The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025) s01e05 Episode Script

(TENSE STRING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(INDISTINCT CHATTER CONTINUES)
Yeah, this has really been
a long-standing nightmare
for the Austin community,
especially for individuals
who have lived with this
for such a very long time,
and
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
(TENSE STRING MUSIC
CONTINUES) ♪
KIRK WATSON:
Good morning, everyone.
Thank you to all of you that
are here with us this morning.
Over three decades
after a horrible crime took
the lives of four teenage girls,
and changed Austin forever,
our hearts haven't healed.
They're still broken
for the precious girls we lost.
More than a quarter-century ago,
in a circumstance
much like this today,
I said that Austin lost
its innocence
the night those young souls
became victims.
Time has passed.
We are different people
and a different city.
And while there's no change
to the horror,
no diminishing the grief,
we can finally express
a deep sigh
a release that comes
from knowing.
Today, finally,
we have an answer.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
("DEVIL TOWN"
BY ALLEGRA KRIEGER PLAYING) ♪
I was living in a devil town ♪
Didn't know
It was a devil town ♪
Oh Lord
It really brings me down ♪
About the devil town ♪
I was living in a devil town ♪
Didn't know
It was a devil town ♪
Oh Lord
It really brings me down ♪
About the devil town ♪
(SONG CONCLUDES) ♪
(ETHEREAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SONORA THOMAS:
I used to babysit this family
on this street, and I've
always tried to remember
which house it is.
And there's a street
on the right side
called Sonora Street.
I think we might have
passed it already.
I don't quite know
this neighborhood
as well as I used to.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SONORA: When the detective
called me on Friday,
just within minutes,
I couldn't hear
what he was saying.
I need to, like,
hear this again ten times
before I know enough
to even ask a question.
(TURN SIGNAL CLICKING)
SONORA: And I can just
feel my mind racing.
I mean, it's only been
three or four days
since I've had
this new piece of information,
so I know this will settle.
But right now, I just feel
Yeah, I definitely
don't feel my body.
I thought it was
always farther down.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-Yeah, I'm not really sure.
-MARGARET BROWN: Yeah.
I remember there being
a big tree, but
now I'm sort of disoriented.
I thought there was a vase
that was sticking up. Okay.
-(BIRDS CHIRPING)
-(SONORA SIGHS)
MARGARET:
Yeah, that'd be good.
Just a few minutes.
We can leave in a minute.
(SIGHS)
(INSECTS CHIRPING)
(SONORA HUMMING SOFT MELODY) ♪
(CONTINUES HUMMING) ♪
Surround you ♪
-(CONTINUES
SINGING INDISTINCTLY) ♪
-(OMINOUS MUSIC OVERLAPPING) ♪
(SONORA CONTINUES HUMMING) ♪
-(KIDS SHOUTING, LAUGHING)
-(OMINOUS MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
BOB AYERS: They drove all
the way from Austin to tell us.
(SONORA CONTINUES HUMMING) ♪
PAM AYERS:
I feel kind of numb in a way.
I think it's 'cause
it's still so new to us.
SHAWN AYERS: In one sentence,
it went from
thirty-something years
of thinking one thing to
"No, it's totally
something else."
BARBARA AYRES-WILSON:
When they explained it to us,
I just felt bad,
'cause they had already had
to talk to every other parent.
It's a lot of people
to have to repeat this story to.
BOB:
He was looking at us and said,
"I've got some good news."
And then there was a long pause.
I'll never forget that.
He said
"I know who killed
your daughter."
(SONORA HUMMING SOFT MELODY) ♪
(CONTINUES HUMMING) ♪
(DAN JACKSON HUMMING) ♪
(MUTTERS INDISTINCTLY)
When I took the case over
in early June of 2022,
we talked
about the physical evidence,
how limited it was.
(SOMBER PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: One of the few things
we had was
that .380 casing found
in the floor drain.
It had been uploaded
into the ATF's database,
and it never got any hits.
JOHN JONES:
The lands and grooves told us
exactly what kind of gun it was.
We put that
on the wire coast-to-coast.
We knew what we were
looking for exactly.
DAN: The system's called NIBIN,
National Integrated Ballistics
Information Network.
So, think of, like,
the national DNA database,
but instead of DNA,
it's spent shell casings.
The way the gun holds
the casing,
it creates these microscopic
little indentions,
and then the software
can compare those
if the same gun was used
in different crimes.
So, I thought, "Well, you know,
it's been a long time.
I assume the data
is still in the database,
but let me double check,
and maybe there's something
we can do with it now."
For whatever reason,
I don't know why,
something told me
to go down that rabbit hole.
It had been uploaded
at least twice.
'97, and then again in '07,
and no matches.
If it's been that long,
the software now is light-years
ahead of what it was.
It's like three-dimensional
type stuff now.
So, July 2nd, they went
and pulled it from evidence.
And that afternoon
they called me,
and I was actually
just left town for vacation.
And I was sitting on the beach
in Port Aransas,
and they were like,
"Hey, are you sitting down?"
I was like, "Yeah,
I'm sitting down on the beach.
What's up?" I was like,
"Do I need a drink for this?"
And he's like, "Yeah, you need
to pour yourself a drink.
We got a hit."
(INTRIGUING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN:
To another unsolved homicide
in 1998 in Lexington, Kentucky.
REPORTER 1: This is
43-year-old Linda Rutledge.
Police say
on November 7th, 1998,
they responded to help
the Lexington Fire Department
with a fire at a business.
When they got there,
they found a woman dead
inside the back of the store,
later confirmed
to be Linda Rutledge.
When they found Linda's body
here on 121 Malabu Drive,
they found injuries
unrelated to the fire.
We cover all the bases
with any fire.
That's what we do
anytime we find a body
where it's suspicious in nature.
REPORTER 2:
Ms. Rutledge's death
had since been ruled a homicide.
REPORTER 3:
No suspect or suspects
have ever been found.
DAN: This woman had been killed
in a strip mall
in a retail space,
her parents' hearing aid store.
She would use
the hearing aid store
after hours to go change.
I think she'd been bartending,
and she was gonna
go change clothes,
and go out with friends.
So, she stopped there,
and never made it to the bar.
(MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪
DAN: Later that night
or early next morning,
somebody was driving by
and saw the fire.
Just like yogurt shop,
the fire department put
the fire out,
and found her body
in the back.
She had been shot
in the head with a .380.
Just like yogurt shop,
she had been sexually assaulted.
Front door's locked
from the inside,
and so, obviously, probably
went out the back door, which,
if you look at the back door
of that strip mall,
it looks just like yogurt shop.
It's like an alley.
Probably most strip malls look
the same.
I got back from vacation,
met with Lexington PD.
Tried to find
any sort of common link.
Their casing had only
been uploaded in 2024,
so a year ago.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
DAN: At the end of the week,
we didn't really have
any other connection.
(SOMBER STRING
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: You know,
Lexington wasn't anything
in our radar for our case,
and they didn't have
any Texas connections.
Same gun,
seven years later, similar MO.
We collaborated
on a testing strategy.
One of the things they had
was a sexual assault kit.
So, we don't have a DNA profile
that would be good enough
for CODIS.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
CODIS, the Combined
DNA Index System,
so it's a national database
held by the FBI.
(DRAMATIC SYNTH
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PRESENTER:
The CODIS program has had
many success stories
since it began.
As the database increases,
so does the number
of solved crimes.
DAN: You have to have
a certain amount of DNA.
It has to be a certain quality.
You gotta have like a full
what's called
a full CODIS profile
to get it uploaded.
Partial or degraded profiles
would get false positives.
(INTRIGUING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: I said, "Well, we don't
have a CODIS profile.
All we have is our Y-STR.
Do y'all have a Y-STR?"
And said, no, they don't have
one for this case.
REPORTER 1: The prosecution
asked for a delay
to sift through
recent DNA evidence.
REPORTER 2: A Y-STR profile,
it doesn't match
any of your defendants.
REPORTER 3:
There is no database
for this particular type
of profile.
This is a Y-only profile.
And there's no database
for that.
DAN: Y-STR profiles,
the male chromosome DNA
that those tests look for.
There's not an automated
searchable database.
It's not like you can
just upload it
and search continuously
because the nature
of a Y profile is that
they're not unique
to an individual.
So, you would get hits that are
totally unrelated to your case.
What you can do
is a manual search.
Take the profile I have,
and physically sit down,
and type it in
against other Y profiles
in other cases in your state.
(MOUSE CLICKING)
DAN: So, if this guy
is from Kentucky,
you can see
if anything matches up
with a known offender there.
That's when I was like,
"Well, why don't we just do that
for the whole country?"
