S5 Ep38: Same Story, Different Players: The Texas Yogurt Shop Murders

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Strange and unexplained with me, Daisy Eagle.

Thanks so much, and enjoy the show.

Strangers just before we begin,

please take note.

This episode covers some very difficult topics,

including the rapes and murders of young girls.

Please take care.

Remember being a teenager,

hug, am I right?

The drama, the lying, the angst,

wasn't it just maddening?

Now add to the experience a horrifying crime

befalling your community,

with limited evidence for authorities

to follow in their investigation of it.

You, a vulnerable knot of hormones and acne

are the closest thing to a suspect,

simply because you were there

being a mall rat with your friends.

Could you trust yourself to stand in your truth

against the feds,

or would you fold under pressure?

Welcome to Strange and unexplained with me, Daisy Egan.

My first real-person job was as a canvasser

for a nonprofit.

I went door to door,

asking for signatures for this bill or that.

Frequently, I was invited in to complete strangers' homes,

and you know what I did?

I went inside strangers' homes.

I am so lucky I made it out of that job alive, literally.

It used to be a part-time job

was a right of passage for teenagers,

whether you were saving up to pay for college

or to buy your own set of wheels,

or just for some pocket money to spend

at the very same mall you likely worked at.

Your first job was supposed to be the stepping stone

into your next 40 to 50 years of daily grind.

But for two young women,

one little sister and a friend,

a part-time teenage job was not the first step of many,

but was indeed their last.

And four young men would be haplessly swept up

into their story in a fight for their own lives.

I'm a man.

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I'm a man.

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17-year-olds Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas

met as members of future farmers of America.

Both girls were juniors at Linear High School

in Northwest Austin, Texas.

Jennifer was a driven and successful student.

According to one source quote,

she served as president of the school's

future farmers of America chapter,

competed on the track team,

and was a member of the Vikets drill team.

A classmate described her as very opinionated

along with her corny jokes.

And her geography teacher later said

she was more excited about life

than any kid I've ever known.

End quote.

Jennifer was working at,

I can't believe it's yogurt where she was saving up

to buy a car.

Eliza was an exceptional student.

She was described as, quote,

a devoted member of the band,

playing the clarinet and also sang in the school choir.

Friends described her as shy at first,

but deeply loyal and witty once you got to know her.

She had a love for animals,

particularly cats,

and was known for her artistic flare and gentle heart.

End quote.

I often took closing shifts

and I can't believe it's yogurt,

which was, quote,

a way to earn extra money

and take on responsibility,

something she did with maturity

beyond her years.

End quote.

End quote.

On Friday, December 6, 1991,

Eliza and Jennifer were both working

the closing shift and I can't believe it's yogurt,

on 2949 West Anderson Lane in Austin.

Jennifer's 15-year-old sister Sarah and her friend,

13-year-old Amy Ayers,

had been hanging out at the mall

where the yogurt shop was located

and both came by.

Amy was described as a bright,

free-spirited,

and endlessly curious teenager.

She was funny and kind and loved good prank.

She was an eighth grader

and had recently joined future farmers of America.

She loved animals.

Quote,

she was especially proud

of raising a lamb named Tutti

as part of her FFA activities.

Her dream was to one day become a veteranarian

combining her deep compassion

with a strong sense of purpose,

end quote.

Sarah was a freshman at Linear High

and she was a junior varsity cheerleader,

a student council representative,

a member of FFA,

and played on the freshman volleyball team

and the basketball team.

Sarah idolized her older sister

and the two were very close.

Quote,

Sarah was described by friends

as warm-hearted and spirited,

with a maturity beyond her years.

Like Jennifer,

she was involved in future farmers of America

and showed interest in animal husbandry,

including raising and showing livestock.

Her involvement in FFA

reflected her love of animals and nature

and she often participated in school

and forage activities

with enthusiasm, end quote.

The four girls had plans

to sleep over at Jennifer and Sarah's house that night.

By 10 pm,

both of Eliza's parents had stopped

by to check in on the four girls.

The shop was scheduled to close at 11 pm.

Just before midnight,

though, a patrol officer noticed flames

coming from inside the yogurt shop

and notified dispatch.

The first fire truck arrived at 11.53 pm.

