1
00:00:41,083 --> 00:00:44,253
Yeah, this has really been
a long-standing nightmare

2
00:00:44,336 --> 00:00:45,379
for the Austin community,

3
00:00:45,462 --> 00:00:48,590
especially for individuals
who have lived with this

4
00:00:48,674 --> 00:00:50,634
for such a very long time, and...

5
00:01:11,446 --> 00:01:12,447
Good morning, everyone.

6
00:01:12,531 --> 00:01:15,784
Thank you to all of you
that are here with us this morning.

7
00:01:16,994 --> 00:01:22,708
Over three decades after a horrible crime
took the lives of four teenage girls,

8
00:01:22,791 --> 00:01:27,337
and changed Austin forever,
our hearts haven't healed.

9
00:01:28,005 --> 00:01:30,757
They're still broken
for the precious girls we lost.

10
00:01:32,092 --> 00:01:33,926
More than a quarter-century ago,

11
00:01:34,011 --> 00:01:37,139
in a circumstance
much like this today...

12
00:01:38,223 --> 00:01:41,310
I said that Austin lost its innocence

13
00:01:42,019 --> 00:01:44,938
the night those young souls
became victims.

14
00:01:47,482 --> 00:01:49,109
Time has passed.

15
00:01:50,068 --> 00:01:53,196
We are different people
and a different city.

16
00:01:55,574 --> 00:02:00,579
And while there's no change to the horror,
no diminishing the grief,

17
00:02:01,246 --> 00:02:05,083
we can finally express a deep sigh,

18
00:02:06,460 --> 00:02:09,463
a release that comes from knowing.

19
00:02:11,548 --> 00:02:15,010
Today, finally, we have an answer.

20
00:03:18,240 --> 00:03:20,701
I used to babysit this family
on this street,

21
00:03:20,784 --> 00:03:24,329
and I've always tried to remember
which house it is.

22
00:03:24,996 --> 00:03:28,125
And there's a street on the right side
called Sonora Street.

23
00:03:28,208 --> 00:03:30,252
I think we might have passed it already.

24
00:03:30,836 --> 00:03:33,839
I don't quite know this neighborhood
as well as I used to.

25
00:03:42,180 --> 00:03:45,934
When the detective
called me on Friday, I just...

26
00:03:46,017 --> 00:03:48,562
Within minutes,
I couldn't hear what he was saying.

27
00:03:49,103 --> 00:03:52,399
I need to, like, hear this again ten times

28
00:03:52,482 --> 00:03:55,527
before I know enough
to even ask a question.

29
00:03:58,196 --> 00:04:03,201
And I can just feel my mind racing.
I mean, it's only been three or four days

30
00:04:03,285 --> 00:04:04,953
since I've had
this new piece of information,

31
00:04:05,036 --> 00:04:06,705
so, I know this will settle.

32
00:04:06,788 --> 00:04:11,042
But right now, I just feel...
Yeah, I definitely don't feel my body.

33
00:04:14,045 --> 00:04:15,964
I thought it was always farther down.

34
00:04:22,763 --> 00:04:27,309
Yeah, I'm not really sure.
I remember there being a big tree, but...

35
00:04:30,479 --> 00:04:32,814
now I'm sort of disoriented.

36
00:04:34,483 --> 00:04:38,111
I thought there was a vase
that was sticking up. Okay.

37
00:04:47,412 --> 00:04:51,332
Yeah, that'd be good. Just a few minutes.
We can leave in a minute.

38
00:05:32,249 --> 00:05:34,709
They drove all the way from Austin
to tell us.

39
00:05:38,505 --> 00:05:39,965
I feel kind of numb in a way.

40
00:05:40,048 --> 00:05:43,051
I think it's 'cause
it's still so new to us.

41
00:05:46,346 --> 00:05:47,347
In one sentence,

42
00:05:47,430 --> 00:05:50,225
it went from 30-something years
of thinking one thing to...

43
00:05:51,017 --> 00:05:53,103
"No, it's totally something else."

