The After Show: The Yogurt Shop Murders

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I'm Deborah Roberts, and as always,

it is really a pleasure to have you here with us. As we take a deep look at a 2020 episode that we have covered, as you all know, we always take a deeper dive into some of those details that you learned about on a Friday night.

Well, our most recent episode called "Yogurt Shop Murders" is a notably chilling story that just made headlines for really more than 30 years. It goes back to December 6th, 1991, when 14 girls were brutally murdered.

I mean, just in a way that it just almost hard to describe at a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. The victims were sisters, Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, who were 17 and 15 at the time, Eliza Thomas, a friend of theirs, who was 17,

and Amy Ares, who was only 13 years old when she was murdered. These girls were found bound sexually assaulted and shot, it was just something that was beyond imagination. And then afterwards, the shop was set on fire. Obviously, in an attempt to cover the grizzly crime

to cover up all the evidence, and the case just left the community. Heartbroken, and as you might imagine, a police force just struggling to try to solve this case. Along the years, as they began to investigate, and I say years, because this case did take years to solve,

there were false confessions, there were dead ends, and then thanks to a team that just would not give up

ultimately a killer was identified, but it was 34 years later.

Well, if you saw our 2020 episode, you know our story is centered around exclusively by the way, an interview with Mindy Montfort, who is a former assistant Texas Attorney General, who really helped crack this case. Mindy is here with us now to share some details about this case.

Mindy, it is such a pleasure to have you. Thank you, Deborah. I'm very happy to be here. And thank you for the coverage you've given this case. Oh, my goodness, of course.

I mean, it's one of those that people have been talking about for a long time. I wish you and I could be together in person, but I know you're working on lots of things out there in Texas, but let's just start off with the case to begin with,

because you worked tirelessly on this, along with other investigators, of course. But when you came into the case, people had essentially kind of given up on it being solved really. And you wanted to just jump right into this,

because it kind of resonated with you, why was it that this case touched something and you just off the start? Well, I actually have been in Austin, Texas in 1976. And grew up in that neighborhood.

I've been to the North Cross Mall. I've been to the yogurt shop. That is a neighborhood that was a community.

“And when this happened, I remember I was in college”

and seeing the news coverage of my neighborhood, you know, with this horrific crime. I mean, back then, too, if you recall, we would walk everywhere as a kid. You didn't even have a phone.

Your parents trusted you on a bike for hours. So that was the environment we grew up in, and then to just fast forward, be in college, seeing this on TV and folding in my community. It was horrible.

Yeah. Then over the years, just following the case and going through law school, then I became a prosecutor, but watching what these families went through through the justice system repeatedly,

and just being victimized over and over again by the system, I just, it really wrote my heart for them.

And I'd always had an interest in the case.

Yeah. And when you think about it, these girls were just a little bit younger than you were, because you're right there in college thinking about, you know, somebody who could be your age. You touched on something when you talked about those innocent times

of kids, you know, just walking around and writing their bikes.

“And in this case, just hanging out at a yogurt shop, right?”

Two of the girls worked there. In our episode, somebody described this as the day that Austin lost its innocence. And you could see that that was what happened. I mean, this tragedy really impacted the community in a huge way. I don't think we've ever been in the same sense.

It just was when you talked to anybody in Austin, Texas. And if you say, you know, here's a go. I would say, oh, I'm a prosecutor. Oh, have you ever heard of the yogurt shop murders? I mean, it was just everybody knew about this case.

And we were a small community back then, not so much today, but it really did change, it changed us. It just did not make sense. It just changed our community. I can imagine that I've covered so many of these stories.

And we often do when, you know, they're in a fairly small town in Austin, as you said, it's sort of bustling now. But, you know, people really did feel very safe and sort of protected.

Let's talk about those four girls. Sarah, Jennifer, Eliza, and Amy, as I said, doing something so innocent, a couple of the girls worked at the yogurt shop. They're all just they're kind of hanging out in their lives. We're viciously cut short.

“And I think in some ways, that is what haunted this community more than anything else.”

I mean, any horrible crime is a horrible crime.

But in this case, young, I mean, basically babies.

