The Austin, Texas Yogurt Shop Murders: Part Two

0:00 Speaker 1: Warning. Kind of Murdery contains adult themes, explicit language, and descriptions of violence. It is not suitable for anyone, and we recommend you stop listening now.

0:18 Speaker 2: True Crime with a dash of the paranormal, the garish, the strange in the darkly comic. A podcast that's about more than just murder. It's my very own pocket dimension, home to a curated collection of bizarre and compelling stories, the unsolved, the unsettling, and the unbelievable. I cover it all just so long as it's kind of murdery. Hey everybody, I'm so glad you're here with me today. You know, I don't know when exactly we jump to the timeline, but uh, we are indeed living in some wild times these days.

0:52 Speaker 2: And you know the old saying time is money. Well, one of the things about these wild times we're living in is things are so darn expensive these days that your time is worth more than ever. And so I have to tell you I am so grateful, I'm so thrilled, I am happy that you are here with me today. I am Zevan Odelberg. This is kind of murdery, and I shall endeavor to be worthy of your attention. And today I'm bringing you to Austin, Texas for part two. That's right, I said part two. So if you haven't heard part one yet, go ahead and listen to it and then come back and join us.

1:33 Speaker 2: I'll save you a seat. But if you're all caught up, then let's get right down to business. There's a lot more of this tragic, mysterious tale to tell. Part two of kind of Murderies, the Austin, Texas Yogurt Chop Murders, starts now. By the end of the nineteen nineties, the yogurt shop building at Northcross had long since returned to ordinary use. The storefront changed tenants, the burn damage had been repaired. Customers walked in and out under new signage without thinking about that night in nineteen ninety one when police lights filled the parking lot and four families received the worst of all possible phone calls.

2:26 Speaker 2: But inside the Austin Police Department, the case never truly disappeared. The file remained thick, crime scene photographs, ballistic reports, autopsy findings, interview transcripts, thousands of tips collected in the months following the murders. Some leads had been pursued quickly and discarded just as quickly. Others lingered in the margins of the file unresolved. One of those unresolved threads involved the statement given by Maurice Pierce. Pierce had been sixteen years old when officers encountered him near North Cross Mall, eight days after the murders.

3:04 Speaker 2: He had been carrying a twenty two caliber revolver, the same type of weapon used in the killings. During the questioning, Pierce claimed he had been involved in the yogurt shop murders and named three other teenagers as participants. His story had not held up. Ballistic analysis could not tie Pierce's gun to the bullets recovered from the victims. Investigators determined that many of the details he provided were either inaccurate or appeared to mirror facts already circulating publicly. Without physical evidence connecting Pierce or the boys he named to the crime scene, Prosecutors had declined to pursue charges, but Pierce's statement never fully vanished from the file.

3:47 Speaker 2: Eight years later, in nineteen ninety nine, detectives returned to it. Cold cases often reopened for practical reasons, new technology, new witnesses, or the arrival of investigators willing to revisit material that others had set aside In Austin, the yogurt shop murders had never been solved, and the pressure to deliver answers had not faded. The case was reassigned to detectives, who began reviewing the investigation from the beginning. They started where many cold case reviews begin, by reading everything.

4:21 Speaker 2: Boxes of reports were opened, Old witness statements were re examined. Investigators looked not just at what had been pursued, but what had been abandoned and why. Names that had once appeared briefly in the files resurfaced again as detectives mapped connections between individuals who had been teenagers in nineteen ninety one and were now adults approaching thirty. Maurice Pierce's statement stood out immediately. Even if parts of it had been unreliable, The fact remained that Pierce had named three specific individuals, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, and Forrest Wellborn.

5:00 Speaker 2: Each of them had been teenagers living in Austin at the time of the murders. Detectives began tracing their histories. By nineteen ninety nine, all three had moved forward, with their lives in different ways. Some had relocated, some had minor criminal records, some had little contact with one another any more, but they all shared a connection that investigators could not ignore. Their names had surfaced together in the earliest days of the investigation, detectives decided to start fresh. The strategy was simple but deliberate.

5:35 Speaker 2: Rather than treating the young men as part of an old lead that had already been dismissed, investigators approached them as individuals who might possess information about what had happened that night. They conducted background checks, reviewed arrest histories, and began quietly arranging interviews. The first person they focused on was Michael Scott. Scott had been seventeen years old in nineteen ninety one. Like many teenagers connected loosely to the North Cross Mall social scene, he had spent time in the area where the yogurt shop was located.