44
00:05:54,771 --> 00:05:56,690
When they explained it to us,
I just felt bad,

45
00:05:56,773 --> 00:05:59,693
'cause they had already had to talk
to every other parent.

46
00:06:00,694 --> 00:06:03,738
It's a lot of people
to have to repeat this story to.

47
00:06:07,409 --> 00:06:09,494
He was looking at us and said,
"I've got some good news."

48
00:06:09,578 --> 00:06:11,788
And then there was a long pause.

49
00:06:13,081 --> 00:06:15,375
I'll never forget that. He said...

50
00:06:16,835 --> 00:06:18,461
"I know who killed your daughter."

51
00:06:44,362 --> 00:06:47,198
When I took the case over
in early June of 2022,

52
00:06:47,282 --> 00:06:49,993
we talked about the physical evidence,
how limited it was.

53
00:06:53,747 --> 00:06:57,876
One of the few things we had was
that .380 casing found in the floor drain.

54
00:07:01,338 --> 00:07:04,007
It had been uploaded
into the ATF's database,

55
00:07:04,090 --> 00:07:05,759
and it never got any hits.

56
00:07:07,844 --> 00:07:10,639
The lands and grooves told us
exactly what kind of gun it was.

57
00:07:11,890 --> 00:07:15,518
We put that on the wire coast-to-coast.

58
00:07:16,561 --> 00:07:18,855
We knew what we were looking for exactly.

59
00:07:20,857 --> 00:07:22,400
The system's called NIBIN,

60
00:07:22,484 --> 00:07:25,445
National Integrated Ballistics
Information Network.

61
00:07:26,404 --> 00:07:28,990
So, think of, like,
the national DNA database,

62
00:07:29,074 --> 00:07:31,910
but instead of DNA,
it's spent shell casings.

63
00:07:32,534 --> 00:07:34,162
The way the gun holds the casing,

64
00:07:34,245 --> 00:07:36,373
it creates
these microscopic little indentions,

65
00:07:36,456 --> 00:07:38,375
and then the software can compare those

66
00:07:38,457 --> 00:07:40,669
if the same gun was used
in different crimes.

67
00:07:41,419 --> 00:07:43,672
So, I thought,
"Well, you know, it's been a long time.

68
00:07:43,755 --> 00:07:45,674
I assume the data
is still in the database,

69
00:07:45,757 --> 00:07:46,758
but let me double check,

70
00:07:46,841 --> 00:07:48,802
and maybe there's something
we can do with it now."

71
00:07:50,345 --> 00:07:52,097
For whatever reason, I don't know why,

72
00:07:52,180 --> 00:07:53,932
something told me
to go down that rabbit hole.

73
00:07:57,477 --> 00:07:59,688
It had been uploaded at least twice.

74
00:08:00,188 --> 00:08:05,235
'97, and then again in '07,
and no matches.

75
00:08:06,277 --> 00:08:07,362
If it's been that long,

76
00:08:07,445 --> 00:08:09,823
the software now is light-years ahead
of what it was.

77
00:08:09,906 --> 00:08:11,866
It's like
three-dimensional type stuff now.

78
00:08:15,245 --> 00:08:18,748
So, July 2nd,
they went and pulled it from evidence.

79
00:08:18,832 --> 00:08:21,292
And that afternoon they called me,

80
00:08:21,918 --> 00:08:24,879
and I was actually...
just left town for vacation.

81
00:08:24,963 --> 00:08:27,090
And I was sitting on the beach
in Port Aransas,

82
00:08:27,590 --> 00:08:29,592
and they were like,
"Hey, are you sitting down?"

83
00:08:29,676 --> 00:08:32,679
I was like, "Yeah, I'm sitting down
on the beach. What's up?"

84
00:08:32,761 --> 00:08:34,264
I was like, "Do I need a drink for this?"

85
00:08:34,347 --> 00:08:36,850
And he's like, "Yeah, you need to pour
yourself a drink. We got a hit."