Babies, people who could be your next door neighbors, your sisters, your daughters, your friends, and the fact that it was something like you mentioned. So innocent, I mean, what's more innocent than having an extra job and hanging out with your friends waiting for closing, you know, to go have a sleepover from the yogurt shop of all places.

And, you know, it's just I think you're right. I think the fact that it was a yogurt shop, their ages, the fact that there were multiple victims that the way they were murdered, it just, again, this just didn't happen in Austin, Texas. Yeah, yeah, well, it was in the 90s. So you come along later on, 2017 you join this case.

And as you said, we can talk more later about what you brought to the case from your expertise. But talk to me a little bit about when you join the case and what you learned from the families, because they had been through the ringer over, you know, more than two decades at that point, almost three decades. And no answer is really, I mean, a lot of twist and turns, which we'll get to.

But what would the families like for you to meet at that time?

“I still remember that vividly that day, and I think I even called my, my father actually”

had been a long, a prosecutor back in the 70s. And I remember calling him and telling him, this had been one of the best days of my career, that the fact that I've met these families who I've just followed throughout the years and been, you know, had my heart broke for them and then to think that I'd go from a college room watching this news coverage to actually working on the case, you know, in 2017, that was

just full circle for me. I was just so honored to be included in the meeting. And then, you know, as the meeting progressed, the district attorney Margaret Moore at the time said, look, we're going to not only are we going to keep investigating this case

and fight till the end and try to get you answers, but I'm going to assign my first assistant

Mindy Monford to lead the team and not, you know, so that was just, I didn't even see that coming by the way. She didn't tell me that before the meeting. Otherwise, you might have been more nervous than you were, probably you were held up as somebody who was going to take a fresh look at the case, but it's just really astounding

to me to a false confessions, which implicated, for a young man, and let's talk about them, Robert Springstein, Forest Wellburn, Michael Scott, and Maurice Pears, and various ones had been arrested and either convicted, but then the cases had been dismissed. Tell us a little bit about how police had to deal with all of that over the years. I know, Deborah, we may need like five episodes.

Episode two. Yeah. I tell you what, this case, I mean, a lot of cases have, you know, a crazy appellate system and legal history, but this one really takes the cake, because not only did you start it out, you had false confessions, not just from the individuals who ended up getting charged

ultimately, but we had confessions from, I mean, two people from Mexico that were

candid. The details didn't add up. Then you had all these people from the mall, you know, this mall crowd, this high school group. They were all giving, you know, incriminating statements, and just, and then later would,

you know, re-can't have some polygraph and re-can't and say, "Oh, I just did it because I had a, he made me mad," he hit on my girlfriend, right? You know, I mean, it just went on and on and when you read the police report, it is, it is so hard to read, because it just keeps going in circles. I mean, there's just so many twists and turns, but then yes, but you ultimately end up with

Maurice Pierce actually flashing his 22 gun around the mall, and that's the same caliber, one of the guns that was used in the yogurt shop was 22. They were each shot with the 22, and then Amy had a second shot with a 380, but he was bragging about that and making comments, and so people then start calling the police and, you know, giving tips to this, and so then Maurice is interviewed, and then he implicates

“the other free, and that's what sort of turn-long forcement on initially, but when Maurice”

Pierce gives his statement originally, one of the detectives comes in and reviews it and says, "No, this does does not add up," you know, and by the way, the gun, they tested the gun, and it was inconclusive, so they basically let Maurice Pierce go, and the report initially, it says, is, is cleared as a suspect, and then, of course, years later, they would come back, they would come back and look at them, and we talk about that in the

piece, how police would circle back around to this crowd, they were making no progress, no arrest. What's a little frightening about this, though, is that two people were convicted, and one of them could have been put to death because of this. Let's talk about that, because Robert Springstein was actually eventually tried and sentenced

the case was solved.

I mean, they were convicted, and the family even sort of, I guess, finally breathed a sigh

of relief, right? Yes.

“Yes, I think that's very fair to say they were convinced that there were these two confessions”

that were taken separately, separate cities, by different investigators, and the statement seemed to have incriminating information that was consistent in both of those statements, and so ultimately, the judge found that those were admissible in court, and then you had two separate juries, review those confessions, spend hours on those confessions, and then deliberate, and they found them both guilty in separate juries.