Not all labs collect
these Y profiles,
but more and more
are starting to.
We asked everybody
around the country,
and everybody came back
with nothing
except South Carolina.
They got a hit.
We got 27 for 27 markers.
A Y profile
from a sexual assault
and homicide
out of Greenville,
South Carolina, from 1990.
(SOMBER PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: They said
they wanted to review it.
We got to do
some quality assurance,
make sure we typed it in
all correctly, 'cause it's a
you know, it's human error.
We think because we were
the first people to ever ask.
They had never gotten
a request before.
They had to make sure
that this
could be a candidate
for our crime
before releasing
more information.
I said, "Okay, no problem."
So, that was like
a really long two weeks to wait.
When I talked
to the detective there,
he didn't know anything
about our case.
And I said something about,
"Well, our quadruple"
And he was like,
"Quadruple? Like, what?"
(MUSIC TURNS TENSE) ♪
DAN: "Yeah, you can look it up."
I was like,
"There's actually
a documentary airing right now."
(CHUCKLES)
'Cause this is right when
I think it was--
episode three was out.
(CHUCKLES) So I was like,
"If you wanna get caught up
to speed, there's
a really good documentary.
It's on HBO.
Uh, I'm in episode four."
And then he said,
"Let me ask you something.
Were your victims tied up
with their own clothing?"
And I said, "Yeah."
And he goes, "Yeah, ours too."
They used some of her pantyhose,
I believe.
And that's when I was like,
"All right,
we're onto something here."
They sent me a report saying,
"This is an affirmative link
to Greenville, South Carolina,
sexual assault and homicide.
Here's the case number
and the date of offense."
So, I Googled the date,
and "Greenville,
South Carolina,"
and of course,
this murder pops up on Google.
A woman was found murdered
in Greenville County.
She's Jenny Zitricki,
strangled and raped
inside her own apartment.
REPORTER 1:
Found dead in a bathtub,
the water still running.
INTERVIEWEE: A violent
serial rapist and murderer.
(SINISTER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: So, that manual search,
turns out
not only had
no one ever asked before,
they got a hit
to a serial killer.
REPORTER 2: Investigators
across multiple states
are working to see if the killer
may be connected to other cases.
DAN: So, again,
you gotta understand,
thousands of men may have
this matching "Y" profile.
So, you know, for our case,
we can't just say
this guy did it.
But I started looking into it.
I got in contact
with the Missouri State Police
who had worked
on another connected case,
a double murder from
I think it was March of '98,
a double homicide in New Madrid.
It's not Muh-drid.
It's Mah-drid?
I always say it wrong.
Sherry and Megan Scherer,
mother and daughter.
The husband
and son had just left
to go into town
and do something,
and they came back
30, 40 minutes later.
I don't know how he got in,
we don't know because
he murdered both of them.
And sexually assaulted Megan,
the 12-year-old.
(SINISTER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
DAN: Two hours after he does
that double murder,
he does
an attempted home invasion
in Dyersburg, Tennessee,
which is only, like,
40 miles away. Same guy.
He tries to force his way
into the home of a woman.
She's able to, like,
keep him out,
but he does shoot
through the door,
and puts a bullet in her arm.
The same gun used in
the Scherer murders in Missouri.
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
So, he goes, "I've got
an entire case file on this guy.
I put everything together
because I knew someday,
somebody else would be calling."
(SOFT INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: It's hard to get
your hopes up in this case,
because there's been
so many letdowns at every turn.
You think this case
is gonna go a certain way,
and you follow that rabbit hole,
and you're way off topic
of where you started.
So, you've just gotta
take a step back,
take it all in objectively.
BARBARA:
It's a lot to ask people
to still be interested
in a 34-year-old case.
I have a friend,
one of the first people
I called that morning
after the murders.
Uh, she and her friend go
to the yogurt store
about every anniversary
since it happened.
For 34 years, they're there.
I quit going years ago.
I was like,
"It's too much for me.
I think y'all are nuts."
But anyway, they do that.
And she said
there was a big crowd this year,
bigger than normal.
And I so appreciate
I do not want anyone to think
that I don't appreciate.
It's part of my healing,
it's because of the love
they've given me.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
But it's not just us.
The community needs to heal.
They need to get past that.
(MOURNERS
SINGING INDISTINCTLY) ♪
(CAR WHOOSHING)
NEIL STEGALL:
'91, I was in graduate school,
and I was in need of some money,
and I contacted a friend
about doing
some reclamation work,
which is what the company did.
I got a call from him
on December 7th
and he asked me
to meet him here at the, uh,
yogurt shop site.
And explained to me that
he was going to be overseeing
the reclamation
of property here,
and also the clearing out
of the yogurt shop,
which included tearing off
all the sheetrock,
and stripping
the store completely.
(GENTLE INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Having a connection
to a couple of the girls,
to a sense of connection
to the neighborhood
I decided I could go ahead
and do that.
And one thing I stipulated
to the people who were going
to work there was
that there was going to be
no joking
no foul language.
There's enough noise
tearing the place down.
There's no need for us
to add to it.
And it was hard work,
because it wasn't just a store
that had burned,
it was a place
of tragic death
which made the work slow
in some respects, and
encouraged us
to bring a lot of respect
to doing that work.
And it's a connection to this
that I had not anticipated
but one I stepped into.
And in the end, not reluctantly,
I almost felt like there was
something to be done here
that was out of honor.
That it not just be
some random
demo crew come in
to do the work thoughtlessly,
but it be done with,
again, respect.
And
it was a very
profound experience.
Regrettable but profound.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
(INTRIGUING PIANO
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN:
So, I'll back up a little bit
and explain how this guy
gets identified.
Back in the '90s,
he was always moving around.
He's not in CODIS,
'cause his felonies were
when they weren't collecting DNA
back then.
So, he's just running around
committing sexual assault
and murders,
and he's an unknown offender.
In the mid-2000s,
agencies start putting
their old crimes into CODIS,
and they all start linking up
to one unknown
prolific killer and rapist,
but they still don't know
who it is.
So, you've got
this 1990 in South Carolina,
pops to the double in Missouri,
which links with ballistics
to Tennessee.
And then '97, Memphis,
that DNA goes into CODIS.
In the Memphis case,
he forces entry into a home.
There's four women.
The women had just gotten home.
They just came in
through the door.
So, he saw an opportunity.
(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
REPORTER: Police say
the man knocked on a door
with four women
and a nine-month-old baby
inside.
He asked for help
in finding his wife's purse,
used a gun
to force his way inside,
then cut the phone lines.
He's able to tie
all four of them up alone.
This was a key element
in the rapist's attack.
He used duct tape to tie up
the people in the house,
then he raped
his youngest victim,
a 14-year-old girl.
MARGARET:
They all lived.
He let them all live.
I-- I don't know why.
They put out a sketch.
But, you know,
think about, this is the '90s.
There's no
cell phone tower data.
There's no security cameras,
there's no
license plate readers.
There's no 24/7
social media coverage
like there is now.
If it was easy,
these cases would be solved.
But between 2006 and 2017,
they went cold.
JOHN WALSH: This is
Jenny Zitricki's actual diary.
Names, places,
lots of things
that she was doing.
Until it ends right here,
the 4th,
-that's when she was murdered.
-(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
And who knows if one
of the names in this diary
had anything to do with it?
This is the mirror
that was hanging
over Jenny's dresser.
The killer left a message on it.
"Don't 'F' with my family."
It was a personal message
to her.
WALSH: So, you think
it's somebody she might know.
And you're saying,
"Keep an open mind,
this could be a red herring
to throw cops off."
That's right.
DAN: And so, 2018,
this is right at the advent
of genetic genealogy.
REPORTER 1: An alleged
serial killer tracked down
through a genealogy database.
DAN: The Golden State Killer
was solved with it
like a year before.
So, that's a brand-new thing.
REPORTER 2: Investigators used
publicly shared DNA data
to track down the suspected
Golden State Killer.
REPORTER 3:
Using DNA from crime scenes
decades ago,
which they submitted
to a publicly shared
genealogy website
-called GEDmatch.
-REPORTER 4:
Allegedly responsible
for 12 murders, 50 rapes,
and more than 100 burglaries
in California.
DAN: The guys from Missouri,
Tennessee,
and South Carolina said,
"We have enough DNA,
maybe we can do that."
And they reached out
to Parabon Labs.
So, I'm gonna build these trees
back to great-grandparents.
DAN: They developed
a genealogical profile
to get some distant relatives.
And then that's when you start
building out those family trees
and seeing where they converge.
And that's
your potential suspect.
