48 Hours - Innocence Lost

Episode Date: January 22, 2017

The murder of four young girls leads to two murder convictions.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Real people, real crimes, real life drama. Jonesy? Yeah?

You hear about the call, 2900, West Anderson? Yeah, I'm headed over there. 2900? 2900? That's a business. I'm John Jones. I was a sergeant investigator. I was working night watch out of homicide.

When this call comes out... Okay, I'm copying the fire part. You're cut out on the first part of that. First it was, you know, firing a business. It's three fatalities. Class 10-4, learn out. Then they called me on the radio and said, I got three people dead.

Triple fatality. And I got about a mile down the road, and they said, make that four. No, that's a shopping center. What place of business is this? This is the, uh, I can't believe it's you. And we got out there, and, uh, it was just a sea of red. More than 25 years ago, I started reporting on what turned out to be the most horrific crime story I have ever encountered.

It happened here in Austin, Texas, in December 1991. I'll never forget how the lead detective described the crime scene. For a long time, I shut out what I saw. Just wholesale carnage. We knew immediately that they were kids. Eliza Thomas, Amy Ayers, Jennifer Harbison, and her sister Sarah. At 3 o'clock that morning, some people were at my door, and then they said there was a fire, and they told us that both of my girls were dead.

It wasn't just the fact that four young girls were killed. It was how they were killed. I've seen homicides, but not four. And not four all tied up, and not four stripped down, and not four burned. They were stacked. Their bodies were stacked. They were burned, and they were stacked.

One of the toughest parts about this was having to deal with those parents the next morning and try to look them in the eye and tell them, we're going to do everything in our power to make sure we get the people that did it. You have some suspects, but none of these are ready to be arrested. No. It took years to come up with any answers, but finally in 1999, there were suspects and arrests. Early this morning, the Austin Police Department served four arrest warrants charging four individuals with capital murder. Are you one of the killers of those four little girls in that yogurt shop? No, no way, not at all. I'm Robert Springsteen, and I'm just a normal guy.

Four children dead in an area where you'd think they'd be safe, a suburban shopping mall. I never thought that tonight, more than 25 years after these girls were murdered, that I would still be reporting on this story. But as it turns out, that closed case wasn't closed after all. It's the first time we have physical proof about who was there. Did authorities get it wrong? Did they put innocent men in prison? They've been looking at the wrong people the entire time.

The killers are still out there. I know for a fact I know one of them. I'm Erin Moriarty. Tonight on 48 Hours. Innocence Lost. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman.

But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The best idea yet. A brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk takers who brought them to life.

Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala? From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening,

you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. Four children dead in an area where you'd think they'd be safe, a suburban shopping mall. But where is safe anymore?

All we knew when we first started on this story was that four young girls, one was as young as 13, were murdered. They were executed and then the building was set aflame. What could be more horrific than that? These were the facts. Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas, both just 17, have been working the late shift in the yogurt shop. Jennifer's 15-year-old sister, Sarah, and her friend, 13-year-old Amy Ayers, had dropped by to help close the shop for the night. Amy's dad, Bob. I feel a loss every day. I miss her every day. I really do. The Harbison girl's mom, Barbara.

They were so sweet. You know, they were good. All four of those girls were wonderful kids. Eliza's mother, Maria. Unless you've been through it, you just cannot imagine how bad it is to have lost a child and to have lost one to violence, too. Austin, Texas was a big city, but with a small-town attitude. That kind of crime happens somewhere else. So in many ways, these four murders changed Austin forever. The cops told me that three of the girls had been shot once in the head.

Little Amy was shot twice. As police and firemen worked the scene, lead detective John Jones had to face the press. What we found in the back there was we found four victims. Were they bound in any way? Can't give you that. Were the victims together or were they in different parts of the building?

Can't give you that either. We'll give you as much as we can, but we are going to have to hold a lot of things back because we are handling this as a murder. Jones worked the case with his partner, Mike Huckabee. It was dark inside. It was smoky, burned insulation everywhere, and just the cold feeling of death.

I saw things in Vietnam, and I thought, nothing will ever match that. Well, this matches that, because it's in Austin, Texas. It's in its, you know, right down the street from where we live. JUDY WOODRUFF, The problem with this case, what really hampered the investigation, was that firemen were called first. So you had all these people walking through the crime scene, and then you had that water that washed away much of the evidence. Had it happened today, there was probably a better way to process the crime scene. But back then, we processed the scene the best as we could with what we had. Of course you assume that these four murders were just so awful that they had to be committed by monsters.

