Speaker 1: So welcome to a very special edition of The Path
Speaker 1: Went Chili. We're going to do something a little different
Speaker 1: from the normal. We've given Ashley a little break because
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about a salt case, but
Speaker 1: it's a very complicated and shocking one, so we have
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about and I'll be sharing the
Speaker 1: details with Jewels and getting her live reaction. So hilariously enough,
Speaker 1: last month, I had an idea pop into my head.
Speaker 1: They had just released a new documentary on HBO Max
Speaker 1: about the Austin yogurt shop murders from nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: and I had covered it on The Trail Went Cold
Speaker 1: two years ago, did a long two part episode. So
Speaker 1: I was thinking, we need to tackle this on The
Speaker 1: Path Went Chilly because we can maybe get three four
Speaker 1: episodes talking about this, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: it wound up being solved. So that changed everything. So
Speaker 1: instead of following our usual format where we talk about
Speaker 1: with Ashley, we're going to spend a couple episodes where
Speaker 1: I share the details with Jewles and she will give
Speaker 1: off her reactions. So, Jules, I know you told me
Speaker 1: before that you haven't watched the recent documentary, but how
Speaker 1: familiar are you with the case in general?
Speaker 2: So I think I listened to like a true crime
Speaker 2: garage or perhaps your episodes on the Trail went cold
Speaker 2: years ago. I purposefully didn't listen to the documentary when
Speaker 2: you discussed maybe we would tackle this together and you
Speaker 2: would tell me the details, and I didn't read anything
Speaker 2: on how the case was solved or any of that,
Speaker 2: because I wanted to be as fresh as I could
Speaker 2: possibly be, so everything would be new and I would
Speaker 2: be surprised by the details.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. Like this is considered to be one of
Speaker 1: the more infamous homicides of the modern era. It's just
Speaker 1: so horrible on so many levels, and it also has
Speaker 1: a wrongful conviction and a lot of people's lives were
Speaker 1: ruined by this, and it's so surreal after nearly thirty
Speaker 1: four years to finally get a concrete resolution. But there
Speaker 1: are still a lot of unanswered questions to this case.
Speaker 1: It takes place in Austin, Texas in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: on the evening of December sixth. Took place at a
Speaker 1: shop called I Can't Believe It's Yogurt, which was a
Speaker 1: frozen yogurt establishment located at a strip mall called the
Speaker 1: Hillside Center, and at around eleven forty seven pm, a
Speaker 1: patrolman from the Austin Police Department noticed that there was
Speaker 1: a fire inside the yogurt shop and called for assistance.
Speaker 1: It looked like it was closed, so they didn't think
Speaker 1: anyone would be in there, but when they arrived, they
Speaker 1: noticed the shop's lights were off, the closed sign was
Speaker 1: facing outward, and the front door was locked, but oddly,
Speaker 1: a key was still inside the lock on the inside,
Speaker 1: so the firefighters used a crowbar to bust open the
Speaker 1: door and entered the back room, and then they discovered
Speaker 1: that there was a small fire burning in there, so
Speaker 1: they were able to extinguish the flames relatively quickly and
Speaker 1: initially just looked like a routine fire, but then they
Speaker 1: were horrified to discover that there were four dead bodies
Speaker 1: lying in the area, and even more tragically, they all
Speaker 1: belonged to teenage girls. One of them was seventeen year
Speaker 1: old Eliza Thomas, seventeen year old Jennifer Harveson, her younger
Speaker 1: fifteen year old sister, Sarah Harveson, and Sarah's thirteen year
Speaker 1: old best friend, Amy Ayres, and Eliza. Jennifer and Sarah's
Speaker 1: bodies were all stacked on top of each other, and
Speaker 1: they were burned so badly that they could not be recognized.
Speaker 1: They had to be identified via dental records, and Amy's
Speaker 1: body was located a few feet away from the pile.
Speaker 1: It's possible she may have actually still been alive when
Speaker 1: the killer left, and then crawled a little bit before
Speaker 1: she passed away right before the firefighter showed up. But
Speaker 1: everyone was totally shell shocked when they realized that four
Speaker 1: girls have been murdered in there.
Speaker 2: I can't imagine that everybody's worst nightmare for first responders
Speaker 2: to walk in there. You don't think that you're going
Speaker 2: to see dead bodies, but I'm sure that they've been
Speaker 2: used to it, and they've seen it under certain circumstances.
Speaker 2: Maybe one dead body. But when you have four kids,
Speaker 2: like they're teenagers, they're kids, to see that, how traumatic
Speaker 2: that would be and to know what a loss to
Speaker 2: the community this is going to be. This is going
Speaker 2: to reverberate outwards everybody at their high school, their families,
Speaker 2: their friends, their loved ones. This is going to be
Speaker 2: felt so deeply by everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I've watched the documentary series. I've read a
Speaker 1: number of books about this, It's been featured on a
Speaker 1: number of true crime shows like forty eight Hours, and
Speaker 1: I can't think of many more examples of a crime
Speaker 1: that totally devastated the community. I mean, I know Austin
Speaker 1: is not a small town. It's the capital city in Texas.
Speaker 1: It's used to having crimes, but never anything of this magnitude.
Speaker 1: And it was especially tragic for the parents, Mike and
Speaker 1: Barbara Harbison. They had since gotten divorced, but they had
Speaker 1: still close relationships with their daughters, and Sarah and Jennifer
Speaker 1: were their only children and they had to lose both
Speaker 1: of them in one night. What's extra tragic is that
Speaker 1: the only employees at the yogre shop were Eliza and Jennifer,
Speaker 1: but Amy was planning a sleepover with the Harbisons, so
Speaker 1: they had been spending the night hanging out. I know
Speaker 1: that Sarah and Amy have been dropped off at a
Speaker 1: mall and then Jennifer picked them up at nine o'clock
Speaker 1: and then took them back to the ogre chop and say,
Speaker 1: after we're done closing, you can help me out and
Speaker 1: then I'll drive you back home for the sleepover. So
Speaker 1: these two youngest girls were just in the wrong place
Speaker 1: at the wrong time. They weren't even supposed to be
Speaker 1: there and just happened to get murdered because they were
Speaker 1: working alongside Jennifer and Eliza.