-(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(KEYBOARD CLICKING)
CECE MOORE: This was
kind of the start of it all.
This was what opened the door
for the rest of these cases
in 2018.
Instead of an exact match
like they're looking for
in CODIS,
we are looking for relatives.
And usually,
they're very distant relatives.
Partial matches.
These are the potential
contributor of this DNA.
When I researched one
of these potential matches,
I found this article.
This guy was convicted
of attempted murder and rape
in 1985 in Florida.
He immediately jumped out at me.
So, I dug more deeply.
I found his daughter's
Facebook page.
I saw a man in the picture
who looked so similar
to those sketches.
And not only did it look
like him, but I thought
he had the same hat
and the same glasses.
(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: So, this is
a good candidate
because of his history.
He was sentenced to 12 years
but he got paroled in '89.
So, he's out in '90.
But he was deceased.
And he was buried in Arkansas.
And so, they got
a judge's order,
and they dug him up
put it in to CODIS,
and he was a perfect match
for all those crimes
we just talked about.
(OVERLAPPING NEWS REPORTS)
REPORTER:
Robert Eugene Brashers.
The unknown DNA profile
collected from Jenny's body
and from all the others
belonged
to the deceased subject,
now confirmed to be
Robert Eugene Brashers,
a 40-year-old man
from Paragould, Arkansas.
DAN: All these cases
were solved in 2018.
-(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-DAN: Now, for our case,
I get all this information
from these guys,
and I'm like, "All right,
this is probably our guy."
I mean, Robert Brashers had
the same Y-STR, at 27 for 27,
with the same make
and model gun as in Kentucky.
And he's a serial killer,
with very similar MO
as the yogurt shop.
Like, "All right,
this is our guy,
but we're not 100 percent."
(INTRIGUING MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: What if this is
as good as it gets?
How would I build--
Essentially,
at the end of the day,
it's still
a circumstantial case.
We need to make sure
that we are 100 percent.
Because somebody went
to death row, and, you know,
we're basically overturning
34 years of work,
do we have enough to call it?
LISA DAVIS: At this time,
I'd like to introduce
Detective Dan Jackson,
the lead investigator
of this case.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Daniel Jackson.
I'm the lead detective,
like she said,
and I've been
on the case since 2022.
Um
So, I'm gonna walk y'all through
how we got
to where we are today.
I'll start with a brief overview
of the history of the case,
and take you back
to December 6th, 1991.
(TENSE MUSIC BUILDS) ♪
DAN: As you can see,
it appears to be
just your everyday
middle America retail space
in a strip mall.
The customers would be there
in the front.
And then in the back is
where the fire was started,
and the girls' bodies
were discovered.
Sarah, Eliza, and Jennifer
were together,
and Amy was a little bit closer
to the front.
There was evidence
of sexual assault.
All four had been shot
in the head
with a .22 caliber pistol.
And Amy was also shot
with a .380 pistol.
The original
ballistics report said
that in all probability,
the weapon used
was an AMT-brand
Backup model .380.
That's an AM
semi-automatic .380,
and the model is a Backup model.
There was one confession
from a juvenile named
Maurice Pierce.
Eight days after the murders,
Pierce was at Northcross Mall
with his friend named
Forrest Welborn.
He was carrying a .22 pistol
in his waistband.
He was arrested and taken
to the homicide office
where he was interrogated
by Detective Hector Polanco.
(OVER RECORDING)
In 1999, Pierce,
Forrest Welborn,
Robert Springsteen,
and Michael Scott
were re-interrogated.
They were able
to get confessions
from Robert Springsteen
and Michael Scott.
MICHAEL SCOTT:
RON LARA:
DAN: Michael Scott received
life without parole,
and Robert Springsteen received
the death penalty.
While they're appealing
their conviction,
a landmark Supreme Court case
comes out.
The Texas Court
of Criminal Appeal granted
a new trial
for Springsteen and Scott.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
-No comment right now, please.
DAN: By this time,
we had a new DNA technology
called Y-STR testing.
All four
of the original suspects
-were excluded
from this profile.
-(CROWD CHEERING)
-ONLOOKER: Welcome home, guys!
-DAN: The charges were dropped.
Then over the next
several years,
hundreds of reference samples
were collected.
First responders, family,
friends, associates.
I think we tested three
or four hundred different people
in this case over the years.
Just recently, we reached out
to all labs in the country
that do Y-STR typing,
and asked
if they could manually search
against our unknown profile.
We got a hit.
A sexual assault
and murder from 1990
out of Greenville,
South Carolina.
This was the profile
that they had.
"Robert Eugene Brashers."
-(AUDIENCE MURMURING)
-(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
His Y-STR has been found
in the following three places.
This is three
sexual assault kits
of those young girls.
It's hard to be 100 percent
with just a Y-STR.
So, we're trying to figure out
how to get from,
"We're pretty sure it's him"
to, "We know it's him."
We start researching Brashers,
figure out what he's doing
around this time, where he's at.
December 8th, 1991,
less than 48 hours
after yogurt shop,
Robert Brashers is stopped
at a Border Patrol checkpoint
going westbound on I-10
between El Paso and Las Cruces.
It was a random cold stop,
just like any time you go
through a border checkpoint,
except the Border Patrol agent
realized something was up.
He didn't like the way
Mr. Brashers was answering,
ran his plate, and it showed it
to be a stolen car
out of Georgia.
It was-- had been stolen
on November 29th.
During this interaction,
he was also in possession
of a .380 pistol.
(AUDIENCE MURMURING)
DAN: That .380 pistol
was an AMT Backup model.
It was the same make and model
identified by ballistics
as the weapon used
in the yogurt shop.
So, he was westbound,
leaving Texas
with an AMT .380 Backup model
less than 48 hours later.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
So, we took additional items
to DNA Labs International.
Now, these items have been
previously tested in years past.
They were preserved of,
"Maybe someday
we could do something with this,
but we can't today,
we'd just be wasting the DNA."
We don't think
we're ever gonna be able
to get enough DNA
for a CODIS upload.
Well, we don't necessarily need
to upload to search.
We just need enough DNA
to compare.
So, we need enough STR markers
to do a direct comparison
from our crime scene
to Robert Brashers.
And this was gonna be it.
We were pushing all of our chips
on the table with this.
This was gonna be
the last shot effort.
But we were pretty confident
with the technology
and the circumstances
that this was gonna be pay dirt.
One of the things we retested
was Amy's fingernail clippings
from the autopsy.
They were able
to get quite a bit of DNA
out of Amy's
fingernail clippings,
and it was directly compared
to Brashers,
and it matched, so that it's
two-and-a-half million to one
that it's likely
Robert Brashers'
underneath Amy's fingernails
than it is
to an unknown individual.
(SOMBER STRING
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: At this point,
there's no physical evidence
that links Springsteen,
Scott, Pierce, or Welborn
to the yogurt shop crime scene.
There's no evidence
that connects
the previous four suspects
with Robert Eugene Brashers
either.
The surviving victims
of Brashers' violence
always reported he was alone
when he acted.
He never is known
to have an accomplice.
(AUDIENCE MURMURING)
DAN: Now, I just wanna reiterate
that this is
a combination of technology,
good police work
from multiple agencies
and cooperation, and timing.
This is something that could not
have happened until 2025.
And I'm sorry that it took
34 years for us to get here,
but we're here now
and, you know
Amy's final moments
on this Earth
were to solve this case for us.
It's because
of her fighting back.
T-- Thank you.
-(AUDIENCE MURMURING)
-(SENTIMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Have we been able to explain
why Brashers was here in Austin?
No, we don't know
why he was in Austin.
We have found no connection.
We're still searching
for that answer.
Just about how techniques
and technology
has changed since then
to make sure we're not
in a situation like this
where four people
get wrongly accused early on,
and then we find, you know,
a potential real suspect
decades later.
No cases are going to be closed
solely based off of confession.
We need other evidence for that.
And so that has changed,
and things have changed
since then.
I took the approach of,
"I'm not gonna listen
to the confessions."
I've never listened to them.
I've never read 'em,
the transcripts.
And the first time
I heard any footage
from the confessions
was the HBO documentary.
Because my point of view
is I don't know,
but I'll go
where the evidence leads me.
Are there likely other cases
like this in Texas?
I mean, he's already been
in South Carolina,
Tennessee, Missouri.
Is it likely,
and are you looking for that?
DAN:
So, I would say it is likely
there are other victims
out there,
because of what we know of him,
when he was not in prison,
he was committing
heinous crimes.
Last week,
we knew of three murders.
This week, we know of eight.
To say there's not
a nine or ten,
I'm sure there are,
and we will be working on that.
