Yogurt Shop Murders

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There was evidence in the house and they would not listen to me. That's not me. I didn't do it. It was a cool evening.

Of course, the city was getting into the holiday spirit at that time.

“Amy was going to the mall with Sarah and Jennifer went to work at the yoga shop.”

We believe that it was business usual, the shit started about 7 o'clock. It was set to close around 11 pm. Two of the girls had left to get to the mall and were coming to the yoga shop. They were going to have a big slumber party, a big sleepover. It's Friday night, they were going to get out of there.

The girls were all picking up, cleaning up the yoga store, something horrific and evil was about to walk in that door. They were supposed to be home by 11, but they were already dead by 11. It all started late when Friday night with police radio call to detect a John John's. John's?

Yeah.

“I hear what the call's playing on on the voice status.”

Yeah, I'm headed over there, okay. I'm AJ out there. I'm Thomas that boy. And Austin police homicide investigator happens to have a news crew riding with him in the car that night. And he gets a call and starts speeding to the scene.

That's the phone, plan that. Triple fatality. Come on, man. The case that would become known as the Yogurt Shop murders begins on a December 9th and 1991. There was a police officer and he was just patrolling the neighborhood and he noticed smoke coming

out from one of the doors and it turned out to be the Yogurt Shop. So he pulled in to investigate and immediately called for fire officials to respond to the scene. The suppression efforts were aimed towards trying to put out this fire. And while doing so, they happened to trip over a body. And that is when they discover a horrific scene.

Then they recognize it's two and then three and then finally four.

The Yogurt Shop, it's probably like a typical retail space in a strip all. You have the consumer area at front tables and chairs and there's a counter kind of in the middle and then there's the back room with storage and office and everything is. I got there right after the fire had been knocked down. Very smokey.

There was water dripping from the ceiling. It was overwhelming more than anything, I mean the fire, four dead folks, young, burned, shot and hit. Three of the girls were just totally not identifiable, which they were burned too much. As soon as the Austin Police Department realized the scope of what they were dealing with,

they called in extra investigators to help them, specifically the FBI arrived at the scene, the ATF arrived at the scene. It was up till about a little bit again with the processing that crime scene, I mean it gets down with water. Because they did such a good job in putting the fire out, a lot of our evidence was destroyed.

There was evidence of sexual assault at the crime scene on the victims as well. So all four girls were noon and they're clothing have been used to tie each other up.

They also took DNA from those victims.

So the part of your standard sexual assault kit at an autopsy side swabs is you also would take

fingernails clippings.

“For that reason, because you think the woman's being sexually assaulted could change, she's”

going to fight back. And the fact that we were able to get any DNA and any evidence from this scene is pretty remarkable, especially given the year 1991, DNA really was not something we talked about back then. Initially, it was thought that it was possibly robbery gone wrong, a robbery that turned

into a horrific murder, because cash arrived and pulled out and there was some cash missing. We're dealing with four beautiful teenage girls to have them or sister, Jennifer and Sarah Barbison, Amy Ayers, and Eliza Thomas, just beautiful girls, and it's just a tragedy.

“These girls were so innocent, enjoying their high school years and their friendships,”

just having a really good time that night together. So Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Barbison were working the evening shift that Friday night. It was set to close around 11pm. But two other girls, Jennifer sister, Sarah Barbison, as well as her dear friend, Amy Ayers, they were at the mall earlier that evening, but went to the yogurt shop, and they were

going to have a big slumber party, a big sleepover. They've swept, they've mopped, they're clean the yogurt machines, then put napkins and the napkin holders, all that good stuff. The girls wore doing what they do every time they shut the shop down, they were putting the chairs up on the tables, they were taking the money out of the cash register.

The girls were herded into the back of the shop, where they were forced to strip. They were forced to tie each other up with their underclose, bound and gagged. They were sexually assaulted, and then they were each shot in the back of the head, execution and stuff, and the place was set on fire. So all four girls were shot with a 22, and then Amy, the youngest victim, was also shot

a second time with a 380 of semi-oamatic pistol, and that shell casing actually made its

way into the floor drain. The fact that Amy had a 380 and a 22, that she was shot by two different weapons, still remains a very intriguing piece of this case.

