The Yogurt Shop Murders

Hello hello everyone and welcome to Serial Killer Saturday. Where every Saturday we discuss the vicious crimes of a serial killer.

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Buckle in guys, because today, we’re talking about the Unsolved Austin Yogurt Shop Murders.

Okay guys, so let’s go back to December 6, 1991 to NorthCross mall in Austin, Texas. Where 16 year old Sarah Harrison and 13 year old Amy Ayers were killing time until Sarah’s sister Jennifer and Eliza Thomas, Jennifer’s friend, who were both 17, were done with their shift at “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” located in the Hillside strip mall. So we’re at about 11 and by this time, Sarah and Amy went to help the girls close the store so they could get to their slumber party. But they never made it there.

Between 11:30 and midnight, the Austin PD officer Troy Gay, noticed smoke rising from the Hillside strip mall riding around on patrol. Gay alerted dispatch and they arrived soon on scene. We do not have a physical time. And as they were extinguishing the blaze, they came upon 4 women, who were naked, bound and gagged with their own clothing. Jennifer, Sarah, Amy and Eliza were dead. Amy was found in the middle of the break room, Jennifer, Eliza and Sarah were found in the backroom. Eliza and Sarah were stacked on top of each other, but it was unclear if that was intentional or if it was a result of the force of the water and Jennifer was found close by them. Upon further examination of the bodies, they found an ice cream scoop between one of their legs and due to the smoke and fire, their bodies were burned almost beyond recognition. The cause of the fire was napkins and other flammable objects found around the store, and their bodies were doused in lighter fluid and lit the shop on fire; he had fled the scene before law enforcement and first responders had arrived. There was also $540 missing from the store. This was the day that is known in Austin as the day it lost its innocence. The city of Austin remained in fear for 10 years before the arrests were made. The mother of Jennifer and Sarah, Barbara says that there were law enforcement officers that came to their home at 3 AM to inform her that both of her daughters were dead. Barbara makes it a point to let the interviewer know that it wasn’t only the fact that 4 young women were dead, but it was how they were killed.

Interested in the police report?

On Friday, December 6, 1991, the owner of a party-supply store in a northwest Austin strip mall was working late when he heard sounds that seemed to come from the roof, followed by popping noises.( this is interesting because it’s not what’s whats most known, we even covered a different person and he isn’t even mentioned). He looked outside and saw smoke coming from the front of the frozen yogurt shop next door to his store. Smoke was also entering his store, so he opened the back door for ventilation. He noticed that the back door of the yogurt shop was partially open, and he could see flames inside. At that moment, a police officer drove into the alley behind the stores, saw the fire, and reported it. The time was 11:47 p.m.

The first firefighters to arrive at the yogurt shop found the front door locked, but they were able to open it with little difficulty. The shop was dark and full of smoke. The firefighters began to extinguish the blaze, which was worst in the rear of the shop. As they worked their way to the back of the building, they discovered four bodies later identified as those of seventeen-year-old Eliza Thomas, an employee of the yogurt shop; Thomas's coworker Jennifer Harbison, who was also seventeen; Jennifer's fifteen-year-old sister, Sarah Harbison; and Sarah's thirteen-year-old friend, Amy Ayers. Amy was planning to spend the night with Sarah, and the two younger girls had walked to the yogurt shop from NorthCross Mall, a nearby shopping mall, to wait for a ride home with Jennifer.

The space occupied by the yogurt shop was deep and narrow. The front two-thirds of the space was the public area, with tables and a counter on which the cash register was located. On the night in question, the chairs had been stacked on the tables as part of the closing routine. Behind the counter was a wall with a door on the right-hand side that opened into the rear third of the shop. A person walking through this door entered a preparation area with a sink and table; the cash register drawer was found on this table. On the right wall of this area were the bathrooms; on the opposite wall was a walk-in cooler. Behind the cooler, in the left rear corner of the shop, was a storage area with shelves full of paper goods and cleaning materials. In the right rear corner was the shop's office, the door of which was closed.

Amy Ayers's body was found on the floor of the preparation area. She had a ligature around her neck and it was determined at autopsy that she had been manually strangled, but not fatally. She also had a bruise on her lower lip. She was naked, and a blouse tied into a knot was found beneath her body. Ayers had two contact gunshot wounds, one on the top left side of her head and the other behind her left ear. The first of these was caused by a .22-caliber bullet which did not penetrate the skull; the medical examiner testified that this shot was not fatal. The second, fatal gunshot wound was caused by a .380-caliber bullet that passed through the brain and exited through Ayers's right cheek.