Do you believe
that justice has been served,
or there's still
some more work to go?
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MIKE GRAHAM: New analysis saying
the .380 shell casing
found at the murder scene
is a big part
of this breakthrough.
It's linked to a gun
that Brashers had
after a chase with authorities
near El Paso.
-(INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE)
-GRAHAM: There is no
DNA evidence that links
any of those original suspects
to the murders.
ERIN MORIARTY:
You're feeling pretty good
about putting
that shirt back on.
I did. I didn't get it out
in 1999.
I heard the words
I wanted to hear.
-ERIN: You did?
-Yeah, that
the last four weren't involved.
It ain't about the confessions,
it's about the evidence.
But I lived to see this day.
(SOFT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
We are so happy
that what we did there
-Yeah.
-helped you guys,
get you some answers.
What we get coming out
of this is,
just like when we solved
our cases,
the team that came out of that,
and now, Austin PD
is part of that team.
So, when the next one comes up,
-and I think
there'll be a next one.
-Yeah.
-Yes, there will be.
-Good.
And this team
will carry forward,
and help those people.
So, it just keeps
building momentum.
CARLOS GARCIA:
It's a strange feeling.
It's a certain sadness.
The loss never goes away
for those families.
You also need to now look at
how does such a horrific
investigative failure occur.
These families have suffered
because of that.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
CARLOS: My other thought is that
there's actually
eight victims here.
There's eight victims,
and another one of those
lost his life, Maurice Pierce.
You know, I just hope
there's-- a day comes
when there's
another press conference
when they put the pictures
of those four boys,
and explain how they're gonna
compensate them.
(CHATTER FADES)
(SOMBER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JONES: There's not a whole lot
that's the same from 1991.
Jeez, more condos.
Everything's changed.
Well, I feel like
all of us there
at the original crime scene
our efforts were validated.
We didn't process the scene
according to 2000
or 2010 standards.
We processed it
to 1991 standards,
and went beyond that.
We did the best we could do
based on what we had
in place then.
(SIGHS)
(SOMBER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JONES: Turns out, maybe
we could have solved it
if Border Patrol had read
the teletype we sent out.
We said we were looking
for a .22,
and an AMT .380 Backup.
But it just wasn't meant to be,
I guess.
-(MUSIC TURNS OMINOUS) ♪
-(INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE)
BOB: I went numb.
It was shocking.
A serial killer, really?
It was
it was still
a little hard to realize.
Pure evil.
He went in there.
His concern was no money.
He was not on drugs.
He was not on alcohol.
He was in, more or less,
his right mind, and
he just-- he just liked to kill.
I understood a robbery
going bad possibly,
something like that,
but for someone to go in
with that mindset
is hard for me to
to accept
that we have people like that.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
MIKE WARE: On February the 19th,
the judge has set a hearing.
We'll be filing a motion
that the state will join in
to declare
that he is actually innocent,
and that he is exonerated,
and the judge
will officially declare that
and sign an order
reflecting all that.
Uh, we will support that
with evidence,
making it very clear
to the world
and for the record,
they're innocent,
and that that is true not just
beyond a reasonable doubt,
but to a moral certainty.
Um
I would like for it to be
a part of this hearing
of what went wrong.
An airplane crashes,
you know, the FFA moves in
and does
an extensive investigation.
But I think
this is analogous to that.
This whole horrible,
tragic scenario, event
has been like a--
a horrible airplane crash.
There's a huge injustice here
that needs to be corrected.
(EMOTIONAL INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
KIMBERLI PIERCE:
We met at Lamar Middle School.
We were 13 and 14.
We dated, really, ever since.
You know, we had her young.
We got married
when we were 21 and 22.
Shortly after that, that's
when all of this happened.
I was 23 and he was 24
when he got picked up.
-(POLICE SIREN WAILING)
-(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
-(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)
-KIMBERLI: October 6th, 1999.
They had SWAT there.
I was basically in a nightgown
when I came out,
'cause I heard
all the commotion.
REPORTER 1:
After nearly eight years,
police have arrested
four suspects.
-KIMBERLI:
It just didn't seem real.
-REPORTER 2: Maurice Pierce
You really think
that if there's no evidence,
this doesn't happen.
REPORTER 3:
Pierce's wife didn't wanna talk.
-REPORTER 4: About your husband?
About your husband?
-No comment. No comment.
REPORTER 5:
Their investigation has ended
KIMBERLI: I sent her to school.
Her principal called me,
because the news showed up
at her school,
her elementary school.
So, I knew then I needed
to not be sending her to school.
And then everything changed.
I had to be available for court.
I couldn't really work.
INTERVIEWEE:
We can hopefully
finally begin
KIMBERLI: I really think that
he thought he would go,
and they would let him out.
He wouldn't be spending
three and a half years in jail
waiting on trial.
(MUSIC TURNS TENSE) ♪
KIMBERLI: They kept him
in solitary confinement
for two years.
So, he was out one hour a day,
and that's when
he would call me.
He didn't see sunlight
except for when he got
to go to court.
The light in his eyes went away.
They changed colors,
and they didn't ever go back.
They kind of were
a dull gray to me.
He used to have
really bright, pretty blue eyes.
It was just not the same.
He was not the same.
She lost her childhood
at the age of seven
when her dad got picked up.
Even she changed.
REPORTER: Are you excited
to see your daughter?
MAURICE PIERCE:
When I was 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.
MARISA PIERCE:
He didn't get to see this day.
-(SOMBER PIANO
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-He didn't get to
let the world know
that he was innocent all along.
RONNIE EARLE: We do not have
the evidence
to convict him right now,
but life is long.
MARISA: In the news,
it's like a blip,
"Oh, he was in for three years."
But it was constant darkness,
and then he got out,
and it was just
a constant battle of the cloud,
and of overcoming, and
ask for dismissal
of the cases
pending further investigation.
Our focus continues
on our suspects at hand.
There is no question
that these suspects
are still the focus
of our investigation.
KIMBERLI:
To have to live with that,
I mean,
that stayed on his record,
pending further investigation
for four murders.
(DARK PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I really feel like
they went after him,
and just never let up.
(POLICE SIRENS WAILING)
-KIMBERLI: He was always
very scared of the police.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
KIMBERLI: He thought they were
always gonna get him
for these murders.
And they did.
In the end, they did.
POLICE OFFICER:
The officer managed to fire
a single round
that did strike the suspect.
-It just doesn't feel like
it's real justice.
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
And I wanna be respectful
to everybody, but
my dad will never come back.
It's a little too late
for him.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER, LAUGHTER)
-CHILD: Look, there's Eliza.
-(AUCTIONEER
BID CALLING RAPIDLY)
seventy-five, all done.
Seven seventy-five, 375.
Three-fifty
(CONTINUES RAPID BID CALLING)
To me, FFA is a place
Well, it
(SENTIMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
BOB: Right now, I see her on
her little
cutting horse stallion,
cutting a cow
on a horse.
PAM:
Those girls are still with us.
-GIRL: Hi!
-MAN: Hi!
-Hi! (BLOWS KISS)
-(MAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)
BARBARA: My memories of them,
they fade, you know.
They've been gone so long.
But they'll always be
little girls to me.
I still laugh about things
that they said or did, and
-they were funny.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
MARGARET:
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-(INHALES SHARPLY)
No, I'm not counting
the days anymore.
It's-- It's over.
MARGARET:
-(BREATHES SHAKILY)
-(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING)
I don't know, it's
I'm still such
in kind of a numb feeling.
I think the certainty,
just knowing,
is-- does help me, yes.
Um
Even There's evidence,
hard evidence,
where before we didn't have
all that hard evidence
to work off of.
And to me, that is a big factor,
you know?
It's the end.
The end of wondering.
Like, if you're walking around,
like, with your shoulders
to your ears
for 30 years, all of a sudden,
you get to relax.
That's a different feeling.
I guess the stress
or the wonderment,
the "I don't know"
is no more.
I was still in shock
for a day or two,
and it was probably a week later
that I finally dealt
with the fact
that my heart
was opened up more,
and I didn't know it was closed.
I thought I had done
a really good job
of working through this,
and getting through this,
but this changed my heart,
and I
I can't tell you how grateful.
Grateful. So much gratitude.
I wasn't expecting that
at all from this--
Uh, but I got that.
That's so good.
Such a good thing to get,
'cause so many people
never get that.
But we-- we did.
We got the closure.
That terrible "closure" word
that nobody likes to use.
And we got it.
We got that and
That's My life is good.
My life is good.
(SOMBER MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
Every year, then I've gone out,
and I've taken care
of the girls' headstones.
I'm going to this year.