And so the investigation went that route. Open the door! Police! The investigation went that route. Open the door, police! We've come across all lifestyles, every type of criminal person that you can think of, and every kind of loony and crazy. The cops went after Satanists and serial killers, like the infamous murderer, Kenneth McDuff. That was a strange man. He flat said, had I done it, I would tell you, because I'd be proud of it.

Has anybody looked at him? I did. We did a workup. It was just one dead end after another. What do you got? The phone never quit ringing. There would be stacks and stacks and stacks of tip sheets on the desk. stacks and stacks of tip sheets on the desk. He was?

I'd never seen a case where there were so many leads coming in, so you had these detectives, John Jones and Mike Huckabee, completely overwhelmed. They didn't even know where to start. Can you give me some indication of just how many suspects you've gone through here? Well, okay. 342. how many suspects you've gone through here. Well, okay. 342. We're looking at pages and pages of suspects here.

And how does that compare to a normal murder case? Oh, it's off the scale. Way off the scale. Back then, this is what the cops knew. There was about $540 missing from the register. There were two guns used in the crime. And investigators were focusing on young people, like a 16-year-old kid picked up at a local mall.

We had the very first one, a guy named Maurice Pierce. He got arrested at North Cross Mall with a gun. Did he pan out at all? No, he didn't. He sounded good. We had to move on him. We couldn't prove that the gun was used because the ballistics wouldn't match up. Jones remembers interrogating Maurice Pierce

along with three of the friends he was hanging out with that day, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, and Forrest Wellborn. But nothing panned out. So we got to a point to where we couldn't go any further with any of the four. There were plenty of leads to follow. Believe it or not, there were actually people who were volunteering that they were the killers. I know that false confessions happen in high-profile cases, but in this case, there were dozens.

People brag about killing? Yeah, they did. And, you know, at first, you know, they puff out their chest, but after a few minutes, you know, they give it up. Oh, well, I was just kidding. We had six written confessions. Several of them were pretty good. Huckabee and Jones agreed that any confessions would have to be backed up by solid evidence.

We weren't going to sign on the line until we had met the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Why was that so important to you, that you had more than a confession, that you had real evidence here. We felt like we owed it to the families to get it right. I thought, they're going to find out who did this. There were so many leads coming in. But after weeks, and then months, and then years, even the girls' parents began to fear that maybe police would never solve these

murders. What happened? Did they know they were going to die? Were they afraid? I don't want to know who did it and why. I don't think they'll ever solve it. I need to know somebody's paying for this. That was just the question everyone was asking.

Who killed these girls? In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still a virgin. It just happens to all of them. I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn Trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse

and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Hotshot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own.

She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access,

I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. How would you describe Amy? She's a cowgirl. She's country. Clint Black. Clint Black. Garth Brooks. Beans and cornbread, onion, a bowl of cereal every morning with chocolate milk.

I can see her riding, just taking off across the pasture on a horse and enjoying it because she loved it so much. Every day I go down there and throw a leg over a horse, I think about her. You know, I wish she was there with me. When I caught up with Bob and Pam Ayers almost eight years after their daughter Amy was killed in the yogurt shop, there were still no arrests. It's hard to think that your child had to go through that and you couldn't do anything. You were not there for them.

Your life changes when you have kids, and boy does it ever change when you lose one. My job was to follow the investigation, so from the very beginning I was with the lead detectives, John Jones and Mike Huckabee. This case took over their lives. They were determined to find out who killed the four girls, Amy, Eliza, Jennifer, and Sarah. For years they got nowhere. It seemed like every time that you opened the door and you thought that the answer was going to be on the other side, there would be a brick wall. Huckabee and Jones were taken off the case, replaced by new investigators.

We did the best we could do. Some people will argue that that wasn't enough. Some breaking news. Austin police have arrested four men in connection with the... And then in 1999, almost eight years after the murders... Austin police tonight believe they have four killers behind the bars. Lo and behold, investigators have real suspects, four suspects. Eight years has been a very long time. It's the biggest break in this case.