Speaker 2: The timing of it is just it's shocking right to
Speaker 2: think that if they'd made a different decision like how,
Speaker 2: things would have turned out differently. And it's one of
Speaker 2: those arguments where people say, oh, things happen for a reason,
Speaker 2: and you think, what could be the reason that four
Speaker 2: teenage girls would end up being murdered, And then you
Speaker 2: have two people that aren't two of them that aren't
Speaker 2: even supposed to be there. So the Harvestins have such
Speaker 2: an incredible loss here, to have two daughters struck down
Speaker 2: in such a horrific way, to have their bodies burned,
Speaker 2: to not be able to do I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: know what they did as far as a funeral, but
Speaker 2: I would think when the bodies are burned like that,
Speaker 2: it would be very difficult to do an open casket.
Speaker 2: And for a lot of people that need to say
Speaker 2: goodbye and that need to be able to see their
Speaker 2: loved one that one last time in their coffin that
Speaker 2: would have been taken away from them, and that is
Speaker 2: truly sad if that was the path that they were
Speaker 2: going to be taking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they did have a massive funeral, and of course
Speaker 1: Yad had to be a closed casket because they were
Speaker 1: burned so badly. But it drew over one thousand people,
Speaker 1: a lot of them who were strangers who didn't even
Speaker 1: know the girls because it was such a devastating crime
Speaker 1: that affected the entire community. And like, these were all
Speaker 1: considered to be very good girls. They excelled academically, they
Speaker 1: had a lot of hobbies, they never caused any trouble.
Speaker 1: And it'll be a sharp contrast because as we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about, four people would later be arrested in
Speaker 1: charge with their murders who were the polar opposite. They
Speaker 1: were kind of considered to be juvenile delinquents who did
Speaker 1: not do very well in school and were known for
Speaker 1: causing trouble. But everyone said, like, why these four girls.
Speaker 1: It's just like they never harmed anyone, and it's been suspected.
Speaker 1: Maybe we will probably never know the motive for this crime.
Speaker 1: That there were signs that it was a robbery because
Speaker 1: some money was taken from the till, and it's possible
Speaker 1: that whoever did it was only expecting two employees to
Speaker 1: be in there and then was just completely thrown off
Speaker 1: when they discovered two additional girls who are just hanging
Speaker 1: out in the back, and that might have just caused
Speaker 1: them to lose it and commit this quadruple murder. So
Speaker 1: they discovered that all four girls have been shot in
Speaker 1: the back of the head, execute style with a twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber weapon. Like I said, Amy's body was found
Speaker 1: a few feet away from the others, and even though
Speaker 1: she was also shot in the head with a twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber weapon, it turned out she had a second
Speaker 1: gun shot wound from a three eighty automatic cold pistol,
Speaker 1: possibly because the bullet from the first shot missed her brain.
Speaker 1: And it also turned out that she had a cloth
Speaker 1: ligature around her neck to suggest that someone attempted to
Speaker 1: strangle her. So it was just major overkill, and they're
Speaker 1: guessing that maybe Amy just took a long time to
Speaker 1: die and that's why there were multiple bullets fired into
Speaker 1: her and she was also strangled. It's been theorized, like
Speaker 1: I said, that she may have and still been alive
Speaker 1: when the firefighters first arrived at the scene and tried
Speaker 1: to crawl away from the rest of the victims, but
Speaker 1: passed away before the fire was put out. And even
Speaker 1: what's more horrific is that all victims had their clothing remove,
Speaker 1: likely after being ordered to undress a gunpoint, and some
Speaker 1: other articles of clothing were found neatly stacked on the
Speaker 1: floor near the bodies, but other articles were used to
Speaker 1: bite and gag the victims. And it would turn out
Speaker 1: that at least some of the girls, though not all
Speaker 1: of them, have been raped. So at the outset, they
Speaker 1: suspected that there were two perpetrators involved in this crime,
Speaker 1: just because it would have been very difficult to handle
Speaker 1: all four girls, and also the fact that two separate
Speaker 1: guns were used to fire the shots.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that that would be a pretty logical deduction.
Speaker 2: Since you have two guns. How many perpetrators will come
Speaker 2: to commit a crime and bring two guns with them,
Speaker 2: So I would think that, yeah, that would make sense,
Speaker 2: especially when you have, like you said, four victims. How
Speaker 2: would you control those other victims? I guess it is possible,
Speaker 2: right if you think of a scenario where you have
Speaker 2: a gun and you're leveraging the relationships of these girls
Speaker 2: with each other. So you're saying, if you run or
Speaker 2: you do something, I'm going to shoot her in the head.
Speaker 2: And they're all going to be petrified, and they don't
Speaker 2: want their friends to get hurt or sister to get hurt.
Speaker 2: So I would think it would be pretty easy to
Speaker 2: control these girls based on their relationships, even if you
Speaker 2: had a solo perpetrator who was in the middle of
Speaker 2: a rate. If he's raping, say one of the sisters
Speaker 2: or the best friend, then you're not going to have
Speaker 2: somebody making a rash decision like to try to run
Speaker 2: away if they think that that's going to get that
Speaker 2: person killed. So it is possible, but I can see
Speaker 2: how they jump to their had to have been at
Speaker 2: least two perpetrators.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking that even if there was
Speaker 1: only one perpetrator, that these girls are going to be terrified.
