The Austin, Texas Yogurt Shop Murders: Part Two
Sources:
https://time.com/7321492/yogurt-shop-murders-suspect/
https://people.com/austin-police-significant-breakthrough-murders-4-teen-girls-yogurt-shop-new-suspect-34-years-later-11820020?
https://www.statesman.com/news/local/article/archives-no-dna-match-yogurt-shop-case-21069666.php?
https://allthatsinteresting.com/austin-yogurt-shop-murders
https://allthatsinteresting.com/robert-eugene-brashers
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/kinda-murdery-true-crime-murder-stories--5496890/support.
Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and
Speaker 1: descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and
Speaker 1: we recommend you stop listening now.
Speaker 2: True Crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish,
Speaker 2: the strange in the darkly comic. A podcast that's about
Speaker 2: more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension,
Speaker 2: home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories,
Speaker 2: the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it
Speaker 2: all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hey everybody,
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you're here with me today. You know,
Speaker 2: I don't know when exactly we jump to the timeline,
Speaker 2: but uh, we are indeed living in some wild times
Speaker 2: these days. And you know the old saying time is money. Well,
Speaker 2: one of the things about these wild times we're living
Speaker 2: in is things are so darn expensive these days that
Speaker 2: your time is worth more than ever. And so I
Speaker 2: have to tell you I am so grateful, I'm so thrilled,
Speaker 2: I am happy that you are here with me today.
Speaker 2: I am Zevan Odelberg. This is kind of murdery, and
Speaker 2: I shall endeavor to be worthy of your attention. And
Speaker 2: today I'm bringing you to Austin, Texas for part two.
Speaker 2: That's right, I said part two. So if you haven't
Speaker 2: heard part one yet, go ahead and listen to it
Speaker 2: and then come back and join us. I'll save you
Speaker 2: a seat. But if you're all caught up, then let's
Speaker 2: get right down to business. There's a lot more of
Speaker 2: this tragic, mysterious tale to tell. Part two of kind
Speaker 2: of Murderies, the Austin, Texas Yogurt Chop Murders, starts now.
Speaker 2: By the end of the nineteen nineties, the yogurt shop
Speaker 2: building at Northcross had long since returned to ordinary use.
Speaker 2: The storefront changed tenants, the burn damage had been repaired.
Speaker 2: Customers walked in and out under new signage without thinking
Speaker 2: about that night in nineteen ninety one when police lights
Speaker 2: filled the parking lot and four families received the worst
Speaker 2: of all possible phone calls. But inside the Austin Police Department,
Speaker 2: the case never truly disappeared. The file remained thick, crime
Speaker 2: scene photographs, ballistic reports, autopsy findings, interview transcripts, thousands of
Speaker 2: tips collected in the months following the murders. Some leads
Speaker 2: had been pursued quickly and discarded just as quickly. Others
Speaker 2: lingered in the margins of the file unresolved. One of
Speaker 2: those unresolved threads involved the statement given by Maurice Pierce.
Speaker 2: Pierce had been sixteen years old when officers encountered him
Speaker 2: near North Cross Mall, eight days after the murders. He
Speaker 2: had been carrying a twenty two caliber revolver, the same
Speaker 2: type of weapon used in the killings. During the questioning,
Speaker 2: Pierce claimed he had been involved in the yogurt shop
Speaker 2: murders and named three other teenagers as participants. His story
Speaker 2: had not held up. Ballistic analysis could not tie Pierce's
Speaker 2: gun to the bullets recovered from the victims. Investigators determined
Speaker 2: that many of the details he provided were either inaccurate
Speaker 2: or appeared to mirror facts already circulating publicly. Without physical
Speaker 2: evidence connecting Pierce or the boys he named to the
Speaker 2: crime scene, Prosecutors had declined to pursue charges, but Pierce's
Speaker 2: statement never fully vanished from the file. Eight years later,
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety nine, detectives returned to it. Cold cases
Speaker 2: often reopened for practical reasons, new technology, new witnesses, or
Speaker 2: the arrival of investigators willing to revisit material that others
Speaker 2: had set aside In Austin, the yogurt shop murders had
Speaker 2: never been solved, and the pressure to deliver answers had
Speaker 2: not faded. The case was reassigned to detectives, who began
Speaker 2: reviewing the investigation from the beginning. They started where many
Speaker 2: cold case reviews begin, by reading everything. Boxes of reports
Speaker 2: were opened, Old witness statements were re examined. Investigators looked
Speaker 2: not just at what had been pursued, but what had
Speaker 2: been abandoned and why. Names that had once appeared briefly
Speaker 2: in the files resurfaced again as detectives mapped connections between
Speaker 2: individuals who had been teenagers in nineteen ninety one and
Speaker 2: were now adults approaching thirty. Maurice Pierce's statement stood out immediately.
