August 7, 2025 • 50 mins
In 1991, Austin, Texas was rocked by one of the most horrifying crimes the city had ever seen: four young girls were brutally murdered and set on fire inside a local yogurt shop. The investigation would stretch on for decades, leading to four men being accused of the crime, yet lingering questions and evolving forensic evidence have continued to cast doubt on whether justice was truly served.
Now, with renewed attention to the case, we’re re-releasing our original Crime Junkie episode. Whether you’re revisiting the details or hearing them for the first time, this is your chance to dive back into the facts, the timeline, and the troubling unanswered questions.Follow along on Instagram and TikTok @crimejunkiepodcast as we continue the conversation.
Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/austin-yogurt-shop-murders/.Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.
Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!
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Now, with renewed attention to the case, we’re re-releasing our original Crime Junkie episode. Whether you’re revisiting the details or hearing them for the first time, this is your chance to dive back into the facts, the timeline, and the troubling unanswered questions.Follow along on Instagram and TikTok @crimejunkiepodcast as we continue the conversation.
Source materials for this episode cannot be listed here due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit: https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/austin-yogurt-shop-murders/.Did you know you can listen to this episode ad-free? Join the Fan Club! Visit crimejunkie.app/library/ to view the current membership options and policies.
Don’t miss out on all things Crime Junkie!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Are you an absolutely huge fonter or a zoom inner.
Perhaps your an arm stretched out like a zombie when
holding a newspaper, or a squint so tightly at the
menu the waiter thinks you're sleeping, Or at Specsavers, we
get it, you don't want to admit it's probably time
to become a glasses wearer, or that's okay, we're ready
(00:20):
to see you whenever you're ready to see properly, book
an eye test at Specsavers dot I E so you
can see clearer, or okay, we'll stop with the earth.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Now. My name's Chad Powers.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Streaming on Disney Plus. Glenn Powell is Chad Powers. Who
is that guy? He's doing a missus doubtfire.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
There was one hell of a performance.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
But with football, Oh I keep Powers than you are
a puzzle. A brand new original series. Every choice, every
mistake carry you to this fot.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
You were born for this moment.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Cry Chad Powers, a new original series exclusively on Disney
Plus eighteen plus subscription required.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Decency's apply, Hey, crime junkies forrit here By now, you've
probably seen or heard people talking about the new HBO
documentary The Yogurt Shot murders, and if you're anything like us,
this case has stuck with you for years. Ashley and
I first covered it way back when some of our
og Crime Junkie fan club members said it our way,
and ever since we have not been able to let
(01:20):
it go. So with the documentary bringing this case back
into the spotlight, we wanted to reshare our original episode.
Whether this is your first time hearing about the yogurt
shot murders or you've been following it for as long
as we have, now is the perfect time to revisit
the case, the timeline, and the questions that still remain unanswered.
We'll be watching the documentary right along with you as
(01:41):
the episodes drop, and we'll be diving deeper over on
our Crime Junkie Instagram and TikTok, so be sure to
follow along and join the conversation there. We want to
hear all your thoughts and theories and reactions as all
of it unfolds. All right, let's get into it. This
is the story of the Yogurt shot murders.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
On December sixth, nineteen ninety one, seventeen year old Eliza
Thomas got ready for work at her house, putting on
her I can't believe it's yogurt uniform and pulling her
hair into a scrunchy. When she left to make it
on time for her seven o'clock shift, she nor her
family had any way of knowing that she would never
come home. Eliza got to work and was soon met
(02:54):
there by her friend and coworker, Jennifer Harbison, who was
also seventeen. Eliza had actually helped Jennifer get the job there,
and both girls were just trying to make some extra money.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
They were in high school.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
They wanted some spending cash, wanted gas money pay for
their cars. So on that night, it was just the
two of them working that evening, and their shifts were
pretty short. The store actually closed at eleven o'clock, and
if they could start cleaning up early, they'd be out
of there pretty quickly. And they were pretty sure tonight
would be a breeze because Jennifer and Eliza had extra help.
(03:28):
Jennifer had a younger sister named Sarah who was fifteen,
and Sarah had been hanging out at the mall, which
was just a couple of blocks away, with her.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Thirteen year old friend Amy Ayres.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
After the mall closed, the two of them went over
to the I can't believe it's yogurt shop to help
Eliza and Jennifer close down. Amy and Sarah stayed in
the back since they weren't technically employees and they weren't
in uniform, and I think they just kind of helped
put things away, maybe wash some dishes. They had some pizza,
and just kind of hung out while Eliza and Jennifer
(04:01):
stayed in the front. Now, my first job was actually
at an ice cream place, and we would always start
the nightly cleanup well before officially closing, and that's what
the girls did that night. They started putting up the chairs,
they started wiping down the tables, cleaning out the machines,
restocking the napkins, all of it. Jennifer went out into
(04:21):
the lobby while Eliza stayed behind the counter to do
the cleaning in the back and ring up the couple
of last minute customers that were flowing in. And we
know it was her behind the counter, not just because
of witnesses, but it was her registered number.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
Used to check these people out.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Shortly before closing, a woman enters the shop and she's
actually just picking up some ice cream to take home
to her husband, and when she enters, she.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
Comes to an abrupt stop.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
There are only two other customers in the store, and
for whatever reason, they make her very uncomfortable. She describes
them as two teens who are facing one another as
they sit at this table. They aren't eating frozen yogurt
or anything at all from what she can see, but
they're focused on some kind of sack in between them
(05:10):
and the boy that she can see she describes as
having darker skin, maybe hispanic, but maybe he could have
just been very tan. But this one guy has his
hand in the sack and he's like rolling something around
that sounds like change or maybe marbles. And she remembers
having the urge to ask the girls if they were
(05:31):
okay alone in there with these guys. But the girls
seemed fine, they were chatty, they were happy, So she
kind of convinces herself, like a lot of us do,
that she's just being paranoid, that she's being crazy, So
she decides not to say anything and she leaves the shop.
Later on, there's another couple that comes in. They come
(05:52):
in while the girls are doing their pre closing routine.
It's a man and a woman and when they come in,
they notice two guys sitting at a booth closest to
the cash register.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
And I kind of want to describe this store to you.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
So when you walk in, you basically see a row
of booths on your left, you see some tables in
the middle, and you see a row of booths on
your right. And these boys were sitting in the row
of booths on the left side, and they were farthest
away from the door but closest to the cash register.
And there's basically this long counter and then you can
(06:29):
go through this doorway into the back room.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Okay, that makes sense, right.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
So the couple says that when they walk in, Jennifer
was out in the lobby and cleaning up, just like
we said, and Eliza was behind the register and they
didn't even know it at the time, but there were
the other two girls in the back. But again they said,
we didn't see them, we didn't hear them, We had
no idea. The couple gets their yogurts and they sit
down to eat instead of taking it to go, and
(06:55):
the woman said she was kind of eavesdropping on the girls,
like as they were chatting, and she felt like, for
whatever reason, the men were eavesdropping as well, because they
weren't really talking to one another. They as far as
she could tell, weren't eating or drinking anything. So she
too felt that it was a little bit strange that
(07:16):
these men were just sitting here so late without any
kind of ice cream. And as the woman is sitting
in the booth now, she's sitting in the chair that
is facing the outside window, and it's late at night.
It's after ten thirty, which means that it's completely dark.
And you know how when it's dark, like there's like
the reflection you see more than you see outside when
all the lights are on. Yeah, well, she said, she
(07:37):
remembers looking and she can see the two men almost
behind her, and one of the guys has his back
to her, and so it's really hard for her to
get an idea of what this guy looks like. And
she even says she's just assuming they're guys based on
like their general form. But the one with his back
to her had a padded tan jacket on, and the
(07:59):
other one she he could kind of see because he
was facing the glass as well, and he looked thin
with maybe light brown hair, but it was really hard
to make out any kind of distinguishing features from that
far away, like looking in a glass reflection. Finally, at
ten forty seven, the couple decides that they should probably leave.
Like the girls are clearly trying to clean up, they
(08:19):
don't want to be in their way, and so they leave,
leaving the two men behind as the only patrons in
the restaurant. Now, it was policy for the store that
at ten point fifty, about three minutes after this couple left,
that the girls were supposed to lock the door from
the inside. This would basically prevent any new customers from
(08:41):
coming in, but it would allow the people who were
still inside to get out. And we know they did
this because later on the keys would still be found
in the lobby door. And we know that they continued
with their cleanup routine because almost all the napkin dispensers
had been refilled, almost all of the chairs were propped
up on the table, all except for one. And this
(09:05):
is something that to me and many people years and
years later, stands out. The booth closest to the counter,
the one that everyone says they saw two strange men
or two strange boys at still had after they came
and photographed it later an empty napkin holder when all
(09:27):
of the other napkin holders in the place were full,
and it had no chair on the end of the
table like all of the other boose and clearly that
was because someone was in that booth preventing Jennifer from
cleaning it. What happened after ten forty seven is unknown.
Did the girls ask the two men to leave at
(09:48):
closing time, prompting the men to pull a gun on them.
Did the men pretend to leave to ease their worries
and then slip back in the back door, which was
later found propped open.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
We may never know.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
All we know is that whatever happened likely happened at
eleven three pm when Eliza hit the button for no
charge sale on their register, which opened the cash register drawer.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
This was the.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Triggering incident when the killer or killers took around five
hundred dollars in cash, but the real thing of value
they took were the four lives of those girls in
the shop that night. About an hour later, a cop
on patrol sees smoke billowing up from the shopping center
where the yogurt shop is located. He calls it in
(10:35):
At eleven forty eight and the fire department is dispatched.
Most of them admitted that foul play wasn't even on
their minds. When they pulled up, the windows were completely black,
smoke was pouring out of them. It's very common for
businesses to leave stoves on after closing, and they thought
that's probably what happened here, like there was a restaurant,
the place caught fire. But what they'd eventually realize is
(10:58):
that the icby didn't have any stoves. The firefighters worked
to put out the flames, and later the officer said,
you know, had we had known what we were stepping into,
we probably would have done it differently, because when the
firefighters went in, there was really no concern for preserving
evidence or a crime scene. They just went in to
(11:21):
put out a fire. And you know, I'm no professional,
so I don't know what the difference is to me.