86
00:08:38,852 --> 00:08:43,481
To another unsolved homicide in 1998
in Lexington, Kentucky.

87
00:08:45,108 --> 00:08:47,986
This is 43-year-old Linda Rutledge.

88
00:08:48,069 --> 00:08:51,031
Police say on November 7th, 1998,

89
00:08:51,114 --> 00:08:53,700
they responded to help
the Lexington Fire Department

90
00:08:53,783 --> 00:08:54,951
with a fire at a business.

91
00:08:55,035 --> 00:08:58,663
When they got there, they found
a woman dead inside the back of the store,

92
00:08:58,747 --> 00:09:00,915
later confirmed to be Linda Rutledge.

93
00:09:00,999 --> 00:09:05,253
When they found Linda's body here
on 121 Malabu Drive,

94
00:09:05,336 --> 00:09:08,214
they found injuries
unrelated to the fire.

95
00:09:08,298 --> 00:09:10,800
We cover all the bases with any fire.
That's what we do.

96
00:09:10,884 --> 00:09:13,678
Anytime we find a body
where it's suspicious in nature.

97
00:09:13,762 --> 00:09:17,057
Ms. Rutledge's death
had since been ruled a homicide.

98
00:09:17,140 --> 00:09:20,477
No suspect or suspects
have ever been found.

99
00:09:20,977 --> 00:09:24,439
This woman had been killed
in a strip mall in a retail space,

100
00:09:24,522 --> 00:09:26,483
her parents' hearing aid store.

101
00:09:27,817 --> 00:09:29,861
She would use the hearing aid store
after hours to go change.

102
00:09:29,944 --> 00:09:32,197
I think she'd been bartending,
and she was gonna go change clothes,

103
00:09:32,280 --> 00:09:33,364
and go out with friends.

104
00:09:33,448 --> 00:09:36,326
So, she stopped there,
and never made it to the bar.

105
00:09:37,494 --> 00:09:41,706
Later that night or early next morning,
somebody was driving by and saw the fire.

106
00:09:41,790 --> 00:09:44,751
Just like yogurt shop,
the fire department put the fire out,

107
00:09:44,834 --> 00:09:51,049
and found her body... in the back.
She had been shot in the head with a .380.

108
00:09:52,842 --> 00:09:55,261
Just like yogurt shop,
she had been sexually assaulted.

109
00:09:55,345 --> 00:09:56,971
Front door's locked from the inside,

110
00:09:57,055 --> 00:09:58,848
and so, obviously,
probably went out the back door,

111
00:09:58,932 --> 00:10:00,809
which, if you look at the back door
of that strip mall,

112
00:10:00,892 --> 00:10:03,311
it looks just like yogurt shop.
It's like an alley.

113
00:10:03,937 --> 00:10:05,438
Probably most strip malls look the same.

114
00:10:07,315 --> 00:10:10,193
I got back from vacation,
met with Lexington PD.

115
00:10:10,276 --> 00:10:12,195
Tried to find any sort of common link.

116
00:10:13,446 --> 00:10:16,199
Their casing had only been uploaded
in 2024,

117
00:10:16,282 --> 00:10:17,617
so, a year ago.

118
00:10:20,161 --> 00:10:21,162
At the end of the week,

119
00:10:21,246 --> 00:10:22,747
we didn't really have
any other connection.

120
00:10:29,504 --> 00:10:32,257
You know, Lexington wasn't anything
in our radar for our case,

121
00:10:32,340 --> 00:10:34,425
and they didn't have
any Texas connections.

122
00:10:35,677 --> 00:10:38,638
Same gun, seven years later, similar MO.

123
00:10:47,647 --> 00:10:50,066
We collaborated on a testing strategy.

124
00:10:51,067 --> 00:10:53,736
One of the things they had
was a sexual assault kit.

125
00:11:02,871 --> 00:11:06,332
So, we don't have a DNA profile
that would be good enough for CODIS.