According to a piece from the Austin Chronicle,

quote,

fans of firefighters and police

responded to the two alarm blaze,

end quote.

Detective John Jones

was the first investigator on the scene.

He pulled up to find a quote,

chaotic scene of public safety officials

trampling in and out

of what they would soon learn

was a scene of a quadruple murder.

After the blaze was suppressed,

firefighters made the shocking discovery.

The bodies of the four girls stripped

and bound, shot in the head.

Some of them stacked together

and terribly burned from the fire

that investigators concluded was set

to cover the crime, end quote.

Another piece from the Austin Chronicle,

quoted Jones as telling reporters

that what he found inside was,

quote, wholesale carnage.

I looked in there,

and oh my god, end quote.

Austin firefighter Renee Garza

would later say, quote,

the firefighter with me tapped me

on the shoulder and pointed down.

He asked me, is that a body?

And I had to step back.

It was, and I saw another body.

I knew it wasn't right.

Something was not right, end quote.

News 8 Austin reported

that 13-year-old Amy was the first body

to be discovered.

She was found, quote,

lying in the middle section of the store.

She was without clothes

and on her side, face down.

Near her was an empty cash drawer.

The medical examiner determined her cause

of death to be strangulation

and gunshot wounds to the head.

A 22 caliber bullet was recovered, end quote.

Sarah Harbison was found in the back room

extensively burned

with her hands tied behind her back

and gagged at the mouth.

She had been sexually assaulted.

Eliza was found on top of Sarah

in a similar manner.

Her face and body were burned

beyond recognition.

She could only be identified

through dental records.

They were able to determine

that she had not been sexually assaulted.

Jennifer was found near Sarah and Eliza.

Investigators believed she had been stacked

on top of Eliza and had been pushed off

by the force of the fire hose.

All four girls it was determined were dead

before the fire began.

Now this arson clearly became

a quadruple homicide.

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The crime scene

was an absolute mess.

According to the Chronicle Quote,

water had puddled in the shop,

particularly in the rear

where the bodies were found.

And the high-powered

firehoses had inevitably

shifted elements of the scene,

perhaps including the bodies,

making it difficult at best

to identify and collect

what evidence remained.

End quote.

Detective Jones reached out

for help with the investigation

and soon the federal bureau

of alcohol tobacco

and firearms,

the FBI,

and the Texas Department

of Public Safety were on the case.

But as I previously noted,

the scene was chaos.

In the time

between the first

fire truck arriving

just before midnight

and about 4 a.m.

when the Department

of Public Safety arrived,

firefighters, paramedics,

arson investigators,

the medical examiner

and police had been coming

and going through the shop.

This, of course,

meant the scene had been

significantly disrupted,

making collection of evidence

infinitely more difficult.

Later, a trial

DPS investigator,

Irma Rios,

would testify that

the efforts of the crime scene

were not coordinated.

Evidence was not collected,

and areas of the shop

had never been processed

for physical damage,

including the bathrooms,

the front door,

and a dumpster out back.

In her testimony,

Rios said,

quote,

no one ever pulled out

everything that was

in the dumpster.

We just looked

at what was on top,

end quote.

I don't care how chaotic

the scene was.

You're telling me

they couldn't look

through the dumpster

at the scene of a horrific crime?

The interior of the shop

had not been properly plotted

for investigation either.

Just like

basic police work.

Despite all this,

eventually some evidence

was collected.

According to News 8 Austin,

using shovels

and sifter screens,

investigators found

bullet shells,

and a magazine

for a semi-automatic handgun.

Some burnt clothes,

including, quote,

remnants of denim fabric,

and clothing from all

the girls,

as well as a heart-shaped

belt buckle that had

belonged to Amy.

However,

police teams never

recovered the belt

that went with it.

A ring that belonged to

Sarah Harbison's

boyfriend was also

found,

end quote.

The Chronicle reported

that latent fingerprints

were found on the

cash register drawer,

and that, quote,

at least five hairs

were recovered

from the girls'

bodies or items

of their clothing.

In their interviews

of witnesses,

who'd been in and around

the yogurt shop

the night of the murders,

investigators found

some promising leads.

In 2009,

the Austin Chronicle reported

that on the evening

of the murders,

quote,

according to police

statements,

a couple saw two men

sitting at a booth

and acting strangely.

