Austin Yogurt Shop Murders /// Part 1 /// 81 | Forensic Files

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[Music] crime notorious unsolved crimes in Texas the yogurt shop murders four teenage girls were murdered
in North Austin at the yogurt shop it was set on fire and when it was put out by
firefighters that's when they found the bodies inside tied up stacked on top of each
other all the girls shot in the head execution style the firefighter with me tapped me
on the shoulder and pointed down and he asked me is that a body and I I had to step back and it it was I saw another
body I knew that that it wasn't right something was not right I mean play that over in your mind
time and time again if we ever get to a point where we have a National Database for some of the
different subtypes of DNA that we have that could be one of the keys to to bringing this investigation back into
the [Music] courtroom 1991 in Austin TCH four teenage girls were bound and killed in a
small yogurt shop the store of course was robbed and now 25 years later this case remains unsolved the yogurt shop
murders took place back in December of 1991 this case has gripped the City of Austin since and it has be been quite
the drama first of all you have the horrible murders that took place but then you have an investigation with many
Peaks and valleys I had heard of this case years ago but never really looked into it and I do want to add that this
case has been requested to be covered on this show by many when I first started looking into this case well first of all
it's a very strange case with strange circumstances MH but as I got kneed deep in this thing it started to occur to me
and I can't I can't shake this thought that this case is like a meshing of two cases that we have covered before first
you have it's like the Burger Chef murders you know that we covered back in episode 2 and also very much like the
West Memphis 3 case that we covered in a three-part Series in episodes 40 to 42 and I'll tell you why I'm making these
connections here first the Burger Chef murders for maybe more obvious reasons both of these events took place in
places of business uh both being food or snack places involving a robbery and ultimately the killing of persons in the
store in the Burger Chef case all of the persons killed were working at the store
at the time that night and they're mainly teenagers yeah and they were actually taken to another location first
but nonetheless it's quite a similar situation now for the West Memphis 3 case and the connection there the
reasons are a little more subtle but it's it's well let's say quote unquote the interesting confessions basically
little to no evidence but just a simple confession or confessions that led investigators to persons they believe to
be responsible for the murders in both cases being that of young men or more appropriately a group of teenage boys
and in both cases is the West Memphis 3 and what you know a lot of people call this the yogurt shop murders I kind of
view it as the Austin city 4 mhm uh there's four victims and there's going to be four major suspects um but with
with both of those cases we're talking about horrendous murders very horrifying yes yes so this all takes place on a
Friday December 6th 1991 17-year-old Jennifer harson drops off her little sister 15-year-old Sarah now Sarah is
with her friend who is 13 years old her name is Amy SS she drops them off at a local spot they are going to catch a
movie and hang out afterwards Jennifer had to go go to work that evening she worked at the I Can't Believe It's
Yogurt Shop this is located in a strip mall on West Anderson Lane in Austin Texas I Can't Believe It's Yogurt is a
basically a frozen yogurt chain and know similar to like a fro yo mhm yeah we used to have one of these back
in the day probably around the time of this crime here in in this city um and it's a great place to drop in for a
snack especially in summertime in the hot days uh great place to take a date to you know these are usually smaller
shops Ice Cream Shop jobs are normally run by teenagers and it's a Friday night so we don't even actually have a adult
on staff we have Jennifer harbinson uh who's working the closing shift with the another 17-year-old girl Eliza Thomas
and as said this is the evening shift the closing shift Jennifer and Eliza would be closing up the shop for the
night at the end of their shifts now keep in mind this is not a huge store so it will just be the two of them cleaning
up and closing the shop for the night and this is something that they had done before sometime later in their shift
Jennifer's Little Sister Sarah and her friend Amy arrive at the yogurt shop they're going to help the two older
teenagers with the closing d duties and then catch a ride with Jennifer afterward there was going to be a uh a
sleepover that night some the closing time was scheduled for 11:00 p.m. MH so during this time you know we we've all
seen this done before or we've worked at similar establishments and this means not only do you have your doors open and
you're working through your your customer line and and ensuring everybody's having probably not a huge
customer base at on this day because it is December but it is Texas so it is a warmer environment actually didn't
think about that yeah like here in Columbus some of the ice cream shops even close for the winter time so this
is something we're not really accustomed to but during this closing shift not only are you trying to uh keep the
customers happy and make sure everybody's served in a timely manner but you're also doing closing duties you
know you're cleaning up the place and closing it for the night and it requires a certain amount of uh administrative
type uh duties where you'd be collect you know Counting the money and filling out some paperwork and maybe doing a
little bit of light inventory or paperwork and then on the flip side you're going to have a little bit of
just hustle and bustle you know you got to sweep the floors mop the floors you know wipe down the windows all that
stuff and we we know how this goes down right Captain because when when people that are working at a store or working
at a restaurant like this you if especially on a Friday night when you have things that you want to do
afterwards usually you're trying to do some of these closing duties even before you've officially locked the door for
the night you know you're trying to trying to expedite the whole situation so you can get out of there in a timely
manner mhm around 10 p.m. a man named Daryl Croft enters the shop and he is there to buy yogurt for himself and two
friends now Daryl Croft is quite observant he's a former police officer yeah or he's just buying three portions
for himself uh at at the time he ran a security company um there's a line of customers and Croft noticed that there
is is a man who is waiting in line but this man is letting people go before him the man is wearing a military fatigue
style jacket uh this man approaches Croft and asks him if he's a cop I guess Croft had one of those Vehicles you know
with the lights on top of it so obviously it the vehicle looks like a police car but it is in fact his
security vehicle uh so the man asks him if he's a cop and then offers to let Croft uh take you know place his order
before him go in line before him Croft is a bit put off by this and thinking that the man might be up to something so