Speaker 2: Even if parts of it had been unreliable, The fact
Speaker 2: remained that Pierce had named three specific individuals, Michael Scott,
Speaker 2: Robert Springsteen, and Forrest Wellborn. Each of them had been
Speaker 2: teenagers living in Austin at the time of the murders.
Speaker 2: Detectives began tracing their histories. By nineteen ninety nine, all
Speaker 2: three had moved forward, with their lives in different ways.
Speaker 2: Some had relocated, some had minor criminal records, some had
Speaker 2: little contact with one another any more, but they all
Speaker 2: shared a connection that investigators could not ignore. Their names
Speaker 2: had surfaced together in the earliest days of the investigation,
Speaker 2: detectives decided to start fresh. The strategy was simple but deliberate.
Speaker 2: Rather than treating the young men as part of an
Speaker 2: old lead that had already been dismissed, investigators approached them
Speaker 2: as individuals who might possess information about what had happened
Speaker 2: that night. They conducted background checks, reviewed arrest histories, and
Speaker 2: began quietly arranging interviews. The first person they focused on
Speaker 2: was Michael Scott. Scott had been seventeen years old in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one. Like many teenagers connected loosely to the
Speaker 2: North Cross Mall social scene, he had spent time in
Speaker 2: the area where the yogurt shop was located. Detectives reviewing
Speaker 2: old witness lists noted that several individuals remembered seeing groups
Speaker 2: of teenage boys around them all that evening, though none
Speaker 2: had identified them conclusively. Scott was brought in for questioning
Speaker 2: in September nineteen ninety nine. The interrogation began, as many
Speaker 2: do with routine questions. Detectives asked Scott where he had
Speaker 2: been living in nineteen ninety one, who he had spent
Speaker 2: time with, whether he remembered the yogurt chop murders. Nearly
Speaker 2: everyone in Austin remembered them. At first, Scott denied involvement,
Speaker 2: but the interview did not end quickly. It stretched into hours.
Speaker 2: Detectives confronted Scott with the old statement from Maurice's Pierce.
Speaker 2: They told him that his name had appeared in the
Speaker 2: investigation from the very beginning. They suggested that other people
Speaker 2: had already talked. They pressed him to explain what had
Speaker 2: happened that night. Gradually, Scott's story began to change. By
Speaker 2: the end of the interrogation, he told detectives that he
Speaker 2: had been involved in the murders. According to Scott, the
Speaker 2: crime had been carried out by four teenagers, himself, Robert Springsteen,
Speaker 2: Forrest Welborne, and Maurice Pearce. The confession marked the first
Speaker 2: time since nineteen ninety one, the first time in eight
Speaker 2: years that investigators believed they might have directed missions from
Speaker 2: someone claiming to have participated in the killings. Detectives documented
Speaker 2: every detail Scott provided He described entering the yogurt shop,
Speaker 2: He described the girl's being forced into the back room,
Speaker 2: he described the robbery, and he described the shootings. With
Speaker 2: Scott's statement in hand, investigators moved quickly. If his confession
Speaker 2: was accurate, then one of the most infamous unsolved crimes
Speaker 2: in Austin might finally have an answer. The next step
Speaker 2: was to speak with Robert Springsteen fourth. What Springsteen said
Speaker 2: in that interrogation room would determine whether Scott's story stood
Speaker 2: alone or whether it would become the foundation of a
Speaker 2: case prosecutors believed they could bring to trial. The second interrogation.
