officer of the courts, it was also an attack on Baton Rouge's criminal justice system family. The heat was on, detectives Johnson and Howard to find the killer. You're looking at the poles around here. What was that, Chris?

Yes, but crime cameras. We know that most of Baton Rouge have crime cameras down here. They have several locations. And across from the office is a crime camera right there on the pole.

We also have traffic cameras that are on each signal light.Oh, yeah?There are some right here. That's correct.

So you could get really lucky, maybe.

Hopefully. We thought we would be getting lucky.

Get the perpetrator coming or going.

That's correct.

This camera, about a block away from Chiquita's office, was working fine. It showed a quiet street the night of the killing. Normal activity. What they really wanted was the shot from this camera, which swept right past Chiquita's office door. But bad luck. A recent storm had knocked it out.

The camera in front of the office was not working properly that particular night.

So no picture of a suspect. This wasn't going to be an open-shot solve, but there was evidence to work with. The crime scene technicians had taken scrapings from under Chiquita's fingernails and sent them off for lab analysis. Had she scratched DNA material from her killer, they'd have to wait on findings. And likewise, the clump of hair found in Chiquita's hand, did it contain DNA identifying the killer?

If you're in a fight and pull someone's hair out, you're going to find root hairs, hair bowls.

But the lab work was back on the hair sample. There were no roots on those strands, but the hair had come from a woman's hair extension or weave. So the scenario that occurs to me is this is a woman that's in this assault. Exactly. Two women are fighting, and she's gotten a bit of this weave and ganked it. The theory of two women in a death struggle didn't make sense to the cops. The attack seemed too violent, too overwhelming. But with homicides, you never know. In the early hours of the investigation, though, they did catch a major break. A report had come into dispatch. A woman driving through a high crime area known as Gardier Lane called police to say she'd found a wallet, and it belonged to Chiquita Tate.

She's driving down Gardier Lane, and she sees the wallet on the side of the road.

Amazingly enough, the finder of the wallet knew Chiquita. The young attorney had given a speech at her daughter's school and made quite an impression.

That prompted her to call the police and advise us that she located this wallet.

And unexpectedly for a wallet taken from a victim's purse and then tossed, Chiquita's ID and her credit cards were all inside, which got investigators thinking, maybe the killer planted the wallet there, hoping some street person would find it and stumble right into a homicide investigation.

When you take a nice wallet loaded with credit cards to Gardier Lane and leave it in the streets, somebody's going to pick it up and start going to the mall, spending some of those credit cards. The first thing that's going to happen is that the police are going to have a film of the transaction and go to that person and say, You killed Chiquita Tate.There's.

Our suspect.Absolutely. So this killer unknown started taking on some traits in the detective's minds. The person was good or lucky enough to get out of the office building without leaving a trail of blood. And after what had to have been a frenzied attack, still had the composure to think of the red herring of the tossed wallet. The killer looked like a cool customer, perhaps a professional. As the cops went down the list of dubious characters on our client roster, they looked closely at two men who had been accused of killing a man and his 17-year-old son. Possible suspects?

One of them actually was in jail at the time of the It just was very unlikely that someone who she worked so hard for would kill her.

A few of the people on Shikita's client list were incarcerated at the time of her killing. Others had alibis, but she also had clients who were free to come and go. Did one of them have an appointment? Was there anybody due to come in that evening?

No. Not after hours. After hours. No. That would have been very unusual, and I would have known.

A mystery client with the worst of grudges? A woman unknown. Only theories until the cops play poker with a witness and hit the jackpot when they're only holding a pair of deuces. Coming up, two new clues, a revealing recording. All this is not on me. And a revealing phone call with a jaw-dropping tip for police.

This is a voice saying, I think I know who may have killed Chiquita.

There's a concept in police work called victimology. The detectives probe the backstory of someone's life to understand what made them tick. In Shakeda's case, they found for sure a woman loved, respected, and admired. Fired, but they also learned she had a capital T temper.

She was extremely aggressive.

