Prime Crime: Solved Murders - The Yogurt Shop Murders

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

It was 1991 when four teenage girls were brutally killed inside a yogurt store in Austin, Texas. With no witnesses to the crime, police had very little to go on. But soon, there was a confession. Then another. And another. It was up to investigators to sort through the evidence and discover the truth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Due to the nature of this cold case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, rape, gun violence, and harm against minors. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. Imagine you're a juror at a murder trial. You sit in a stuffy courtroom listening to a prosecutor lay out their case. The evidence is hard to follow, and you're not sure where you stand on the question of innocent or guilty. Then the prosecutor drops a bomb. This suspect confessed. Well, that would catch your attention, right? The person on trial looked a detective in the eyes and said they did it. That's

pretty convincing. But what if you learned this confession wasn't the only one. What if 50 other people said the exact same thing? I'm Carter Roy. And this. This is Solved Murders, a Spotify original from Parcast. In this special episode, I'm spotlighting one of the most compelling cold cases from around the world, exploring the reasons it remained unsolved and how long it took to find the answers, if ever. Today, we're covering the yogurt shop murders, a gruesome crime that changed Austin, Texas, forever. It sent shockwaves through the suburbs and left investigators deeply confused, especially when they were faced with dozens of separate confessions.

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was a quiet city. Although the population hovered around half a million, it had a safe, small town feel. That changed in 1991 when four teenage girls were killed in a frozen yogurt store. They were mourned citywide for decades afterwards. However, according to some people, they aren't the only ones who should be remembered. There were also four teenage boys whose lives were changed by the yogurt shop murders, but their legacies are much more common. complicated. You'll see why once you hear the full story. But right now, let's start at the beginning. It's the evening of December 6, 1991. The air in Austin, Texas is clammy and tepid, rain drizzles. The suburbs are shrouded in a thick fog that reflects and diffuses every streetlight and neon sign.

Even though it's a Friday night, the hillside center strip mall is mostly empty. Only three sets of windows remain bright, a natural food store, a pizza place, and a frozen yogurt shop called, I can't believe it's yogurt. Just before 8 p.m., a dark blue pickup truck pulls into the parking lot. A teenage girl hops out and hurries into the yogurt shop, adjusting her polo shirt as she goes. This is 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison. She's barely made it in time for her shift. Which is understandable. Jennifer's got a lot on her plate.

She's a track star and a member of Future Farmers of America. She works weekends at the shop to help her dad pay off the pickup truck. At $4.35 an hour, the money adds up slowly. But Jennifer's positive attitude and strong work ethic guarantee good tips. Plus, she gets to work with her friend who's a friend who's a lot of, Already behind the counter, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas. Eliza is also working to pay off her car. She has a bright green VW coupe she maintains obsessively.

She shows this same attention to detail when she's working at the shop, too. The counters are always spotless during her shifts. When Jennifer gets inside, she flashes a smile at Eliza before washing her hands and clocking in. It's just the two of them tonight, with no manager on duty. Not many people crave frozen yogurt in December, so it doesn't make sense to have three employees in the shop. The shift is easy. Eliza manned the register, Jennifer takes customers' orders and pulls the lever on the yogurt machines, maneuvering the cups and cones to make perfect swirl.

Around 9 p.m., Jennifer darts out to pick up her sister, 15-year-old, Sarah Harbison and her best friend, 13-year-old Amy Ayers. The two younger girls had been wandering around the mall all evening. This was their first time going to the mall without their parents. It was sort of a big occasion, so they dressed to impress. Amy's wearing turquoise, wrangler jeans, and oversized bomber jacket, and a big heart-shaped belt buckle, 90s Texas fashion to a tea. Sarah's got on a black denim jacket, a gold cross necklace, and two rings. One of them is pretty special. She has a new boyfriend who's a senior, and he just gave her his class ring.

Sarah and Amy sit at a table in the mostly empty shop. They split a pizza from the restaurant next door and count down the minutes until closing time. The last two customers come in around 1045. By that point, Jennifer is wiping tables down and flipping chairs over. Eliza handles the couple's two cups of vanilla frozen yogurt. After they leave, either Jennifer or Eliza turns the open sign to closed and locks the front door. They continue cleaning up.