Speaker 2: After Michael Scott's statement was taken in September nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: detectives turned their attention to the next name that appeared
Speaker 2: in Maurice Pierce's original claim, Robert Springsteen, the fourth. Springsteen
Speaker 2: had been seventeen years old in December of nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: Like Scott, he had spent time around the North Cross
Speaker 2: Mall area during his teenage years. Detectives reviewing the old
Speaker 2: case file noted that his name had surfaced more than
Speaker 2: once in early investigative notes, though nothing at the time
Speaker 2: had connected him directly to the crime scene. In the
Speaker 2: absence of physical evidence, the early investigation had never moved
Speaker 2: forward with him as a primary suspect. Eight years later,
Speaker 2: the situation was different. Now detectives had a confession from
Speaker 2: Michael Scott that explicitly named Springsteen as one of the
Speaker 2: participants in the murders. The confession alone did not prove anything.
Speaker 2: The confession alone did not prove anything. Investigators understood that
Speaker 2: statements given during interrogation could be incomplete, exaggerated, or inaccurate,
Speaker 2: but it provided a starting point. Detectives located Springsteen and
Speaker 2: brought him in for questioning. The interrogation followed a pattern
Speaker 2: familiar to investigators handling long dormant cases. Rather than opening
Speaker 2: with accusations, detectives began with neutral ground. They asked Springsteen
Speaker 2: where he had been living in nineteen ninety one. They
Speaker 2: asked about the people he spent time with back then.
Speaker 2: They asked about what he remembered about the yogurt shop
Speaker 2: murders themselves. Like nearly everyone who had grown up in
Speaker 2: Austin at the time, Springsteen remembered the crime clearly. The
Speaker 2: murder had dominated local news for weeks. The photographs of
Speaker 2: the four girls had appeared on television and in newspapers.
Speaker 2: The story had been discussed in schools, homes, and work
Speaker 2: places across the city. At first, Springsteen denied any involvement.
Speaker 2: Detectives gradually shifted the tone of the interview. They informed
Speaker 2: him that Michael Scott had already spoken with them. They
Speaker 2: explained that Scott had provided a detailed account of the
Speaker 2: crime and had identified several other individuals who had been
Speaker 2: present that night. Springsteen listened as investigators described the direction
Speaker 2: the case was taking. Interrogation often depends on pressure built
Speaker 2: through incremental steps rather than confrontation. From the beginning, detectives
Speaker 2: presented the information slowly. They suggested that the truth was
Speaker 2: already coming together and that Springsteen had an opportunity to
Speaker 2: explain his role before the investigation moved further. The questioning
Speaker 2: continued for hours. As the interview progressed, Springsteen's position began
Speaker 2: to shift. At first, he challenged parts of what the
Speaker 2: detectives were telling him. Then he began to acknowledge fragments
Speaker 2: of memory connected to the night of the murders. Eventually,
Speaker 2: he provided a statement that placed him inside the yogurt
Speaker 2: shop with the others. According to the account, he gave
Speaker 2: detectives four teenagers had gone into the shop that evening.
Speaker 2: The plan, he said, had been to commit a robbery.
Speaker 2: The store had been near closing time, and the employees
Speaker 2: inside were young. Once inside, the situation escalated. Springsteen described
Speaker 2: the girls being forced into the back room. He described
Speaker 2: them being restrained. He described the shootings.
Speaker 3: In his statement, Springsteen also claimed that he had sexually
Speaker 3: assaulted one of the victims before the murders took place.
Speaker 3: The details detectives documented in that interview appeared to align
Speaker 3: with elements of the crime scene investigators had red corded
Speaker 3: eight years earlier. The victims had been found bound, they
Speaker 3: had been moved to the back room, two different firearms
Speaker 3: had been used. Investigators now had two individuals independently describing
Speaker 3: participation in the same crime. The statements did not match perfectly,
Speaker 3: confessions rarely do, but they overlapped in key areas names
Speaker 3: of participants, the general sequence of events, the location of
Speaker 3: the killings. Detectives believed they were finally seeing the outlines
Speaker 3: of what had happened inside the yogurt shop on December sixth,
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one. With those two confessions, the investigation accelerated rapidly.
Speaker 3: Police began locating the other individuals named in the statements.