To the point of being irritating?

To some and to some extent.

Had she pushed someone too hard or too far. As detectives ran through the evidence, they'd, of course, been talking to the husband, Greg Harris, right from the start. Greg, meanwhile, was being very helpful with investigators. He hadn't lawyered up. He was telling him the story of his night. Here's the keys to my vehicle. Take a look. If you want to to the house, check it out.Yes, absolutely.I'm with you. They conducted those searches because spouses, no matter how cooperative, are always suspects. What crime scene investigators found when they poured over Greg and Shakeda's house was, well, at first glance, not much. No weapons, certainly, no blood-soaked clothes. They took DNA swaps and bagged various items for lab analysis. Then in a closet, they found a really oddball souvenir. An audio recording made by Greg of him and Chiquita engaged in a screaming match.

This sounded like a couple splitting the sheets, divvying up the household goods.

Danita was aware that her sister, Chiquita, was unhappy, but realistically, she didn't think her strong-willed sister would ever be happy in a marriage.

You know in a relationship, you have to compromise. I don't think she was willing to do it. It's her way or no way.

Danita says her tempestuous sister was always threatening to storm out of the marriage right up to her last day.

And that morning, February 19th, she called me and she said, Dee, I just can't do them everything anymore.

Greg's parents, Silver Ray Harris and Joycey Henderson, believe the couple had just hit a rough patch.

I think it had to do with her not being home very often. She take cases that would take her to New Orleans, and she'd work on cases to lay up into the night.

Too much career going on for her.

Yeah, and no time for him. And I think he wanted more time.

But in the early hours of the investigation, detectives learned the fight recorded at the couple's home wasn't an isolated incident. Their files showed that a 911 domestic call brought police to Greg and Shakeda's house two months before they got married. What was that all about?

Police were called out because Shakeda accused Greg of hitting her. From what we understand, a charge was filed against both of them.

With that in mind, when Greg sat down with investigators, the conversation became contentious, even combative.

I love my wife. We were trying to make this relationship happen.

You were trying to make this relationship happen? No, we both were.

They'd had problems, he admitted, but said he wasn't violent with Shakeda. The detectives told Greg what they'd picked up on, that Shakeda was leaving the marriage. Ron countered husband.

She was still living with me. You go to my house, it ain't no clothes packed. Yeah. Well, if she was leaving, why she asked me to come over there and help her when we were still going to the movies, doing everything else?

They reviewed Greg's timeline the night of the killing, how he brought his wife dinner and left her still working at the office sometime around 8:30.

Where did you go?

Where did I go? I went home.

Straight home? I went straight home. Which path you took home?

I got on the interstate.

That's when police, clearly suspicious of Greg, used a ploy to smoke him out to catch him in a lie if he were in fact lying.

According to the cameras, that's not the path which you've taken last night.

We convinced him that we had cameras up, which we do have cameras up. We convinced him that we can track his cell phone.

In fact, did you have anything like that?

No, but they're not. We just bluffing him.

You know we do phone records? Your phone records, her phone records. It tells every tower that you hit when you're making phone calls.

That's fine. That's fine.

And so with Greg thinking the cops knew his every move, they confronted him with an important question about the place where Chiquita's wallet had already been found.

When was the last time you've been on Gordia Lane?

Gordia Lane? I went to Gordia Lane last night.

Really? Yes. What town you went to, Gordia Lane?

I don't know what town it was.

Approximately.

What's he saying he's doing there?

He said he to buy steroids. He's a big guy, he lift weights, and he said that's where a steroid dealer live.

Full street transaction. Right. Whatever the explanation, Greg Harris had put himself in the neighborhood where the wallet had been tossed. For the cops, it was a got you moment. And while they had no evidence, no DNA, no forensics that connected him to the killing, they did have some leverage, that old domestic dispute call. Though she and Greg were charged, only the charge against Chiquita was dropped.

Why are you don't want to have a warrant?

All this was supposed to have been dismissed. Now, other than this, I don't know anything about it. I never hit this girl a day in my life.