6:10 Speaker 2: Detectives reviewing old witness lists noted that several individuals remembered seeing groups of teenage boys around them all that evening, though none had identified them conclusively. Scott was brought in for questioning in September nineteen ninety nine. The interrogation began, as many do with routine questions. Detectives asked Scott where he had been living in nineteen ninety one, who he had spent time with, whether he remembered the yogurt chop murders. Nearly everyone in Austin remembered them.

6:42 Speaker 2: At first, Scott denied involvement, but the interview did not end quickly. It stretched into hours. Detectives confronted Scott with the old statement from Maurice's Pierce. They told him that his name had appeared in the investigation from the very beginning. They suggested that other people had already talked. They pressed him to explain what had happened that night. Gradually, Scott's story began to change. By the end of the interrogation, he told detectives that he had been involved in the murders.

7:13 Speaker 2: According to Scott, the crime had been carried out by four teenagers, himself, Robert Springsteen, Forrest Welborne, and Maurice Pearce. The confession marked the first time since nineteen ninety one, the first time in eight years that investigators believed they might have directed missions from someone claiming to have participated in the killings. Detectives documented every detail Scott provided He described entering the yogurt shop, He described the girl's being forced into the back room, he described the robbery, and he described the shootings.

7:49 Speaker 2: With Scott's statement in hand, investigators moved quickly. If his confession was accurate, then one of the most infamous unsolved crimes in Austin might finally have an answer. The next step was to speak with Robert Springsteen fourth. What Springsteen said in that interrogation room would determine whether Scott's story stood alone or whether it would become the foundation of a case prosecutors believed they could bring to trial. The second interrogation. After Michael Scott's statement was taken in September nineteen ninety nine, detectives turned their attention to the next name that appeared in Maurice Pierce's original claim, Robert Springsteen, the fourth.

8:31 Speaker 2: Springsteen had been seventeen years old in December of nineteen ninety one. Like Scott, he had spent time around the North Cross Mall area during his teenage years. Detectives reviewing the old case file noted that his name had surfaced more than once in early investigative notes, though nothing at the time had connected him directly to the crime scene. In the absence of physical evidence, the early investigation had never moved forward with him as a primary suspect. Eight years later, the situation was different.

9:03 Speaker 2: Now detectives had a confession from Michael Scott that explicitly named Springsteen as one of the participants in the murders. The confession alone did not prove anything. The confession alone did not prove anything. Investigators understood that statements given during interrogation could be incomplete, exaggerated, or inaccurate, but it provided a starting point. Detectives located Springsteen and brought him in for questioning. The interrogation followed a pattern familiar to investigators handling long dormant cases.

9:37 Speaker 2: Rather than opening with accusations, detectives began with neutral ground. They asked Springsteen where he had been living in nineteen ninety one. They asked about the people he spent time with back then. They asked about what he remembered about the yogurt shop murders themselves. Like nearly everyone who had grown up in Austin at the time, Springsteen remembered the crime clearly. The murder had dominated local news for weeks. The photographs of the four girls had appeared on television and in newspapers.

10:07 Speaker 2: The story had been discussed in schools, homes, and work places across the city. At first, Springsteen denied any involvement. Detectives gradually shifted the tone of the interview. They informed him that Michael Scott had already spoken with them. They explained that Scott had provided a detailed account of the crime and had identified several other individuals who had been present that night. Springsteen listened as investigators described the direction the case was taking. Interrogation often depends on pressure built through incremental steps rather than confrontation.

10:42 Speaker 2: From the beginning, detectives presented the information slowly. They suggested that the truth was already coming together and that Springsteen had an opportunity to explain his role before the investigation moved further. The questioning continued for hours. As the interview progressed, Springsteen's position began to shift. At first, he challenged parts of what the detectives were telling him. Then he began to acknowledge fragments of memory connected to the night of the murders. Eventually, he provided a statement that placed him inside the yogurt shop with the others.

11:20 Speaker 2: According to the account, he gave detectives four teenagers had gone into the shop that evening. The plan, he said, had been to commit a robbery. The store had been near closing time, and the employees inside were young. Once inside, the situation escalated. Springsteen described the girls being forced into the back room. He described them being restrained. He described the shootings.