Sarah, Jennifer, Amy, Eliza, we did not forget. In custody, fours well-born, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, and Maurice Pierce, all in their 20s. If those names sound familiar, there's a reason for it. Those are the same four guys who were picked up just eight days after the murders, investigated, and then dismissed. And we both looked at each other, and then dismissed. And we both looked at each other, and I think we both wanted to just,

felt like we were gonna fall to the floor. I mean, that was the last thing we expected here. There was a feeling that maybe the two lead detectives screwed up. Maurice Pierce was that gun-toting 16-year-old caught at the mall. But this time, when the new detective spoke with Pierce and his three friends, they got a big break. One of them, Michael Scott, confessed. I remember looking at this girl.

I hear the gun go off. I only pulled the trigger once. I hear another gun go off. I only pulled the trigger once. I hear another gun go off. I think I hear a total of five shots. It started, Scott said, as a simple robbery. The four guys had cased the place that afternoon and jammed the back door open. Come on, Michael, you're doing good. Tell us. Let's do this today. Let's do it.

I remember seeing a girl. I remember seeing a gun. I remember one girl screaming, terrified. And it wasn't just Michael Scott telling the story. The new detectives got a second confession from Robert Springsteen. He told them he not only killed one of the girls, he raped her. Did you do this? I have no comment. The police theory was, yes, these four guys planned to rob the yogurt shop. Three of them would go in, and then one of them, Forrest Wellborn, would stay outside as the lookout. But something went awry, and then the killings began. Seeing the suspects actually

admit to the killings made it all too real for the families. We had accepted the fact that Amy had died quick, and she didn't. They suffered that night, and we've tried to make it less than it was, and we're finding out that it was as bad as we ever thought it was for them. You would think that these four guys, suspects in this horrific murder, would be cold-blooded characters. So I was taken aback when I met the youngest one, Forrest Wellborn. How are you feeling?

Scared. I spoke with Wellborn shortly after his arrest. What scares you the most? Forrest Wellborn was 15 years old at the time of the murders. He came across as a simple, frightened teenager. There was absolutely no physical evidence, nothing to tie him to the murders, except for the word of one of the other defendants, Michael Scott.

How many people are in the LTD? Just tell me. Three. Three people. You, Maurice Pierce, and Robert Springsteen. And even he seemed to need prodding to put Wellborn at the scene. Who else is in the car? scene. Who else was in the car? Me, Robert, Maurice, and Forrest? Were you there as a lookout?

No. Were you in the car? Could you have been in the car? No. Not at all. Forrest waited in the car, didn't he? Forrest was in the car, wasn't he? Forrest was in the car, but I don't remember him outside.

Yeah, Forrest was in the car, wasn't he? Forrest was in the car, but I don't remember the time. Forrest waited outside. When Wellborn, the alleged lookout, was interrogated by police, he denied knowing anything about the crime. You couldn't tell something? You could have suggested something? Maybe you did suggest something. They're trying to tell me what to say. Didn't you try to suggest something? Maybe we shouldn't do this? This ain't right? This ain't the right thing to do.

You were doing this. That's what it was. Just say it. Did you try to convince anybody this wasn't the right thing to do? Don't say you weren't there because you were there. They'd get right in my face and, you know, tell me everything I said was a lie. At the time, I found Wellborn credible. And as hard as the cops tried, they couldn't get him to crack.

You ain't gonna forget them goddamn screams. You ain't gonna forget hearing them goddamn gunshots. Never tempted just to get them off your back? No, I wasn't. I'm not gonna lie about something like that. They tried twice to indict Forrest Wellborn, and they couldn't do it. So eventually, charges were dropped against him. Charges were also dropped against Maurice Pierce.

Police were convinced he was the mastermind, but they just didn't have any evidence to prove it. That's tough, because he doesn't have a... He's so guilty, and he's walking around. That's... That's a tough one. Everything falls apart, except for the cases against Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott. And even there, there were some serious problems. All they had were the men's confessions.