So using a year and a half old warrant unrelated to the death of Chiquita Tate, the police put Greg in custody for a few days. So they could put him on ice, huh?

Absolutely. While the forensics were being tested from the crime scene.

But then, seemingly out of the blue, came a strange tip from an anonymous caller.

Saying, You need to look into this angle because I think I know who may have killed Chiquita.

This is a voice on the phone?

This is a voice on the phone. Female voice. It's like, You need to look into it. She was involved in a lesbian love triangle.

Did that explain the clump of hair, the impassioned, intimate killing. The investigation was charging off in a wholly new direction. Coming up.

I knew the two ladies.

Two new suspects? Exactly what would police find? And Chiquita's husband, Greg, was he in danger?

Someone came up to his bedroom window at about 3:40 in the morning and shoots in the window.

When Dateland continues. Just as investigators were zeroing in on the husband, Greg Harris, they got a tip that brought them back to Chiquita Tate's list of clients. But it wasn't about any of the career criminals on her roster. The tip concerned two female clients, a same-sex couple that Chiquita had been helping with an adoption case. The anonymous caller suggested their lawyer-client relationship was more than that.

A female said that it was two women that Chiquita had a love triangle. She even gave the two suspects' name as well. She indicated that one suspect had scratches on their body.

Well, that would explain the crime of passion, which you think is a signature here. And also maybe why there's hair in the palm of her hand. That's correct. Some a tussle. Yes. Police confirmed the names of the two women on Chiquita's client list and then made each a call.

We had to investigate and contact both individuals and got statements from them.

The detectives told the prosecutor that both women insisted Shakeda wasn't their lover, just a good attorney.

We loved her work. She was a friend, but that's where it ended.

Still, the detectives took a closer look at the couple.

We didn't see any scratches on their arms. We also realized one of the suspects had brazed and not weaving her hair.

What's more, police say that both women had alibis. Legal assistant, Leslie Hookfin, was sure the secret love triangle was nonsense.

I knew about the adoption. I knew the clients, and everything was going well.

Is there any way you can see that that's somehow involved with... Never.chiquita's being butchered?

No, I knew the two ladies, and I knew the case was going well.

But you didn't see any difficulty there, any bad blood? No, not at all.

Not at all.

So the investigators put the tip in their back files and proceeded to check out the tipster. They traced her call to a town in Texas. They even drove there, and after questioning a few locals, managed to reach a woman by phone with an broadly familiar voice.

I immediately recognized her as the voice that I heard that had called the office that time. I asked her, How does she know Shakeda Tate? And she said, Well, Shakeda Tate used to be married to my brother.

This was Greg Harris's sister?

That's correct. Greg Harris's sister.

So the tip that sent detectives off to Texas had led them right back to Greg, the husband. Was Greg, or maybe his sister, trying to plant a false lead? Frem Burns added that to her list of concerns about Greg Harris. She was also discovering that Greg had a had history with some of the women in his life. Her investigators found Greg had control issues and a temper, according to Chiquita's family members and some old girlfriends.

He just wanted them within his eyesight and within his control.

She also learned that Chiquita had taken out a lease on an apartment. She hadn't yet moved into her new place, but Prem Burns believes Chiquita was indeed going to divorce Greg, which meant he had lost control of her.

I believe that's what happened with Chiquita, is that he was not going to let her.

Nobody leaves me.

Nobody leaves Greg Harris unless Greg Harris throws them out of the house onto the front lawn.

Greg's brother, Mike, doesn't believe it for a second. His brother, he says, wasn't violent. And once more, he says Greg and Chiquita were working it out. We all go through bumps.

But there's also a phase called reconciliation and healing. And that's what they had.

And as for that tip about the same-sex couple, Greg's father, Silver Ray, says his daughter wasn't trying to throw off the cops. The female love triangle was a legitimate concern of his.

She got that strictly from me, which I got it from another attorney. And we just wanted to look at all the options to make sure that all the bases were covered. We wanted to look at these two women.

