Coerced Confessions and Final Exoneration

What's up, sports fans? I'm Rachel Demita here to tell you about my show Courtside Club. If you love hoops and hot takes, then you're in the right place. Wantna hear about Caitlin Clark's unstoppable rise in the WNBA, how stars like Weemby and Lua Donich are dominating the NBA. Or maybe you just want the tea on this week's most viral sports moments Don't worry, we'll keep you updated on all of it. So grab your popcorn and come hang with us. ourtside. You can listen to courourtside Club wherever you get your podcast, Oy anda Summer routines live or die by how easy they are, and honestly, if something takes too much effort, I'm out. That's why Groons is my go to. It's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens, vitamins and minerals. Plus, it has six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is more than two cups of broccoli, No no mixing powders, no giant pills, no hassle. I just rip open the pack and I'm done. They taste good and make it easy to stay on top of my health Even when life gets busy, Save up to fifty two percent off with code podcast at groons d. co. That's code podcast at grnS. co. There's a fire inside you you can't ignore. Stand still, not a chance. You're a lifelong learner who's come this far. Now, we're here to help you keep going further, Capeella University Can't you do? Visit caapella.edu to learn more In nineteen ninety one Austin, Texas was right on the verge of becoming what it is today, a bustling hub of arts and culture But the secret of just how cool Austin was hadn't quite yet got out nationally. We go to Texas cities in ninety one werere Houston, Dallas San Antonio. Centers of business, commerce, arts and important historical sites like the Alamo. Daly Plaza, where JFK was assassinated Austin by comparison didn't seem like much to many. Was it citywide celebration of E. Or's birthday parades, costumes, and other quirky local traditions Austin was seen as a stoner in sllacker's paradise place where it felt far more likely to see sixty style hippies and university students smoking weed and tripping balls than some sort of violent, crazy or high profile incident Austa was seen largely by its inhabitants place that was really safe Still Austin was actually not a stranger to some high profile homicides Decades earlier in nineteen sixty six, Charles Whitman climb to the top of the Texas Tower at the University of Texas and having already murdered his wife and mother killed fourteen people and wounded thirty one others, with his dear rifle before police managed to shoot and kill him At the time, the violence was inexplicable Later, people began to connect the dots Whitman, a former Eagle Scout, Marine. started to suffer very serious mental health problems after his mother left his father in March of sixty six culminating in an incident on march twenty ninth when he told a psychiatrist that he was thinking about going to the tower and shooting people When all of this came to light, it seemed like an understandable, if unsettling story A mentally ill guy snap. If only someone, like his doctor had alerted the authorities, something could have been done to prevent it Plus, it was the fact that the crime he had committed had been in broad daylight There was no secrecy about it, no mystery And when he was shot by the police It was over Austinites did not have to worry about Whitman ever killing anyone else ever again It was horrific, yes, incredibly tragic. Terrifying even But it also felt like an aberration A one off. Clearly when it comes to mass shootings in America, that has decidedly not been true, unfortunately Nearly three decades later, the yogurt shop murders in Austin would surpass the massacre at the University of Texas and become the city's most high profile crime even though far less people were killed. very different and for many, far more upsetting because it felt like it could that it might not be an aberration, but rather The start of something After all, the killer was still out there. Nobody knew who came into the I canan't belieieve It's Yogurt that fateful night around eleven PM Just as its two teenage workers, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison closing up Nobody knew what the person or people had said to the girls before they'd killed them Had they joked around with them, made them feel comfortable blend it in Had they flashed a badge or an ID? somethingomet that made the girls think that the person or people they were dealing with were regular law abiding citizens or law enforcement officials Nobody knew if or how they'd approached the other two girls in the store that night either. fifteen year old Amy Ayres and fifteen year old Sarah Harbison, Jennifer's younger sister What people did know was how the bodies were found. Just before midnight on december sixth, nineteen ninety one, a call came in that reported a fire at the ICBY store When firemen arrived, they found a wall of smoke, ash, and flames thick enough to make speaking or even gesturing to communicate impossible As the firefighter stumbled in, still thinking that a stove, which the ICBI did not have have been left on They saw something to a body But it wasn't just one body, but the yogurt shop and not just two either. The bodies of four young girls would be found in the yogurt shop's back room naked, bound, and burned beyond recognition Even more horrifying than the condition of the bodies was the fact that the scene seemingly gave no clues as to what its perpetrator wanted outside of sex They didn't take any money They didn't leave behind a manifesto They didn't seem like Charles Whitman intent on blowing up their lives in one last storm of violence No, for all anyone knew, the perpetrator had gone back to their life, or to their lives They could still be attending barbecues, going to see live music on Sth Street, celebrating birthdays, checking you out at the grocery store, looking for the next group of girls to destroy all while Austin was left reeling It seemed like the city's days of innocence were over, that if something like this could happen in Austin, with its charming, quirky, offbeat businesses and local friendly generally peace and drugs and good time, love and weirdos, It could happen anywhere As Barbara Aris Wilson, then Barbara Serasi, the mother of two of the victims told People Magazine in nineteen ninety two Did we do wrong here We moved to a nice house in a good neighborhood You did all the middle class American things that you do to protect your family and make it wholesome and right. If this can happen to us It can happen to anyone The yogurt shop murders Right now, another true crime, another what in the actual fuck is wrong with so many of our fellow Meet Sack editions time, sir This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck Happy Monday, Wlcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious Dan Cummins, suck nasty Proably autistic definitely neurodivergence, mayaybe insane. And you are listening to Time suck Hail Nimrod, Hail, fina, praise me be a good boy Jangles and gllory be to triple him charity announcement time, and then we're off into the episode this June, this Pride month. We are making a donation to modern military. a nonprofit advocating for LGBTQIA plus military members and their families The work includes advocacy policy and more to ensure that all service members and veterans are cared for no matter who they love And that is exactly why we love them. We love our veterans, we love our Pide members And here we are. We have donated ten thousand two hundred and thirty dollars to modern military on behalf of our space lizards who support us on Patreon and also put another one thousand one hundred and thirty into the scholarship fund If you'd like to learn more about what modern military is doing or want to get involved Please visit modernmilitary. org And also next week, we will be covering the Stonewall ots, which is both a fascinating topic, some important history Perfect for this month Hail Nimrat. And now This week's topic time. Not much setup needed for this episode. If you're a true crime fan, you've likely heard of the Austin Yogurt shop murders Indeed, a five episode documentary on the case titled Apply The Yoga Chop murders debuted in March of twenty twenty five on HBO to crritical acclaim I haven't seen it but only due to time, I've heard it's very good I do watch True Crime Docu series about our topics here when time allows on occasion, but since I can read a lot faster than I can watch. digest more information more effectively that way for whatever reason I tend to learn more on written sources, L like I did this week Hopefully like we usually seem to do, we can provide additional info here more than what that series presented for any of you who have seen it Yogurt shop murders were not the only big true crime case in the nineties, of course. That decade was actually huge for highly publicized true crime tales. nineteen ninety one brought us PBe Herman Be arrested for jerking off little Pewe a Sarasota Florida adult movie the and arrest that was part of a Very important sting operation We're a lot of taxpayer dollars. We're dedicated to stopping perverts from ruining the otherwise wholesome family fun experience of watching porn in a dark room with strangers D Tetectives would periodically visit pornographic theaters in the area and observe the audience for hours. doing solid, immensely important detective work and definitely not getting turned on ever, keeping the public very safe and arresting those engaged in what these detectives considered indecent exposure in a normally wildly decent place Three other men were also arrested that night on similar charges Good Part of Operation Make America limp again I don't know if the operations a name, but I'mroud of that And then there was the one time in nineteen ninety seven Definitely one hundred percent straight. thirty six year old comic and actor Eddiey Murphy pulled over by the police early in the morning of may second in West Hollywood after being observed pulling over and talking to a twenty two year old transgender sex worker Salamar Sayuli. who then got into Murphy's car Murphy claimed he was just been helpful to someone who might have needed a ride Okay, sounds good to me. happppens a lot. A lot of very sexy women and men dressed in the high hills and very little else in West Hollywood late at night and very early in the morning are lost And they just happen to be wandering around in the same area looking for a ride to somewhere Murphy later said in a nineteen ninety seven interview with People Magazine I saw this Hawaiian looking woman and said What are you doing out here She said I'm working He was shocked. Murphy claimed he then offered Seulia a ride and even tried to convince her to leave sex work He said, quote, I said, you shouldn't be doing that And by bing I'm never giing anyone a lift again. Cool story, bro, totally believable. Murphy also told journalists the only reason he was driving past a known sex worker hotspot at four hundred forty five in the morning was because he had insomnia And he felt like driving around to u I don't know. helpelp himself fall back asleep. at the wheel U Suli told a story that was very different from Murphy's She alleged that Murphy put two hundred dollars bills on her leg and asked her if she'd wear lingerie She also said that he asked if he could see her in that lingerie and what kind of sex she liked before the authorities approached. Hm Does her story seem more believable to you than his? I don't know. In the nineteen ninety seven We found out that a thirty four year old Seattle area elementary school teacher Mary Kay Lterau A married mother of four was seven months pregnant with the child of one of her recent sixth grade students een year old Villy Vau She would go to prison for six months then immediately violate her parole, get pregnant again with another one of Falau's babies. They go back to prison until two thousand four. thenen get out again and start seeing Falu once more thenen marry him in two thousand five. Their two daughters would serve as flower girls to a wedding that had to have been attended mostly by people or by people who really liked to watch complete fucking train wrecks I guess all those cases were more torid scandals than hardcore true crime cases But there were definitely you know, highly publicized murder cases in the nineties as well nineteen ninety three through ninety six brought us to Mendez Brothers tririals, one eight hundred business baby, nineteen ninety four brought us to the O.J. Simpson trial All the murders of Tupac Shakur and the notorious BIG captivated the nation in nineteen ninety six and nineteen ninety seven. There was a disappearance and murder of John Bonet Ramseay in nineteen ninety six, perhaps the most infamous U.S true crime case of all time covered here previously for Pe Hermanetie Murphy and Maryay L Peto U against these national stories Many of them involving wealthy people, celebrities or a murdered little girl whose face was splashed across magazines for many, many years. It seems unlikely that the yogurt shop murdrs would have attracted as much dedicated attention as they did and as they sustained over decades. But a few things made the Yogurt Shop murder stand out in the worst way amongst even those crimes for those who are paying attention For one thing, there was the sheer brutality of it, combined with the ages of the victims Teen year old Amy Eyres seventeen year old Eliza Thomas. seventeen year old Jennifer Harberson and Jennifer's fifteen year old sister, Sarah all found to have been tied up and shot execution style in the backs of their heads before their bodies had been burned to the point of being unrecognizable One was definitely raped as well All of them may have been sexually assaulted The scene painted a horrific story of these girls' last minutes, minutes that should have been spent laughing and chatting, closing up the shop and then heading home. Instead, they've been herded up probably at gunpoint, taken to the back room, likely sexually assaulted in front of each other, then killed one by one while their friends listen to one another's final moments. It seemed unlikely that one person could have been capable of keeping all these girls, you know, controlled in this scenario, which meant most people assumed that multiple traders were involved But how would those people have found each other? Have they murdered together before How do they decide on that yogurt shop? hadad they been, you know, staking it out, stalking one or more of the girls for a while perhaps most importantly, would they try to kill again? Would more brutal rapes and murdder soon follow For a long, long time, Austinites wouldn't get any answers The investigation stumbled and was dragged down by political infighting within the APD. The Austin Police Department and the burnout and PTSD of the investigators who are following every lead into a never ending series of dead ends What little evidence that survived the fire was not very helpful in a time when forensic testing not nearly as powerful as it is today So in the absence of that pololice had to rely on witnesses' descriptions of what they hadd seen that night. Indeed, every customer at the yogurt shop spoken to seemed to remember some suspicious person that night And a few names would come up that took precedence over the others Robert Springsteeen Michael Scott Maurice Pierce and Forrest Wellborne And soon some of them would confess For a moment APD held its breath. Was this it? Was this the final piece in the puzzle Today, we'll go over the last day that the four victims were alive, december sixth, nineteen ninety one, jumping around between how they spent their days in general and learning who they were so we can try and understand what brought them to the yogt shop and why it seemed like just another ordinary day until it didn' We'll cover the initial horrific discovery made by the police and how the investigation was immediately compromised by the water that firefighters had to douse the shop with And we'll also cover how battles within the Austin Police Department left the detectives looking into the case burn out, exhausted, and traumatized and how that led even more tragedy Let's Begin Trap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time suck timeline December sixth, nineteen ninety one was a Friday. public school kids. It was the next to last week of the fall semester But the weather that day didn't seem to promise a lot of fun and leisure. gray Overcast Little Humittt. fifteen year old Sarah Harbverson didn't seem to mind though It was warmer than the past few days had been and the temperature would rise into the low seventies. maybe a little cool for Austin Damn near ideal. For most places in the world. As a sophomore at Lenier High, a school known as Juan Navarro Ely College High schoolool since twenty nineteen, apparently, Sarah played basketball and volleyball and was a member of the FFA future farmers of America and a member of the student cououncil, very busy kid For an FFA project, she and Jennifer, her seventeen year old sister, were raising lambs to show at the annual Austin livestock show in Rdeo the next spring That meant waking up early. After a quick breakfast, the sisters went to the A barn. place some three miles away where FFA kids raise their animals to feed the lambs and muck out their stall After that, they went home to shower and change before Jennifer then drove them to school in her nineteen ninety one dark blue Chevy S ten pickup truck After school, they do the same thing head back to the A bar at home where Jennifer let her sister out and then drove off to visit her boyfriend After that, Jennifer went to a friend's house to retrieve her wallet and then back to school to pick up a form she needed to fill out to run for quQeen of the local chapter of the FFA Hard wororking, ambitious kid meaneanwhile, Sarah hung out at home. At four thirty that afternoon as she peeled an orange, Sarah Harbts's mother, Barbara Sarasi, came home from work as a credit officer at Team Bank Barbar soon noticed that Sarah was in a good mood. andine knew why Sarah had a new boyfriend who had recently given her his senior ring, and she didn't have basketball or volleyball practice the next day You plan to go out that night mostost likely to hit North Cross Mall and seni your rings. U we call them class rings, I think I guess some schools still offer them, but I don't think they're very popular anymore. feels so nineties to me, especially the part about him giving her a senior ring is a kind of promise ring And my high school dudes would do that with their lettermen's jackets too. I remember looking at a bunch of options for my class ring and a catalogue, just fucking big gody rings. and actually really wanting one someome ring with a huge ruby on it That's so random. Even though they are so fucking cringy to me now, not a big jewelry person, just personally I think the only thing that stopped me from getting and wearing one though was is not having the money So a little nostalgia blast there weeekend nights, kids from all over the city either drove to or were dropped off at that North Cross mall to window shop, eat some pizza, smoke some cigarettes, flirt, play pranks, laugh, drink sodas, maybe go to a movie or even ice skate on the only rink within two hundred miles. When the mall opened in the nineteen seventies, it was a pretty straight and narrow scene by nineteen ninety one, most of the kids who hung out at the mall were distinctly alternative Fucking most cool teenagers, I guess were alternative in nineteen ninety one. Right? They're dropping LSD. they have moohawks. They, you know, came to see midnight movies like Heavy metal, Pink Floyds the Wall, The Rocky Horror Picture showhow Fucking love it. When Barbara wasn't worried about her kids being around kids doing shit like that, she wanted her kids to enjoy being young. have fun, rack up various memorable life experiences. In fact, that was exactly why she'd moveved to Austin Bara had grown up inew Bost. small town in East Texas near the Arkansas line that has pretty much zero in common with regular Boston in Massachusetts New Boston is one hundred and fifty six miles east of Dallas, only twenty two miles west of Tex Aarkcana little over four thousand six hundred people liivving in a place known mostly for its pioneer days festival and rodeo and kicking out a couple high school football stars went on to play in the NFL. New Boston doesn't quite have the Boston equivalent of the Celtics, Red Sox, Bruins, Harvard, focal point of the Revolutionary War, Puritan St stronghold, birthplace