And the defendant said those confessions had been coerced. You're the coldest guy I've ever talked to in my life. Are you a cold-blooded murderer? No, sir, I'm not. I think you are. I was berated and berated and berated by the police officers. Until they obtained what it was they wanted to hear, they were not going to allow me to leave. And I basically, they broke me down. Ten years after the yogurt shop killings, Robert Springsteen was the first to go on trial. These young men have been implicated and they have confessed and they can withdraw it. But the truth is they actually were there and they actually did the murders.

actually did the murders. In May 2001, nearly a decade after the Yogurt Shop murders, Robert Springsteen's trial began. Mr. Springsteen, you understand you've been accused of the offense of capital murder. There's been a lot of hoopla and madness going on here the last several years, and I would like to get some of the records set straight on this and have the people know the truth. When Springsteen was arrested, he was married and working in a stockroom. But at the time of the murders, he was a 17-year-old dropout who hung out at the mall. When you first start working on a case like this, you want to meet the defendants. You want to talk to them. You want to look them in the eye.

You want to see for yourself these guys who have been accused of such horrific murders. Let me just ask you, did you have anything to do with the murders at the yogurt shop? No, never. Springsteen pointed out that there never has been any physical evidence linking him to the crime. Were your fingerprints ever found anywhere at the yogurt shop? Your blood? No. Your DNA?

No. Any hair? No. But Springsteen did have trouble explaining, after denying for hours that he was involved, why he would later confess to both rape and murder. How does that happen? I don't know. There's psychological aspects to it that I don't understand.

What really helps somebody like Robert Springsteen is that he had a litigator, Joe Jim Sawyer, a bigger-than-life Texas lawyer on his side. They were going to get a confession out of Robert Springsteen, period. Period. They weren't leaving without it. They got him isolated and they went to work. You're going to confess and goddam it you will confess and he by God did confess. But Springsteen seemed to get some of the details right. For instance, he demonstrated the position of Amy's body and he knew that she had been shot with

a.380 handgun. There are details in Robert Springsteen's admissions that are pretty credible. Oh, yeah. I mean, how would he have those kind of details unless he was there? Because he had known the details for years, because they were on the street.

They were known to virtually every kid who had any interest in the case who had been there the night of and the nights following those murders. The parents of the victims were absolutely convinced that the police had it right, that they had arrested the right guys, and that Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott had killed their little girls. The first trial was extremely hard. It was so hard and it was long. We all were there and we were sitting through it day after day. That Robert Burns Springsteen shot Amy Ayers in the top of the head. For three weeks, the family sat there and heard the horrible details. Knowing what the girls went through that night, listening to them talk about them

pleading for their lives. Prosecutors used Springsteen's confession and corroborated it with parts of Michael Scott's written confession, which was read to jurors. Scott himself refused to take the stand. While Mike Scott's statements were actually presented to the jury at Springsteen's trial, you never got to cross-examine Mike Scott. That's right. Jurors deliberated for 13 hours.

Robert Springsteen was convicted and then condemned to death row. We were all just wept when he was found guilty. And even though we got what we wanted, he got death, and we were happy for that. It was still horrible that we were hoping to take someone else's life. A year and a half later, Springsteen's friend Michael Scott, who also claimed to be innocent, was convicted as well. He was sentenced to life in prison. And so after all those years, it felt like the end. But in fact, the case

was far from over. Fifteen years after the murders, a shocking turn of events. The 5-4 decision, the court behind me said that Michael Scott's constitutional rights were violated during his trial and therefore should get a new one. Ultimately, both Scott's and Springsteen's convictions were overturned, the cases thrown out, and here's why. Everyone is entitled by the Sixth Amendment to confront an accuser, but in the case of Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, their confessions were used against each other. But they were never allowed to cross-examine each other at trial.

And so their constitutional rights were violated. They would have to be tried all over again. It was pure agony for Eliza Thomas' mother, Maria. I felt like my head was going to spin out of my body, and it was because their rights were violated. Every time I hear those words, that their rights were violated, I just feel like I'm going to go insane. I mean, I just, I don't, I'm pretty angry, you know, their rights are violated.

Our girls were murdered. It's a 23-hour lockdown. There's no human contact. Everywhere you go, you're handcuffed and escorted by two officers. When you're forced into an environment like that, it's very, very difficult. It's so restricted and regimented. Robert Springsteen, then 35 years old, had already spent 10 years in prison. He admitted he was no choir boy as a teenager. I had kind of like a minor in possession or disorderly conduct or whatever it was back when I was 17.