I think you can only put out a fire one way,
but maybe there are certain techniques they can use, or
maybe it's everybody looking back and just being a little
harder on themselves knowing how the case ended up almost
thirty years later. But as they moved through the store,
(11:43):
fighting off the flames, they could barely see through their masks,
but the one thing that caught their eye was afoot
and Brett. I don't know if this happens to you,
but there are certain memories that are like etched in
my brain when someone brings something up, like you get
that first flash something. And the firefighter who found them
(12:03):
says that any time he thinks back on the crime
scene or he thinks about this case many many years later,
it's that image that's conjured up in his mind of
that single foot, charred black, but distinctly human. And that's
when they all realized that they weren't dealing with a
normal fire. They saw a second body almost right away,
(12:27):
and then a third body, and something about the positioning
of the first two, the way the girls were stacked
one on top of the other, naked and bound, they
knew that this was going to be a homicide investigation.
The homicide detective that was on duty at the time,
his name was John Jones, and he ended up being
(12:48):
called to the scene. And it's actually kind of crazy
because we have tape of him getting this call that
very night because he was doing a ride along with
a news station. They were doing this story on crime
in Texas. They'd been in Austin for a couple of days,
and really we're getting nothing. Austin was still kind of
a small town back in nineteen ninety one with very
(13:10):
little violent crime. And there was even this offhanded comment
made on the very last day before this call came in,
something along the lines of like, you know, you probably
won't get a lot for your story here, but at
least you're going to Houston the next day, Like that's
the big city, that's where you'll be able to get
crime to report on. But little did they know that
night they would get one of the biggest crimes in Austin,
(13:31):
maybe even in Texas history. Here is the call that
comes in to Detective Jones, tell me, yeah, you hear
about to call on fourth Management.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Yeah, I'm handed over there. I aiata twenty nine. That's
a business go anyway, uh.
Speaker 8 (14:03):
Out of play fatality.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Past have far warn auto a triple fatality. I murdered
a great Now that's a shopping center. Where do I
(14:31):
need to come to?
Speaker 4 (14:31):
In here?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
What place of business is this?
Speaker 3 (14:37):
That shover around it? Back the rout of back.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Wall U track? Can I get around from the sad side?
It's a firehead stretch across Aderson Lane.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Before he even arrived on scene. The men at the
scene of the crime radio him back and say make
that four bodies. And even with the warning, Detective Jones
had no clue what he was about to walk into.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
My name's Chad Powers.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
Streaming on Disney Plus. Glenn Powell is Chad Powers?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
What is that guy?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
He's doing a missus doubtfire.
Speaker 8 (15:20):
That was one hour of a performance. But with football,
I like Key Powers than you are a puzzle.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
A brand new original series. Every choice, every mistake carry
you to this fock You were born for this moment.
Cry Shod Powers, a new original series exclusively on Disney Plus.
Eighteen plus subscription required decency's apply.
Speaker 5 (15:43):
When detected, Jones walked through the yogurt shops, still thick
with smoke that was filling his lungs. He was horrified
at what he saw. The girls had been burned so
badly that their bodies had melted and they had become
part of the floor that they were found on. They
were all found in the back of the store, and
(16:03):
in most of the retellings of this story you'll hear
it generalized as they were stacked atop one another and
then set on fire. But that's not exactly right, or
it might be right, but we really have no proof
and its kind of speculation at this point. The way
that they were recorded as being found by homicide was
(16:23):
Sarah was laying on the floor by the back door,
Eliza was laid on top of her, and right next
to them was Jennifer and Amy was actually the farthest away,
more towards the entrance leading to the front of the store.
And it's possible that more than just Sarah and Eliza
were stacked and somehow the velocity of the water used
(16:46):
possibly pushed Jennifer off of the others.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
But it's also possible that Jennifer.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
And Amy were always positioned how they were, and I
think it's safe to say that at least Amy was
never in the same area as the other girls. Because
she was the least burned of all of them, positioned
on her stomach or her right side, she was somewhat
recognizable and it was her, the youngest of all of them,
that gave Detective Jones the first indication that they would
(17:15):
later find signs of sexual assault. Between her nude and
spread legs. Was an ice cream scoop pointed up toward
her pelvic bone. Before the girls were transported one at
a time to the Medical Examiner's office for an autopsy
to be performed, rape kits were performed on the scene. Now,
(17:36):
usually this would be like super no, no, Like, you
don't do anything on the scene. All of this is
done at the emmy's office. Right, protocol was clear on
this matter, but the detective in charge was adamant about
breaking protocol. Too much had already been lost due to
the fire and the water damage. They could not risk
(17:57):
losing any more evidence or cataminating anything by transport. So
after a tiff with the Emmy's office, like they kind
of got into it, they ended up agreeing and taking
rape kits there. Now, I tell you this because by
the time the Medical Examiner's Office got the girls, there
was so much hostility built up between the EMMY and
(18:19):
the detectives, and this could have led to the EMMY
not being as thorough as they normally would because they
didn't do something that normally is done in every single
arson case. They did not swab any of the bodies
for accelerant. Now, part of the reason that this might
(18:41):
have happened like in addition to the hostility is because
everyone at the scene agreed that they couldn't smell any
accelerant on the girls, on the floor where the bodies
were found, or on any of the ligatures used to
bind them. But whether everyone agreed or not, standard practices
dictated that they should have been swabbed anyways, but they weren't,
which is going to play a major factor in the
(19:03):
case later. And while we're talking about it, there's a
lot that wasn't done that looking back, should have been done.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
But Austin was not ready for this.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
Their crime scene tech had only processed maybe one other
arson case before this one, so no one dusted the
bathroom for fingerprints. Not everyone on the scene was wearing booties.
They didn't keep the lock on the back door to
see if maybe it was like tampered with. They didn't
save a lot of the materials that were found in
(19:33):
the back with the girls, and maybe none of those
things would have helped solve the case years later, or
even at.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
The time, but now we'll never know exactly.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
The Medical Examiner's office was able to confirm that at
least some of the girls had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
They don't ever officially.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Rule out any girls, but I think some of them
were so badly burned that nothing could conclusively be saved
or collected. The girls had each been shot in the
head with twenty two, but again, Amy's body was a
little different than everyone else's because she had actually been
the only one who was shot twice, once on the
side of the head with the twenty two, but when
(20:11):
that didn't kill her, a second larger caliber weapon, likely
a three point eighty, was used to shoot her again.
She also had a bruise under her chin, indicating that
she had been struck, and she'd also been strangled before
being shot again. It's hard to tell if Amy was
singled out for some reason, or if all of the
girls were tortured like this before their death, but their
(20:34):
bodies were too burned to show any signs of it.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
So who would have done this?
Speaker 5 (20:39):
This was really a gruesome scene And was it really
a robbery gone wrong? Or were these girls targeted and
the five hundred or so dollars that were taken was
just an afterthought? Neither scenario made sense to investigators. These
girls had no enemies, they weren't into anything nefarious, and
if the eleven Zho three Vegis' opening is any indication.
(21:01):
It seemed they put up no fight when handing over
the money. So why police tried to hold a lot
of the crime scene details back in their early days.
They didn't want the public to know about Amy's bruises,
or how many times she'd been shot, or about the
ice cream scoop between her legs. They didn't want the
public to know where the fire actually started, which according
(21:23):
to early reports was like the shelving unit next to
Eliza and Sarah and Jennifer. They didn't want to say
what was used to buying the girls or how much
money was even taken.
Speaker 7 (21:33):
Okay, At eleven forty seven, one of our patrol Lobsters
called in the dispatch, smoke coming out from I can't
believe it's yogurt.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Fire department got here, Charlotte.
Speaker 7 (21:42):
Thereafter what we found in the back there was we
found four victims. We're handling as a homicide right now.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Because the affairs, and one of the victims was struck.
Speaker 7 (21:51):
In the head.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Were the victims together or were they different parts.
Speaker 9 (21:54):
Of the building? Because you no, I.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Can't, I can't give you that either. Where they found
it in any can't give you that.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Was there any sign of court entry to the building.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Can't give you that, or Candy, give me just what
I gave you. It's still very early in the investigation, okay.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
The idea was if they could hold some of these
key pieces back, they could weed out false confessions and
they'd be able to know if they ever got somebody
for this, if he was telling the truth by comparing
statements to the facts never released to the public. And
this was a nice idea in the beginning, but slowly
facts started leaking out, like, for example, someone who worked
(22:32):
in the medical examiner's office would gossip with their hairdresser,
who would tell their next client about the latest insider
news that they heard on the case, And just like that,
the news outlets and the public started reporting on things
police tried to keep quiet. Not everything, but way more
than the police wanted because they again, they did use
those facts to weed people out. As crazy as it
(22:54):
is to imagine, they got lots of people who tried
to confess to these crimes, but one by one, detective
Jones would realize that their account didn't line up and
he would eliminate them from the suspect pool, but the
pool of suspects was growing faster than they could even
eliminate people. At one point in the investigation there were
over like three hundred and fifty suspects. But a week
(23:19):
into the investigation, one lead really jumped out at investigators.
A sixteen year old named Maurice Pierce was arrested at
the mall nearby and found with a twenty two caliber gun,
the exact kind of gun police were looking for in
this crime. When he was questioned about the crime, Maurice
(23:40):
started to confess, but not saying that he did it.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
He fingered a friend of his.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
He said that a fifteen year old friend named Forrest
Welburn had borrowed the gun that night of the murders
and he was the one who killed the girls. Now
this feels huge to investigators. You have a kid with
the right kind of weapon saying that he knows who
did so. The next step is to bring in Forrest
and see what he has to say about Maurice's statement
the night of the murders. When they talked to him,
(24:08):
Forrest swears that he had nothing to do with the crime.