of America's first public school, public park or subway system, or you know, live in a metro area with nearly five million people, slightly different energies One might say that newew Boston is a wee bit sleepier than regular Boston Probably not getting the same bands coming through Definitely not getting the same bands as Austin, either. manan, fuck, that scse crushes with live music. spoon, white denim die spits Oh, on and on and on. Anyway. Having married her high school sweetheart, Bara had been young when she had her babies, then when her husband decided to enroll in graduate divinity courses at the university They all moved to Austin where Barbara worked to support the family until he got his degree and they could go back home. The city life opened her mind new possibilities. and when the girls were five and two and a half, she left both Mike Carbasson and New Boston and set off in her little hatchback. Figuring that she and her two daughters could lead much more interesting lives in Austin Funky artistic city of over two million in the metro area now little less than half that many living there dead Soon after arriving back in Austin, Barbara met Frank Sarasi, a technician at Dell compomputers, whom she married in nineteen eighty Man, fucking Dell computers I didn't realize they were still around. About a decade after all this happened, they had a wildly popular ad campaign basased around a stoner character named Steve, played by Ben Curtis with a catchphrase everybody seem to know Dude, you're getting tellll. Just call or go online. Tellem what you want, and right to your front door comes America's favorite PC. Thanks, Stehven. Now you can get a Dell desktop with an Intel FentM four processor, whichich delivers performance where you need it most. And six months of Dellnet by MSN Innet access for just eightllarsy nineents. Dellet go online today and get a free CD burner or DVD upgrade. CD burner, notebooks too. Dude, you're getting a Dell. Easy to buy, easy to own, easy as Dell M that little doom, don't do, don't do heard that so many times. Six months dial up internet access For Barbara Frank who went by Sip 's exotic. Italian, Catholic, sexy and bringing home that Dle Bacon She threw herself into a new relationship. even decided to send her daughters to a Catholic middle school and weekly mass so Barbara and Skip could exchange vows in a church the girls like going made it clear to their mom they were looking forward to attending a public high school when the time came Barbara was fully supportive of that, and Frank didn't try and intervene. D didn't try and stop In nineteen ninety, Barbara would move from their small house in a dicey neighborhood into a roomy barn like structure west of MoPak, one of the city's main expressways on a street called Tamarak Trail, seven miles from the school her eldest daughter Sarah' sister Jennifer Harbverson, seventeen in a senior, though she could have passed for younger. Only eighty six pounds and five feet tall, Jennifer was a relay runner on the Syney Lineier High School varsity track team She loved running, loved her sister and her compact preppy little u her peppy little Eent pickup even though she'd had to get a job so she could make payments on the loan for it Ftirst, she'd worked at a nearby Albertson's sacking groceries and despite her size, hauling across the parking lot into customers cars. But then in July of ' ninety one Her friend Eliza Thomas had told her that working for the I canan't believe It's yogurt was fucking way better in that grocery store grind And yes, ICBY was for sure a direct competitor to TCBY, the country's best yogurt their main competitor for a few years. They actually predated TCBY by three years, haven't been found in nineteen seventy eight The two were in quite the fro yo war. TCBY originally stood for this Campt Yogurt until ICBY successfully sued them for copyright infringement and made them change the meaning of the acronym since it was clearly a knockoff of theirs Let's now shift gears and meet Eliza Like the Harbeston Girls, Eliza Thomas, also deeply involved in FFA. For her project, which she had also attended to that morning at the A barn She was raising a pig Raised the pick for last year's show as well. and she' actually won She's hoping to win again, of course, but her two hundred and fifty four pound pig Stony seemed like he was sick this year too sick to properly fatten up The vet had prescribed shots that Eliza had to give him twice a day on the morning of december sixth. Eliza asked her mother to go with her to the Agg barn and help her give Stony an injection And her mother Maria agreed. Eliza drove her bright green, nineteen seventy one Volkswagen, Carmen Gia very cute retro car to Lenier parked next to the barn where she waited for her mom to pick her up in a fewutes Tony got his injection And Eliza got another taste to what she hoped would be a long career in veterinary medicine For a couple of years, she had kept a bowl of crawfish thenen some white rats. As the work of keeping animals grew more complicated, involving farming equipment and repairs, she kept up Learning how to weld, how to do auto repairs Christmas that year just a few weeks away, she had asked for car parts, dreaming of driving around in her sporty stylish car as she made vet calls to farms across Texas For now It was time to head off to school and then to work Liza had taken the four dollars thirty five cents an hour job at the ICBY shop in January to supplement the money she made from her other job, escorting a nine year old boy to gym lessons twice a week At four hundred thirty five an hour. I remember those days well madeade the same amount for a couple years when I was bagging groceries in Idaho at Paul's grocery store in the nineties. G guessing these girls at least also got some tips though A lot of what Eliza made went to maintain the Volkswagen One friend would later tell news sources that Maria, Eliiza's mom didn't make much money as she cycled through different career paths analyze it didn't want to have to ask your mom for help. Great fucking kid Jennifer loved her job at ICBY. It was perfect, just like Eliza had told her it would be A couple shifts on the weekends allowed her make money, seeee any friends that might drop in and friends and cute boys always seem to drop in When Eliza got ready for her shift with Jennifer that evening, Sarah Harbison was thinking about her own evening plans Like she had told her mom, Barbara, she wanted to go to the mall, but she didn't want to go alone So she decided to call up her friend een year old Amy Eyres Amy attend Burnett Middle school And unlike Jennifer and Eliza, who were popular older girls, Amy was still the quiet, reserved kid she had always been te such a kid startarting to transition into a big high school kid and leave that little little kiddom era fully behind Having spent a good part of her childhood on a ranch Amy been riding horses since she was three ride all day without getting tired or bored Tough ass kid In Austin, she often wore a cowboy hat to school and sometimes after or before school, she leashed up one of two pigs that she was raising and it would take four walks like Eliza and a lot of other adolescent girls, she wanted to grow to be a veterinarian And had even gotten special permission from the FFA to be a junior member Once her dad would be asked in the wake of this tragedy, if Amy was something of a cowgirl. And Bob would respond emphatically that she was, quote, all Cow girl And this cow girl despite the age difference, which can be pretty big, you know, when one person's thirteen and One person's fifteen, you know, at that age, two years meet a lot. She was still Sarah's best friend he went to different schools. they hardly got to see each other during the week though. So the weekend for when they really prioritized hanging out And this fateful day, Sarah called Amy, whose parents were going Christas shopping Pamela Ares had seen a watch she wanted to buy for her son Sean at Scheppler's. She and husband, Bob were also planning to buy some Western style clothes for Amy since her daughter was still again, truly just a kid, neeither Pamela nor Bob often let Amy very far out of their sight. which Sarah knew and was not bothered by In fact, she had planned the whole thing out so that the heirs would feel really comfortable. She proposed that Jennifer on her way to ICBY drop the younger girls off at the mall Then Jennifer could duck out of work a few hours later real quick Pick them up Bring him back to the ICBY to wait for Jennifer to be done with her shift. And then when her shift was over, Jennifer would drive both younger girls home to have a big sleepover. and the heirs agreed It was supposed to have been such an incredibly wholesome night fucking' should' have been that night nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine times out of a million, it would have been that night. Jennifer got home around seven thirty. She agreed to Sarah's plan, hustled upstairs to get dressed in a work uniform, an open neck knit polo shirt. into dark chains just like the company requires. ICBY couldnt start slacking, letting TCBY show them up. They would lose the yogurt war Actually actuallyually, they would definitely lose the yogurt war anyway. TCBY still has over one hundred and twenty five locations worldwide way down from its peak of nearly two thousand locations back in two thousand one, but they are still hanging on ICBY now has exactly Zero shops left one I can tell When I search for ICBY locations, my web browser literally kicked backack with, are you sure you don't mean TCBY locations? These murders, I'm guessing went a long ways killing this franchise Once Jennifer had changed into her work clothes, she tied up her black high top rebox, fuck yeah, put on a jacket, grabbed her purse, went downstairs As Jennifer chated with her mother, Barbara noticed that Jennifer seemed a little evasive. W she keeping a secre? W she may be having sex with a boyfriend Samm As the girls rushed around getting ready for their evenings, Barbara decided press the iss She figured there would always be more time to get into it later Meanwhile, the first yogurt shop girl, as she would unfortunately come to be known in the press was arriving at ICBY And more on how her day began right after today's first of two Mid Show sponsored breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads ever again, please send them to be a spaceer on Patreon, help us make monthly charitable contributions. get the catalog ad free, episodes three days early and more Mint mobile plans are only fifteen dollars a month So what's the catch You have to give them your first and second born Not a bad deal in my opinion There is no catch There are no gimmicks and no gotches. 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Now let's return to the evening of december sixth, nineteen ninety one. when Eliza Thomas was opening the shop for the evening As Eliza walked into the yogurt shop's unassuming strip mall facade, she took the office keys from the cash registrter's ledge and walked to the end of the counter through an open door on her left and into the storage area past two bathrooms, the mop sink and the walking cooler. She swung to the right and unlocked the ICBY office door. inside setat down her jacket, car keys, purse, and maroon white backpack on a filing cabinet, then locked the door behind her and retraced her steps Following the shop's parent company, Bryce's rules, should put the keys back on the cash register, settle in for what seemed like another predictable night How is this place only open for couple hours a night by the way very interesting business model Maybe Maybe that's why they lost the yogt Wars. They were the Fro Yo Wars Not open enough Because Eliza arrived first, she would run the cash register while Jennifer took orders tape in the machine, an old fashioned paper roll would record every transaction Eliza rang up including the last one of the night. A no sale at eleven o three PM Some thirteen minutes after the front door was locked and three minutes after the shop was officially closed But Eliza didn't know that quite yet All she knew was that she and Jennifer would work until eleven. At which point they would lock the front door from the inside, turn the open sign over to closeed, leave the key in the lock, even if any last minute customers were still inside They would then deposit the night's proceeds in a floor safe in the office and clean up according to Bryce's precise closing instructions When they were finished, they would remove the key and lock the door again from the outside Put the key in an envelope, slide it under the door where the manager would retrieve it the following morning the whole cycle of dispensing swirls of delicious frozen yogurt frequently covered in sauces and syrups and various candy toppings would start over again I actually tried to get my daughter in Roe to work in a frozen yogurt shop at one point. Lindsey and I and the kids have gone to grab frozen yogurt here here and there Especially the summer since back before Monroe was even in kindergarten I thought a Froyo shop would be almost an ideal spot for teen to work. Seems easier than work in an ice cream shop, right? You don't have to scoop that shit for hours but you still get tips And the Froyo shops around here always seem to be gathering spots for high school kids, right, employees and customers And in Austin that hot humid weather year round, that's a perfect city for FOo. Outside of this terrible night, but it was damn near a perfect job for these high school kids. Right, Wk with your friends, have other friends visit you, meet lots of people, enjoy some delicious treats in an air conditioned shop down the street from the mall As Eliza started working, dispensing Froyo and ringing up transactions, Sarah Harbison was on her way to the mall For her big adventure, Sarah had donned a black denim jacket with an Aztec style lightning bolt across the front. Fuck ye, bro She hopped in the car with Jennifer and the two sped off to Amy's house where minutes earlier, Bob and Pamela Ayres had left to go shopping after kissing their daughter good night and telling her that they loved her When the S ten pulled up, Amy hopped in and like Sarah, she decided to have some fun getting dressed up too She wass wearing a bomber jacket. Oh man, bomber jackets. Those were in for a little while in the nineties. Her turquoise Wanglers and black lace up boots. as well as a watch, a pair of shrimp style earrings little shrimp shrimp fingigers, I guess The three string friendship bracelets she never took off Aw, man, French or bracelets And around her waist a wide leather belt threaded with multicolor lacing and fastened with a large heart shaped buckle she'd borrowed from her mom ready to turn boys heads to the mall. After a few minutes of driving, Jennifer pulled up to the North Cross Mall and the three girls coordinated a time for her to pick them up And the two younger girls went off A few minutes later, Jennifer arrived at ICBY to begin her eight to eleven shift. just three hours for the evening rush And now let's find out what some of our customers would notice that fateful evening Between eight hundred fifteen and eight thirty, fifty one year old Lucceilla Jones one of the ICB w spots and got out resident of nearby Allen Dale. She had come to get a quick yogurt for her husband. who just had some dental surgery and could only eat soft foods Heading inside, the still at notice only two other vehicles in the lot. Eiza's V d and Jennifer's S ten She was was a bit slow Sand to the ICBY to find the yogurt shop's familiar interior Southwestern inspired with dark red Mexican tile floors and walls lined with light oak toned wood paneling Along the North wall there were three booths covered in forest green vinyl E with a blonde wooden chair at the end. There were five more boots against the south wall and in the middle of the room, there were three small tables The serving counter extended from the cash register on Luscella's left to within five feet of the other wall, whereet there was a freezer chest filled with prepackaged cakes, pies, frozen yogurt sandwiches and treats for special occasions. Froyo sandwiches Shit, I've never had one of those. Our local Fio shops fucking slackking Liza stood behind the cash regter, while Jennifer Man, the toppings display chocolate, hot fudge, caramel, strawberry, cherry, carrb chip, chopped nuts, M and M, granola, chunks of syrupy fruit, aerosolt cans of whipped cream, Oreos. They fucking had to have Oreos, didn't they And Graham cracker Dust Maybe some butterfinger crrumbs. Definitely some chocolate chips and some gumm bears or gummy worms or both as well as the five large dispenser cans on a shelf behind her, each filled with a different flavor of yogurt The chocolate and vanilla can sat side by side with a common spigot that delivered ICBY's most popular offering the vanilla chocolate squirrel. Of course. best of both worlds. drizzle that bad boy and some Hershey's chocolate syrup or go, fuck yourself As she went to the counter Lucella saw that there were only two other customers in the shop pair teenage boys who had taken the table nearest the door and we're focusing intently on something between them smallmall sack of some kind. One Sal is back to her, leaning on his elbows, slumped over the table. while the other stood behind it facing her They look to be somewhere between fourteen and seventeen, notot in other words, an uncommon sight for a froyo shop staffed by some cute high school girls But still something about them unnerved her It's one thing, neither of them appeared to actually be eating anything whereere they just waiting for somebody? just loitering And what was in the sack? What's in the box seeven anyone Moving on when the standing boy struck his hand into the bag and started around, there was a clicking sound marble striking one another O maybe coins or keys ten, twenty sided, eight sided die, etcetera, later Lucella would think that it might have been bullets though Uh a bag of bullets the fuck brings a bag of bullets to a Froyo shop. I mean, maybe some weird I' done that I guess. There are certainly all kinds out there. Never heard of that one though. Never heard that little scenario playing out Bringing a bag of bullets to Froyo shop She moved past the boyys to the counter where she ordered a fresh strawberry suundaay from Jennifer, then went to the cash regitter to pay for it Jennifer and Eliza, were chatting happily, which calmed her. If anything really was wrong, Lucella thought, the girls would be on high alert Once you left the shop Everything seemed fine For Jennifer II, the night was proceeding according to plan At around nine. She ducked out of work, Drove back to North Cross to pick up Sarah and Amy back at the strip mall, the two younger girls had went to get takeout pizza from mister Gottty's before the restaurant closed at ten. ot a regional pizza chain that started in Austin in nineteen sixty nine. Sosed to be delicious CoVID hit him hard. Some of their stores closed, it seems, but back at this time, they were fucking poppining They had buffets, arcade rooms, super popular spots for teens. They're like the Black Angus Steakhouse Club for teens Uh Meanwhile, Jennifer hustled back into ICBY There, Eliza was talking to her sister Sonora on the phone as Maria, her mother, stood near the counter with a sandwich she had bought for Eliza Liza was trying to convince her little sister to ride her bike to the shop urn the evening to one big sister hangout But Senora couldn't leave without dad's permission. Her dad and her mom had been divorced since she was a toddler But but he didn't want to give permission, so Eliza handed the phone back to her mom Soon afterward, Sarah and Amy return with their pizza, opening the box on one of the shop's tables Two young girls shared pizza, as Eliza wrapped up her conversation with her mom by the cash register. Sometound this place is pretty slow. When the phone rang again, Jennifer jumped to get it. Kn it was her boyfriend Samy who wanted to meet for breakfast the next morning And now let's meet another custom. between nine, thirty and ten. Daryryl Croft. fifty two year old former military police officer and current owner of Longghorn security Company That is so Texas parked his company car, a tan forord station wagon with a rack of blue warning lights across the roof in front of the Froyo shop after his two companions told him what they wanted roft entered the shop alone, surveyed the place girls behind the counter Maria by the cash register Two young people, a boy and a girl sitting