Croft does not take the man up on his offer thus it's now time for the guy in the Army jacket to place his order and
he ask simply just for a can of soda he doesn't order any yogurt at all after the man paid for his can of soda he went
to the back of the store uh Croft then approaches the counter mhm and he places his order and he asked Eliza Eliza is
the shift supervisor that night so she is on the register uh he asked you know where did
the man go why did he go to the back and she says you know he had asked to use the restroom and she had allowed him to
the back of the store to use the store's restroom Croft still is put off by the man and decides that even after
receiving his order he's going to stick around a little longer than necessary you know he kind of wants to keep an eye
on the place it's you know it's his nature he's a former police officer um but after a few minutes go by you
know his he's got frozen yogurt it's starting to melt right here this is direct evidence that this gentleman
bought three servings of yogurt for himself and not for him and two friends well like I said the the man that he's
waiting on that he's trying to keep an eye on the guy in the Army jacket he doesn't come back he doesn't come back
so uh Croft decides that he's going to leave now Croft would end up giving a fairly detailed description of this man
he described the man as a white male about 6 feet tall mid to late 20s with a medium build dark hair he was clean
shaven he had a clear deep voice and a long pointed nose so Croft just described me yeah I find it very odd
that he went into a yogurt shop and didn't order frozen yogurt right that's the only reason you need to be there but
uh then when he orders the soda and then heads off to the restroom it's like well
maybe he's just being polite by ordering the soda so he's not just using the restroom and and and not paying for
anything possibly my guess is that Croft you know kind of got the hint that maybe
this guy was kind of lingering or loitering for for some time for a reason right right right which or he's just a
complete Savage and goes to yogurt shops for a soda now we are going to fast forward just a little bit so just before
11: p.m. there is a married couple who are in the yogurt store so this is just before closing right just before the
girls will lock the front door finish cleaning and restocking count the register and then leave for the night
yeah and this is the best part of the night if you're the employee well things are winding down there's only four
customers in the store at this time well and you're excited to go home yeah you have the married couple who say that
they see two men sitting at a booth and this is while the girls are cleaning the
shop they're and this is important here stock in the napkins in the dispensers that are on the tables and picking up
chairs and flipping them upside down and placing them on the tables as they clean
each table and move on to the next uh the the details of this couple account we we don't have we don't have them this
is not something that's been presented to the public not everything here has been released but about this particular
part of the evening but the couple says that the men were sitting together at the booth of course and they are acting
strange uh we don't know what exactly that means uh but the woman says that the man made
her uncomfortable the couple leaves the store just minutes before closing time and the two men are still present in the
store when they leave so we got creepy MC creepers and his buddy old Oddball and they're the last two known customers
in the yogurt shop that night yeah we would call these campers you know when I used to work at the restaurant and at
the bar people that just kind of sit there with with basically nothing on their table for far too long and
probably you know it's so close to closing time sometimes it's a few minutes afterwards we go oh I got a
group of Campers at table 13 well and these campers these creepy campers is what we should call them neither one of
them were eating yogurt they're both just drinking sodas and I know that sounds like such a silly thing to keep
harping on but maybe that's why this married couple why the woman was kind of so put off by these two that she thought
that they were strange or acting she says acting strange we don't know exactly the details of that um but but
she's afraid of them now the the married couple has left as as Captain just said
we got the two weirdos still sitting at the booth the creepy campers now closing
time is 11:00 p.m. at 11:03 p.m. someone pushed the no sale key on the register this is opening the
register drawer so this would have been recorded on the register so we know this
happened it's believed this may have been the start of the robbery in the start of the horrible events to come now
just before midnight then rookie Austin Police Officer Troy gay was on patrol near North Cross Mall uh he reported
smoke coming from the rear of the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt Shop uh now as I said the yogurt shop is located in a
strip mall and this is just down the street from the North Cross mall where the rookie officer is stationed uh
according to the media reports at the time nearly 50 firefighters responded to this call at the yogurt shop Jesus after
extinguishing the Flames they made a Grizzly Discovery so keep in mind here what's going on right we how destroyed
this place must be there is a fire and a pretty decent sized one at that well and
and all that the people know all that the firefighters know is that this is called in as a fire it's not called in
as a burglary or anything and that's going to come into play because what happens is when the firefighters get
there they start doing their job they start trying to put out the fire this place is ablazed uh it's a you know a
family-owned business these are franchised it's connected to other businesses so now they're trying to save
that whole area and as they do that they make that gruesome Discovery Well and even after they put out the fire the
place is full of smoke uh objects in the store are melted burned and ruined um there would be soot everywhere
and water from the firemen's hoses so much that there were puddles of water all over the place right one of the
firefighters walking through the shop after the fire had been extinguished he points to something on the floor and he
asked the firefighter next to him what is that and the object he is pointing to is a foot can you imagine the thoughts
that are going through that firefighter's head well now a new call has to go out right Captain because
originally they're responding to a fire and the firefighters discovered that we have a fatality and actually the call
that goes out is that they discovered three fatalities after extinguishing the fire this call is going to the police at
this point obviously and just seconds later that call from the dispatcher that came to the police police cruiser radios
well it it has to be updated because shortly just seconds afterwards it's updated to four fatalities were found
well now the firefighters have to start treating this as you know a crime scene and they already aware that the work
that they did to put out the fire has already contaminated that crime scene which is going to make this way harder
for the police officers and law enforcement the detectives to collect evidence MH and and I said four