Yeah. So that goes on, and everybody thinks that this case has been solved, and sadly, that's the end of it. So the Texas appeals court then overturns both Scott and Springstein's convictions, because of some technicalities about cross-examining witnesses, and at that point, of course, we

didn't have modern DNA like we do right now, but the charges ultimately, against all

of these folks would be dismissed, you know, one man could have been put to death, and clearly the wrong people were behind bars. That was also difficult for the family, too. We talk about in our piece in 2020, you know, having thought that this case was put to rest, and now they don't know what to believe.

No, that's exactly right, and I think if you talk to the families today, they'll even tell you with this new information. They don't quite know if they should believe it, because they believe this other information for so long, but I think they felt that with two different juries were turning verdicts of guilty that they had the right guys, I mean, I believe, you know, that they did believe

that they had the right people. But the court did say that it was not, but these were not the right people.

Well, actually, you know, it's even more traumatic for the families, because the first

thing that happened was the Supreme Court, actually, the United States Supreme Court changed, it's ruling saying that you had to be a certain age before you'd be eligible for death

“row, and that's why springsteens was commuted to life.”

So that was the first thing that happened where the families, you know, had to deal with him getting commuted to life, and then the second thing that happened was another Supreme Court hearing, which was talking about the confessions themselves, and so any trial in America that had taken place where you put a codependence confession against the other codependent without putting the codependent on the stand.

That was remanded to have a new trial, and that's what happened here. So again, it's chipping away, a bit by bit, they just kept getting this more bad news to the families. Right. Of course, they're sitting there thinking, you know, where's the justice in this?

Now we have to go through another set of trials, and it was at that point that the prosecution decided we didn't have DNA back when we had the first trials, maybe with new technology, as you mentioned, we might be able to get something. Yeah. Ultimately, all of these folks were dismissed, and there was just recently a hearing

that formally cleared all of their names. What was your reaction?

“I think, you know, I've spent so much time on this case now, and I know the evidence”

against Robert Bushiers, and I do not find any evidence at this point that Robert Bushiers had any contact with the original individuals who were charged, and so therefore I thought it was the right thing to do. But Bushiers is a name that's going to factor later on, we'll talk a little bit. But I want to hear from you, because I'm sure our listeners and viewers out there will

want to know, when you think about false confessions, why would anybody confess? And why would anybody even try to implicate themselves into a heinous crime, which you could wind up going to prison for life for possibly, you know, being put to death? I mean, that is something that nobody can really understand. I still can't understand it, Deborah.

I, that is the one thing that I just caused as me pause all the time, because I'm thinking, why would you implicate yourself? Why would you do this? But we know it happens, because now we do have DNA, and we've seen so many cases that have been cleared, and individuals have been exonerated, thank God for DNA, or because other

people come forward and provide new evidence, or maybe someone confesses a jailhouse confession, but we know it happens. Yeah, and in this case, too, when we talk about the individuals here, there was a lot of interrogation, and all of that, you call it the no-strid dumbest effect? I can't take credit for that, but I have been struggling with this idea of false confessions,

and I ended up talking to Vern Pearson, who is an elected district attorney out in California, and he's actually become quite the expert on false confessions, and he goes, and he speaks at different trainings for prosecutors and detectives, so that they can see how this can happen. And he actually is the one who, he said it can happen for a lot of reasons, but one of the things is what he calls the no-stridomous effect, you know, no-stridomous made thousands of

predictions, and if you just put one set of facts into one of those, you know, you're going

You're bound to find something that's going to be true.

Exactly. So, you know, corroborate your evidence. Yeah, yeah.

“But 50/50 shot that it was, you know, a gun versus a knife, right?”

I mean, so, you know, it's, it, things like that. Yeah. What? And it does happen, too. You're absolutely right.

We've heard about that over the years. Well, you hit on something that I want to talk about more DNA, which played a pivotal part in solving this case after 30 years.

So, Mindy, don't go anywhere because I want to talk more about that.

One of the victims, they were actually able to extract some DNA from, and then actually using modern technology make a big difference in this case. So, we want to talk about that. We'll be right back. This show is sponsored by Quince.

