The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025) s01e03 Episode Script
Mental Evidence
Sure.
CLAIRE: So, go ahead.
-Oh, just go ahead, and?
-CLAIRE: Yeah. Sure.
The way memory works
is basically to play back,
so to speak, but not
in a video recorder sense,
to report
to someone else what it is
that we have seen
or heard or who we saw.
Now you say,
"Well, why wouldn't it
just be as simple
as pushing a little switch
and playing back
a tape like a VCR?
Well, because playback
is not really accurate.
What we really do is construct.
You have some puzzle pieces,
you put them down on the table,
but there are a lot of gaps.
(OVER VIDEO)
Well, memory abhors these gaps.
You don't want
an incomplete puzzle.
So basically from inferences,
from assumptions,
from incorporation
of information
from other people,
these pieces are
literally created
and they fill in the gaps.
I knew I wasn't
going to make a film
about the whole case
because it was too big.
ROBERT SHOMER:
The next time around
when somebody asks you,
what did you see
or what do you remember seeing,
all the pieces are there.
The ones you saw,
the ones you created.
We were trying to make
a documentary
about false confession.
JOE SAWYER: I think the country
is learning that confessions
aren't what we thought they were
or what we wanted them to be.
Right. Yeah.
And it should bother us
that there are guys in prison
who are there wrongly
and you are one of them.
CLAIRE: There are
some hurdles to that,
which is convincing a viewer
that these are false confessions
to begin with.
You know, having that question,
how does a person confess
to a crime they didn't commit?
Why not ask the person
who confessed?
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(SOFT GLOOMY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PAUL JOHNSON:
When I started this case,
I came up with
about 2000 separate tips.
And so we needed
to look into them.
So in 1999,
we started working
on the Maurice Pierce tip.
There's things that were just
unresolved about Maurice.
And when Maurice got arrested
back in 1991
at the mall with the gun,
roughly ten days
after the murders,
sometime during the night,
Hector Polanco brought Maurice
to an interview room
to interview him.
At the beginning
of the recording,
it says something like,
"Let's go over
what we've been talking about."
JOHNSON: That interview,
which probably started
around midnight,
goes on till the day shift
starts coming in.
John Jones, the main person
assigned to the case,
Polanco comes out and says,
"Okay, this is Maurice.
He's acknowledging
some involvement
in the yogurt shop case."
So John Jones takes
a separate written statement
from Maurice Pierce.
(MUSIC TURNS OMINOUS) ♪
JOHNSON:
When I was looking at this case,
I saw that statement
that John Jones took.
And when I was digging through
the rest of the evidence,
I find this recording.
And I listened to the recording
of what Maurice Pierce had said
just before John Jones
took Maurice's statement.
And it's not the same.
JOHNSON: His written story
involves only meeting
with Forrest
in the parking lot
of Northcross Mall.
But in that recording,
the story involves
the creek people.
JOHNSON: It involves him
being in his car with Forrest
over in an apartment complex
where right down
from that parking lot is a place
in the creek
where people hang out.
And we just call them
the creek people
because they hang out
at the creek.
KEVIN PARLIN: It was just
a spot to get away
from everybody, to hide.
Uh, it was a place we could do
our illegal underage drinking
and not get caught.
That was the-- the hangout,
and that's-- that's what we did.
You know, 15, 16, what-- what--
however old I was at, uh
We did way too much drinking
(CHUCKLES) for our age.
But that was where we were
hanging out that night.
(OMINOUS MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JOHNSON: John Jones
justifies not thinking
Maurice is a suspect
because even Hector Polanco
couldn't get him to confess.
And Polanco
can get people to confess
even if they're innocent.
Maurice doesn't confess himself
on the tape,
but he does say Forrest told him
very specific things
that were happening
during the commission
of the crime.
JOHNSON: And he doesn't say
those things to John Jones
when Jones
is taking a statement.
Evidently, John Jones
never knew the story
that Maurice told
to Hector Polanco.
And Hector Polanco
never bothered
to look at this
written statement
and see that it's different
than the story he had heard.
Any time you get
somebody telling a story,
and they tell one story,
and then they tell
another story,
you don't stop and get--
until you get it resolved
why their stories are different.
You know, Hector Polanco had,
at some point,
kind of gotten a bad reputation.
And I'm not sure
Jones even cared
what Maurice told
Hector Polanco.
I get the impression
he wouldn't have
trusted anything
Polanco said anyhow.
If I had been investigating,
I think anybody
would have wanted to know
if he's telling you
a different story
than he just told somebody else.
And, you know,
they wired Maurice up,
they say something like
"Forrest didn't know
what he was talking about,
had no idea what was going on."
And they also interviewed
Robert Springsteen
and Michael Scott
because they were
along in the car.
MARGARET BROWN:
No.
Okay.
MARGARET:
I'm just like
(CHUCKLES)
MARGARET:
Okay. Um
You're assuming
some things there that--
MARGARET:
Well, nobody called him Mace.
MARGARET:
(SIGHS) Uh
I-- I-- Yeah.
I'm trying to think how to
Well, I-- I-- so for--
for Maurice and--
and bringing my name up,
I mean, I-- you know,
of course
I-- because I doubt that he
really knew any of our names,
uh, back then
Um And then obviously--
Yet my name is Mac
and that's pretty much
the only name I went--
I didn't go by Mace.
I don't know
where that came from,
but, um, we were easy targets.
People knew
we hung out down there
and him not knowing my name
or names of some of the other
people down there
you know, but, you know,
there's a group of people--
tho-- those were the one--
Uh, it's a deflection
I don't
Yeah.
Maurice's story has always been,
Forrest took his gun,
and Forrest probably did it.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON:
But I thought it was more likely
that Maurice was actually
the one doing the murders.
I thought it was
a bit suspicious.
We had these
conflicting statements,
the one of the recording
that I had already heard,
and then the one
that he had written out in 1991.
And I wanted to get
whatever he claimed
the truth to be right now.
So I talked to him at his house.
(GRIPPING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON:
So, in addition to Forrest,
he says he was
with Michael Scott
and Robert Springsteen
that night.
I ended up contacting
each of them by phone,
and I asked them, just,
"What did you do that day?"
And they each told me a story,
and they all involved
the other three people,
and they were
all different things
about what they did.
I could not clear them.
I could not take their alibi.
Their alibis were each other,
and they were all different.
But they each talked
about going to San Antonio
the night after
the murders happened.
They were all together
in that stolen Pathfinder.
And each one of them remembered
stopping somewhere along the way
and buying a newspaper
and as they're driving,
somebody reading the article
about the yogurt shop murders.
Teenagers in a stolen car,
driving to see some girlfriend,
stopping to get the Sunday paper
in the first place,
is kind of suspicious to me.
So we started working
to find out everything we could
about these guys.
John Jones described them
as dudes without dates
who would hang out
at Northcross Mall
and, you know,
watching girls, basically.
I thought it was weird
that they all four
were hanging out
in the first place.
I mean, they might have
known each other,
but I never thought of them
hanging out.
KEVIN:
I didn't know them as a group.
I wouldn't have made
those connections ever.
Not until I met Forrest later
that I knew
he had hung out with Maurice.
Forrest, he was just
kind of a quiet guy.
He liked to work,
he liked to work on cars.
Anything you needed,
he would help.
AMANDA STATHAM: He always
came off as a sweet guy.
Really non-assuming,
just a nice dude.
BEVERLY LOWRY:
He was the only one
who had
a stable home environment,
but he was a follower
and the person he followed
was Maurice.
MAC LUDIN: We thought
we were the coolest kids
in the neighborhood.
Maurice and his guys thought
they were the coolest kids
in the neighborhood.
And yeah,
we did not like each other.
BEVERLY: Maurice Pierce was
always thought of
as the ringleader.
He always had access to a car.
Didn't he have, like--
It was an old police car.
-It had the spotlight on it?
-Yeah.
Yeah. I thought
it was real cool.
AMANDA: He was like a grifter.
He's the kind of guy
that would steal someone's dog,
wait a while,
and then return it to him
for a fucking reward.
Just no moral
-anything, like--
-I was afraid of him.
-Yeah, he was creepy.
-Now, I'm afraid of nobody
-Yeah.