fatalities that is in fact the call that went out but but technically Amy the 13-year-old she was clinging to life uh
when discovered but but she died very shortly after after the discovery so four girls lay dead inside the shop
three were found together this would be in the back room prep area the other girl Amy was found closer to the back of
the shop this is near the stores restrooms and like we said Amy is 13 Sarah is 15 then we have Jennifer and
Eliza that are both 17 just kind of put into perspective I mean we have a couple
we do have two older teenagers but you know Sarah and Amy were were just babies M and Eliza Sarah and Jennifer were the
three that were found in that back room prep area now they were actually found together two of them were stacked on top
of one another and the third girl lay next to them investigators believe as do I that all three of them were probably
stacked on top of each other but due to the chaos when the firefighters were putting out the fire and sweeping the
ceiling walls and floors with their high-pressured hoses that the girl which was on top was probably knocked to the
floor one of the First Responders described the girls as charred nearly to the Bone investigators immediately
concluded the blaze was set to cover up the crime you mean the arson happened to
cover up the murders yes yes sorry about that but the thing here is Captain we have multiple crimes happening in a very
short period of time in a small space right we have the arson that was that the fire set to cover up the murders was
the murders due to something going wrong in a robbery because one would assume this is a robbery gone wrong uh when you
start to look at this thing and there was a robbery you know we we said that that at some point no someone had hit
the no sale button on the register we don't know if this was one of the girls or if this was a robber um but what we
do know is there is $540 missing uh from the store that night that seems like a very small amount of money to kill four
innocent girls over yeah it's to me this looks like it it makes absolutely no sense even if
you if you try to go down the path of a robbery gone wrong I don't know that you
commit four murders to cover up a a $540 robbery and and furthermore it seems to
me like you could have picked another business where there would have been potentially more more money if this in
fact if money was the actual object that you were seeking that night how about you talk a little bit about one of the
main characters in this case detective Jones yeah so here's an interesting situation regarding this case detective
Jones was working the night shift that night and he was one of the officers that received the call about the
fatalities he's on his way to the store the strange thing here is he's actually being he has a ride along that night
right he's followed by a news team yeah they're doing a piece on crime in the city uh and they're following him around
so we get a lot of of news footage from this crime scene right from the get-go so detective Jones as you said he's one
of not only one of the first law enforcement officers to the scene that night but he would end up being the lead
investigator early on in this case he's called to the scene and he describes the
scene to the news team after he goes inside he comes back out and he describes the scene as a whol sale of
Carnage and to make matters worse we got four teenagers well and actually at the
time they didn't even really fully know that I mean I've heard Jones talk about this case time and time again and one
thing and I'll try to try to say it as best as I can but when he's referred to his immediate reaction to what he's
seeing you know he says you know I've seen burned bodies before you know the enormity of that is huge but and then to
have the Stacked bodies but he says we couldn't tell a lot back then right when we were in the building uh we couldn't
even tell race or sex so that tells you how bad the scene was mhm and this shop was you know a pretty typical any kind
of retail shop that would be in uh a strip mall and what we have at the scene is we have the locked front door so we
could assume that um the girls were able to lock the front door on what capacity
and then normally you lock the front door you take care of all your belongings you might have to run out
trash through the back but they found the back door unlocked and open like crack yeah and the the owner of the
store would kind of help police with the with this situation to kind of take them
through how this closing time would work and what he States is that the back door
itself it's dead bolted and and there would be no reason for the girls to open up that door that night okay so have to
throw trash away that night right having the back door unlocked and opened was strange was super strange to the owner
and it might be just a simple sit as Maybe the owner says you know what leave the trash near the back door leave
the trash in this location and I will take the trash out when I arrive in the morning morning yeah now regarding the
front door it's a little bit of a different situation it's it's locked that you know the firefighters found the
front door locked they were able to pry it open pretty easily they're hell they're firefighters that's what they do
they kick in doors and bust down doors put out fires right but this door itself it was locked from the inside and it was
one of those kind of locks where you would lock it with an actual key mhm and that same key would unlock it from the
outside right so the door was locked with the key still in the lock on the inside of the door now what the girls
would would do is after they finished up everything they would unlock the front door from the inside they would leave
taking the key with them lock the door from the outside and then they would slide the key underneath the door
putting it back into the store so the people that arrive in the morning presumably these are people that have
their own key you know the the owner and maybe a manager or something right they
would arrive in the morning and they would pick up that key and the whole process would start right but that way
you don't have a bunch of employees running around with the key right you don't have to a million keys out all
right so just a quick recap we have a fire at the yogurt shop the the the firefighters show up they start putting
out the fire and then they quickly realize that we have a murder scene mhm um we then have the detective showing up
they can't even identify these bodies cuz they're so badly burned and so badly charred they realize then the arson was
to cover up the murders uhhuh and then on by the way we also have money missing and we have one door open the other door
still locked MH um and we'll get into more of the findings right after this quick beer break this show is sponsored
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2023 all right cheers mates I'm actually uh switching over from the Island Reserve to uh little Ryan guys the truth
cheers hey I do want to get into the autopsy report and I and here's the thing though Captain this is always
tough in these situation in any case that we go through because sometimes we cover the autopsy findings and sometimes
we do not uh and usually you know it's a thin line and you have to decide when you're going to cross that line or not
and typically with uh a case involving teenagers um we would try to stay away from that but in certain situations that