But he also had no history of violence. I'm very humble, very family-oriented, and I'm just a normal guy. Although his murder conviction was overturned in 2006, the district attorney was determined to retry him. Ironically, neither he nor Michael Scott would even be in this situation had they not confessed to the murders. Even when you look someone in the eye, even when he tells you he was pressured, it is still so hard to understand why a normal guy in his 20s would admit to something so horrific.

So we collected sections of Michael Scott's confession. I heard the gun go off. And showed them to Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at John Jay College for criminal justice. Kassin was familiar with the case because he was once contacted by the defense. I only pulled the trigger once. A good, valid confession will look something

just like this, but there are many false confessions that are known, proven false confessions, that also look just like this. I hear somebody get slapped. You can't tell just by looking. But why would somebody confess to something they didn't do? What goes on in a person's mind to say,

yeah, I was there, I was thinking this? One is the person feels absolutely trapped. At some point, Maurice Angie is that revolver. What does he say to you? The goal of interrogation, very explicitly, is to increase the anxiety associated with denial. Let's do it now. You went inside those doors with those boys.

We know you did it, and we don't want to hear any lies. Didn't you, Michael? I don't remember. Yes, you do remember. No, I don't. Michael? And when police apply pressure for long periods of time, Kasson says even innocent people can crack.

Is that the gun you shot somebody with, Mike? Take a look at what happened during Scott's interrogation. Is that the gun you walked up behind somebody with and shot the head? People will make very, very myopic short-term decisions. They are very concerned about, I've got to stop the pain now. Come on here, though. I think most people think when they look at this, you could not make me confess. The only answer I can give you to that question is that when you look at DNA exonerations,

roughly a quarter of them had false confessions as a factor in those cases. Tell us what happened. What did those two boys do to those girls? And it's not just Kasson who had concerns. So did John Jones, the original lead detective on the case. Even though John was taken off the case, he knows as much about it as anyone. It's a nice confession, but it's still got to match up to the facts. For instance, Jones says the killers did not go into the yogurt shop office, as Michael Scott claimed they did.

And how do you know that that part of the confession just didn't happen? Well, the door was locked when we got there. We had to use a key on it to open. Jones also wonders about Scott's language in his written statement. I had a Zippo lighter with me and lit the fire. I heard a whoosh sound of the accelerant when it caught fire. Accelerant was a multisyllable word, and I think that was his first multisyllable word. You think it was fed by one of the investigators? I think he heard it earlier, yeah.

Because who refers to lighter fluid as an accelerant? I mean, that's cop talk. Surprisingly, it was during our interview that Jones saw the video for the first time. You were one of the initial investigators, and you've never seen the confession? Odd, isn't it? Jones and his partner were troubled that they were consulted by the new investigators

when they got those confessions, especially since Jones spoke to the suspects first, right after the crime. We had a man, and we didn't get anything close to that out of him, and they were still juveniles then. I didn't think, and I still don't, that persons of that age could hold that information in. Prosecutors were hoping to bolster their case with new, more reliable DNA tests. If you remember, Springsteen said that he had raped one of the victims.

But prosecutors got a shock when those DNA results came back. As it turns out, DNA from the crime scene did not match Springsteen, nor any of the men accused of the crime. The beauty of DNA is that it damns and it saves. Defense attorney Sawyer says that in this case, it saves Robert Springsteen. After they began ringing admissions out of Robert, the cops get him to the penultimate question. You killed her, didn't you? Yes, yes, all right, I killed her. And then, of course, they tell him, no, no, that's not enough. You were man enough to admit that you murdered her. Now, now, own up to it.

You raped that girl. No, I did not. Come on, Robert. Damn it, Robert, you've got the guts for it. Tell us. You know how to rape your daughter. You say it's a murder. They already... Except that, that can't be true. We know to a scientific certainty that is not true.

And yet, the prosecution was still determined to retry both men. After months of delays, however, the judge decided to release Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott without bail. They would await retrial as free men. What does it feel like to be out? It's wonderful and I'd like to thank God and my families and my attorney. I didn't really quite exactly believe it. The girls' families couldn't believe it either. I cried for days when I was told they were let out.

I was just angry. I wanted to hit something. You just take a breath and you go, okay, this is one more thing to deal with. There never would be new trials. There simply wasn't enough evidence, and so prosecutors dropped all charges against both men. Today, investigators still won't admit they might have gotten the wrong guys. Their attitude is, well, if the DNA didn't match those four guys, there must have been a fifth one with them. That's absolutely absurd.