The napkin containers are filled, dirty dishes get thrown in the sink. Someone brings out a step stool and cleans the yogurt dispenser, another wipes down the counters with a rag. One of the girls takes a can of Coca-Cola out of the refrigerator and grabs a styrofoam cup to go with it. But the can is never opened. Something stops her from drinking it. About an hour later, an Austin PD officer is on patrol

when he notices a column of black smoke cutting through the fog. It's coming from the yogurt shop. The officer calls for help. Firefighters initially assume it's a run-of-the-mill kitchen fire, probably from a stove that was left on too long. But then they realize, frozen yogurt stores don't have stoves. Two firemen rush through the dining area. They're met with bright orange flames, everything in the building is smoldering. They bring in hoses and douse the area, sending up a plume of steam.

The room goes white as the fire dies down. Firefighters shuffle through the ash and rubble, unable to see more than a few inches in front of their faces. They look for the source of the fire. It seems like the damage is most severe in a storage room at the back of the building. A few men go in to investigate. One fireman clicks on a flashlight. Then he freezes.

There's something on the floor. He looks closer than reels back. It's a foot, a burned human foot. Sergeant John Jones is the only homicide detective on duty that night, and when he gets a call from the first responders at the shop, he drops everything and zooms across town. As John drives, he gets more updates. Firefighters say they've found not one,

but two charred bodies in the back of the yogurt store. Then they find a third victim, then a fourth. By the time John arrives, dozens of emergency personnel surround the strip mall. Fire trucks and ambulances clog the parking lot. There are only two civilian vehicles, a Chevy S-10 pickup truck and the VW coupe. The fire department is all over the yogurt shop's front.

entrance, so John enters through the back. He later describes the crime scene in two words. Wholesale carnage. Parts of the girl's bodies are still on fire. They're blackened and ashy, laying in puddles of dirty water. One is stacked on top of another, with a third just three feet away. The fourth body is around a corner closer to the cash register. and tables, John holds his breath and documents the scene with a Polaroid camera. In 21 years of police work, he's never seen anything like this. After John collects himself, his first priority is identifying the bodies. His supervising lieutenant calls in the manager of the store. The problem is the remains are so damaged by the fire, she can't recognize her own.

employees. Now, you already know it's Eliza, Jennifer, Sarah, and Amy. The first three are found in the back room. Amy is around the corner. It takes a while for police to figure that out, though. They have to rifle through the cars in the parking lot to find Jennifer and Eliza's personal items. Then they piece together Sarah and Amy's identities through their clothing and jewelry. Speaking of clothing, this is where the story gets even harder to stomach. Medical examiners and forensic technicians scan the back room for evidence. Almost everything has been consumed by the fire, but they do notice a pile of clothes and shoes next to the back doors. There are the remains of Jennifer and Eliza's yogurt shop uniforms, complete with Beaux.

feet-up Reebok sneakers. Also in the pile are the vestiges of Amy's mall outfit. Her belt and jacket are missing, and so are some of the girls' underwear. It seems like the victims were forced to take their clothes off, which makes police think rape or sexual assault is likely. They swab the girls' bodies for possible DNA evidence. Around 7 a.m., they zip the remains into bags. and drive them to the morgue.

The girls are autopsied, and it's determined they were all dead before the fire started. Eliza, Jennifer, and Sarah all died from single gunshots to the head at point-blank range. Remember, they were altogether in the back room. 13-year-old Amy Ayers was the outlier. She'd been shot twice with two different guns, a 22-caliber and a 380-caliber. caliber. She'd also been punched and strangled. Based on her position further away from the others, it seems like she tried to make a run for it but was stopped before she could escape. The autopsy is sickening, but it does confirm that two firearms were involved, and the police

think two guns probably means two assailants at minimum. Sergeant John Jones, the homicide detective, first responded to the scene, is named as a lead investigator. Right away, he starts interviewing everyone who is near the shopping center on Friday night. And it turns out, a few customers think they saw something suspicious. When Sergeant John Jones speaks to customers who are at the yogurt shop on the night of the crime, he discovers something very interesting. One woman remembers coming in around 8.30 p.m. She noticed a pair of teenage boys sitting together. It didn't look like they'd ordered any food. There was only one thing on their table, a small bag. They just sat there, staring at it. One of them stuck a hand inside the bag, and the woman heard a clicking sound,

like marbles knocking against each other. Later, she'd wonder if they were bullets. The couple who came into the shop around 1045 also saw two figures sitting in a booth huddled together. If these were the same customers, they'd been there for more than two hours. When this couple left the shop at 1047, the two men stayed put. John and his staff do their best to track these men down, but no one saw their faces. The only thing witnesses agree on is that they're male in their teens or early 20s. This doesn't get the investigators very far. And while they scramble to figure out what to do next,

the entire city falls into a state of panic. Local and national media outlets cover the story obsessively, and impromptu shrine shows up in the burned-out strip mall and the victim's faces become ubiquitous. Sergeant John Jones' office is flooded with tips about suspicious neighbors and shifty-looking teens. He gets between 50 and 75 calls per day and follows up on everyone.