But I'm so at peace
that I'm ready
I'm ready to go on with my life,
and have some fun,
and do some things
that I wanna do.
And they're so at peace,
it just
I can just feel Amy
wanting me to do that.
I may not take care
of those gravesites
as much as I used to,
because they're on
their own now.
(CLICKS TONGUE)
And I feel they're at peace.
I didn't know how angry I was.
And I realized, like,
"Damn, I've been
I've been pissed
for a long, long time,
and didn't realize it."
I looked at my kids different,
looked at my wife different.
Looked-- Everything I looked at
was different.
I guess I'm gonna have
to find something else
to worry about. (CHUCKLES)
It's just (EXHALES)
I-- I just
You can breathe again
because we know the truth now.
MARGARET:
Because of the evidence,
and we know
And we know.
MARGARET:
I don't understand it either
(CHUCKLES) to be honest.
MARGARET:
No. I mean
Ooh, that's cold, isn't it?
No, I do that
for my own self-protection.
I don't wanna get involved
in the emotional trauma
of what they went through.
I've already been through a lot,
I don't wanna take that on.
And I mean,
that's a horrible thing.
What happened
to them was horrible.
MARGARET:
No. They-- I
They are not part
of this case any longer.
I don't go there.
I mean, I know that
they suffered, you know?
But my suffering is
is totally different
than theirs,
and I have to deal
with my pain, and
(SOMBER MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
I really don't think about it.
I mean, every now and then,
it's like, you know,
kinda got a raw deal.
But two confessed,
went to prison.
Two didn't confess,
did not go to prison.
So, in my mind,
the two that did
they didn't help themselves.
I don't know, it's just--
I haven't got to them yet.
When it all comes down, and
that it wasn't them,
and the courts say
it wasn't them,
and it's finalized
they didn't--
Well, I can't say that.
MARGARET:
I was gonna say they didn't
put themselves there,
but they kind of did.
(PENSIVE PIANO
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JONES:
The original investigators
Let's see, how'd they put it?
Had some shortcomings
in the case, yeah.
We could have went and filed
any of those confessions we had.
Got a warrant for arrest,
and then worried
about making the case later.
That didn't work out so well
for Paul and them.
MARGARET:
Same thing you always ask me.
"How you feeling right now?
What would you like to say
to Maurice Pierce now?"
Considering that
I think he made the statement--
I think he made
the statement that
he didn't really care
whether he was dead or not.
"What are your thoughts now?"
Maurice may be dead, but
Robert Springsteen
is still alive,
and so is Michael Scott, and
so is Forrest Welborn.
"They're all still alive.
What would you like
to say to them?"
And maybe
the jury found them guilty,
because of the way evidence
was presented to them.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
(SOMBER PIANO MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PAUL JOHNSON: So,
I have three horses over here.
They don't get
a lot of attention.
I don't really care too much
about what the public thinks
about my investigation.
A case like this,
where somebody
that we were not investigating
is matched to the crime
I would expect people
that are concerned
to question
the previous investigation
that didn't point to this guy.
But I did watch
the press conference
and what they said
at the press conference
seems to absolutely indicate
this new guy was there
and was involved.
What I don't think it shows
or anything that they said
at the press conference shows
-that other people
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
or maybe even the ones
that we filed on,
were not there.
Just because he was,
I don't think that shows
that our guys
or other guys were not.
What kind of shocked me is
that he said he's never listened
to the confessions.
ROBERT SPRINGSTEEN:
PAUL: If he would listen
to the confessions
or read the investigations
that had to do
with the confessions,
there would be things
that could not be explained
by our guys
not having been there.
MARGARET:
Nobody says that exactly.
The only thing
we could figure out
is that the person
that they're not identifying
was so bad and scary
that they would rather not.
MARGARET:
And-- Very likely.
That kind of person might scare
these little teenagers.
(OMINOUS INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
PAUL: If they all
had something to do
with going into the yogurt shop
and they're scared of him to
point the finger at him or,
"Okay, I'm not going
to point the finger at him,
I'll point the finger
at Forrest.
He doesn't scare anybody."
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
("MONA LISA" BY CONWAY TWITTY
PLAYING OVER SPEAKERS) ♪
Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa
Men have named you ♪
You're so like a lady
With a mystic smile ♪
("MONA LISA"
CONTINUES PLAYING) ♪
It's like an old Austin
kind of feel to me.
You know, I know
that there's a lot
of country music getting played,
but that's not all
that gets played.
It just I don't know,
it just reminds me
of the old days, sort of.
(SLOW COUNTRY MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
This is chile rellenos
with chicken.
And this is vegetable
with pasta.
But this was a repeat request.
MARGARET:
(SINISTER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
SHARON SHIPMAN:
We lived not too far away
from Northcross Mall.
I actually had to pick him up
at the juvenile center
because he and Maurice
were at Northcross Mall.
(SOMBER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SHARON: When I got there,
they told me
that Maurice had a gun with him.
I picked Forrest up
and brought him home.
It was later that we found out
that they were being questioned
about the yogurt shop murders.
He would be walking to school,
and there would be
a car parked outside.
And the detective
would get out and say,
"Get in the car.
We're going for a ride."
He was 15 years old.
He didn't know
he didn't have to get in the car
and go with him.
He didn't have anything to hide.
We knew there were a lot of kids
being questioned.
I guess I didn't realize
how serious it was.
The detectives brought him
to my house and said,
"We have two confessions
and we're going
to make the arrest in two weeks.
And Forrest has the opportunity
to save himself,
so you need to convince him
to confess."
So, every day for two weeks,
I sat at his shop with him
because I wanted to make sure
he was safe.
The day I went back to work,
they arrested him.
(SOMBER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
FORREST WELBORN: There's no time
when it's not there.
I want it to go away.
(INHALES, CLICKS TONGUE)
It's still very difficult
to even talk about,
or think about, or
(SOMBER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC RESUMES) ♪
FORREST:
I've had people try to tell me
I should be celebrating,
but it's still not over,
you know.
It's not a celebration moment.
I hope everybody believes that,
you know,
I wasn't there now, you know.
A lot of people
think of me as a murderer.
And I've had to deal with that.
Lost jobs, lost relationships,
lost friends. You know.
(CLEARS THROAT)
It's been really difficult.
(OVER RECORDING)
MARGARET:
Uh, betrayal, you know?
He was my best friend
at the time.
And to have him try to say
that I was there
and I had a part of it
was just absolutely insane
to me.
That's where I lost
(INHALES DEEPLY)
lost a lot of hope in people,
you know, especially friends.
I wasn't able
to really trust anybody.
Ended up dropping out
of eighth grade
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
'cause I just couldn't do it.
MARGARET: I'm so sorry.
I went back the next year.
But I only stayed
for a couple months and left.
MARGARET:
Yes.
MARGARET:
(CLEARS THROAT) Yeah, um
(SNIFFLES)
(SOBS HEAVILY)
MARGARET: Wait a minute.
(FORREST SOBS)
-(EXHALES, MUTTERS)
-MARGARET: You okay?
-FORREST: I'm good. (SNIFFLES)
-MARGARET: Okay.
(FORREST SIGHS)
MARGARET: Just had to take
a breath.
(FORREST SNIFFLES, SIGHS)
Yeah, it's very hard.
MARGARET: I know.
I'm really sorry.
(SOMBER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Well, they came they came
I had a business site
in Lockhart
while I was doing
automotive repair.
They came, surrounded the place
and arrested me,
took me away from my business,
charged me for the crime.
Ended up losing that business.
Thought I was going to prison
for the rest of my life
for something I didn't do.
Thought it was over.
MARGARET:
-No.
-MARGARET: Yeah.
I wasn't going to talk to him
ever again,
and I never did.
Now, it's hard for me
to really bring somebody
in that close anymore,
and, you know,
I have some friends
but not super close.
If I find someone
that does like me,
then that's one
of the first things
I have to let them know,
is that I've been
wrapped up in all this
with the yogurt shop murders.
And
-So, it normally
doesn't work out very well.
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
MARGARET:
Um, six months.
I've tried, but
you know, I mean,
it's the worst crime in Austin,
you know.
So, to get involved with,
you know
I've never really been cleared.
I've never, you know
I've never had anybody
come out and say,
"Oh, he's innocent,"
you know, let the world know.
MARGARET:
You know,
I'm sad for him and his family.
But still,
I've been angry at him
for so long for what
he said to the detectives
and I thought
we were best friends and so
MARGARET:
I don't care anything
about them.
Anybody that can try to say
that I was there and did it,
I have no sense
in talking to 'em
or have any feelings
towards them.
