Dateline NBC - Shining Star

Episode Date: September 10, 2024

A criminal defense attorney is found brutally murdered in her office after working late. The search for the killer takes investigators down a strange and unexpected road. Dennis Murphy reports.Listen to Dennis Murphy and Josh Mankiewicz as they go behind the scenes of the making of this episode in ‘Talking Dateline’: https://link.chtbl.com/tdl_shiningstar

I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Murder is so personal. She knew who was in the room with her. She trusted that person. And 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 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 way. Somebody planned this murder. Who done it? Who came up here and did it? I told her I will make this right. 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 capital 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 writ for the big murder trial starting Monday.

When did the killer take her? Sometime after 8 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 it an attorney? The office, now strung with yellow crime scene tape, belonged to an up-and-comer named Shakita 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. Chiquita 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.

Shakita 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 Leslie 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. Shakita was enjoying such success, she opened her own firm in a nice building a few blocks from the courts complex. Leslie 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. Chiquita was one to speak her mind and dress how she wanted. In conservative pantsuits one day and stilettos and spiky hair the next. And we always joked because Chiquita would wear four inch heels and just strut in and you knew Chiquita Tate was in the courtroom.

Another thing, Chiquita was all about family. She hired her sister Danita to help in the office. And Danita knew better than anyone that hard-driving Chiquita could be sunny one minute and a Gulf Coast storm the next. She fired me, like, every week. She fired you? Yeah, every week and then. You were her office assistant? Yeah, and 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 Shakita off. She's in a Corvette, he's in a Mercedes. She's blowing the horn at him and, you know, oh, you don't cut me off. And so they pull up to the red light and 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, varnishing the bookshelves, 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 Lessie 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's like, the Hummer 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 say, that's my sister in there. Just like Danita, Chiquita's legal assistant, Leslie Hookfin, was stopped on the street outside by an officer. And he saw me coming, so he came toward me and grabbed me, pretty much to hold me up because I was going down. And that's when he told me she was dead. Chiquita's loved ones were huddled together when veteran homicide detectives Chris Johnson and Elvin Howard rolled up to the scene. So the responding officers 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 appellate court to review. After a quick chat, she headed back to her office, where workers were refinishing a bookcase. Lessee left at her regular time, about 5.30, and she remembers being concerned about the

smell of varnish. I said, Keta, don't stay in here too late because the smell was just overpowering. She says, Les, I'm not going to stay in here late. I'm just going to read this. But she did stay late. Chiquita's husband, Greg, told police his wife called him around 7 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. Shakita 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 Shakita. Greg said Shakita 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. And so 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. Chiquita 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? 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. So this is starting to tell you some stuff about the nature of this killing. That's correct. It didn't look like a robbery. However, as crime scene techs processed 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 her 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, I did not come to any conclusions because I couldn't think of a soul who would have wanted her dead. Chiquita's father-in-law, Silver Ray Harris, admired her courage, but wondered about the kind of clients who came with her line of work. Being a criminal lawyer, that's what you deal with, criminals. So you have to accept the degree of bad people.

She had some of the toughest of the tough, huh? 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, Chiquita'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 at night, I pray he'll get justice.

Police were confident they would get their man or woman, and something up a street pole gave them hope. Outside Chiquita'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 Dateline continues. Shakita 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 polls around here. What was that, Chris? Yes, the crime cameras. We know that most of Ben Roers 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. Yeah, that's correct. So you could get really lucky, maybe. Hopefully. We thought we would be. Get the perpetrator coming or going, huh? That's correct. So you could get really lucky, maybe. Hopefully. We thought we would be. Get the perpetrator coming or going, huh? 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-shut 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 balls. 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 yanked 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 Guardia Lane called police to say she'd found a wallet and it belonged to Chiquita Tate. She's driving down Guardia 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 his wallet. And unexpectedly, for a wallet taken from a victim's purse and then tossed, Shakita'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 Gucci wallet loaded with credit cards to Guardia 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. And 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 up 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 homicide. It just was very unlikely that someone who she worked so hard for would kill her. A few of the people on Chiquita'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. 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 Shakita's case, they found for sure a woman loved, respected, and admired. 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 them the story of his night. Here's the keys to my vehicle. Take a look. If you want to go to the house, check it out. Yes, absolutely. I'm with you. And they conducted those searches because spouses, no matter how cooperative, are always suspects. And what crime scene investigators found when they poured over Greg and Chiquita's house was, well, at first glance, not much. No weapons, certainly. No blood-soaked clothes. They took DNA swabs and bagged various items for lab analysis. And 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 of February 19th, she called me and she said, Dee, I just can't do the marriage thing 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 would take cases that would take her to New Orleans and she'd work on cases to late 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 Shakita's house two months before they got married. What was that all about? Police were called out because Shakita 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 the relationship happen?

No, we both were. They'd had problems, he admitted, but said he wasn't violent with Chiquita. The detectives told Greg what they'd picked up on, that Chiquita was leaving the marriage. Wrong, countered the husband. She was still living with me. You go to my house, there ain't no clothes packed. Yeah. Well, if she was leaving, why she ask me to come over there and help her when we were still doing, 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 in 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 make a phone call. 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 Gordier Lane? Gordier Lane? I went to Gordier Lane last night. Really? Yes. What time you went through Gordier Lane? I don't know what time it was. Approximately. What's he say through Guardia Lane? I don't know what time it was.

Approximately. What's he say he's doing there? He said he went to buy steroids. He's a big guy, he lifts weights, and he said that's where steroid dealers 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 gotcha 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 the only one that had 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.

And 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 Dateline 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 names 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 sort of a tussle. Yes. Police confirmed the names of the two women on Chiquita's client list and then paid 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 Chiquita 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 braids and not weave in 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 Chiquita's being butchered? No. 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 oddly familiar voice. I immediately recognized her as the voice that I heard that had called the office that time. I asked her, how did she know Shakita Tate? And she said, well, Shakita 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 bad 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. And I believe that's what happened with Chiquita, is that he was not going to let her. Nobody leaves me, huh? 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 what's 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, you know, 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? I didn't encourage her. She did it on her own. But it wasn't nothing to throw the cops off. If you're investigating, you've got to look at all the angles. In fact, Greg's father and mother, Joyce, and brother, Mike,

say they couldn't believe that police even suspected Greg, not the Greg they knew. My Greg was the 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 older brother. I wouldn't be the person I am today if it wasn't for him. Even Chiquita'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 Chiquita 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-millimeter gun,

hoping that he was in the bed. Just so 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 mean? 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 that 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 threw it at him. And then he jumped me. And 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. And his boss said, you know, 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 like 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 Guardier Lane, where Greg eventually admitted he went the night of the killing. Guardier Lane? I went to Guardier Lane last night. Misdirection, according to the prosecutor, was Greg's M.O.

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 kind of 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 bloodstained glasses. A lab analysis revealed there were dots of blood throughout Greg and Chiquita's house. There was a significant bloodstain 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 Chiquita 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 believed 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 and buy into 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, Donita 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. I'm shaking badly because it's standing on my feet. And we're 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 reached was something in between. Guilty of manslaughter, 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 manslaughter. 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. 40 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 Shakita had been her law clerk, and the first defense team did not object. Should you have gotten her recused? Absolutely not. Was that a trial error? 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 White 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 star. So it's been years now. Flassie, do you miss her? Oh, I miss her so much. Everything,

her good moods, her bad moods, her good days, her bad days. I just, 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.