He says, the knight of the murders, he was with
Maurice and two other guys. Both these seventeen year olds
named Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, and all four of
the boys had taken a stolen car to San Antonio, Texas.
So not only was Forrest denying this now, but there
was little to no details for Maurice that matched the
(24:29):
real crime scene. The only thing that tied them to
the case was the fact that it looked kind of
fishy that this Maurice kid had a twenty two caliber
on him. But when that gun was tested, it turns
out that the ballistics didn't match and it wasn't the
gun actually used at the crime. So Maurice and the
three other boys were just another set of names that
(24:49):
Jones scratched off his list. There was eventually a profile
made of the perpetrators and it kind of went like this.
They said, there's at least two men. One of the
has a dominant personality. Likely these two men are both
white and in their late teens to mid twenties. One
of these men is the dominant one and the one
(25:10):
that really pushed this crime forward. They think that in
school he was likely an underachiever. He probably resents discipline,
He has an explosive personality, like he gets really angry
really easily, and it's even worse when he's mixing like
drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
He's just kind of like impulsive and explosive.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
They say that he's likely to get involved in physical confrontation,
but only when he has the advantage. And he's probably
unemployed or has like a very menial job but has
history of changing jobs all the time. He's not super dependable,
likely because of this, he lives with his parents or
some kind of older person. They think that this person
(25:51):
would have been a frequent patron of the icby familiar
with like the area and the streets, maybe even a
resident of that very neighborhood. They think the person would
have had a criminal record. This person could have likely
been abusive to women, or especially young women. And they
think that this person has no remorse about what they did,
but might be acting strangely because he's super stressed that
(26:15):
whoever he did this crime with is going to be
like his downfall, because maybe that person is feeling some
kind of regret and this confrontation like him being stressed
and this other person regretting it might lead to some
kind of violent fallout. Their belief is that after this
deed was done, they probably went to a secure location,
and they may have even come back that night to
(26:37):
watch police and the firefighters, but likely went away for
a while after and probably missed school or work or
wherever they were supposed to be. Now, this profile is
kind of thorough, but unfortunately it wasn't quite specific enough,
and it really could have been any number of young
men in the area.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the traits they
described were like, Yeah, that sounds like someone who would
do this.
Speaker 6 (27:04):
It's not very it's so broad, you know, it is, Yeah,
like any kind of.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Any kind of violent offender.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
He's a young man, like anyone who's been in and
out of the system. I mean this again, very very
broad to any troubled young man. And Austin again was
small town in the idea that there wasn't a ton
of violent crime, but it was still a big enough
town that you.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
Had a very large pool of suspects.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Now, more weeks would pass, turning into months and eventually years.
This case took an immense toll on Jones, who eventually
had to take a month's leave from the job because
he was experiencing PTSD symptoms like linked to the case.
It's all he thought about, day in, day out, night
and day, day and night. His relationship with his family
(27:48):
became stranged. He would have nightmares about the event. This
thing consumed him, and he was really frustrated with his
own people, with the police because publicly they were saying
all the right things. They're saying, this case isn't cold,
we have active resources working on it. It's of the
highest priority for us. But Jones felt like it was
(28:08):
a little bit of bs because if it was of
the highest priority, why weren't they getting more people assigned
to the case. Like they had a group of investigators
for like a month or so, but then everyone got
pulled off. Eventually Jones would even be pulled off as well.
After about three years, he was promoted to another position,
and it would take nearly eight years after the crime
(28:32):
before there would be any new developments in the case.
In nineteen ninety nine, an officer named Hector Polanco was
the new lead investigator on the yogurt chop cases, and
when he looked at the case as a whole, the
same thing kept popping out at him. Those four boys
(28:54):
in his gut. He felt that they had something to
do with the crime, and he was going to prove it.
He reinterrogated the boys, pressing them for hours at a time.
Maurice and Forrest held firm they were not involved. But
those two seventeen year old boys, well seventeen at the night.
Now it's eight years later. These are twenty six year old,
(29:15):
grown men. They were not as strong. When Michael Scott
was interviewed, he started by saying he had no idea
what happened to those girls, and his memory was terrible.
But the detectives didn't take that to mean he didn't
do it. They decided it was their job to help
him remember what happened. Hour by hour, they break him down,
(29:36):
eventually getting him to admit that they had cased the
place earlier and he was outside of the shop when
everything went down, and he says that it was Maurice
and his other friend Robert who were inside. Well, a
few more hours into the interrogation and then Michael puts
himself inside the store holding a gun. At some point
(29:57):
in this interview, Michael tells police that he thinks he
needs a lawyer, but they don't stop questioning him. That's
super illegal, right, Yeah, So this comes up later. But
what the detectives say is he says he thinks he
needs a lawyer. The detectives kind of leave, and then
they come back and just start questioning him again, and
he keeps talking. So the police say that they just
(30:19):
thought he was thinking about getting.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
A lawyer and not actually asking for one.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Right.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Then, by seven hours into this interview, Michael is now
admitting to having the gun and being the one shooting
on Robert's command.
Speaker 9 (30:35):
At some point, Mari, he's handy, has that revolver. What
does he say to him? Either shoot him or you're next.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
That's why head.
Speaker 9 (30:45):
I didn't want to do it, Rob, I either shoot him.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
On your next.
Speaker 9 (30:48):
What what do you ever hearing? End? I remember looking
at the scroll, I cry. I hear the Robert is
saying I had gone go off. I don't like pull
(31:15):
tuger once I turned around to your stick the gun.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
In one of the craziest parts of the interview, one
of the investigators brings in a revolver to air quotes
help Michael remember, and he even jabbs something against the
back of his head to help him remember. And this
is like very clearly seems like intimidation.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
It's scary. You can kind of start to.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
See why maybe somebody would want to confess under these
like pressures. And the investigator says that he just used
a finger and it wasn't really the gun. But it's
still a terrifying tactic that I'm sure contributed the confession
that they got.
Speaker 7 (32:01):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
They keep pressing Michael for details, those details that they
had been holding back that only the.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
Killer would know, Like what were the girls tied with?
Speaker 5 (32:11):
At first, Michael tries to kind of skirt around it,
saying that he didn't tie them up, it was Robert,
but polonk Go's like, no, no, no, it takes more
than one person to tie them up, So tell me
what you used so you can tell in the interview,
Michael's like trying to reach and trying to come up
with something.
Speaker 6 (32:26):
So he starts talking.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
He's like, well, maybe a T shirt and Polonko's like okay, yeah,
like a T shirt and what else? And then he's like,
I want to say some kind of chord and Polonko's like, no,
it wasn't a chord.
Speaker 6 (32:38):
What else was it?
Speaker 5 (32:39):
And they do this for a while where he's like
naming things that he could have tied them up with,
and Polanco says no, try again. He's like, what about
Napkins And he says, no, that's not possible. So while
he's not telling them what to say, he's very clearly
leading him to whatever it is he wants to hear.
After twenty hours, they have a confession from Michael they
think they can use, and a confession that they truly
(33:02):
believe in.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
I think so.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Then they try the same techniques on Robert Springsteen and
he starts much the same, swearing that he has nothing
to do with it.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
The problem is, and what are you going to get
one of all our options?
Speaker 9 (33:16):
I know I'll give you any more truth than I've
already given. Where do we go from here? QUI can't
You're going to fordegt yourself.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Into that thing.
Speaker 9 (33:24):
Well, you're already there, You've already done.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
The whole the hole there. Oh man, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
That's what I keep telling you, guys. I mean, my god,
this is seven years ago.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
But this is part of the most significant things that
ever happened in you.
Speaker 9 (33:37):
That's why I keep trying to explain to you.
Speaker 8 (33:38):
If I was there and I'm parttaken this I would
remember these things, and.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
You do remember these things?
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Do you're the coldest guy I've ever talked to in
my life?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Are you a cold blooded murder?
Speaker 7 (33:51):
And that's I think you are.
Speaker 9 (33:53):
I think Maurice is absolutely true about you.
Speaker 10 (33:55):
Right then you're a part of this guy.
Speaker 9 (33:57):
I've never talking to you to take part of it.
Speaker 8 (33:59):
Then let's take what its.
Speaker 9 (34:00):
When you need to type, if that's what you've belated.
Speaker 7 (34:02):
In this where you think this guys needs to go,
then let's go.
Speaker 9 (34:07):
But I'm doing everything I can and have exceeded my
moments of healthy.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
You guys, where do we go?
Speaker 9 (34:12):
There?
Speaker 5 (34:14):
After hours and hours, they break him down as well,
until they have him confessing that he killed some of
the girls himself. There was no talk of rape until
police kept pushing what else did you do?
Speaker 6 (34:28):
What else did you do?
Speaker 5 (34:30):
And he keeps saying that he doesn't know, And finally
the detectives get fed up and they're tired of waiting,
and he just flat out says, tell me how you
raped her, and Robert, clearly defeated, just says, fine, I
stuck my in her, and that is all police needed.
Most of Michael and Robert's confession matched likely because I
(34:51):
think that they were led by the same guys, but
those investigators think they match because they really did it.
With their confessions, Polanco together his theory of events. He
says that sixteen year old Maurice was the mastermind of this,
Robert and Michael were the ones who pulled it off,
and Forrest was the lookout. As word of this theory
(35:12):
trickled back to the original investigator, Jones, he didn't believe it,
still doesn't believe it, but he had no control over
the case anymore and it was in someone else's hands now.
Polanco took his theory to the prosecutors who would evaluate
the case against these boys. Ultimately, only two of the
four men were taken to trial. Maurice and Forrest had
(35:34):
never confessed to the killings, and because there was no
physical evidence, I repeat, no physical evidence linking them to
the scene, it would have been a really hard conviction
to get. So the prosecutors ended up dismissing all charges
against Maurice citing lack of evidence, and they actually tried
a little bit to take Forrest to trial, but after
(35:55):
two grand juries wouldn't indict him, they decided to drop
the charges against him.