I know it's really bad to say,
but
it doesn't hurt my feelings
that they went to jail at all,
because what they tried
to do to me,
try to make me sit in there.
I've got pulled over
all the time by the police,
once a week.
I've been incarcerated 50 times
for nonsense.
I don't know what's going
to change it, but
maybe one day.
There's
The four girls,
they weren't the only ones
that lost their lives.
No.
(REFLECTIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MARGARET:
(INHALES DEEPLY)
Well, in our case, the person
that killed our daughter,
there's justice
because he's no longer here.
MARGARET:
I don't.
I don't think of him as human.
It's just
(REFLECTIVE MUSIC
CONTINUES SOFTLY) ♪
He's the reason, and that's it.
Right now he's a monster
and I'm okay with that.
I just feel like
there's evil people out there.
I don't know what
makes them that way.
I don't want to spend
too much time
sort of thinking about them
or understanding them
or what
their backstory is. (CHUCKLES)
MARGARET:
I guess because he's dead.
That's where all
the peace comes in.
He's not gonna hurt or do
anything else to anybody else.
I just want to know
what life he had
that made him this way.
Children are not born evil.
We caused them to be this
and I want to know
what happened.
Was he not held enough?
-Was he not loved enough?
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
Or did he just--
just decided not to care,
not to care about anybody
but himself,
somewhere along the way?
(SOMBER INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CECE: You know,
he's one of those serial killers
who didn't want to be famous,
didn't want his crimes
to be known.
And so, now that he's infamous,
it is interesting
to think about what that means,
how much energy is put
into thinking about him
at this point.
It doesn't matter.
What's the use of spending
too much time
-and energy thinking about him?
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
Now, I wish I felt that way
because I've been
obsessed with him
and I've spent thousands
of hours researching him.
(INTRIGUING PIANO
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CECE: I've identified lots
of serial killers
and they didn't
all stick with me.
This guy was incredibly evil,
incredibly violent.
He has literally haunted
my dreams.
My feeling was
that his story wasn't finished
and other people
were still waiting for answers.
My years-long obsession
has led me to want
to talk to people who knew him.
Because I feel like any
little clue could potentially
lead us to another case
that he's responsible for.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
I feel like I have
more paperwork on my father
than I do anything else.
I have one photo
of me and my father,
and that is the family photo
that, of course,
is all over the internet.
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DEBORAH BRASHERS:
This picture was taken
the summer of 1997.
The night we moved to Arkansas,
this picture was taken.
I didn't know of anything,
anything bad about my father.
I had just met him
not long before that.
He pulled in the driveway
one day
and said, "Hi, I'm your father."
My mother said, "Hey,
this is your daddy for real."
And then, that's just my daddy.
And then he's dead.
Not long after.
(SUSPENSEFUL STRING
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DEBORAH: I was around
more people growing up
that were strange
than I was normal people.
Criminals, people that
Like, the weird feelings that
you get around certain people,
those were my normal.
My mother was not
the greatest person.
So, the people that,
you know, you're born from,
if they're that way,
then how do you know?
Differentiating that was
very hard until I got older.
To me, people being
shitty to you is normal.
For a very long time,
that's how my life was.
The only part of my life
that I thought
was the most normal
was all actually coming out
to be a lie now,
because that was
the time of my life
-when I was with my father.
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-MAN: Here you go. Here we go.
-(CHILD GIGGLING)
DEBORAH: The little bit of time
that I met him until he died,
it was the best time
of our entire life.
We didn't have
to want for anything.
We didn't have
to question anything.
Like, we were never hurt,
never touched by men
or anything in that nature.
My mother didn't run off on us.
It was like the white picket
fence type family.
Like, you got three girls,
a father that goes to work,
a mother that goes to work.
We have cookouts,
we have birthday parties,
like just normal.
A lot of people will tell you,
you would have never thought
my father was who he was,
but he was a very evil man.
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Come to find out
he was on the run
for breaking and entering
a woman's house
in 1998, over Easter weekend.
It was Easter morning
when he was caught in her house.
Why are you not at home?
You have three children at home.
It's Easter.
MARGARET:
In 1998, he
Breaking and entering
into someone else's house
he used to work in.
He broke in her house
and cut her phone line.
He had a kill kit on him.
He was going to kill this woman.
Why? I don't know,
she didn't do nothing to him.
MARGARET:
-A kill kit.
-MARGARET:
He had black gloves,
zip ties, a gun.
-He had multiple of those kits.
-(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DEBORAH: He left the gun there,
got arrested,
called my mother and told
my mother where the gun was.
And my mother called my grandpa
and my grandfather went
to go pick up the gun.
My mother and grandfather
had to have known something.
Like, there's people that,
as long as you don't hurt
my family, it's okay.
And that's what
I'm afraid of. I'm
I'm afraid of that
being the truth.
(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
DEBORAH: Normally,
without him on the run,
we called him Robert or Daddy.
But when he was on the run,
we were told to call him Mitch.
Like, before we went out to eat,
he put a little wig on,
'cause we knew
he was "on the run."
So, you know,
he couldn't look like hisself.
He used to dress up as a woman
and rob Shoney's
and Waffle Houses
in the middle of the night.
Would go test drive a car
and then put the key
in this little putty,
and remake the key, and he'd
go steal that car that night.
Like, he'd done a lot,
but you wouldn't have thought
that he murdered people.
I remember when
the Scherer murders,
the broadcast come up on the TV
and my mother got scared.
And he's like, "Oh, no,
that would never happen here,
we're fine."
Yeah, because you done it.
But he was nonchalant.
There's no telling how many
more crimes that he's done
that no one
will ever know about.
That's what
I'm coming to terms with.
If I have to live
with this every day,
I at least need to know that
I've said sorry to these people.
Someone that is a blood kin
to him
is sorry for what he's done.
(SOFT REFLECTIVE
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DEBORAH:
I don't want to upset anyone
by reaching out to them.
I've never reached out
to the Scherer families,
but I've reached out
to family members
in South Carolina,
and in Austin
and told them that I'm sorry.
I want to break
all the generational curses
as possible.
This was for the two men
that were falsely accused
of my father's crimes
in Austin, Texas.
"Hi, my name is Deborah Brashers
and I understand the words
that I'm about to say
may not mean much to you.
I'm not the one
who caused the pain
and hardship you've endured,
but I am a descendant
of that person who did.
I cannot begin to imagine
everything you've been through
since 1999.
My father's actions
took so much from you.
Even though I wasn't
involved in his choices,
I still feel deep regret for
the pain his actions caused you.
I wanted to reach out
and acknowledge what happened
and tell you that
someone recognizes
the wrong that was done.
You didn't deserve what happened
and I'm sorry for all you lost
because of it.
Sincerely, Deborah Brashers."
And it took me a couple of days
to write that,
like write exactly
what I wanted to write in it.
I'm gonna have to print it out
and send it to them.
This is right before
he showed up.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-CLAIRE HUIE: You wanna try it?
-Yep.
CLAIRE: Okay, okay,
let's try this one.
I haven't talked to the boys.
There you go.
I hope they are enjoying
some kind of peace
as a result of this news.
I can't imagine what it's like
to have that kind of weight
where even the people who say
they think you're innocent
-maybe don't really believe it.
-CHILD: Come up here.
I didn't think they did it.
And then there was the question.
CHILD: Come up here, Mom.
And I I was really convinced.
-And the question
was still there.
-CHILD: Mom, I do
CLAIRE: I spent a lot of time
with Robert Springsteen.
He managed that tension
with so much grace.
Um
And now knowing for sure
he didn't do it, like,
how is he not
the angriest person on earth?
And he's not. He's not angry.
MARGARET:
Because I asked him directly.
-(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-I'm not angry, I'm not--
As you guys have seen,
I'm not really
I'm not really
that emotional about it,
or that mad about it,
or, you know,
I let all that anger
and stuff go.
CLAIRE: Rob and I spent
a lot of time alone together.
And if I thought
he was a murderer,
I wouldn't
have done that. (CHUCKLES)
And then with Michael Scott,
he says,
"I think I might have
had something to do with it."
ROBERT: (OVER VIDEO)
They really screwed me over.
He didn't, so it's still
Even in his own mind,
he can't trust himself.
Now, he can tell himself fully,
"I didn't."
-Okay, I'm following you.
-(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CLAIRE: Nice.
MARGARET:
CLAIRE: If he were still alive,
I would be terrified
for everyone.
The force of the evil present
is terrifying.
Nice. Boosh!
On the one hand, it's a relief
that it's kind of over
and he's done.
But it is anticlimactic
that he's dead.
It feels like he was
always this unknown
and he remains an unknown.