“Logically, you think two people, or at least two people, why would you have two guns?”

So that was the working theory that was more than one person. It was a very limited amount of resources back in 1991 to devote to this case. I'm talking about six men homicide units, so they were stretched thin from the very beginning. I've been in Homestead of a pretty good time, and this is probably the worst one I have ever seen for the mere fact that it involved four young ladies all at the same time.

Over three decades, after a horrible crime took the lives of 14 age girls, and changed Austin forever, our hearts haven't healed. They're still broken for the precious girls we lost. The Austin Police have announced that a significant breakthrough has been made in the yogurt shop murder case.

Austin in 1991 was kind of a sleepy college town. I've got a third of the size of it is now, and people back then didn't lock their doors at night.

We all felt pretty safe, and we never thought about anything bad ever happening, because

it was everybody just kind of knew everybody was just small. But when the yogurt shop murders took place, it changed Austin forever.

The yogurt shop murders have been repeatedly described as the day Austin lost...

This is Jennifer's pen from the yogurt store for her uniform, and I didn't know that was here.

“My name is Barbara Wilson, and I am the mother of Jennifer and Sarah Harbison.”

Jennifer was of course my first born, and she was very evavacious and loving.

Jennifer and Sarah were so close, they always called Sarah Lui's little knees.

They made me feel secure, they raised me as much as our rights thing. My sister was very social energetic. She was really into fitness and fashion, and you know, had fantasies of modeling and doing lots of different things. She was 17, so she was trying to discover who she was.

There's all of this with the horse. The youngest of the girls was 13-year-old Amy Ayres, still an eighth grader, and like her parents

and big brother Sean, little Amy was a rancher at heart.

I see her bride and her horse. Her hair is blowing in the wind, and she's just frightened and haven't found. I see Sean hold her and she's a baby. He wanted a sister. I mean, let's first time I got the holder.

So it's like that's when I became a big brother. She had strawberry blonde hair, met the length of mine, and she wore a hat. She's a strong hat in the summer. We were joined to help, and she'd go out with me to take care of the animals and we were

always riding together and she was just a cowboy girl.

So in December 1991, it was a cool evening. Of course, the city was getting into the holiday spirit at that time. Amy was going to the mall with Sarah, and Jennifer went to work at the Yoggers shop, and then they were going to go home to Sarah and Jennifer's house.

“I remember the doorbell ring, and I looked at the bedroom window and saw police cars,”

told him, I said the police are here, and we went to the front door. This whole started at 5.30 in the morning. I heard someone knock at the door, and I jumped up. When I went to the door, there were three people standing at my door. They asked me about if I had a daughter or not, yes, and those questions are just not.

You don't want those questions to ask, because you know that there's something, and you don't know what it is, and it's bad. You don't want to feel that, but you know it's here, the devil has come to your door. I heard a mom scream, so I went to the living room and asked my mom what's wrong, and she looked at me and said Amy's dead, and I just kind of went numb, and then looked around me,

there's cops everywhere.

“I just remember my body started shaking, and my teeth started chattering, and I couldn't”

really even hear what was being said. They were telling us some story about there being a fire, say I'm still not processed in any of this very well, that there was a fire, and the girls didn't make it. We could burn with the cause of fire, I mean we didn't know anything. They were trying not to tell us if they had been shot.

The families had to reconcile two very different types of emotions. Number one, this profound grief and sadness and shock, but on the other hand, this desire and this question about who killed their daughters and why. We live between the bookings of time, and their short chapters have begun, and they have hinders who soon let perpetual light shine upon.

There were hundreds of people at the funerals of these girls.

I said look around, I said look what we've got behind us.

Kids, that's all I can say is kids. We had a lot of support, we really did. The victim's family say they're counting on community support to find the killers. They say if this call for help isn't enough, they'll put up 14 billboards throughout the city asking that justice be done.