By watching their

reflections in the

plate-glass shop front,

the woman could see

the men from where she was

sitting.

The woman said

the pair made her

uncomfortable,

sources tell the Chronicle.

The couple left,

as the girls began to

close up shop,

leaving the two men

alone with them,

end quote.

Listen,

I'm sure this anonymous

couple already feels

horrible for not

doing more,

and I don't mean

too much,

but,

come on,

these were children,

these people

should have done more.

I saw a thing on

threads recently

where a woman

recounted being

hit on by a grown-ass

adult man in an

airport when she was

like 14 or so,

and an older

black woman

intervened and was

like,

until you get on that

airplane, I am your

auntie,

and ran that man off.

That's how you do it.

But it wasn't

just a civilian couple

that saw that

something wasn't right

at the yogurt shop

a former police

officer,

Durrell Croft,

who was,

by that time,

running a private

security company,

visited the shop

around 10 p.m.

that evening.

He recalled being

approached by a man

wearing a military

fatigue-style jacket

who was

loitering in the

line at the shop.

The man was

apparently letting

other customers go ahead

of him in line,

and gave the same

courtesy to Croft,

but not before

asking Croft

if he was a cop.

Croft said he

didn't take the man

up on his offer

and noticed when he

got to the counter,

that all he

ordered was a soda.

He then

watched the man go

behind the counter

toward the back of the

store.

Croft asked Eliza

what was going on,

and she said she

had let him back there

to use the restroom.

And then,

according to the

Chronicle Stranger,

quote,

Croft was uneasy

and testified that he

hung around the counter

for a few more minutes

to see if the man

ever returned.

According to Croft,

he never did.

End quote.

I can't with this.

I can't.

What the fuck

should be more urgent

to any adult person

let alone an officer

of the law

than waiting until

some strange dude

comes out from the

back of a store

where four teenage

girls are seemingly

alone.

Indeed, 17-year-old

Eliza was the

supervising manager

on the shift.

There were no

adults there

with them.

At least he paid

attention to what

little he saw.

According to the

Chronicle, quote,

days after the crime,

Croft was able

to give a fairly

detailed description

of the man he saw.

A white male

about six feet tall,

mid to late twenties,

medium build,

dark hair,

clean shaven,

clear deep voice,

and a long pointed

nose.

End quote.

An employee

at a nearby party

store said he

heard nothing at all

from the yogurt shop

except for some

props which were

assumed to be the

gunshots.

Criminal attorney

Amber Farley

would later point out

that the lack of

screams or commotion

coming from the

yogurt shop suggested

that whoever carried

out this gruesome

quadruple homicide

was able to maintain a

quote certain amount

of control over the

victims.

She said the killer

or killers likely

had previous criminal

records and that the

manner of the killings

suggested that they

were, quote,

experienced,

sadistic criminals.

End quote.

Despite all that

information, however,

police quickly focus

their attention on

four suspects who

are anything but

experienced sadistic

criminals.

End quote.

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Within a week of the murders,

16-year-old Maurice Pierce was arrested

for bringing a gun to North Cross Mall.

The gun was the same make and model

as one of the guns used in the murders.

Pierce was taken in and questioned

by Austin Police Department homicide detective

Hector Polanco.

Now, what they gleaned from Pierce

is all a little confusing because there's differing

information from a few sources,

so I'll just get through this as best I can.

According to a press release from 2025

on the Austin, Texas.gov website

after hours of interrogation from Detective Polanco,

Pierce confessed to the four murders.

However, according to the Austin Chronicle quote,

Pierce said in a written statement

that the 22 he was carrying at North Cross Mall

had been used by his friend Forest Wellborne

to commit the yogurt shop murders, end quote.

Forest Wellborne was 15 years old.

In this interrogation, Pierce also implicated

his friend's Robert Springsteen, 17, and Michael Scott, 17.

Before his days as the regional manager

of a paper company in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

At any rate, the day after whatever it was,

Pierce actually confessed to Detective Jones

interviewed Pierce and determined

that the information the teenager gave him

didn't match the details of the crime scene.

Also, ballistic tests on the gun Pierce had on him

at the time of his arrest were inconclusive

as to matching the gun used in the murders.