Speaker 3: Forrest Welborn and Maurice Pierce were identified as the remaining
Speaker 3: members of the group described by Scott and Springsteen. Detectives
Speaker 3: prepared to question them as well, hoping to confirm the
Speaker 3: version of events that was now taking shape. By late
Speaker 3: September nineteen ninety nine, the Austin Police Department believed that
Speaker 3: the case that had haunted the city for nearly a
Speaker 3: decade might finally be nearing resolution. Investigators had two confessions
Speaker 3: and four names tied to the same story. For the
Speaker 3: first time since the night of the murders. Detectives believed
Speaker 3: they knew who had been inside the yogurt shop. The
Speaker 3: next step would determine whether those confessions could hold up
Speaker 3: under scrutiny. The arrests within days of the two interrogations,
Speaker 3: The investigation that had sat dormant for most of the
Speaker 3: decade accelerated with unusual speed. Detectives now had statements from
Speaker 3: Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, each describing participation in the murders,
Speaker 3: and each naming the same group of teenagers as being
Speaker 3: present that night. Those names had first appeared eight years
Speaker 3: earlier in Maurice Pierce's original claim. Now they had resurfaced
Speaker 3: inside formal confessions given during recorded police interviews, Detectives moved
Speaker 3: to bring the remaining two individuals into custody. Forest Welborne
Speaker 3: and Maurice Pearce were located and questioned again. Both had
Speaker 3: been teenagers in nineteen ninety one. Both had lived in
Speaker 3: the Austin area at the time of the murders. Their
Speaker 3: names had been attached to the case in its earliest days,
Speaker 3: but without evidence, investigators had never been able to pursue charges.
Speaker 3: Now the situation had changed. Scott's confession placed all four
Speaker 3: boys together at the yogurt shop. Springsteen's statement placed himself
Speaker 3: and the others inside the building during the robbery and killings.
Speaker 3: Investigators believed they had obtained overlapping accounts that pointed toward
Speaker 3: the same group. In late September nineteen ninety nine, Austin
Speaker 3: police arrested four men in connection with the yogurt shop murders,
Speaker 3: Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, fourth, Forest Welborne, Maurice Pierce. The
Speaker 3: arrests drew immediate national attention. The murders of Jennifer Harbison,
Speaker 3: Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers had remained one
Speaker 3: of Austin's most painful unsolved crimes throughout the nineties. For years,
Speaker 3: the case had existed in a suspended state between investigation
Speaker 3: and silence. Now suddenly the police were announcing that they
Speaker 3: believed the people responsible had been identified. Authorities described the
Speaker 3: case publicly as a result of renewed investigative work. In
Speaker 3: detailed confessions, investigators explained that the suspects had been part
Speaker 3: of the same social circles in Austin during the early
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties. According to police statements at the time, the
Speaker 3: robbery of the yogurt shop had escalated into violence once
Speaker 3: the group realized the victims could identify them. The arrests
Speaker 3: were followed by formal charges of capital murder. Under Texas law,
Speaker 3: the killing of multiple victims in a single criminal episode
Speaker 3: qualified the case for the most serious level of prosecution.
Speaker 3: The District Attorney's office began preparing for a trial that
Speaker 3: could potentially result in death penalty sentences. Inside the police department,
Speaker 3: detectives believed the confessions had finally provided the missing narrative
Speaker 3: of what had happened inside the shop. Investigators reconstructed a
Speaker 3: version of events in which the four teenagers entered the
Speaker 3: yogurt store near closing time intending to commit a robbery.
Speaker 3: The girls were forced into the back room. They were
Speaker 3: restrained to prevent them from calling for help or identifying
Speaker 3: the offenders. Later, the robbery spiraled into murder. Two guns
Speaker 3: were used, the fire was set afterward. The confessions appeared
Speaker 3: to account for details that had puzzled investigators for years,
Speaker 3: why two weapons were present, why the victims had been
Speaker 3: moved into the back room, and why the building had
Speaker 3: been set on fire after the killings. For the families
Speaker 3: of the victims, the arrest offered the first real sense
Speaker 3: that the case might be nearing resolution. Nearly eight years
Speaker 3: had passed since the night of the murders. The girls
Speaker 3: had grown into symbols of tragedy that had reshaped how
Speaker 3: many people in Austin thought about safety in ordinary places.