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Just go to ABCSecretSavings.com/2020. Again, that's ABCSecretSavings.com/2020. ABCSecretSavings.com/2020. Welcome back to 2020 The After Show. I'm talking with Mindy Montford, who is a former cold-case prosecutor.

She helped solve a case that seemed to be unsolvable in Austin, Texas over the years. It was called yogurt shop murders for young girls who were just brutally murdered and Mindy. It's just so great to talk to you about this because many of the cases that we talk about turn on DNA, and even when they're old cases and people are often surprised by that because when you apply modern technology, but that made such a big difference in this case.

Being evolved over the years, and the family, of course, is in limbo, or the families because we're talking two sisters and then two other girls, so three sets of families here. And you've got to know the family is really well over time, you know, you had to gain their trust, you're working to solve these murders, give me a sense of what that was like for you, you grew up knowing about this case, and now you're talking and working with

the families.

“What was that like for you and for them as you all made this connection?”

Well, it was surreal, coming full circle as someone who lived in the community, grew up in that community, in that neighborhood, and then to watch the footage in college, and then find myself as a, you know, prosecutor later in life working on the case.

It was an incredible opportunity, I was humbled to even be a part of it.

And I instantly had a connection with the air's family. That's who we met with the first time I got involved in the case in 2017. They're doing it was the youngest one, 13 years old, and I believe, I'm not, I'm probably not overstating this, I believe we have talked emailed, communicated, I'm to say on a weekly basis, maybe every other week since that meeting in 2017, I mean, even if it was just an

email to check in, to say, and stay close, yes.

well, let's talk about the cold case unit because that was what sort of turned this whole

thing around. Many states have started these cold case units, but this one started, and you had a lot

“to do with that, was it because of your memories and your connection to this case?”

I think so, I'm going to say yes, because there were several reasons. One, we learned, we actually met with the Golden State Killer investigation team to sort of triage the overt shot murders at one point, and we learned about all the resources that were available outside of Austin, Texas, and we thought, if we didn't know about these experts in these private labs, how does Corpus Christino, how does love it know?

We know why isn't this more of a statewide resource? And so at some point, we came up with a pitch, and we thought that the Attorney General's office would be a really good place to have a unit because it has statewide jurisdiction. We have prosecutors in that office, a pellet, prosecutors in the office, and then criminal investigators.

So what a better place than to have it, you know, from the AG's office? Yeah, and then to show the right thing, the dots with all of these different places. Right. That's right. And to really be able to serve as a resource for the whole state and to be able to connect,

like you said, experts, labs, different cities with each other, with different cases that might be similar, and so we went and made this pitch along with the airs, the airs came to the meeting with the Attorney General's office, myself, and then the sergeant of the Austin Police Department, Colkase Unit at the time.

“And we did a PowerPoint, and I'll never forget, you know, at the very end, the airs looked”

at this room full of suits, and they said, look, this may not help our case, but if it helps one family, then it's worth it. So they were still hanging in there, if nothing else, just for the impact. So of course you're teeming up with others, and you've got to deal with law enforcement when you're doing this in about a year later, Detective Dan Jackson gets involved in the

case. Talk a little bit about his work on the case and the two of you working together. Sure. That was a great moment, and I knew that Dan was going to be taking a look at this case from a different viewpoint, and he did know about the case.

He also grew up here in central Texas, and he remembered it as a young boy. And, you know, I do want to say, over the years, the Austin Police Department has had several

dedicated detectives to this case, and they were amazing, you know, I can't say enough

great things about the resources that they devoted, but as you know, with departments, people get promoted. The change, yeah. That's our end and out, right? So when Dan Jackson comes on, the airs are very, very skeptical, because as they put it,

this is, you know, number 242 on the case, you know, and you look at all of the different people who've worked from the police department on the case, and Dan basically told them, I'm going to work hard, and I'm going to be the last detective on this case. And they're thinking, yeah, we've been there and done that and seen that, and you know, and understandably, because they've had no answers, and it is sort of remarkable that

they would hang in there and keep trying to see change. You're bringing a first set of eyes the two of you, and a lot of the stories that we've covered on 2020 turn on that. Somebody new who is coming to office who suddenly sees something a little different. Maybe looking at the same evidence everybody else has, but sees it differently.