He just kind of
swept through town
and caused a lot of destruction
for a lot of people.
(SOMBER PENSIVE
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
CECE: After I identified him
in 2018,
I started looking for cold cases
in all the places
I knew that he lived.
That's why I was so disappointed
I couldn't have helped solve
the yogurt shop case.
They didn't have enough DNA
for us
to perform genetic genealogy.
If only I had known
that, right here,
should be the stop
at the Texas border in December,
things would have been
very different.
I would have known immediately
that he was a very
strong suspect for yogurt shop.
(LOW TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: So, back to December 8th,
1991, he's getting out of Texas.
He goes to jail that night
on the stolen truck
and a felon
in possession of a firearm.
Somebody bonds him out
five days later.
Someone pays for his bond,
I don't know who.
And then fast-forward
a couple months,
February of '92, he gets
arrested in Cobb County, Georgia
in a stolen vehicle
from Tyler, Texas.
So, basically he bonds out,
backtracks through Texas,
steals another truck,
and ends up in Georgia,
where he gets arrested again.
I think that's when
he had burglary tools,
police scanner,
a fake police ID.
I think, like, a wig.
The possession of a firearm
by a felon is taken federally
and he gets five years
in prison.
Once he's sentenced though,
that .380
is given to his father.
His father is able to get it
out of police custody.
Talking to an ATF guy,
they're like, "Yeah,
that's not an easy thing to do.
You gotta fill out, like,
a lot of paperwork.
It's kind of a pain."
And we're talking,
like, maybe a 75-dollar gun.
So, when he gets out in '97,
he gets his gun back.
(SCOFFS) But, at first,
we couldn't believe it,
but then that actually
led us to help solve
other cases,
because he kept the gun.
We would have never linked
any of these cases to Kentucky.
We wouldn't have got a NIBIN hit
because the gun
would still be sitting
in a federal archive.
Completely, like, unforeseen
chain of events led to all this.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: And then, January of '99,
police officers driving through
the parking lot
of a Super 8 motel
in Kennett, Missouri
sees a car
that kind of sticks out.
Plate comes back stolen.
They look in the car,
there's like,
some kids' toys or something.
Front desk is like,
"Well, the only people
staying here with kids
is room number whatever."
-(KNOCKING ON DOOR)
-BRASHERS' WIFE:
What do you want?
DAN: Brashers' wife,
she gives a fake name
of who her husband is.
"He left," you know,
-"I don't know when
he's coming back."
-(KIDS CLAMORING)
DAN: And they start
looking around the room,
and they find him hiding
underneath the bed with a gun.
(MUSIC RISES) ♪
DAN:
It becomes a police standoff.
DEBORAH:
We woke up to guns everywhere.
There are police officers
right here to the left.
There's like five
to seven of them, guns drawn.
And there's a police officer
over here, holding the bed up
and my father's laying
underneath the bed
with the gun to his head.
They put my mother in handcuffs,
and then they took us
out in the hallway.
And where we were sitting at,
you could look down
and you could see the pool,
and you could look up and see
the reflection behind you
as to everything
that was happening.
As the door opens,
you can see, like,
my father's throwing stuff
out of the room.
And about that same time,
I heard a big boom,
and then I seen
police officers go in.
DAN: He throws out a bunch
of their clothing and stuff,
and he also throws out
a nine-millimeter pistol.
And then he shoots himself
in the room.
(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
He had shot himself
with an AMT .380 Backup model.
The serial number is
the same one he was stopped at
two days after yogurt shop.
So, it was like full circle.
He used that gun
to commit his murders
and then
he killed himself with it.
He had a nine-millimeter
and he had a .380.
If I was going to shoot myself,
I would definitely pick
the nine-millimeter.
It's more powerful.
So, he picked that gun
for a reason.
Um, that was his trophy.
And that's what
he killed himself with.
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
They, of course,
interrogated us,
asked us
all kinds of questions.
And we lied.
"That's Mitch. That's Mitch.
I don't know who Robert is.
I have no idea who Robert is."
So, on the suicide note,
the outside of it says,
"To the police."
And then on the--
He wrote in it,
"In the event you are
reading this, I am dead.
Please, I beg you,
do not contact my father.
He has just came out of
the hospital from cancer surgery
and it will kill him if
the cops tell him. Thank you."
Like the "Thank you"
on the bottom of this note,
just it's
Like, why?
He was dead for 20 years
before anybody knew anything.
I don't think he ever thought
he would get caught.
(LOW TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: How he got into the shop,
we don't know.
He had a different line
each time, it seems like,
different ruses he would use.
So, this was--
The actual tip was taken on
December 8th of 1991,
so just two days later.
The caller, Mr. Croft,
worked for Longhorn Security,
and he had been a customer
that night at the yogurt shop.
(SUSPENSEFUL STRING
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: Said he was in the store
till 10:15 p.m.
and noticed a White male
in his late twenties,
acted strange.
"When I entered the store,
I saw a couple eating
at one of the booths
and another couple
ordering from one of the girls.
The Thomas girl
was at the register.
There was a White male subject
standing between the place
where you order at the counter
and the register
where the Thomas girl was.
All of a sudden,
the subject nudged me
and I turned to him and he said,
'Are you driving that car
with the lights on top?'
He was talking
about my work car,
which has overheads on it.
I said it was my car
and then he asked me,
'Are you a cop, or security,
or what are you?'
The girl asked what he wanted,
and he hesitated for a minute
and then said,
'I want a cold drink.'
And this stuck me as funny,
because why would you just want
a cold drink
if you're in a yogurt shop?
While he was
at the register paying,
he asked the Thomas girl
if they had a restroom.
She told him that
it was in the back,
and he picked up his Sprite
and walked behind the counter
to the back.
I stood there and talked
to the Thomas girl
for a good ten to 15 minutes,
mostly to see if the subject
was going to come back out.
I kind of had a bad feeling
about him anyway.
But he never did.
After a while,
my yogurt started to melt
and I said goodbye and left.
He was a White male.
He was about 5'9'',
and had a medium build.
After that, I went to
the football game in Houston
and then we got back
to Austin on Sunday
and I heard
about the news of the murders."
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
And that's when it ends.
We'll never know for sure
if that was Brashers,
but it definitely fits
the storyline
of maybe he got in there,
used the restroom,
and didn't come out.
Or went up and propped open
the back door.
(SIREN WAILING)
(MELANCHOLIC INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
I was sitting here
and there was a sea of red.
(SIGHS) Fire trucks
with lights flashing.
Patrol units
with their lights flashing.
There was smoke.
I could still see smoke
coming out
where they vented the roof.
(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
-(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)
-(RADIO BEEPS)
So, I come in here and
(SIREN WAILING)
I knew enough
not to go around this way,
and this is where I park.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
JONES:
The fingernails made it for me.
There could be
no cross-contamination
with what's under
her fingernails, and
That is investigator 101
that on sexual assaults
where the victims live,
-you always scrape
the fingernails.
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-You know,
bag it up and send it off.
-MARGARET: Who is that?
I'm sorry?
MARGARET:
Huh?
-Jeez.
-SONORA: Mm-hmm.
-JONES: Jeez, Sonora.
-(SONORA SPEAKS INDISTINCTLY)
JONES: I don't know
what to say about this. (LAUGHS)
SONORA: (LAUGHS) I know.
Well, and I wouldn't
I don't usually come here.
-You know, it's a little
challenging, obviously.
-(SENTIMENTAL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
But this friend
that I had breakfast with said,
"I wanted to buy flowers
and bring them over
to the yogurt shop.
I don't know
if you're up for it."
And I said,
well, you know, I'm pr--
you know, practicing saying yes
to everything.
And I said,
"Sure, let's-- lemme try it."
-How about this, huh?
-JONES: Yeah.
-(SONORA SIGHS)
-Thirty-four years.
I mean, it's so heartening
to see all these flowers here.
It's like so many people
still think about it.
-Please, go ahead.
-JONES: Oh, yes.
(EMOTIONAL PIANO
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
MOURNER 1:
-Oh, wow.
-MOURNER 1:
MOURNER 1:
SONORA:
MOURNER 1:
SONORA: Mm-hmm.
MOURNER 1:
All right, I'll let y'all go.
-Yeah. Thanks for coming by.
-MOURNER 1: Yeah.
It was nice meeting you.
(MELANCHOLIC INSTRUMENTAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
ARNE ASTAD:
We were cleaning the dining room
because at that time,
Gatti's had a buffet.
I was back doing dishes
and Dave was vacuuming
and he goes,
"Oh, look out there,
there's fire trucks out
in the parking lot."