Speaker 3: Now prosecutors were preparing to bring the accused into court,
Speaker 3: But even as the arrests were announced, the strength of
Speaker 3: the case depended almost entirely on one type of evidence, confessions.
Speaker 3: Investigators did not have finger prints tying the four suspects
Speaker 3: to the yogurt shop, they did not have DNA placing
Speaker 3: them at the scene. The fire had destroyed much of
Speaker 3: the forensic material that might have answered those questions. What
Speaker 3: prosecutors had were the statements given by Scott and Springsteen
Speaker 3: during their interrogations, along with the earlier statements made by
Speaker 3: Maurice Pierce years before. At the time of the arrests,
Speaker 3: police believed those statements were enough to move forward. Detectives
Speaker 3: who had worked the case since nineteen ninety one described
Speaker 3: the moment as a turning point. The investigation that had
Speaker 3: once seemed stalled had suddenly produced four suspects and a
Speaker 3: narrative of the crime. As the legal process began to
Speaker 3: take shape, two of the men would become the central
Speaker 3: focus of the prosecution. Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott would
Speaker 3: be the first to face trial. The question that now
Speaker 3: faced the courts was simple, but enormous, whether the confessions
Speaker 3: that had reopened the case could withstand the scrutiny of
Speaker 3: a jury the prosecution. Once the arrests were made, the
Speaker 3: case moved out of the interrogation room and into the
Speaker 3: court room. The Austin Police Department had spent eight years
Speaker 3: searching for suspects. Now the responsibility for proving the case
Speaker 3: shifted to the Travis County District Attorney's office. Prosecutors began
Speaker 3: assembling the narrative they would present to a jury. The
Speaker 3: central pillar of the case was the pair of confessions
Speaker 3: obtained in nineteen ninety nine. Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen,
Speaker 3: fourth had each described being inside the yogurt shop during
Speaker 3: the robbery and killing. Their statements contained overlapping details about
Speaker 3: the events of December sixth, nineteen ninety one. According to prosecutors,
Speaker 3: those details demonstrated knowledge that only someone present at the
Speaker 3: crime scene could possess. But the prosecution's challenge was clear
Speaker 3: from the beginning. The fire had destroyed much of the
Speaker 3: yogurt shop and had also destroyed large portions of the
Speaker 3: physical evidence. Fingerprints that might have tied the suspects to
Speaker 3: the building were lost, Potential DNA evidence had been damaged
Speaker 3: or contaminated by heat and water. The investigation had recovered
Speaker 3: ballistic information about the weapons used, but no firearm had
Speaker 3: ever definitively been connected to any of the suspects. Without
Speaker 3: those traditional forensic anchors, prosecutors relied heavily on the consistency
Speaker 3: between the confessions and the known facts of the crime scene.
Speaker 3: In the reconstruction presented by investigators, four teenagers had gone
Speaker 3: to the yogurt shop late that night intending to commit
Speaker 3: a robber. The store was staffed by two young employees
Speaker 3: and occupied by two younger girls who had been visiting.
Speaker 3: According to the statements given by Scott and Springsteen, the
Speaker 3: offenders forced the victims into the back room, restrained them,
Speaker 3: and robbed the register. What followed, according to the prosecution's theory,
Speaker 3: was an attempt to eliminate witnesses. Each of the four
Speaker 3: girls had been shot in the head. Two different firearms
Speaker 3: were used. After the killings, the offenders set a fire
Speaker 3: inside the shop to destroy evidence and delay discovery of
Speaker 3: the crime. Prosecutors believed the confessions explained each stage of
Speaker 3: that sequence. The presence of two weapons matched the ballistic findings,
Speaker 3: the movement of the victims into the back room matched
Speaker 3: the crime scene layout. The fire set after the shootings
Speaker 3: aligned with the arson investigator's conclusion that the blaze had
Speaker 3: been deliberately ignited. In preparing for trial, prosecutors focused on
Speaker 3: the two defendants whose statements were most detailed Robert's Springsteen
Speaker 3: and Michael Scott. Charges against Forrest Welborne and Maurice Pierce
Speaker 3: began to weaken as investigators reviewed the evidence more closely.