So there began this outpouring of tips to the Austin Police Department, quite literally thousands of tips from people who called in, there was this all-out effort by the Austin community to help solve this crime. It takes only eight days for one of those tips to produce the first solid lead. Detectives follow that tip to a shopping mall, less than half a mile from the younger

shop into a 15-year-old teenager named Maurice Pierce. Different individuals had seen Maurice Pierce with a 22 firearm that they have been bragging to other people about being at the younger shop.

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Show Creek is a creek that runs through Austin, and when people think of Austin, they think of Show Creek. There was a creek behind the yogurt shop, and as tips were coming in and witnesses were being interviewed, there came to be known the Creek People. So underneath the bridge, kids were congregate there, smoke weed, drink beer.

There was a thought that possibly the murder weapon or weapons might have been disposed in the creek, that people had been hanging out at the creek prior to the murders and after. And so authorities as part of the investigation began trying to learn the names of some of those people and young men who were there. Police are looking for your help in solving this murder because there's not a lot of evidence

to go on. They're began this outpouring of tips to the Austin Police Department. Right literally thousands of tips from people who said that they had seen various things. The fact that they didn't have suspects, that they didn't have someone who did this, and that they didn't solve this crime, to terrified people.

I felt sick. I'm going to scare me to death.

How frightened that has happened close to home, at home.

As of this morning, the murderers are still at large.

“Who are they, where are they, when will they strike again?”

The answer, anyone, anywhere, any time. The yoga shop was maybe a couple of blocks from North Cross Mall here in Northwest Austin. So all the kids were congregated at the mall. About eight days after the murderers, Maurice Pierce is a teenager who is found at North Cross Mall with a 22.

This is Maurice Pierce. He was 15 in 1991.

He was bragging about a gun about a 22.

And authorities initially became really excited that they thought maybe they had found the perpetrator, and they call him in for questioning, and he is questioned at length. And it's during questioning that Pierce tells investigators that I'm a night of the murderers, another boy named Forest Wellborn, borrowed his gun, and later returned telling Pierce, he'd done something bad, and then he smelled of smoke.

They actually wired up Pierce, put a bug on him, to see if he could get Forest to tell

“the story again and Forest is kind of like, what are you talking about?”

They did talk to Forest, and Forest says, "No, the next day, me and Maurice and my other friends Robert and Mike, we still a car and drove to San Antonio together." The police were drawn to the fact that these four original suspects, Maurice Pierce, Forest Wellborn, Michael Scott, and Robert Springsteen had been involved and had staked out the yogurt shop earlier in the evening and planned to return to Robert.

So the operating theory that the police are working with is that Pierce and Wellborn, along with two other friends, Scott and Springsteen, all teenagers, rob the yogurt shop, assault and kill the girls, set the store on fire, and then steal a car and skip town. To investigators, all the pieces seemed to fit together. They have the motive, they have the opportunity, according to them, and the 22 caliber murder

weapon. All except for one thing.

“There was absolutely no evidence at all.”

They didn't have the ballistics for the 22, they didn't have fingerprints, hair, DNA, nothing that tied any of these boys or anyone to this crime at all. They had at the beginning a lot of gossip, teenage gossip, and we're talking about boys that are 15, 16, and 17 years old. The Austin Police Department administered polygraph exams of both Pierce and Wellborn, but

essentially they decided that any information that they had was not legitimate and that they were likely not involved in the yogurt shop murders. And then they test Maurice Pierce's 22, and it doesn't match, it's not the gun. Period in the story. For the families, this just added to their pain and turmoil and grief.

Today we're not able to get a simple, clear, direct answer about who killed their daughters. Today the families of the 14-age girls murdered in a Northwest Austin yogurt shop held their

first joint news conference.

We all were together for so many press conferences trying to keep it alive and trying to deal with our own grief, that our whole process. Their message together, we can find and stop these vicious killers. As police chase down every possible lead, the search for the killer or killers, drags on from days to weeks and then finally to months and still nothing.

Goboards begin to go up all over Austin and a desperate effort to shake loose any clue. And every time we see those faces, it gives us hope and joy and sadness. We want those pictures out, we want people to know that these beautiful girls were alive in the part of the city and they made a difference every day. On the six-month anniversary of the yogurt shop murders, people converged at the state

capital, people are holding wider candles, investigators are still no closer to cracking the case. As hopes for an arrest begin to fade, public frustration begins to grow. For the Austin Police Department, it continued to put a bright spotlight on their investigation.