Meanwhile, Detective Jones had an itchy feeling

about Detective Polanco.

Polanco had a reputation for employing coercive tactics

when trying to get confessions out of suspects.

It was Polanco whose interrogations

led to the wrongful convictions

of Richard Danzinger and Christopher Ochoa

for a 1988 rape and murder.

The two were exonerated in 2002,

but not before Danzinger suffered severe brain damage

from a beating by a prison inmate.

For his part under questioning,

the forest well-born denied any involvement in the murders,

but did say that he and Pierce,

along with Springsteen and Scott,

had gone to San Antonio several days later

in a stolen mise-on pathfinder.

As a result, both Springsteen and Scott

were brought in for questioning,

but were not at the time considered suspects.

After questioning Pierce and well-born himself,

Detective Jones determined

neither of them were good for the murders.

About well-born Jones direct quote was, quote,

forest had no clue.

He couldn't organize a two-car parade, end quote.

LOL.

And so having cleared these four kids,

it seems the police were like shrug and kind of gave up

until about five years later

when a new detective picked up the file

and gave it a new set of eyes.

Unfortunately, though stranger,

this new set of eyes decided to focus

on an old set of information.

5 years after the murders in 1996,

Detective Paul Johnson went about reorganizing

the old case file, and for some reason set his sights

back on Maurice Pierce and his 22 caliber pistol.

As the Austin Chronicle put it, quote,

exactly why that gun, out of all the others mentioned

by various suspects, some of whom had confessed

to the crime, caught his attention remains unclear.

Indeed, why Pierce was a victim,

indeed, why Pierce was vaulted to the top of the pack

of potential tips?

There were some 2,000 of them after his reorganization,

according to news reports from 1999,

remains a mystery to many involved in the case, end quote.

Pierce well-born Springsteen and Scott were brought back in.

Imagine as a teenager being accused

of a quadruple homicide with your boys.

Getting off the hook only to be put back on it years later

as a not yet done forming adult.

Growing up is enough of a trip,

oh, how I would regress into panic.

According to the Austin-Texas.gov piece,

Springsteen and Scott confessed and both implicated each other.

Forest well-born and Maurice Pierce did not confess.

Regardless, all four men were arrested for capital murder.

It's important to note here that there was no

physical evidence linking these four men to the murders.

The only thing the prosecution had to go on

were coerced confessions.

Springsteen's lead defense attorney, Carlos Garcia,

and detective Jones both believed

that the new investigative team had approached the case

file with a bias.

His counsel thought the new investigation led

with the assumption that they'd had the right suspects

to begin with, but it just screwed up the investigation.

Jones told the Chronicle quote,

That's what happens when you come up with a conclusion

and then you go about building a case to that conclusion,

other than going about it the other way around.

That's what happened in this case, really.

I think that certain people came up with what they thought

happened and then constructed a case around that theory.

End quote.

Maurice Pierce was living with his wife

and daughter near Dallas at the time of his arrest.

He was described by the new investigative team

as the mastermind of the four kids.

Please don't forget he was 16 at the time

the four girls were murdered.

Have you ever met a 16 year old mastermind of anything?

Most of the time they can't even remember

to wash their own balls.

So not a mastermind was Pierce, in fact,

that his case never even made it to trial.

Instead, he sat in jail for three years

awaiting trial before being released in 2003

due to a complete lack of evidence.

Tragically, in 2010, Pierce was stopped

for a traffic violation and took off on foot.

After a brief chase, he was caught by an officer

and the two tussled.

During the struggle, Pierce grabbed the officer's knife

off his belt and stabbed him in the neck.

The officer then shot and killed him.

On September 15, 1999, investigators traveled

to West Virginia to re-interrogate Robert Springsteen.

This was the third time in eight years

that Springsteen was questioned about the murders.

Now, I know this might come as a shock, stranger,

but police once again behaved badly

during this four hour interrogation.

According to the Chronicle quote,

during the interrogation,

Robert Springsteen is sitting in a straight-back chair

across from the door.

Detective Robert Merrill alternately sits in front of the door

or with his legs propped on the wall,

blocking the room's only exit.

Detective Ron Lara and occasionally alcohol tobacco

and firearms federal agent Chuck Meyer

sit across the table from Springsteen leaning in

and sometimes yelling at him just inches from his face.