The Austin PD identifies and rules out about 25 potential suspects fairly quickly. Some of them are turned in by friends and family and others are brought in for similar crimes. Multiple goth teenagers are interrogated just because they look threatening. When the calendar flips to 1992, the calls slow down. John realizes he needs to look outside of the community for help, so he calls in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit

and asks them to make a psychological profile of the killer. The Bureau releases their report in early January 9,000, 1992. They say there are at least two culprits in their late teens or early 20s. One has a more domineering personality and the other or others just follow along. The leader is probably a high school dropout who still lives with a parent or other family member. He has anger issues and is impulsive, which makes it hard for him to hold down a job. He's likely white and and lives near the yogurt shop. This profile could match up with a mysterious pair of customers.

It certainly doesn't eliminate them, but the question still remains. Who are they? John chips away at the case through January without much luck. He calls more witnesses. He talks to the girls' families. He sends a colleague all over the country to track down serial killers and sex offenders

whose crimes seem to match up. None of it goes anywhere. Then in early February, he gets a call that might change everything. A fellow Austin police officer tells John that someone just confessed to the yogurt shop murders. A prisoner heard someone in his cell block bragging about the murders that morning. One of John's supervisors, Senior Sergeant Hector Polanco, interrogated that inmate for about six hours. By nightfall, he had a signed statement.

Well, naturally, John's excited. He contacts one of his FBI colleagues who hooks the suspect up to a polygraph machine. But then, the inmate freezes. He recants his statement and implies that Polanco actually coerced him into confessing. Now, you should know, Hector Polanco is a controversial figure in the Austin PD. He's a skilled detective who's known for closing 100% of his cases, which is pretty much unheard of. He's particularly good at getting confessions out of people, even those who are later proven innocent. Polanco doesn't use brute force.

He just asks a lot of questions, pushing suspects to think about why they might have committed the crime. After several hours in a cramped room, if I did it can easily become I did it, especially when the suspect is desperate to go home. There isn't a recording of this interrogation, so John can't tell if there was any manipulation involved. but when John does his own interview, he notices a lot of holes in the suspect's story. It seems like his confession was based more on rumor than firsthand experience. John lets him go. About a month later, this story repeats itself.

A different suspect sits in a closed room with Hector Polanco for hours. He confesses to killing Eliza, Jennifer, Sarah, and. Amy, but when he's interviewed by other officers, his story falls apart. Eventually, this suspect admits the truth. Hector Polanco coached him into confessing and threatened him if he didn't. Ten days later, Polanco is removed from the task force, but he still keeps his job as a police officer. After this, the investigation slows to a crawl. Months go by. Twelve public service billboards pop up on Austin streets, featuring black and white photos of Eliza, Jennifer, Sarah, and Amy. A bright red stripe of text reads,

Who killed these girls? The four young women hover above the city. Thousands of people drive past them on morning commutes and weekend errands. There's Eliza with her head. cock to the side and a practiced rodeo queen's smile. Jennifer Beam straight into the camera, her face framed by big hair-sprayed curls. Sarah has a quizzical look, like the photographer hit the flash a little too soon. Amy rests her chin on her hand and grins. They look like the kind of girls that everyone in Austin went to school with, clean-cut suburban with a bit of Texan flair.

As the months go by, they become a familiar sight, so does the question written beneath their faces. Who killed these girls? Sergeant John Jones and his colleagues combed through local records. They're hoping to find similar crimes that might be connected. For a while, they focus on a group of gang members who sexually assaulted a woman in downtown Austin a few weeks before the murders. In October of 1992, these men are arrested in Mexico. One of them confesses to the yogurt shop murders, then recants just a few days later.

He says he was tortured by the Mexican authorities. He doesn't even know the actual number of victims who were killed. This is now the third major confession that turns out to be false. As the one-year anniversary of the murders draws closer, John's mental health suffers. He pulls away from his wife and kids and develops severe insomnia. He refuses to look at photos of the crime scene. It's already burned into his mind. He's been handed the most shocking, gut-wrenching case that Austin has seen in decades.