What struck you, too, when you began to look? I mean, again, as you said, the DNA evidence was not compelling in terms of not having anybody to connect it to. So whatever it's really struck you. Dan and I both knew when he came on board, I told him, you know, we've got this, and

he knew. This is, you know, this Y profile, which is a male unknown male profile that was from the crime scene, a vaginal swab from Amy Ayers. And that was the one, by the way, that that was the reason when it didn't match the original four suspects that the DA's office had to dismiss the case.

You cannot take a case like that to trial when you have an unknown profile and expect a jury to come back with a very much reasonable doubt that you can't do it, right? That definitely gives them reasonable doubt. And so we knew before we could move forward on this case again, we had to figure out who's profile that was.

“And the problem with that, of course, is, you know, that's what we'd been stuck.”

We'd been stuck for years trying to figure that profile out.

So I think when Dan came on board, we basically said, okay, number one, we both agree,

we've got to figure out who's DNA is. Yeah. Whether it's a customer, an employee, a first responder or a suspect, we've got to figure out who's DNA that is. The other thing we thought was, we have focused on that for so long that why aren't we going

back and looking at all the evidence and seeing, okay, now it's, you know, 2022, 2023, maybe technology has changed enough that we could go back and retest some of those items. You looked at an old shell casing and then there's something called the Nibon system that

That's right.

“Some is basically it's like you hear codeus for DNA, a database, a national database.”

Nibon is for ballistic, so for shell caseings and guns and it's, you know, supposed to connect firearms to different crime scenes after they're uploaded by law enforcement. Okay, so you're looking at all of this and now you've, you know, you're sort of onto something that's a little bit more modern in terms of the way you can look at this evidence. And then in summer of 2025, you get a phone call that changes everything, a match all

the way in South Carolina. Right. Well, we had two crazy phone calls.

The first was when the Nibon hit came back to an unsolved case in Kentucky.

And at first we were thinking, okay, well, anybody could maybe steal a gun or sell a gun. This doesn't necessarily mean it's connected to your workshop. When we read the police report from the Kentucky case, the Lexington Kentucky case, it pit chills in us because it literally involved a strip center, a business and a strip center, a woman had been shot in the head with a 380.

She was naked from the waist down and then they set the place on fire. Which is exactly what happened with the yoga shop murders. I couldn't get on a plane to Lexington fast enough with the police. I was like, let's go tomorrow. You know, we've got to figure out more about this case and so we, that was our first,

you know, a haul, my gosh, the first phone call, then that basically led the injection to say, well, wait a minute, you know, we have not done a national request for local crime labs to run our DNA, our YSTR, our male profile that was unknown. In 2019, we had asked for crime labs across the country to do what's called a manual keyboard search where they actually manually enter the DNA components.

Very time-consuming. Maybe it matches. Yeah. Very time-consuming. And a lot of labs don't have the time to stop and do it for you.

So it's really kind of a Hail Mary, but in 2019, we had done that and not had any results. But here we are with this nigh been lead now and Dan thought, you know what, let's do it again. Let's try it again. So that goes out and we get this hit to South Carolina and then we can't find out a name or anything about it for three weeks while legal figures out if they could release it to.

But meanwhile, you know something is happening.

Something is percolating here, which is so amazing when you think about it, it's all about

trying and trying again and you just actually happened to hit pay dirt. Well then ultimately, you hear the name Robert Bershears and you Google and you start looking and what are you learning about this guy because you talk about the one crime and now suddenly you're going to be looking at a lot of other crimes. It was crazy.

I mean, the craziest thing is when we were waiting for three weeks, I was told that it matched with serial killer in South Carolina so you mentioned Google. That's what I was doing. I was Googling, serial killers and nothing came up on Robert Bershears, it was the strangest thing.

So once we did get his name, we found out more about him.

“Our next question was, well, what was he doing in Texas, does he have any Texas ties?”

And of course that would be the next, you know, crazy moment in this case when we found out two days after the yogurt shot murder, he was arrested in a stolen vehicle with a 380 trying to go into New Mexico because at the border, Texas and New Mexico and got stopped and we knew, I mean, are you kidding? I mean, this has to be, it has to be him.