-but I was
a little afraid of him.
BEVERLY: Then there were
Michael Scott
and Rob Springsteen.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BEVERLY:
They had broken family lives.
They were kids who wanted to be
special in some way,
and the only way
they could manage it
was to be bad.
AMANDA: I met Michael Scott
my first year of high school.
He was like, you know,
T-shirt and jeans and long hair,
like, sort of pothead dude.
His mother didn't live
too far away,
and she was working
during the day,
so I'd skip school and go
smoke dope at his mom's house.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
AMANDA: And then
there was Robert.
Robert was creepy.
-SARAH STATHAM: Creepy as fuck.
-AMANDA: Creepy as fuck.
Really just outlier
of the outliers.
Really
I'd sell him mushrooms.
-Did you?
-Yeah.
He looked like somebody, like,
that would try to show you
his dick in a parking lot.
(CHUCKLES) Yes! He did.
-(SNORTS) Sorry. But he did.
-He did.
BEVERLY: It is hard
to make the leap
to see them carrying
something like this off.
Now, there's a thing
about what kind of
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
appearance people make
and who could commit
this murder.
It's really dangerous to get off
into who could commit a crime,
any kind of crime,
but particularly, a murder.
(FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(WATER TRICKLING)
JOHNSON: Our plan was
to talk to people
that were in the creek
that night
to see if they confirmed
seeing Maurice up there,
seeing his car,
seeing him do some things
that he had told
Hector Polanco he had done.
So we brought them in
one at a time.
RON LARA:
-MAC LUDIN:
-LARA:
MAC:
When I got the phone call to
"Hey, can you-- can you
help us out with this?"
You know, "We know
you were in the area.
Maybe you had seen something,"
and you know, me being,
"Well, yeah, sure.
I'll-- Whatever I can do
to help, I'll come down."
My first thought is,
"What took you so long
and why did you
not question us?"
We were local young punk kids.
We hung out
in that area all the time.
LARA:
KEVIN: (CHUCKLES)
LARA:
KEVIN: (SCOFFS)
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 1:
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 1:
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 1:
LARA:
CREEK PERSON 2:
LARA:
CREEK PERSON 3:
LARA:
CREEK PERSON 3:
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 3:
Since we were able
to kind of confirm
the story Maurice told Polanco,
we moved on to Forrest Welborn.
LARA: I'll be back with you
in about 15 minutes.
(DOOR CREAKING)
(FORREST GRUNTS)
LARA:
FORREST WELBORN:
LARA:
FORREST:
LARA: Okay.
-FORREST:
-LARA:
FORREST:
-LARA:
-FORREST:
APD OFFICER:
FORREST:
-(DOOR CREAKING)
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON: I always hoped
this case would be solved.
And sometimes you never know
if it's going to be solved
until you actually solve it.
I never had the feeling
we were on the right track
until after Michael Scott's
first day of interview.
LARA:
MICHAEL SCOTT:
LARA:
-MICHAEL: Yeah.
-LARA:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA: Mm-hmm.
APD OFFICER:
MICHAEL:
(TAPE WHIRRING)
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
JOHNSON:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL: Yes.
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-JOHNSON:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
JOHNSON: As soon as we got
the investigator
starting to write up
his confession,
we sent some investigators
to West Virginia
to try to talk
to Robert Springsteen.
He had gone back
to West Virginia
like two or three weeks
after the murders
to live with his mother.
So we went and talked to him
at the local
police department there.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
LARA:
LARA:
LARA:
-ROB SPRINGSTEEN:
-LARA:
LARA:
LARA:
LARA:
-ROBERT:
-LARA:
-ROBERT:
-LARA:
-ROBERT:
-LARA:
(SIGHS)
You didn't.
(GRIPPING MUSIC BUILDING) ♪
MICHAEL:
JOHNSON: All the interviews
with Michael Scott
and the interview
with Robert Springsteen
were voluntary interviews.
They were free to leave
at any time.
ROBERT:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
LARA:
ROBERT:
LARA:
ROBERT:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
REPORTER 1:
The Austin Police Department
and the Travis County
DA's office
say their investigation
has ended
in sweet success.
DICK ELLIS: Now,
after nearly eight years,
police have arrested
four suspects.
These are the words
thousands here in Austin
have been waiting to hear
for nearly eight years.
On December 6, 1991,
we as a city lost our innocence.
Today, as a community,
we can hopefully
finally begin
the process of healing.
I have to tell you
that I am extremely proud
of the members
of this police department.
These arrests culminate
nearly eight years of hard work,
but it's an effort
that won't end
until the jury comes back
with the guilty verdict.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BARBARA AYRES-WILSON:
This is not the end of what
we have been trying to do,
but only the beginning.
It is also important
that these four people
are allowed to have
a fair and good trial.
PAM AYERS:
We've all talked about it.
We felt like our lives were
just now
beginning to get back
to a somewhat normal state,
not like it was
for so many years.
But, uh, now it's going
to start all over again.
It's-- We're going to start
December 6, '91,
all over again.
MIKE HUCKABAY:
If you could stop time
and get back to basics
right after those girls
were killed
we come up with suspects,
the four guys.
I go right back.
I go right back.
Those guys that we got
they did it. They did it.
It sounded good.
I mean, I dug the shirt out.
All right. And then
Huck and I were talking.
He goes, "Well,
all I got is a confession."
I go, "That's it?"
"Yeah. From just two of 'em."
It's a confession. That's
that's like a two-legged stool.
It ain't going to stand.
You need that third leg.
MARGARET:
Evidence.
ERIN MORIARTY: After eight years
and no physical evidence
to tie any of the four men
to the murders,
why did the Austin police
focus on them?
As adults,
all four have led quiet lives
with jobs and families.
Maurice Pierce's sister.
It's hard to talk about this,
isn't it?
-Mm-hmm.
-ERIN: Why? Tell me.
(SNIFFLES)
Because they've taken
his life away.
ROBIN MOSS: Sometimes
I think about the death penalty
and what-- I can't believe--
I won't let myself believe
he could possibly be convicted.
ERIN: How long
have you been here now?
Two months.
Did you ever think
you'd be in here?
No.
The only thing we ever had
on Forrest was a party
to an aggravated robbery.
We didn't have a case
to even suspect
that he had an intention
to be a party to a murder.
MICHAEL:
ERIN: In a surprise move
REPORTER 2:
Any comment, Forrest?
ERIN: the judge lets Forrest
go home on bail.
SPEAKER: It's okay.
Trying not to get too excited
about not getting indicted
because I never know
what's going to happen
in the future.
ERIN: Forrest Welborn
was offered a deal,
and they would have
left him alone
if he would testify
against the other three guys.
And he said,
"No, I'm not going to."
You know,
"I'm not going to lie."
That's what he goes.
"I'm not going to lie
about something like that."
ERIN: A grand jury indicts
Robert Springsteen,
Michael Scott,
and Maurice Pierce.
All three will be tried
for first degree murder.
If convicted,
Springsteen and Scott
face the death penalty.
STAFF MEMBER:
My understanding is
that you all have
contacted your own attorney.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
JOE: With a death penalty case,
there is always
the tremendous burden
because a great deal depends
on your representation.
Will he live? Will he die?
Will you do the job right?
Will you make a mistake?
And with Robert,
because of the nature
of his confession,
the statements he makes,
I had real doubt as to whether
we could ever push
for a finding of not guilty
-APD OFFICER:
-(ROBERT SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
APD OFFICER:
ROBERT:
JOE: when it's the words
of the accused himself
saying, "I did this."
And he's saying it
into a video camera.
But I want you to,
just for a moment,
imagine the stress he was under
when he was making
that statement.
The fear, the uncertainty,
the suddenness,
all contributed
to Springsteen's statement.
APD OFFICER:
ROBERT:
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
CARLOS GARCIA: I've always
tried to be very detached
so that when I would get a case
in front of me,
I try and strip away any emotion
and anything like that.
I mean, our job
is to just study--
figure out what the facts are.
With Michael,
what I started with
was his written confession.
I started to read it,
and I remember getting
maybe to about
page three or four,
and it was too much for me.
It was overwhelming
to read this horrific detail
of raping these girls
and killing them.
I couldn't read it objectively.