The pressure for them to solve this case was above and beyond any case that t...

experienced before ever.

“And I dare to say that this was the biggest case that ever happened in Austria's history.”

Ten months after the crime itself, authorities became very excited after a man who was

arrested in Mexico confessed to the murderers. The man on the right goes by the nickname "The Terminator." And that's exactly what 24-year-old Carlos Savedra claimed he did when he raped and killed four Austin teenagers. I'm in the area of this town, I just love to be able to touch something that's close to them.

I shouldn't have to be out here, I'd be able to be at home with her. One day at a time, some days it's one hour at a time. No one that did not know the girls or us or any of the families at all would care that much. It was opening to see how many people actually get affected. We did a weekend where we were on the corner where the yogurt shop was.

A lot of people had gone out and passed out flyers as people, you know, did you see anything.

People that didn't know us were willing to try to help us. One of the breakthroughs in the yogurt shop investigation came about ten months after the crime itself. The authorities from Mexico called Austin Police and it citedly told them that they had obtained this confession.

Two men, Cortes and Savedra, there were Mexican nationals and they were suspected of being the killers. APD flies down there to interview them. Police, the man on the right, goes by the nickname "The Terminator," and that's exactly what 24-year-old Carlos Savedra claimed he did when he raped and killed.

The problem is, as Austin Police began studying the confession, many of the details did

not match any details of the crime scene. They didn't know the details of the crime. They were false confessions. They got your hopes up a little bit, like, somebody's going to be held accountable for this.

Finally. And then they come back and say they wasn't there. At the end of the day, there were something like over 50 confessions in this case. And hundreds of more tips beyond that.

“There was much desperation, I think, in trying to find who with the killers were.”

There was posters, there was rewards, you'd see the posters of the girls on the billboards. There was a huge effort to try and solve the crime. We know all there is to know about the crime itself, and we've got, you know, everything ready except who the charge of it was. It was a fight.

We got excuses like where there's more homicides happening every day in Austin. That's fine. But, you know, just keep working on a loose one. Despite all efforts, there are no major breakthroughs and more importantly, there are no arrests. In the late 1990s, there was a new effort to try to solve this crime.

Investigators dust off the old files. They take a new flesh look at the evidence and wind up going all the way back to square one. 33 boxes of evidence and video tapes and audio tapes and things. The police were drawn to the fact that these four original suspects, Maurice Pierce,

force well-born, Michael Scott, and Robert Springstein were all involved in this. They bring in Michael Scott and Robert Springstein for interviews and interrogations. What we're going to be talking about today is just kind of taking you back to the 1991. I'll be honest with you guys. I don't have this point in there.

“Well, we're in one of the reasons that we're here to help you try and remember.”

We're just kind of on back when we're saying, trying to do the best we can and trying to solve the people that really want to talk to that well. I want to tell you a little bit by yourself, I'm married to a police teacher, a woman that I have two step students and a step grandson. They were interviewed over and over and over again.

Michael Scott and Robert Springstein were subjected to 18 hours and five hours of interviews respectively. I can tell you, if I was there and it's all over, participate in that hour, I would think that I would be ridiculous.

This is where the case takes a major turn.

Michael Scott indicates that he and the other three boys were in fact involved in these horrific murders. He said that Maurice Pierce was something of the ringleader of the crime. Forest Wellborn was the lookout and that he and Robert Springstein were the primary offenders in terms of killing the young victims and robbing the storm.

Forest Wellborn and Maurice Pierce never confessed to the crime.

In fact, they say in fadically, they had nothing to do with the yogurt shop motives. After hours of unrelenting interviews, Michael Scott and Robert Springstein confess to these murders. Robert Springstein and he confessed the last step of reading interrogation is that you have them right the confession and sign it.

Robert Springstein refused to sign it, he immediately takes it back. Michael Scott takes it back. But he goes in and signs his. Is it possible to kill those girls? I guess it's possible.