That was a moment for you, the aha moment, you really, you knew at that point you had the person. You know, his MO, once we were learning more about the crimes that they knew he had committed and then to be in Texas two days after the yogurt shot, getting out of the state and then to have a 380, you know, in his possession, it's going to be a real weird coincidence

if it isn't him. Yeah, at that point you knew you had your killer. You go, you share the news with the, with the families actually in person because you want to tell them, once you feel like you've got this crime solved, that had to be a real moment for all of you.

“It was, you know, there's moments as flashbacks that you remember and you remember forever,”

you know, one was the first meeting in 2017 and then of course it's, it's where I was when we got to certain pieces of information about brochures and then of course a career highlight going and finally delivering the news we had been, I mean, it was surreal that we, I couldn't believe we had to answer for all this time.

I knew, you know, Deborah, I knew we would find it because we had DNA and I've always felt

like one day technology, you know, would catch up and we'd figured out, I just didn't know if I'd be alive. But I knew it. But I knew it. We believed in it.

So you, you finally get a match, you convinced you've got your killer and then devastating

news in a way when it comes to sort of finding a day in court. Robert brochures had died in 1999 and a standoff with police. So you, you know, you've got your person, but you don't really have the person to be able to bring into court. It had to be pretty devastating.

We knew that when we told the families that it was going to be a hit to them. You know, I do think though, looking back on it when we talked to Barbara and told her he was deceased, first her reaction was, you know, oh, you know, dang it. But then she kind of came back and said, you know what, I don't think I could survive another trial.

I don't think I could go through this again.

“So, you know, I think in a lot of these cold cases, sometimes, we, I mean, a lot of times”

the perpetrator ends up being dead because the, because of so much time has, has a lot of you. That's right. Yeah. But a lot of times the families just want the answers, you know.

In this case, you've got not only an answer to that, but so many other things, Mindy, I want to continue talking about brochures when we come back because what you learned about him was absolutely mind blowing about his past and also what his own daughter told us at 2020 about what it was like growing up the daughter of a serial killer. You're going to hear more about all of that, so don't go anywhere.

It's the paradise podcast. I am your host, Ryan Michelle Bethe, with my husband, Shirley. So. Join us here on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus, where we'll discuss each episode with the cast and crew of Paradise.

I'll be getting all the secrets from Dan Fogaman, James Marsden, Shaling Woodley, Julian Nicholson, and Sterling Calby Brown paradise. The official podcast is now streaming and stream paradise on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bundle Subscribers, Terms Apply. Welcome back to 2020 The After Show, I am talking with Mindy Montferna, former assistant

Texas attorney general who was just pivotal in helping solve a cold case called the yogurt shop murders and it took the lives of four young girls, Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, Eliza

“Thomas and Amy Ayers and Mindy says that she will never forget them or their parents”

and Mindy, so much of what you did with skill and then a lot of it too was sort of luck in the sense that you guys stayed on this case. And DNA, modern DNA technology had changed so much, but once you began to learn that Robert Bush years had been in Texas, he had committed crimes very similar to what had happened in Austin before, you began to learn more, I mean this man's life had taken him really

all over the country in a way and just the other crimes and murders that he had committed were just absolutely not only just heart-wrenching but mind-blowing really.

He, I've never had a case quite like this actually when so much devastation, so many

different offenses, his victims were so young and you know he would target the youngest victim, we do know that from some of the survivors that we've talked to, so it does make what he did even more heinous, also the fact that he was so manipulative. He was not done at all, he was very smart and for someone to evade authorities and stay out of jail as much as he did for all the crimes he did pretty remarkable.

Yeah, it is pretty remarkable and that happens a lot, and of course we've covered sadly stories of other serial killers. He had been in prison for a while and then was out of prison and you know he had this

“sort of checkered past of all of these crimes as you said, you, I think you even said”

when he wasn't you know in prison he was murdering and raping women, ultimately the Kentucky Police Department announced that for years was responsible for a 1998 homicide fire that was so similar to the yogurt shop as we talked about, his daughter spoke with us and she said something which I've heard before, I actually interviewed the daughter of the BTK killer years ago and it was just another chilling story and for her to have no idea that her father

was in any way remotely a criminal and she said he seemed like a nice normal guy and so did Bashir's daughter said that she was just kind of a typical normal, you know, father. How common is that? I mean, as you said, you haven't experienced a lot of these intense cases like this, but the idea that they could just lead a fairly normal life, but yet have this other side

to them that is just so volatile and vicious and heinous. What did you make of that? And I think one of the things we're learning more about serial killers and when you start looking at all of them, that is how they were able to blend in so well with society and to, you know, oh my wife left her person, the car, can I use your phone, right?