My biased viewpoint
at the time was
people don't confess
to something they did not do.
I had to put that aside
just to objectively review
this case.
So I put it away
for about a month.
I mean, I learned
everything I could
about the crime scenes.
I come back to it.
As I started to read it,
it was like,
"Okay, wait a minute.
That didn't happen.
That didn't happen.
That's totally inaccurate.
Why is he getting
so many things wrong?"
This confession clearly
does not match this crime scene.
Interrogation practice,
there's a book. I have them all.
So this is
Criminal Interrogations
and Confessions,
fourth edition.
This is considered the bible
of interrogation practice
in the United States.
Through extended research
and years of experience,
John Reed and Associates
has developed a nine-step
interrogation process.
These guys are criticized
by social psychologists,
because they're saying,
"Look, the method that
they're teaching in here
can lead to false confessions."
Step number two
and step number seven
are the most essential steps
of the interrogation process.
Give the suspect
psychological justification
for committing the crime.
Suggest to the suspect
a good reason and a bad reason
so that we make it easy for them
to make that
first admission of guilt.
CARLOS:
Michael's biggest problem was
he trusted the police.
MICHAEL:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
CARLOS: He says, "Guys,
either I don't remember
or two, I'm lying."
Well, there was a third option.
What's the third option?
MARGARET:
Yes.
But he didn't consider it
because he doesn't believe
they lie.
Even Springsteen said,
"Guys, I could've sworn I went
to Rocky Horror Picture Show."
"Well, I guess I was wrong."
"No, actually you weren't.
You were right.
They lied to you."
Which is what this guy say
it's okay to do, is to lie.
That's the problem
with this method.
The police are using techniques
they have no idea
how powerful they are.
Because if you've got
a subject that believes you
when you lie to them--
"You're the authority figure.
I believe you're
telling me the truth.
Why would you lie to me?"
That is what happened
to Michael Scott,
but that's not all.
Reed would say they used
some tactics from us,
but they did all the stuff
we told them not to do.
-ROBERT MERRILL:
-MICHAEL: I don't--
MERRILL:
CARLOS:
Aside from the nine steps,
there's a couple of things
it says.
It says, "Don't do these things,
because if you do these things,
that could lead
to a false confession.
You cannot threaten people.
Don't promise anything
to people.
Do not feed
false theories of memory."
First of all,
you have to understand
about how memory works.
SHOMER: Memory abhors gaps.
You don't want
an incomplete puzzle.
So basically from inferences,
from assumptions,
from incorporation
of information
from other people,
which you've come
to believe is reasonable,
these pieces
are literally created
and they fill in the gaps.
CARLOS: So, for example,
they tell him,
"There's something
in your mind, Michael,
that's called revivification."
APD OFFICER:
CARLOS: You can replay it
if you want to.
We can extract it
from your mind.
APD OFFICER:
He believes it,
so it becomes this exercise
in trying to extract memories
that he believes he has.
"Hey, Michael, you were
telling me that you thought
the girls might have been
tied up."
"You thought."
The key word is "thought."
The jump from "you think
they were tied up" to
LARA:
It's a very subtle suggestion,
but it's there nonetheless.
And so Mike starts to say,
"Yeah, I think maybe shoelaces."
"Oh, come on, Mike,
you know it wasn't shoelaces.
Come on, what was it?"
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-LARA
-MICHAEL:
He finally hits on one--
one the one that it was correct.
"There you go, Mike.
There you go."
MICHAEL:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
CARLOS: And so what happens?
He starts to commingle
these memories.
Now the mind does not know
which is false and what is not.
And that's the problem.
That's how you create
false memories.
That could lead
to a false confession.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
REPORTER: Good evening.
Thanks for joining us.
Robert Springsteen's
capital murder trial
is underway.
Evidence was introduced today
in court.
There was a ring
that one of the girls
was wearing,
as well as a belt buckle.
The most difficult thing
to see was
a crime scene photo
of Amy Ayers.
It showed her lying face down
inside the yogurt shop.
Family members looked away.
(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BOB AYERS:
DA's office was telling us,
"Well, on such and such day,
they're going to show them
crime scene photos."
And we just told him,
"We're going to be there."
Usually, protocol
is the parents aren't there.
I said, "Well, we will be."
There was 14 people on the jury.
If they got to sit there
and take it,
well, I just figured
we could too.
Not only did they strangle her,
they pistol-whipped her
and they shot her twice.
That is a cold, cold person.
They could do that to a kid,
and they feel like part of that
is because Amy was
trying to get away.
So then the thing is,
was she first?
Was she last?
I mean, you know, all of that
runs through your mind.
And I know worse things
happen to people
but they're not mine.
(SOMBER MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
SONORA THOMAS:
I did go to the trials.
It was just
a very strange experience
'cause I remember looking
and thinking like,
"That just looks like a person."
You know,
you have this image that,
like, somebody with horns
is going to walk in.
And instead, this-- this sort of
homely-looking person walks in.
BOB: I looked at him
and he looked at me
and there was nothing there.
It was ice.
It was clear.
I'm telling you,
his eyes were like ice.
And I just, I got--
I had chills.
And that's the first time
I saw the evil.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MIKE LYNCH: I'm going to be
reading from a journal
I kept during this
capital murder trial.
I guess I kept it
because I kind of wanted
some sort of history.
But more than that,
it was kind of therapeutic.
"The yogurt shop case
has created a level
of tension and scrutiny,
extreme even
for a death penalty case."
There's gonna be
graphic evidence.
It's gonna be stuff
that you don't wanna hear.
There's gonna be things
you don't want to look at.
There is not a shred
of physical evidence
to connect Mr. Springsteen
to have commissioned this crime.
The only evidence
that was even close to saying,
"Well, maybe Michael
did something,"
was one witness
who came in saying,
"Yeah, he said words
to the effect of 'I did it.'"
BARBARA: One of the days
of going to court,
there was this young woman.
She had a big tattoo
from shoulder to shoulder
and a strapless top on.
I was like, "Who is this girl?"
Mike Scott's friend had been
this 13-year-old
kind of punk rock kid
back in 1991, and she testified.
The way I remember it
is Michael was pacing around
our living room and,
you know, I was like,
"Dude, you can talk to me,
like, I'm-- I'm your friend."
And we're both staring out
into the yard.
He goes, "I did it."
LARA:
AMANDA:
MIKE HALL: She said
that Mike said to her,
"We raped 'em and we killed 'em,
blah, blah, blah,
and it was just crazy,
blah, blah, blah."
She was a little,
I would call, on the fringes.
But when she spoke on--
on the stand,
she was articulate.
He confessed to her.
That's powerful.
CARLOS: This is one girl
eight years after the fact,
and they didn't have
anything to match up.
What's the detail?
"Did it." What do you mean?
"Oh, he said he did it."
That that's not much.
If you look at the evidence
against these men,
the prosecution
really didn't have anything.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
"The defense attempted
to introduce expert testimony
from a memory expert
concerning how memory works
and how persuasion
and suggestion
under some circumstances
can get people
to remember things
they didn't actually experience.
The defense wanted
the jury to hear
how a reasonably normal person
could be convinced
through regular
police interrogation
that he had committed
a horrific act
despite being
absolutely innocent.
However, the memory expert
wanted to testify
to more than I thought
the law allowed."
So I tried to find a point
where he could be helpful
without going over the line.
I think, maybe, I felt like
I wanted to give him more
but shouldn't under the law.
So, I guess that bothered me.
ROBERT: How do you know
it's a true confession
or a false confession?
You don't.
That's why we have juries.
And juries have to make
that judgment.
But juries should know
how these things work.
They should know that
there are certain techniques,
certain procedures
that the police use
that increase the probability
of false confessions.
They should know that.
MICHAEL: I did think for a while
that I had something
to do with this crime.
It's weird, 'cause even now,
y-- one still questions himself,
"Did I have something
to do with it?"
(GRUNTS)
They really screwed me over.
The approach that I was taking
from the beginning
with this false confession idea
is that Mike was someone
who became convinced
that he had murdered
these girls.
We talked to some experts
who who said this is--
This yo-- This case
with Michael Scott
is one of those cases
that will keep you up at night.