Speaker 1: And like you said, even though if all four of
Speaker 1: them fought back, they might be able to overpower him,
Speaker 1: it would be very difficult to do so without at
Speaker 1: least one of them getting hurt. So I'm thinking they're
Speaker 1: probably thinking to themselves, even if I fight back, there's
Speaker 1: a good chance my sister or one of my friends
Speaker 1: will be shot, so let's just do what they say
Speaker 1: and hopefully we'll get out of this alive. But unfortunately
Speaker 1: that turned out not to be the case.
Speaker 2: And you said that they were bound with items of
Speaker 2: their clothing, so it makes it a lot more difficult. Say,
Speaker 2: if this individual or individuals wanted to rob the place
Speaker 2: and rape the victims. If you have these girls, they've
Speaker 2: undressed and you've bound them and say, I don't know
Speaker 2: how their arms and legs are tied, it would make
Speaker 2: escape very very difficult, would it not?
Speaker 1: It would. Yes, we don't know the exact series of
Speaker 1: events how they played out, but the store was scheduled
Speaker 1: to close at eleven o'clock, and of course the patrol
Speaker 1: officer didn't notice the fire until eleven forty seven pm,
Speaker 1: and when the fire marshal came to the scene, he
Speaker 1: suspected that the fire was originally started at eleven forty two.
Speaker 1: So this was a pretty protracted thing, Like it's possible
Speaker 1: the perpetrator could have been in there for as long
Speaker 1: as forty five minutes or so, so they took their
Speaker 1: time what they were doing and probably used a lot
Speaker 1: of fear to control these girls. Yeah, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: so I mentioned that the keys to the front door
Speaker 1: were found in the lock. So it was speculated that
Speaker 1: the girl ros were planning to close, and that whoever
Speaker 1: the killer was may have been the last customer or
Speaker 1: customers inside the store. But they also saw that the
Speaker 1: shop's back door was broken. They couldn't determine at the
Speaker 1: time whether the perpetrator had broken and through the back
Speaker 1: or broke the door when they left, but they suspected
Speaker 1: that they fled the scene through the back door when
Speaker 1: they were finished. The cash register was empty, and an
Speaker 1: automate later showed that five hundred and forty dollars was
Speaker 1: missing from the register, which seemed to point to robbery
Speaker 1: being the motive, But surprisingly, an open bank bag containing
Speaker 1: additional money was left behind under the register. Ivy never
Speaker 1: disclosed how much money was in this bag. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it was a lot, but it's possible maybe
Speaker 1: the killer didn't even notice it, or maybe they just
Speaker 1: wanted to kill someone and the money was of secondary importance.
Speaker 1: The register's log showed that someone had used the no
Speaker 1: sale button to open the till at eleven oh three pm,
Speaker 1: three minutes after closing time, and an unopened coke can
Speaker 1: in an empty st irofoam cup were found next to
Speaker 1: the register, so this led to speculation that whoever this
Speaker 1: was was the last customer in the store before closing
Speaker 1: may have gone to the counter to buy a coke,
Speaker 1: but then suddenly pulled out a gun and forced Jennifer
Speaker 1: or alies it empty the register and then forced all
Speaker 1: four of the girls into the back room in order
Speaker 1: to kill them.
Speaker 2: I wonder what order it happened in, Like, there is
Speaker 2: a potential that say, this individual pulled out a gun
Speaker 2: and threatened to whomever was out the cash register and said,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm going to rob the place, and before
Speaker 2: actually getting the money from the cash register, got the
Speaker 2: girls into the back and ended up having them stripped
Speaker 2: down and committed the rapes and then went to the
Speaker 2: cash register. Because if you're in a hurry after you've
Speaker 2: done that and maybe you started the fire, maybe you've
Speaker 2: got all these things already in motion, and you're in
Speaker 2: a huge rush trying to get everything done, you might
Speaker 2: overlook something like a bank bag. But I feel like
Speaker 2: if you did that first, you would be a little
Speaker 2: more methodical and a little more organized, because you're not
Speaker 2: going to be operating under the gun in such a
Speaker 2: way that you would be after you've already taken all
Speaker 2: the time to get them undressed and to rape one
Speaker 2: or more of the girls, and then then you go
Speaker 2: to rob do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's why I've suspected that maybe they were
Speaker 1: just thrown off when they discovered that two additional girls
Speaker 1: were in there, Sarah and Amy, that they may have
Speaker 1: just thought, there are two employees working here, I can
Speaker 1: handle them all on my own. I'm going to commit
Speaker 1: this robbery. And then he probably would not have seen
Speaker 1: Sarah and Amy from the front of the store. And
Speaker 1: then when Jennifer and Eliza were forced into the back
Speaker 1: and they noticed two additional girls there, that might have
Speaker 1: like caused them to freak out. Maybe they lost control
Speaker 1: because they weren't expecting these additional witnesses, and that's why
Speaker 1: they decided to just go so overboard with raping them,
Speaker 1: tying them up, killing them, and then setting them on fire.
Speaker 2: It just makes you wonder what was the primary motive?
Speaker 2: Was the primary motive to sexually assault two girls that
Speaker 2: they could begets the perpetrator. Perpetrators likely thought that there's
Speaker 2: just the two girls there, so was that the primary
Speaker 2: motivation and the robbery was secondary, or robbery the primary
Speaker 2: motivation and the rape was secondary.