in a booth along the right hand wall. Another couple standing close to the counter, studying a wall menu and just behind them, a fidgety young man in an army green jacket that may have come from a military surplus store figured that the man was in his early to mid twenties, medium billed one hundred and fifty five to one hundred and seventy pounds between five, ten and six feet tall and wite I thought there was something off about this dude As Croft observed him, the people studying the menu moved forward in ordered jitter young man was next And when he hesitated, instead of moving to the counter took a step towards him point the young man turned around, and Dcroft's surprisise began to casually ask him about his car Was that his car out there? he asked Croft, with the lights on top Croft said, yes, the young man asked if Croft worked for the police or some kind of security details roft S shrggg said he owned a security company actually. He didn't like the way that the guy asked him that. Jennifer meanwhile asked the young man what he wanted. She had to keep things moving. The young man moved up, asked for a seven up. When Jennifer said they only had sprite, he said, fine, okay So she put the can in a paper sack, handed it to Eliza to ring up With that done, Croft moved to the counter and gave Jennifer his order. Before he got to the cash register to pay, the strange young man had gone around the end of the counter and through the door to the back room Croft asked Eliza where he was heading When she said the bathroom, he told her he didn't know that he even had one, and Eliza laughed. The bathrooms weren't really open to the public, she explained. but the guy said he really had to go, so she let him Ladatercroft would wonder why Eliza had said that. because ICBY actually had two bathrooms, onene men's, one women's Just about any food and beverage business in the US provides to the public Was the young man someone's boyfriend Was he making a delivery of some kind, drugs or alcohol or other contraband Croft wondered all of that, but then shrugged it off get his own business to get back to after all A few minutes after Daryryl Croft drove away, Maria Thomas left as well. and almost immediately afterwards, James Thomas, Elliizaah's dad and her step momom dropped by So many people stopp and byy that n As Amy and Sarah continued to eat their pizza, Eliza told her father and stepmom about an economics class she was taken They stayed for fifteen or twenty minutes before heading out Aain, a lot of people, a lot of people just hanging out Very weird hours. This is this yogurt chop is very slow And so the remaining hour or so of the young women's shift started to tick down now At ten forty two PM eighteen minutes before closing time, Eliza rang up the last true sale of the evening The couple who placed that order. Tim Stryker and Margaret Shin I' been out to a movie and we're stopping by for some dessert before heading home Iagine many of you done the same thing Grab some sweet Froyo after a nice night out at the movies. I for sure have many times Entering the shop, they notice only two other customers Large people in hooded jackets sitting across from each other in the last booth on the left closest to the cash register Margaret couldn't really be sure of their facial features or even their genders But there was something odd about them, she thought When they leaned over to talk to each other, she figured they might be gay Okay, that is a weird combo observation So so what do you think their genders were Marge I don't know I'm not sure if they were two men. to women Or maybe they were one man and one woman. No, no way. No, that's impossible. No, I'm positive. They were definitely either two men or two women And what makes you say that It's their energy They had a strong A strong gay energy. They were minutes away. from either sucking each other's dicks or licking each other's pussies. I know it Like I can feel it, you know No Marge, we don't U once they got no yogurts Margaret and Tim debated eating them at the store or taking them home You know, away from the gay energy. as they did, Eliza and Jennifer chatted about the next week's schedule Eventually the couple decided to head home, eat someplace safe and straight. And with that, it was time to start locking up 'srazy to think about how if they just would have decided to have eaten their yogurts there Maybe this tragedy would have never occurred Maybe they would have spooked away. whoever was you know, whoever committed this tragedy, you know, the person would have or people would have moved on. The Yogurt murders would have never happened We don't know who did what One of the girls probably Jennifer, locked the front door and turn the open sign around to close now Because she'd already wiped off the tables, she then pulled a step stool close to the big silver swirl dispenser so she could remove the lids, drain the yogurt, and clean and sanitize each canister Ash she did that Jennifer's back would be to the front door Close to her behind the cash register, Eliza will be running a rag over the counter, wiping it down And that's really the last thing we know about what happened. for sure or at least ninety nine percent for sure. ICBY that night Now let's u before the tragedy. Let's fast forward about an hour. The call would come in at eleven forty eight J before midnight The first report was made by offfficer Troy Gay An APD rookie on DWI patrol that night to crossing highighway one and Anderson Lane spepecifically looking for people who seemed gay. as his name suggests He was on gay DWI patrol On a mission to arrest fucking anybody who was driving in a way that was both drunk and gay U no, no, he was crossing highighway one on Anderson Lane When he spotted a column of smoke rising from the Hackburry trees lining Shoal Creek and he drove toward it He came to the alleyay behind the strip mall, saw yellow flamame shooting out between two steel doors. He steered the car closer Beyond a blue dumpster, a man appeared in the next set of doors and waved him forward That man was Jorge Barney He had seen smoke seeping around the electrical panel in the north wall of his shop, and he had opened the door just in time to see the police car edging towards him Both men it seemed pretty clear what was going on It was a fire in the yogurt shop Officer Gay drove to the front of the strip center Call In genereneral Dispatch Have a fire inside a business, he said But unfamiliar with the neighborhood, he gave the wrong address His mistake was soon corrected by another officer Dennis Straight who headed to the scene, leaving his own patrol, where he was out looking for straight crimes like, u U dudes beaten off in the bushes while peep into women's apartments. Deinitely just women's apartments dudes who were very excited to be doing that D deffinitely not faking any enthusiasm. And for sure not wondering if they would be equally happy if not happier beaten off in the bushes and peeping into a dude's apartment. ' fuck that. No, this officer's name was Denis Smith By then the yogurt shop's window and the glass panes in the front doors were completely black and smoke was pourn from the roofs of adjacent businesses It looks scary But also they thought it was probably just an ordinary kitchen fire Most likely somebody left a burner on cllosed up the shop went home Officers had no idea there was not a burner of any kind in the yogurt shop Wh is fair, right? Fire and fro yo or any kind of high heat and fro yo, don't exactly go hand in hand Station eight of the Austin Fire Department quickly send in four units now aerialder aerial ladder Company, an engine company carrying hoses and water, an emergency medical service ambulance and a battalion chief's car The engine company's unit parked closest to the shop so that two of its specialists, Renee Heector Garza and David DeVau could quickly connect and charge the hoses Once they' done that, the two men already dressed in turnouts and equipped with a handy pack radio Donned air packs, face masks and gloves, and it was time to go inside. Guardza pulled on the front door, but the lock didn't give. so then he used a crowbar to pop it open smoke banked to the ceiling and poured out He and Devau dropped to their hands and knees and crept forward Man's such a fucking dangerous job. After bumping head first into the service counter, they regrouped, crawled into the back room where they stood up and took in the situation Seem like the hottest flames are coming from halfway up the south wall of the storage room So Garza assumed that was where the stove was Hoping to ventilate that room, A Garz had taken a tentative step into the darkness when he felt Deau's hand on his shoulder DeVau kind of shook Garza and Garza had no idea what that was supposed to mean until he saw the handlight. Devau was pointing at the floor. The circle of light illuminated Both men stepped back and then promptly stumbled over a second body bodies were young women Girls actually Both were naked Roughly only an hour earlier, everything had been fine. Those girls were having a great night, another great night at the yogurt shop. now this. It really is wild, just how fast life can go from great gone in the blink of an eye As the same goes. Garza told the other firefighters to stay put outside in the staging area where firefighters were climbing ladders and knocking open doors of the other businesses. He told his battalion chief what they'd found A member of the team immediately volunteered to go and get them at Garus shook his head. They shouldn't move them. He said, somethingomet was off about the scene. somethingomething was very wrong Guards then went around to the back, where the door swung open easily, pouring smoke and steam. He looked inside, contrary to what he'd expected, there was no kitchen, no stove But there was another body, another girl That was when Officer Gay called for a homicide cop, reporting two bodies probable arson probable homicide. Austin Police Department Sergeant John Bisexual was the only homicide cop on the street that night. He went out trying to solve a recent string of carjackings committed by someone who appeared to be strongly sexually attracted to both men and women based on how the victims had referred to a flirty, hands energy They winked at drivers of both genders, fucking winked at them hard And everyone said, it was not a joking kind of week. It wasn't those kind of winks that you know, some people just give out of habit. It wasn't like a fucking facial tick. No It was an intentional closed eye and then one open bedroom. I w to fuck the shit out of you eye. No. his name is Sgeant John Wilson Jones And he really was the only homicide cop on the street that night may have been bisexual mayaybe not. may have been asexual. It might fuck cats in this free time. I have no fucking idea What he got up into got up into in the bedroom back then or even today Uh donon't even want to know if he's listing Actually I would I would I wouldn't my know it If you are listening, maybe right. But anyway, when his phone rang the first time, close to midnight, he was on the other side of town an airport, Martin Luther King, Junror Boulevards Following up on an earlier call, a guy who had barricaded himself inside of a building and was threatening to kill himself Now Jones punched in. Two fatalities. the dispatcher told him. suspected arsons suspected homicide looks like gunshot wounds. And then the dispatcher gave him the address two nine, four nine West Anderson Lane One of the I can believe it's yogurt locations Arson murders at a yogurt shop, he thought was very strange, and it had already been somewhat of a strange night for Jones, considering that a reporter and a videographer from KTBCTV, a local CBS affiliate doing a series on homicides in Texas They were already in the cruiser with him So far, the ride along had been a bust. And the KTBC crew was looking forward to heading to Houston next day U Ever done rightide along by the way Highly recommend if you haven't Interesting just to see how it goes down in real time I got to do one with an officer in Florida years ago. a standup fan who I got to know. Hello, Anthony. If you are still listening, hope you andichelle you're still good And that was when I learned that one of the reasons a lot of officers on speed patrol don't pull over more speeders is because of the paperwork they roade speeding tickets all day long, they'd be buried with it A least that's what Anthony told me. Maybe he's super fucking lazy. I don't know. My ride along was very slow Nothing crazy happened Definitely wasn't like an episode of cops, which I kind of expected to be for some reason U Thankfully, I think that's how most of them go. And this ride along had been slow until this call came in But now it seemed like the KTBC crew was going to get their material after all. Boy was they ever Jones reved his unmarked san, switched on his lights and siren, and once his riders wereull settled into the back seat, hit the ramp hard leading to the interstate As he did, the next call came in. they' found another body He was inside of highway one hundred eighty three when his phone rang for a third time. Jonesy said a cop on the scene that for Okay, John said Here we go. He arrived at the scene shortly after midnight. By then, the Hillside center strip mall, which also included a nail salon, a goodwill store, and some other eateries, was lit up like a nighttime movie set. fire trrucks, police cars, flashers, crowded the parking lots Harsh generator powered lights in the alley bathes everything in an eerie white glow When he got to the alley, the steel doors to the storage room of the yogurt shop were wide open. Joan stepped inside, found pure carnage waiting for him. Three of the girls, their bodies were so melted together that it didn't seem possible to tell where one started and another began Holy shit. Most of the features that identified them, like hair, eyes, noses, and skin, completely charred away or gone, leaving a craggy blackened mas O Out of all the burning though, Jennifer Harbardon's was the worst Jennifer was curled on her side, closest to the melted shelves against the south wall, cans of toppings, paint, and cleaning supplies had exploded around her But the investigator could still see that her nude body had not been bound Sarah's body, however, despite his condition had clearly been bound. Actually some sources say that u Jennifer's body was also bound just, the fire just, you know, ruined what may have bound her. Like the others, Sarah was naked and melted Her hands tied behind her back with a pair of panties. Later, investigators would find that she had an abrasion in the upper portion of her vulva and her vagina. Her wrists were pressed against her spine, her face obliterated, a steel girdder between her legs. The curled skin of her top leg peeled back like a stocking ugh The sisters had both been shot in the head with a twenty two caliber bullet Eliza was lying spread eagle on top of Sarah, the skin of her athletic young legs split apart by the sweeping flames Like Jennifer, she had been burned, herer hair and face completely singed away Where was Amy Jones and other investigators didn't see her immediately But she was there, of course pale, shimmering mas lay beyond the worst of the destruction. It wasn't clear why Amy hadn't been grouped with her friends, but ultimately she hadn't met the same fate Her skin was burned, raw, but not charred Joonan stepped gingerly around the bodies, having been schooled in evidence collection and processing. He usually felt confident, but Arson, that was a different matter Flames could easily burn away crucial evidence. If they didn't, the water that put out the fire certainly would In other words, it was as he would put in his case notes Robbery, plus sexual assault, plus multiple child victims, plus bondage, plus gunshot wounds, plus fire, heat, smoke, water damage, plus know known witnesses equals to homicide, arson and DA's worst nightmare Not know what else to do, Jones begins snapping black and white Polaroids By then, longtime AFT Ason investigator, Melvin Stall had arrived and was also taking pictures In his official report written the next day, Saturday, december seventh Stallwood estimates that the fire had been set somewhere high along the south wall of the storage room toward the east end of the steel shelves at approximately eleven forty two thirty nine minutes after Eliza rang up no sale. What exactly had happened in those thirty nine minutes That, of course, was the mystery I mean, their final minutes had been pure hell, but the exact details of that hell. possible to put together phhoto stall noted the large amount of blood on the floor. that seemed to indicate that the girls had almost certainly been dead from gunshot wounds when the fire was lit But other things were already becoming difficult to establish. The scene was a mess of water, ash and rubble. Nobody had thought to create a log to track who was coming in or out In the chaos, the ICBYI's bathrooms would never be dested for latent fingerprints. and the trash would not be combed prof evidence When the investigators made a snap decision to use the metal shelves in the break room to set aside evidence they actually degraded that situation further Searching through the lingering muck, an investigator found a spent shell casing from a three hundred eighty pistol in a clogged drain under the main sink. Not far from Amy's body though w guns. So did that mean that there were two perpetrators It seemed likely that there were at least two perpetrators based on four victims being subdued and raped and then burnt in such a short amount of time likely possibly rape. as far as the other three Just after seven o'cock on Saturday morning, december seventh, deputy medical examiner Les Carpenter instructed his crew to zip the body of Amy Ayres into a body bag and transport it to the morgue. Once Amy's body had been delivered, Carpenter's team went back for Eliizah's. The autopsy of Amy Lee Ayers began that morning at seven fifteen. Elizah Hope Thomas at nine thirty Sarah Louise Harbinson at noon And Jennifer Anne Harbison at one hundred thirty that afternoon Nobody swabbed the bodies though for any sign of an accelerant Since the investigators had not reported smelling any gasoline or harsh chemicals at the scene, that topic had been forgotten And that would later become a major issue Meanwhile, news of the carnage was already getting out, thanks in part to the news crew that happened to have literally been along for the ride. Jones had also issued a press release stating that the bodies of four young women had been found, quote in an area near the back door to the ICBY shop at two nine forty nine West Anderson Lane. and that each of the victims suffered gunshot wounds to the head and severe burns as a result of the fire Half an hour later after the press release, he met with the girls' immediate families at the main police station downtown. famamilies, of course, were living in a fucking nightmare thingsings had just been so great Right their daughters had just been alive, full of life, having such a fun and normal teen girl night They had no idea how long their daughters had suffered if they had been tortured sexually or otherwise. The second question, investigators did not yet know that answer Two pairs of underwear were missing along with Amy's bomber jacket. Of course, the girls had been naked, which did point to a sexual assault The police did know that the girls most them, at least had died quickly. The autopsies were confirmed that they had all been shot by a medium caliber weapon in the back of the head Amy, the thirteen year old cowgirl, however, had also been strangled Unlike the others, who had only been shot once, she had been shot twice with two different guns Rrange maybe indicates rage towards her. The first had to hit her in a sideways trajectory, the second from a large caliber gun It had been a through and through, a around that had pierced and then exited her body Nobody could offer the families anything close to an answer to their most pressing question. Why did any of this happen? The next day, an Austin Police Department spokesman, Mike Huckabay would go on records speculated about the motive First thing that comes to mind quoted the say is Caine I've been homicide a pretty good time and this is the worst one I've seen, considering it involved four young ladies at the same time Fuck Did the murders have anything to do with crack cocain How to F Eers? No known money being taken likely sexual assaults and an arson point I feel like our buddy Mike might not have been a genius I haven't been in