Speaker 6 (35:59):
As well, but with Michael and.
Speaker 5 (36:01):
Robert, they had confessions and they thought with those they
could get convictions. Because of the confessions, it made it
an uphill battle for their defense attorneys. Though each man
had recanted their confession and said they only confess due
to coersion, it was too late and those confessions would
be used against them in court. They were each tried separately,
(36:24):
and Michael's confession was used in Robert's trial and vice versa.
But they didn't have the actual man come and testify
because that would have been a disaster. Like, say Michael
shows up at Robert's trial takes the stand, he would
have repeated what he's saying in his case, like, Hi,
my confession was a total lie.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
We didn't do it. They just made me say that,
and that's not very convincing.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
So instead of bringing the men into court, they just
used their tape confessions from earlier and showed that to
the jury, and they didn't actually bring them in, which
means that they weren't allowed to actually confront their accuser,
which is a pretty unconstitutional thing.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
And is going to come up later in our story.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
Now. The one thing that the defense did try to
point out in the trial was that there were parts
of their confession that didn't quite match up to the
facts in the case. Both men couldn't agree on what
they used to prop open the back door, but I
think the most important detail. Each man said that the
girls were stacked and that they used accelerant to douse
(37:25):
the girls and light them on fire. Now, in every
original report it said that the fire was started on
the shelves near the girls, not actually on the girls.
And remember we said all of the people who were
on the scene didn't smell accelerant on the girls or
their ligatures, or on the floor around them. But after
this confession, some experts were brought in and they changed
(37:49):
the official ruling years later to say that the girl's
bodies were the point of origin of this fire. Now,
normally this would have been something that could easily have
been refuted by a defense team once the case went
to trial if we would have had those swabs.
Speaker 6 (38:07):
But remember, for whatever reason, the swabs were not taken
in this case.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
The defense tried to push that the men were forced
into confessing, but by the time these men were in court,
it's two thousand and one, and the idea of false
confessions were still a very foreign idea to the general public,
so a jury found it very hard to believe, and
both men were convicted of the murders. Robert was sentenced
(38:32):
to death and Michael was sentenced to life in prison.
Both men would spend years in jail before getting any
of their appeals granted. Both men appealed their convictions on
the basis of not being able to confront their accuser, which,
as I mentioned earlier, is a constitutional right. The higher
courts agreed, and in two thousand and six, the Court
(38:53):
of Appeals threw out Robert's conviction and Michaels was thrown
out one year after in two thousand and seven. But
even though they're cons were thrown out, they each had
to remain in jail while the prosecution decided if they
were going to retry the case. In two thousand and eight,
the defense teams for the men do something bold. They
request to have the evidence retested using all of the
(39:16):
new DNA technology that's available.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
That's brave. If the DNA evidence doesn't come back in
their favor, it could ruin everything.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
Right, agreed, But I think that's a testament to how
much they were trying to get others to hear them
when they said that they were innocent. They knew in
their heart of heart that that DNA would not come
back to matching them, and it didn't. There was at
least one unknown male sample that was found in the
rape kit that didn't match Michael or Robert or anyone
(39:48):
connected to them, and this was groundbreaking. The defense thought, here,
here is our proof that you have the wrong guys.
Go out and find the right people for this now.
But that is not exactly what the DA and the
investigators did.
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Speaker 2 (40:44):
That was one hell of a performance.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
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Speaker 6 (40:48):
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Speaker 5 (41:07):
They doubled down, and they didn't reinvestigate or look for
new suspects. Rather, they only looked at the case again
to see what else they could do to tie it
to their jailed men, and that new DNA it didn't
bother them. They came up with a slightly different theory
in their mind. Now there aren't four men involved. There
is this magical fifth man who they don't know about.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
And has never been brought up in any of the confessions.
On top of this man literally just appearing, doesn't it
go against what Robert said in his confession that he
was the one who raped the girls.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
Yeah, so the confession that they're using to say that
they did it is now clearly wrong. But they're saying, like, oh,
the confession's kind of not true, like only part of it,
the parts we want to be right are right and.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
Listen right, they're picking and choosing, Yeah, and listen.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
I get it from both sides a little. I'm sure
that some of these people really believed that they were
guilty and they were just doing their best job to
keep who they thought were dangerous men off the street.
But I think it's all so important to point out
that after the men were convicted, Polanco had actually gotten
into some trouble on another case that was overturned, where
(42:20):
they proved that he had forced a false confession. So,
knowing your lead detective on this case had a history
of doing that, maybe you should take a second look.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
But it seems everyone was convinced.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
No one on the case or in the prosecution had
second thoughts about the men's guilt, and they wanted to
find anything they could that would prove that. But they
couldn't find anything more. And when the old jury was pulled,
they found out that seven of the twelve wouldn't have
convicted the men had they known about the DNA evidence.
(42:55):
So the prosecution then realized that they didn't have a
case against these men, and they were forced to let
them go. On October twenty eighth, two thousand and nine,
all charges were dismissed against Michael and Robert. Now they
let them go but that does not mean that they
are found innocent, and realistically they could be recharged if
(43:17):
the DA ever wanted to do that or if they
ever found anything. And the men can't sue saying that
they were like wrongfully convicted, it's like a very sticky
spot for them.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Now.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Subsequent testing was done and a second unknown male's DNA
had been found on other items of evidence, which makes
this fifth man.
Speaker 6 (43:38):
Theory harder and harder to believe.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
Nothing in the shops or on the girls has ever
been linked to the four men. Maurice ended up passing
away in twenty ten after a totally unrelated altercation with
the police. The other men are alive and maintain their innocence,
but I don't think anyone is to making a new
and critical look at this case. And to me and
(44:03):
to many people, the key to really cracking this case
is to find out who those two men were sitting
in the.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
Booth that night at the yogurt shop.
Speaker 5 (44:14):
I don't think it was any of the four men
accused of this crime, and I think it's someone else
who is still walking free. You know, there was another
person in the store that night, like much earlier in
the evening when it was still kind of hustling and bustling,
which makes me think that these men were hanging out
like a really long time, which makes them even more suspicious.
(44:38):
But this other yogurt shop goer was actually like an
off duty or ex police officer, and he had a
weird interaction with a guy that kind of matches one
of the descriptions of the two men. And this guy's
like standing in line and lets everyone like go ahead
of him, go ahead of him, go ahead of him,
like he doesn't know what he's doing. If you're just
gonna let everybody get in line ahead of you, and
(44:59):
the guy it's like a little bit fishy. And he
asked him, like, are you a cop, And the guy's
like yeah, and he's like okay, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
He's like, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
And the guy gets up to the counter and he
just buys a soda and then he says he actually
like walks back and goes towards the back of the store.
Speaker 6 (45:16):
Now you have to enter in the back to go
to the restrooms.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
But he also this person could have easily gone in
the back and propped open the door for them to
come in. Later, when the girls would have asked them
to leave. So again, I think the key to whatever
happened that night is finding those two men sitting at
the booth.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
I feel like I bring this up in like every case,
but this one seems just perfect and ripe for it.
Is there enough DNA evidence to run through a genetic
matching programmer system.
Speaker 5 (45:50):
So I would think because they had like such a
good sample from Amy's rape kit. I don't know if
there are any swabs left. But again we've said this before.
Anyone who wants to take us up on it, like,
we will fund the testing. But I think this would
be like the perfect and it seems like a high
profile enough case that.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
They'd want to do it right.
Speaker 5 (46:13):
But that's only if they're honest officers and prosecutors, Like
I think they will do that if they are, but.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
Not if it will expose a mistake that their team made.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Right, like there could be some real answers, But if
they're afraid of being proven wrong and like finding out
that it's linked to somebody that they can't link back
to their four guys, they might not want to. And
I'm not sure why being right is more important than
finding justice for four young girls but I worry that
that might be the case here.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
Can't the four men's defense team request it?
Speaker 6 (46:49):
No, And this is what totally sucks about the justice system.
Speaker 5 (46:55):
When you are the defendant, you can only request testing
be done and if they are like coming after you,
So unless they were to bring charges against the men again,
like that's the only time they could request things be done.
If no one has charges pending against them.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
There's no defense to be made.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
Yeah, the only people who can get testing are like
the DA are the police, and it's totally in their
hands and not even like the family members. I mean,
I'm sure they could push pretty hard, but they can't
like demand it. You can't get a court order for it.
It seems a little bit backwards knowing that there's so
much at our fingertips now. Not ideal, but that's kind
(47:34):
of the place that we're in. I would, you know,
if I were the family. I think we said this
in other episodes as well, like I would be constantly
pushing on the police. I don't know if the family
still believe these four men did it, or if they're
kind of wondering if it's someone else as well. Even
if they still think it's these four men, Like, I don't.
Speaker 6 (47:51):
See what harm it would cause.
Speaker 5 (47:54):
There was obviously someone else involved, and if we can
maybe get that person, maybe it brings us closer to justice,
whatever that means. So I would encourage them to be
you know, putting the pressure on police, putting the pressure
on the prosecution. I don't know what that looks like,
just getting public attention, starting petitions, getting on the news,
but it's never too late, and it shouldn't be too
late for these girls. If you want more information on
(48:28):
this case, if you want to see some pictures of
the layout of the store, of that booth and how
there was like nothing on it and why we think
there were men sitting there, you can check out those
pictures on our website, crime Junkie podcast dot com.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
You can also follow us on Twitter at crime Junkie
Pod and on Instagram at a crime Junkie podcast.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
And we will be back next week with a brand
new episode.
Speaker 5 (49:07):
This episode of Crime Junkie was researched, written and hosted
by me, with co hosting by Britt Praywatt. All of
our editing and sound production was done by David Flowers,
and all of our music, including our theme, comes from
Justin Daniel. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So
what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
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Decency's apply, Hey, crime junkies forrit here By now, you've
probably seen or heard people talking about the new HBO
documentary The Yogurt Shot murders, and if you're anything like us,
this case has stuck with you for years. Ashley and
I first covered it way back when some of our
og Crime Junkie fan club members said it our way,
and ever since we have not been able to let
(01:20):
it go. So with the documentary bringing this case back
into the spotlight, we wanted to reshare our original episode.