Did you encourage her to call the cops, Mr..

I didn't encourage her. She did it on her own. But it wasn't nothing to to throw the cops off. If you're investigating, you got to look at all the angles.

In fact, Greg's father and mother, Joycey, and brother Mike say they couldn't believe that police even suspected Greg, not the Greg they knew.

My Greg was a son that helped raise his brothers. He made sure that they were fed when I worked. He made sure when they came home, they did their homework.

You have people you want to grow up to be like. My model was my elder brother. I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for him.

Even Shakeda's sister could not imagine Greg as the killer. Can you see him in that office? No.in a rage, slashing your sister?No.Fight that's moving from here to there? No.

No, I can't even picture it.

Greg's parents and his brother believe that whoever killed Shikita also wanted Greg dead. They recount an incident that happened after Greg was released from custody. Shots were fired into his home.

Someone came up to his bedroom window at about 3:40 in the morning and shoots in the bedroom window five times with a 10-millimetre gun, hoping that he was in the bed. Just what happened, Greg fell asleep on the sofa. God saved him. He was not in the bed.

Greg's family, convinced he was innocent, became only more so when they heard this. Scrapings from under Chiquita's nails showed DNA not only from Greg, but from someone else as well, an unknown male. What could that Coming up.

If Greg Harris had done this, you would have found an enormous amount of blood, and that just wasn't the case.

Another DNA surprise is coming, and in court, a surprise from the jury, too.

I just about passed out.

The case against him. Greg Harris was the last person known to have seen Chiquita alive. His marriage to Chiquita had been volatile, and he put himself near the street where Chiquita's stolen wallet was tossed. But what galvanized this case for the prosecutor was a pair of sunglasses discovered in Greg Harris's car.

The glasses are under the seat.

Is there blood evidence on them?

There absolutely was. There was a combination of his blood and her blood on the left lens. When I was told there is their blood mixed on this left lens and the right arm of those glasses, I said, I don't need anything more.

On March 16, 2009, Greg Harris was charged with second-degree murder. He went on trial two years after Chiquita's death in March of 2011. The prosecution set out to prove that Greg killed Chiquita because she was going to leave him. Former girlfriends testified that Greg had a Jekyll and Hyde personality, sweet when he was courting, volatile and controlling once he won them over.

He would hit them. He would fight with these girls. As long as he could control them, he was fine.

Prosecutors played the 911 tape from that domestic abuse call. While both Chiquita and Greg were charged, the call didn't sound as though they were locked in a fair fight.

He grabbed my finger and I figured we got to do it at him. And then he choked me. And I I couldn't move.

And the prosecution argued Greg had another motive, money.

The night the murder happened, he called his boss and said, I need to get an advance or a loan on my 401k. His boss said, I can't do it. I'm sorry, Greg.

But as Prem Burns told the jury, Greg could get about $60,000 in insurance if Chiquita were to die.

I think money was motivation, but more so I think Chiquita had planned to leave Greg, and that's one thing Greg could not accept.

The prosecution told the jury Greg may have been angry, but he was also cool and calculating, planning both a crime and a cover-up. Case in point, those long hairs that suggested a female killer. The state argued Greg brought the hair to the crime scene and then planted it.

Her hand was not clenching it as if she died that way. It was actually strewn as if somebody had taken it and just weaved it through her hand.

It was a ploy, said the prosecution, designed to throw off the cops, just like the tossed and found wallet from Gardier Lane, where Greg eventually admitted he went the night of the killing.

Gardier Lane? I went to go to your lane. I went to go to your lane last night.

Misdirection, according to the prosecutor, was Greg's MO. She even suspects he fired those shots into his own bedroom to make it look as though the killer was still at large.

It was like, Gee, let me call and say that there's a lesbian love triangle. Let me plant the hair. It's like, Let me just go one step further.

And of course, there was the blood evidence. Prosecutors presented more than the blood stained glasses. A lab analysis revealed there were dots of blood throughout Greg and Chiquita's house. There was a significant blood stain on a Clorox bottle.