The other three bodies were found on the floor of the storage area, covered with rubble from the fire. Eliza Thomas's body was lying on top of Sarah Harbison's body, and Jennifer Harbison's body was lying beside them. They, too, were naked. The evidence suggests that the three bodies had been stacked, and that Jennifer's body had rolled off the pile during the fire. All three bodies were badly burned and charred, with Jennifer's having been most severely damaged. Thomas's hands were tied behind her with a brassiere and she had a gag in her mouth. Sarah Harbison's hands were tied behind her with panties and she also had been gagged. There was physical evidence that she had been vaginally assaulted, probably with the handle of the ice cream scoop found on the floor between her legs. Jennifer Harbison's hands were behind her back as if they had been tied, but no binding was recovered. She had a ligature around her neck. Each of these girls had been killed by a single .22-caliber contact gunshot to the back of the head.

Four .22-caliber bullets were recovered from the bodies during autopsy. Due to the condition of the bullets, it was not possible to determine if all four had been fired from the same weapon. A .380-caliber bullet and a .380-caliber shell casing were recovered at the scene of the murders. The unusual rifling pattern on the .380 bullet led a firearms expert to conclude that it was fired from an AMT Backup, a small silver-gray semiautomatic pistol. The murder weapons were never found.

Melvin Stahl, an arson investigator for the Austin Fire Department, initially concluded that the fire at the yogurt shop had been started on the shelves in the storage area and then had spread up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the opposite wall. Under this theory, the bodies had been burned primarily by radiant heat. Marshall Littleton, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, reviewed the photographic evidence in October 1999. Based on his analysis of the burn patterns, the damage to the bodies, and the relative amount of damage to other items in the area, Littleton concluded that the fire had begun on the bodies, in the center of the storage area. Stahl testified that after reviewing Littleton's findings and the evidence on which it was based, he agreed with the conclusion that the fire began on the bodies.

The manager of the yogurt shop described the store's closing routine. One of the girls would first lock the front door, leaving the key in the double-cylinder dead-bolt lock so it would not be misplaced, then stack the chairs and sweep and mop the front service area. Meanwhile, the other girl would take the cash register drawer to the table in the preparation area, count the money and prepare a printed report, then drop the money into a combination safe in the floor. After that, the various food products would be placed in the cooler, and the yogurt machines, serving implements, and storage vessels would be washed. The girls would leave through the front door, re-lock it, and slide the key under the door in an envelope. After the fire, the key was found still in the front door lock.

The manager testified that the back door of the shop had a dead-bolt lock with a thumb latch on the inside. The manager had the only key to the back door, which ordinarily remained closed and locked. As previously noted, the back door was open on the night of the offenses.

We go on to hear from Dearl Croft, owner of a private security company, parked his marked vehicle in front of the yogurt shop at around 10:00 p.m. on the night of the murders. When he went inside the shop, a teenaged male asked him if he was a police officer. When it was his turn to order, the young man refused to go to the counter and asked to use the restroom. Croft was in the shop for about twenty minutes and did not recall seeing this individual return. Eliza Thomas's mother, Maria Thomas, was visiting her daughter in the shop. She and her daughter were acquainted with Croft, who was a regular customer. She confirmed Croft's account, adding that the suspicious-acting young man was accompanied by another young male. Lucella Jones also recalled seeing two teenaged males at the yogurt shop that night. One of the them had his hand in a bag and “was playing with something-it sounded like marbles or something clicking together. And it frightened me.” Jones was shown a photo spread containing Pierce's photograph. She said that Pierce's picture looked most like one of the persons she saw in the yogurt shop, but she did not make a positive identification. She did not identify either Scott or Springsteen in other photo spreads. And there are so many more testimonies heard during this trial it’s insane.

Autopsies were done on all 4 girls and out of the 4 Sarah and Amy had been raped, but all 4 were shot in the back of the head, execution style. However that is as far as we get as far as information of the autopsies as they were sealed, which was due to the outrageousness. Then we get our first advancement in the case. After the autopsies were done, they discovered that 2 different guns had been used, either meaning the Killer would have had to use 2 different guns at the same time, or there were two different killers. Now while we know that first responders were doing their job by putting out the fire, they had also effectively washed away forensic evidence if there was any. The Austin PD also did not have the faculties to work with the forensic evidence they had. In the early 1990s Austin DP had one fingerprint unit and due to short staffing, there was only one homicide detective on the night of the murders. However, investigators Huckabay and Jones had a handful of suspects and there were constantly tips coming in. They had a total of 342 suspects and false confessions, dozens of them and they were undoubtedly overwhelmed. They at one point had 6 written confessions and some of them were thoroughly convincing, had they been able to back it up with credible evidence. And the Austin PD had decided that they weren’t signing anything until they had proof beyond reasonable doubt. The first place the investigators began looking for suspects, they started looking into serial killers who may have been popular in that area.

