Austin yogurt shop murders | |
---|---|
Location | Austin, Texas, U.S. |
Date | December 6, 1991 c. 11:00 p.m. (CST) |
Attack type | Mass murder, rape, arson |
Deaths | 4 |
Perpetrators | Unknown |
The 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders are an unsolved quadruple homicide which took place at an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas, United States on Friday, December 6, 1991. The victims were four teenage girls: 13-year-old Amy Ayers (or Ayres), 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison and Jennifer's 15-year-old sister Sarah. Jennifer and Eliza were employees of the shop, while Sarah and her friend Amy were in the shop to get a ride home with Jennifer after it closed at 11:00 pm. Approximately one hour before closing time, a man who had tried to hustle customers in his queue was permitted to use the toilet in back, took a very long time and may have jammed a rear door open. A couple who left the shop just before 11:00 pm, when Jennifer locked the front door to prevent more customers entering, reported seeing two men at a table acting furtively.
Around midnight a police patrolman reported a fire in the shop, and first responders discovered the bodies of the girls inside. The victims had been shot in the head; some had been raped. A .22 and a .380 pistol were used to commit the murders, and the perpetrator(s) probably exited out through a back door that was found unlocked. The organized method of operation, ability to control the victims, and destruction of evidence by arson pointed to an adult experienced in crime rather than teenagers, according to one of the original detectives on the case. Austin Police Department has DNA from an unknown male as a result of one of the rapes. [1] A Y-chromosome match for the perpetrator DNA has been found in a research database of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) but it has declined to reveal the identity of the man in accordance with the law of anonymity for donors, and because thousands of men could bear this fragment of DNA, which is unable to identify individuals.
Shortly before midnight on Friday, December 6, 1991, a patrolman from the Austin Police Department noticed a fire coming from an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop and reported it to his dispatcher. After the fire was extinguished, firefighters discovered four nude bodies. Each had been shot in the head execution style with a .22 caliber lead bullet. Sarah's hands had been bound behind her with a pair of panties and she had also been gagged and raped. Jennifer was not bound but her hands were behind her back. Eliza had been gagged and her hands were also tied behind her back. All three had been severely charred and shot in the back of the head. [2]
Unlike the others, Amy's body was found in a separate part of the shop. She was not charred but she had received second- and "very early" third-degree burns on 25-30% of her body. She was found with a "sock-like cloth" around her neck. She had been shot the same as the others; however, the bullet had missed her brain. She also had a second bullet which had caused severe damage to her brain, exiting through her lateral cheek and jawline. [3] It is thought that the killers had stacked all four bodies one on top of another, but that Amy had pulled herself off and managed to crawl to a different part of the store. Sarah's and Eliza's bodies were found stacked on top of each other with Jennifer's body, which is theorized to have been stacked on top of the others but had been disturbed when Amy crawled away. Autopsy results show high levels of BTU output, which suggests an accelerant may have been used.
Initial investigations had produced a large number of persons of interest, among them a 15-year-old caught with a .22 (not established to be the murder weapon) in a nearby mall days after the murders. Although he initially gave promising information, after tough questioning the detectives decided that he was trying to get himself out of the gun charge and eliminated him and three petty criminal friends whom he had implicated, none of whom were older than 17 years old at the time. [4] [5]
Several years later, a new detective on the case theorized that the four teens from 1991 were credible suspects. By that time, they were in their twenties. In a string of interrogations conducted by various detectives, confessions were obtained from some of the suspects. They said all four - Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn [6] - had participated in the murder. No record was kept of what was said to the men in the 1991 interrogations, making it impossible to know whether the detectives had supplied information to the suspects in the initial interrogations. Such information could be used to implicate the suspects in later interrogations, if they were to reference it. Two of the four were sent to trial, entirely due to their self-incriminating statements. The prosecution went into a great detail about the horrific nature of the crimes against the young victims, but presented no hard evidence other than the confessions. The two were convicted, one being sentenced to death and the other sentenced to life imprisonment because he had been 15 at the time. However, the prosecution's tactic of using excerpts of each one's alleged confessions at the other's trial was ruled to have violated the Confrontation Clause because the co-defendant was non-testifying. Both convictions were overturned on the Confrontation Clause alone, and the men were freed in 2009. The prosecution insisted that they would be re-tried. However, forensic investigation showed that the DNA found in a victim was not theirs, nor was it that of the other two implicated in their confessions. The prosecution consequently abandoned plans for a retrial. [7] Texas courts later decided that those released were not entitled to compensation, because they had not proven that they did not commit the crime. [8]
One of the detectives in the interrogations, Hector Polanco, had been accused of coercing false confessions in the notorious case of Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger. Both were released after 13 years in prison; Danziger was assaulted in prison which resulted in permanent brain damage. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] Seven jurors from the trials have stated that they would not have convicted the men had this evidence been available at the time. [14] [15]
At the time of the murders, a known serial killer, Kenneth Allen McDuff, was in the area. He had a history of multiple murders involving teenagers, but was soon ruled out. [16] He was executed on November 17, 1998.