Whether this is your first time hearing about the yogurt
shot murders or you've been following it for as long
as we have, now is the perfect time to revisit
the case, the timeline, and the questions that still remain unanswered.
We'll be watching the documentary right along with you as
(01:41):
the episodes drop, and we'll be diving deeper over on
our Crime Junkie Instagram and TikTok, so be sure to
follow along and join the conversation there. We want to
hear all your thoughts and theories and reactions as all
of it unfolds. All right, let's get into it. This
is the story of the Yogurt shot murders.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
On December sixth, nineteen ninety one, seventeen year old Eliza
Thomas got ready for work at her house, putting on
her I can't believe it's yogurt uniform and pulling her
hair into a scrunchy. When she left to make it
on time for her seven o'clock shift, she nor her
family had any way of knowing that she would never
come home. Eliza got to work and was soon met
(02:54):
there by her friend and coworker, Jennifer Harbison, who was
also seventeen. Eliza had actually helped Jennifer get the job there,
and both girls were just trying to make some extra money.
Speaker 6 (03:05):
They were in high school.
Speaker 5 (03:06):
They wanted some spending cash, wanted gas money pay for
their cars. So on that night, it was just the
two of them working that evening, and their shifts were
pretty short. The store actually closed at eleven o'clock, and
if they could start cleaning up early, they'd be out
of there pretty quickly. And they were pretty sure tonight
would be a breeze because Jennifer and Eliza had extra help.
(03:28):
Jennifer had a younger sister named Sarah who was fifteen,
and Sarah had been hanging out at the mall, which
was just a couple of blocks away, with her.
Speaker 6 (03:38):
Thirteen year old friend Amy Ayres.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
After the mall closed, the two of them went over
to the I can't believe it's yogurt shop to help
Eliza and Jennifer close down. Amy and Sarah stayed in
the back since they weren't technically employees and they weren't
in uniform, and I think they just kind of helped
put things away, maybe wash some dishes. They had some pizza,
and just kind of hung out while Eliza and Jennifer
(04:01):
stayed in the front. Now, my first job was actually
at an ice cream place, and we would always start
the nightly cleanup well before officially closing, and that's what
the girls did that night. They started putting up the chairs,
they started wiping down the tables, cleaning out the machines,
restocking the napkins, all of it. Jennifer went out into
(04:21):
the lobby while Eliza stayed behind the counter to do
the cleaning in the back and ring up the couple
of last minute customers that were flowing in. And we
know it was her behind the counter, not just because
of witnesses, but it was her registered number.
Speaker 6 (04:36):
Used to check these people out.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Shortly before closing, a woman enters the shop and she's
actually just picking up some ice cream to take home
to her husband, and when she enters, she.
Speaker 6 (04:46):
Comes to an abrupt stop.
Speaker 5 (04:48):
There are only two other customers in the store, and
for whatever reason, they make her very uncomfortable. She describes
them as two teens who are facing one another as
they sit at this table. They aren't eating frozen yogurt
or anything at all from what she can see, but
they're focused on some kind of sack in between them
(05:10):
and the boy that she can see she describes as
having darker skin, maybe hispanic, but maybe he could have
just been very tan. But this one guy has his
hand in the sack and he's like rolling something around
that sounds like change or maybe marbles. And she remembers
having the urge to ask the girls if they were
(05:31):
okay alone in there with these guys. But the girls
seemed fine, they were chatty, they were happy, So she
kind of convinces herself, like a lot of us do,
that she's just being paranoid, that she's being crazy, So
she decides not to say anything and she leaves the shop.
Later on, there's another couple that comes in. They come
(05:52):
in while the girls are doing their pre closing routine.
It's a man and a woman and when they come in,
they notice two guys sitting at a booth closest to
the cash register.
Speaker 6 (06:03):
And I kind of want to describe this store to you.
Speaker 5 (06:06):
So when you walk in, you basically see a row
of booths on your left, you see some tables in
the middle, and you see a row of booths on
your right. And these boys were sitting in the row
of booths on the left side, and they were farthest
away from the door but closest to the cash register.
And there's basically this long counter and then you can
(06:29):
go through this doorway into the back room.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
Okay, that makes sense, right.
Speaker 5 (06:33):
So the couple says that when they walk in, Jennifer
was out in the lobby and cleaning up, just like
we said, and Eliza was behind the register and they
didn't even know it at the time, but there were
the other two girls in the back. But again they said,
we didn't see them, we didn't hear them, We had
no idea. The couple gets their yogurts and they sit
down to eat instead of taking it to go, and
(06:55):
the woman said she was kind of eavesdropping on the girls,
like as they were chatting, and she felt like, for
whatever reason, the men were eavesdropping as well, because they
weren't really talking to one another. They as far as
she could tell, weren't eating or drinking anything. So she
too felt that it was a little bit strange that
(07:16):
these men were just sitting here so late without any
kind of ice cream. And as the woman is sitting
in the booth now, she's sitting in the chair that
is facing the outside window, and it's late at night.
It's after ten thirty, which means that it's completely dark.
And you know how when it's dark, like there's like
the reflection you see more than you see outside when
all the lights are on. Yeah, well, she said, she
(07:37):
remembers looking and she can see the two men almost
behind her, and one of the guys has his back
to her, and so it's really hard for her to
get an idea of what this guy looks like. And
she even says she's just assuming they're guys based on
like their general form. But the one with his back
to her had a padded tan jacket on, and the
(07:59):
other one she he could kind of see because he
was facing the glass as well, and he looked thin
with maybe light brown hair, but it was really hard
to make out any kind of distinguishing features from that
far away, like looking in a glass reflection. Finally, at
ten forty seven, the couple decides that they should probably leave.
Like the girls are clearly trying to clean up, they
(08:19):
don't want to be in their way, and so they leave,
leaving the two men behind as the only patrons in
the restaurant. Now, it was policy for the store that
at ten point fifty, about three minutes after this couple left,
that the girls were supposed to lock the door from
the inside. This would basically prevent any new customers from
(08:41):
coming in, but it would allow the people who were
still inside to get out. And we know they did
this because later on the keys would still be found
in the lobby door. And we know that they continued
with their cleanup routine because almost all the napkin dispensers
had been refilled, almost all of the chairs were propped
up on the table, all except for one. And this
(09:05):
is something that to me and many people years and
years later, stands out. The booth closest to the counter,
the one that everyone says they saw two strange men
or two strange boys at still had after they came
and photographed it later an empty napkin holder when all
(09:27):
of the other napkin holders in the place were full,
and it had no chair on the end of the
table like all of the other boose and clearly that
was because someone was in that booth preventing Jennifer from
cleaning it. What happened after ten forty seven is unknown.
Did the girls ask the two men to leave at
(09:48):
closing time, prompting the men to pull a gun on them.
Did the men pretend to leave to ease their worries
and then slip back in the back door, which was
later found propped open.
Speaker 6 (09:58):
We may never know.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
All we know is that whatever happened likely happened at
eleven three pm when Eliza hit the button for no
charge sale on their register, which opened the cash register drawer.
Speaker 6 (10:13):
This was the.
Speaker 5 (10:14):
Triggering incident when the killer or killers took around five
hundred dollars in cash, but the real thing of value
they took were the four lives of those girls in
the shop that night. About an hour later, a cop
on patrol sees smoke billowing up from the shopping center
where the yogurt shop is located. He calls it in
(10:35):
At eleven forty eight and the fire department is dispatched.
Most of them admitted that foul play wasn't even on
their minds. When they pulled up, the windows were completely black,
smoke was pouring out of them. It's very common for
businesses to leave stoves on after closing, and they thought
that's probably what happened here, like there was a restaurant,
the place caught fire. But what they'd eventually realize is
(10:58):
that the icby didn't have any stoves. The firefighters worked
to put out the flames, and later the officer said,
you know, had we had known what we were stepping into,
we probably would have done it differently, because when the
firefighters went in, there was really no concern for preserving
evidence or a crime scene. They just went in to
(11:21):
put out a fire. And you know, I'm no professional,
so I don't know what the difference is to me.
I think you can only put out a fire one way,
but maybe there are certain techniques they can use, or
maybe it's everybody looking back and just being a little
harder on themselves knowing how the case ended up almost
thirty years later. But as they moved through the store,
(11:43):
fighting off the flames, they could barely see through their masks,
but the one thing that caught their eye was afoot
and Brett. I don't know if this happens to you,
but there are certain memories that are like etched in
my brain when someone brings something up, like you get
that first flash something. And the firefighter who found them
(12:03):
says that any time he thinks back on the crime
scene or he thinks about this case many many years later,
it's that image that's conjured up in his mind of
that single foot, charred black, but distinctly human. And that's
when they all realized that they weren't dealing with a
normal fire. They saw a second body almost right away,
(12:27):
and then a third body, and something about the positioning
of the first two, the way the girls were stacked
one on top of the other, naked and bound, they
knew that this was going to be a homicide investigation.
The homicide detective that was on duty at the time,
his name was John Jones, and he ended up being
(12:48):
called to the scene. And it's actually kind of crazy
because we have tape of him getting this call that
very night because he was doing a ride along with
a news station. They were doing this story on crime
in Texas. They'd been in Austin for a couple of days,
and really we're getting nothing. Austin was still kind of
a small town back in nineteen ninety one with very
(13:10):
little violent crime. And there was even this offhanded comment
made on the very last day before this call came in,
something along the lines of like, you know, you probably
won't get a lot for your story here, but at
least you're going to Houston the next day, Like that's
the big city, that's where you'll be able to get
crime to report on. But little did they know that
night they would get one of the biggest crimes in Austin,
(13:31):
maybe even in Texas history. Here is the call that
comes in to Detective Jones, tell me, yeah, you hear
about to call on fourth Management.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
Yeah, I'm handed over there. I aiata twenty nine. That's
a business go anyway, uh.