Speaker 1: Well we'll talk more about this later, but when you
Speaker 1: find out the background of the person who's been identified
Speaker 1: as the perpetrator of this crime, I have a feeling
Speaker 1: it was probably the sexual assault and that they just
Speaker 1: wanted to perform a thrill kill and that the robbery
Speaker 1: was secondary. So the artist investigator would come to the
Speaker 1: scene and believe that the fire had been started on
Speaker 1: some steel shelves located on a corner in the storage
Speaker 1: room because it contained a bunch of combustible items like
Speaker 1: styrofoam cups, so when they set them on fire, that
Speaker 1: caused this fire to spread really quickly and cause them
Speaker 1: to burn so badly. But unfortunately, this would be a
Speaker 1: recurring theme here. Some of the key pieces of evidence
Speaker 1: would go missing over the years, such as the metal shelves,
Speaker 1: then the ladder that have been used on there, and
Speaker 1: also the broken lock from the back door also went missing,
Speaker 1: even though it could have contained fingerprints or the killer's DNA.
Speaker 1: And this is not anyone's fault, but unfortunately, because the
Speaker 1: firefighters when they instantly went in there, they had to
Speaker 1: use the water to put the fire out and didn't
Speaker 1: even realize at the time that there were four bodies
Speaker 1: under there, And of course this could have also compromised
Speaker 1: potential forensic evidence. I mean, you can't blame the firefighters.
Speaker 1: Obviously they have to put the fire out immediately, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was so frustrating to know that they
Speaker 1: could have compromised a crime scene.
Speaker 2: I'm sure that this happens all the time because their
Speaker 2: primary focus is to put out the fire and to
Speaker 2: hopefully save whomever is in there, and they're not thinking
Speaker 2: first thought, like I've got to preserve this potential crime scene.
Speaker 2: They're just there to do their job. And once they
Speaker 2: realize that i'm sure everybody there is de ceased, then
Speaker 2: their focus will switch right and there will be to
Speaker 2: preserve the scene and to get investigators in there as
Speaker 2: quickly as possible. But in those first moments, when you
Speaker 2: know they just want to put out the fire, they
Speaker 2: don't know that there's four bodies. I'm sure that there
Speaker 2: was a huge amount of destruction of evidence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we're going to talk about, like this
Speaker 1: would eventually get solved with DNA testing, but because of
Speaker 1: all the water. Some of the DNA samples weren't complete.
Speaker 1: It was only like a partial profile. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: this probably had a lot to do with the fact
Speaker 1: that fire and water was used over the bodies. So
Speaker 1: what makes a story even sadder is that throughout the
Speaker 1: course of the evening some of the girl's parents would
Speaker 1: even stop by the store before closing, just to check
Speaker 1: on their daughters and just everything seemed completely normal at
Speaker 1: the time. I know that Eliza's mother, Maria stopped by
Speaker 1: it around nine point thirty and said that everything was fine,
Speaker 1: and that Eliza's father stopped by at a different time,
Speaker 1: and nobody saw anything out of the ordinary. And of course,
Speaker 1: by today's perspective, it probably seemed shocking that these two
Speaker 1: seventeen year old girls were working alone to close a
Speaker 1: store in like a downtown area. And I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: going to ask this, but no, there were no security
Speaker 1: cameras there, so they didn't get any footage of the crime.
Speaker 1: And later on, the victims' families would actually file a
Speaker 1: lawsuit against the yogurt shop's parent company, Bryce Foods, as
Speaker 1: well as the property Morrison Properties, who owned the Hillside
Speaker 1: Center Strip mall, because it turned out there had been
Speaker 1: some robberies at some of the other shops at the
Speaker 1: malls in the months prior to the yogurt shop murders,
Speaker 1: and I don't think any of the families knew about that,
Speaker 1: And they're saying to themselves, if we had known that
Speaker 1: there was crime going on here, robberies, we never would
Speaker 1: have allowed these two teenage girls to close this shop
Speaker 1: by their own and they would after they filed the lawsuit.
Speaker 1: The two sides would reach a twelve million dollar settlement.
Speaker 1: But the good news is that the families would use
Speaker 1: the money to start a nonprofit organization about crime prevention
Speaker 1: and workplace safety, which was called We Will Not Forget SAJE,
Speaker 1: which was the first name initials of the four victims.
Speaker 1: And of course this would use this would be used
Speaker 1: to help implement a lot of new safety procedures to
Speaker 1: protect workers who had to work in this environment. So
Speaker 1: if there's a silver lining to this whole case, at
Speaker 1: least the families used the lawsuit money they earned to
Speaker 1: do some good.
Speaker 2: That's amazing when you hear that families are able to
Speaker 2: have the wherewithal to come together and to have this
Speaker 2: and to be united with this goal to not have
Speaker 2: other families have to deal with the tragedy that they did,
Speaker 2: because I feel like, on a level, this could have
Speaker 2: been preventable. I mean it's very nineteen ninety one. I mean,
Speaker 2: even a shop that's called I can't believe it's yogurt
Speaker 2: is very nineteen ninety one. Do you remember, like how
Speaker 2: big frozen yogurt was in the nineties.