Let’s talk about them.

First up we have Kenneth Allen McDuff, he was a suspected serial killer of at least 14 victims. On August 6th, 1966 Robert Brand, Mark Dunman, and Edna Louis Sullivan were the three victims that got him convicted. You might know McDuff through another true crime story The Broomstick Murders (we’ll get into these in a separate episode). He was sentenced to death and his sentence was advanced to life with the possibility of parole in 1972 after the US supreme court abolished the death penalty. In 1989, McDuff was released due to prison overpopulation (please don’t get me started on this bullshit. You’re telling me that there are drug dealers that have committed less heinous crimes spend more time in jail than this CONVICTED MURDERER) So now that this murderer is out on the run, it’s believed he had more victims (no shit, you released a murderer from prison and he murdered again. Remind me, why are we shocked?) McDuff was taken into custody after police finding the body of 22 year old Melissa Ann Northrup and he was sent to death row. McDuff confessed to the yogurt shop murders. His execution followed as scheduled despite the effort to spare his life with a wrongful confession. However a quote from McDuff states “ Had I done it… I would tell you cause I’d be proud of it”. Which is sickening, but also convincing that he isn’t the one guilty of these murders. Authorities investigated the confession but the fingerprints and hair collected from the scene of the yogurt shop murders, could not physically be linked to him.

The next suspect they had was Maurice Price.

Maurice Price was a 16 year old that was arrested at NorthCross Mall (remember this is the mall that Sarah and Amy were waiting at.) with a gun the same day as the murders. Investigators got this tip 8 days after the murder, with a further look into the gun investigators found that it was a .22 which was the same gun used to execute the girls. Nothing came from the lead from questioning of who Price was with that day, and he responded with Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen and Forrest Welborn but once again, the lead went nowhere, and upon testing on the gun, it was ruled out was the murder weapon, to further the theory, his fingerprints and hair did not match those of the ones left at the scene. The questioning with Scott had a total of 20 hours of video footage.

Here’s a paraphrased version of Scott’s confession (and as soon as you hear this, you’ll get the uncertainty):

Police: “Well what did you use to tie up the girls?” (remember the answer is their own clothing)

Scott: “Venetian blind cords” (that was not the same answer)

Police: (literally trying to help him get closer) “Not venetian blind cords.”

Scott: “Um, napkins.” (Are you kidding me dude. You’re killing me)

Police: You can’t tie somebody up with napkins.” (literally so much patience)

This went on through the “process of elimination” until he correctly guessed that it was their own clothing. This was later seen as coercion and a major reason that the men were released later.

There were YEARS that went by without a single arrest and by then the case had been passed down to new detectives, until 1999. Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Forrest Welborn and Maurice Pierce were arrested for the yogurt shop murders and if you feel like those names are deja vu… you’d be correct. Because those are the names of the men questioned 8 days after the murder, but this time, Michael Scott confessed to the murders as did Robert Springsteen who confessed to the murders and the rape of one of the girls.

Here was that confession:

” I remember looking at this girl. I hear the gun go off… I only pulled the trigger one time. I hear another gun go off. I think I hear a total of 5 shots.”

Detective: How many people were in the LTD?

Scott: 3

Detective: 3 people. You, Maurice Pierce and Robert Springsteen?

Scott: Yes

Detective: Who else was in the car?

Scott: Me, Robert, Maurice and Forrest?

This is an excerpt from the questions of Wilborn:

When asked if Welborn was a lookout, he replied “No”.

Detective:Were you in the car? Could you have been in the car?

Wilborn: No. Not at all

Back to the excerpt from Scott:

Detective: Forrest waited in the car, didn’t he? Forrest was in the car wasn’t he?

Scott: Forrest was in the car, but-

Detective: Yeah, Forrest was in the car. Forrest waited outside.

Back to Welborn (i have no idea why it skips around like this but literally doesn’t make sense if I read it in organized order):

Detective: You could have done something. You could have suggested something. Maybe you did suggest something.

Welborn: They tried to tell me what to say

Detective: Did you try to suggest something, maybe, ‘We shouldn’t do this? This ain’t right? This ain’t the right thing to do?”