homicide a pretty good time at all. I've never worked in homicide or in any other aspect of police work. but I do still know that crack addiction tends to lead to crimes involving getting more money. So you can buy more cracks. You know, getting shit to sell to get money to buy the crack. We've covered a lot of sexual predators over the course of this podcast. a lot of murders Not one of them, to the best of my memory, was primarily motivated by cracks Why did you kill All those women and children, Mr. Chicatilo What is big deal? I wstle for crack. I jerk soft Shamcock in corner for crack. I bother no one except people are rape and kill for crack Met some else now On december eighth nineteen ninety one less than forty eight hours after the Austin Yogurt shop murders, thirty three year old Robert Eugene Brashers was stopped by a U. S. border Patrol agents Back on march thirteenth, nineteen fifty eight, the youngest of four children, born to douualists and Nelly Brashers, Brasers had grown up in Newport, News, Virginia. ent his high school years in Huntsville, Alabama and South Bend, Indiana After graduating high school, he had first enlisted in the Army. and then somehow ended up serving in the Navy for ten months instead of the Army for being discharged due to personality disorders As a civilian, he would move to New Orleans, Louisiana, then to Fort Myers, Florida, a couple of years later. We don't know much about his childhood more those early adult years But we do know that down in Florida, old Bobby old Bobby Brash got himself into some trouble On november twenty second, nineteen ninety five, Brashers then twenty seven years old was arrested in port Port St. Lucy Florida on charg of assaulting a twenty four year old woman named Michelle Wilkerson They'd met in Fort Pierce Brashers had convinced Michelle to go to a bar with him Spent a couple of hours at that bar having a good time and some drinks. Then Brashers drove Michelle to a dark alley near a Citrus Grove where he popped a couple of budwisers for them to keep the party going. But when he tried to make a move, Michelle resisted She was not having a good time he was. He was not reading the room. She actually climbed out of the vehicle to escape from him brrashers, he didn't like that one fucking bit In a flash he grabbed a gun, shot Michelle twice, once in the neck, once in the head. Miraculously only did those two shots not kill her She was still conscious and she managed to get away. hiding in a culvert under the road after running. Holy shit. she had the composure to run after being shot twice in the fucking neck and head, no less And then she was not only able to find a place to hide, she was able to stay quiet and still while he looked for her Michelle's survival instincts beyond impressive When he couldn't find her, Brasers drove away through his gun into the ocean and decided to head home to Port Lucy, Port St. Lucy But then got in his car or got his car stuck in the sand, excuse me As he was trying to get it out, Michelle stumbled into a nearby apartment building where concerned residents soon called the police As an ambulance drove her to the hospital, she gave a detailed description of her attacker and his car. And as it happened, brashers not hard to find. He was still wandering the beach when the cops picked him up And he would soon be charged with attempted first degree murder, aggravated battery, and using a firearm during the commission of a crime Next year, he would be convicted and sentenced twelve years in prison Then he would be released early for good behavior may fourth, nineteen eighty nine. of fucking course. Still got people locked up for life for selling wheat And this motherfucker shoots some woman in the head and neck who had fled because she didn't want to be raped and he serves less than four years How insulting to her and to all victims of violent crime No one will ever make this shit make sense to me because it doesn't make any fucking sense. I cannot legally encourage anyone to do this, but if one of you were able to somehow lead a bloody revolution on top of the government Could you at least consider bringing me on as a consultant when it comes to some serious criminal justice reforming Fortunately, once he was released, Brashhers became a model citizen, though And he never ever hurt anyone ever again because that's how that always works. Uh no, no, he was way worse once he got out. That's how that always works when it comes to certain kinds of violent criminal behavior He would drift between South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia after he got out, never spending too long in one place Meanwhile, during those years, the body of twenty eight year old Genevve Jenny Zatrichi was found bludgeoned, raped and strangled with pantyhoes at her apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, april fifth, nineteen ninety Great job People who let him out early. Her blood is on your hands too After murdering her in the bedroom, her killer, spoiler alert, it was brashers, even though he was not caught, dragged her body into a bathtub and submerged it before writing, Don't fuck with my family onn the bathrooms mirror. And now on december eighth, nineteen ninety one, less than forty eight hours after the Austin Yogt shop murders as he was getting stopped, Brashers was driving a truck he'd stolen from Marrietta, Georgia, which border patrol soon clocked While searching the stolen vehicle, the border Patrol agent found a three hundred eighty AMT backup, the exact make and model of firearm that had been used in the yogurt shop murders brrashers took off. gotot back into a stolen truck, guned it but wouldn't make it very far After an approximately mile long car chase, he surrendered to officials and was charged with auto theft and possession of a firearm. crimes he would get a slap on the wrist for Despite his record despite fleeing the police Nobody looked too hard at the gun which was later sent back brasher's father. And now before we return to Austin, let's take our second and two Mid showow sponsor breaks Hey everybody, Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co host, Woody Harrelson It's called where everybody knows your name and we're back for another season. I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it. Listen to where everybody knows Your name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes wherever you get your podcast. Summer routines live or die by how easy they are, and honestly, if something takes too much effort, I'm out. That's why Groons is my go to. It's one daily pack of gummies covering my greens, vitamins and minerals. Plus, it has six grams of prebiotic fiber, which is more than two cups of broccoli, no mixing powders, no giant pills, no hassle. I just rip open the pack and I'm done. 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At Capeella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now, go earn the degree, Capeella University canan't you do? Visit Cpella. edu to learn more. Thank you for listening to those sponsors. Hope you heard some deals you liked Th nows returned to Austin, Texas Back in Austin on december ninth, nineteen ninety one, just three days after the murders The girls' funeral was held at Stain. Louis the King Church Speaking from behind four matching white caskets, the Reverend Kirby Garner offfficiated before an estimated one thousand people as five hundred more waited on the lawn outside. Th three of the girls would be buried side by side at Capitol Memorial Gardens. while Eliza would be buried in Austin Memorial Park Cemetery closer to where her family lived. The cops, of course were watching, wondering if the person or people who are responsible try to blend into the crowd of mourners Since Friday, the police have been inundated with tips. It seemed like everybody knew somebody who had been acting weird lately which makes sense, I guess, rightight? I see people I think seem weird every fucking day I think a lot of my family members are weird Hell I'm weird. Wh isn't weird And in Austin, Texas, literally a city known for being weird Keep Austin Weird is an actual popular Austin slogan that has been printed all over t shirts and stickers and more for years Everyone in Austin, it seemed had a neighbor who liked to set fires or knew a boy who had come home that night M little Suss orr they'd come home with blood under their shirt. you know, somebody they knew somebody who had came home with blood in their shirt. Every time somebody made a dark joke about how they would have done it ring with another incoming call Nobody at the funeral appeared suspicious to investigators, though So that was a dead end And then another dead end. come on december fourteenth That day, APD homicide was called out again when a father and son were found stabbed to death in their South Austin apartment. E body pierced by more than a dozen blows. The brutality of that led them to wonder if there was a connection to the yogurt shop murders. killer an unemployed chemist and housemate would be quickly apprehended And he had a solid alibi for the night of december sixth then another incident would come on the police's radar that possibly pointed to the Yogurt shhop murders At about six o'clock on the evening of Saturday, december fourteenth, eight days after the murdder, sixteen year old Maice a loaded twenty two pistol into his left hand jean pockets Yeah,, you know, left side jeans pocket and jam sixteen extra rounds into the other pocket An imaginative boy with flashing blue eyes and spiked hair, Maurice had taken the gun off of a thirteen year old boy named Johnny Holder who had lifted the gun from his father's collection. un in his jeans now, Maurice picked up his dad's car keys, left his apartment, fifteen year old Frest Wellborn, a friend of his right behind him Their destination was North Cross Mall same M where Sarah and Amy had hung out on the night they were murdered just down the street from the yogurt shop Marisason Forst walked around and joined how the gun made them feel powerful and mysterious And then they showed it to the wrong kid who let security know about it A security guard confiscated the gun and ammunition, then took the kids to the back office, where he arranged for them to be transferred to the juvenile detention center But somebody would hear about the arrest before the boys made it to Juvy A detective named named Hector Polanco Planco was dark eyed, handsome and supremely self assured, known for both his charisma and interrogation skills. Beloved by Chief Ronnie Earl for his record one one hundred percent clearance rate Dude was a legend at this time on the Force And now he would attempt to work his magic on Maurice Sure enough, by the next morning, Marisa told Polanco that the twenty two was probably the gun used to kill the ICBY girls that Forrest was probably the one who had shot them They've been hanging out with some skinheads that night, he said. And Fororest and another guy named Mace had disappeared for a few hours Fst got back with a gun. It had been discharged six times And he added Forest smelled like hairspray could have been used as an accelerant to start the fire. When Polanco asked who else Marice had a hangout with that night, the teenager eagerly offered up two names seventeen year olds, Rob Springsteeen and Mike Scott Robby, as he was known, was the fire brand of the group. to get angry, Robbie had been assigned to an alternative learearning center for disruptive students and protested by wearing weird clothes to get attention A Naru jacket one day, this very distinctive hip length tailored coat first worn in India and popular in U.S. counterculture in the late sixties and early seventies a hip hop d rag style bandana around his head the next day He growning up in Chicago but four months before the murers, his father and stepmother had offered him a separate condo to live in Austin if he kept his head down Robbie had eagerly agreed And after getting town, he registered for the fall semester at Austin's McCallllum High School where he would be a sophomore fucking sophomore with his own condo Okay That must have been fun He got into a few scrapes, an argument with his football coach, let him to getting dismissed from the team a fight in a nearby McDonald's where he pulled out a knife. But administrators in the school insisted he was not a terrible kid. He just needed more time to settle in But then the fights kept coming And soon, Robbiey was back where he had started in alternative courses, courses he barely showed up to When a cop asked him how long it had been since he had gone to school, Robbie shrugged and said, I a week, two weeks, I don't know, probably least a month In November of ninety one, Robby had asked his dad if his friend could live with him Robby's dad was skeptical, but Robbie won him over by saying that the friend had a bad situation at home and needed a good place to land And that friend was Mike Scott Born in Micronesia, where his family had immigrated after his granddad served in Guam during World War two, Mike moved around a lot as his child But he spent most of his life in Austin struggling through school with a diagnosis of severe dyslexia He liked his extriculars though. his freshman year. He made the football team. Join the drama department, Royal courourt players and played viola in the school orchestra He moveved from boy Scout to life Scout at sixteen, showing off his short haircut and uniform in a group photo school kept getting harder And by his sophomore year, his parents were divorced and his mom was struggling with her own mental health most of his extracurriculars, started skip of school, and began spending most of his nights at friends's houses He still had academic subjects that engaged him now. He was obsessed with the dress and culture of pre eighteen forties Native Americans and made himself a Native American dance costume. But he spent most of the time doing what the other boys in his friend group did smmoke a weed, drop an acid Hanging out On the morning of the murders, he told the detective he had gotten up early. Smoke some weed by the swimming pool then rode the bus to McCallllan to see what his friends there were up to particular, he wanted to see a girl, teenager named Amber Fair enough. prettyty norm But the detective noticed the boy's stories about what they had done on december sixth kept changing the way a lie keeps changing In later statement, Mike Scott came up with an entirely new and different account said went up to school Friday morning, eight AM, talked to Robin front of school. I don't know how he got there I told him I would be at to Boeing alley at lunch lefte school lunch with Robin Murice and Forrest around two hundred thirty Capital Bowl, had lunch, then left thirty minutes later. Amber was at the Bowloey. from the Bowing alley went to North Cross, little after three These inconsistencies were exactly what the detectives were looking for course There was another explanation to explain these inconsistencies outside of the boys trying not to tell the truth and that was a lot of fucking weed The boys have been fucking stoned all day and stone the whole day before Stone the day before that They've been stoned most of their waking hours for weeks, if not months Easy way to get shit jumbled up But the detectives didn't think that was it No, they knew it was obviously crack cocaine. These boys were fucking crack fiends. When you're a crack fan, killing and burning four girls in a yogurt shop makes perfect crack sense. The crack told him to do it. That's some crack logic for you No In investigators follow the boy's story closely arrived at another figure Forrest Wellborn kid who had been with Maurice when Maurice went to North Cross with a gun teen year old Forrest had come out of McCallum High at lunchtime on Friday, december six to find that his friends were waiting for him. among his friends Forest was known as the quiet And like his friends, he spent a lot of his life moving between parents and stepparents homes. Currently, Frest lived with his dad in Austin, and spent most of his school days doodling in his notebooks, drawning superheroes, weapons, gunblasts and villains very normal common teenage boy thing to do During Fsts lunch break, Mike Robin Forrest headed to a nearby bowling alley and near the end of their lunch period, Marie showed up in his dad's Ford LTD model a car that earn the nickname of Land Yacht due to being big, heavy and smooth riding sounds sweet Forrest that thought he was going to head back to school, but now things were getting interesting They were driving around when Maurice pulled over, hollllowed at some nearby Mexican low level gangsters to come over to the car. Mike thought they werere going to buy some weed, but Maurice bought a gun instead thirty eight Mike thought shhining black Th thenen they went up to the big reservoir of Lake Travis, about twenty miles outside of town that afternoon, shot at some trees. Then they drove back to school Later that afternoon, Mike Robin Maurice drank some beers, headed over to the North Cross Mall. soon four showed up then Maurice had to leave to babysit his sister and he wanted F to come with him Where had the group been between eight and midnight That was, of course, the million dollar question, and Rob Maurice and Mike would all tell different stories Rob said he snuck in to see the midnight Rocky Horr picture show Almost always did a weekend nights But when Mike tried to, he got kicked out had to wait until the show was over around two AM Then they wanted to go to a party, but couldn't get the address for the party, so somebody ended up dropping them off at Mike's mother's place Mike however said the Maurice took him down to sixth street. partied for a few hours before going back to the condo He said he turned on a moving and fell asleep But Maurice was the one to give the most compelling version of that night. The story where Forrest had gone off with his skin heads and then came back smelling like hairspray And there was one more piece of evidence that seemed to link the boys to the murders. On Friday morning, Maurice's father had reported that his car was stolen and that Maurice had taken it to San Antonio. But when this was reported to the APD, the clerk made a mistake. They reported the car theft as taking place on Saturday, december seventh. al togetherher The storory seem to point to a day of crime, drugs, and guns to which Murice wanted to sudden get out of to Now there's only one thing left to do. for Murice to sign a statement that said that Forrest had used his twenty two to kill the girls Maurice, well He would do just that. With that sign statement, detective Joan took him to the apartment where he lived with his father. They arranged for Maurice to wear a wire while he talked to Forerest After Maurice picked him up near an Austin laundromat, he started on the questioning What did you actually do that night? That Friday Forest Pardon Reese, That Friday When the girls were dead huh Briefs And you said you wanted to use a gun Forest When I wanted to use a gun This general confusion went on for quite a while where Maice finally said You said that you wanted to use the gun and that you had kill the girls Forresten immediately and adamately claimed that he'd just been joking around that he'd never killed anybody And then he got more and more confused as his normally chill, easy going friend just got anger and insisted that he had killed the girls. But Forrest never ever caped. He acted like a kid like a kid who did not do it The cops considered the interview bust And soon Jones inactivated the teenagers as suspects. to square one All Detective Hector Polanco's interrogation and Marurice had seemed to elicit was a bunch of bullshit More disappointments would soon follow On the afternoon of Sunday, december twenty ninth, Jones followed a hot tip about a black man named Cornelius, who friends said had been bragging about killing several white girls Given his history as a reputed drug dealer and former member of the LA. Crips, Jones had brought him in or had' brought But Cornelius too had a solid alibi. another dead end, another dude who hadd just been talking shit By january third, nineteen ninety two, nearly a month after the murders, numerous promising leads had fizzled into nothing And not for lack of effort. Jones and his team had interviewed all the shop owners in the strip mall, all the customers they knew of who were at ICBY between eight PM and closing time All the area's bus operators, every member of the victims' families, along with their boyfriends They had inspected phone logs, traffic tickets, videotapes to the girls's funeral service