Carter Cervantes: The Murder of Ashlea Harris

Carter Cervantes is a former American Eagle Outfitters store manager who was convicted of capital murder in May 2016 for the killing of her 31-year-old coworker Ashlea Ann Harris in Fort Worth, Texas. The Carter Cervantes and Ashlea Harris murder case grew out of a workplace theft: Cervantes and her boyfriend, Clarence David Mallory Jr., killed Harris in November 2014 to steal her store keys for a planned Black Friday robbery and to punish her for reporting an earlier burglary. Both were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Why Ashlea Harris Was Targeted

Cervantes managed an American Eagle store in Amarillo, Texas, where she hired 19-year-old David Mallory and began a romantic relationship with him in violation of company policy. After a district manager intervened, Cervantes transferred to the American Eagle at Fort Worth’s Hulen Mall. Mallory was fired and barred from other American Eagle locations, but Cervantes helped him falsify documents so he could be hired at her new store.¹

On August 24, 2014, a hooded burglar stole roughly $18,000 from the Hulen Mall store after Texas’s sales tax holiday weekend. Harris, the assistant manager, reported Cervantes and Mallory as the primary suspects after Cervantes was seen leaving a back door unlocked. Surveillance footage backed her up, and American Eagle fired them both.¹

Prosecutors said the pair resented Harris for reporting them and planned a second robbery for the Black Friday rush. That required Harris’s keys. On November 21, 2014, they bought what investigators later called a “murder kit”: shovels, gloves, duct tape, rope, and a tarp. Mallory’s phone contained GPS coordinates for a spot near Lueders, north of Abilene, where they had already dug a grave.²

The Killing on Black Friday Morning

Harris worked a Black Friday shift at Hulen Mall through the night of November 27 into the early hours of November 28, 2014, clocking out around 4:00 a.m.³ Around 8:00 a.m., a neighbor at the River Ranch Apartments on King Ranch Road called 911 to report smoke from an upstairs unit. Firefighters put out a small fire that the sprinkler system had already contained and found Harris’s body on her bedroom floor, hands and feet bound with duct tape and covered in blood.¹

An autopsy attributed her death to asphyxia and blunt force trauma, with injuries to her face, head, neck, and throat consistent with beating and strangulation. The appellate opinion in Mallory’s case also noted her throat had been cut.² Prosecutor Kevin Rousseau later called it a “rage killing” and “torture.”¹ Investigators found the fire had been set with rubbing alcohol as an accelerant, an afterthought meant to destroy evidence. There were no signs of forced entry, no missing valuables other than Harris’s work and home keys, and the apartment door had been locked from the outside.

How Cervantes and Mallory Were Caught

A neighbor reported hearing a loud thump, screaming, and heavy breathing around 7:30 a.m. and had seen a black two-door Infiniti leaving with its headlights off. Harris’s coworkers pointed police to the August theft investigation and identified Cervantes as the owner of a black Infiniti G35, sharing photos from her Instagram account.⁴

Officers set up surveillance at the couple’s apartment early on November 29 and later observed them at Hulen Mall. Mall cameras caught Cervantes trying to use stolen keys on the American Eagle gate. The attempt failed because the store had changed its locks after the August burglary.¹ Mallory was briefly taken in that day for driving without a license, and both were released.⁴

A search warrant for Cervantes’s Infiniti turned up ski masks, a 9mm Glock 19, a walkie-talkie, and a visual guide to lock picking. Harris’s DNA was found on blood-stained floor mats and on the handgun, which investigators believed had been used to pistol-whip her.² Inside the couple’s apartment, police recovered the receipt for the November 21 purchases, and duct tape there matched the tape used to bind Harris. Text messages between the two spelled out planning for the killing and the robbery.¹

Arrest warrants for capital murder were issued on December 4, 2014. U.S. Marshals arrested Mallory in the Amarillo area the next day, and Tarrant County deputies took Cervantes into custody on December 6.⁴

Trials, Convictions, and Sentences

Cervantes and Mallory were tried separately in the 297th Judicial District Court of Tarrant County. The charge fell under Texas Penal Code § 19.03, which makes a murder committed during a robbery or in retaliation a capital felony.⁵

Cervantes went first. In May 2016, a jury convicted her of capital murder. Evidence at trial included surveillance footage from the police station showing her wiping down a water bottle in an interrogation room, in what prosecutors described as an attempt to remove her DNA.¹ She received a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Rousseau told reporters the killing was driven by both revenge and greed.

Mallory’s trial followed in August 2017. He pleaded not guilty and did not testify.⁶ The jury convicted him of capital murder, and he received the same sentence.⁷

Mallory’s Appeal

Mallory appealed to the Court of Appeals for the Second Appellate District of Texas at Fort Worth. In a memorandum opinion issued on February 14, 2019, Chief Justice Sudderth wrote that the evidence supported the conviction whether the jury viewed Mallory as the principal actor or as a party under Texas’s law of parties. The court affirmed the conviction.² Both Cervantes and Mallory remain in prison serving life without parole.

1
Oxygen. Ashlea Harris Killed by Former Hulen Mall Employees
2
CaseMine. Mallory v. State, No. 02-17-00279-CR
3
CBS News Texas. One Dead After Fort Worth Apartment Fire
4
Amarillo Globe-News. Fort Worth Murder Suspects Arrested
5
FindLaw. Texas Penal Code § 19.03 – Capital Murder
6
Texas Courts. Court’s Charge to the Jury, Case No. 1395156D
7
Dallas Voice. 2nd Defendant Convicted, Sentenced to Life for Murder of Ashlea Harris