End quote.

Springsteen continued to deny his involvement in the murders

until, quote, he finally began to break down

in front of the police and admitted to being involved

in the murders.

I don't know whether this is true or not

or whether I'm fooling myself.

Springsteen told his interrogators,

I'm so confused.

End quote.

When he did finally confess, said in quotation marks,

there were major discrepancies between the story he told

and the actual facts of the case.

He did not say the girls had been bound and gagged

or that the back room had been set on fire.

At trial, detectives blamed the omission

on Springsteen terminating the interview

before they could get to that point.

I mean, it was his third interview

and it went on for four hours.

It's hard to imagine how these basic facts

would have been left out.

He also told them he shot Amy first

with a 380 caliber gun and then when she didn't immediately die,

she was shot again with a 22.

But medical experts had determined

that the order of the shots were the reverse.

Now, look, one could definitely argue

that after so much time had passed,

he could have gotten confused

about which order the shots were fired in.

But he also never mentioned that Amy had been strangled

with a cloth ligature.

Springsteen did, however, seem to know facts

that had never been made public.

For instance, he knew about the second weapon

used in the crime and that it was a 380 caliber semi-automatic.

He knew that Michael Scott had tried

and failed to rape one of the girls

and he said while casing the shop earlier in the day,

he'd propped the back door open

with a pack of cigarettes or a small rock.

Why, he didn't know if it was a pack of cigarettes

or a small rock, I don't know.

Now that the back door has been brought up,

I do wanna say something that occurred to me earlier

going through the research.

Firefighters said they'd struggled to get through

the front door because it was locked

and someone had left a key in it.

So eventually they broke it down.

When I read that, my very first thought was,

shouldn't there have been a back door?

Not only that, but like, I'm pretty sure

the front wall of the yogurt shop was glass

as most mall storefronts are.

Why didn't they just break the glass?

I know none of this really matters

and the girls were dead before the fire started anyway,

but maybe they could have collected more evidence

if they'd gotten in sooner.

Anyway, Springsteen's trial got on your way

in May of 2001.

For some Foccata reason, the judge judge Mike Lynch

instructed the jury not to take notes

during the trial, which was expected to last weeks.

Have you ever heard of something like that?

I haven't.

Why shouldn't a jury be allowed to take notes?

What on earth?

Apparently something like 37% of state judges

bar note-taking during trial,

even though the American Bar Association is like,

a jury should absolutely be allowed to take notes WTF.

Once again, as with the initial investigation,

there was no actual evidence linking Springsteen

or Scott to the case.

You might be wondering why Forrest Wellburn

wasn't also being tried.

Well, a grand jury declined to indict him

because unlike his two friends, Forrest did not confess

and like his two friends, there was zero evidence

linking him to the crime.

Literally, all the prosecution had

were the coerced confessions.

Springsteen's attorney put forth the defense

that there was a predator stalking the streets

and alleys of Austin at the time of the murders.

Though they didn't name the predator,

most assume he was referring to Kenneth Allen McDuff

who was to put it succinctly, a truly awful person.

By the time of the yogurt shop murders,

McDuff had murdered six people,

raping at least three of them.

Three of those murders occurred less than two months

before the four girls in the yogurt shop.

He went on to kill three more women,

the first within 23 days of the yogurt shop murders

and the last within two months.

McDuff was executed in November of 1998,

three years before Springsteen and Scott's trial began

and some anonymous sources came forward to say

he confessed to the yogurt shop murders

on the day he was executed.

However, investigators didn't believe his confession

because he'd apparently gotten some details wrong.

So don't worry, this rapist and murderer

was not good for this crime,

but the two kids who'd never murdered or raped anyone

as far as we know definitely were.

Even with loads of other leads

and unexamined DNA evidence from the scene,

Springsteen and Scott would remain tangled up in this story

for years to come.

The story is about to begin.

The story is about to begin.

The story is about to begin.

The story is about to begin.

The story is about to begin.

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McDuff was not the only one to confess, however.

According to some sources, there were as many as 50

confessions containing credible details.

For some reason, only two of these confessions

were allowed to be introduced as defense

in Springsteen and Scott's trials.