Speaker 3: Welborne had not given a confession, and Pierce's earlier statement
Speaker 3: from nineteen ninety one had already been dismissed as unreliable.
Speaker 3: Without stronger evidence tying them to the scene, prosecutors ultimately
Speaker 3: decided not to pursue capital murder charges against those two men.
Speaker 3: That decision narrowed the legal battle. The trials would center
Speaker 3: on Springsteen and Scott. The prosecution prepared to argue that
Speaker 3: their confessions were voluntary and accurate reflections of what had
Speaker 3: occurred inside the yogurt shop. Detectives who conducted the interrogations
Speaker 3: documented the interviews carefully. Transcripts were prepared. The statements were
Speaker 3: analyzed line by line to demonstrate where the suspects had
Speaker 3: described aspects of the crime scene that investigators believed had
Speaker 3: not been widely known at the time. The defense he
Speaker 3: took a very different view. Attorneys representing Scott and Springsteen
Speaker 3: argued that the confessions had been obtained through long and
Speaker 3: coercive interrogations. They pointed out that the suspects had been
Speaker 3: questioned for hours and that investigators had repeatedly confronted them
Speaker 3: with details from the case file during the interviews. Defense
Speaker 3: attorneys argued that this process could lead suspects to adopt
Speaker 3: or repeat information provided by the detectives, creating statements that
Speaker 3: appeared accurate even if the suspects had not actually been
Speaker 3: present at the crime. The issue would become central once
Speaker 3: the trials began. Another complication involved the relationship between the
Speaker 3: two confessions. Because Scott and Springsteen had been interrogated separately,
Speaker 3: each confession referenced the other defendant. Prosecutors intended to use
Speaker 3: both statements to reinforce their narrative of a four person
Speaker 3: robbery that escalated into murder, but using one defendant's confess
Speaker 3: ffession against another raised complex legal questions about whether each
Speaker 3: man had the right to challenge the statements made by
Speaker 3: the other. Those questions would eventually become a defining feature
Speaker 3: of the case. Still, as the trials approached, the prosecution's
Speaker 3: confidence remained high. Investigators believed the confessions told the story
Speaker 3: of what had happened inside the yogurt shop. Prosecutors believed
Speaker 3: juries would hear those accounts and conclude that the case
Speaker 3: had finally been solved. Nearly a decade after the murders,
Speaker 3: the city of Austin prepared to watch the legal system
Speaker 3: attempt to answer the question that had lingered since December
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety one who killed the four girls in the
Speaker 3: yogurt shop the trials the first trial began in two
Speaker 3: thousand one. By that point, nearly ten years had passed
Speaker 3: since the murders. The city had changed in the intervening decade.
Speaker 3: New businesses had opened where old ones had closed. Students
Speaker 3: who had had been children in nineteen ninety one were
Speaker 3: now adults, but the photographs of the four girls, Jennifer Harbison,
Speaker 3: Sarah Harveson, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayres remained familiar to
Speaker 3: almost everyone who had lived in Austin during that time.
Speaker 3: When Robert Springsteen fourth was brought into the Travis County
Speaker 3: court room, the case that had sat unresolved for years
Speaker 3: was finally being presented before a jury. The prosecution's case
Speaker 3: centered almost entirely on Springsteen's confession and the broader narrative
Speaker 3: investigators had constructed around it. Prosecutors walked the jury through
Speaker 3: the crime scene as it had been documented in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one, the back room where the victims were found,
Speaker 3: the bindings, the gunshot wounds, the fire set afterward. They
Speaker 3: argued that Springsteen's statement described those events in a way
Speaker 3: that demonstrated direct knowledge of the crime. Jurors heard that
Speaker 3: four teenagers had entered the yogurt shop intending to rob it.
Speaker 3: The victims were forced into the back room and restrain
Speaker 3: so that they could not escape or identify the offenders.