Um, because, uh, that is not how
these interrogation techniques
should work,
but they are powerful
and they do
elicit results like this.
They also elicit
a less interesting,
less psychologically
interesting result,
which is that
you will also get another kind
of false confession,
and that's just the confession
to get the hell out of the room.
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
ROBERT: Needless to say,
I wouldn't ever do it again.
It was a really,
absolutely jackass,
stupid thing to do,
but it was the only thing
that I could think of
to do at that time.
The thing that kept
effectively running
through my head was,
"Okay, these guys
have got something
really screwed up somewhere.
I've got to get out
of this room.
I've got to get to an attorney.
I've got to talk to an attorney
and get all this stuff
straightened out."
They kept telling me
I could leave,
but they were sitting
in front of the door.
ROBERT:
JOHNSON: When that has been
brought up,
that the confessions
were coerced,
so they're not true.
That's not how I authenticate
a confession.
What determines
if the confession is true
is that they reveal
some information
that they would not
have known otherwise
and there was no other way
for them to find out
that information.
LARA:
LARA:
JOHNSON: He indicated
the position of Amy's body.
Body position has never been out
to anyone anywhere,
and nobody knows that
unless they were there.
You couldn't even describe it
to somebody else to act out.
In addition to that,
each confession confirms things
from the other's confession.
APD OFFICER:
MICHAEL:
APD OFFICER:
-MICHAEL:
-APD OFFICER:
APD OFFICER:
APD OFFICER::
-APD OFFICER::
-ROBERT:
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JOHNSON: Okay, this is nothing
like it used to be.
So this is the area,
just inside the back door,
where there's shelves
and the bodies
were kind of
right next to the shelves.
This wall wasn't here. You know,
all this has completely changed.
MICHAEL:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
CARLOS: But that's not how
the fire started.
The fire did not start
on these bodies.
That would have been
practically impossible.
What APD knew in 1991
was that this fire
started on the shelves.
Fire makes patterns
when it burns.
So there's something called
a V pattern.
Looks like that.
So the fire burns here.
If it's next to a wall,
you'll see a big old V.
And so this V pattern is
on the wall of this freezer
and on this sidewall.
The fire investigator
had told them back in 1991.
The fire started in the shel--
on the shelves.
LARA:
CARLOS: Now,
after all this interrogation,
Michael Scott makes the fire
start on the girls.
Well, that does not fit.
Paul Johnson knows this.
So they went and got
this ATF fire guy
to come and tell the jury
that the fire started
on the girls.
Every time you get something,
a confession,
that isn't quite
like you thought it was
you go back and see,
could it be true?
MICHAEL:
APD OFFICER:
MICHAEL:
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON: So we went
to our expert
and he came back with a report
that the fire
not only could have,
but I think he would say
it definitely did start
on the bodies.
And then as it increased
from where their bodies were,
caught the things
on the shelves on fire.
Saying we changed it
to match the confessions
No. (SCOFFS)
We're just checking out,
could it be true?
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
MIKE: "In addition to
the factual issues for the jury,
there were several
significant legal issues
for the court.
Foremost, the admissibility
of the defendant's
own statement.
The more difficult question
involved the admissibility
of the co-defendant's
statements."
(GRIPPING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MIKE: In this case,
Springsteen was on trial.
Scott had taken
the Fifth Amendment.
He hadn't had his trial yet.
He wasn't about
to get on the stand
in Springsteen's case
and answer any questions.
And the defense would say,
"I can't cross-examine Scott
about this statement.
Therefore,
it should not come in."
AMBER FARRELLY: You can't
use these confessions
against each other
because you have
the Fifth Amendment right
to not incriminate yourself
and not testify.
You have
the Sixth Amendment right
to confrontation.
So if you accuse me of a crime,
then you have to come
into court by God
and look me in the face
and testify
about why you think I did this.
Robert had the right
not to testify,
and we can't call Scott
to the stand
because he has
the Fifth Amendment right
to remain silent.
So that's blatant consti--
blatant constitutional error.
MIKE: So what I did
was whittle everything out
that referred to anybody else
except what Scott
was admitting that he did.
In the statement I allowed in,
there was
absolutely no reference
to any other individual
involved in this crime.
So it was just Scott saying,
"I did this and I did this,
and I did that."
"After studying the law,
I think I made
the soundest decision I could.
If it turns out to be wrong
in the eyes of a higher court
looking back, then so be it."
JOE: I made no secret
of telling the judge
that I thought
the trial had been unfair
at virtually every turn.
When Mike Scott's
redacted confession came in
on a Friday afternoon
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
Robert leaned toward me
and whispered,
"I'm a dead man, aren't I?"
And I said,
"Yes, Robert, you are."
MIKE: Could the defendant
please rise?
"We, the jury,
find the defendant,
Robert Springsteen IV,
guilty of the offense
of capital murder."
Signed by
the foreperson of the jury.
And at this time,
Mr. Springsteen,
the court sentences you
to death.
It was one of the worst days
of my life as a lawyer.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BARBARA: It was awful.
You'd think it would be great.
It was awful.
I was in the courtroom.
Me and my mother
were trembling and shaking.
And crying, not because
I like these people, I don't,
but (HESITATES)
he's going to die.
He's going
This man's going to die.
And now we have blood
on our hands, too.
(CHUCKLES)
-No, not right now.
-I'm sorry. (SOBS)
It's over.
REPORTER 1: Is this
what you wanted, Barbara?
Well, we want
some kind of ending.
(SOBS)
It's
REPORTER 2: How do you feel?
Like it's a step
in the right direction
to bring these boys to justice.
(PENSIVE MUSIC BUILDS) ♪
REPORTER 3: It took
the Travis County jury
less than three hours today
to sentence Michael Scott
to life in prison.
RONNIE EARLE: We asked the jury
to consider the death penalty.
They heard the evidence
and decided
that a life sentence
was appropriate.
JOHNSON: When the verdicts
came down, I was very happy.
Of course, the verdicts
in a criminal case
has to be unanimous,
so there was nobody
among those 24 jurors
that had any doubt
that these were
the right suspects.
Maurice was the third one,
so we were going to try
Maurice next.
But that never happened.
The Travis County
District Attorney announced
he will not seek a murder trial
in the investigation
of Maurice Pierce.
NEWSCASTER 1: What led
District Attorney Ronnie Earl
to give up
even before the trial began?
RONNIE: The evidence shows
Maurice Pierce's guilt.
We just don't have enough
to prove his guilt
beyond reasonable doubt.
JOHNSON: I didn't think
we had enough evidence
to assure a conviction
because Maurice never confessed.
NEWSCASTER 2:
Surrounded by his wife
and ten-year-old daughter,
Maurice Pierce is free,
no longer waiting
for his day in court.
"When I was detained
and arrested,
I proclaimed that I was innocent
of all the charges
that were filed against me,
and I am standing here today
with that same proclamation."
REPORTER 1: Maurice Pierce,
you're a free man.
-How do you feel to be out now?
-MAURICE PIERCE: Happy.
NEWSCASTER 3: Austin police
released a statement
emphasizing that Pierce
was not exonerated
and that their investigation
continues.
Remember,
their initial investigation
focused on Maurice Pierce.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
AMBER: Their belief
was that he was the ringleader,
the mastermind
behind all of this.
The only reason
Michael and Robert
come into play
is because of Maurice Pierce.
He's the central focus
of all of this.
JOHNSON: When he was released,
it was always with the intention
of we're going
to still go after him.
We do not have the evidence
to convict him right now.
But life is long.
JOHNSON: I think there's
more evidence out there.
I believe that
there are other people
that know very specific things
about what happened
in and around the yogurt shop
that night
that we have not developed yet.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
CARLOS: March of 2008,
we get a call
from the judge's office
saying, "Hey, can you come
and meet right now?"
When we got there,
prosecutors said, "We've been
doing more DNA testing
and we have found
a full profile."
Our evidence includes DNA
from one male
whose identity
is not yet known to us.
Questions.
The DNA doesn't belong
to Michael.
It doesn't belong
to Robert Springsteen.
It is not
any one of these four boys.
So you have to then explain,
where does it come from?
Well, it comes from the killer.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
CLAIRE: So, go ahead.
-Oh, just go ahead, and?