126
00:11:07,834 --> 00:11:10,295
CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System,

127
00:11:10,378 --> 00:11:13,590
so, it's a national database
held by the FBI.

128
00:11:18,761 --> 00:11:22,473
The CODIS program has had
many success stories since it began.

129
00:11:22,557 --> 00:11:24,434
As the database increases,

130
00:11:24,517 --> 00:11:26,811
so does the number of solved crimes.

131
00:11:27,478 --> 00:11:30,356
You have to have a certain amount of DNA.
It has to be a certain quality.

132
00:11:30,440 --> 00:11:31,816
You gotta have like a full...

133
00:11:31,900 --> 00:11:34,402
what's called a full CODIS profile
to get it uploaded.

134
00:11:35,403 --> 00:11:38,740
Partial or degraded profiles
would get false positives.

135
00:11:40,950 --> 00:11:42,660
I said, "Well, we don't have
a CODIS profile."

136
00:11:42,744 --> 00:11:44,495
"All we have is our Y-STR."

137
00:11:45,747 --> 00:11:47,040
"Do y'all have a Y-STR?"

138
00:11:47,123 --> 00:11:48,917
And said, "No, they don't have one
for this case."

139
00:11:50,126 --> 00:11:53,880
The prosecution asked for a delay
to sift through recent DNA evidence.

140
00:11:53,963 --> 00:11:57,717
A Y-STR profile,
it doesn't match any of your defendants.

141
00:12:02,513 --> 00:12:06,309
There is no database
for this particular type of profile.

142
00:12:06,392 --> 00:12:10,355
This is a Y-only profile.
And there's no database for that.

143
00:12:11,105 --> 00:12:15,485
Y-STR profiles, the male chromosome DNA
that those tests look for.

144
00:12:15,568 --> 00:12:17,528
There's not an automated
searchable database.

145
00:12:17,612 --> 00:12:20,073
It's not like you can just upload it
and search continuously...

146
00:12:20,949 --> 00:12:22,909
because the nature
of a "Y" profile is that

147
00:12:22,992 --> 00:12:24,911
they're not unique to an individual.

148
00:12:24,994 --> 00:12:28,581
So, you would get hits
that are totally unrelated to your case.

149
00:12:30,333 --> 00:12:32,835
What you can do is a manual search.

150
00:12:32,919 --> 00:12:35,630
Take the profile I have,
and physically sit down,

151
00:12:35,713 --> 00:12:39,342
and type it in against other "Y" profiles
in other cases in your state.

152
00:12:41,177 --> 00:12:43,012
So, if this guy is from Kentucky,

153
00:12:43,096 --> 00:12:46,224
you can see if anything matches up
with a known offender there.

154
00:12:47,475 --> 00:12:48,476
That's when I was like,

155
00:12:48,559 --> 00:12:50,436
"Well, why don't we just do that
for the whole country?"

156
00:12:51,062 --> 00:12:54,649
Not all labs collect these "Y" profiles,
but more and more are starting to.

157
00:12:55,566 --> 00:12:56,901
We asked everybody around the country,

158
00:12:56,985 --> 00:13:00,655
and everybody came back with nothing
except South Carolina.

159
00:13:02,490 --> 00:13:05,702
They got a hit. We got 27 for 27 markers.

160
00:13:06,661 --> 00:13:09,122
A "Y" profile
from a sexual assault and homicide

161
00:13:09,205 --> 00:13:11,874
out of Greenville, South Carolina,
from 1990.

162
00:13:17,672 --> 00:13:19,340
They said they wanted to review it.

163
00:13:19,882 --> 00:13:22,760
We gotta do some quality assurance,
make sure we typed it in all correctly,

164
00:13:22,844 --> 00:13:25,054
'cause it's a...
you know, it's human error.

165
00:13:25,138 --> 00:13:27,473
We think because we were
the first people to ever ask.

166
00:13:27,557 --> 00:13:29,350
They had never gotten a request before.