Every lead has fizzled out, and there's still no clear to. description of the suspects. All he has are a series of false confessions, and there are more and more of those coming in, by the way. Some estimate there are at least 50 throughout the course of the investigation. It makes the whole department look bad. John stays in contact with the girls' families, but sometimes he's so ashamed he can't even look them in the eye. John works on the case through 1993, but his higher up seemed to lose faith. One by one, they remove his colleagues from the task force. By May of that year, he's the only investigator left. He starts having nightmares, and that fall, he's diagnosed with PTSD. About six months after that, he's abruptly transferred.

He's furious, and so are the victim's parents. John's been on this case for a year and a half at this point, and they have to know how much he cares about solving it. But John's superior seemed to sense that he's gotten too far into the weeds. They are fed up with his lack of progress and might be worried for his health too. After John gets reassigned, the case sits dormant for another year and a half. In January of 1996, a new lead detective takes the reins, an officer named Paul Johnson.

Where John had led with passion for the victims, Paul relies on logic. Paul works through John's database of tips and leads. There are about 5,000 entries. By July of 1997, he's eliminated almost 3,000 of those. But there's one that continues to confound him. something that happened in the first two weeks of the investigation. Remember those teenage boys I mentioned at the beginning of this episode?

The ones who might be killers or victims, depending on who you ask? This is where they come in. Somewhere in the Austin Police Department offices, there are four filing cabinets stuffed with Sergeant John Jones notes about the yogurt shop murders. There's one Detective Pottes, Johnson pulls out frequently. It's labeled with the name Maurice Pierce. Maurice was 16 when the yogurt shop murders occurred, older than Sarah and Amy, but younger than Jennifer and Eliza. He first became involved with the case on December 14, 1991, eight days after the crime.

Initially, he was arrested for carrying a gun at the mall. The authorities, noticed it was a 22-caliber pistol, the same size as one of the weapons used at the yogurt shop. When they asked why he had it, Maurice said he just wanted to carry it around. The police didn't really buy that explanation, so that evening they brought Maurice in for questioning. The officer interrogating him was Hector Polanco. We don't know what happened between Maurice and Polanco that. night, but the two of them talked until the early morning hours. The 16-year-old story changed over the course of that conversation. He eventually told Polanco that the gun he was carrying was one of the

weapons that killed Jennifer, Eliza, Sarah, and Amy. Still, Maurice insisted he wasn't guilty. His friend, 15-year-old Forrest Wellborn, had borrowed the weapon from another friend. So Forrest was probably the guy they were looking for. The Austin PD immediately tried to follow this lead. They gave Marisa wire and sent him to talk to Forrest. The 16-year-old had been awake for more than 24 hours at this point. He tried to get Forrest to say something incriminating, but Forrest blew him off. Maurice burst into tears.

The officers who were listening realized that Maurice probably lied to Polanco. The boy seemed scared, not guilty. Authorities spent a few more days looking into Maurice's story just to be sure. He said he'd been hanging out with two other boys on the day of the murders. Rob Springsteen and Mike Scott were both 17. The four boys were stereotypical troublemakers, more interested in smoking weed and driving around than going to class. On the day after the murders, all four of them stole a car just because it was there. So yes, they had a history of questionable and sometimes criminal activity.

But as far as the police could tell, they weren't killers. They were kids who made some bad decisions. They became just another blip on the case's radar until 1996, when Detective Paul Johnson decides to take a second look. At face value, his decision makes sense. These four seem to match the FBI's psychological profile of the killers. Maurice seems like an impulsive, cocky leader, and the other boys might have followed along.

They all seemed adrift in life. It wasn't hard to imagine, two of them sitting in the yogurt shop for hours, wearing big jackets and playing with a bag of bullets. Paul Johnson speaks to the suspects in October of 1997. It's a replay of what they said six years before. Maurice says he was suspicious of Forrest, Forrest says he knows nothing, and Robin Mike are clueless. Then the task force talks to them again. And again, and...

Again, nothing comes of it for two whole years. Then, in September 1999, something shifts. Almost out of nowhere, Mike Scott confesses. Right after that, Rob Springsteen says he participated too. Both of them say Forrest Wellborn and Maurice Pierce were also involved. With their sworn statements, it only takes a few weeks for the Austin Pears. to arrest all four young men. They're accused of capital murder.

When their faces appear on the front page of the Austin American statesman, the city feels a jolt of relief. After almost eight years, the suburban boogeymen have finally been caught. The case against them seems airtight. Two of them already confessed, and Marisa's gun matches the one used in the murder. Only then, a ballistics lab finally tests the 22-caliber pistol that Maurice carried through the mall in 1991. It's been in a storage locker all these years.