Speaker 8 (14:03):
Out of play fatality.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Past have far warn auto a triple fatality. I murdered
a great Now that's a shopping center. Where do I
(14:31):
need to come to?
Speaker 4 (14:31):
In here?
Speaker 2 (14:32):
What place of business is this?
Speaker 3 (14:37):
That shover around it? Back the rout of back.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Wall U track? Can I get around from the sad side?
It's a firehead stretch across Aderson Lane.
Speaker 5 (14:52):
Before he even arrived on scene. The men at the
scene of the crime radio him back and say make
that four bodies. And even with the warning, Detective Jones
had no clue what he was about to walk into.
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Speaker 1 (15:17):
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Speaker 3 (15:18):
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Speaker 8 (15:20):
That was one hour of a performance. But with football,
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Speaker 5 (15:43):
When detected, Jones walked through the yogurt shops, still thick
with smoke that was filling his lungs. He was horrified
at what he saw. The girls had been burned so
badly that their bodies had melted and they had become
part of the floor that they were found on. They
were all found in the back of the store, and
(16:03):
in most of the retellings of this story you'll hear
it generalized as they were stacked atop one another and
then set on fire. But that's not exactly right, or
it might be right, but we really have no proof
and its kind of speculation at this point. The way
that they were recorded as being found by homicide was
(16:23):
Sarah was laying on the floor by the back door,
Eliza was laid on top of her, and right next
to them was Jennifer and Amy was actually the farthest away,
more towards the entrance leading to the front of the store.
And it's possible that more than just Sarah and Eliza
were stacked and somehow the velocity of the water used
(16:46):
possibly pushed Jennifer off of the others.
Speaker 6 (16:49):
But it's also possible that Jennifer.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
And Amy were always positioned how they were, and I
think it's safe to say that at least Amy was
never in the same area as the other girls. Because
she was the least burned of all of them, positioned
on her stomach or her right side, she was somewhat
recognizable and it was her, the youngest of all of them,
that gave Detective Jones the first indication that they would
(17:15):
later find signs of sexual assault. Between her nude and
spread legs. Was an ice cream scoop pointed up toward
her pelvic bone. Before the girls were transported one at
a time to the Medical Examiner's office for an autopsy
to be performed, rape kits were performed on the scene. Now,
(17:36):
usually this would be like super no, no, Like, you
don't do anything on the scene. All of this is
done at the emmy's office. Right, protocol was clear on
this matter, but the detective in charge was adamant about
breaking protocol. Too much had already been lost due to
the fire and the water damage. They could not risk
(17:57):
losing any more evidence or cataminating anything by transport. So
after a tiff with the Emmy's office, like they kind
of got into it, they ended up agreeing and taking
rape kits there. Now, I tell you this because by
the time the Medical Examiner's Office got the girls, there
was so much hostility built up between the EMMY and
(18:19):
the detectives, and this could have led to the EMMY
not being as thorough as they normally would because they
didn't do something that normally is done in every single
arson case. They did not swab any of the bodies
for accelerant. Now, part of the reason that this might
(18:41):
have happened like in addition to the hostility is because
everyone at the scene agreed that they couldn't smell any
accelerant on the girls, on the floor where the bodies
were found, or on any of the ligatures used to
bind them. But whether everyone agreed or not, standard practices
dictated that they should have been swabbed anyways, but they weren't,
which is going to play a major factor in the
(19:03):
case later. And while we're talking about it, there's a
lot that wasn't done that looking back, should have been done.
Speaker 6 (19:11):
But Austin was not ready for this.
Speaker 5 (19:12):
Their crime scene tech had only processed maybe one other
arson case before this one, so no one dusted the
bathroom for fingerprints. Not everyone on the scene was wearing booties.
They didn't keep the lock on the back door to
see if maybe it was like tampered with. They didn't
save a lot of the materials that were found in
(19:33):
the back with the girls, and maybe none of those
things would have helped solve the case years later, or
even at.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
The time, but now we'll never know exactly.
Speaker 5 (19:42):
The Medical Examiner's office was able to confirm that at
least some of the girls had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
They don't ever officially.
Speaker 5 (19:50):
Rule out any girls, but I think some of them
were so badly burned that nothing could conclusively be saved
or collected. The girls had each been shot in the
head with twenty two, but again, Amy's body was a
little different than everyone else's because she had actually been
the only one who was shot twice, once on the
side of the head with the twenty two, but when
(20:11):
that didn't kill her, a second larger caliber weapon, likely
a three point eighty, was used to shoot her again.
She also had a bruise under her chin, indicating that
she had been struck, and she'd also been strangled before
being shot again. It's hard to tell if Amy was
singled out for some reason, or if all of the
girls were tortured like this before their death, but their
(20:34):
bodies were too burned to show any signs of it.
Speaker 6 (20:37):
So who would have done this?
Speaker 5 (20:39):
This was really a gruesome scene And was it really
a robbery gone wrong? Or were these girls targeted and
the five hundred or so dollars that were taken was
just an afterthought? Neither scenario made sense to investigators. These
girls had no enemies, they weren't into anything nefarious, and
if the eleven Zho three Vegis' opening is any indication.
(21:01):
It seemed they put up no fight when handing over
the money. So why police tried to hold a lot
of the crime scene details back in their early days.
They didn't want the public to know about Amy's bruises,
or how many times she'd been shot, or about the
ice cream scoop between her legs. They didn't want the
public to know where the fire actually started, which according
(21:23):
to early reports was like the shelving unit next to
Eliza and Sarah and Jennifer. They didn't want to say
what was used to buying the girls or how much
money was even taken.
Speaker 7 (21:33):
Okay, At eleven forty seven, one of our patrol Lobsters
called in the dispatch, smoke coming out from I can't
believe it's yogurt.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Fire department got here, Charlotte.
Speaker 7 (21:42):
Thereafter what we found in the back there was we
found four victims. We're handling as a homicide right now.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
Because the affairs, and one of the victims was struck.
Speaker 7 (21:51):
In the head.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Were the victims together or were they different parts.
Speaker 9 (21:54):
Of the building? Because you no, I.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Can't, I can't give you that either. Where they found
it in any can't give you that.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Was there any sign of court entry to the building.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Can't give you that, or Candy, give me just what
I gave you. It's still very early in the investigation, okay.
Speaker 5 (22:10):
The idea was if they could hold some of these
key pieces back, they could weed out false confessions and
they'd be able to know if they ever got somebody
for this, if he was telling the truth by comparing
statements to the facts never released to the public. And
this was a nice idea in the beginning, but slowly
facts started leaking out, like, for example, someone who worked
(22:32):
in the medical examiner's office would gossip with their hairdresser,
who would tell their next client about the latest insider
news that they heard on the case, And just like that,
the news outlets and the public started reporting on things
police tried to keep quiet. Not everything, but way more
than the police wanted because they again, they did use
those facts to weed people out. As crazy as it
(22:54):
is to imagine, they got lots of people who tried
to confess to these crimes, but one by one, detective
Jones would realize that their account didn't line up and
he would eliminate them from the suspect pool, but the
pool of suspects was growing faster than they could even
eliminate people. At one point in the investigation there were
over like three hundred and fifty suspects. But a week
(23:19):
into the investigation, one lead really jumped out at investigators.
A sixteen year old named Maurice Pierce was arrested at
the mall nearby and found with a twenty two caliber gun,
the exact kind of gun police were looking for in
this crime. When he was questioned about the crime, Maurice
(23:40):
started to confess, but not saying that he did it.
Speaker 6 (23:43):
He fingered a friend of his.
Speaker 5 (23:45):
He said that a fifteen year old friend named Forrest
Welburn had borrowed the gun that night of the murders
and he was the one who killed the girls. Now
this feels huge to investigators. You have a kid with
the right kind of weapon saying that he knows who
did so. The next step is to bring in Forrest
and see what he has to say about Maurice's statement
the night of the murders. When they talked to him,
(24:08):
Forrest swears that he had nothing to do with the crime.
He says, the knight of the murders, he was with
Maurice and two other guys. Both these seventeen year olds
named Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, and all four of
the boys had taken a stolen car to San Antonio, Texas.
So not only was Forrest denying this now, but there
was little to no details for Maurice that matched the
(24:29):
real crime scene. The only thing that tied them to
the case was the fact that it looked kind of
fishy that this Maurice kid had a twenty two caliber
on him. But when that gun was tested, it turns
out that the ballistics didn't match and it wasn't the
gun actually used at the crime. So Maurice and the
three other boys were just another set of names that
(24:49):
Jones scratched off his list. There was eventually a profile
made of the perpetrators and it kind of went like this.
They said, there's at least two men. One of the
has a dominant personality. Likely these two men are both
white and in their late teens to mid twenties. One
of these men is the dominant one and the one
(25:10):
that really pushed this crime forward. They think that in
school he was likely an underachiever. He probably resents discipline,
He has an explosive personality, like he gets really angry
really easily, and it's even worse when he's mixing like
drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 6 (25:27):
He's just kind of like impulsive and explosive.
Speaker 5 (25:30):
They say that he's likely to get involved in physical confrontation,
but only when he has the advantage. And he's probably
unemployed or has like a very menial job but has
history of changing jobs all the time. He's not super dependable,
likely because of this, he lives with his parents or
some kind of older person. They think that this person
(25:51):
would have been a frequent patron of the icby familiar
with like the area and the streets, maybe even a
resident of that very neighborhood. They think the person would
have had a criminal record. This person could have likely
been abusive to women, or especially young women. And they
think that this person has no remorse about what they did,
but might be acting strangely because he's super stressed that
(26:15):
whoever he did this crime with is going to be
like his downfall, because maybe that person is feeling some
kind of regret and this confrontation like him being stressed
and this other person regretting it might lead to some
kind of violent fallout. Their belief is that after this
deed was done, they probably went to a secure location,
and they may have even come back that night to
(26:37):
watch police and the firefighters, but likely went away for
a while after and probably missed school or work or
wherever they were supposed to be. Now, this profile is
kind of thorough, but unfortunately it wasn't quite specific enough,
and it really could have been any number of young
men in the area.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
Yeah, I feel like a lot of the traits they
described were like, Yeah, that sounds like someone who would
do this.