167
00:13:31,311 --> 00:13:33,521
They had to make sure that this could be
a candidate for our crime

168
00:13:33,604 --> 00:13:35,106
before releasing more information.

169
00:13:35,982 --> 00:13:37,108
I said, "Okay, no problem."

170
00:13:37,191 --> 00:13:39,861
So, that was like
a really long two weeks to wait.

171
00:13:41,571 --> 00:13:44,699
When I talked to the detective there,
he didn't know anything about our case.

172
00:13:44,782 --> 00:13:46,826
And I said something about,
"Well, our quadruple..."

173
00:13:46,909 --> 00:13:48,828
And he was like, "Quadruple? Like, what?"

174
00:13:51,331 --> 00:13:52,373
"Yeah, you can look it up."

175
00:13:52,498 --> 00:13:54,584
I was like, "There's actually
a documentary airing right now."

176
00:13:54,667 --> 00:13:58,212
'Cause this is right when...
I think it was... episode three was out.

177
00:13:59,380 --> 00:14:01,174
So, I was like,
"If you wanna get caught up to speed,

178
00:14:01,257 --> 00:14:03,634
there's a really good documentary.
It's on HBO. I'm in episode four."

179
00:14:06,304 --> 00:14:08,056
And then he said,
"Let me ask you something.

180
00:14:08,139 --> 00:14:09,974
Were your victims tied up
with their own clothing?"

181
00:14:11,184 --> 00:14:13,311
And I said, "Yeah."
And he goes, "Yeah, ours too."

182
00:14:13,394 --> 00:14:16,147
They used some of her pantyhose,
I believe.

183
00:14:21,027 --> 00:14:24,197
And that's when I was like,
"All right, we're onto something here."

184
00:14:26,616 --> 00:14:28,326
They sent me a report saying,

185
00:14:28,409 --> 00:14:30,745
"This is an affirmative link
to Greenville, South Carolina,

186
00:14:30,828 --> 00:14:31,996
sexual assault and homicide."

187
00:14:32,080 --> 00:14:33,915
"Here's the case number
and the date of offense."

188
00:14:34,415 --> 00:14:36,334
So, I Googled the date,
and "Greenville, South Carolina,"

189
00:14:36,417 --> 00:14:38,086
and of course,
this murder pops up on Google.

190
00:14:38,169 --> 00:14:40,671
A woman was found murdered
in Greenville County.

191
00:14:40,755 --> 00:14:44,926
She's Jenny Zitricki, strangled and raped
inside her own apartment.

192
00:14:45,009 --> 00:14:48,012
Found dead in a bathtub,
the water still running.

193
00:14:48,096 --> 00:14:50,473
A violent serial rapist and murderer.

194
00:14:52,642 --> 00:14:53,768
So, that manual search,

195
00:14:53,851 --> 00:14:56,187
turns out not only had
no one ever asked before,

196
00:14:56,270 --> 00:14:57,980
they got a hit to a serial killer.

197
00:14:58,064 --> 00:15:00,483
Investigators across multiple states
are working to see

198
00:15:00,566 --> 00:15:03,027
if the killer may be connected
to other cases.

199
00:15:03,111 --> 00:15:05,696
So, again, you gotta understand

200
00:15:05,780 --> 00:15:08,783
thousands of men
may have this matching "Y" profile.

201
00:15:08,866 --> 00:15:12,078
So, you know, for our case,
we can't just say this guy did it.

202
00:15:12,161 --> 00:15:13,663
But I started looking into it.

203
00:15:13,746 --> 00:15:15,957
I got in contact
with the Missouri State Police,

204
00:15:16,040 --> 00:15:17,667
who had worked on another connected case,

205
00:15:17,750 --> 00:15:20,420
a double murder
from, I think it was March of '98,

206
00:15:20,503 --> 00:15:23,005
a double homicide in New Madrid.

207
00:15:23,089 --> 00:15:25,967
It's not Muh-drid. It's Mah-drid?
I always say it wrong.