They check it against the bullets found at the crime scene. They don't match. This gun, the one that supposedly tied the four men to the murders, has nothing to do with the crime at all. As the trial looms, the prosecutors look to DNA. evidence to try to prove their case. They send samples taken from the victim's bodies to a forensic lab. In June of 2000, the Department of Public Safety announces that none of the men's DNA is present in the samples.

A grand jury chooses not to indict Forrest Wellborn and all the charges against him are thrown out. But the other three men aren't so lucky. They remain in jail. with capital murder charges looming over their heads. In Texas, that means the death penalty could be on the table. Rob Springsteen and Mike Scott go to trial in 2001 and 2002, respectively. While the proceedings are separate, they're extremely similar.

Both their defense teams say their confessions were coerced and shouldn't be considered evidence. Of course, most defense lawyers, claim their client's confession shouldn't be taken seriously, but these teams bring some solid evidence to the table. All the telltale signs of a forced confession are there. Both men were interviewed for hours upon hours, and their stories changed significantly in that time. Large sections of their interrogations are poorly documented, and several details don't actually match the crime scene. For example, Mike said,

one of the girls was forced into the yogurt shop's office. But that room had been locked the entire night. He also said the fire started with cups and napkins that were piled on the victim's bodies, then doused in lighter fluid. But every arson expert who examined the scene said accelerants hadn't been used. Not to mention that the Austin PD has been inundated with dozens of so-called confessions. clearly these statements can't be trusted at least not without other evidence to support them and yet the jury can't forget about rob and mike's own words regardless of the context even though the men refuse to testify against each other the prosecution still has their written confessions they read them out loud as a form of testimony it takes the jury almost a full

day to decide on Mike's verdict, and the same goes for Rob's. Both are found guilty of capital murder. Maurice Pierce's fate still hangs in the balance. By January 2003, he's been behind bars awaiting trial for over three years. That's when he learns, the state hasn't been able to gather enough evidence against him. All the charges are dropped, and he's released from jail. Three years later, Rob Springsteen's conviction is overturned. The same thing happens with Mike Scott in 2007. That doesn't mean they're leaving jail, though. It means they're being granted new trials.

So once again, prosecutors search for airtight evidence against them. They turn to DNA analysis, hoping new forensic tech will help them pin down the suspects. In March 2008, forensic investigators find a completely new genetic profile in a swab taken from Amy Ayer's body. They test this sample using a new technique that specifically targets male DNA. And it does not match up with Maurice, Mike, Rob, or Forrest. They were innocent the whole time. Because the prosecution can't come up with any compelling evidence to prove their guilt, Rob Springsteen and Mike Scott are released from prison in June 2009.

They're well into their 30s now and have spent close to a decade behind bars. The authorities spend a few more months investigating the DNA sample, but it doesn't go anywhere. And the investigation is suspended in October 2009. After 18 years, the Yogurt Shop Murder's Task Force is back to square one. But that doesn't mean all hope is lost. In 2017, the Austin PD revisits the DNA samples, and they find a partial match in a national database. The profile was added by the FBI, which means it came from a person of interest in a federal case. authorities are excited by this possible new suspect and they petition the FBI to release the person's name.

Federal authorities refuse citing privacy laws. The case stalls yet again. Now, it's important to remember that as much as we want justice to be swift, the truth can take time. Getting the answer right is often more important than getting it quickly because other Otherwise, innocent people can become victims of the justice system. So for now, we just have to be patient. As of this recording, both the Austin PD and the victim's families seem optimistic that answers could be found soon. If the stories we tell on this show prove anything, it's that cases can be solved years or even decades after the fact.

hopefully the truth is just around the corner. Thanks again for listening. We'll be back next Monday with another cold case. For more information on the yogurt shop murders, among the many sources we used, we found Beverly Lowry's book, Who Killed These Girls, extremely helpful to our research.

You can find all episodes of cold cases and all other Spotify originals from Parcast, for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Cold Cases is a Spotify original from Parcast. Our head of programming is Julian Bois Roe. This show was developed by Mickey Taylor. Our supervising sound designer is Russell Nash,

with Nick Johnson as our head of production and quality control by Spencer Howard. Ryan O'Leary Jones is our supervising editor and Derek Jennings is our writing lead. This episode of Cold Cases was written by Kylie Harrington, edited by Karris Allen and Kate Murdoch, fact-checked by Catherine Barner, researched by Mickey Taylor, with sound design by Russell Nash, and produced by Bruce Katovich. I'm Carter Roy.