According to the Chronicle, quote,

a confession given by Alex Briones,

who was already wanted in San Antonio

for raping a woman and setting her on fire,

told police in 1992 that the murders started off as a robbery,

that the girls were bound, gagged, and raped than shot,

that there were two guns used,

and the second looked like a silver semi-automatic,

and that napkins and cardboard boxes were stacked

on the bodies before the fire was set.

All these details correspond to the crime,

and were supposedly confidential, end quote.

And quote, Sean Smith described in court

as an Austin resident who in 1992,

voluntarily came forward to confess to the crime,

told police that he and some friends arrived

at the shop after hours, that they stripped and bound the girls,

and that one of the guns used was an automatic of some sort,

that the girls were stacked in the back room,

and that lighter fluid had been used to start the blaze,

end quote.

Apparently, police determined these to both be false

because of misinformation given of well-known facts,

including the number of victims involved.

The defense called one of the initial investigators,

Mike Huckabee, not, I don't think,

the former presidential candidate,

who admitted that the investigation was kind of a shit show

from the jump.

He said there was so much information coming in

and going out that at one point,

they thought there might have been a leak

from the police department.

Also, they questioned almost 60 teens,

and Huckabee said they were likely all talking

to each other and sharing information.

On the stand, Detective Jones testified,

quote, initially, information we would normally

keep confidential was coming back to us

with such frequency that we had to cross it off the list, end quote.

Additionally, the bullets found at the scene

did not match Pierce's gun and police

knew that months before arresting him.

The defense also called Dr. Richard Offsheh,

a professor of social psychology

at the University of California Berkeley.

Offsheh was there to testify to the coercive tactics

police used in their interrogations,

but apparently Judge Lynch was like,

uh-uh, no sir, you leave that up to the jury to decide.

And Offsheh was like, uh, how da fuck,

are they going to decide that

if you don't tell them what happened?

He told the Chronicle, quote,

I was severely limited in the testimony I might have given.

I know what happens in interrogations

and I can help a jury evaluate it fairly.

Because if a jury understands how interrogations work,

then they can understand those things

that elicit false confessions, end quote.

Michael Scott's confession was also used

as evidence in Springsteen's trial,

which was a major issue because he hadn't gone to trial yet.

So he couldn't be brought in to testify

about his confession.

And at that point, his confession was really just a thing

he'd said, probably under duress.

But later, at least one juror would say they considered

Scott's confession a, quote, key piece of evidence.

In his 2001 Austin Chronicle piece on the case,

someone has to die, reporter Jordan Smith said

the prosecution used redundant reminders

to, quote, overwhelm the lack of physical evidence.

The endless stream of photographs shown to the jurors

seemed to have their intended effect.

There were tears, horrified expressions,

and postures of recoil throughout the jury box.

But does the gruesome nature of the crime

demonstrate anything about the guilt of the suspect

at the defense table?

End quote.

On May 30, 2001, Robert Springsteen was convicted

and sentenced to die.

And then in 2005, his death sentence was commuted

to a life sentence when the Supreme Court ruled

executing juvenile killers is unconstitutional.

Michael Scott's trial began in September 2002

and followed pretty much the same bullet points

as Springsteens.

According to one source that I'm not going to name right now

because it's a spoiler alert, Scott's timeline

of at least 20 hours of combined interrogation hours

went like this.

Quote, in February 1998, with the case gone cold,

police decided to conduct a new investigation

of the crime.

They re-questioned Scott by telephone

and he denied involvement.

On September 9, 1999, Scott was questioned again,

this time in a police station.

At one point during a 12 hour interrogation,

Scott said he knew the identities of the killers.

On September 10, the interrogation resumed

and ultimately Scott said he had probably shot one

of the girls and they'd he fired a gun once

and that he set the fire.

On September 13, Scott was interviewed once more

and said he remembered seeing Pierce

with one of the girls in a separate room in the yogurt shop.

He said he thought he had gagged one of the girls

with paper towels or napkins.

Further, Scott said the 22 caliber pistol came

from Springsteen.

He remembered little about the other weapon

but thought it was a semi-automatic 38 caliber and, quote.

Melvin Stahl, the city's fire investigator,

believed the fire had started in a corner of the shop

where supplies were stored.

But Scott said he started the fire

on the girl's bodies using an accelerant.