Austin police admit that over fifty people, including McDuff on the day of his execution, had confessed to the yogurt shop murders.[ citation needed ] A confession in 1992 by two Mexican nationals, held by Mexican authorities, was soon disputed and finally ruled false. [17]
In 2006, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Robert Springsteen's conviction on the basis of an unfair trial. [18] The U.S. Supreme Court refused to reinstate the conviction in February 2007. [19]
On August 20, 2008, the defense lawyers for Scott and Springsteen requested DNA testing of alternative suspects. [20] No matches against evidence discovered earlier that year were found. [21] Seven jurors from the trials have stated that they would not have convicted the men had this evidence been available at the time. [22]
On Wednesday, June 24, 2009, Judge Mike Lynch ruled, in response to Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg's request that one of the trials be continued, that defendants Springsteen and Scott be freed on bond pending their upcoming trials. [23] At 2:50 p.m. that day, they both walked out of the Travis County Jail with their attorneys. [24]
Later that day, Lehmberg responded to Lynch's decision with the following statement: [25]
On October 28, 2009, all charges were dismissed against Scott and Springsteen.
On December 23, 2010, Austin police officer Frank Wilson and his rookie partner, Bradley Smith, conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle driven by Maurice Pierce in the northern part of the city. After a brief foot pursuit, Pierce struggled with Wilson before removing a knife from his belt and stabbing Wilson in the neck. Wilson, who survived his injuries, subsequently pulled out his gun and shot and killed Pierce. [26] Maurice Pierce had been identified as one of four teenage suspects in 1991 and who was later arrested after new interrogations took place in 1998 and 1999. Charges against Pierce were eventually dismissed.
On December 8, 2021, the House Judiciary Committee passed legislation from Rep. Michael McCaul giving the families of cold case victims the opportunity to petition the federal government to reexamine cases older than three years. [27]
On February 5, 2022, it was announced that advanced DNA technology was bringing investigators closer than ever to solving the murders. [28] [29]
The murders were the subject of Beverly Lowry's 2016 nonfiction book Who Killed These Girls? Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders, [30] Corey Mitchell's 2016 nonfiction book Murdered Innocents [31] and the novel See How Small by Scott Blackwood. [32]
Murders in the Austin area:
The West Memphis Three are three men convicted as teenagers in 1994 of the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, United States. Damien Echols was sentenced to death, Jessie Misskelley Jr. to life imprisonment plus two 20-year sentences, and Jason Baldwin to life imprisonment. During the trial, the prosecution asserted that the juveniles killed the children as part of a Satanic ritual.
The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case in the United States over the aggravated assault and rape of a white woman in Manhattan's Central Park on April 19, 1989, occurring at the same time as an unrelated string of other attacks in the park the same night. Five black and Latino youths were convicted of assaulting the woman, and served sentences ranging from six to twelve years. All later had their charges vacated after a prison inmate confessed to the crime.