At this point, it seemed like the only way of getting a real lead was to go on unsolved mysteries or America's most wanted Things are fucking bleak But Jones didn't want the famil to feel like the police were given up And they worked. What he really wanted was more investigators and better ones The case it started out with six two on two on nights, which left four to pursue the case during the day. and all six of those investigators still had other murders to look into. along with all of the paperwork that following leads in the yoga shop murders generated. It was a fucking mess Thankfully, though, he would get what he needed Soon Chief Everet made an official announcement that he was giving Sergeant John Jones the opportunity to create an officially sanctioned task force. madeade up of representatives from APD A FD BATF, the FBI Texas DPS intntelligence TCSO, the Travis County Sheriff's office and the Travis County DA's offffice. So many acronyms. So many investigators And they would also bring in the exact people that Jones really, really wanted FBI profilers prorofilers return a very different view of the crime the police they agreed that there was likely more than one perpetrator. but they specified that one would have a dominant personality They felt they were probably white in their late teens or mid twenties The one with the dominant personality, the profiler said had probably not finished high school underachiever with less than average grades who resented any attempt to discipline him As a young man, the suspect would likely have an explosive personality made worse by drinking alcohol or doing drugs. probably unemployed or work a menial job maybe to support himself, he live with a parent or grandparent They believed he was familiar with the streets and stores around the ICBY and that he had honed in on the yogt shop because he was drawn to women who were younger and quote, less adequate. A description of the suspects went out the new st new statesman, a local newspaper, it would then soon make its way to the Washington Post as well. No leads would be generated thanks to it Eight weeks in, the task force was still interviewing customers and employees comombing through people's famous memories about what they'd seen on a random Friday night to establish a definitive timeline database of those who had information that might be helpful swell to six hundred names And there were even more that they didn't have time to interview or simply couldn't find By February of nineteen ninety two, the shadow of the yogurt shop murders loomed over all of Austin literally A massive billboard showed dark haired Eliza next to Amy, who stood beside Sarah, Jennifer to Sarah's right, slashed beneath the four girls photos was a bolded question Who killed these girls There was a twenty five thousand dollars reward for any information that led to the arrest of the murder or murders. Before moving forward, I do have to correct myself. It loomed over some of us and notot all of it, literally That wouldll be a massive fucking billboard If the shadow was big enough to loom over literally all of the city. I know you know that I didn' to know that I know that as well Austin overall was starting to move on and away from this case despite this billboard. With no new breaks, it seemed like they had no other choice but to. In the spring, the Laneer High School FFA voted in a new president to take Jennifer Harberson's place. Friends of Amy and the Harerson sisters volunteered to show their animals at the livestock show Eliza's sister Sonora, who shows Stony her prize pig stillill The police were not giving up, and soon one man thought he had a new credible eat Palanco that interrogator. Good a reputation for getting confessions from pretty much fucking everybody he talked to Polanco had been on early morning duty when a tip came in from the Dell Valley Jail where an inmate had reported overhearing a fellow prisoner named Sean Buddha Smith bragging about having done the yogura shop murders Blanco had Smith brought downtown that interrogated him alone in a room with no recording device Six hours later he emerged with a signed statement, a confession It was done With that, Palanco called John Jones, who called their Qantico contact, Jack Barnett and soon seemed like this nightmare was going to be over prorofiler was like, Yeahah, this sounded like the guy Jones even got ADA, Terry Keel to initiate indictment procedures positive that the squads star interrogator could not be wrong Then he gave orders for Buddha Smith to take a polygraph. then as the test was about to begin, Smith started to waver He said actually time to think of it h I don't really know what the fuck I was talking about Uh Maybe I maybe I made it all up Maybe Im just another dude trying to sound like more of a cold blooded killer than I actually am. They weret maybe I just try to shock people The thing was, however, the confession he had given did have a lot of key details right. W Bota the murderer Or was there a leak in homicide was someone distributed information that the police had withheld specifically to catch their predator even though Budha Smith had signed a statement saying he had committed the murders The Plygraph test said he was lying Even though as we've learned over and over, polygraphs are not all thatt reliable, there were enough doubts about his confession that it was tossed out Once again, the investigation shifts focus So With the three month anniversary of the case Cone up Fast, Austin PD did what they had been resisting from the very beginning They turn to TV Over three days at the end of February, forty eight hours, taped a special about the yogurt shop murders that would air in late March The billboards loomed over Austin, the specials title was to the point. Who killed these girls But The special ended up doing more harm than good Why? Well, at the time, Austin PD was focused on what would soon become known as one of the biggest red herrings in the history of modern crime in this country Satanism Damn you, Satan Atheists, aggnostics, Jews, Muslims. Christians, more Christians than anyone else, which only makes sense in a predominantly Christian nation where the group has the biggest numbers They've been raping and molesting and killing motherfuckers left and right in America going back to the beginning But it's always a threat of the Satanist to get people riled up So ridiculous. Even if there finally was a huge Satanist murder, and or molestation and or sex trafficking scandal They would still be dead last in the true crime rankings by fucking miles way behind So many supposedly wholesome other belief groups And yet the Satanic panic continues What's that bookeman up to now? I think the only way to le fully go away is if all the Abrahamic religions die off and that's not happening anytime soon This particular satanic panic started when some Austin PD officers had started interviewing local teens. many of them wearing spiky dog collars, black lipstick other things that mark them as alternative An investigators for some reason thought that if these kids were black lipstick and painted their fingernails, even the boys would do this and sometimes wear women's clothing Well, then know my heck, by golly, Holy Moses, gosh, dang, they simply must be killing and raping and burning kids You know, it starts with black lipstick and it ends with killing and raping kids at a yogurt shop. Classic Satanism onene thing from the special roducers and a cameraman accompany Jones, Huckabay, other cops in raid on the small home of a reputed highigh priestess of Darkness who called herself Claire Levt. A the founder of the Church of Satan Anton Lvee. When the cops entered, Claire was naked and alone in her bed Take a nap actually But still she was a naked Satanist. So her nudity was obviously evil Her nap was probably mostly about charging up her evil priestess powers All the bones in our uar actually turn out to be rat and squirrel bones Now to those who didn't believe that good wholesome Americans were being murdered by Satanists Austin PD looked like fucking idiots And the cops who were very worried about Satanist in their midst, let's be honest. probablyrobably were idiots. Have you ever met someone truly, truly worried about Satanist being a credible threat to society Didn't seem like an idiot I have not The reward for this focus was tons of tips from those who did believe in the Satanic panic. M most of them center predictably around the occult. U Most them paranoid imaginative nut jobs, you know, talking crazy unhelpful fever dream shit Uh they were further away now from solving the case and ever wile, On february eighteenth, nineteen ninety two our old buddy old Pal who anyone with a brain knew was going to get right back to commit heinous crimes. afterfter only spent a couple years in prison from shooting the woman he wanted to rape in the head and neck. Robert Brasher's old fucking Bobby B He's arrested Cobbounty Georgia part of thetlanta Metro area W searchedes his vehicle, which had been stolen, just like the last vehicle he got pulled over in back in december ninety one U notot even three months earlier Investigators found a radio scanner, police jacket, lock picking tools, and a Tennessee driver's license. Nothing to see here Based on all that, theyrested for grand theft auto, possession of a weapon and theft. Brashers now made a plea deal that resulted in a five year sense which he would serve in full Soide would have been better off though if he'd just been thrown into a rattlesnake pit Meanwhile We'll check with him later. Some detectives in Austin were following some lead look promisy releas more promising than just a vague sense of satanic panic In late March, a man left a message saying he had seen the killers put yogurt into the girls' vaginas. So again I know who I know who did it She whispered. protection, we'll talk later Yeahah, totally. This motherfucker seems very stable and incredible Definitely out of his mind or making stupid jo After trarap Trace located the call, Jones and a partner paid this guy a visit, he quickly denied, having left the message until he played the tape and heard his voice. and then he apologized profusely and said he was only joking Then a young woman phoned in to report that her boyfriend told her that he definitely did it Just another fucking weirdo talking shit Another man said a friend of his had witnessed the girls being cut up into literal pieces They hadn't. Uh, he didn't see that Somebody else blamed the KKK All right And another person swore that he had heard at a party that the girls' heads were all cut off and dropped into a well So that's helpful Someone else even went as far as confessing just like Buddha Smith had, and just like Smith had, he confessed during an interview conducted by none other than APD star detective Hector Polanco. Everybody that dude interrogated confessed to something. He would have made a great Spanish Inquisitor Alex Briiones, who had previously been arrested for tying a sixty year old woman to a chair, raping her and burning her to death said he had committed the Yogre shop murders That dirtbag actually seems like you could' have done it. But he said there were three girls, not four When detectives pressed him, Briona said that Polanco had pressured him into confessing. What? Polanco, pressuring people No way And then he'd also confessed because he wanted his family to get the reward money. said he had a brother who dyabades and they can use the cash In ten days of the young man's arrest, Polonco was taken off of the Yogurt Sop murders case. Good ply a lot better at getting confessions out of people than he was at getting the truth out of people. A few months later, Planco would be fired. on grounds of suspicion of perjury, misuse of authority. What What and witness tampering. D'uring in different arrest The White knight, not so noble after all. In retaliation he would immediately sue the city for discriminatory firing and would be reinstated But his reputation was fucking toast All of this, of course, made for more of a messy investigation But out of all of the chaos, one new piece of information again did seem promising Around this same time, investigators on another task force were trying to figure out who' abducted Colleen Reid from an Austin car wash back on december twenty ninth, nineteen ninety one, just three weeks after the Yoga shop murders At the time, the Yogurt Shop Murders Task Force Had wonder if Colleen's disappearance had anything to do with the murders of the four girls, but when no new info came They put it on the back burner Now, however, there was new info. a man named Alva Hank Warley confessed that he had driven from Waco to Austin Plning to score some weed, meth and cocaine. He was fucking ready to par te When he was stopped at the car wash where Colleen was rinsing her sedan And Warley had not been alone He had been with Time, suuck alum and complete and total dirt bag, Kenneth McDuff Remember the Broomstick killer from episode four hundred and one? Holy shit that dude was full evil. This is the dude who had kidnapped and raped and killed three teens with an accomplice back in nineteen sixty six Brutalizing one with the broken off jagged handle of a broomstick Wh she screamed that he was tearing something inside of her with it before breaking her neck and choking her to death with the same broomstick He had gotten the death penalty for that But then a law changed, his death sentence converted to life with the possibility of parole And then he was fucking paroled And he got right back to raapid and killing, of course MacDuff had grabbed Coleen Reed by the throat, carried her after getting out of prison, screaming to his car, at which point he hadd forced the terrified woman to give whirly oral sex while McDuff drove. Once I got back to Wakeo, McDuff raped Reed repeatedly and brutally until at one point, Reed laid her head on Warly's shoulder, begged him not to let McDuff hurt her anymore After driving to an open field, McDuff announced he was going to quote user up. A phrase he had used before when he was ready to kill a woman He ended up hitting her in the face, knocking her to the ground where she her head hit rock just randomly and it killed her Now Jones and the other investigators thought that McDuff seemed perfect for the yogurt shop murdrs. And you know what? not a bad guess Only problem was They had no idea where he was He was still out there in the wind, still killing when he should have already been executed long ago April of nineteen ninety two, Eliza's two hundred and fifty four pound pig Stony did win the nineteen ninety two Grand Champion Prize of the Austin Travis County Lvestock Show Amy's light heavyweight hog weighing at two hundred and thirty five pounds, one fourth in his class Sarah Harberson Lam got six And Jennifer's gotten night. Stony, the biggest winner actually, in more ways than won. Fetching six thousand dollars at auction presumably bound for the butcher shop But the livestock show decided to give him back to the Thomas family Wh would then send Sony to Crow's Nest Farm, a pretty place north of town where unwanted animals live long, quiet lives being petted and pampered by school kids on field trips Bojangles loves this. By then, the Yogurt Murders database had rocketed up to two thousand two hundred names, eight hundred of which were suspects. twentywenty more billboards went up, all bearing that same question, Wh killed these girls fifty five year old police chief, Jim Everet shocked APD and the city by announcing his retirement kind of out of nowhere. Ased if this had anything to do with how you know morale on the forth was very low. He said no, that he'd been planning for a while to live a peaceful life in the hills of Western Arkansas That was not true In fact, he'd applied for a chief's job in Aurora Colorado District attorney Ronnie Earl seemed to know that Everet was looking for an easier place to work And he had said that it's quote, a hard time to be the head of a law enforcement agency The problems will not diminish with the next chief. The career cop, George Peiffer was now named actcting chief And then Piffer would get what looked like a lucky break early May. Broomstick fucked that guy forever McDuff was arrest in Kans City, Missouri, working as a city garbage collector under a name he had taken from a stolen security car but he would not confess to the overshop murders. and did in fact have a solid alibi for the night of december sixth Another promising lead I went up in smoke And now the month stretched on with no new information Over the summer, America's mostost wanted would run a special about the murders And that would lead to a flurry of new tips One of them gave a familiar name, a Mexican national named Alberto Cortez Who is known to travel with two associates, Porfirio Via Sedra and Ricardo Hernandez Only two and a half weeks before the Ogre S shop murders, these men had raped a woman at gunpoint in a car parked outside a heavy metal bar called the Cavity Cub and then driven her to San Antonio and dumped her off Could they be the perpetrators of the yogurt shop murders All three men had fled to Mexico. But in october nin of nineteen ninety two, Savedra and Cortez would be arrested and charged with the Cavity club kidnapping and rape, as well as drug trafficking and gun smuggling Boths were flown to Mexico City and investigators from Austin studootents showed up to interview them. But Deputy Atorney General Jose Luis Romero a piece would not agree to extradition Texas had the highest rate of executions in the U.S. Well in Mexico, the maximum penalty for a rape and murder was fifty years even if there have been many, many victims even dumber than our legal system down there when it comes to violent criminals As Jones tried to work something out, something shocking happened In front of reporters, Saavedra admitted to killing the girls When asked why he shook his head. and then it was quickly let away Later that day, a Mexican investigator announced that Sedra had quote, forced the girls to submit, then he raped them tied them up and shot them Back in Austin, the girls' families were shocked After so much searching, so much pain, was this how it all ended In his first interview with American investigators, Savedra seemed not to know anything about what it actually happened at the ICVY He said he didn't know how many girls he'd killed, maybe three four five. Afterwards, he added he had mutilated the girls, said he cut up their breasts, arms of vaginas, and tied them up with rope Of course, none of that happened They had not been found in that condition. There was not rope used. withithin three days. Savedra then recanted. M shock value psycho bragging bullshit. So many fucked up people in the story American investigators would ultimately go back and forth with three men for over a year before finally coming to the conclusion that they did have nothing to do with the Yochop murders The men would, however, be charged in the cavity club charges or convicted of the Cavity club charges But that wasn't much comfort, especially for the families who had come to believe that these were the right guys You the famies of the Austin yogurt shop murder victims. And then there would even be more bad news for the yogurt shop murders Right these poor families Incoming Chief Elizabeth Watson was sworn in November of nineteen ninety two. She announced that because of recent incidents suggesting possible misconduct amongst investigators like in detective Hector Polanco's cases. All ninety pending homicide cases in Austin would be reviewed And that would slow down the Yogurt Shop murders investigation even further the police working on the yogurt shop murders and other police, this made no sense. What misconduct was she talking about? Why single out homicide when cops regularly transf transferred from one unit to another Still that December, homicide cops received an administrative questionnaire divided into five sections training and adequate resources case preparation and review management slash personnel deficiencies and malfeasance comprehensive answers to the questions posed and each were to be submitted by early January, which of course added a lot more paperwork to the huge piles of papwork investigators were already working on. In a time that was already so so demoralizing to be an Austin investigator, things were even worse now And every promising phone call that came in every hint that someone somewhere knew something about the yogurt shop murders just fizzled out. December sixth, nineteen ninety two was the one year anniversary of the murders When the murders had happened, Austin PD had