Speaker 1: Oh, definitely, yes. I don't know if they ever had
Speaker 1: I can't believe it's yogurt in Canada because I don't
Speaker 1: remember ever seeing it, but apparently it was huge in
Speaker 1: the US during this time period.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I get that. But when you know that
Speaker 2: there's robberies and you would expect that the stores within
Speaker 2: that strip mall are that mall, that they would respond
Speaker 2: accordingly and that they would do with everything that they
Speaker 2: could to keep their employees safe. Particularly when you're dealing
Speaker 2: with teenage girls or underage employees, you want to have
Speaker 2: those security measures in place. So I definitely understand why
Speaker 2: the families were awarded that twelve million.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This seems to be a recurring theme in a
Speaker 1: lot of old cold cases we cover, where we see
Speaker 1: people the victims doing dangerous things like working alone at
Speaker 1: a convenience store at night without any security cameras, and
Speaker 1: you're like, this would never happen today, But it was
Speaker 1: just kind of a signed at the times. So the
Speaker 1: investigators tried to check all the known customers visited the
Speaker 1: yogurt shot throughout the course of the night, tried to
Speaker 1: account for as many as possible. There were a couple
Speaker 1: who couldn't be identified who were picked out by other customers,
Speaker 1: Like there were a pair of teenage boys who were
Speaker 1: in there between eight fifteen and eight thirty who had
Speaker 1: long on camp hare seemed to be staring at their
Speaker 1: girls a lot. Sometime between nine thirty and ten, there
Speaker 1: was like a guy who was described as being in
Speaker 1: his twenties, as a fidgety young man who went into
Speaker 1: the bathroom for a while. And I know that one
Speaker 1: of the customers got a weird feeling about the guy,
Speaker 1: so he decided to wait around for a few minutes
Speaker 1: after ordering his yogurt, but wound up leaving before the
Speaker 1: young man emerged from the back. But the most intriguing
Speaker 1: lead was provided by a couple named Tim Striker and
Speaker 1: Margaret Shean, who bought some yogurt at ten forty two pm,
Speaker 1: eighteen minutes before closing, and they noticed two young men
Speaker 1: sitting at a table which was the closest to the register,
Speaker 1: who appeared to be in their late twenties early thirties,
Speaker 1: very generic like around five foot six, with a skinny
Speaker 1: frame and lighter brown, dirty blonde hair. But what was
Speaker 1: interesting is that when the fire department arrived an hour later,
Speaker 1: they noticed that these were the only tables in the
Speaker 1: store which did not have the chairs stacked up, which
Speaker 1: is usually what happens when you're closing up and eating
Speaker 1: establishment before closing, and it also did not have the
Speaker 1: napkin dispenser filled. So they began to theorize that because
Speaker 1: the key was in the front lock, that maybe these
Speaker 1: guys were still around at closing time, and that at
Speaker 1: around eleven they finally performed the robbery and then took
Speaker 1: the four girls into the back and then committed the murders.
Speaker 1: And they tried as hard as they could, and they
Speaker 1: could not track down or identify these guys. So for
Speaker 1: the longest time there was speculation that these may be
Speaker 1: the killers, and it just seemed to fit the scenario
Speaker 1: so perfectly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense, especially when you got eyewitnesses Striker
Speaker 2: and Shean, those are very memorable last games. Yep, you've
Speaker 2: got them identifying two young guys, pretty generic looking, sitting
Speaker 2: at a table. And then that same table doesn't have
Speaker 2: the napkin dispenser filled and there isn't chairs that are
Speaker 2: stacked there. So it's pretty easy to theorize that there's
Speaker 2: a potential that they could be involved in what happened
Speaker 2: because the girls weren't able to clean up that area.
Speaker 1: And just the fact that this got such massive publicity
Speaker 1: in Austin and they said, if you were in the
Speaker 1: Yogret shop that night, please come forward so we can
Speaker 1: account for your whereabouts. And the fact that these two
Speaker 1: young men didn't, even though they were the last ones
Speaker 1: known to have been in the store before closing, seemed
Speaker 1: to speak volumes that either they don't want to get
Speaker 1: involved where they're the killers. So the investigation initially was
Speaker 1: headed up by a veteran Austin police detective named John Jones.
Speaker 1: And this is a case where you're going to see
Speaker 1: the best and the worst of police work, and John
Speaker 1: Jones actually represents the best. Ironically enough, he was actually
Speaker 1: filming like a ride along on the night of the
Speaker 1: murders where he invited a camera crew from a TV
Speaker 1: station to watch him on duty. It was kind of
Speaker 1: going to be like an episode of Cops. He thought
Speaker 1: it was just going to be a routine night, and
Speaker 1: he got like a radio call that there's a fire
Speaker 1: at a yogret shop, and he said, well, let's go
Speaker 1: over and see what happens. They just expected to be
Speaker 1: like a routine fire, and the camera crew just had
Speaker 1: no idea that when we walk in there, we're going
Speaker 1: to find four bodies and find yourself right in the
Speaker 1: middle of one of the worst homicides of the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: So they still have some of the original footage from
Speaker 1: Jones's ride along in the documentary and on the forty
Speaker 1: eight Hours episodes, because this camera crew did not know
Speaker 1: that they were going to be a part of history
Speaker 1: and have to witness one of the worst crimes you've
Speaker 1: ever heard about.
Speaker 2: That is so wild. That just gave me like flashbacks
Speaker 2: to basically being a kid in the nineties and watching
Speaker 2: that TV show Cops when you'd hear it like the
Speaker 2: theme song, bad Boys, Bad Boys, What are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I can totally understand why they were filming
Speaker 1: that because Cops was huge in the early nineties, so
Speaker 1: they were doing their own version of Austin. But of course,
Speaker 1: usually on the TV show Cops, you never saw quadruple homicides.
Speaker 2: No, absolutely not. And I'm sure when you get the
Speaker 2: call and it's like, oh, there's a fire at a
Speaker 2: yogurt shop, you think this is pretty benign. It's probably
Speaker 2: like an electrical issue or something. Nobody, I'm sure on
Speaker 2: that crew would have thought that there's even a small
Speaker 2: possibility that there's somebody there who's murdered, let alone for
Speaker 2: teenage girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was going to talk about like this
Speaker 1: case gave a lot of people post traumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately one of them was John Jones. He's always
Speaker 1: been very passionate about this case. Even though he is
Speaker 1: long retired, he still appears on TV shows about it.