Wilborn: no reply

Detective: 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. ( at this point I’M getting pissed because this detective is pushing so hard that there’s literally coercion)

Welborn: They get right in my face and tell me everything I say was a lie.

Robert Springsteen Questioning:

Detective: You’re the coldest guy I’ve ever talked to in my life. Are you a cold- blooded murderer?

Springsteen: No, sir, I’m not

Detective: I think you are (bro im gunna blow a gasket)

In an instance where Springsteen spoke to reporters, he stated “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, they basically broke me down”.

Law enforcement whole-heartedly believed that these were the 4 men who committed these murders.The story they told was that they planned to rob the yogurt shop. Welborn waited outside and was considered a lookout while Scott, Springsteen and Pierce went inside to rob the girls. And just like many stories we hear, it was a robbery gone wrong and all the girls were killed. Welborn’s charges were dropped in June of 2000 due to lack of evidence, as were the charges against Pierce in January of 2003. Law enforcement and the victims' families took this as a very hard loss as Pierce was considered to be the mastermind behind the crimes and the one who actually committed the murders. However, Springsteen and Scott had separate trials for the yogurt shop murders and were both found guilty of capital murder. Springsteen was sentenced to the death penalty which the State of Texas had made an exception for even after the Supreme Court ruling in 1972 after jurors deliberated for 13 hours. Michael Scott was sentenced to 99 years in prison. But not long after their trials started, there were concerns that Springsteen and Scott were innocent, arising. Such as the issue with no physical evidence from the crime scene matching to the two. Both men had retracted their statements and stated that their confessions were coerced. (which like…. how???) However there was also evidence to back up their claims. 15 years after the murders were committed, both convictions were overturned in response to the violation of the 6th amendment right to confront their accuser. While Scott and Springteen’s were used against one another in trial, their lawyers were not given the cross-examination option of the accuser. Scott did not testify in court and couldn’t be cross-examined by Springsteen’s lawyers and vice versa. They were released due to a violation of their constitutional rights. Once again, as we talked about in the beginning, their DNA did not match the one found at the crime scene and neither does the DNA of the two who were previously released. The District Attorney Lehmberg said even though she was certain that Scott and Springsteen were responsible for the murders, they were not to be re-prosecuted until the DNA evidence had a match. When Springsteen was brought to trial, this is a dialogue from that:

Detective: let me just ask you again, did you have anything to do…

Springsteen interrupts: No. I did not.

Detective continues: with the murders at the yogurt shop?

Springsteen: No. Never. *at this time he also notes that there is no physical evidence linking him to these murders*

Detective: What did you do?

Springsteen: I shot-

Detective: Which one?

Springsteen: I don’t know.

Detective: What was she doing when you shot her?

Springsteen: Crawling

Springsteen later states when he was asked why he admitted after denying involvement for hours, he states “there’s like psychological aspects to it that I don’t understand”. Even his lawyer stated that the detectives were going to get a confession out of Springsteen, they were determined and they weren’t going to let him leave without it. His lawyer goes on to explain that the reason Springsteen was able to recite certain details is because those details were on the street, he knew the details for years.

Police interviewed 52 customers from the yogurt shop on the day of the murders and not 2 but 3 customers who left just before closing noticed 2 men sitting in booth looking pretty comfortable. After the men left, they said that Jennifer lock the door behind them, not allowing anymore customers in, however the two men were still inside as well as the other customers still in the shop. The description of the persons of interest are as follows: dirty blond hair, about 5’6, late 20 or early 30s. One is described as a bigger man and both were wearing big jackets, one an army fatigue kind of looking jacket and the other was black. Neither of these men have been identified today.

Today, “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” is a Classy Nails Salon but a plaque remains honoring the victims of these brutal murders. Everyday, according to the employees, they leave treats and coins there everyday and every Chinese New Year, they give the girls red envelopes full of money. According to the workers, the girl's parents visit on the anniversary of their deaths. . Head of the APD’s cold- case and missing persons unit, says this case has never been closed and every now and then they still do get tips, but nothing that has led to anything. Oh and you remember that suspect? Maurice Price? Yeah, 8 years after the murder charges were dropped, in 2010 he was pulled over during a routine traffic stop and ran out of the car, when he was apprehended, he sliced an officer across the throat and he was shot and killed. Eliza’s mother had died in 2015.

If you’re interested in researching this case further, there is a book written by Corey Mitchell called Murdered Innocents.

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