It is possible.

“Anything's possible, that's what you said.”

Right?

Is it possible for a offspring as you were present there or there's some place?

Is that possible? No. You just told me anything's possible, if it's possible, okay, is it possible that you were there? Yes.

Is it possible that you kill one or two or one of those girls? Could be. Is it possible that you were involved in planning? Is it possible? Yes.

You know you did. He knows it. Yeah, I know it. You watch it. I mean, you didn't want to watch it.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not going to say no anymore, because you guys got a really good pill in case.

“And I'm starting to remember a few things here now, most of them, because that's”

what I'm trying to do. I just got shocked. Don't hold that now. Run behind the pill. I'm not holding that guy.

He all made a bunch of memories, trigger. I'm not being mistaken to discuss it with myself.

I'm never in my ears, Rayna.

I remember this is the one that I tried to break the being alive. Draw the pain with me. I'm not going to look at that guy. It's gone. I remember here, you're next.

I pointed that down. I'm not holding it straight. Early this morning, the Austin Police Department, with assistance from other law enforcement agencies, served four restaurants charging four individuals with capital murder. These charges stem from the murder during the robbery of a yogurt shop on the

Simmer 6, 1999. Robert Springstein and Michael Scott confessed, though they charge the two of them with four counts of capital murder.

“It's important that these young men get all they deserve in our judicial system so that we never have”

to go back through this again. Austin breathed a collective sigh of relief. The families were relieved to get to the truth of what happened the night of December 6, 1991. My son, Michael, sealed your shop, suspect. Almost as quickly as the relief came from these arrest.

They know the four boys didn't have anything to do with us. There was no physical evidence linking them to the scene, no DNA, no fingerprints, nothing. There is something definitely wrong with this case. In Texas, police say they have solved this sensational 8-year-old murder case. That is what this case is about.

Bringing to justice four individuals for the brutal murder of four little girls. Michael Scott, Forest Wallborne, Maurice Pierce, and Robert Springstein arrested for the four younger shop murders. You have been charged with the offense of the fugitive from justice from the state of Texas for capital murder.

We want to know where these young people came from. We want to know their backgrounds. We want to know how their lifestyle became a murderous one. We have to get my attorney to make a statement or I don't know what else to tell you. Right from the time of the murder to the arrest, the four men have had rather unremarkable lives.

Robert Springstein is now living in West Virginia. Maurice Pierce is married and a father. Michael Scott, also a father.

Meanwhile, to the south of Austin, Forest Wellborne has developed a business ...

District attorney obtained indictments against three of the four defendants. At the same time, two separate grand jury failed to bring an indictment against Forest Wellborne.

The second Travis County grand jury refused to indict Forest Wellborne, forcing the state to drop charges against him.

A ballistic report provided by the ATF also set the gun that Maurice Pierce had on him. That night at North Cross Mall was not the firearm that was used in the commission of the murders. There now all of these cracks and misgivings in the case. Additionally, the defense claims the interrogations were coerced using a controversial high pressure interrogation method called the red technique developed in the 50s and still used today. But criticized by many in the legal community for possibly leading to false confessions.

The red technique I view is sort of a form of psychological warfare. When Michael Scott was interrogated was over a series of days. They had his brain so messed up that he did know which way was up or down.

“He believes him when they say he was involved. He believes it. That's why he's so scared.”

But the whole point is he begins to doubt his memory. Springsteen comes in. He had just gone off work. He worked the night shift. And he is just done with this. I'm just, I think, I guess my version of what happened and everybody else's version of what happened is simply totally everything. So it's also what I don't understand.

When the confessions don't match, then they keep at them. So it's making him change to match what they believed happened. So in this portion of the interview investigators present false information to Robert Springsteen, a common and legal method of the red technique. Well, the red method says you can light up people.

It's a conflict like your condition. But you can be surprised if I told you that the lucky horse was even showing that act on Friday, December 6, 1991. But the movie was indeed playing the night of the murders. The questioning throws off his memory and why he could say he wasn't at the yogurt shop. Scott begins to believe all this stuff they're telling him.

He's like, okay, so now I'm trying to get these memories out. Well, where they kind of put it?