A miscarriage of justice occurs when a grossly unfair outcome occurs in a criminal or civil proceeding, such as the conviction and imprisonment of a person for a crime they did not commit. Miscarriages are also known as wrongful convictions. Innocent people have sometimes ended up in prison for years before their conviction has eventually been overturned. They may be exonerated if new evidence comes to light or it is determined that the police or prosecutor committed some kind of misconduct at the original trial. In some jurisdictions this leads to the payment of compensation.
Sture Ragnar Bergwall, also known as Thomas Quick from 1993–2002, is a Swedish man previously believed to have been a serial killer, having confessed to more than 30 murders while incarcerated in a mental institution for personality disorders. Between 1994 and 2001, Quick was convicted of eight of these murders. However, he withdrew all of his confessions in 2008, as a result of which his murder convictions were quashed, the final one in July 2013, and he was released from hospital. The episode raised issues about how murder convictions could have been obtained on such weak evidence, and has been called the largest miscarriage of justice in Swedish history. Journalists Hannes Råstam and Dan Josefsson published TV documentaries and books about the murder cases; they claimed that bad therapy led to false confessions. Dan Josefsson claims that a "cult"-like group led by psychologist Margit Norell manipulated the police and talked Sture Bergwall into false confessions.
Ronald Dale Earle was an American politician and judge who was, from January 1977 to January 2009, the District Attorney for Travis County, Texas. He became nationally known for filing charges against House majority leader Tom DeLay in September 2005 for conspiring to violate Texas' election law and/or to launder money. In Texas, Earle was known for his criminal justice reform efforts which focused on crime prevention, alternative sentencing, victim advocacy, and the reintegration of former offenders into society. In 1983, Earle - an Eagle Scout - prosecuted himself for an election law violation after missing a campaign finance filing deadline by one day; he was fined $212. Earle was a fixture in Travis County politics and served in public office there for more than 30 years, joking that he was asked if he was the "District Eternity".
Three basic features of Japan's system of criminal justice characterize its operations. First, the institutions—police, government prosecutors' offices, courts, and correctional organs—maintain close and cooperative relations with each other, consulting frequently on how best to accomplish the shared goals of limiting and controlling crime. Second, citizens are encouraged to assist in maintaining public order, and they participate extensively in crime prevention campaigns, apprehension of suspects, and offender rehabilitation programs. Finally, officials who administer criminal justice are allowed considerable discretion in dealing with offenders.
Steven Allan Avery is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who had previously been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of sexual assault and attempted murder. After serving eighteen years of a thirty-two-year sentence, Avery was exonerated by DNA testing and released in 2003, only to be charged with murder two years later.
A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interrogation techniques. When some degree of coercion is involved, studies have found that subjects with low intelligence or with mental disorders are more likely to make such confessions. Young people are particularly vulnerable to confessing, especially when stressed, tired, or traumatized, and have a significantly higher rate of false confessions than adults. Hundreds of innocent people have been convicted, imprisoned, and sometimes sentenced to death after confessing to crimes they did not commit—but years later, have been exonerated. It was not until several shocking false confession cases were publicized in the late 1980s, combined with the introduction of DNA evidence, that the extent of wrongful convictions began to emerge—and how often false confessions played a role in these.
False evidence, fabricated evidence, forged evidence, fake evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally in order to sway the verdict in a court case. Falsified evidence could be created by either side in a case, or by someone sympathetic to either side. Misleading by suppressing evidence can also be considered a form of false evidence ; however, in some cases, suppressed evidence is excluded because it cannot be proved the accused was aware of the items found or of their location. The analysis of evidence may also be forged if the person doing the forensic work finds it easier to fabricate evidence and test results than to perform the actual work involved. Parallel construction is a form of false evidence in which the evidence is truthful but its origins are untruthfully described, at times in order to avoid evidence being excluded as inadmissible due to unlawful means of procurement such as an unlawful search.
Linda Fairstein is an American author, attorney, and former New York City prosecutor focusing on crimes of violence against women and children. She was the head of the sex crimes unit of the Manhattan District Attorney's office from 1976 until 2002.