-CLAIRE: Yeah. Sure.
The way memory works
is basically to play back,
so to speak, but not
in a video recorder sense,
to report
to someone else what it is
that we have seen
or heard or who we saw.
Now you say,
"Well, why wouldn't it
just be as simple
as pushing a little switch
and playing back
a tape like a VCR?
Well, because playback
is not really accurate.
What we really do is construct.
You have some puzzle pieces,
you put them down on the table,
but there are a lot of gaps.
(OVER VIDEO)
Well, memory abhors these gaps.
You don't want
an incomplete puzzle.
So basically from inferences,
from assumptions,
from incorporation
of information
from other people,
these pieces are
literally created
and they fill in the gaps.
I knew I wasn't
going to make a film
about the whole case
because it was too big.
ROBERT SHOMER:
The next time around
when somebody asks you,
what did you see
or what do you remember seeing,
all the pieces are there.
The ones you saw,
the ones you created.
We were trying to make
a documentary
about false confession.
JOE SAWYER: I think the country
is learning that confessions
aren't what we thought they were
or what we wanted them to be.
Right. Yeah.
And it should bother us
that there are guys in prison
who are there wrongly
and you are one of them.
CLAIRE: There are
some hurdles to that,
which is convincing a viewer
that these are false confessions
to begin with.
You know, having that question,
how does a person confess
to a crime they didn't commit?
Why not ask the person
who confessed?
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
(SOFT GLOOMY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PAUL JOHNSON:
When I started this case,
I came up with
about 2000 separate tips.
And so we needed
to look into them.
So in 1999,
we started working
on the Maurice Pierce tip.
There's things that were just
unresolved about Maurice.
And when Maurice got arrested
back in 1991
at the mall with the gun,
roughly ten days
after the murders,
sometime during the night,
Hector Polanco brought Maurice
to an interview room
to interview him.
At the beginning
of the recording,
it says something like,
"Let's go over
what we've been talking about."
JOHNSON: That interview,
which probably started
around midnight,
goes on till the day shift
starts coming in.
John Jones, the main person
assigned to the case,
Polanco comes out and says,
"Okay, this is Maurice.
He's acknowledging
some involvement
in the yogurt shop case."
So John Jones takes
a separate written statement
from Maurice Pierce.
(MUSIC TURNS OMINOUS) ♪
JOHNSON:
When I was looking at this case,
I saw that statement
that John Jones took.
And when I was digging through
the rest of the evidence,
I find this recording.
And I listened to the recording
of what Maurice Pierce had said
just before John Jones
took Maurice's statement.
And it's not the same.
JOHNSON: His written story
involves only meeting
with Forrest
in the parking lot
of Northcross Mall.
But in that recording,
the story involves
the creek people.
JOHNSON: It involves him
being in his car with Forrest
over in an apartment complex
where right down
from that parking lot is a place
in the creek
where people hang out.
And we just call them
the creek people
because they hang out
at the creek.
KEVIN PARLIN: It was just
a spot to get away
from everybody, to hide.
Uh, it was a place we could do
our illegal underage drinking
and not get caught.
That was the-- the hangout,
and that's-- that's what we did.
You know, 15, 16, what-- what--
however old I was at, uh
We did way too much drinking
(CHUCKLES) for our age.
But that was where we were
hanging out that night.
(OMINOUS MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JOHNSON: John Jones
justifies not thinking
Maurice is a suspect
because even Hector Polanco
couldn't get him to confess.
And Polanco
can get people to confess
even if they're innocent.
Maurice doesn't confess himself
on the tape,
but he does say Forrest told him
very specific things
that were happening
during the commission
of the crime.
JOHNSON: And he doesn't say
those things to John Jones
when Jones
is taking a statement.
Evidently, John Jones
never knew the story
that Maurice told
to Hector Polanco.
And Hector Polanco
never bothered
to look at this
written statement
and see that it's different
than the story he had heard.
Any time you get
somebody telling a story,
and they tell one story,
and then they tell
another story,
you don't stop and get--
until you get it resolved
why their stories are different.
You know, Hector Polanco had,
at some point,
kind of gotten a bad reputation.
And I'm not sure
Jones even cared
what Maurice told
Hector Polanco.
I get the impression
he wouldn't have
trusted anything
Polanco said anyhow.
If I had been investigating,
I think anybody
would have wanted to know
if he's telling you
a different story
than he just told somebody else.
And, you know,
they wired Maurice up,
they say something like
"Forrest didn't know
what he was talking about,
had no idea what was going on."
And they also interviewed
Robert Springsteen
and Michael Scott
because they were
along in the car.
MARGARET BROWN:
No.
Okay.
MARGARET:
I'm just like
(CHUCKLES)
MARGARET:
Okay. Um
You're assuming
some things there that--
MARGARET:
Well, nobody called him Mace.
MARGARET:
(SIGHS) Uh
I-- I-- Yeah.
I'm trying to think how to
Well, I-- I-- so for--
for Maurice and--
and bringing my name up,
I mean, I-- you know,
of course
I-- because I doubt that he
really knew any of our names,
uh, back then
Um And then obviously--
Yet my name is Mac
and that's pretty much
the only name I went--
I didn't go by Mace.
I don't know
where that came from,
but, um, we were easy targets.
People knew
we hung out down there
and him not knowing my name
or names of some of the other
people down there
you know, but, you know,
there's a group of people--
tho-- those were the one--
Uh, it's a deflection
I don't
Yeah.
Maurice's story has always been,
Forrest took his gun,
and Forrest probably did it.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON:
But I thought it was more likely
that Maurice was actually
the one doing the murders.
I thought it was
a bit suspicious.
We had these
conflicting statements,
the one of the recording
that I had already heard,
and then the one
that he had written out in 1991.
And I wanted to get
whatever he claimed
the truth to be right now.
So I talked to him at his house.
(GRIPPING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON:
So, in addition to Forrest,
he says he was
with Michael Scott
and Robert Springsteen
that night.
I ended up contacting
each of them by phone,
and I asked them, just,
"What did you do that day?"
And they each told me a story,
and they all involved
the other three people,
and they were
all different things
about what they did.
I could not clear them.
I could not take their alibi.
Their alibis were each other,
and they were all different.
But they each talked
about going to San Antonio
the night after
the murders happened.
They were all together
in that stolen Pathfinder.
And each one of them remembered
stopping somewhere along the way
and buying a newspaper
and as they're driving,
somebody reading the article
about the yogurt shop murders.
Teenagers in a stolen car,
driving to see some girlfriend,
stopping to get the Sunday paper
in the first place,
is kind of suspicious to me.
So we started working
to find out everything we could
about these guys.
John Jones described them
as dudes without dates
who would hang out
at Northcross Mall
and, you know,
watching girls, basically.
I thought it was weird
that they all four
were hanging out
in the first place.
I mean, they might have
known each other,
but I never thought of them
hanging out.
KEVIN:
I didn't know them as a group.
I wouldn't have made
those connections ever.
Not until I met Forrest later
that I knew
he had hung out with Maurice.
Forrest, he was just
kind of a quiet guy.
He liked to work,
he liked to work on cars.
Anything you needed,
he would help.
AMANDA STATHAM: He always
came off as a sweet guy.
Really non-assuming,
just a nice dude.
BEVERLY LOWRY:
He was the only one
who had
a stable home environment,
but he was a follower
and the person he followed
was Maurice.
MAC LUDIN: We thought
we were the coolest kids
in the neighborhood.
Maurice and his guys thought
they were the coolest kids
in the neighborhood.
And yeah,
we did not like each other.
BEVERLY: Maurice Pierce was
always thought of
as the ringleader.
He always had access to a car.
Didn't he have, like--
It was an old police car.
-It had the spotlight on it?
-Yeah.
Yeah. I thought
it was real cool.
AMANDA: He was like a grifter.
He's the kind of guy
that would steal someone's dog,
wait a while,
and then return it to him
for a fucking reward.
Just no moral
-anything, like--
-I was afraid of him.
-Yeah, he was creepy.
-Now, I'm afraid of nobody
-Yeah.
-but I was
a little afraid of him.
BEVERLY: Then there were
Michael Scott
and Rob Springsteen.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BEVERLY:
They had broken family lives.