The Clorox bottle was out up on the sink, and it had blood visible to the eyes.

Prosecutors say that stain contained Chiquita's and Greg's DNA. What makes sense to you?

What makes sense to me is that Greg Harris had no reason to want to kill Chiquita Tate. Zero whatsoever.

Lance Unglesby was on the defense team, and he argued there wasn't nearly enough evidence to convict Greg Harris. Nothing put him at the site of the killing. The alleged motive was weak, and the blood evidence, paltry.

Our theory was very clear. If Greg Harris had done this, you would have found an enormous amount of blood in that Mercedes and on his clothes and at the house in Baker, and that just wasn't the case.

Lance, out at the house, they're very curious about this Clorox bottle, where, again, they think they see commingled blood. What about that? That's a problem for you.

Well, practically, it's not a problem. In the normal course of living, a little blood on a Clorox bottle is really not that big a deal. If Shakeda lived there, of course, her DNA would be on that bottle.

As for the hair that the prosecution said was planted, The defense argued that was just an unproven theory. Those two female clients may not have been involved, but the long strands suggest another woman may have been there.

It suggested that a female had maybe killed her, and that in the middle of the fight, she'd pulled the hair out. Between that and the amount of cleanup that would have been required, we always believe two people were involved in this murder.

And as for that visit to Gardier Lane, the defense lawyer says Greg was reluctant to admit it, but not because he had tossed the wallet.

Well, because he was buying steroids. He was discussing buying steroids, which is illegal.

Kill her for the insurance, the defense said no way.

He had too much going for him. We did not buy into the prosecutor's theory that he would do it because he was in some financial stress. We didn't believe in buying to that for a minute.

The defense argued cops didn't look hard enough at the list of scary clients who may have wanted Chiquita dead, and that unknown male DNA under her fingernails, the source, still unknown.

We believe that there was just more to this than was being presented to that jury.

The trial lasted 16 days, and then the jurors were given their instructions. After listening to the evidence, Danita was torn, and she remembers how she felt when after three and a half hours of deliberation, the jury announced it had a verdict. Now, take me right through your mind and your stomach as you're walking back into the courtroom.

Shaking barely can stand on my feet. We holding hands walking back in there.

Did They see Greg as a stone killer capable of premeditated murder or an innocent, grieving husband. The answer is neither. The verdict they reach was something in between. Guilty of manslauner, a lesser charge which the judge allowed them to consider. The prosecutor was flabbergasted.

I just about passed out, and so did the defense attorney. Nobody argued manslauder.

She wanted to know why the jury rejected her argument of premeditated murder.

I went back and talked to the jury, and they said, Well, you know what we think? We think something just went on up there that got out of hand.

The judge had a lot of latitude in imposing the sentence. Manslaughter could carry anywhere from a few months to 40 years in prison. A lesser conviction of lesser charge, but the judge threw the metaphorical book at him.

She did.

Forty years without the possibility of parole. Correct. The maximum sentence. After that, Greg Harris got a new lawyer who called his trial unfair because the judge knew the victim personally. Judge Trudy White did disclose early on that Shikita had been her law clerk, and the first defense team did not object. Should you have gotten her recused? Absolutely. Was that a trial her?

No, she was a very fair judge.

But Greg's new lawyer, Rick Gallo, said the judge did not disclose everything about their relationship. We discovered that Chiquita, the victim, had actually represented Judge White in a civil lawsuit. Judge did not respond to our request for a comment. Gallo also argued the real killer is a relative of one of Chiquita's clients. He said DNA might prove that. But in 2016, a judge denied his request for a new trial. The cops will tell you that every lead they chased down brought them back to one man who robbed a family of its shining stars. So it's been years now. Flassie, do you miss her?

I miss her so much. Everything. Her good moods, her bad moods, her good days, her bad days. I miss it all.

Baton Rouge. The river rolls on. But without that fiery young lawyer who'd come so far, so fast. That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.