Under the Gun
After a lengthy investigation that was at times scattershot, overly aggressive, and just plain incompetent, Austin police say they’ve caught the three young men who killed four teenage girls in an “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” shop in 1991.
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Both men knew an astonishing number of details about the crime scene that were not made public. Springsteen's description of Amy's position, for example—lying on her stomach, with her right hand up and out—was consistent with how the body was found. But Scott had some alarming inconsistencies in his stories. In his interrogations he said he had shot two girls, then one, and then, in the written statement, two again. According to Detective John Hardesty, Scott said Pierce had pistol-whipped one of the girls, but he also said that it was Springsteen who had hit them. At first Scott said he was pretty certain that only three boys were involved, but after Hardesty repeatedly suggested to him that Welborn was outside in the car, Scott included him from then on as the lookout. And only for the written statement did he mention the seemingly memorable fact that Welborn had fled during the crime only to be picked up in the parking lot afterward. As told by Merrill, Springsteen's story clashed with Scott's too. Springsteen said the car was parked near a grassy area, that Pierce had raped one of the girls, and that maybe Scott hadn't shot anybody at all. Not surprisingly, both fingered someone else as the psychotic leader, the action man.
Still, the two confessions convinced district judge Jeanne Meurer that there was probable cause, and she certified Pierce and Welborn as adults. Springsteen was indicted on December 14, 1999 on four counts of capital murder. The indictments of Scott and Pierce followed on December 28. District attorney Ronnie Earle announced he would seek the death penalty against Scott and Springsteen, but because Pierce was legally a juvenile in 1991, Earle was limited to seeking a life sentence against him. Earle also said that the grand jury's term would be extended for ninety days, "for the purpose of investigating the yogurt shop murders." In other words, to get something on Welborn, who had been freed on December 10 on $375,000 bail.
The calm that followed the indictments was shattered on May 2, 2000, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms released a report finding that the gun discovered on Pierce in December 1991—the catalyst for pursuing these four defendants—was probably not the murder weapon after all. That week, desperate for a murder weapon, officers began the pointless task of dredging the Colorado River under the Loop 360 bridge looking for the gun that both Scott and Springsteen said may have been dumped the night of the murders. Nine years had passed since the killings, and six floods had washed out the river in that time. There was no more apt symbol of the APD's troubles than images on the news of cops literally fishing for clues—at least until later that month, when the photo of Detective Merrill holding the gun to Scott's head showed up in a pretrial motion. Suddenly the case seemed to be falling apart as quickly as it had come together. On June 7, Diana Castañeda, who had been on the grand jury that indicted the three, wrote to Judge Mike Lynch and complained that jurors had been used as "pawns in what I assume to be a rush to judgment." She requested that he hold a hearing about the matter. In September she told me, "I wish this case had been done properly. I'm afraid we have taken the easy way and that all the facts aren't in." Grand jury proceedings are supposed to be secret, and Castañeda's concerns, and the way she expressed them, were anything but.
Two weeks later, in another pretrial hearing, Detective Paul Johnson made a stunning admission: He had been told by an APD ballistics expert back in January 1999 that Pierce's .22 was almost certainly not the gun. That meant that he had known that fact for a year and a half, including during his several hours on the stand at the certification hearings. Johnson said that he had meant to say something about it in a report but that he had forgotten.
It got worse. On June 30 a report from the DPS showed that, after testing for rape and checking fingernails and examining mucus found under one of the girls (presumably Amy), none of the boys' DNA was found at the crime scene. While this didn't exonerate the suspects—DNA could have been destroyed by the fire or the water—it was yet another colossal problem for a DA who has, as the police have stated repeatedly during hearings, no physical evidence tying the suspects to the crime.
That same day, after the second grand jury failed to come up with indictments against Welborn, Judge Jon Wisser threw out all four charges against him. If, as the old saying goes, any competent DA can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, why couldn't Ronnie Earle nail Welborn? For years police officers had questioned him, and for years he had steadfastly denied having anything to do with the killings. "They would get right in my face," Welborn told 48 Hours, "and tell me everything I said was a lie." In December 1999 the DA's office had approached Welborn and told him he could write his own ticket if he agreed to testify that he was outside the yogurt shop in the car while the other three went in. Welborn turned the offer down, saying, "I'm not gonna lie for them." It was a desperate move by prosecutors who still did not have a single witness. "That's not a card the state plays unless it's in serious trouble," says criminal attorney Gary Cohen, who has tried a number of cases in Austin involving the police. "For the state to let him walk signals that they have some serious problems with proof. That man firmly believes he is not culpable in any way." Welborn's father, Jimmie, says, with disgust, "The police felt they could intimidate him about sitting in jail for years waiting trial."