Speaker 1: He appeared in the documentary on HBO Max. He pretty
Speaker 1: much made a vow that I'm going to solve this
Speaker 1: case no matter what. He became close friends with the
Speaker 1: victims' families, kept them informed at every opportunity. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: because he was working on it so passionately, like I said,
Speaker 1: he started to develop PTSD, he started to develop depression
Speaker 1: and it deprived him from being around his own family
Speaker 1: because he was married, he had kids of his own,
Speaker 1: but because he was working on it so hard, he
Speaker 1: barely saw them anymore, and it eventually ended with him
Speaker 1: being divorced, and a couple of years later, unfortunately, he
Speaker 1: would be moved off the investigation transferred to another division,
Speaker 1: and he pretty much said that at the time, this
Speaker 1: was the best thing for my mental health. But he's
Speaker 1: always felt guilty about it because unfortunately, once he left
Speaker 1: the investigation, it started getting screwed up in a huge way.
Speaker 1: And if he had been on it the entire time,
Speaker 1: I think things would have turned out differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally get that, But I can understand needing
Speaker 2: to balance your family life because if you're spending all
Speaker 2: of this time investigating the deaths of four girls, but
Speaker 2: you have your own living children who you're not spending
Speaker 2: time with, I can see how that would erode your
Speaker 2: relationships with not only your children, but with your spouse
Speaker 2: as well. And so you can understand why the divorce
Speaker 2: rates of cops are so high because they pour so
Speaker 2: much energy and so much of themselves into wanting to
Speaker 2: solve these cases and caring so much about the family
Speaker 2: members who are left bereft because they don't have their
Speaker 2: loved ones anymore, and that idea of wanting to get
Speaker 2: some kind of justice and even at the expense of
Speaker 2: their own relationships and their own mental health. So I
Speaker 2: think it's probably a good thing that he got transferred,
Speaker 2: because who knows what could have happened to him from
Speaker 2: a mental health perspective if he kept going down the
Speaker 2: rabbit hole. But it is unfortunate that the investigation got
Speaker 2: really screwed up after he was gone.
Speaker 1: It's true I wanted to give Jones credit because there's
Speaker 1: going to be some bad police work coming up that
Speaker 1: totally screws up this investigation. But I did want to
Speaker 1: acknowledge that the first guy who worked the case did
Speaker 1: his best job as he could, but unfortunately just was
Speaker 1: unable to solve it and had to leave the investigation
Speaker 1: for his own well being. So the first major lead
Speaker 1: would occur on December the fourteenth, eight days after the murder,
Speaker 1: when they got a tip about a sixteen year old
Speaker 1: kid named Maurice Pearce who was arrested at the North
Speaker 1: Cross Mall and charged with unlawful possession of a weapon
Speaker 1: because another kid noticed a guy sticking out of the
Speaker 1: back of his waistband and notified the police, and it
Speaker 1: turned out he was carrying a loaded twenty two caliber pistol,
Speaker 1: which was the same type of weapon used in the
Speaker 1: yogurt shop murder. So this obviously peaud the Austin Police
Speaker 1: Department's interest. So Maurice was taken into custody and arrested,
Speaker 1: and he was also accompanied by a fifteen year old
Speaker 1: friend of his named Forrest Wellborn, who just happened to
Speaker 1: be with him at the time, and they wound up
Speaker 1: being interviewed by another detective named Hector Polanco, who would
Speaker 1: turn out to be a very controversial figure. So Maurice
Speaker 1: claimed that Forrest had lent him the gun and that
Speaker 1: it had likely been used in the yogurt shop murders,
Speaker 1: and along with Forrest, Maurice implicated two other individuals, seventeen
Speaker 1: year old Robert Springsteen and seventeen year old Michael Scott,
Speaker 1: which is a name which always makes people chuckle because
Speaker 1: they think of Steve Carell's character in the Office, but
Speaker 1: this was many years before that. But like all four
Speaker 1: of these kids were known for kind of being juvenile delinquents,
Speaker 1: they dropped out of high school, for being aimless drifters
Speaker 1: who spent a lot of the time partying and drinking
Speaker 1: and smoking marijuana. But even though they committed a few
Speaker 1: petty crimes, they didn't seem to have any real history
Speaker 1: of violence. But I know that Maurice's story is that
Speaker 1: Robert Michael and Forrest had committed the murders and that
Speaker 1: he had functioned simply as the getaway driver. Maurice said
Speaker 1: that he stayed in the car the entire time, and
Speaker 1: that afterwards, after they committed the crime, they fled Austin
Speaker 1: and spent some time in San Antonio in order to
Speaker 1: avoid the authorities. Well, Hector Polanco, the guy who had
Speaker 1: interrogated Maurice and got this confession, he seemed to buy
Speaker 1: hook line and sinker. But John Jones, he was pretty
Speaker 1: skeptical because Maurice kept telling all these stories of that
Speaker 1: contraddicted each other, and when he tried to press Maurice
Speaker 1: to share in criminating details about the crime, he didn't
Speaker 1: say anything that was not already public knowledge. He did
Speaker 1: not seem to have any inside details about the yogurt
Speaker 1: shot murders, and Jones came up with the idea of
Speaker 1: putting a wire on Maurice so that he could have
Speaker 1: a secret conversation with Force Wellborn to see if maybe
Speaker 1: he revealed anything incriminating. But after listening to the secret conversation,
Speaker 1: Jones says that Forrest clearly doesn't have any idea what
Speaker 1: he's talking about. I seriously doubt that he's involved in
Speaker 1: the murders. And hey did ballistic tests on Maurice's twenty
Speaker 1: two caliber gun and compare them to the bullets in
Speaker 1: the murder scene, and the results were inconclusive. But John
Speaker 1: Jones still thought, I don't think these guys are involved
Speaker 1: in the murders. And they were technically dismissed as suspects
Speaker 1: at the time, but not completely ruled out. They were
Speaker 1: just pretty much put on the back burner. But from
Speaker 1: day one, John Jones felt, I don't believe any of
Speaker 1: these four guys are involved in the murders. But unfortunately,
Speaker 1: many years later other detectives would have a differing view.