Richard Jason Ofshe is an American sociologist and professor emeritus of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his expert testimony relating to coercion in small groups, confessions, and interrogations.
The murder of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe took place in her bedroom inside her home at Escondido, California, sometime between late night January 20, 1998, to early morning January 21, 1998. Stephanie's parents and grandmother found her body on the floor of her bedroom on the morning of January 21, 1998. She had been stabbed eight times. There was no sign of forced entry. Stephanie's window was found unlocked, but a screen was in place and there was no disturbance of accumulated grime and insect traces. A sliding glass door in her parents' bedroom was also unlocked. No knives were found at the scene that seemed consistent with the murder weapon, and no bloody clothing was found despite an exhaustive search.
The Norfolk Four are four former United States Navy sailors: Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek Tice, Danial Williams, and Eric C. Wilson, who were wrongfully convicted of the 1997 rape and murder of Michelle Moore-Bosko while they were stationed at Naval Station Norfolk. They each declared that they had made false confessions, and their convictions are considered highly controversial. A fifth man, Omar Ballard, confessed and pleaded guilty to the crime in 2000, insisting that he had acted alone. He had been in prison since 1998 because of violent attacks on two other women in 1997. He was the only one of the suspects whose DNA matched that collected at the crime scene, and whose confession was consistent with other forensic evidence.
Iwao Hakamada is a Japanese former professional boxer who was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, for a 1966 mass murder that became known as the Hakamada Incident. On March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada as the world’s longest-held death row inmate. In March 2014, he was granted a retrial and an immediate release when the Shizuoka district court found there was reason to believe evidence against him had been falsified.
The Brenton Butler case was a murder case in Jacksonville, Florida. During the investigation of a shooting death outside a motel in 2000, police arrested 15-year-old Brenton Butler and charged him with the murder. Butler subsequently confessed to the crime, and the case went to trial. However, during the trial he testified that he had been brutalized into his confession, and he was acquitted. The case gained significant notice in the media, and became the subject of an award-winning documentary, Murder on a Sunday Morning.
Mr. Big is a covert investigation procedure used by undercover police to elicit confessions from suspects in cold cases. Police officers create a fictitious grey area or criminal organization and then seduce the suspect into joining it. They build a relationship with the suspect, gain their confidence, and then enlist their help in a succession of criminal acts for which they are paid. Once the suspect has become enmeshed in the criminal gang they are persuaded to divulge information about their criminal history, usually as a prerequisite for being accepted as a member of the organization.
Debra Jean Milke is a German-American woman who spent over 25 years in prison in the state of Arizona. She was one of three people sentenced to death for the December 2, 1989 shooting death of her four-year-old son, Christopher Conan Milke. Her alleged conspirators were her roommate James Lynn Styers and his friend Roger Mark Scott. Neither testified against her and both agreed that she was not present at the shooting. Scott implicated Milke as the mastermind while Styers said she had no involvement whatsoever. They implicated each other as the actual shooter. Who that was remains a subject of speculation.
The Central Park Five is a 2012 documentary film about the Central Park jogger case, directed by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, his daughter Sarah Burns, and her husband David McMahon. It covers the arrests, interrogations, trials, convictions and vacating the convictions of the five men who were teenagers in 1989 at the time of the case. It was released in the US on November 23, 2012.
Adrian P. Thomas was a father of seven children living in Troy, New York, when, in September 2008, his four-month-old son died. A preliminary medical examination indicated that the infant died from head trauma. The police interrogated Thomas for nearly 10 hours during which he confessed to throwing his son on the bed three times. The entire interrogation was videotaped. He was charged with second-degree murder, found guilty, and sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
Juan A. Rivera Jr. is an American man who was wrongfully convicted three times for the 1992 rape and murder of 11-year-old Holly Staker in Waukegan, Illinois. He was convicted twice on the basis of a confession that he said was coerced. No physical evidence linked him to the crime scene. In 2015 he received a $20 million settlement from Lake County, Illinois for wrongful conviction, formerly the largest settlement of its kind in United States history.