Welborn's lawyer, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez, was so confident of his client's innocence that he invited district attorney Earle to interview Welborn in his office. Two prosecutors spent more than three hours with the young man and left empty-handed. Even after two grand juries failed to return indictments against Welborn, investigators continued, and continue to this day, to work his case. "Forrest Welborn still remains under investigation for the murders," assistant district attorney Buddy Meyer told the Austin American-Statesman. According to Icenhauer-Ramirez, "The DA is continuing to harass members of Forrest's family—even remote cousins—looking for someone who heard him say, 'I did it.'" Welborn had an auto repair shop in Lockhart before his arrest, but it closed during his two months in jail. Since he got out he's been working various jobs to take care of his son and a new daughter born in August. He turned down repeated requests for an interview. His mother, Sharon Pollard, says he's tired of being lumped in with the others, and he wants to put the whole thing behind him. "These people need to know they can't go ruining people's lives," she says. Her ex-husband, Jimmy, agrees. "I've had enough of their arrogance," he says angrily. "It's hard to believe the police can be so dishonest . . . Forrest was victimized and stripped of his dignity. It ruined his life."
"Everyone lies" is rule number one in Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon's definitive book about the life of detectives. Even the police. In truth, the police have to lie. They spend much of their time dealing with people who lie for a living, and if they didn't mislead suspects in interrogations, they would solve only the easy cases. Legally, cops can tell suspects just about anything, as long as they stop short of lying about the law, and the public accepts a certain amount of mendacity if the cops catch a certain number of crooks. In Austin, even over the past troubled year, as the police took hit after hit to their credibility and competence, many citizens just shrugged their shoulders. It didn't matter that the police didn't have any evidence or eyewitnesses: Those two suspects had confessed. In detail. There is no way they could have made it all up.
Well, actually, there is a way. The latest disaster for the Austin police—the Pizza Hut case, in which Christopher Ochoa, an innocent man, confessed in great detail to a murder he didn't commit (see "Untrue Confessions," at the end of this article)—has shown just how far the Austin police will go to solve a brutal, highly publicized murder. Could the APD have done it again with the yogurt shop murders? Both Ochoa's and Scott's confessions offer a remarkable level of detail, including how the victims had been bound and shot. Both men changed their stories several times, and each account made the teller guiltier. Both fingered someone else as the guy who needed money, the guy who came up with the plan to get it, and the guy who told the confessor to kill, which he did.
Of course, it's impossible to prove that police detectives fed Scott the details of the murders, but we know that they put him through a brutal interrogation that included yelling, swearing, and at least one vivid visual aid. Scott is also the sort of malleable personality—according to his wife, Jeannine, he "can't even write his name on a tough day"—who would be likely to make a false confession. During his first day with the police, he called Jeannine and said, "Dear, I guess I know more about this case than I thought I did." He was eager to please, riding with the cops from his Buda home to the Austin police station four times and to the yogurt shop twice. His eagerness was sometimes frightening. At one point during questioning, he moaned, "I'm scared that I'm not answering your questions the way you-all want answered." Another time he said in despair, "I don't know if this is real."
Tony Díaz, Scott's lawyer, thinks the detectives found easy prey: "These guys are like the guys who question POWs. They say, 'Here's your wife's name and address.' They don't say, 'We're going to go blow her up.' They say, 'Rob, Maurice Pierce has implicated you'—even though that's false. And, 'Rob, we have DNA evidence against you. Rob, you can't claim you were at the Rocky Horror Picture Show because it wasn't playing that night.' But it was!"
Even if the only weapons the police have are the two confessions, that may be enough to convict Springsteen, whose trial is scheduled to start on February 20, and Scott, whose trial will likely be held later this year. "A confession, if believed beyond a reasonable doubt, is enough to convict the confessor, assuming there is independent evidence that a crime was committed," says noted Houston criminal attorney Randy Schaffer. Springsteen's lawyers have already tried to get his confession thrown out, but the court denied their motion; Scott's lawyers have filed a motion to try the same.
Looking ahead, the prosecution will have the biggest problems with Pierce. In Texas a person cannot be convicted solely on the word of a co-conspirator. Some kind of corroborating evidence is needed, and the police have admitted they have none. They finally have at least one witness, although she's eight years late and she did not see the crime committed. Her name is Lusella Jones, and she was in the yogurt shop the night of the killings. On October 4, 1999, said Detective Skolaut, Jones picked Maurice Pierce out of a photo lineup as the one who "looked most like" one of two men in the yogurt shop that night about whom she had a "strange feeling." She couldn't pick out Scott or Springsteen.
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