Why have they never mentioned a fifth man in the entire time? The boys have never mentioned a fifth man. The DA's office has never mentioned a fifth man. There's no fifth man. This woman says, not only did the Austin police have it wrong, she has a pretty good idea who did do the killings. I've never seen a case go off the rails like this.

Even with so much at stake, the investigation completely collapsed. With both Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen out of prison and cleared by DNA, the real question is, whose DNA was it? It's haunting to this city. Beverly Lowry has written a new book, Who Killed These Girls? What's your first reaction when you hear about the fifth man theory? Oh, I don't hear people talking about that so much anymore. The fifth man theory was that idea authorities came up with.

If the DNA found at the crime scene didn't match any of the suspects, there must have been a fifth mystery man. I've been in the back room of what used to be the yogurt shop. It's a very, very small room. You have five guys in the back of there doing that. It just makes no sense. Twenty-five years ago, it was about like this. Mm-hmm. Cold, dark.

Not long ago, I took a drive back to the scene with attorney Amber Farrelly. She was on both Scott and Springsteen's defense teams. It's very close to the highway, two major highways actually, and railroad tracks. So if anybody wanted to come in and get out of Dodge quickly, they could. Definitely not something that I would say would be a crime of opportunity. It'd be more like something premeditated, definitely planned. And she believes those killers were in the yogurt shop that night, and the cops missed it. I know exactly who killed those four girls.

I have his DNA profile. I know who it is, I just don't know his name. She put together a timeline, a detailed account of everyone who came into the yogurt shop that night. And are these then customers who were there at the yogurt shop at the time? Yes, and I've got them here in pretty much kind of their important nuggets that they said to the police. But she found two men police never identified and never talked to. You start looking at everything, you can tell that we're missing two people. And when you say missing two people, what do you mean by that? They have accounted for and interviewed 52 people that were in the yogurt shop that day.

There are several customers in there that mention a guy or at the very end, two guys. These two mysterious guys were still in the shop at closing time. These two men that you've marked with these big question marks, these are the two killers you believe? Yes. Who were definitely in after 1047?

Yes. And the last two people in there, except for the girls? The last two people in there. except for the girls? The last two people in there. How are they described by witnesses? One is described as having lighter hair, maybe like a dirty blonde, about 5'6", late 20s, early 30s. The other is described as a bigger man. Both are described as wearing bigger coats. One as a green coat, army fatigue kind of looking jacket, the other with a black jacket.

A local newspaper, the Austin Chronicle, illustrated her theory. So this is actually the photograph of the yogurt shop. As you can see here, the chairs, and they've superimposed those two men there. This is just an artist's drawing, right? Based, though, on what witnesses said they saw, two men sitting at a table. What do you think the motive was? Was it just robbery? No, absolutely not.

There was an open bank bag underneath the cash register. I think that the motive for the crime was evil, just to do what those men did, and it wasn't about money. To hurt those girls? Yes. Farrelly believes the mystery DNA belongs to one of those two men. The trouble is identifying them. I believe one day we will find them. I probably am the only person on this case with hope that we will actually be able to identify this person by name one day. She hopes that someone seeing this broadcast will come forward. hopes that someone seeing this broadcast will come forward.

But the original detective on the case, John Jones, says you can only consider them potential witnesses, nothing more. That's two witnesses that we don't have. That's all I can say about that. Will authorities take a new look at the case and track down those two men? I have confidence that they will. I can't tell you when. I can't tell you when. I can't tell you how. The only thing I'm confident about is the crime will be solved.

Until then, it's an investigation hanging in limbo. Why is this anniversary something that hits you every single year? Well, it represents one that got away. Returning to this place 25 years after I first reported on this crime, feelings came rushing back. came rushing back. I think about Jennifer, Sarah, Eliza, and Amy a lot these days. Three of them would be in their 40s. They might even have children of their own.

And I may never be able to forget Maria Thomas' pain. Sadly, last year, she passed away. I can never forget what she told me. The missing. The missing is the hardest part. I just wish I could have more memories. If you have any information on this case, police encourage you to call 512-472-TIPS. Under Texas law, neither Robert Springsteen nor Michael Scott is entitled to compensation for their wrongful convictions until a court officially declares their innocence. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.