208
00:15:26,676 --> 00:15:29,637
Sherry and Megan Scherer,
mother and daughter.

209
00:15:30,304 --> 00:15:34,100
The husband and son had just left
to go into town and do something,

210
00:15:34,183 --> 00:15:36,185
and they came back 30, 40 minutes later.

211
00:15:36,269 --> 00:15:39,564
I don't know how he got in, we don't know,
because... he murdered both of them.

212
00:15:40,565 --> 00:15:43,109
And sexually assaulted Megan,
the 12-year-old.

213
00:15:44,986 --> 00:15:47,071
Two hours
after he does that double murder,

214
00:15:47,155 --> 00:15:50,283
he does an attempted home invasion
in Dyersburg, Tennessee,

215
00:15:50,366 --> 00:15:52,994
which is only like 40 miles away.
Same guy.

216
00:15:53,077 --> 00:15:55,580
He tries to force his way
into the home of a woman.

217
00:15:55,663 --> 00:15:56,873
She's able to, like, keep him out,

218
00:15:56,956 --> 00:16:00,084
but he does shoot through the door,
and puts a bullet in her arm.

219
00:16:00,168 --> 00:16:02,962
The same gun used
in the Scherer murders in Missouri.

220
00:16:04,338 --> 00:16:06,632
So, he goes, "I've got
an entire case file on this guy."

221
00:16:06,716 --> 00:16:09,886
"I put everything together because I knew
someday somebody else would be calling."

222
00:16:18,186 --> 00:16:19,937
It's hard to get your hopes up
in this case,

223
00:16:20,021 --> 00:16:23,107
because there's been so many letdowns
at every turn.

224
00:16:25,568 --> 00:16:27,695
You think this case is gonna go
a certain way,

225
00:16:27,778 --> 00:16:29,655
and you follow that rabbit hole,

226
00:16:29,739 --> 00:16:31,741
and you're way off topic
of where you started.

227
00:16:33,075 --> 00:16:37,330
So, you've just gotta take a step back,
take it all in objectively.

228
00:16:40,750 --> 00:16:43,419
It's a lot to ask people
to still be interested

229
00:16:43,503 --> 00:16:45,254
in a 34-year-old case.

230
00:16:47,507 --> 00:16:51,469
I have a friend, one of the first people
I called that morning after the murders.

231
00:16:52,261 --> 00:16:57,600
She and her friend go to the yogurt store
about every anniversary since it happened.

232
00:16:57,683 --> 00:17:00,978
For 34 years, they're there.
I quit going years ago.

233
00:17:01,062 --> 00:17:03,064
I was like, "It's too much for me.
I think y'all are nuts."

234
00:17:03,147 --> 00:17:04,482
But anyway, they do that.

235
00:17:04,565 --> 00:17:06,442
And she said
there was a big crowd this year,

236
00:17:06,526 --> 00:17:07,652
bigger than normal.

237
00:17:09,987 --> 00:17:11,155
And I so appreciate...

238
00:17:11,239 --> 00:17:14,534
I do not want anyone to think
that I don't appreciate.

239
00:17:14,617 --> 00:17:17,869
It's part of my healing,
it's because of the love they've given me.

240
00:17:19,829 --> 00:17:23,626
But it's not just us.
The community needs to heal.

241
00:17:23,709 --> 00:17:25,127
They need to get past that.

242
00:17:35,429 --> 00:17:39,725
'91, I was in graduate school,
and I was in need of some money,

243
00:17:39,809 --> 00:17:43,020
and I contacted a friend
about doing some reclamation work,

244
00:17:43,104 --> 00:17:44,647
which is what the company did.

245
00:17:45,314 --> 00:17:49,318
I got a call from him on December 7th...

246
00:17:50,611 --> 00:17:53,239
and he asked me
to meet him here at the...

247
00:17:53,948 --> 00:17:55,241
yogurt shop site.