not seemed equipped to handle it. They had few resources, few full time homicide investigators, few state of the art testing facilities for forensic evidence But they didn't seem to lack leadership But now with Chief Watson alienating police officers left and right, it seemed like they didn't even have that. And so on may tenth, nineteen ninety three, nearly a year and six months after the murders, senior Sergeant Ron Smith announced the disbanding of the Yogurt Shop Murders Task Force beginning may twenty first. John Jones would work exclusively on the case, but only between eight AM and four PM Monday through Friday with a team of six patrolmen assigned to him, and that would only happen for the next ninety days Oh, and most of them were rookies. Jones himself didn't hear about this change in policy until it was officially announced, at which point he fucking' blew a gasket He had given everything to this case. His marriage was in shambles now. He'd been diagnosed with depression. He was seen a therapist I think a lot of people forget just how fucking hard many law enforcement officers work towards bringing justice, you know to victims. How much they sacrifice Despite this investigation royally fucking up his life Still was not planning on giving up still wanted to bring those girls fam's closure, to victims justice, get another dirt bag or several off the street At home, he stayed up all night, writing a strongly worded letter. After listing to seven major suspects and some of the numerous tips that he had not had a chance to explore, he went on to write, quote, This case controls us. We don't control it. We can't control it because we never had the resources to control it. When we were getting seven hundred tips a month, we had to triage them. Work on the ones that sounded good because we only had five full time investigators That situation forced us to be in the predicament we're in now, stillill working tips that are over a year old. Is this case a priority or isn't it? He never got a response Soon after, when Bob airs, Amy's dad told Jones that he that he looked bad Jones took the hint and requested a fifteen day administrative leave Unfortunately, Chief Watson refused to approve the request but authorized a sick leave instead that required medical approval before he could return to work It was clear to Jones that she wanted him to fully step aside. But he wouldn't then He made a mistake As the negotiations with Mexico over Saedra and Cortez continued, The families of some of the murdered girls were getting impatient Particularly Skip Sarasi, Jennifer andarah's step dad He asked Jones if there was anything they could do to speed up the process then went ahead and called the Mexican consul in San Antonio himself Gip thought that the conversation with the consul had gone well, so we got the families to write a letter that could be forwarded to the atttorney G genereral's office in Mexico. Jones, fully aware that he was disobeying department rules, faxed that letter to San Antonio And that was the last draw for his superiors They accused him of grandstanding of becoming too close to the families, giving them police info. They even implied that Jones had asked the families to write the letter On october twenty ninth, Jones received a record of substandard performance. Two days later, his psychologist wrote the APD to say that after carrying the sole responsibility for the investigation for six months, Jones was now exhibiting more than ninety percent of the symptoms of extreme PTSD Ting nightmares, insomnia difficulties in concentrating and hypervigilance And that would get give him a one month medical leave By mid November though, he willll be back on the job still obsessed with the case. January of nineteen ninety four. now Bryice Foods, parent company of I can't believe it's Yogurt. agrees to pay the victim's familyies twelve million dollars in a civil suit settlement The families had accused the Yogurt shop's owners of lacked security that had contributed to the likelihood of a violent attack Meanwhile Jones kept pursuing new leads But then soon, He would be removed from the case entirely On may tenth, nineteen ninety four, Deputy Chief of Police Bruce Mills told Jones that he and Doug Dukes, who worked the APDs Child Abuse Division would swap places Mills was surprised that Jones seemed upset by this.idn't he want to be off the case No, Jones said. He wanted a reduction, not a transfer. And he'd expected to be consulted as part of any changes to the case Instead, now we just got a week to wrap shit up Hail Sergeant John Jones and Hil Nimrod. Dude clearly could not have given any more than he did to solve in this case. Hope we got the help we needed for that PTSD The families were heartbroken to see their biggest advocate being removed In other ways, though, some of them felt like there was you know, time to move on With the settlement money, the heirs, thirteen year old Amy's parents, they moved out of Austin. bought a ranch outside the little town of Blanco, some fifty miles away Maria Thomas, seventeen year old Eliza's mom bought a house way the hell away from Austin in Oregon. Barbara and Skip Serasi the haresting girl's mom's stepad They bought into a new suburban development closer to Capitol Memorial Gardens where Sarah, Jennifer and Amy were buried Skip decided to use the money in another way too. He hired an attorney to dig further into those previous suspects down in Mexico Meanwhile, what was now being called Austin's cop wars between the Force and the and Chief Watson, they continued In October of nineteen ninety five, Chief Watton enrolled Austin officers into a task force codeenamed Malasangre, Bad bllood a federally funded initiative designed to attack organized drug trafficking and money laundering. But the local chapter quickly imploded when undercover informants accused APD officers of protecting several key dealers Excuse me in exchange for cocaine, sexual favors, and for some an all expenses paid trip to the Super Bowl This led to a bunch of allegations, lawsuits and whistleblower complaints, all of which hampered an already struggling police department As the APD was being torn apart by infighting and corruption in February of nineteen ninety seven, Robert Eugene Brasherss, old Bobby B, our buddy old pal was released from prison again He would now move to Perigold, a little city of about eighteen thousand five hundred people at the time in Northeast Arkansas. full of scenic hiking trails and charming little shops brashers would not be hiking or shopping. Instead, he had moved in with his five year old daughter, Deborah who'd been born in nineteen ninety one, her mom, Dorothy, and Dorothy's two other daughters was clear to everyone in the family. Some was fucking wrong with brushers. At one point, he fought his st step kid stepdad. hisis wife's ex husband's husband and injured him with a drill. Then the fan was horrified when they found videos of brashers, evidently self recorded, making small cuts across his neck and his arm to see how much pain he can withstand And years later, his daughter, Deborah, would come to believe that her mom knew something about the really evil shit the Bashers was getting up to when he was off on his own at this time which was seemingly confirmed when Dorothy told Deborah that she should call him by a different name and to try and keep him inside the house when he was home brushers would not be kept inside Just a month after his latest release from prison, brrashers raped a fourteen year old girl in Memphis, Tennessee on march eleventh, nineteen ninety seven instead of sneaking in grabbing the girl from the street he did something very different and arguably much more psychologically damaging He knocked on the door to the home that girl and four other people were currently inside of. and threaten them all with a gun tied everybody up and raped her for all to witness Ver confident, almost like he had done that sort of thing before Meanwhile back in Austin, savede face over what was becoming an increasingly embarrassing situation for the APD, Elizabeth Watson announced something surprising She was reopening the investigation into the ICBY murders And a detective named Pa Johnson would be in charge of searching for new leads Johnson He was just the kind of squeaky, clean person the department needed to show that it was serious about solving crimes It's been five years in sex crimes, five in homicide Heid won awards for public service, you know, several different occasions Most importantly, Paul liked to work alone, which was exactly what the department wanted He wouldn't turn up anything either Paul's assignment continued until july thirty first, nineteen ninety seven, by which time Elizabeth Watson had left Austin for a job with the Department of Justice in DC. Bruce Mills was appointed interim chief Mills decided he wanted to help Johnson out, so he gave him a new task force And this time Johnson found something or rather reound it I came across the name of four boys we met earlier Maurice, Rob, Mike and Forest A lot of changed in the years since the murders. For one thing, the boys were not teens anymore They werere in the twenties now Rob, now twenty three had moved back to West Virginia, where he worked for minimum wage at a series of odd jobs and lived with his mom before marrying and moving to a cabin that his wife had inherited. Mike also twenty three had hit the road, taking whatever jobs he could find, including working at an adult video store and as a roofer Be he settled down and married a computer technician named Jeanine Mary Stark Fst now twenty one and moved to Lockhart to work at a car repair and body shop where he shared a daughter with a girlfriend and planned to open his own shop someday. twenty two year old Maurice. He got married to his high school sweetheart, Kimberly moved to Dallas to raise their five year old daughter Marissa None of them still hung out. In fact They didn't even talk to each other anymore. But Johnson wanted to talk to them In November of ninety seven, Paul Johnson paid Maurice Peierce a visit Maurice was friendly and approachable, summon up his early interactions with the police about the murders this way I know I made a statement when I was arrested that said that Forrest told me other details about the murders. I don't remember any of that now I knowew I was very nervous and I was trying to say things to help get me out of the police interview. and they were twisting my story up Johnson then went on to talk to Frest Wellborne. who denied any involve in the crime. polygraph test would back him up Both Rob and Mike too said that they'd been doing normal teenage things on the night of the murder going into your murders, going to parties, sneaking into the movies, drinking beer, driving around so it look like another deadit Johnson still wondered about them, was still suspicious A few months later in February of nineteen ninety eight, Johnson again called Mike Robin Maurice, who again gave him nothing useful And then in March, twenty months after its formation The new Yogurt Shop Murders Task Force was disbanded Round and around we go Paul Johnson was transferred out to work the streets, but like John Jones before him, he could not let go of this case really thought there was something about those boys, something nobody else was seeing Paul Johs kept thinking about those four young men, Bobby Brashers honed in on his next victims thirirty eight year old Sherry Sherr lived with her twelve year old daughter, Mean, in Portidageville, Missouri, littleittle town about one hundred and fifty miles southeast to Staint Louis. On march twenty eighth, Sherry and Meghgan stayed home to hang laundry while Sherry's husband Tony, and the couple's son Steven went to work on a nearby farm As he headed home Tony called Sherry offered pick up a pizza dinner. But when Tony and Stehven came to the gravel road leading to the house, they were delayed by a car accident. So Tony called Sherry again to let her know that they were still on their way this time, Sherry did not answer And then when Tony and Stehven got home. Everything was weirdly quiet Nobody was you know, putting clothes in the clothhing lines outside, inside, Sherry and Meghan laid dead on the floor gagged with a sock B shot in the head Investators later discoverred that Meghan had also been sexually assaulted What insane sight to come home to. What a horrific bade to experience Wellile Tony and Stehven were still grieving forty two miles away in Dyersburg, Tennessee, Brasherers already preparing for another attack Like some of his other attacks, it would start with breaking into a house Only this time Did't go his plan This time, the young woman inside fought back successfully Sources never publicly identified her, but according to investigators, she managed to block him from getting in the house Before fleeing, he shot her in the arm but she survived And now she gave police a solid description what they used to produce a composite sketch Soon ballistic evidence would show that the bullet fired in Dyersburg had been the same kind as the ones that had been used to kill Sherry and Meghan. But still Nobody connected this to brushers. And on april twelfth, nineteen ninety eight He would try his sick shit again This time his target was a woman in Parigold, Arkansas, somebody he'd actually worked for before approach your house, cut the phone lines Before he could get inside, the cops showed up and he was arrested. post bail Cool The guy who wass convicted of shooting a woman in the head and neck amongst a litany of other crimes, given the chance to post an easy bail. Nice. after getting caught planning a home invasion Against a woman, anyone with half a fucking brain should know he had nefarious intentions towards. Excellent work again, justice system. Fantastic. Way to keep us safe He would show up next on law enforcement's radar nearly six months later in August of ' ninety eight august sixteenth of that year. Brashers was driving down US highighway four twelve but not driving well He was swerving down the highway, and he veered off the road and crashed his van through a fence, hit a parked car, and then fled the scene. A couple of minutes later, a passeng driver picked him up But once that person had dropped brushers off, they began to sink I how was fucking weir And then they began to think Now not just weird That gu was creepy game me the Heei Jeb Soon after they dropped him off, they called the police who then found brushers and officers pretty much immediately clocked that the forty year old man was not being truthful about his identity So they decided to dig in deeper after they'd let him go During their investigation, they discovered that Brashordz had recently burglarized his neighbor's home and stolen some cash and jewelry. In the months that followed, Arkansas authorities would issue a warrant for his arrest which would revoke the bonds he had been released on back in April. Failing to appear in court on november twelfth, Brasherson racked up another arrest warrant Brash had good reason not to want to go to court A few days before the second arrest warrant, on november seventh, nineteen ninety eight around seven forty AM, the Lexington Fire Department in Lexington, Kentucky was dispatched to the Nixon Hearing Aid Center. When crews arrived at the scene, they saw a column of smoke rising from the storefront But the smoke was worse than it looked, and the flames quickly went out that allowed them to make another discovery body of a forty three year old woman in the backroom Inbesquez would later identify her as Linda Rutledge She had died from multiple gunshot wounds to the head One shot in the head. And then a fire started to try and burn away evidence feel familiar. B back to Austin now and backing up a little to September of nineteen ninety eight, almost seven years since the yogurt shop murders. That month, investigator Paul Johnson sent Maurice Peerce's twenty two in ammunition to ballistics to be checked again Still has not written him off, Still has not written off his friends But the result was the same. This was not the gun used at ICBY. But still, Johnson not yet convinced that he didn't have something to do with it all , you know, boisant Uh, these guys now Late that fall, Johnson once again drove to Louisville, where Maurice agreed to undergo hypnosis this time against his lawyer's advice Anyone else feel like Maurice is being too helpful At this point he was well within his rights to tell investigators that enough's enough. Go fuck yourselves And he should have done that h But he didn't. Luckily, even the hypnosis yielded nothing new. A few days later, Forrest provided a written statement echoing Peerce's account. The young men had nothing to do with the murders based on all the evidence and years of looking at them And yet Johnson still thought no, no no. no, they're my guys. They did it. Undeterred, he asked DPS for even more gun and blood tests His tenacity must have been impressive because after nine months, Chief Stan Nino offered Paul Johnson yet another opportunity to organize another yogurt shop murders task force. The fucking third one And it would continue to focus on Paul Johnson's main suspect, Maurice Pierce He specifically instructed his new force to focus in on anything they might have missed in Marisa's story the first time In their very first meeting, Paul and another investigator showed a two hundred five slide PowerPoint presentation titled The invvestigative Plan to Pursue Maurice Pierce Johns had decided who his primary suspect was for sure. Now he just needed to find the evidence to convict him problem was There wasn't The detective needed something else, Somebody to talk about. what those teenagers really got up to that fateful night, like maybe a girlfriend They would hone in on twenty four year old Kelly Hannah, who had dated Robbie for three weeks, November and early December of ' ninety one Now in her third trimester of her third pregnancy Kelly first told the detectives that she really didn't remember much about Robby She'd only dated him for three weeks nearly a decade ago But the detectives asked her to come in anyway and she agreed This time, they asked her about the day after the murders when Rob came by her father's trailer. She said he had told her that he had spent the day before driving around Did that seem odd to her? they asked Kelly said that by then she had heard what had happened at the yogurt shop and asked Rob if he had seen fire trucks or anything. And when he said no, yeah, that did seem odd to her. Kelly heard to say that you know, it only seemed odd though because they all knew the area and drove past the ICBY all the time But she'd already used the word odd and the cops really hung ono that They had their entry point and now they kept pushing She tried to tell him that she didn't see Rob on the night of december sixth The cops pivoted easily, making it sound like he was supposed to be with her Like they had made plans and he hadn't showed up. They wanted to know, did she think that Rob Springsteen was a liar? Kelly could only say that she had no And when he hesitated cops told her that she had been identified as part of the group that took the Joy ride to San Antonio even though she wasn't in that group and nobody had actually identified her as being with them. so they lied to her. And that scared her based on this false information, Kelly panicked. She worried that, you know, somehow she would end up being charged with something, possibly taken away from her two children N to mention the baby she's about to give birth to So now she starts to cry And the cops take that as another sign of guilt. A interview done, the investators decided it was time to talk to another person, someone even closer to the case, Mike Scott And they would interrogate him on Thursday, september ninth, nineteen ninety eight beginning at nine in the morning. and Mike was very upfront. And he said, I'll be honest with you guys Piss poor memory. But the detectives had answer for that They were here to help him remember. and Mike believed them He struggled to keep up as the investigation zigzagged between different days and different groups of people, But every time he stepped back claiming not to remember, the investigators were firmed. No, he was doing great he was remembered very specific stuff He just needed to keep going. And he did pressure to remember mounted, one of the investigators noted, Mike, you seem real wound up. Like there's something you're not telling us You're acting real nervous Mike responded that he was scared which the investigators immediately latched onto Why was he scared Was you hiding