Speaker 6 (27:04):
It's not very it's so broad, you know, it is, Yeah,
like any kind of.
Speaker 4 (27:10):
Any kind of violent offender.
Speaker 5 (27:11):
He's a young man, like anyone who's been in and
out of the system. I mean this again, very very
broad to any troubled young man. And Austin again was
small town in the idea that there wasn't a ton
of violent crime, but it was still a big enough
town that you.
Speaker 6 (27:24):
Had a very large pool of suspects.
Speaker 5 (27:27):
Now, more weeks would pass, turning into months and eventually years.
This case took an immense toll on Jones, who eventually
had to take a month's leave from the job because
he was experiencing PTSD symptoms like linked to the case.
It's all he thought about, day in, day out, night
and day, day and night. His relationship with his family
(27:48):
became stranged. He would have nightmares about the event. This
thing consumed him, and he was really frustrated with his
own people, with the police because publicly they were saying
all the right things. They're saying, this case isn't cold,
we have active resources working on it. It's of the
highest priority for us. But Jones felt like it was
(28:08):
a little bit of bs because if it was of
the highest priority, why weren't they getting more people assigned
to the case. Like they had a group of investigators
for like a month or so, but then everyone got
pulled off. Eventually Jones would even be pulled off as well.
After about three years, he was promoted to another position,
and it would take nearly eight years after the crime
(28:32):
before there would be any new developments in the case.
In nineteen ninety nine, an officer named Hector Polanco was
the new lead investigator on the yogurt chop cases, and
when he looked at the case as a whole, the
same thing kept popping out at him. Those four boys
(28:54):
in his gut. He felt that they had something to
do with the crime, and he was going to prove it.
He reinterrogated the boys, pressing them for hours at a time.
Maurice and Forrest held firm they were not involved. But
those two seventeen year old boys, well seventeen at the night.
Now it's eight years later. These are twenty six year old,
(29:15):
grown men. They were not as strong. When Michael Scott
was interviewed, he started by saying he had no idea
what happened to those girls, and his memory was terrible.
But the detectives didn't take that to mean he didn't
do it. They decided it was their job to help
him remember what happened. Hour by hour, they break him down,
(29:36):
eventually getting him to admit that they had cased the
place earlier and he was outside of the shop when
everything went down, and he says that it was Maurice
and his other friend Robert who were inside. Well, a
few more hours into the interrogation and then Michael puts
himself inside the store holding a gun. At some point
(29:57):
in this interview, Michael tells police that he thinks he
needs a lawyer, but they don't stop questioning him. That's
super illegal, right, Yeah, So this comes up later. But
what the detectives say is he says he thinks he
needs a lawyer. The detectives kind of leave, and then
they come back and just start questioning him again, and
he keeps talking. So the police say that they just
(30:19):
thought he was thinking about getting.
Speaker 6 (30:21):
A lawyer and not actually asking for one.
Speaker 4 (30:24):
Right.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
Then, by seven hours into this interview, Michael is now
admitting to having the gun and being the one shooting
on Robert's command.
Speaker 9 (30:35):
At some point, Mari, he's handy, has that revolver. What
does he say to him? Either shoot him or you're next.
Speaker 3 (30:44):
That's why head.
Speaker 9 (30:45):
I didn't want to do it, Rob, I either shoot him.
Speaker 8 (30:48):
On your next.
Speaker 9 (30:48):
What what do you ever hearing? End? I remember looking
at the scroll, I cry. I hear the Robert is
saying I had gone go off. I don't like pull
(31:15):
tuger once I turned around to your stick the gun.
Speaker 5 (31:26):
In one of the craziest parts of the interview, one
of the investigators brings in a revolver to air quotes
help Michael remember, and he even jabbs something against the
back of his head to help him remember. And this
is like very clearly seems like intimidation.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
It's scary. You can kind of start to.
Speaker 5 (31:46):
See why maybe somebody would want to confess under these
like pressures. And the investigator says that he just used
a finger and it wasn't really the gun. But it's
still a terrifying tactic that I'm sure contributed the confession
that they got.
Speaker 7 (32:01):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
They keep pressing Michael for details, those details that they
had been holding back that only the.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
Killer would know, Like what were the girls tied with?
Speaker 5 (32:11):
At first, Michael tries to kind of skirt around it,
saying that he didn't tie them up, it was Robert,
but polonk Go's like, no, no, no, it takes more
than one person to tie them up, So tell me
what you used so you can tell in the interview,
Michael's like trying to reach and trying to come up
with something.
Speaker 6 (32:26):
So he starts talking.
Speaker 5 (32:27):
He's like, well, maybe a T shirt and Polonko's like okay, yeah,
like a T shirt and what else? And then he's like,
I want to say some kind of chord and Polonko's like, no,
it wasn't a chord.
Speaker 6 (32:38):
What else was it?
Speaker 5 (32:39):
And they do this for a while where he's like
naming things that he could have tied them up with,
and Polanco says no, try again. He's like, what about
Napkins And he says, no, that's not possible. So while
he's not telling them what to say, he's very clearly
leading him to whatever it is he wants to hear.
After twenty hours, they have a confession from Michael they
think they can use, and a confession that they truly
(33:02):
believe in.
Speaker 6 (33:03):
I think so.
Speaker 5 (33:04):
Then they try the same techniques on Robert Springsteen and
he starts much the same, swearing that he has nothing
to do with it.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
The problem is, and what are you going to get
one of all our options?
Speaker 9 (33:16):
I know I'll give you any more truth than I've
already given. Where do we go from here? QUI can't
You're going to fordegt yourself.
Speaker 4 (33:23):
Into that thing.
Speaker 9 (33:24):
Well, you're already there, You've already done.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
The whole the hole there. Oh man, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
That's what I keep telling you, guys. I mean, my god,
this is seven years ago.
Speaker 1 (33:34):
But this is part of the most significant things that
ever happened in you.
Speaker 9 (33:37):
That's why I keep trying to explain to you.
Speaker 8 (33:38):
If I was there and I'm parttaken this I would
remember these things, and.
Speaker 9 (33:42):
You do remember these things?
Speaker 3 (33:44):
Do you're the coldest guy I've ever talked to in
my life?
Speaker 1 (33:49):
Are you a cold blooded murder?
Speaker 7 (33:51):
And that's I think you are.
Speaker 9 (33:53):
I think Maurice is absolutely true about you.
Speaker 10 (33:55):
Right then you're a part of this guy.
Speaker 9 (33:57):
I've never talking to you to take part of it.
Speaker 8 (33:59):
Then let's take what its.
Speaker 9 (34:00):
When you need to type, if that's what you've belated.
Speaker 7 (34:02):
In this where you think this guys needs to go,
then let's go.
Speaker 9 (34:07):
But I'm doing everything I can and have exceeded my
moments of healthy.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
You guys, where do we go?
Speaker 9 (34:12):
There?
Speaker 5 (34:14):
After hours and hours, they break him down as well,
until they have him confessing that he killed some of
the girls himself. There was no talk of rape until
police kept pushing what else did you do?
Speaker 6 (34:28):
What else did you do?
Speaker 5 (34:30):
And he keeps saying that he doesn't know, And finally
the detectives get fed up and they're tired of waiting,
and he just flat out says, tell me how you
raped her, and Robert, clearly defeated, just says, fine, I
stuck my in her, and that is all police needed.
Most of Michael and Robert's confession matched likely because I
(34:51):
think that they were led by the same guys, but
those investigators think they match because they really did it.
With their confessions, Polanco together his theory of events. He
says that sixteen year old Maurice was the mastermind of this,
Robert and Michael were the ones who pulled it off,
and Forrest was the lookout. As word of this theory
(35:12):
trickled back to the original investigator, Jones, he didn't believe it,
still doesn't believe it, but he had no control over
the case anymore and it was in someone else's hands now.
Polanco took his theory to the prosecutors who would evaluate
the case against these boys. Ultimately, only two of the
four men were taken to trial. Maurice and Forrest had
(35:34):
never confessed to the killings, and because there was no
physical evidence, I repeat, no physical evidence linking them to
the scene, it would have been a really hard conviction
to get. So the prosecutors ended up dismissing all charges
against Maurice citing lack of evidence, and they actually tried
a little bit to take Forrest to trial, but after
(35:55):
two grand juries wouldn't indict him, they decided to drop
the charges against him.
Speaker 6 (35:59):
As well, but with Michael and.
Speaker 5 (36:01):
Robert, they had confessions and they thought with those they
could get convictions. Because of the confessions, it made it
an uphill battle for their defense attorneys. Though each man
had recanted their confession and said they only confess due
to coersion, it was too late and those confessions would
be used against them in court. They were each tried separately,
(36:24):
and Michael's confession was used in Robert's trial and vice versa.
But they didn't have the actual man come and testify
because that would have been a disaster. Like, say Michael
shows up at Robert's trial takes the stand, he would
have repeated what he's saying in his case, like, Hi,
my confession was a total lie.
Speaker 6 (36:41):
We didn't do it. They just made me say that,
and that's not very convincing.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
So instead of bringing the men into court, they just
used their tape confessions from earlier and showed that to
the jury, and they didn't actually bring them in, which
means that they weren't allowed to actually confront their accuser,
which is a pretty unconstitutional thing.
Speaker 6 (37:02):
And is going to come up later in our story.
Speaker 5 (37:04):
Now. The one thing that the defense did try to
point out in the trial was that there were parts
of their confession that didn't quite match up to the
facts in the case. Both men couldn't agree on what
they used to prop open the back door, but I
think the most important detail. Each man said that the
girls were stacked and that they used accelerant to douse
(37:25):
the girls and light them on fire. Now, in every
original report it said that the fire was started on
the shelves near the girls, not actually on the girls.