“It's not hard. I want to say it's just important, really.”

But what do you say that? I remember it being white, something white. It's not that hard. It's not that hard. It's not that hard.

It's kind of what the matter. Was it electrical, Jorge? You tell us. I can't remember.

Finally, he hits on something that was actually like underwear or socks or whatever.

There you go, Mike, you got it. Now you're working. Now you remember, you remember, right? One of the detectives is trying to get him to confess and goes behind him and puts his gun behind his head. Does that look like the gun you've seen before? Looks like we're going to see before, but I'm not hard to do.

Is that the gun you shot somebody with, Mike? No.

“Is that the gun you walked up behind somebody with and shot the head?”

Is that the one? Talk to me, Mike. Yes, sir. You did that, didn't you? Yes, sir.

He doesn't have to say I'm going to shoot you, but anyone who is in that situation, I think, would feel scared. Between the feeding effects, the threat and this false memory, you believe, plus the fear they put into them.

They basically scared them to death.

What happened to trials is they tried spring seem first, and at spring seems trial, they use part of Scott's confession against him. And then at Scott's trial, they use part of spring seem confession against him. So they used their confessions against each other. Despite the confessions being recanted soon after they were given,

they were still used as a key piece of evidence. The trials were horrible, by the way. But they were just horrible. We were trembling. I mean, just trembling for the verdict.

We did jury find the defendant Robert Springsteen the fourth guilty of the alphins of Captain Murder. They took what you wanted, Barbara. So we went some kind of tending. Michael Scott is also found guilty.

The jury's believed the statements and ultimately returned convictions.

In compliance with the laws and state of Texas,

I hear by assess your punishment at death.

“Robert Springsteen was sentenced to death by lethal injection”

and Michael Scott was sentenced to life in prison. Maurice Pierce sits in the Travis County jail for about three years awaiting trial. And prosecutors dropped the charges against him. And all they got is that they were together.

So they have to let him go. I'm innocent of all charges pertaining to the yoga shot case. 15 years after the crime, the cases of Springsteen and Scott are remanded to be retried after the U.S. Supreme Court rules

and a separate case that two men's statements

could not be used against each other in separate trials. So if you accuse me of something, then by God get up on that stand, and I'm going to cross-examine you about that.

“You can't cross-examine a written confession.”

The criminal court of appeals and Texas said, because of the Supreme Court case, that they had deserve a new trial. And so they sent it back to District Court to be retried. In 2008 and 2009, prosecutors are wrestling with what they are going to do. The state says they will retry the case,

but when prosecutors test the crime scene DNA with improved technology called YSTR, which looks at male genetics only, they find none of the four boys match the DNA recovered from the crime scene. That evidence made clear that there was no physical evidence tying the boys to the crime and the convictions are dismissed.

And so as of October 2009, both guys were now free, but the cases are dismissed pending further investigations. Which means that at any time, these charges can be brought back to them again and they can be arrested at any time for these. It's been a long time and coming and I'm happy to be here.

No comment right now, please. For the families, this was yet another aspect of this terrible emotional roller coaster. That was pretty bad because we thought we had the guys that did it. Our fair was money to hit again. And now, in many ways, they felt as though the investigation was back to square one.

Somebody had done this before.

“That's why they realized this was a much bigger case.”

They called and said, "There's been a break in the case." He said, "I know that killed your daughter." I loved my father and then I found out that he was a cheerleader. He said, "My Nikola, do you still have this feeling?" "That's why I'm working with a child and a child?"

No, not at all. This story is like a story with you who can't do it. Wow, that's what it's all about. Yeah, exactly. This story is like a story with you.

You can't do it. You can't do it. No, it's not like a story. You can't do it. No, it's not like a story.

-Stoy-an-el-edict? -Safe. -Midviso Stoy-a, yet's costing those tests. -It's the paradise podcast. -I am your host, Ryan Michelle Baté, with my husband, Sterley. -So. -I'm joined 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 Fogerman, James Marsden, Shaling Woodley, Julian Nicholson, and Sterling Helpy Brown.