Speaker 2: It's honestly really refreshing to hear that Jones in the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, a time when very few investigators seemed to
Speaker 2: believe that there was such a thing as false confessions,
Speaker 2: Like we have seen so many cases from that era
Speaker 2: where people have confessed because of things like the read
Speaker 2: technique being employed, and investigators really just didn't know. The
Speaker 2: literature wasn't there like it is today to support that
Speaker 2: false and confessions are very much a thing, and that
Speaker 2: certain personality types are more susceptible, and that sometimes detectives
Speaker 2: don't even realize when they're leading people. And the fact
Speaker 2: that Jones was able to go, yeah, these guys, they
Speaker 2: didn't do it. They don't have the information. Just because
Speaker 2: they're confessing doesn't mean that they're good for it. That
Speaker 2: is not a take that we typically hear in nineties cases.
Speaker 1: It's true, and Jones actually said that throughout his time
Speaker 1: investigating Yogurtshot murders, he said that no less than fifty
Speaker 1: people falsely confessed to it. I mean, I know this
Speaker 1: happens in high profile cases, but that is an abnormally
Speaker 1: high number. I guess there were just maybe a lot
Speaker 1: of mentally unstable people there, or people who just wanted
Speaker 1: attention or just wanted to control the police. But pretty
Speaker 1: much he had the mindset that if anyone makes a confess,
Speaker 1: I am not going to take it seriously unless I
Speaker 1: can find other corroborating evidence, and he never did. He
Speaker 1: just said that most of the people who confess, all
Speaker 1: they did was share details that had already been leaked
Speaker 1: to the public. But unfortunately, as we're going to talk about,
Speaker 1: there were other people in the Austin PD you had
Speaker 1: a different mindset who felt, well, some one confesses, I'm
Speaker 1: going to pin it on him no matter what, even
Speaker 1: if there is no other evidence. That is wild.
Speaker 2: Fifty people falsely confessed. You've got to wonder what type
Speaker 2: of mental health issues these people were contending with. It
Speaker 2: just gives me like that vibe of the John Benay
Speaker 2: case with John Mark Carr and all of these other
Speaker 2: people who supposedly confess to people that they knew in
Speaker 2: their lives, and there's just so many interesting suspects in
Speaker 2: that case. And I just I can't understand what the
Speaker 2: motivation would be other than you're dealing with a mental
Speaker 2: health crisis, unless somebody thinks that they would gain some
Speaker 2: type of notoriety. But I would think that if you
Speaker 2: were trying to get notoriety from the murders of four
Speaker 2: teenage girls, there's something not right.
Speaker 1: Yes, because it's not like that's a particularly popular crime.
Speaker 1: Like you will be the most hated person in the
Speaker 1: state of Texas if you confess to murdering four children
Speaker 1: and raping them and burning their bodies. I mean, I
Speaker 1: can kind of understand people doing it inside a prison,
Speaker 1: like John Mark Carr and the John Benny Ramsey case,
Speaker 1: if they feel they have nothing left to lose and
Speaker 1: want attention. But I don't know the mindset of someone
Speaker 1: who's a free person and then just walks into the
Speaker 1: police and decides to confess to the murders of four
Speaker 1: teenage girls.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, if you did go to jail and you'd
Speaker 2: falsely confessed, you'd basically be in protective custody because you
Speaker 2: would be viewed as a pedophile and a rapist, So
Speaker 2: you would be on the lowest rung on the totem
Speaker 2: pol as far as inmates go. And I'm sure that
Speaker 2: because of how horrific the case was and because it
Speaker 2: was four girls, that there would be a lot of
Speaker 2: people in there who would be trying to hurt the
Speaker 2: individual who was responsible. So it does seem really wild
Speaker 2: that that many people would confess.
Speaker 1: It is, Yeah, so yeah, I knew that they often
Speaker 1: happen in a lot of these cases, but I can't
Speaker 1: think of too many others where fifty people did it
Speaker 1: just for one crime. So on the other side of
Speaker 1: the coin, there's the detective Hector Polanco, who had a
Speaker 1: reputation with the Austin ped for closing a lot of
Speaker 1: cases because he said he had a gift for being
Speaker 1: able to get confessions out of suspects, and as we're
Speaker 1: going to find out, a lot of these confessions turned
Speaker 1: out to be false. He even got a few confessions
Speaker 1: and the yogurt shop murders that wound up not sticking.
Speaker 1: I want to know more details about this person, but
Speaker 1: they were described as a drug dealer slash drag queen
Speaker 1: named Sean Buddha Smith, who claimed that the yoga shop
Speaker 1: murders took place because Eliza was targeted because she's supposedly
Speaker 1: ripped off two hundred dollars worth of weed from Buddha
Speaker 1: and his friends, which was one hundred percent at not true.