11:45 Speaker 3: In his statement, Springsteen also claimed that he had sexually assaulted one of the victims before the murders took place. The details detectives documented in that interview appeared to align with elements of the crime scene investigators had red corded eight years earlier. The victims had been found bound, they had been moved to the back room, two different firearms had been used. Investigators now had two individuals independently describing participation in the same crime. The statements did not match perfectly, confessions rarely do, but they overlapped in key areas names of participants, the general sequence of events, the location of the killings.

12:26 Speaker 3: Detectives believed they were finally seeing the outlines of what had happened inside the yogurt shop on December sixth, nineteen ninety one. With those two confessions, the investigation accelerated rapidly. Police began locating the other individuals named in the statements. Forrest Welborn and Maurice Pierce were identified as the remaining members of the group described by Scott and Springsteen. Detectives prepared to question them as well, hoping to confirm the version of events that was now taking shape.

12:57 Speaker 3: By late September nineteen ninety nine, the Austin Police Department believed that the case that had haunted the city for nearly a decade might finally be nearing resolution. Investigators had two confessions and four names tied to the same story. For the first time since the night of the murders. Detectives believed they knew who had been inside the yogurt shop. The next step would determine whether those confessions could hold up under scrutiny. The arrests within days of the two interrogations, The investigation that had sat dormant for most of the decade accelerated with unusual speed.

13:36 Speaker 3: Detectives now had statements from Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, each describing participation in the murders, and each naming the same group of teenagers as being present that night. Those names had first appeared eight years earlier in Maurice Pierce's original claim. Now they had resurfaced inside formal confessions given during recorded police interviews, Detectives moved to bring the remaining two individuals into custody. Forest Welborne and Maurice Pearce were located and questioned again.

14:08 Speaker 3: Both had been teenagers in nineteen ninety one. Both had lived in the Austin area at the time of the murders. Their names had been attached to the case in its earliest days, but without evidence, investigators had never been able to pursue charges. Now the situation had changed. Scott's confession placed all four boys together at the yogurt shop. Springsteen's statement placed himself and the others inside the building during the robbery and killings. Investigators believed they had obtained overlapping accounts that pointed toward the same group.

14:41 Speaker 3: In late September nineteen ninety nine, Austin police arrested four men in connection with the yogurt shop murders, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, fourth, Forest Welborne, Maurice Pierce. The arrests drew immediate national attention. The murders of Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers had remained one of Austin's most painful unsolved crimes throughout the nineties. For years, the case had existed in a suspended state between investigation and silence. Now suddenly the police were announcing that they believed the people responsible had been identified.

15:21 Speaker 3: Authorities described the case publicly as a result of renewed investigative work. In detailed confessions, investigators explained that the suspects had been part of the same social circles in Austin during the early nineteen nineties. According to police statements at the time, the robbery of the yogurt shop had escalated into violence once the group realized the victims could identify them. The arrests were followed by formal charges of capital murder. Under Texas law, the killing of multiple victims in a single criminal episode qualified the case for the most serious level of prosecution.

15:57 Speaker 3: The District Attorney's office began preparing for a trial that could potentially result in death penalty sentences. Inside the police department, detectives believed the confessions had finally provided the missing narrative of what had happened inside the shop. Investigators reconstructed a version of events in which the four teenagers entered the yogurt store near closing time intending to commit a robbery. The girls were forced into the back room. They were restrained to prevent them from calling for help or identifying the offenders.

16:29 Speaker 3: Later, the robbery spiraled into murder. Two guns were used, the fire was set afterward. The confessions appeared to account for details that had puzzled investigators for years, why two weapons were present, why the victims had been moved into the back room, and why the building had been set on fire after the killings. For the families of the victims, the arrest offered the first real sense that the case might be nearing resolution. Nearly eight years had passed since the night of the murders. The girls had grown into symbols of tragedy that had reshaped how many people in Austin thought about safety in ordinary places.

17:08 Speaker 3: Now prosecutors were preparing to bring the accused into court, But even as the arrests were announced, the strength of the case depended almost entirely on one type of evidence, confessions. Investigators did not have finger prints tying the four suspects to the yogurt shop, they did not have DNA placing them at the scene. The fire had destroyed much of the forensic material that might have answered those questions. What prosecutors had were the statements given by Scott and Springsteen during their interrogations, along with the earlier statements made by Maurice Pierce years before.