And remember we said all of the people who were
on the scene didn't smell accelerant on the girls or
their ligatures, or on the floor around them. But after
this confession, some experts were brought in and they changed
(37:49):
the official ruling years later to say that the girl's
bodies were the point of origin of this fire. Now,
normally this would have been something that could easily have
been refuted by a defense team once the case went
to trial if we would have had those swabs.
Speaker 6 (38:07):
But remember, for whatever reason, the swabs were not taken
in this case.
Speaker 5 (38:12):
The defense tried to push that the men were forced
into confessing, but by the time these men were in court,
it's two thousand and one, and the idea of false
confessions were still a very foreign idea to the general public,
so a jury found it very hard to believe, and
both men were convicted of the murders. Robert was sentenced
(38:32):
to death and Michael was sentenced to life in prison.
Both men would spend years in jail before getting any
of their appeals granted. Both men appealed their convictions on
the basis of not being able to confront their accuser, which,
as I mentioned earlier, is a constitutional right. The higher
courts agreed, and in two thousand and six, the Court
(38:53):
of Appeals threw out Robert's conviction and Michaels was thrown
out one year after in two thousand and seven. But
even though they're cons were thrown out, they each had
to remain in jail while the prosecution decided if they
were going to retry the case. In two thousand and eight,
the defense teams for the men do something bold. They
request to have the evidence retested using all of the
(39:16):
new DNA technology that's available.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
That's brave. If the DNA evidence doesn't come back in
their favor, it could ruin everything.
Speaker 5 (39:25):
Right, agreed, But I think that's a testament to how
much they were trying to get others to hear them
when they said that they were innocent. They knew in
their heart of heart that that DNA would not come
back to matching them, and it didn't. There was at
least one unknown male sample that was found in the
rape kit that didn't match Michael or Robert or anyone
(39:48):
connected to them, and this was groundbreaking. The defense thought, here,
here is our proof that you have the wrong guys.
Go out and find the right people for this now.
But that is not exactly what the DA and the
investigators did.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
With three.
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Speaker 3 (40:35):
My name's Chad Powers, streaming on Disney Plus. Glenn Powell
is Chad Powers. Who is that guy? He's doing a
missus doubtfire.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
That was one hell of a performance.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
But with football.
Speaker 6 (40:48):
I like Key Powers.
Speaker 8 (40:49):
If you are a.
Speaker 3 (40:49):
Puzzle a brand new original series, every choice, every mistake
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Speaker 5 (41:07):
They doubled down, and they didn't reinvestigate or look for
new suspects. Rather, they only looked at the case again
to see what else they could do to tie it
to their jailed men, and that new DNA it didn't
bother them. They came up with a slightly different theory
in their mind. Now there aren't four men involved. There
is this magical fifth man who they don't know about.
Speaker 4 (41:31):
And has never been brought up in any of the confessions.
On top of this man literally just appearing, doesn't it
go against what Robert said in his confession that he
was the one who raped the girls.
Speaker 5 (41:41):
Yeah, so the confession that they're using to say that
they did it is now clearly wrong. But they're saying, like, oh,
the confession's kind of not true, like only part of it,
the parts we want to be right are right and.
Speaker 4 (41:54):
Listen right, they're picking and choosing, Yeah, and listen.
Speaker 5 (41:57):
I get it from both sides a little. I'm sure
that some of these people really believed that they were
guilty and they were just doing their best job to
keep who they thought were dangerous men off the street.
But I think it's all so important to point out
that after the men were convicted, Polanco had actually gotten
into some trouble on another case that was overturned, where
(42:20):
they proved that he had forced a false confession. So,
knowing your lead detective on this case had a history
of doing that, maybe you should take a second look.
Speaker 6 (42:30):
But it seems everyone was convinced.
Speaker 5 (42:33):
No one on the case or in the prosecution had
second thoughts about the men's guilt, and they wanted to
find anything they could that would prove that. But they
couldn't find anything more. And when the old jury was pulled,
they found out that seven of the twelve wouldn't have
convicted the men had they known about the DNA evidence.
(42:55):
So the prosecution then realized that they didn't have a
case against these men, and they were forced to let
them go. On October twenty eighth, two thousand and nine,
all charges were dismissed against Michael and Robert. Now they
let them go but that does not mean that they
are found innocent, and realistically they could be recharged if
(43:17):
the DA ever wanted to do that or if they
ever found anything. And the men can't sue saying that
they were like wrongfully convicted, it's like a very sticky
spot for them.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Now.
Speaker 5 (43:27):
Subsequent testing was done and a second unknown male's DNA
had been found on other items of evidence, which makes
this fifth man.
Speaker 6 (43:38):
Theory harder and harder to believe.
Speaker 5 (43:42):
Nothing in the shops or on the girls has ever
been linked to the four men. Maurice ended up passing
away in twenty ten after a totally unrelated altercation with
the police. The other men are alive and maintain their innocence,
but I don't think anyone is to making a new
and critical look at this case. And to me and
(44:03):
to many people, the key to really cracking this case
is to find out who those two men were sitting
in the.
Speaker 6 (44:11):
Booth that night at the yogurt shop.
Speaker 5 (44:14):
I don't think it was any of the four men
accused of this crime, and I think it's someone else
who is still walking free. You know, there was another
person in the store that night, like much earlier in
the evening when it was still kind of hustling and bustling,
which makes me think that these men were hanging out
like a really long time, which makes them even more suspicious.
(44:38):
But this other yogurt shop goer was actually like an
off duty or ex police officer, and he had a
weird interaction with a guy that kind of matches one
of the descriptions of the two men. And this guy's
like standing in line and lets everyone like go ahead
of him, go ahead of him, go ahead of him,
like he doesn't know what he's doing. If you're just
gonna let everybody get in line ahead of you, and
(44:59):
the guy it's like a little bit fishy. And he
asked him, like, are you a cop, And the guy's
like yeah, and he's like okay, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 6 (45:06):
He's like, no, you go ahead.
Speaker 5 (45:08):
And the guy gets up to the counter and he
just buys a soda and then he says he actually
like walks back and goes towards the back of the store.
Speaker 6 (45:16):
Now you have to enter in the back to go
to the restrooms.
Speaker 5 (45:20):
But he also this person could have easily gone in
the back and propped open the door for them to
come in. Later, when the girls would have asked them
to leave. So again, I think the key to whatever
happened that night is finding those two men sitting at
the booth.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
I feel like I bring this up in like every case,
but this one seems just perfect and ripe for it.
Is there enough DNA evidence to run through a genetic
matching programmer system.
Speaker 5 (45:50):
So I would think because they had like such a
good sample from Amy's rape kit. I don't know if
there are any swabs left. But again we've said this before.
Anyone who wants to take us up on it, like,
we will fund the testing. But I think this would
be like the perfect and it seems like a high
profile enough case that.
Speaker 4 (46:11):
They'd want to do it right.
Speaker 5 (46:13):
But that's only if they're honest officers and prosecutors, Like
I think they will do that if they are, but.
Speaker 4 (46:20):
Not if it will expose a mistake that their team made.
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Right, like there could be some real answers, But if
they're afraid of being proven wrong and like finding out
that it's linked to somebody that they can't link back
to their four guys, they might not want to. And
I'm not sure why being right is more important than
finding justice for four young girls but I worry that
that might be the case here.
Speaker 4 (46:45):
Can't the four men's defense team request it?
Speaker 6 (46:49):
No, And this is what totally sucks about the justice system.
Speaker 5 (46:55):
When you are the defendant, you can only request testing
be done and if they are like coming after you,
So unless they were to bring charges against the men again,
like that's the only time they could request things be done.
If no one has charges pending against them.
Speaker 4 (47:12):
There's no defense to be made.
Speaker 5 (47:13):
Yeah, the only people who can get testing are like
the DA are the police, and it's totally in their
hands and not even like the family members. I mean,
I'm sure they could push pretty hard, but they can't
like demand it. You can't get a court order for it.
It seems a little bit backwards knowing that there's so
much at our fingertips now. Not ideal, but that's kind
(47:34):
of the place that we're in. I would, you know,
if I were the family. I think we said this
in other episodes as well, like I would be constantly
pushing on the police. I don't know if the family
still believe these four men did it, or if they're
kind of wondering if it's someone else as well. Even
if they still think it's these four men, Like, I don't.
Speaker 6 (47:51):
See what harm it would cause.
Speaker 5 (47:54):
There was obviously someone else involved, and if we can
maybe get that person, maybe it brings us closer to justice,
whatever that means. So I would encourage them to be
you know, putting the pressure on police, putting the pressure
on the prosecution. I don't know what that looks like,
just getting public attention, starting petitions, getting on the news,
but it's never too late, and it shouldn't be too
late for these girls. If you want more information on
(48:28):
this case, if you want to see some pictures of
the layout of the store, of that booth and how
there was like nothing on it and why we think
there were men sitting there, you can check out those
pictures on our website, crime Junkie podcast dot com.
Speaker 4 (48:41):
You can also follow us on Twitter at crime Junkie
Pod and on Instagram at a crime Junkie podcast.
Speaker 6 (48:46):
And we will be back next week with a brand
new episode.
Speaker 5 (49:07):
This episode of Crime Junkie was researched, written and hosted
by me, with co hosting by Britt Praywatt. All of
our editing and sound production was done by David Flowers,
and all of our music, including our theme, comes from
Justin Daniel. Crime Junkie is an audio Chuck production. So
what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?
Speaker 3 (49:30):
My name's Chad Powers streaming on Disney Plus. Glenn Powell
is Chad Powers? Is that guy he's doing a missus doubtfire.
Speaker 8 (49:40):
That was one hell of a performance. But with football,
I like you Powers than you are a puzzle.
Speaker 3 (49:45):
A brand new original series.
Speaker 8 (49:47):
Every choice, every mistake carry you to this spot you
were born, So this moment pre Crime.
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