something It's like those dudes forgot that a lot of people get nervous when being investigated by the cops, innocent or guilty I would have been nervous if I was investigated as a suspect to nineteen ninety one yogurt shop murders, even though I was only fourteen when they happened, split my time between Idaho and Nevada and had literally never been to Austin before my life I would' have been worried that some investigative mistake or some crooked cops were gonna to put me in prison for shit I didn't do. By noon The tenor of the conversation with Mike's gota change. Now the detectives told him that they had talked to everyone Maice, Forrest and Rob And they knew what had happened I mean they did that's what he said Now Mike need to do the right thing, they said. tellell the truth Mike was still firm I didn't fucking do anything. I don't know anything So now the investigators changed tactics They told him that they didn't think he killed any of the girls, of course, but that he knew who did And if he didn't agree to work with them, he would become a scapegoat For the other suspects And now Mike was really starting to get nervous. Still wouldn't admit to killing them or even knowing who killed them, but his mind had begun to turn on itself, doubting his own recollections. As he would put at the interrogation, I'm scared to have information and don't know I have information pooor bastard, right, the detectives, you, they then pushed him a little further. You remember that night A detective said. You remember the date. You understand that when you first sat down here, you volunteered the date. We didn't bring it up. You brought it up And now I cracked. He said he had seen fire trucks and that he had lied about seeing the Red Jeep car one of the boys had been driving that night in the North Cross parking lot Now he said he hadn't seen it And this gives detectives an opening As they continued to question him, wondering why he had lied, Mike started to rock back and forth in his chair, holding his head in his hands as if trying to dislodge the memories the detectives insisted he had inside of him. A little more than four hours into the question, a detective pointed to the pictures of the dead girls again, asked Mike to look at them again That's it for them He said, referring to their deaths. And for what twelve or fourteen bucks, Mike said Was it worth it Not for four lives No, it wasn't worth it Whose idea was it to go there? They asked, Huh Here we go again, getting into that non responsive Moteorse. They said. How long do you think you can keep us up? Wait a minute, he says You need some time to think real hard, buddy, they say, because the next phase And then Mike put his head down, defeated, and just said, Yeahah. And then they said, it's coming real quick, real quick. And your opportunities are slowly diminishing. But you realize that, don't you And they asked him again, whose idea was it And finally, at one thirty PM, Mike said Maurice' He then proceeded to tell them that they had cased the yogurt shop, noticing that the back door had propped open had been propped open. He said that he hadn't gone in himself But he knew that Robby didn't had a gun Even the way Mike spoke made it clear that he wasn't remembering so much as visualizing what the detectives were just saying to him. I just told him He literally said, I keep seeing these girls get shot. I don't know if this is real or not or if this is, then he stops At that point, the detective interrupted him. Michael, it's real. Every time he tried to talk about the shooting, how the girls had been killed, What had been done to them beforeforehand, he shook his head and said some version of them I can't even remember going inside the place, guys. I don't remember walking through the doors that the task force simply supplied him with the details details, so intent on creating false memories. withith that tried and true mixture of asking him leading questions, feeding him crime scene details, applying lots of social pressure and fear of punishment, Well, Mike said he you'd tryed to tie them up with extension cords They told him tryry again They said maybe he had used their own clothes And then he literally repeated, use their own clothes to tie them up. They didn't make me shoot them, did they They did this with every detail, supplying him the answer to the question, including about where the girls had been shoted. At first, Mike said they were shot behind the counter. and they're like, Nope, try again. He later stated for the record that the girls were taken to the back of the shop, where they were sexually assaulted, then shot and just like the investigators had told him they were After his assertion that he shot a girl in the face, the detective shook their heads. Nope He then said forehead and they were like, nope and then they said back in the head and they're like, Bingo. t five thirty PM far far too late Mike finally said he wanted to speak, you know, have a lawyer with him The detectes immediately took a break. And when they came back, they were like you sure h You sure you want that lawyer We just need to clear up a couple things You know, don't you want to work with the guys who have your best interest at heart? the guys that are trying to keep you out of prison doesn't a lawyer As evening wears on, other members of the task force join in, listing as Mike confesses that Rob had called him a pussy, had goaded him into raping one of the girls at night waver between several different versions of how the fire started. one where Maurice pulled out a zippo, another where Maurice instructed him to grab a can of lighter fluid from the car, another one, in which Mike was in the car, not doing shit Mike was finally released at ten twenty two PM. after over twelve hours of being interrogated Never did get that fucking lawyer The next day, after a good night's rest, after, you know, no longer being intimidated and badgered and pressured, Mike unsurprisingly saw things very differently He went down to the station, he told investigators, he had only been telling them what he thought he they wanted to hear In response, one of the detectives put a fucking gun to the back of his head. Not kidding put a gun to his head My Godd, how is that guy not fucking fired immediately Rather than make him talk though, the gun made him shut down. And the next guy to come in, a Texas ranger named Alabreo found a completely exhausted, weeping mic sitting at a cramp table Iours there, he told Mike to help get the girl's screams out of his head But instead of doing that whatever that would even supposedly entail, Al' painted a much more disturbing picture She described, quote, little girls tied up on the floor They were squirming Mike was raping them Was it from the front or the back And then they were lying on top one another as he squirted lighter fluid on their little bodies that Mike really broke down. He's like having a fucking psychotic breakd now he would no longer resist the detective's coortion On Tuesday, september fourteenth, after countless hours of interrogation, he agreed to give a written confession admitting his participation in the murders alongside Robert Springsteeen, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Wellborne. Holy shit. Now it's time to rind up round up the others. After I gave a statement, detectives set out to West Virginia to find Robert Springsteeen. When they found him on the morning of september sixteenth, he had worked back to back shifts had spent his remaining time fixing up his cabin. and had only slept about six hours over the past three nights. Surprisingly His interrogation would go similarly to Mike's Detectives asked him if he was surprised to know that the North Cross Mall wasn't even playing the Rocky Horror picture show on the night of the murders, which was his alibi. that wasn't true. They had been playing that movie But the way it was phrased, would you be surprised gave the detectives a loophole to just fucking blatantly lie Well, Rob said he would be very surprised learn that because he rememered to be in the fucking movie. The investigators asked If you weren' at the movie Where were you What have you been doing What you been doing things with Rob told him he'd been writing songs with his uncle Bruce, if you must know. Like this next one. Maybe you've heard of it, motherfuckers Is that enough for you I was writing fucking born in the USA with my fuckking uncle Bruce Fringstick he wasn't doing that Bruce is not his unc That song came out seven years before the murders. After several more hours of interrogation, Rob finally broke, saying that it was possible that he had murdered the four girls My God Soon he was given details about the rapes, details he had been fed for hours by investigators Describing what happened as a total cluster fuck He would lay his head on his arm to recreate the position of Amy Eyre's body, which prosecutors would later describe as a perfect replica, even though it wasn't. t seven o'clock, the detectives read his miranda rights and then too late, Rober snapped out of it said he need to talk to his wife and a lawyer techs already what they want Didn't matter that many of the details did not match what Scott had told him at all They now had two confessions to the yogurt shop murders to mismatch confessions of the still Robert even said that he had put his dick in her pussy quote, referring to thirteen year old Amy Ayres And that will not look good for him at trial Now the task force only needed one more thing for Maurice Piers to confess few days after Rob's interrogation, Paul Johnon himself drove to Irving to interview Maurice Maurice was ready this time. he told the men to meet him at his lawyer's office When they tried to interrogate Fororece, he too kept his mouth shut. and detectives came back empty handed None of the witnesses who had been at the ICBY that night, Darrel Croft, that guy who had owned a security company or Lucella Jones, the woman who had come to the shop and get her husband a yogurt positively identify these boys Detective's not given up On Friday, october first, nineteen ninety eight, the statements's page one headline made it official arrests likely in yogurt shop killings. Police have suspects in nineteen ninety one deaths of four teens October fifth, Paul John wrote separate affaviditses, which were then taken to the one hundred sixty seventh district court judge, Mike Lynch, who issued the arrest warrants for Robert Burnn, Springsteeen, theth Michael James Sott Maurice Earl Peerce and Fororerest Brook Wellborne The very next day, all four men would be arrested in a coordinated sweep Scott was taken to the Travis County Jail, Springsteeen to the South Central Regional detention Center, just outside of Charleston, wellborn and Pierce to the Gardenner Betts Juvenile detention Center for the APD and the city as a whole. It looked like a triumph As Mayor Kirk Watson would put it On december sixth, nineteen ninety one, we as a city Lost our innocence Today we regain our confidence All of this confidence was based only on Springsteeen and Scott's error riddled confessions. veryery little forensic evidence, no recovered weapon The main piece of evidence was their confessions, and since Wellborn and Pierce didn't also confess, there wasn't much that could be done about them. The Travis County Grand jury declined to indict Wellelborne. Psecutors dropped charges against Pice due to insufficient evidence, but only after he sat in jail For three fucking years, What a nightmare Despite no convictions for two of the four, it was still full steam ahead on Scott and Springsteam Robert Springsteeen would be tried first in two thousand one. The state's case relied mostly on Springsteeen's confession Sprst would take the witness stand himself and claim the detectives had psychologically broken him down during long interrogations until he had simply repeated whatever he thought they wanted to hear Prosecutors countered that his confession contained details only a participant would know But the jury would not hear that most of those details had been fed to him by detectives Also, in both Springsteen and Scott's upcoming trial, prosecutors used each man's confession against the other, even though neither defendant testified against the other in court That meant the defense could not cross examine the accuser. which is typically guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment In the end, the jury, who had watched the family show up day after day, who had heard lengthy descriptions of what bright, beautiful young women their daughters had been before a senseless act withk their lives believed the state's story Just a reminder There is no IQ test for jurors. Do not have to have any common sense or any critical thinking skills to be a gererm And after a roughly three week trial, jurors deliberated for thirteen hours before convicting Robert Springsteeen on capital murder and sencing him to death Michael Scott will be tried separately the following year Like Springsteeen's case, the prosecution leaned heavily on Scott's confession and on portions of Springsteeen's statements, and the result would be the same In May of two thousand two, Scott would also be convicted sends to life in prison this time Moving ahead to two thousand five now, after the U. Supreme Court decision and Roper vers. Simmondons barred executions for crimes committed under the age of eighteen, Springsteeen's death ends was automatically converted to life imprisonment because he had been seventeen at the time of the murders men still looking at life in prison though appeared The next year, however, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Robert Springsteeen's conviction, citing that the Sixth Amendment you know, was violated And the year after that, in two thousand seven, Michael Scott's conviction would be similarly overturned In response on august twentieth, two thousand eight, the defense lawyers for Scott and Springsteen requested DNA testing of alternative suspects Why? Because District atttorney Rosemary Lemberg had requested that they be tried again St wanted to put these innocent men in jail after they had lost years of their lives Luckily, however, Judge Mike Lynch ruled the defendants would be allowed out on bond, penning their upcoming trials As a result, both men would be released in two thousand nine after nearly a fucking decade in prison As the prosecutors prepared for the new trials, they ordered new DNA tests, specifically vaginal swabs And now they had access to a new kind of technology, advanced YSTR testing What's that It's an improvement on what's called STR testing which does not always turn up accurate results TR testing, male DNA may be masked or in competition with excess amounts of female DNA Basically, since you are testing all the DNA present and because both men and women have X chromosomes, with men having XY and women having XX DNA tests can result in confusing jumble where nobody knows which X chromosomes belong to who But Y STR testing specifically targets STR regions on the male Y chromosone that is passed down through paternal lineage, i. e. father to son Specifically targeting the Y chromosome a YSTR test leaves out female DNA, leaving the unknown male's profile relatively pristine Earlier testing had revealed the presence of one unknown male's DNA at the scene But there were not any hits And so on october twenty eighth, two thousand nine, all charges against Scott and Springsteen are now. disismissed But some still thought they were guilty Then on december twenty third, twenty ten, Austin police officer Frank Wilson and his rookie partner Brley Smith conducted a routine traffic stop The man in the car was Maurice Pierce who immediately got out of the car and fled Surprisingly, Dude no longer felt too safe around the police. After a brief pursuit on foot Pierce struggled with Wilson before removing a knife from his belt and stabbing offfficer Wilson in the neck Officer Wilson pulled out his gun in response and shot and killed Pierce Jumpinghead dozen years now On february fifth, twenty twenty two, it was announced that advanced DNA technology was bringing investigators closer than ever to actually solving the Austin murders In fact They hadd honed in on their suspect back in twenty eighteen But it would take three more years before the public knew who that was Finally, less than a year ago, on september twenty sixth, twenty twenty five, APD made their announcement Robert Eugene Brasers. old Bobby B H! killed Jennifer, Eliza Sarah And Amy, but you knew that DNA test revealed that his YSTR profile matched specifically to a sample taken from under thirteen year old Amy's fingernails. kidded fox She had struggled and decades later because of that She had helped solve her own murder. In addition, testing of the bullet casing that was found in the that was found at the crime scene was consistent with patterns produced by a gun that brashers owned So where was brashers? Well, He wass fucking dead. Heilled himself back in nineteen ninety nine On january thirteenth of that year, after police officers had noticed another stolen vehicle he had ten parked in a lot of a super r hotel in Kennet, Missouri. they'd broken down his hotel room door, found him hiding under the bed with a loaded gun When they tried to arrest him, he threatened to kill himself, and officers were forced to retreat Within a few minutes backup arrived. In the meantime, Brasers had barricaded himself, his wife, his daughter, and two stepdaughters in the hotel room. During negotiations, he would then release his family but then shoot himself in the headit He would remain alive for six more days before dying in the hospital on january nineteenth. Nearly two decades later Investigators would exume his body in twenty eighteen. And then the real work of connecting him to many, many crimes began Despite this discovery, Mike Scott and Robert Springsteeen still had not been formally declared innocent of the oververhop murders. Why not? Well, money, it seems If they were, they would be owed compensation for every year they'd spent in prison potentially up to eighty thousand per year Their lawyers partnering with the Innocence proroject who we have donated to in the past kept working towards that. Same on Texas's legal system owning up to their fucked up mistake and not just paying them immediately It is exactly that kind of shit that erodes citizens' faith in government Just a few months ago, in February, there was some justice Travis County Judge Dana Blazy stated that all four men, Pierce, Springsteeen, Scott and Welburn were innocent clearing their records and formally exonerating them In his response, Rob Springsteeen said in a st written statement read by his attorney Amber Farreley that his wrongful arrest turned his life into a cycle of chaos and uncertainty I have been persecuted every day. I have lived every single day being seen as a monster for something I did not do Michael Scott would express a similar sentiment in the hearing, saying I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon, sue me. And since I don't have a butler, I have to do it myself. So Most nights before I go to bed, I will lay six strips of bacon out on my George Foreman grill Then I go to sleep When I wake up, I plug in the grill. I go back to sleep again Then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon It is delicious, It's good for me. It's a perfect way to start the day Today, I got up, I stepped onto the grill and I clamped down on my foot. That's it. I don't see what's so hard to believe about that That, of course, is the raw, Michael Scott. That is Michael Scott from the office. No, Michael Scott from this case would say for decades, I've carried the burden of wrongful conviction Every day, I' have carried the weight of a crime that I did not commit. No court ruling can return the years and the love that were taken from me, but it can acknowledge the truth. I am not guilty. Thankfully, Austin law enforcement was ready to admit their mistake now Austin district attorney Trudy Strasberger, said Travis County's wrongful prosecutions left defendants screaming into the wind for decades and that it was our turn to accept responsibility. And then just last month, may thirteenth, twenty twenty six, The city of Austin agreed to pay thirty five million dollars in compensation to the four falsely accused men, three surviving, one deceased, of course Austin City manager TC Broadnax issued a public statement, calling the settlement the final chapter of a devastating story in Austin's history and expressed quote, hope that this settlement brings a sense of closure to everyone affected by this horrific