report could mean a break in the case it it can clear up certain amounts of evidence that are found well and also
depending on what you find during that autopsy it changes the suspect that you're looking for mhm and as we said
there the later in this case there's going to be four suspects that that are brought to the Forefront amongst a whole
bunch of other groups of suspects and the problem here is I think you have to review that autopsy report because
within that there could be Clues as to how many perpetrators it took to carry out this crime was it four people was it
one person you know and some of this information helps and the reason being is you know we talked about the West
Memphis case right M West Memphis 3 so so just comparing the two real quick here and the reason why I think it's
important is in this situation in the yogurt shop murder situation we have a very we have a very uh pinpointed time
frame of when the deaths probably occurred you're right because we we know that they're closing about 11: uh and
then we know that the firefighters receive a call and are on the scene about 12 yeah so we have about an hour
and and we can surmise that that they were killed during that hour period now in the west Memphis case what the big
what the big problem with that case was in my opinion is that they were not they
were not able to nail down the time of death and that being that there were so many people that have been suspected of
that crime you know whether it be in the media's eyes or in the eyes of investigators but one big problem you
have there is when you cannot pinpoint that time of death well you could have eliminated a lot of those suspects just
to what time they they were murdered well right and if you have a time of death then you can find out if that
person has an alibi or not but again here I think what we're going to find out is does this point to one person two
persons four people carrying out this crime that that's the important thing here which is very similar to The West
Memphis 3 as well so hopefully this will clear some things up uh for later on discussion because this shocking case is
about to get real cloudy real quick I do want to be perfectly clear here though right while I do have a quote unquote
autopsy report um and I have very little reason to doubt the following report but I want
everyone to understand something that this is a thirdhand account of the autopsy report
because early in this case it was determined that the autopsy reports should be sealed and according to some
people um these are technically public documents and that they should be made public because this could help with the
actual investigation so what I have here is actually a third hand account of the
autopsy reports this was the reports were supplied by a former attorney to a writer and then a a writer reviewed them
and gave a summary of those reports so what we have here is is this report and I'll read it read it as it goes um well
just the warning is is this is graphic in nature so yes just be warned so we have the uh body of Sarah harbinson uh
was found nude uh found gagged and her hands were bound behind her back with a pair of panties uh her body was severely
charred and she had been shot through the back of the head with a 22 caliber gun uh this was a lead bullet which was
recovered from her brain then we have Jennifer harbinson whose nude body was found she was not bound but her her body
was found in a manner that her hands were behind her back uh her body was severely charred as well but there was
no binding on the hands no binding but you don't know what could have been burnt in
situation um she had been shot through the back of the head and again a 22 caliber lead bullet was recovered from
her brain Eliza Thomas she was nude as well and gagged her hands bound behind her back with a bazer and her body was
severely charred uh and she had been shot through the back of the head again a 22 caliber lead bullet was recovered
from her B from her brain yeah I mean this is just the scene is horrific uh what a tragic scene
Amy airs uh her body she was found nude as well with a sock likee cloth material
wrapped around her neck with a half hitch in the back um this would be the manner that it was tied in her body was
not severely charred now remember she was the one that was found elsewhere okay so this might help lead
investigators to figure out where the fire had originated from um well Amy Amy wasn't badly charred as like the other
victim vitim were but she did have second and third degree burns on about 25 30% of her body and she had been
found shot in the back of the head just like the same same as the other girls with a 22 caliber gun um but the bullet
in this case did not enter the brain however there was a second gunshot and in this report it says the caliber is
not specified in the report caused this second gunshot caused severe damage to the brain so possibly two weapons two
guns this would be two weapons yes and this bullet exited through the right lateral cheek and jaw area all right so
is it possibly two guns or is it definitely two guns well according to this report it sounds more like possibly
two guns but what we would later learn is that it is in fact uh two guns and I'm going off of this assumption because
of the police were looking for a 22 caliber gun and a 38 or a 380 caliber gun okay and what this tells me is that
probably at the time that when this autopsy was filed uh when this report was conducted they may not have found
that bullet at that time and it may have been recovered from the scene later therefore they know that it's a a 380 um
the the report goes on to state that whereas the cause of death for each of the other girls this is all this is
Jennifer Sarah and Eliza the three other girls other than Amy was determined by the coroner to be shot with a 22 caliber
gunshot wound to the back of the head the cause of death for Amy was listed as a result of gunshot wounds of the head
and aixia due to ligature strangulation also unlike the other girls Amy's fingernails were cut for
examination purposes and fingerprints were taken yeah and it seems like maybe that we should just assume that with
Jennifer Sarah and Eliza that maybe their bodies were just so badly charred that they couldn't
actually take those for fingerprints yeah I would guess that a certain amount of evidence was lost due to the amount
of fire that that the bodies had to succumb to but the situation here is it it's showing us a few different things
okay one it's showing us that Amy is believed to have spent more time with with whoever was assaulting her or
whomever was you know killing her um you know they clipped her fingernails for a
reason um and this may have been we have a big problem here right Captain because we have one girl that's
found back by the restrooms she's the same girl that is shot twice the only one that's shot twice the only one where
there's mention of possible strangulation as well so do we have a situation where all four girls are shot
and believed to have been dead and then the whoever did this is stacking the bodies so that because when you burn the
place the whole goal here is if you're trying to cover up these murders is that you want to burn as much of that
evidence away and as much of those bodies as possible do we have a situation here where someone had stacked
those bodies and for whatever reason Amy had survived we know that the bullet didn't hit the brain and then at some