Speaker 1: But he then said that, oh, the only reason I
Speaker 1: confessed is because Detective Polonco lied to me and said
Speaker 1: that they had a videotape of me at the yogurt shop,
Speaker 1: so that's why I decided to confess even though there
Speaker 1: were no security cameras there. He was just kind of
Speaker 1: calling his bluff. So after he learned there were no cameras,
Speaker 1: he recanted his confession. There was another suspect named Alex
Speaker 1: Brianus who had been arrested for another murder, so he
Speaker 1: definitely was a dangerous person and claimed that the yogurt
Speaker 1: shop murders were committed alongside an accomplice and that it
Speaker 1: was a robbery gone wrong. But a story fell apart
Speaker 1: when he was asked to pick out his accomplice from
Speaker 1: a photo lineup, and it turned out he picked out
Speaker 1: a suspect who was in prison when the murders took place,
Speaker 1: so obviously he could not have done it. And the
Speaker 1: big turning point for Hector Polanco was on an unrelated
Speaker 1: case where they were trying to assault the murder of
Speaker 1: a Travis County Sheriff's deputy named William Redman, and he
Speaker 1: got a confession from a suspect named John Salazar and
Speaker 1: Bragg that he saw the case of the murder of
Speaker 1: a fellow police officer. Well, what he did know is
Speaker 1: that the real killers were confessing to a completely different
Speaker 1: investigator at the exact same time, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that Salazar was already in police custody for another crime
Speaker 1: on the night that the murder took place, so it
Speaker 1: couldn't have been him. So they started going into Polongo's background,
Speaker 1: found out that he had a history of getting false
Speaker 1: confessions from people. So he was finally removed from the
Speaker 1: yogurt chop investigation and then fired from the Austin Police Department.
Speaker 2: Wow. Sounds like at the end of the day, people
Speaker 2: who were working with him probably knew that he was
Speaker 2: aggressive in the way that he went after suspects and
Speaker 2: the way in which he like quote unquote closed cases.
Speaker 2: So maybe it was that mentality of hey, they're guilty
Speaker 2: of something, and it came down to, like, you know,
Speaker 2: we always talk about the wire juking the stats, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you've got somebody who's more concerned with the percentage
Speaker 2: of cases that they're closing than they are the guilt
Speaker 2: or the innocence of the people. And the problem with
Speaker 2: putting people who are innocent behind bars is the person
Speaker 2: who is actually guilty of committing that crime is still
Speaker 2: out there on the streets. So that idea that oh,
Speaker 2: they're probably guilty of something, or this person had a
Speaker 2: pattern of recidivism or a pattern of a certain type
Speaker 2: of crimes that they were committing. It falls flat when
Speaker 2: you have the actual killer or the person who's guilty
Speaker 2: of committing whatever crime still out on the street. There's
Speaker 2: no way to justify that. And I just I don't
Speaker 2: understand that mentality, and I think it just it has
Speaker 2: to come down to people are more concerned about their
Speaker 2: careers and they probably go into law enforcement with this
Speaker 2: idealized view that they're going to make a difference. But
Speaker 2: as we know, like just the way politicians go into
Speaker 2: politics thinking that they're going to change things, and you
Speaker 2: end up compromising bits of yourself along the way in
Speaker 2: order to get the job done. And then at the end,
Speaker 2: I'm sure a lot of people look at themselves in
Speaker 2: the mirror and they're like, whow me, Like, how many
Speaker 2: deals have I had to make to get here? Am
Speaker 2: I the person that I thought that I was going
Speaker 2: to be? And can I make that type of difference?
Speaker 2: And I think it's probably no different with a lot
Speaker 2: of detectives. Not all detectives are going to be able
Speaker 2: to look at the evidence and go, oh, well, maybe
Speaker 2: this person is innocent and I should let them go.
Speaker 2: They're going to go, oh well, it could be another
Speaker 2: case that I'm closing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's pretty much his mentality. He just wanted
Speaker 1: to close all these cases. And you talked about letting
Speaker 1: the real killer get away with it, and that's how
Speaker 1: it backfired on Polanco is that he had no idea
Speaker 1: that the real killer was confessing to another police officer
Speaker 1: while he was extracting a false confession from another suspect,
Speaker 1: and that's how he got caught. I mean, Planco would
Speaker 1: not be responsible for the wrongful conviction and the yogurt
Speaker 1: shot murder's case because he was long gone when this
Speaker 1: happened years later. But he was technically the one who
Speaker 1: put these four suspects on the map, because he was
Speaker 1: the one who got Maurice Pierce to confess when they
Speaker 1: found him in the mall carrying the twenty two, to
Speaker 1: talk about how he and these three other guys committed
Speaker 1: the murders. And because their names wound up in the files,
Speaker 1: we'll find out that some different detectives will go back
Speaker 1: to them years later, and that's when they would finally
Speaker 1: build a case that was strong enough for them to
Speaker 1: be charged. That brings an end to part one of
Speaker 1: our series of the Austin Yogurt Chot Murders. Join us
Speaker 1: again next week for part two.
Speaker 2: Robin, do you want to tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about the Trail Went Cold? Patreon?
Speaker 1: Yes, The Trail Cold Patreon has been around for three
Speaker 1: years now, and we offer these standard bonus features like
Speaker 1: early ad free episodes, and I also send out stickers
Speaker 1: and sign thank you cards to anyone who signs up
Speaker 1: with us on Patreon. If you join our five dollars
Speaker 1: tier tier two, we also offer monthly bonus episodes in
Speaker 1: which I talk about cases which are not featured on
Speaker 1: the Trail Went Cold's original feed, so they're exclusive to Patreon,
Speaker 1: and if you join our highest tier tier three, the
Speaker 1: ten dollars tier. One of the features we offer is
Speaker 1: a audio commentary track over classic episodes of Unsolved miss
Speaker 1: where you can download an audio file and then boot
Speaker 1: up the original Unsolved Mysteries episode on Amazon Prime or
Speaker 1: YouTube and play it with my audio commentary playing in
Speaker 1: the background, where I just provide trivia and factoids about
Speaker 1: the cases featured in this episode. And incidentally, the very
Speaker 1: first episode that I did a commentary track over was
Speaker 1: the episode featuring this case. So if you want to
Speaker 1: download a commentary track in which I make more smart
Speaker 1: ass remarks about Jewel Kaylor, then be sure to join
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Speaker 2: So we hope you'll check out those patreons. We'll link
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Speaker 2: Music by Paul Rich from the podcast Cold Callers Comedy