Speaker 3: The robbery escalated, the girls were shot, then the offenders
Speaker 3: set the store on fire before leaving. Prosecutors presented the
Speaker 3: confession as the missing piece that explained the evidence investigators
Speaker 3: had collected years earlier. The use of two different firearms,
Speaker 3: the movement of the victims of the back room, and
Speaker 3: the deliberate fire all aligned with the account Springsteen had
Speaker 3: given to detectives. The defense attacked the confession itself. Springsteen's
Speaker 3: attorneys argued that the statement had been obtained after hours
Speaker 3: of interrogation, and the detectives had fed key details to
Speaker 3: him during the questioning. They pointed out that no physical evidence,
Speaker 3: no fingerprints, no DNA, no weapon connected Springsteen to the
Speaker 3: yogurt shop. The defense told the jury that the confession
Speaker 3: was not proof of guilt, but the product of intense
Speaker 3: police pressure. Despite those arguments, the jury returned a verdict
Speaker 3: of guilty. Because the case involved the murder of multiple
Speaker 3: victims in a single criminal episode, the sentencing phase allowed
Speaker 3: the state to pursue the death penalty. After hearing additional testimony,
Speaker 3: jurors sentenced Robert Springsteen to death. The conviction was widely reported.
Speaker 3: For many in Austin, it appeared that the long search
Speaker 3: for answers had finally reached its conclusion. The second trial
Speaker 3: followed soon after. In two thousand and two, Michael Scott
Speaker 3: was brought before another jury in Travis County. The prosecution
Speaker 3: presented a case similar to the one used against Springsteen.
Speaker 3: Scott's confession was introduced alongside evidence from the crime scene
Speaker 3: and the investigative narrative developed during the nineteen ninety nine interrogations. Again,
Speaker 3: the defense challenged the reliability of the confession. Scott's attorney
Speaker 3: argued that detectives had interrogated him for extended periods and
Speaker 3: had suggested elements of the crime during questioning. They emphasized
Speaker 3: the s the same gap that had existed throughout the
Speaker 3: case the absence of physical evidence tying Scott to the scene,
Speaker 3: but once again the jury accepted the prosecution's account. Michael
Speaker 3: Scott was found guilty of capital murder. Unlike Springsteen, he
Speaker 3: received a sentence of life in prison rather than the
Speaker 3: death penalty. With those two convictions, prosecutors believed the case
Speaker 3: had been resolved. The trials had produced a clear legal conclusion.
Speaker 3: Two men had been held responsible for the murders of
Speaker 3: four teenage girls. The confessions had persuaded juries that investigators
Speaker 3: had correctly identified the people who had entered the yogurt
Speaker 3: shop on the night of December sixth, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: For the families of the victims, the verdicts brought a
Speaker 3: measure of closure that had been absent for nearly a decade.
Speaker 3: The legal system had reached a judgment. The case that
Speaker 3: had haunted Austin had at least in the eyes of
Speaker 3: the courts, been answered, But outside the court room, questions
Speaker 3: about the investigation had not completely disappeared. Defense attorneys continued
Speaker 3: examining the interrogations that had produced the confessions. Legal scholars
Speaker 3: began discussing whether the way those statements had been used
Speaker 3: in court raised constitutional concerns, and advances in forensic science,
Speaker 3: particularly DNA testing, were beginning to change the expectations surrounding
Speaker 3: criminal evidence. At the time of those trials in two
Speaker 3: thousand and two, those developments had not yet reached the
Speaker 3: yogurt shop case in a decisive way. For the moment,
Speaker 3: the verdicts stood. Two men were convicted, one faced execution,
Speaker 3: another faced life behind bars. The murders of Jennifer Harbison,
Speaker 3: Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers appeared to have
Speaker 3: been solved, but I don't have to tell you that
Speaker 3: appearances can be deceiving. Please join me next Thursday, March
Speaker 3: twelfth for part three of the Austin, Texas Yogurt Shop Murders.
Speaker 3: And Hey, if you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend,
Speaker 3: tell a family member, a co worker, anybody you know
Speaker 3: who likes a true crime podcast, Please tell them to
Speaker 3: listen to Kind of Murdery. I sure would appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Until next week, I'm Zevan Odleberg, and this has been
Speaker 3: kind of Murdery.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell
Speaker 1: your friends. You can find us on social media at
Speaker 1: Kindamurdery or email at kindomurderyat gmail dot com.
Apple Podcasts
Castbox
Castro
Goodpods
Moon FM
Overcast
Pocket Casts
Podbean
Podcast Addict
Podcast Republic
Spotify