They were kids who wanted to be
special in some way,
and the only way
they could manage it
was to be bad.
AMANDA: I met Michael Scott
my first year of high school.
He was like, you know,
T-shirt and jeans and long hair,
like, sort of pothead dude.
His mother didn't live
too far away,
and she was working
during the day,
so I'd skip school and go
smoke dope at his mom's house.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
AMANDA: And then
there was Robert.
Robert was creepy.
-SARAH STATHAM: Creepy as fuck.
-AMANDA: Creepy as fuck.
Really just outlier
of the outliers.
Really
I'd sell him mushrooms.
-Did you?
-Yeah.
He looked like somebody, like,
that would try to show you
his dick in a parking lot.
(CHUCKLES) Yes! He did.
-(SNORTS) Sorry. But he did.
-He did.
BEVERLY: It is hard
to make the leap
to see them carrying
something like this off.
Now, there's a thing
about what kind of
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
appearance people make
and who could commit
this murder.
It's really dangerous to get off
into who could commit a crime,
any kind of crime,
but particularly, a murder.
(FOREBODING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(WATER TRICKLING)
JOHNSON: Our plan was
to talk to people
that were in the creek
that night
to see if they confirmed
seeing Maurice up there,
seeing his car,
seeing him do some things
that he had told
Hector Polanco he had done.
So we brought them in
one at a time.
RON LARA:
-MAC LUDIN:
-LARA:
MAC:
When I got the phone call to
"Hey, can you-- can you
help us out with this?"
You know, "We know
you were in the area.
Maybe you had seen something,"
and you know, me being,
"Well, yeah, sure.
I'll-- Whatever I can do
to help, I'll come down."
My first thought is,
"What took you so long
and why did you
not question us?"
We were local young punk kids.
We hung out
in that area all the time.
LARA:
KEVIN: (CHUCKLES)
LARA:
KEVIN: (SCOFFS)
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 1:
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 1:
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 1:
LARA:
CREEK PERSON 2:
LARA:
CREEK PERSON 3:
LARA:
CREEK PERSON 3:
-LARA:
-CREEK PERSON 3:
Since we were able
to kind of confirm
the story Maurice told Polanco,
we moved on to Forrest Welborn.
LARA: I'll be back with you
in about 15 minutes.
(DOOR CREAKING)
(FORREST GRUNTS)
LARA:
FORREST WELBORN:
LARA:
FORREST:
LARA: Okay.
-FORREST:
-LARA:
FORREST:
-LARA:
-FORREST:
APD OFFICER:
FORREST:
-(DOOR CREAKING)
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON: I always hoped
this case would be solved.
And sometimes you never know
if it's going to be solved
until you actually solve it.
I never had the feeling
we were on the right track
until after Michael Scott's
first day of interview.
LARA:
MICHAEL SCOTT:
LARA:
-MICHAEL: Yeah.
-LARA:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA: Mm-hmm.
APD OFFICER:
MICHAEL:
(TAPE WHIRRING)
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
JOHNSON:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL: Yes.
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-JOHNSON:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
JOHNSON: As soon as we got
the investigator
starting to write up
his confession,
we sent some investigators
to West Virginia
to try to talk
to Robert Springsteen.
He had gone back
to West Virginia
like two or three weeks
after the murders
to live with his mother.
So we went and talked to him
at the local
police department there.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
LARA:
LARA:
LARA:
-ROB SPRINGSTEEN:
-LARA:
LARA:
LARA:
LARA:
-ROBERT:
-LARA:
-ROBERT:
-LARA:
-ROBERT:
-LARA:
(SIGHS)
You didn't.
(GRIPPING MUSIC BUILDING) ♪
MICHAEL:
JOHNSON: All the interviews
with Michael Scott
and the interview
with Robert Springsteen
were voluntary interviews.
They were free to leave
at any time.
ROBERT:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-MICHAEL:
LARA:
ROBERT:
LARA:
ROBERT:
MICHAEL:
LARA:
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
REPORTER 1:
The Austin Police Department
and the Travis County
DA's office
say their investigation
has ended
in sweet success.
DICK ELLIS: Now,
after nearly eight years,
police have arrested
four suspects.
These are the words
thousands here in Austin
have been waiting to hear
for nearly eight years.
On December 6, 1991,
we as a city lost our innocence.
Today, as a community,
we can hopefully
finally begin
the process of healing.
I have to tell you
that I am extremely proud
of the members
of this police department.
These arrests culminate
nearly eight years of hard work,
but it's an effort
that won't end
until the jury comes back
with the guilty verdict.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BARBARA AYRES-WILSON:
This is not the end of what
we have been trying to do,
but only the beginning.
It is also important
that these four people
are allowed to have
a fair and good trial.
PAM AYERS:
We've all talked about it.
We felt like our lives were
just now
beginning to get back
to a somewhat normal state,
not like it was
for so many years.
But, uh, now it's going
to start all over again.
It's-- We're going to start
December 6, '91,
all over again.
MIKE HUCKABAY:
If you could stop time
and get back to basics
right after those girls
were killed
we come up with suspects,
the four guys.
I go right back.
I go right back.
Those guys that we got
they did it. They did it.
It sounded good.
I mean, I dug the shirt out.
All right. And then
Huck and I were talking.
He goes, "Well,
all I got is a confession."
I go, "That's it?"
"Yeah. From just two of 'em."
It's a confession. That's
that's like a two-legged stool.
It ain't going to stand.
You need that third leg.
MARGARET:
Evidence.
ERIN MORIARTY: After eight years
and no physical evidence
to tie any of the four men
to the murders,
why did the Austin police
focus on them?
As adults,
all four have led quiet lives
with jobs and families.
Maurice Pierce's sister.
It's hard to talk about this,
isn't it?
-Mm-hmm.
-ERIN: Why? Tell me.
(SNIFFLES)
Because they've taken
his life away.
ROBIN MOSS: Sometimes
I think about the death penalty
and what-- I can't believe--
I won't let myself believe
he could possibly be convicted.
ERIN: How long
have you been here now?
Two months.
Did you ever think
you'd be in here?
No.
The only thing we ever had
on Forrest was a party
to an aggravated robbery.
We didn't have a case
to even suspect
that he had an intention
to be a party to a murder.
MICHAEL:
ERIN: In a surprise move
REPORTER 2:
Any comment, Forrest?
ERIN: the judge lets Forrest
go home on bail.
SPEAKER: It's okay.
Trying not to get too excited
about not getting indicted
because I never know
what's going to happen
in the future.
ERIN: Forrest Welborn
was offered a deal,
and they would have
left him alone
if he would testify
against the other three guys.
And he said,
"No, I'm not going to."
You know,
"I'm not going to lie."
That's what he goes.
"I'm not going to lie
about something like that."
ERIN: A grand jury indicts
Robert Springsteen,
Michael Scott,
and Maurice Pierce.
All three will be tried
for first degree murder.
If convicted,
Springsteen and Scott
face the death penalty.
STAFF MEMBER:
My understanding is
that you all have
contacted your own attorney.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
JOE: With a death penalty case,
there is always
the tremendous burden
because a great deal depends
on your representation.
Will he live? Will he die?
Will you do the job right?
Will you make a mistake?
And with Robert,
because of the nature
of his confession,
the statements he makes,
I had real doubt as to whether
we could ever push
for a finding of not guilty
-APD OFFICER:
-(ROBERT SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
APD OFFICER:
ROBERT:
JOE: when it's the words
of the accused himself
saying, "I did this."
And he's saying it
into a video camera.
But I want you to,
just for a moment,
imagine the stress he was under
when he was making
that statement.
The fear, the uncertainty,
the suddenness,
all contributed
to Springsteen's statement.
APD OFFICER:
ROBERT:
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
CARLOS GARCIA: I've always
tried to be very detached
so that when I would get a case
in front of me,
I try and strip away any emotion
and anything like that.
I mean, our job
is to just study--
figure out what the facts are.
With Michael,
what I started with
was his written confession.
I started to read it,
and I remember getting
maybe to about
page three or four,
and it was too much for me.
It was overwhelming
to read this horrific detail
of raping these girls
and killing them.
I couldn't read it objectively.