17:44 Speaker 3: At the time of the arrests, police believed those statements were enough to move forward. Detectives who had worked the case since nineteen ninety one described the moment as a turning point. The investigation that had once seemed stalled had suddenly produced four suspects and a narrative of the crime. As the legal process began to take shape, two of the men would become the central focus of the prosecution. Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott would be the first to face trial. The question that now faced the courts was simple, but enormous, whether the confessions that had reopened the case could withstand the scrutiny of a jury the prosecution.

18:27 Speaker 3: Once the arrests were made, the case moved out of the interrogation room and into the court room. The Austin Police Department had spent eight years searching for suspects. Now the responsibility for proving the case shifted to the Travis County District Attorney's office. Prosecutors began assembling the narrative they would present to a jury. The central pillar of the case was the pair of confessions obtained in nineteen ninety nine. Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, fourth had each described being inside the yogurt shop during the robbery and killing.

19:00 Speaker 3: Their statements contained overlapping details about the events of December sixth, nineteen ninety one. According to prosecutors, those details demonstrated knowledge that only someone present at the crime scene could possess. But the prosecution's challenge was clear from the beginning. The fire had destroyed much of the yogurt shop and had also destroyed large portions of the physical evidence. Fingerprints that might have tied the suspects to the building were lost, Potential DNA evidence had been damaged or contaminated by heat and water.

19:33 Speaker 3: The investigation had recovered ballistic information about the weapons used, but no firearm had ever definitively been connected to any of the suspects. Without those traditional forensic anchors, prosecutors relied heavily on the consistency between the confessions and the known facts of the crime scene. In the reconstruction presented by investigators, four teenagers had gone to the yogurt shop late that night intending to commit a robber. The store was staffed by two young employees and occupied by two younger girls who had been visiting.

20:06 Speaker 3: According to the statements given by Scott and Springsteen, the offenders forced the victims into the back room, restrained them, and robbed the register. What followed, according to the prosecution's theory, was an attempt to eliminate witnesses. Each of the four girls had been shot in the head. Two different firearms were used. After the killings, the offenders set a fire inside the shop to destroy evidence and delay discovery of the crime. Prosecutors believed the confessions explained each stage of that sequence.

20:37 Speaker 3: The presence of two weapons matched the ballistic findings, the movement of the victims into the back room matched the crime scene layout. The fire set after the shootings aligned with the arson investigator's conclusion that the blaze had been deliberately ignited. In preparing for trial, prosecutors focused on the two defendants whose statements were most detailed Robert's Springsteen and Michael Scott. Charges against Forrest Welborne and Maurice Pierce began to weaken as investigators reviewed the evidence more closely.

21:09 Speaker 3: Welborne had not given a confession, and Pierce's earlier statement from nineteen ninety one had already been dismissed as unreliable. Without stronger evidence tying them to the scene, prosecutors ultimately decided not to pursue capital murder charges against those two men. That decision narrowed the legal battle. The trials would center on Springsteen and Scott. The prosecution prepared to argue that their confessions were voluntary and accurate reflections of what had occurred inside the yogurt shop.

21:41 Speaker 3: Detectives who conducted the interrogations documented the interviews carefully. Transcripts were prepared. The statements were analyzed line by line to demonstrate where the suspects had described aspects of the crime scene that investigators believed had not been widely known at the time. The defense he took a very different view. Attorneys representing Scott and Springsteen argued that the confessions had been obtained through long and coercive interrogations. They pointed out that the suspects had been questioned for hours and that investigators had repeatedly confronted them with details from the case file during the interviews.

22:20 Speaker 3: Defense attorneys argued that this process could lead suspects to adopt or repeat information provided by the detectives, creating statements that appeared accurate even if the suspects had not actually been present at the crime. The issue would become central once the trials began. Another complication involved the relationship between the two confessions. Because Scott and Springsteen had been interrogated separately, each confession referenced the other defendant. Prosecutors intended to use both statements to reinforce their narrative of a four person robbery that escalated into murder, but using one defendant's confess ffession against another raised complex legal questions about whether each man had the right to challenge the statements made by the other.

23:07 Speaker 3: Those questions would eventually become a defining feature of the case. Still, as the trials approached, the prosecution's confidence remained high. Investigators believed the confessions told the story of what had happened inside the yogurt shop. Prosecutors believed juries would hear those accounts and conclude that the case had finally been solved. Nearly a decade after the murders, the city of Austin prepared to watch the legal system attempt to answer the question that had lingered since December nineteen ninety one who killed the four girls in the yogurt shop the trials the first trial began in two thousand one.