And you look so charming and normal and they let their guard down and he was able to just

have said and in the yogurt shop to these gay and their trust, you know, and I just,

“I know there's going to be other crimes out there and that's what we're continuing to”

look at because as you said, I, I don't believe for a minute that when he was out in the free world and we don't have, you know, we've got this big timeline, but there's gaps. And I don't believe for a minute that he just took breaks in his killing spree. Right. So you actually, I think we're going to find more crimes.

Yeah, in fact, you've actually actively sent out bulletins asking other law enforcement areas and communities to start looking around to see if there may be something that sort of fits his pattern, haven't you? We have and we're going to probably send another one out in the next week or two with even more information and targeting certain areas we know he, he operated.

Well, the big question many will ask, I mean, how a man like this can act alone, a person like this could do something so awful and for young girls and in other cases there were other women one after the other, do you believe that he just did this and acted alone? Or do you think over time he might have had an accomplice anywhere? I, you know, that was one of the main questions that I had and I still have.

I mean, it's, we're not going to know for sure until, you know, maybe we, we find a case where he did act with somebody, but everything we've seen up to date, he's been alone. The interesting thing I think when I was trying to figure out how he could, you know, tie up and do this to four different young girls at the same time. The Memphis case, the Memphis Tennessee case where he actually let them live, that involved

four women and he was able to sweet talk his way in and then boom, he's holding a gun to them and gets them, you know, to tie themselves up, he pulls the phone cord out, ties

“another one up and then asks basically who is the youngest here and that's what he sexually”

assaults. Yeah, you can only imagine, but he was able to do that without anyone else there for those four girls and I'm sure that must, when I read that report, I thought this is how the yoga shop happened. Well, manipulation and manipulation and youth, as you said, in innocence, all of those things

that were stolen from these girls, the families are so, so fortunate that they had you on their side. I have to tell you, you know, just tireless in the work that you did and it's, it's really

pretty amazing to that you've managed to stay in touch with them and maybe sort of off

for a little bit of solace to them in the sense that they, some of them at least have built a friendship with you. I think it's so important when we cover these stories and we make it a point on 2020 to make sure we say the names of the victims. We bring to life the names and the lives of these victims and in this case, we're talking

Sarah, Jennifer, Eliza and Amy and their families, all they're trying to make sure that their memory, their legacy is honored, we see that so often in the same as true in the case with these young girls as well. You know, it's very true and, you know, we, I go by the memorial, even during the investigation

when we would be stalling out and I'd be so frustrated, I would always stop that I would

go and get gas, it was out of my way that it was right across from the yoga shop, it just, I kind of wanted to feel their presence or their spirits and say, am I crazy for continuing to, you know, give me something, give me some sign and there's a little memorial there for them and sometimes I would just go touch it, just to kind of give me strength. But after the case was over, going back there, that day and being able to, and it was

before we told the families, I was able to just put my hands on it and think, you know, the news that was about to break and how happy those families were going to be. Well to finally learn the truth and as I said, they're very fortunate to have had you on their side, you brought the truth, no matter how difficult it was, they did finally get some answers after all those years.

Mindy, it is such a pleasure to get to talk to you and I'm looking forward to meeting you in person here at 2021 of these days, so we'll keep working on something maybe at some point down the world. I'm sure.

And to our listeners and viewers, thank you for joining us as always for this podcast

“episode and of course, remember, you can catch our latest 2020 episode on Friday nights”

on ABC and stream episodes like this one on any time on Disney plus and on Bulu. Thanks for watching, we'll see you all next time. In 9th, the magazine "Gibbelkau" is an exclusive one-plic hair, a magazine in mid-century bungalow, the Architecten, Frank Lloyd, White Junior, in Los Angeles, to his home. From 30-30 podcasts.

The key to this case, it's Bryan, it's Bryan, it's Bryan, I'm all before he died, he was on a phone,

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