My biased viewpoint
at the time was
people don't confess
to something they did not do.
I had to put that aside
just to objectively review
this case.
So I put it away
for about a month.
I mean, I learned
everything I could
about the crime scenes.
I come back to it.
As I started to read it,
it was like,
"Okay, wait a minute.
That didn't happen.
That didn't happen.
That's totally inaccurate.
Why is he getting
so many things wrong?"
This confession clearly
does not match this crime scene.
Interrogation practice,
there's a book. I have them all.
So this is
Criminal Interrogations
and Confessions,
fourth edition.
This is considered the bible
of interrogation practice
in the United States.
Through extended research
and years of experience,
John Reed and Associates
has developed a nine-step
interrogation process.
These guys are criticized
by social psychologists,
because they're saying,
"Look, the method that
they're teaching in here
can lead to false confessions."
Step number two
and step number seven
are the most essential steps
of the interrogation process.
Give the suspect
psychological justification
for committing the crime.
Suggest to the suspect
a good reason and a bad reason
so that we make it easy for them
to make that
first admission of guilt.
CARLOS:
Michael's biggest problem was
he trusted the police.
MICHAEL:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
CARLOS: He says, "Guys,
either I don't remember
or two, I'm lying."
Well, there was a third option.
What's the third option?
MARGARET:
Yes.
But he didn't consider it
because he doesn't believe
they lie.
Even Springsteen said,
"Guys, I could've sworn I went
to Rocky Horror Picture Show."
"Well, I guess I was wrong."
"No, actually you weren't.
You were right.
They lied to you."
Which is what this guy say
it's okay to do, is to lie.
That's the problem
with this method.
The police are using techniques
they have no idea
how powerful they are.
Because if you've got
a subject that believes you
when you lie to them--
"You're the authority figure.
I believe you're
telling me the truth.
Why would you lie to me?"
That is what happened
to Michael Scott,
but that's not all.
Reed would say they used
some tactics from us,
but they did all the stuff
we told them not to do.
-ROBERT MERRILL:
-MICHAEL: I don't--
MERRILL:
CARLOS:
Aside from the nine steps,
there's a couple of things
it says.
It says, "Don't do these things,
because if you do these things,
that could lead
to a false confession.
You cannot threaten people.
Don't promise anything
to people.
Do not feed
false theories of memory."
First of all,
you have to understand
about how memory works.
SHOMER: Memory abhors gaps.
You don't want
an incomplete puzzle.
So basically from inferences,
from assumptions,
from incorporation
of information
from other people,
which you've come
to believe is reasonable,
these pieces
are literally created
and they fill in the gaps.
CARLOS: So, for example,
they tell him,
"There's something
in your mind, Michael,
that's called revivification."
APD OFFICER:
CARLOS: You can replay it
if you want to.
We can extract it
from your mind.
APD OFFICER:
He believes it,
so it becomes this exercise
in trying to extract memories
that he believes he has.
"Hey, Michael, you were
telling me that you thought
the girls might have been
tied up."
"You thought."
The key word is "thought."
The jump from "you think
they were tied up" to
LARA:
It's a very subtle suggestion,
but it's there nonetheless.
And so Mike starts to say,
"Yeah, I think maybe shoelaces."
"Oh, come on, Mike,
you know it wasn't shoelaces.
Come on, what was it?"
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
-LARA
-MICHAEL:
He finally hits on one--
one the one that it was correct.
"There you go, Mike.
There you go."
MICHAEL:
LARA:
-MICHAEL:
-LARA:
CARLOS: And so what happens?
He starts to commingle
these memories.
Now the mind does not know
which is false and what is not.
And that's the problem.
That's how you create
false memories.
That could lead
to a false confession.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
REPORTER: Good evening.
Thanks for joining us.
Robert Springsteen's
capital murder trial
is underway.
Evidence was introduced today
in court.
There was a ring
that one of the girls
was wearing,
as well as a belt buckle.
The most difficult thing
to see was
a crime scene photo
of Amy Ayers.
It showed her lying face down
inside the yogurt shop.
Family members looked away.
(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BOB AYERS:
DA's office was telling us,
"Well, on such and such day,
they're going to show them
crime scene photos."
And we just told him,
"We're going to be there."
Usually, protocol
is the parents aren't there.
I said, "Well, we will be."
There was 14 people on the jury.
If they got to sit there
and take it,
well, I just figured
we could too.
Not only did they strangle her,
they pistol-whipped her
and they shot her twice.
That is a cold, cold person.
They could do that to a kid,
and they feel like part of that
is because Amy was
trying to get away.
So then the thing is,
was she first?
Was she last?
I mean, you know, all of that
runs through your mind.
And I know worse things
happen to people
but they're not mine.
(SOMBER MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
SONORA THOMAS:
I did go to the trials.
It was just
a very strange experience
'cause I remember looking
and thinking like,
"That just looks like a person."
You know,
you have this image that,
like, somebody with horns
is going to walk in.
And instead, this-- this sort of
homely-looking person walks in.
BOB: I looked at him
and he looked at me
and there was nothing there.
It was ice.
It was clear.
I'm telling you,
his eyes were like ice.
And I just, I got--
I had chills.
And that's the first time
I saw the evil.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MIKE LYNCH: I'm going to be
reading from a journal
I kept during this
capital murder trial.
I guess I kept it
because I kind of wanted
some sort of history.
But more than that,
it was kind of therapeutic.
"The yogurt shop case
has created a level
of tension and scrutiny,
extreme even
for a death penalty case."
There's gonna be
graphic evidence.
It's gonna be stuff
that you don't wanna hear.
There's gonna be things
you don't want to look at.
There is not a shred
of physical evidence
to connect Mr. Springsteen
to have commissioned this crime.
The only evidence
that was even close to saying,
"Well, maybe Michael
did something,"
was one witness
who came in saying,
"Yeah, he said words
to the effect of 'I did it.'"
BARBARA: One of the days
of going to court,
there was this young woman.
She had a big tattoo
from shoulder to shoulder
and a strapless top on.
I was like, "Who is this girl?"
Mike Scott's friend had been
this 13-year-old
kind of punk rock kid
back in 1991, and she testified.
The way I remember it
is Michael was pacing around
our living room and,
you know, I was like,
"Dude, you can talk to me,
like, I'm-- I'm your friend."
And we're both staring out
into the yard.
He goes, "I did it."
LARA:
AMANDA:
MIKE HALL: She said
that Mike said to her,
"We raped 'em and we killed 'em,
blah, blah, blah,
and it was just crazy,
blah, blah, blah."
She was a little,
I would call, on the fringes.
But when she spoke on--
on the stand,
she was articulate.
He confessed to her.
That's powerful.
CARLOS: This is one girl
eight years after the fact,
and they didn't have
anything to match up.
What's the detail?
"Did it." What do you mean?
"Oh, he said he did it."
That that's not much.
If you look at the evidence
against these men,
the prosecution
really didn't have anything.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
"The defense attempted
to introduce expert testimony
from a memory expert
concerning how memory works
and how persuasion
and suggestion
under some circumstances
can get people
to remember things
they didn't actually experience.
The defense wanted
the jury to hear
how a reasonably normal person
could be convinced
through regular
police interrogation
that he had committed
a horrific act
despite being
absolutely innocent.
However, the memory expert
wanted to testify
to more than I thought
the law allowed."
So I tried to find a point
where he could be helpful
without going over the line.
I think, maybe, I felt like
I wanted to give him more
but shouldn't under the law.
So, I guess that bothered me.
ROBERT: How do you know
it's a true confession
or a false confession?
You don't.
That's why we have juries.
And juries have to make
that judgment.
But juries should know
how these things work.
They should know that
there are certain techniques,
certain procedures
that the police use
that increase the probability
of false confessions.
They should know that.
MICHAEL: I did think for a while
that I had something
to do with this crime.
It's weird, 'cause even now,
y-- one still questions himself,
"Did I have something
to do with it?"
(GRUNTS)
They really screwed me over.
The approach that I was taking
from the beginning
with this false confession idea
is that Mike was someone
who became convinced
that he had murdered
these girls.
We talked to some experts
who who said this is--
This yo-- This case
with Michael Scott
is one of those cases
that will keep you up at night.