23:47 Speaker 3: By that point, nearly ten years had passed since the murders. The city had changed in the intervening decade. New businesses had opened where old ones had closed. Students who had had been children in nineteen ninety one were now adults, but the photographs of the four girls, Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harveson, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayres remained familiar to almost everyone who had lived in Austin during that time. When Robert Springsteen fourth was brought into the Travis County court room, the case that had sat unresolved for years was finally being presented before a jury.

24:25 Speaker 3: The prosecution's case centered almost entirely on Springsteen's confession and the broader narrative investigators had constructed around it. Prosecutors walked the jury through the crime scene as it had been documented in nineteen ninety one, the back room where the victims were found, the bindings, the gunshot wounds, the fire set afterward. They argued that Springsteen's statement described those events in a way that demonstrated direct knowledge of the crime. Jurors heard that four teenagers had entered the yogurt shop intending to rob it.

24:58 Speaker 3: The victims were forced into the back room and restrain so that they could not escape or identify the offenders. The robbery escalated, the girls were shot, then the offenders set the store on fire before leaving. Prosecutors presented the confession as the missing piece that explained the evidence investigators had collected years earlier. The use of two different firearms, the movement of the victims of the back room, and the deliberate fire all aligned with the account Springsteen had given to detectives.

25:27 Speaker 3: The defense attacked the confession itself. Springsteen's attorneys argued that the statement had been obtained after hours of interrogation, and the detectives had fed key details to him during the questioning. They pointed out that no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no DNA, no weapon connected Springsteen to the yogurt shop. The defense told the jury that the confession was not proof of guilt, but the product of intense police pressure. Despite those arguments, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

26:00 Speaker 3: Because the case involved the murder of multiple victims in a single criminal episode, the sentencing phase allowed the state to pursue the death penalty. After hearing additional testimony, jurors sentenced Robert Springsteen to death. The conviction was widely reported. For many in Austin, it appeared that the long search for answers had finally reached its conclusion. The second trial followed soon after. In two thousand and two, Michael Scott was brought before another jury in Travis County.

26:31 Speaker 3: The prosecution presented a case similar to the one used against Springsteen. Scott's confession was introduced alongside evidence from the crime scene and the investigative narrative developed during the nineteen ninety nine interrogations. Again, the defense challenged the reliability of the confession. Scott's attorney argued that detectives had interrogated him for extended periods and had suggested elements of the crime during questioning. They emphasized the s the same gap that had existed throughout the case the absence of physical evidence tying Scott to the scene, but once again the jury accepted the prosecution's account.

27:10 Speaker 3: Michael Scott was found guilty of capital murder. Unlike Springsteen, he received a sentence of life in prison rather than the death penalty. With those two convictions, prosecutors believed the case had been resolved. The trials had produced a clear legal conclusion. Two men had been held responsible for the murders of four teenage girls. The confessions had persuaded juries that investigators had correctly identified the people who had entered the yogurt shop on the night of December sixth, nineteen ninety one.

27:44 Speaker 3: For the families of the victims, the verdicts brought a measure of closure that had been absent for nearly a decade. The legal system had reached a judgment. The case that had haunted Austin had at least in the eyes of the courts, been answered, But outside the court room, questions about the investigation had not completely disappeared. Defense attorneys continued examining the interrogations that had produced the confessions. Legal scholars began discussing whether the way those statements had been used in court raised constitutional concerns, and advances in forensic science, particularly DNA testing, were beginning to change the expectations surrounding criminal evidence.

28:27 Speaker 3: At the time of those trials in two thousand and two, those developments had not yet reached the yogurt shop case in a decisive way. For the moment, the verdicts stood. Two men were convicted, one faced execution, another faced life behind bars. The murders of Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers appeared to have been solved, but I don't have to tell you that appearances can be deceiving. Please join me next Thursday, March twelfth for part three of the Austin, Texas Yogurt Shop Murders.

29:05 Speaker 3: And Hey, if you enjoyed the show, please tell a friend, tell a family member, a co worker, anybody you know who likes a true crime podcast, Please tell them to listen to Kind of Murdery. I sure would appreciate it. Until next week, I'm Zevan Odleberg, and this has been kind of Murdery.

29:27 Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell your friends. You can find us on social media at Kindamurdery or email at kindomurderyat gmail dot com.