-Hoo! Paradise, the official podcast is now streaming, and stream Paradise on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bundle subscribers, Terms Apply. -This is a day that we brought Amy home from the hospital. -This is a day that we brought Amy home from the hospital. -And he was brown over. -Shan wanted his sister.

-He's just beaming looking at her. -He was a good big brother, too. -Played with her. -Love Donner.

-This is the first day of school, Victor.

-Her and John, this is the egg one that we talked about showing her hog that she won a trophy for showmanship.

-The first year she ever showed.

-She was proud of that one too. -We were too.

“-How many kids can say they wrote a oral champion?”

-Cutton Horse. -I know. -That's where they stopped. -Okay. -So more.

-I had virtually given up on Solvener case. I mean, I had just come to the resolution. -We weren't going to solve it. I would know when I died. -What happened? -But I would have to leave with that.

-Help it. Thanks to Angie. -We've baited this for. -For me, it was the right thing to do. I wanted to help them. I wanted to help my sister-in-law, because it was not right what was done to her and her friends.

Angie Ayers is a fiery force. She also brings this deep and rich passion

on behalf of the sister-in-law she never met.

-And it's not an easy road to travel. You've got to pick yourself up by the boots to have the guts to go down and talk to the police department and talk to the district attorneys.

“-It's been a fight and it takes an emotional and a physical toll.”

Trying to find the answers that you deserve. -And there are others joining this long battle to find answers for Amy and the girls. The Ayers meet Travis County prosecutor Mindy Maudford, who is now working the cold case investigation

for the district attorney's office. -As someone who's followed this case from living here and remembering when it happened. And that's my neighborhood. So I've known about this for so long and had so much empathy

and respect for you all. -We were nervous because we had gone through so many people before, but I do remember after the meeting, you took the chance to walk us down. And you turned to us and you had tears in your eyes.

You said, "I'm always going to be here.

I'm going to continue to fight no matter what." Sean and I talked about that on the way out and I was like, "I hope she stands up to it. And you have." -I'm in it.

-I know you did. -You had DNA.

“And so many of these cases don't have that.”

And so I knew it was just a matter of time but that we had to try everything. -So remember, back in 2009, the Austin authorities released the suspects because the DNA technology had advanced

and they were finally able to obtain something called a YSTR profile. And neither Springsteen nor Scotts DNA matched. So now the hope is, can the latest science help match who this DNA

actually belongs to? -We have tested hundreds, hundreds of people,

first responders, serial killers,

family members, police officers, against that YSTR profile we've had to try to identify the individual without success for years. -Four teenage girls,

bound gagged and shot in the head in an eye can't believe a Joker chop. And now on this 30th anniversary of this heartbreaking crime, the case that to this day still has

more questions than answers. -But at some point, the Austin Police Department formally requested that the newly formed cold case unit

within the AG's office assist APD with this investigation. I was told, "You're going to really be excited because we've got this new detective coming on board

and directing in Jackson." -So this is the entryway to the cold case office. The first thing you see when you start your day is

this here, and what we have is a to scale diorama of the strip mall where the yogurt shop was located.

And then we also have here as pictures of the four girls. And a short biography about each girl and then a slight short synopsis of the case.

And sort of reminds you while we're out here and what we're doing here and why this, you just knew it was like

starting to begin with, was to work this case. -Mindy introduced us and I said, "Oh, I don't remember my exact words,

but I know that I said something to the effect. Oh, so you're only the next investigator 200 and something."

And he was like,

"I would like to make the last one.

But then took this, he looked outside the box. He told us,

"He's never seen crime scene photos,

never read any of the confessions." Nonetheless, he was looking for evidence. -I took the case over I was like,

this case will never progress

“until you figure out how to unown profiles.”

We had seen a couple of things off that didn't result in any thing promising. So you all the leads end up going nowhere and then at the end of June

of 2025, I don't know why I went down so I just ran a hole but I was thinking about that three-year cartridge

that was pulled from a train. Thinking about what we could do with it. -The ATF maintains this database and now you can take your

expenditure casing, give it to Niven, and they will do one of these computer searches, and they will search this database

of thousands and thousands

of other expenditure caseings, and remarkably, every once in a while you get a hit. -I wanted our detective to submit it

and that afternoon, my phone rang, and he was like, "Hey, you got a second?"