Investigators solved that discrepancy

by seeking a second opinion from ATF agent,

Marshall Littleton, who was like,

oh, yeah, the fire was definitely started

on the bodies with an accelerant.

They went back to Stahl who was suddenly like,

oh, yeah, you're right, oops, haha,

somehow I missed that the first time around, my bad.

According to a piece from 2001 in the Texas Monthly,

Detective Robert Merrill held a gun to Scott's head

during his interrogation on September 10th, 1999.

There is indeed a still image of it

from the interrogation room's video camera.

Now, you know me, stranger,

I'm no desperate Austin detective

trying to put a check in the solved box

so my bosses don't fire me,

but I'm pretty sure holding a gun to your suspect's head

is never considered legal.

I may be a dummy, plenty of people have said as much,

but what kind of answers do you expect to get from someone

with a gun pointed to their head?

Oh, that's right, the answers you want.

Sorry, duh.

Duh.

Scott was convicted on September 22nd, 2002,

and sentenced to life in prison.

Forrest Wellborn, who was only 15 at the time of the murders

had opened his own auto repair shop

and was married by the time he was arrested

in 2000.

According to News 8 Austin, quote,

on Friday, June 30th, 2000, a judge dismissed

the four Capitol murder charges against him

because a grand jury failed twice to indict him.

End quote.

Despite that, quote, he lost his business

after being arrested and could not find a job

after being released on $375,000 bail.

End quote.

The only difference between Springsteen and Scott

and Pearson Wellborn is that Pearson Wellborn

never confessed.

There was no evidence on any of them.

The only reason Springsteen and Scott were indicted

and convicted was because they confessed.

Springsteen, of course, immediately appealed,

and in May of 2006, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

overturned his conviction.

Not being able to admit they were wrong,

the state tried to appeal the ruling,

but the Supreme Court was like, get the fuck out of here

and refuse to even consider it.

In April of 2008, according to the Austin-American Statesman,

the defense team disclosed that there was, quote,

previously undiscovered DNA that did not come

from either Scott or Springsteen

that was taken from one of the victims.

End quote.

Indeed, there were multiple samples

from unidentified males taken from three of the victims.

In 2009, seven former jurors said they wouldn't have voted

to convict an either trial if they had known

about the DNA evidence.

Despite all that, though,

according to a piece in the AP from 2010,

prosecutors had their heels deeply dug in

and said they stood by their case, quote,

despite the DNA results.

They noted previous jury verdicts and confessions

by Scott and Springsteen, end quote.

In a press conference, Travis County District Attorney

Rosemary Lemberg said, quote,

she still hopes to try Scott 35 in Springsteen 34,

but must first determine who's DNA was recently found

in vaginal swabs taken from 13-year-old victim

Amy Ayers, end quote.

You think?

Sergeant Ron Lara, a chief investigator on the case,

said, quote, our focus continues on the suspects at hand

referring to Scott and Springsteen.

He also said that detectives are still investigating

Maurice Pierce 34 against whom charges were dismissed

in 2003 for lack of evidence, end quote.

Dude, let it go.

You were wrong.

It takes a big man to admit that.

Through all of this, however, Springsteen and Scott

remained in prison.

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On Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 10 years after being imprisoned, Springsteen and Scott were

released on bond pending new trials, which would never happen.

According to the statesman, quote, prosecutors faced an ultimatum by Judge Lynch.

Proceed to trial or he would consider a defense motion to dismiss the cases based on the

defendant's rights to a speedy trial.

Prosecutors move for dismissal at a short hearing Wednesday.

Lynch complied.

End quote.

But please don't think for a moment stranger that the state was eating crow.

Nope.

CDA, Lemberg, maintained she still believed Scott and Springsteen to be guilty.

She stood in front of a throng of reporters and told them the new DNA evidence did not

exonerate all four original suspects.

Pierce, well-born Springsteen and Scott, it just meant that there was a fifth suspect

who helped them carry out the crime, that they hadn't been able to identify.

Jesus Christ.

Lemberg clung on to this fifth-man theory despite evidence of yet another unknown man found

on the victim's clothing.

The statesman reported, quote, in addition to the DNA found on Ayers, defense lawyers say

they found DNA from the same male in a vaginal swab taken from Jennifer Harbison.