event. settlement still needed to be approved by the Austin City Council though Fortunately, two weeks later on may twenty eighth it was. point seven five billion dollars will be paid out to each of the three still living men, and another eight point seven five million dollars will be paid out to the estate and family of Maurice Pierce, who of course died in twenty ten, does not make up for what happened But nice to finally see some real justice in this episode Almost nine million dollars does not give you a decade of your freedom back But it does make the rest of your life easier to enjoy Let's now head to Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Bare. The Austin Yoga shhoppers, such a horrific story in so many ways Even though the case was not high profile, like some of the other famous cases of the nineties, it is easy to see how it became such an emblem of modern true crime many ways, the yogurt shop murders reflect some of our deepest societal fears that our most vulnerable young people can be taken from us in an instant without any rhyme or reason, even from a safe place that in a place where they should be safe, their after school job in a strip mall in a slow, easy going city, someomebody could barge in, overwhelm them, proceed to hurt and kill them all without anybody getting a chance to interrupt the brutality or save them and perhaps our deepest fear that the person can then simply slip back into the shadows, melting back into the rest of society as the years march on The problem with murders becoming emblems though, is that the pressure this puts on cities to solve them be the heroes who take away that fear. Obviously, there should be certain pressures on police departments to sove murders. That's the nature of the job after all. But when the feeling comes to be that the city cannot move on, that the police need to solve the murder, to prove themselves, or dispel political tension within the city government Well, people start to look at suspects that seem like they could have done it rather than ones the evidence actually points to. fourour teenage boys would find this out firsthand The initial investigation of Robert Springsteeen, Michael Scott Maurice Perce and Forrest Wellborne D didn't go anywh boy stories were, you know, or while they were, a little suspicious. Wh none of them could definitively point to where they had been that night on december sixth It was pretty obvious to the police And this was the result of the boy's unorthodox lifestyles How they really went to school? How they smoked a ton of weed drrank a lot, did a bunch of psychedelics. How they didn't need to check in with their parents that essentially had free run of the city And so the boys were dismissed as suspects and they should have been But nearly ten years later, the boys now young men would pop up on the police's radar again. While Paul Johnson perhaps started out with the best of intentions, his investigation quickly zeroed in on the four teenage boys who had shifted the alibis for the night of december sixth in an unethical way. ignoring evidence He focused on them what he should not have Though Fororerest and Maurice would adamantly reject being involved, the investigators's brutal interrogation techniques would lead to both Mike and Robert confessing that they had committed the yogurt shop murders, even if though their confessions did not match one another hours of intense interrogations, including one including one that included, you know, pointing a fucking gun at Mike's head How did that detective, again, not going to prison himself for that shit? The men came to belief or at least say that they had been the ones to commit those brutal acts The fact that they quickly recanted that in the end didn't mean anything the investigators just wanted the case solved, even if that meant pinning it on the wrong people, that's so fucked up Both men would spend nearly a decade in prison before being released in two thousand nine, pending new trials. But when the DA's office sent samples of DNA away for testing, they found something surprising a new suspect Robert Eugene Brashers ' life, of course defined by violence. By the time he died of suicide at age forty, he had victimized at least nineteen people in various ways, raping them and or shooting them. Many of the tactics he' used were similar to the ones employed in the yoga shop murders, including burst into a house with a weapon, which he used to corral the house's inhabitants while he sexually assaulted a young girl in front of them In another incident, he set a fire in a commercial building in Arkansas where he had murdered a woman very reminiscent of the yogurt chop murders And yet brrashers was never on the police's radar Was it possible he was a young man in a green army jacket that a patron of the yogurt shop saw that night fidgeting, walking into the back to use the employee restroom Maybe. Or did Brashers come by later at eleven o three, faking that he was going to buy yogurt, that no sale that Eliza rang up before unleashing his destruction on four young lives We'll never know exactly what happened that night or how brrashers managed to subdue all four girls Maybe they saw him by obeying him He'd be more likely to let them live Maybe he promised them that exact thing. In the absence of concrete information, we can only speculate Speculation is fine as long as it does not veer into scapegoating blame. If you are ever questioned by the police for a serious crime, especially one you did not commit laawyer up immediately It does not make you look guilty despite what you may hear, it makes you look smart Even the best cops can get shit wrong None of us are all knowing And staying out of prison by not getting charged for a crime you did not commit is easier than getting back out of prison after being found guilty for a crime he did not commit Finally, there are a lot better ways to try and win millions of dollars than mean falsey in prison for years buying a lottery tick Tim now For the takeaways. Time suck, top five takeaways. Number one On the night of december sixth, nineteen ninety one, four young women were murdered at an Austin, Texas Strip malls. I can't believe its's yogurt location They were thirteen year old Amy Eyres, seventeen year old Eliza Thomas, seventeen year old Jennifer Harbinson, and fifteen year old Sarah Harbinson. The victims were bound and gags, shot in the head with Amy shot twice and found practically melted together. Number two, Robert Springsteeen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welburn, and Maurice Pierce were initially suspected of the murders when Maurice was found with a twenty two caliber pistol at nearby North Cross Mall around a week after the murders Though Maurice initially implicated Forrest, the teenager would not confess to being involved, and authorities soon moved on to other tips. Later, however, as the APD battled political infighting and accusations of corruption The Yogberthop Murders Task Force refocused on the youngen obtaining confessions from Michael Scott andobert Springsteen Both men would be in jail until two thousand eight And it would take all the way until February of twenty twenty six for them to be officially exonerated and all the way until a few weeks ago paid for being falsey imprisoned Number three, the Austin Yogurt shop murders were particularly challenging to solve And many police, including Sergeant John Jones, worked tirelessly to solve them including pouring over hundreds of leads, tips, and other crimes, looking at other crimes for connections While focusing on what the police did wrong, it's easy to write them off as incompetent and the investigators who pressured Mike and Rob were definitely wrong to do so But that does not take away from the many people, both experienced cops and rookies who you know spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours trying to track down anything they could about who might have truly committed the crimes Much of police work is skill, but it's also luck and good timing, like many other professions. and police have to work within tremendously complicated systems, including ones where cops who pressure people like Hector Polanco are rewarded for their good clearance rates. In that environment, it is so hard to be a good investigator and yet many still are for A major breakthrough came decades after the crime when advances in DNA analysis and genetic genealogy identified serial killer and rapist Robert Eugene Brashers as the likely perpetrator Authorities announceced the identification in twenty twenty five, nearly thirty five years after the murders Unfortunately, Brashers had died by suicide decades earlier in nineteen ninety nine So there was no justice for the families of the victims on that front Rures has posthumously been strongly linked to the deaths of at least eight women now Number five, new info, or I guess, a little more new info. More and more, we are hearing about people whose DNA is used to solve crimes long after they have happened, Mike the Golden State killer and now Robert Eugene Brashers Much of this is thanks to direct to consumer DNA testing kits, like the ones from twenty three and M and Ancestry d. com, though major direct to consumer testing companies strictly refuse to voluntarily share customer data with police and generally only hand over user information if forced to do so by a legally binding court order or search warrant Other databases like GED match or familyamily Tree DNA where users explicitly allow law enforcement to look for matches are often searched before resorting to direct consumer options evenven after a DNA match is found, Its not the end of the st Professional genealogists have to evaluate these matches, compare them against public records, and map a family tree to narrow down the suspect to one individual These companies are not the only ones at the forefront of this genetic research though. One of the largest collections of ancestry information belongs to Drumo, please Church of Latteray Saints AKA the Mormons And they have a very special place for this info. Their Granite Mountain Records Vault is a massive underground archive. This is hundreds of feet inside solid granite in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, about twenty miles southeast to downtown Salt Lake City It was built back in nineteen sixty five, equipped with blast resistant doors to preserve records against fire, natural disasters. Nuclear attack, the fucking apocalypse The vault contains more than three point five billion genealogical images along with other important church records and archivive materials Through cooperation with government archives, churches and libraries, our libraries, the LDS Church has created the largest collection of family records in the entire world with information on more than three billion deceased people Information that could help solve a lot of cold cases So why do they have all this information Well, according to Mormon doctrine, you spend eternity with your family members after you die, and a lot of Mormons want unsurprisingly to know who those family members are, both the ones alive and the ones you'll be meeting on the other side I wonder how distant the relatives can be. qualify for Shar in Heaven with him I mean, an estimated sixteen million men. as men alone, roughly zero point five percent of the world's male population or one in two hundred men, are believed to carry the distinct Y chromosome lineage traced back directly to Genghis Khan So who's gang is Kan hanging out with in me after Life? All of his descendants? At least thirty two million people. if he has as many female descends as male ones. That's a lot of fuckking people to hang Eerny will be a never end string of social obligations, which sounds more like hell to me than heaven And if you trace shit back even further, aren't we pretty much all related? I mean, if you follow Christian literalist interpretation all the way back, you end up with Adam and Eve Wouldn't they then be in the same heaven party with fucking everybody, billions and billions of people oundserrible P probablyably shouldn't try to apply basic logic to a theological constuct They don't tend to weather that very well. Anyway, you can also do what's called temple work for the dead. seems like praying for your dead ancestors, though the church emphasizes that your ancestors can accept or reject this work if they want to I think that might be another term for like baptism of the dead, or at least there's that also That's a proxy practice where living Mormons are baptized by immersion on behalf of deceased ancestors This is rooted in the belief that baptism is essential for salvation, and it provides an interesting way for billions who have died without the opportunity to receive the LDS gospel to accept or reject it in the afterlife again So that's interesting Seems a little complicated and messy for an omnipotent God, but whatever Also, maybe this all isn't even the full story. Many super credible obviously hatched by geniuses conspiracy theories claim The vault contains gold, secret artifacts, suppressed historical documents, and other hidden treasures Though none of that has ever been proven But They don't let non Mormons inside the ancient or the fucking hidden archives. So who knows what's in there Time suck, top five takeaways The nineteen ninety one Austin Yogurt shop murders have been sucked I' sorry I was a little all over the place in moments with this one Got back from Germany visiting my son Kyler with Lindsey Monroe. He's studying abroad over there and holy shit, Jet lag's been a little rough ten hour difference fucked me up U, justust the weirdest waves of just mental fox Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for helping making time suck. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cumms Thanks to Logan Keith, helping to publish this episode and designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions dot com and thank you to Sophie Evans for her initial research Also, thanks to the All seen eyes, continuing to moderate the culture of the Curious private Facebook page Mod squad, making sure your disiscord keeps running smooth And everybody over on the Time sucks sububredit and Bad Magic sububredit And now let's head over So this week's Time sucker updates Updates. Get your time sucker updates Starting off with Savvy Sack, Matthew Martin who send in a message to Bo Jjangles of Timeesuckpodcast. com with the subject line of Hanlin's Razor slash suggestions Hey Dan This isatt, longime listener, firstirst timee caller I was just writing about the Nova Sotia massacre and how at the end it was suggested that since the mounties fucked up so badly, there might have been some nefarious cover up going on about motorcycle gangs smuggling or whatever while this was initially very intrigue I had to catch myself because this is about as perfect an instance of Hanlin's raazor as you can find Never attribute to malice which is adequately explained by stupidity, it says So while it seems like since the cops did such a colossal blunder here there just had to be a greater conspiracy afoot. but really It's just that they were actually that bad. I think this is true of a lot of conspiracy theories. The incompetence is so galling that there has to be a secret reason The idiots of the internet would be wise to realize that no one knows what's going on and those in the upper echelons are also utterly clueless Thanks for reading. W wouldn't change a thing. B match Nat yes Uh I don't think that I've ever heard of Hanlon's Rzor before, but I have talked about that exact concept numerous times with friends Yeah, a lot of people are just not great at their jobs All of us have bad days at our jobs and make mistakes And sometimes a lot of people have the same bad day And collectively B big fuck up a curse. This makes total sense for most conspiracies. And I also apply that logic to people driving a bunch. Right When somebody is, you know, been riding my ass in years past, I generally interpret it interpreted that as aggression, right them being an asshole that they intentionally just wanted to get too close to my bumper to get me to move over to fuck with me U orr that they just, you know, always drove like an asshole just because they always were an asshole. But that is not necessarily true. Some people just think that's the way you're supposed to drive I had to teach both of my kids to stop fucking doing that Both of them, when they first started driving, would just consistently be just right up on someone's ass and then be totally shocked. when they kept getting flipped off and yelled at. they were just completely clueless They did not realize, for whatever reason that that is often interpreted as being aggressive and rote In short They were just being stupid kids. And those Nova Sotia law enforcement officers could have just collectively just been being stupid in the days that followed that tragic shooting And some of them, perhaps, many of them actually were L is stupid all the time Hanlon's razor never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. I will try and remember that And thanks for two great topic suggestions as well Next up Dick Sucker Oscar Nagata temporarily redirected enough blood to his brain to send in a message with the subject line of I got penis enlargement surgery wrote, Haha JK Hello, Madman Dan, Ruler of the Suck Dungeon, sererv it to Bao Jjangles and father of the Kyler and the Monroe Hope I got their names right. you did Kenya and I'm listening to Time suuck almost every day since mid last year when I discored it. Well, thank you. This has been amazing. Naturally, I have a decade plus worth of content I want to write you about But I have enough discipline to write only about three topics today Well, not really topics First of all, I have sat in bars thinking, consulted scientists, and conducted experiments for months just to understand why the Queen of the Suck, Lindsay does not submit to you with zero luck That wasn' until I heard you say that you love pineapple on your pizza And then I understood everything. Scientists have written papers, plays have been played Songs have been saying And they explain that this is a characteristic of a pussy, not Gitalia Baking pineapples on bread, cheese, and meats combined have a very specific chemical reaction and only affects men causing them to lose control over their wives and daughters Change your pizza habit Hj it Pineapple and pizza is not bad Just just the worst kind of pizz Second, part of my writing is a little bit weird When I was in primary school, fourteen years old, I went to a boarding school where we had no access to electronics or any kind of porn The naughtiest thing I could find definition of sex in the dictionary and a biology textbook So naturally, my big brain decided to use what I had and what I could make Yes, I did jerk off to the dictionary I also made crude drawings of two people having sex and did my business. not my proudest moment The last thing is a confession and a suggestion I've been a naughty boy, who doesn't go peep in the potty for a while. I don't listen to most Time suucker updates. I realized in the newest episodes, that segment is at the end of the show compared to earlier ones where it was at the beginning That makes it easier for me to skip them immediately after the main part of the show. I haven't found the moment. you swch things up. and so I have no idea why you did it But I would love it if you brought them back to the front. I want to go peep in the poty again I love you and I hate you. Commons' law, and I'll continue sucking you hard until I finish PS, I heard you say that you're an idiot sometimes Please don't sell yourself short You're an iot all the time. Thank you, Oscar. Excellent misdirect at the end there. Fare, my friend addddressing your message in parts first Pineapples is made for pizza Have you had it with thin round ham slices? AKA what we call Canadian bacon around here The Hawaiian pizza, literally my favorite and both my kids favorite pizzas. Please meet with those scientists again and reconsider. Second, I fucking love that you literally jerked off to the actual dictionary definition of sex sexual activity, including specifically sexual intercourse Just saying that if you would like to jerk off again, but don't want to have to read it. Finally, the updates have stayed at the end of the show, specifically so people can skip them if they want to just hear the topic like you've been doing I felt and still feel that's the most conscientious choice. so if you're If if you want toar, you're going gonna have to exert more willpower More sef control. Don't skip them