point she started to crawl or to move away from the from from the stack and was was tracked down and then killed
near the rest rooms that's very I mean it's horribly sad for the fact you know Amy again is is the youngest of all four
victims we should also talk about what the city's fire investigator found U now that we've gone through what we've heard
of the autopsy so the city fire investigator Melvin stall he concluded that from reviewing the crime scene that
the fire had started in a corner of the shop where the supplies were stored so this would be where the fire started
then at some point it it worked its way through portions of the the of the store
yeah and with the autopsy and with this uh the fire report this is basically the
start of the investigation and looking for suspects and looking for answers of this quadruple homicide yeah and in this
situation detectives are going to do just like what they would normally do in any homicide type situation you're going
to start off by interviewing family members and Friends of the victims in interviewing the store owner and
employees as well as owners and employees of the shops nearby you're also going to interview the customers
who had been in the shop that day and Fielding thousands of tips phoned in from very concerned from the very
concerned public because this I mean this this case blew up the city rightfully so I mean people were calling
in with tips left and right well and I'm sure there's a bunch of statements from
the the store owners next door yeah yeah one such interview was that of the owner
of the nextto shop this is a party supply store uh this man stated that the only thing out of the ordinary for that
evening was that he had heard popping noises and sounds that he had thought were coming from the roof uh he had also
noticed the back door to the yogurt shop was open it it was propped open and and
this was abnormal now of course the the police are assuming that the popping noises that he had heard were probably
the gunshots right but one thing we got to keep in mind here is this store is right next door and in a strip mall
they're sharing they're basically sharing a wall so this is not like a huge barrier between the two locations
what what is he hearing he's hearing popping noises he's not hearing screams he never reports hearing screams or or
loud commotions other than these popping noises so what that tells me is that we
have a a a group of victims here that seem to be by by going by this one account seem to be controlled by
whomever is carrying out this crime yeah I mean you'd think well You' think also
maybe that um there's some way that they're unconscious at this point mm and maybe that's why they're not you're not
hearing the screams cuz you'd think that if you're next to your you know best friend or next to your sister and and
she got shot you know what you would be doing that would be UNC controllable you
I mean like that you could have you could have one uh suspect on each victim and that doesn't stop you know somebody
from making some kind of noise once you start shooting yeah we have two of the victims that are gagged um that may have
played a role in that that as well um but we also don't know what what's going on inside these four walls we don't know
what's being said to them uh what we do know is just like you said four victims perceivably you would you would guess
that that all four of them would have been shot with that 22 mhm uh three of them were killed by the 22 the fourth
survived it but was shot by it so you almost seem like you have a situation here where they're being executed one at
a time right um and you're exactly right you would expect the the Remain the the
alive uh people to start reacting to what they're seeing or hearing um somehow somehow either these these
screams were muffled or didn't happen at all and and somehow these the perpetrator or perpetrators of this
horrific murder and murders was able to control the scene and control the victims well and like I said I mean the
possibility it's just likely to me that there would be unconscious by some level
MH um there only one of them had been reported to show signs of some kind of actual struggle um and that was Amy she
had had uh what appeared to have been hit on the face with something um and again we talked about her probably
having more uh you know probably a closer attack on her than the other girls um the because of the crime scene
being so messed up you know because the fire had destroyed so much of the crime scene detective Jones he knew that this
would make the investigation very difficult at best to identify and collect evidence that remained at the
scene I got to say that detective Jones I believe you know did his due diligence
here he immediately calls in for backup he reached out and brought in several different organizations into this
investigation he brought in the Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms he also brought in the FBI and the Texas
Department of Public Safety detective Jones was not the only detective on this case he was actually working with his
partner uh detective Huckabee plus having brought in all those other organizations you're going to have you
know detectives and investigators involved uh from those places as well well 8 days into this investigation we
got uh detective hucke and detective Jones they're going to receive a break yeah this would be a 16-year-old boy his
name is Maurice Pierce now he had been picked up at the North Cross Mall remember we had said this was the mall
that was just blocks from the crime scene and he's picked up because he's carrying a 22 caliber handgun yeah
during questioning Maurice Pierce he said that he had lent the gun to his friend Forest wilborne who was 15 and
wilborne had said that he had used the gun to commit the yogurt shop murders right now if at this point as far as
detectives go you're thinking done solved yeah yeah and but you got to do your due diligence because you need
evidence if if if in fact this wilborne character carried out the murders so one
thing that they do is that they hook uh Maurice Pierce up and their they're going to record a conversation that he's
going to have with forest wilborne and Forest Wilborn has no clue according to the recording what what his friend
Maurice Pierce is talking about right and you know they're trying to get this they're trying to get some idea if
forest wilborne was actually involved now when they bring in wilborne he immediately denies any involvement uh
but he did tell investigators that he and Pierce along with two other boys this would be Robert Springstein and
Michael Scott that at some point they had stolen a a vehicle uh and this they had stolen a vehicle because they wanted
to Joy Ride to nearby San Antonio uh this was a stolen SUV this took place not long after the crime but it was that
admission that put Springstein and Scott and the other two boys on the police radar right nonetheless after lengthy
questioning Jones and his team they dismissed Maurice Pierce as a suspect they concluded that he was lying about
having lent the gun to his friend and his friend saying that he had used it in the murders that's just such an odd
thing to lie about though well and and the thing here with Jones too is Jones speaks very frankly to everybody and and
I I like the cut of his jib I like his character and and one thing that he said years later you know when brought up the