248
00:17:58,411 --> 00:18:02,915
And explained to me that
he was going to be overseeing

249
00:18:02,999 --> 00:18:05,084
the reclamation of property here,

250
00:18:05,167 --> 00:18:07,753
and also the clearing out
of the yogurt shop,

251
00:18:07,837 --> 00:18:10,172
which included tearing off
all the sheetrock,

252
00:18:10,256 --> 00:18:12,300
and stripping the store completely.

253
00:18:20,433 --> 00:18:23,561
Having a connection
to a couple of the girls,

254
00:18:23,644 --> 00:18:26,022
to-- a sense of connection
to the neighborhood...

255
00:18:27,982 --> 00:18:30,318
I decided I could go ahead and do that.

256
00:18:32,820 --> 00:18:36,365
And one thing I stipulated to the people
who were going to work there was that

257
00:18:36,449 --> 00:18:38,701
there was going to be no joking,

258
00:18:40,036 --> 00:18:41,579
no foul language.

259
00:18:42,913 --> 00:18:44,999
There's enough noise
tearing the place down.

260
00:18:45,082 --> 00:18:47,335
There's no need for us to add to it.

261
00:18:50,254 --> 00:18:51,547
And it was hard work,

262
00:18:51,631 --> 00:18:53,758
because it wasn't just a store
that had burned,

263
00:18:53,841 --> 00:18:57,178
it was a place of tragic death...

264
00:18:59,764 --> 00:19:03,309
which made the work slow
in some respects, and...

265
00:19:05,186 --> 00:19:08,272
encouraged us to bring a lot of respect
to doing that work.

266
00:19:10,483 --> 00:19:13,694
And it's a connection to this
that I had not anticipated...

267
00:19:16,405 --> 00:19:17,948
but one I stepped into.

268
00:19:20,743 --> 00:19:22,161
And in the end, not reluctantly,

269
00:19:22,244 --> 00:19:26,123
I almost felt like there was something
to be done here that was out of honor.

270
00:19:28,668 --> 00:19:30,503
That it not just be some random...

271
00:19:31,420 --> 00:19:34,674
demo crew come in
to do the work thoughtlessly,

272
00:19:35,174 --> 00:19:37,426
but it be done with, again, respect.

273
00:19:40,471 --> 00:19:41,472
And...

274
00:19:42,848 --> 00:19:46,018
it was a very profound experience.
Regrettable but profound.

275
00:20:03,411 --> 00:20:06,914
So, I'll back up a little bit
and explain how this guy gets identified.

276
00:20:07,415 --> 00:20:10,209
Back in the '90s,
he was always moving around.

277
00:20:10,292 --> 00:20:12,545
He's not in CODIS,
'cause his felonies were

278
00:20:12,628 --> 00:20:14,588
when they weren't collecting DNA
back then.

279
00:20:15,131 --> 00:20:17,925
So, he's just running around
committing sexual assault and murders,

280
00:20:18,008 --> 00:20:19,593
and he's an unknown offender.

281
00:20:21,679 --> 00:20:26,183
In the mid-2000s, agencies start putting
their old crimes into CODIS,

282
00:20:26,267 --> 00:20:27,435
and they all start linking up

283
00:20:28,018 --> 00:20:31,689
to one unknown,
prolific killer and rapist,

284
00:20:31,772 --> 00:20:33,399
but they still don't know who it is.

285
00:20:35,985 --> 00:20:38,904
So, you've got
this 1990 in South Carolina,

286
00:20:38,988 --> 00:20:43,659
pops to the double in Missouri,
which links with ballistics to Tennessee.

287
00:20:44,702 --> 00:20:47,955
And then '97, Memphis,
that DNA goes into CODIS.

288
00:20:48,873 --> 00:20:51,500
In the Memphis case,
he forces entry into a home.

289
00:20:51,584 --> 00:20:52,626
There's four women.

290
00:20:53,127 --> 00:20:55,504
The women had just gotten home.
They just came in through the door.

291
00:20:55,588 --> 00:20:57,006
So, he saw an opportunity.