Um, because, uh, that is not how
these interrogation techniques
should work,
but they are powerful
and they do
elicit results like this.
They also elicit
a less interesting,
less psychologically
interesting result,
which is that
you will also get another kind
of false confession,
and that's just the confession
to get the hell out of the room.
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
ROBERT: Needless to say,
I wouldn't ever do it again.
It was a really,
absolutely jackass,
stupid thing to do,
but it was the only thing
that I could think of
to do at that time.
The thing that kept
effectively running
through my head was,
"Okay, these guys
have got something
really screwed up somewhere.
I've got to get out
of this room.
I've got to get to an attorney.
I've got to talk to an attorney
and get all this stuff
straightened out."
They kept telling me
I could leave,
but they were sitting
in front of the door.
ROBERT:
JOHNSON: When that has been
brought up,
that the confessions
were coerced,
so they're not true.
That's not how I authenticate
a confession.
What determines
if the confession is true
is that they reveal
some information
that they would not
have known otherwise
and there was no other way
for them to find out
that information.
LARA:
LARA:
JOHNSON: He indicated
the position of Amy's body.
Body position has never been out
to anyone anywhere,
and nobody knows that
unless they were there.
You couldn't even describe it
to somebody else to act out.
In addition to that,
each confession confirms things
from the other's confession.
APD OFFICER:
MICHAEL:
APD OFFICER:
-MICHAEL:
-APD OFFICER:
APD OFFICER:
APD OFFICER::
-APD OFFICER::
-ROBERT:
(PENSIVE MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JOHNSON: Okay, this is nothing
like it used to be.
So this is the area,
just inside the back door,
where there's shelves
and the bodies
were kind of
right next to the shelves.
This wall wasn't here. You know,
all this has completely changed.
MICHAEL:
LARA:
MICHAEL:
CARLOS: But that's not how
the fire started.
The fire did not start
on these bodies.
That would have been
practically impossible.
What APD knew in 1991
was that this fire
started on the shelves.
Fire makes patterns
when it burns.
So there's something called
a V pattern.
Looks like that.
So the fire burns here.
If it's next to a wall,
you'll see a big old V.
And so this V pattern is
on the wall of this freezer
and on this sidewall.
The fire investigator
had told them back in 1991.
The fire started in the shel--
on the shelves.
LARA:
CARLOS: Now,
after all this interrogation,
Michael Scott makes the fire
start on the girls.
Well, that does not fit.
Paul Johnson knows this.
So they went and got
this ATF fire guy
to come and tell the jury
that the fire started
on the girls.
Every time you get something,
a confession,
that isn't quite
like you thought it was
you go back and see,
could it be true?
MICHAEL:
APD OFFICER:
MICHAEL:
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JOHNSON: So we went
to our expert
and he came back with a report
that the fire
not only could have,
but I think he would say
it definitely did start
on the bodies.
And then as it increased
from where their bodies were,
caught the things
on the shelves on fire.
Saying we changed it
to match the confessions
No. (SCOFFS)
We're just checking out,
could it be true?
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
MIKE: "In addition to
the factual issues for the jury,
there were several
significant legal issues
for the court.
Foremost, the admissibility
of the defendant's
own statement.
The more difficult question
involved the admissibility
of the co-defendant's
statements."
(GRIPPING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MIKE: In this case,
Springsteen was on trial.
Scott had taken
the Fifth Amendment.
He hadn't had his trial yet.
He wasn't about
to get on the stand
in Springsteen's case
and answer any questions.
And the defense would say,
"I can't cross-examine Scott
about this statement.
Therefore,
it should not come in."
AMBER FARRELLY: You can't
use these confessions
against each other
because you have
the Fifth Amendment right
to not incriminate yourself
and not testify.
You have
the Sixth Amendment right
to confrontation.
So if you accuse me of a crime,
then you have to come
into court by God
and look me in the face
and testify
about why you think I did this.
Robert had the right
not to testify,
and we can't call Scott
to the stand
because he has
the Fifth Amendment right
to remain silent.
So that's blatant consti--
blatant constitutional error.
MIKE: So what I did
was whittle everything out
that referred to anybody else
except what Scott
was admitting that he did.
In the statement I allowed in,
there was
absolutely no reference
to any other individual
involved in this crime.
So it was just Scott saying,
"I did this and I did this,
and I did that."
"After studying the law,
I think I made
the soundest decision I could.
If it turns out to be wrong
in the eyes of a higher court
looking back, then so be it."
JOE: I made no secret
of telling the judge
that I thought
the trial had been unfair
at virtually every turn.
When Mike Scott's
redacted confession came in
on a Friday afternoon
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
Robert leaned toward me
and whispered,
"I'm a dead man, aren't I?"
And I said,
"Yes, Robert, you are."
MIKE: Could the defendant
please rise?
"We, the jury,
find the defendant,
Robert Springsteen IV,
guilty of the offense
of capital murder."
Signed by
the foreperson of the jury.
And at this time,
Mr. Springsteen,
the court sentences you
to death.
It was one of the worst days
of my life as a lawyer.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BARBARA: It was awful.
You'd think it would be great.
It was awful.
I was in the courtroom.
Me and my mother
were trembling and shaking.
And crying, not because
I like these people, I don't,
but (HESITATES)
he's going to die.
He's going
This man's going to die.
And now we have blood
on our hands, too.
(CHUCKLES)
-No, not right now.
-I'm sorry. (SOBS)
It's over.
REPORTER 1: Is this
what you wanted, Barbara?
Well, we want
some kind of ending.
(SOBS)
It's
REPORTER 2: How do you feel?
Like it's a step
in the right direction
to bring these boys to justice.
(PENSIVE MUSIC BUILDS) ♪
REPORTER 3: It took
the Travis County jury
less than three hours today
to sentence Michael Scott
to life in prison.
RONNIE EARLE: We asked the jury
to consider the death penalty.
They heard the evidence
and decided
that a life sentence
was appropriate.
JOHNSON: When the verdicts
came down, I was very happy.
Of course, the verdicts
in a criminal case
has to be unanimous,
so there was nobody
among those 24 jurors
that had any doubt
that these were
the right suspects.
Maurice was the third one,
so we were going to try
Maurice next.
But that never happened.
The Travis County
District Attorney announced
he will not seek a murder trial
in the investigation
of Maurice Pierce.
NEWSCASTER 1: What led
District Attorney Ronnie Earl
to give up
even before the trial began?
RONNIE: The evidence shows
Maurice Pierce's guilt.
We just don't have enough
to prove his guilt
beyond reasonable doubt.
JOHNSON: I didn't think
we had enough evidence
to assure a conviction
because Maurice never confessed.
NEWSCASTER 2:
Surrounded by his wife
and ten-year-old daughter,
Maurice Pierce is free,
no longer waiting
for his day in court.
"When I was detained
and arrested,
I proclaimed that I was innocent
of all the charges
that were filed against me,
and I am standing here today
with that same proclamation."
REPORTER 1: Maurice Pierce,
you're a free man.
-How do you feel to be out now?
-MAURICE PIERCE: Happy.
NEWSCASTER 3: Austin police
released a statement
emphasizing that Pierce
was not exonerated
and that their investigation
continues.
Remember,
their initial investigation
focused on Maurice Pierce.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
AMBER: Their belief
was that he was the ringleader,
the mastermind
behind all of this.
The only reason
Michael and Robert
come into play
is because of Maurice Pierce.
He's the central focus
of all of this.
JOHNSON: When he was released,
it was always with the intention
of we're going
to still go after him.
We do not have the evidence
to convict him right now.
But life is long.
JOHNSON: I think there's
more evidence out there.
I believe that
there are other people
that know very specific things
about what happened
in and around the yogurt shop
that night
that we have not developed yet.
(DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
CARLOS: March of 2008,
we get a call
from the judge's office
saying, "Hey, can you come
and meet right now?"
When we got there,
prosecutors said, "We've been
doing more DNA testing
and we have found
a full profile."
Our evidence includes DNA
from one male
whose identity
is not yet known to us.
Questions.
The DNA doesn't belong
to Michael.
It doesn't belong
to Robert Springsteen.
It is not
any one of these four boys.
So you have to then explain,
where does it come from?
Well, it comes from the killer.
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