fact of Maurice Pierce and they found him with the gun and now you you're talking to his Maurice Pierce's three
friends he basically says yeah we had to deal with him because he got caught with
a goddamn 22 and Jones would go on to say that it yes it's the same caliber as one of the two guns used in the crime
but it became clear to Jones that neither Pierce nor Wilborn had any connection to the crime at all when he
describes Forest wilborne he describes Forest as Forest had no clue he says this is a guy that couldn't organize a
two-car parade yeah that boy didn't know chicken [ __ ] from chicken salad he was
no criminal mastermind that's to you know to say the least in in Jon's opinion moreover Janes says that Maurice
Pierce his gun that 22 that they found on him it did not match the ballistics of the crime which is a strange which is
a strange thing because then he almost immediately says that and he points this out and he's rightful rightful to do so
but stating that 22s are typically thought as throwaway weapons because the ballistics uh the bullets are flattened
uh because they're a softer smaller bullet and this usually leaves very few few Clues which would help match them to
a particular gun uh but the gun that they checked on Pierce was just one of 75 guns they test fired 75 guns and they
never found a successful link to any of the guns that were used in the crime it seems like detective Jones and uh
detective hucke did a really good job of trying trying to let the evidence tell the story yeah and not to come up with a
theory and make the shoe fit you're exactly right and the other thing here too is we from Jones's statements future
statements we can we can verify that there was that second gun even though and and we know now that the autopsy
report was not complete because Jones would tell us that the there was a second gun used in the crime this was a
380 pistol used to fire the single shot into Amy uh and he stated that a big part of their investigation which was
right to do so was looking for that 380 he said because While most 380s have a particular twist to the rifling of the
barrel the one that was used in the yogurt shop murders it had an opposite twist so if that gun could be found
which who knows I mean it still could be found even 25 years later this would be
a tremendous help to closing this case and to figuring out who did this crime well it seems like this 16-year-old
Pierce is a little bit of a nutcase right he's he's basically saying well I got this gun he seems like he's being
kind of braggadocious about this whole idea of um you know my friend was involved you know and then it just seems
odd and and like I said detective Jones is going well the shoe doesn't fit right
and then we have this other detective that comes in to actually interrogate Pierce yeah and I I want before we get
into that I want to go into this just a little bit more here because Detective Jones he's not a rookie detective okay
at this point in his career he's investigated over 140 homicides so this is a seasoned detective this is a guy
that knows what to look for he's probably put many many people behind bars for those murders now this
situation like you said do we just have some dumbass 16-year-old boy and I can say that because I was once a dumbass
16-year-old boy okay and I know how some you're still a dumbass 16-year old boy I
know how some some of these things work okay so do we have a situation here where this kid and and he's probably not
a you know a good you know a doood he's probably not a good Samaritan he's walking around a mall with a with a gun
and and you know could could you see kind of a dumbass 16-year-old kid kind of bragging to his friends like oh you
see this gun this 22 caliber it's it's the same kind of gun that was used in the yogurt shop you know uh not meaning
it's the exact same gun um the other thing too though like what you were going to get into is this other
detective that was involved in the investigation at the time but we also see in the west Memphis 3 there's a lot
of accounts whether these were madeup accounts or not was that you know Damen Eckles was going around town basically
you know bragging about that he was involved you know yeah and and he States things like well I had people asking me
if I was involved so at some point I just kind of joked joked to them to their face you know which came back
to really be a bad idea B in the probably much like this Maurice Pierce person um but we have a detective um
who's no longer a detective his name is Hector palanco now he's an interesting guy right he is a guy that that Jones
would say you know we learned this years later that Hector palanco was responsible for getting for having a bad
name yeah for getting many many people to confess to crimes that they did not commit what a skill yeah yeah he he he
was he was strong in the area of coercion right he also interviewed Jesse M Kelly so which he did not we don't
want anybody to get confused there um but what he's saying is that when they brought in Maurice Pierce and they
wanted to really Grill him right put the hammer down right so they stick him in an interrogation room with this
detective palano and palanco was not able is a bad name it's a regular name I'm sorry if your last name is palanco
most of our listeners have the last name palanco 95% of our listeners are Panos what he's saying here is that if panco
could not get this Maurice Pierce to confess to the crime MH he didn't do it he absolutely didn't do it and that's
that's detective Jones saying this out of experience okay so do you think listen just hypothetically right what do
I think we have Pierce in a room we don't know if he did did it right right but they call you in oh he's in the room
because they assume he did it oh no I'm saying hypothetical that's what hypothetical is is fictitious land okay
we just have a suspect right and and they call you in Columbus PD calls you in and they say we want you to get him
to confess you think you could do it uh no no I don't I don't think I would have
that skill you don't think you watched enough detective shows or like SVU or anything uh there was a detective that
that worked a famous case up in Canada was a serial killer and I can't remember his name maybe McDon I can't remember
his name he was the guy that was involved in the the Air Force up there uh so this is a guy that would not be
easy to break uh and I watched they had a lengthy video of him interrogating this guy and he got him to to talk
eventually and this was this was not like this was not like a guy that just got into the air force this was a guy
that was very high ranking officer that that had spent 20 some years in the Air Force up there and he was a respected
individually individual in the community as well as in the government uh government's eyes up there he he would
be the type of criminal that you would think that you wouldn't be able to get him to Spill The Bean so to say right
and this guy was able to do it and I I sat there and I watched the interrogation like three times because I
thought oh if I could just pick up something here then you could use this on anybody and it would work I I I could
tell you right now I don't have that ability well maybe it was just his time to tell you know what I mean maybe it
was just his building up inside him and it didn't really matter who asked well I