So he called, he was like, "Hey, how could you on a bigger phone?" with a couple of people. He was like, "Are you sitting down?"

I said, "Yeah." He goes, "Hey, we got a hit." From a 1998 unsolved case, and I can tuck you.

-I still get chills thinking about it because when Dan started reading me the police report and I'm hearing this victim was shot in the head

with a 380, possibly sexually assaulted and the business was burned. -But we could find no connection between other than that gun.

But we're still on the name. So, we still don't know who did it. -At that point, Dan Jackson asked crime databases across the country

if they would do something called a manual search. Upload only the strand of DNA that they have into their databases

to see if there is a possible match. -So, we reached out

“to all the labs and asked him to do this.”

All the states were turned information saying, "No hits, no matches, except one state." South Carolina said, "Yes." And that was a huge break.

-Bingo, a lead 34 years in the making. Suddenly, we've got a serial killer on our hands.

-After 34 years, Austin authorities have gotten a big break. Like nothing else in this investigation so far.

But we'll do that now. It's been years in the making thanks to a new science called genetic genealogy. There's one name in this area

that really stands out and that's CC Moore. -I have been involved in over 360 law enforcement cases that I've been able to help law enforcement

resolve. -Genetic genealogy is the combination of using documentary sources and DNA to learn more about someone's family history.

I started filming a series with ABC News called the genetic detective. The work I did laid the foundation

for the investigators who identified the killer in the yogurt shop murders. -CC Moore's investigation actually kicks off with a

different cold case from 1998 in a Midwestern town 800 miles away from Austin. -March 28th, 1998,

a teenager and his father came home and made a terrible discovery. Megan and Sherry share a mother and young daughter

had been viciously murdered. It was definitely the worst crime scene at the time that I had seen. Sherry had three gunshot wounds

to the head. Megan Sherry was laying in the air Sherry. She also had a gunshot wound to the head.

Her hands had been bound behind her back with an extension cord. -Unfortunately, Megan was actually assaulted

and so they were able to collect DNA from the perpetrator off of her body.

Investigators got their first

big break in the case. It came about 40 miles south in Dyer's bird Tennessee. About 9 o'clock at night

on the same evening that Sherry and Megan had been murdered. A mother in

Dyer County, Tennessee describes coming home with her kids and a maroon van

is in. The man walks up and she describes the man and pulling a gun

from the waistband of his pants

Pointing it directly

out. She tries to start shutting the door on his arm. That's when he shoots

the bullet goes through the door and hits her in the shoulder. She survived

and he pulled back out to the van and took off. -The crime

laboratory technician was able to match the bullets

and say that the same gun is burned. -What's amazing to me

is that that wasn't enough for him. Two murders and a rape

wasn't enough. He tried to go and victimize somebody else in the very same day

and I think that tells us

something important about him.

The survivor, the woman who fought him off she was able to describe him

to law enforcement and so that was a really key piece of information.

-So in 1998 we were interviewing suspects that had criminal histories,

that had been involved in assaults and sexual assaults and looked similar to the composite

that we had posted on the media. Nothing worked. -This year family was

beloved in their community and very state police.

“This was a really important case to them.”

But years passed until they were able to do more with that biological evidence. And once DNA

technology advanced, they were able to get that DNA profile

created and uploaded into the law enforcement database code is.

-Our hope was when we submitted this profile it would send us a nameback

of a suspect that had been arrested in the past. But

instead we were linked to a cold case that occurred in 1990 in Greenville,

South Carolina. -In South Carolina in April of 1990, young woman

named Genevieve Zettricke

was found murdered in her apartment. Genevieve Zettricke was found murdered in her apartment. Genevieve Zettricke

was found murdered in her apartment. Genevieve Zettricke was found murdered in her apartment. Genevieve Zettricke was found murdered in her apartment.

Genevieve Zettricke was found murdered in her apartment. Genevieve Zettricke was found murdered in her apartment. Genevieve Zettricke