From this shopping center,
to the end of that
shopping center,
to the wallpaper place,
we all shared the same attic.
So, smoke started coming in.
You know, we really
didn't know at that time
until like after 3:00,
4:00 in the morning.
Then we heard,
like, the tragic news.
Well, thank you.
-Yeah, thank you so much.
-Thank you.
(SIGHS)
Gosh, if we stay here
long enough,
we're gonna meet
all kinds of people.
I can't believe
he was here that night.
MOURNER 2:
SONORA: Right.
And I feel sorry for those boys
that got sent to prison too
because of the police work then.
Right.
They thought they did it,
but they didn't really.
And it was like,
"Oh my goodness."
SONORA: Yeah.
(JONES SIGHS)
(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-Oh, we lived to see this.
-This is This is
-Yeah.
-(SIGHS)
It's all the work
you did that night.
(SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
SONORA: To me, it's so sweet
that people remember.
And at the same time,
I hope people forget.
(SCOFFS)
Let's all create new stories.
Life has to be generative.
We can't keep holding on
to the past.
I think that's why
I'm starting to think
about, "What's it going
to be like a year from now?"
I mean, this story
will always be with me.
-Gimme a kiss, Sonora.
-(KISSES)
SONORA: But again, it's not like
I'm living in the mystery
and the angst of it.
Yeah, there's the creek.
I feel like this whole thing
is almost over.
And at some point
this is just gonna be history.
It'll be something we remember,
but it's not something
we're living through anymore.
It's like now we have
the answers and we can
put the question behind us.
Maybe that's the part
we can put behind us.
BARBARA:
So many memories and so many
Y'all have seen everything
The world has seen so much.
Yeah, that was Sarah's.
But there's not too many left.
Now, it's taken over
with my new grandkids.
Who is this from? Maddie.
She made me a hat.
By the way,
I think y'all are all nuts
for being in this business.
It's so it's such
a weird business.
-(LAUGHS) Just
-(MARGARET LAUGHS)
I don't mean to be disrespectful
in any way to anybody
over all these years
who's interviewed me.
No disrespect.
But I'm so glad
that's over with.
What a blessing, I wasn't
I didn't know
this would ever happen,
but this will be
my last interview.
You're supposed
to let this shit go,
'cause this eats you up.
(GENTLE EMOTIONAL
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
(BIRDS CHIRPING)
-Hold on to that plate.
-(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
SHAWN: Our fight for
this case is over with.
Our fight is not done
for other people.
ANGIE AYERS: Trying to make
a place where we can
include forensic experts,
DNA experts, genealogists,
geneticists,
victims' advocates,
all wrapped into one.
So, if people had questions,
they can reach out to one place.
A nonprofit.
What we put our energy forward
now is towards that.
ANGIE:
Trying to help other families
with whatever
they're going through
'cause everybody's journey
is different.
SHAWN: Hopefully to solve
some more cases.
And get some more answers
for people,
so they don't
have to wonder no more.
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
-(BIRDS CHIRPING)
MARGARET:
If it turns out that they had
nothing at all to do with it,
I would feel like
I had been fooled.
If they just happened to make up
the body positions,
I would just have been fooled.
I was acting on this stuff
and that didn't happen,
who knows?
Then I was wrong.
If the investigators get
something wrong or gets fooled,
it's not his decision
that puts them in prison,
it's the decision of these 12
MARGARET:
Well, I still don't think
(CHUCKLES) it's wrong myself.
(SOMBER PIANO
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
WARE: I've never seen
a case quite like this
where so many people,
so many professionals,
were so absolutely sure
that they were right,
all along, tragically,
very, very wrong.
REPORTER:
WARE:
There's a whole area of study
that professors
write about, et cetera,
called innocence deniers,
and it's often police,
prosecutors, et cetera,
will contort in their own mind,
"Well, okay,
there's this new evidence,
but the original guy's
still guilty," and why?
PHOTOGRAPHER: Two, one.
WARE: The evidence
is so overwhelming now
that I think probably, everybody
pretty much accepts it.
I expect that they will get
a judicial declaration
that they are actually innocent
and that they are exonerated.
(SOMBER PIANO
MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
JOSÉ P. GARZA: I don't think
we've ever been here before.
We have a situation where
their convictions
were thrown out.
No one has been
convicted of a crime.
Yet the burden
and weight of the allegation
has clung to them for 30 years,
and they carry it with them
everywhere they go.
(CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING)
JOSÉ:
The interrogations that led
to these so-called confessions
were flawed,
they were unlawful,
they were unjust.
DETECTIVE:
JOSÉ: Unfortunately,
there were many Hector Polancos
during that time.
There was a culture
that he didn't start
and he certainly
wasn't the last of.
It was a moment in our history
that we have
an obligation to understand
and to do everything we can
to make right.
There needs to be a reckoning.
(MUSIC TURNS TENSE) ♪
(INDISTINCT MURMURING)
BAILIFF: All rise.
JUDGE DAYNA BLAZEY:
Please be seated.
Good morning, everybody.
TRUDY STRASSBURGER:
Every day in this courthouse,
the state asks people
to take responsibility
for harm they've caused
to another.
And then we do what we can
to assist in repairing the harm.
(SOLEMN MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
Today, it's our turn
to accept responsibility
and to use the truth
to mitigate harm,
so we can help all involved
heal and move forward.
Over 25 years ago,
the state prosecuted
four innocent men,
teenage boys
at the time of the crime,
in what is known
as the 1991 yogurt shop murders.
The wrongful prosecutions
caused harm to Amy Ayers,
Eliza Thomas, and sisters,
Jennifer and Sarah Harbison.
They deserve justice.
There was harm
to the families of the girls.
They were asked to trust us
when we told them
we had the perpetrators.
And now they've been asked
to put away the thoughts
and feelings
that festered for decades
with eyes on the wrong people,
uncertainty,
and a lack of finality.
There was harm caused
to this community.
Believing that teenagers
were capable of these acts
changed our perception
of humanity.
It goes without saying
that harm was caused
to the four
wrongfully prosecuted.
Today, we are going
to take the first step
in righting that harm
by shining a light on the truth.
(REFLECTIVE PIANO
MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
JUDGE DAYNA: Please have a seat
on the witness stand.
TRUDY:
Did your investigation uncover
any forensic
or physical evidence
connecting any of the four
to the murders?
No.
TRUDY: Did your investigation
uncover any evidence
connecting the four
to Robert Brashers in any way?
No.
TRUDY: And in the confessions,
there were confessions
to the sexual assaults.
Based on what you knew
about the exclusions of the four
from the vaginal swabs,
is that possible?
DAN: No.
MICHAEL SCOTT:
My name is Michael James Scott.
On December 6th, 1999,
when the yogurt shop murders
occurred, I was 17 years old.
I did not commit those crimes.
I had no involvement in them,
and I have maintained
my innocence every day since.
I was accused, tried,
and wrongfully convicted.
I lost my family.
I lost my youth.
I lost my early adulthood.
No court ruling
can return the years
and the love
that were taken from me,
but it can acknowledge
the truth.
I am not guilty.
Statement
of Robert Springsteen IV.
This is the statement
of Forrest Brook Welborn.
My name is Phil Scott.
Michael Scott is my son.
My name is Janine Casey.
I am Michael Scott's
former wife.
Death by cop
is not how I envisioned
my husband's life ending.
I'm so proud of Forrest
for never wavering
on his innocence
in this horrible crime.
To the Austin Police Department,
the DA's office,
and to Paul Johnson
(VOICE BREAKS)
(SNIFFLES)
your tunnel vision
stole my daddy's future.
JUDGE DAYNA: Today's decision
is not an act of generosity.
It is an act of obligation.
No ruling can restore
the time taken from you.
No judgment can fully remedy
the burden
that you have carried.
But the court can and does
state without qualification
or hesitation
-that you are cleared
-(MUSIC FADES) ♪
and that your innocence
is affirmed.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Three, two, one.
Today's testimony centered
on loss,
the pain of losing families
and losing youth,
as the four men
wrongfully accused
in the yogurt shop murders
waited to have
their names cleared.
(INDISTINCT CHATTER)
Mm-hmm.
And, um
(INDISTINCT CHATTER CONTINUES)
I just want you to know that.
-Okay?
-Thank you.
Yes.
(SOFT PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪
DAN: Can you get it up there
without moving the
SGT. MELANIE RODRIGUEZ:
The story has been updated
with a new ending.
DAN: Same spot,
but just updated.
That actually looks good.
Yeah. Looks pretty even.
Yeah.
(SOFT PENSIVE
MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪
(GENTLE PIANO MELODY PLAYS) ♪
(MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