got to admit when I when I first sat down and I heard about this situation I I was being the ever ever being the
skeptic that I am right I I expected it just to be something all your typical run-of-the-mill interrogation this guy
he was never like aggressive or forceful with anything um I don't even think he ever lost
to the guy that he was interrogating but he got him to confess he got him to start talking and it was I thought it
was masterful yeah and I know there's like some techniques that they use but uh one of our uh buddies that is a
Columbus uh detective always talks about he never claimed to be like a super intelligent guy he worked hard uh did
his job but he wasn't like into like the psychology of trying to figure out criminals and all that stuff and so he
would just go in have them talk you know confess you know and and maybe they did confess
but it would be like bits and pieces and then he would just go okay well I got to
go talk to this guy and he'd go out you know pretend to talk to the guy get another cup of coffee come back and go
we got to start from the beginning cuz you're lying and then he would just do that about five or six times and he them
down eventually they're just like so confused and thinking that this guy has to know something that they just start
spilling the beans he you know I don't know if we're talking about this same guy but there there's a detective that I
spoke to and this is a very this is a pretty regular technique I'm assuming but I had never thought of it at the
time but one thing he had told me because I'd asked him I was like you know how many times in these when you're
questioning somebody do you just outright lie to them which I've always thought was strange but you're allowed
to do so right um and he told me that you know he's like a lot of times you don't have to lie to them he's like it's
really about the way you word things and he said said you know if I if I were talking to somebody that we suspected
robbed an ATM machine well what am I going to use I'm going to use their knowledge that their general knowledge
that they may know and I'm going to mix in a little bit of stuff that we might know but I'm not going to you know I'm
not going to have to lie because I could look at the guy and tell him well what if I said to you that we have you on
camera committing this crime right he's not claiming that they do but then immediately the guys thinking well of
course they have cameras at these ATMs I was at that ATM and then a lot of times
or I was not at the ATM and then you go well that's impossible right yeah well now's the point in the investigation
because look that's your big lead right going back to the four teenage boys that
are picked up that's your big lead and then that after you investigate it and you put them through the mill there it
really goes nowhere for them it doesn't check out exactly it doesn't it doesn't fit the crime uh so now police are going
to start focusing in on the freaks right because you've you you've exhausted some
of your leads and you got to start looking into well what's going on in the area yeah and also just to keep in you
know our minds on the time frame this is 1991 this is two years before West Memphis 3 and and so we this is the
height of satanic Panic yes and that's that's part of the freaks that they're going to start focusing the
investigation around they're going to check in with known uh Satanist in the area rapist uh
violent offenders and serial killers and because this is an extremely violent crime that took place right and you
would you would think that if you have to find somebody outside of the circle of the victims or outside of the circle
of the shop itself that now you're going to have to look for people that are capable of such horrendous violence well
and that's one of the things that detectiv Jones said is is he didn't even believe that the the for that they had
or capable of something this horrendous let's go into the thought of the serial killers that we had mentioned right so
in 1992 we have a man that is picked up and his name is Kenneth Allen McDuff okay
now some of our listeners are this name is going to ring bells with them right uh this is a serial killer and he is he
was actually first convicted of raping and murdering three teenagers way back back in August of
1966 um he killed three people like I said in 1966 and he was he was known as the
broomstick killer and you think well why is he involved in this 1991 case well he
was he was caught and Texas had a problem okay nowadays we know Texas is one of the FastTrack states where they
they they convict people and they execute people with with a quickness uh that's not carried out as fast in other
states way back then it was a bit of a different situation okay because you did have the the uh capital punishment the
death penalty was abolished in 1972 so even though that he was convicted and sentenced to death back back in ' 66
that was abolished in 72 so they end up commuting his sentence to life with the possibility of parole yeah which is
ridiculous which you also have another you have another bad thing going on here in in the state of Texas at some point
in his in his while he's in prison there's an overpopulation problem okay all these prisons are getting heavily
overpopulated so the idea here is you got to let some of these guys out to create some space for the new guys
coming in yeah the thought that sounds like a great idea well he would he would not be high on their list of people to
release obviously because he's an extreme violent offender right three murders so
what they start off with doing is letting out the nonviolent offenders M well they do that for quite some time
and even though it it doesn't create enough space so at some point they have to start releasing violent offenders the
problem here is he had served quite a bit of time and he was considered to be older and therefore the thought would be
that there's a better chance of him being rehabilitated when you compare him to a prisoner that had only spent a
short amount of time in prison right but you have three murders under your belt and three rapes so you know hey let's
send this guy out cuz he's too old for that so due to the extremely crowded prison Texas prisons McDuff is pared in
1989 now actually upon his release McDuff is arrested on a series of parole violations but he's not locked up for
any substantial length of time what happens here captain m is that in late December of
1991 along with an accomplice uh he is in Austin City Texas they pick up a woman named Colleen Reed now she is at a
car wash now this car wash is not terribly far from the yogurt shop right they pick her up and abduct her at a car
wash and basically I don't want to go into the details of of what takes place after that but she is killed she's
killed that night and her body is is not found for quite some time and it's not found in
1992 um what happens here is he would after being released he ultimately ends up killing a couple of people and he's
suspected of killing many more people the thing here is he he's in the area at the time right and he's a very bad guy
and and second of all he's there's some similarities to this crime as to his old
crimes he he was known to have raped the victims before killing them he was also
known to have tied them up and a lot of them they to use their own belongings you know we talked about these girls