They also found another partial DNA profile in Sarah Harbison, which is not complete enough

to determine who it belongs to, according to defense lawyers.

Finally, they found unknown male DNA on clothing used to bind the wrists of Thomas.

End quote.

Lemberg complained that the DNA testing had cost more than $200,000.

Ooh, fuckin' who?

You should have done your job right in the first place.

Also, I'm pretty sure those are tax dollars.

Fun.

The cost was due, in part, to having to send the samples to a private lab, quote, until

this summer when the State Department of Public Safety Crime Lab began conducting the testing,

end quote.

That was 2010.

Apparently, until this summer actually meant 15 years.

It wasn't until 2025 that the unknown DNA sample was finally identified as belonging to

Robert Eugene, Braschers.

Braschers had an attempted murder in Florida in 85, for which he was imprisoned, and then

paroled in 89.

Through the DNA testing, it was discovered that after that attempted murder, he then raped

and murdered a woman in South Carolina in 1990, but somehow remained under the radar

enough to assault and murder the four girls at the yogurt shop in 91.

He went on to commit three more rapes and two more murders.

On January 13, 1999, police found Braschers at a super-rate motel in Missouri.

He was holding his wife, daughter, and two-step daughters hostage with a 380 pistol.

He released his family and then shot himself in the head.

He survived for six days and then died from the injuries.

The gun, with which he shot himself, was the same makin' model as the one used to kill

Amy Ayers.

Now do you want to get really mad stranger?

According to the City of Austin's website, detectives learned, quote, that on December 8,

1991, less than 48 hours after the yogurt shop murders, Braschers was stopped by border

patrol at a westbound checkpoint between El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico.

He was driving a stolen car out of Georgia and was in possession of a 380 pistol, end quote.

It was the same caliber gun, according to the bullets at the scene, and the same gun

he would use to kill himself eight years later.

A smoking gun found just days after the murder and border control couldn't be bothered

to, I don't know, flag it?

Finally, in 2025, the new District Attorney, Jose Garza, said quote, there are still investigative

steps that are underway.

That being said, the overwhelming weight of the evidence points to the guilt of one man

and the innocence of four.

If the conclusions of that investigation are confirmed, the Travis County District Attorney's

office will take responsibility for our role in prosecuting these men, and sending one

to death row and one to serve life in prison.

If the conclusions of APD's investigations are confirmed as it appears that they will

be, I will say I am sorry, though I know that will never be enough, end quote.

For his part though, Springsteen's lawyer was quick to remind people that the real victims

of this whole awful thing are Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison, and Sarah Harbison,

who were brutalized and murdered in the yogurt shop that night in 1991.

And of course, that's the hardest truth of the matter.

These four girls died in the innocent age of working their first jobs, sneaking fro

yo samples to friends who loiter them all long enough for you to clock out on a Friday night.

It's the time and space of life just getting started.

Adolescence fueled by anticipation and sugar.

Obviously, I imagine what happened to Amy, Eliza, Jennifer, and Sarah was horrifying.

But imagining them that night, hanging around the shop just before their deaths, hits

me even harder in the stomach.

I picture Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott just a few years older hanging around

the same mall, burning away the hours until adulthood hit them with those initial calls

from police, requesting interviews they'd inevitably clam up in.

The feeling is one of loss for their futures, and as is often the case, a renewed disgust

for authorities who don't take care with the lives affected in the chaos of crimes like

these.

My only hope is we remember these mistakes and learn from them.

What a gift it is to grow up and have the opportunity to change.

If given the chance, we're responsible to do so.

Next time on Strange and Unexplained, in the midst of World War II, three girls were

recruited by a Dutch resistance group fighting the Nazis.

The girls were tasked with extremely unusual jobs.

The kind of jobs only suited to young women.

They were very, very good at it.

The dainty Nazi killers.

Strange and Unexplained is a production of three goose entertainment and grab bag collab.

This episode was written by me, Daisy Egan, with research by Joe Gwerdet, sound mixing

and designed by Jeff Devine.

If you have an idea for an episode or want to submit a question for an ask me anything

episode, it had to strange and UnexplainedPod.com and fill out the contact form.

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You can follow me on social media at Daisy Egan or follow the show at SNUPod and grab

bag collab.

Stay Strange.