were tied up with with socks that were theirs and or pay need of yeah exactly and he he have done similar things with
stockings and uh and panties and things like that shoelaces before um the thing here is though that that's strange is
that if he were to have been involved in the yogurt shop murders this would have taken place
December 6th 1991 he picked up Colleen Reed December 29th in Austin 1991 it would be hard for me to believe
that he uh would have stuck around you know we're talking about a guy that was probably moving about quite a bit
especially moving about the state of Texas it would be hard for me to believe that he would stick around for almost a
month after after that crime yeah but not unheard of for a killer to stick around no you're exactly right you're
exactly right yeah and with Colleen Reed he had an accomplice and so you know a lot of people believe and I think a lot
of the evidence points out that it was at least two people uh that you know did these heinous crimes at the yogurt shop
so again uh you have two people in the coling Reed and those same two people you know just you know less than a month
earlier could have done it is possible I do want to go through real quick how McDuff was eventually
picked up um it wouldn't be until March uh it was March of 1992 uh there was an abduction and there
was a murder of 22-year-old Melissa northop now Northrop she was working at her job as a clerk this is at the
quickpack convenience store this is in Waco Texas uh when she was abducted and driven from the location in her own
vehicle which was the 1977 in Buick Regal this car was found abandoned 5 days later uh but it wasn't until April
26th that her body was found floating in a gravel pit about a mile from where the
car was discovered her hands had been tied behind her back with shoe strings and a sock uh she had been strangled
with a rope uh police were led to McDuff after his abandoned vehicle was found parked near the store uh and he had once
worked with Northrup at the store and was arrested he was tracked down in Kansas City May 4th 1992 this was after
they had shown his picture on America's Most Wanted and received tips that of where he was located yeah and this is
frustrating for the cops and frustrating for the detectives cuz clearly you know
you know this fits his Mo you know and you have this serial killer you have this you know this animal and and you
really want it to to be pinned down on him yeah you he has to be looked at right because even you might not be able
to link him to the area at the exact time but the problem is he's somebody that is certainly capable of such yeah
and he has to be looked at and this is somebody they did look at and they looked at him very hard just couldn't
connect the dots to to make it fit yeah but this will not be the last time that we hear from McDuff in the in this case
no and this also will not be the last time that we hear we bring a serial killer into the investigation um this
investigation is really I mean it this case doesn't go cold for quite some time the investigation's very hot you're
talking about a situation where we have almost 400 suspects M uh we've had thousands of people interviewed
thousands of tips received we've had people that have been interrogated questioned yeah and these cases normally
don't go cold because of the amount of pressure that they're getting put on the Departments from the communities yeah
and this case would ultimately see 50 confessions right and six of them being written confessions so we don't have
time you know we got to do this in part two obviously but we'll get into some of
those confessions we'll get into some of these other suspects including more about McDuff and the other serial killer
all right and we our recommended reading for the week is yes our recommended reading for this week is Wolf Boys by
Dan Slater uh this is the story of two American teens recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel and their suit by a
Mexican amican detective who realizes the War on Drugs is unwinable uh this is this is what it's like to be an employee
of a global drug trafficking organ organization and this also talks about how a 15-year-old American boy goes from
being a star quarterback to a trained assassin this case also takes place in Texas that's right and and more
specifically the Border Town of Laredo Texas where you know sometimes people grow up poor uh the streets are
dangerous and sometimes Mexican-American teenage boys would end up joining gangs
like the Zetas which is a drug cartel with roots reaching back to the Mexican military uh wolf boys is a true story
it's the true story of a couple of teenagers that join the Zetas this is a brutal Journey Into the Heart of the
Mexican drug trade and a good-natured teenager turns into a feared assassin so pick up wolf Boys by Dan Slater By going
to our website True Crime .c click on the recommended page you're going to see all kinds of books on there and you can
do that by going through our Amazon banner and we want to thank you for joining us in the garage today tomorrow
we'll pick up right where we left off where where the detectives down in Austin city are hot on the track of
finding who did this horrific murder and we're hot on the track and we're bringing you along with us so until
tomorrow be good be kind and don't let it [Music] [Applause] you can start your day off right when
you find a professional on Angie to get your plumbing right first connect with skilled professionals to
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Austin Yogurt Shop Murders ////// 81

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In 1991- Austin, Texas 4 teenage girls were bound and killed in a small yogurt shop. The store of course was robbed. Four teenage boys would later be arrested and two of them found guilty of the murders. These convicted killers were eventually released when new evidence showed that the state's case was wrong. Now over 25 years later this case remains unsolved. Who killed these girls? Some still argue police had it right years ago, when they questioned the four boys and later arrested them. Some investigators suggest the killer or killers are unknown to law enforcement. Some point toward an insurance fraud scheme reaching high levels of the local judicial system.

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Brief Summary

The episode discusses the unsolved yogurt shop murders in Austin, Texas, where four teenage girls were killed in 1991.

Key points

The Yogurt Shop Murders. Four teenage girls were murdered in a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, in 1991.
A Grizzly Discovery. Firefighters discover the bodies of four girls after extinguishing a fire at the yogurt shop.
Arson to Cover Up Murders. Investigators conclude that the fire was intentionally set to hide the murders of four girls.
Detective Jones' Unique Situation. Detective Jones was on a ride-along with a news team when he received the call about the fatalities.
The Horrific Scene Unfolds. Detective Jones describes the aftermath of the fire, revealing the tragic loss of four teenagers.
The Investigation Begins. Detective Jones calls for backup to investigate the yogurt shop murders.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

This case has gripped the City of Austin since.

Discussion on the impact of the yogurt shop murders.

6:15WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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