292
00:20:58,758 --> 00:21:00,634
Police say the man knocked on a door

293
00:21:00,718 --> 00:21:03,262
with four women
and a nine-month-old baby inside.

294
00:21:03,345 --> 00:21:05,848
He asked for help
in finding his wife's purse,

295
00:21:05,931 --> 00:21:09,477
used a gun to force his way inside,
then cut the phone lines.

296
00:21:09,560 --> 00:21:11,896
He's able to tie
all four of them up... alone.

297
00:21:12,521 --> 00:21:14,899
This was a key element
in the rapist's attack.

298
00:21:14,982 --> 00:21:17,943
He used duct tape
to tie up the people in the house,

299
00:21:18,027 --> 00:21:21,989
then he raped his youngest victim,
a 14-year-old girl.

300
00:21:23,157 --> 00:21:27,661
They all lived. He let them all live.
I... I don't know why.

301
00:21:29,580 --> 00:21:30,915
They put out a sketch.

302
00:21:31,582 --> 00:21:33,125
But, you know,
think about... this is the '90s.

303
00:21:33,209 --> 00:21:34,960
There's no cell phone tower data.

304
00:21:35,044 --> 00:21:37,421
There's no security cameras,
no license plate readers.

305
00:21:37,505 --> 00:21:40,674
There's no 24/7 social media coverage
like there is now.

306
00:21:41,175 --> 00:21:42,968
If it was easy,
these cases would be solved.

307
00:21:43,052 --> 00:21:46,138
But between 2006 and 2017, they went cold.

308
00:21:48,974 --> 00:21:51,977
This is Jenny Zitricki's actual diary.

309
00:21:52,061 --> 00:21:55,147
Names, places,
lots of things that she was doing.

310
00:21:55,231 --> 00:21:59,109
Until it ends right here, the 4th.
That's when she was murdered.

311
00:21:59,193 --> 00:22:01,821
And who knows
if one of the names in this diary

312
00:22:01,904 --> 00:22:03,364
had anything to do with it.

313
00:22:03,447 --> 00:22:05,825
This is the mirror
that was hanging over Jenny's dresser.

314
00:22:05,908 --> 00:22:08,828
The killer left a message on it.
"Don't 'F' with my family."

315
00:22:08,911 --> 00:22:10,538
It was a personal message to her.

316
00:22:10,621 --> 00:22:12,498
So, you think
it's somebody she might know.

317
00:22:12,581 --> 00:22:15,251
And you're saying, "Keep an open mind,
this could be a red herring

318
00:22:15,334 --> 00:22:16,961
-to throw cops off."
-That's right.

319
00:22:17,586 --> 00:22:21,257
And so, 2018,
this is right at the advent

320
00:22:21,340 --> 00:22:24,677
-of genetic genealogy.
-An alleged serial killer tracked down

321
00:22:24,760 --> 00:22:26,720
through a genealogy database.

322
00:22:26,804 --> 00:22:29,306
The Golden State Killer was solved with it
like a year before.

323
00:22:29,390 --> 00:22:30,432
So, that's a brand new thing.

324
00:22:30,516 --> 00:22:33,978
Investigators used
publicly shared DNA data to track down

325
00:22:34,061 --> 00:22:35,980
the suspected Golden State Killer.

326
00:22:36,063 --> 00:22:38,858
...using DNA from crime scenes
decades ago,

327
00:22:38,941 --> 00:22:42,027
which they submitted
to a publicly shared genealogy website

328
00:22:42,111 --> 00:22:43,445
called GEDmatch.

329
00:22:43,529 --> 00:22:46,031
Allegedly responsible
for 12 murders, 50 rapes,

330
00:22:46,115 --> 00:22:48,325
and more than 100 burglaries
in California.

331
00:22:48,409 --> 00:22:51,287
The guys from Missouri,
Tennessee, and South Carolina

332
00:22:51,370 --> 00:22:53,914
said, "We have enough DNA,
maybe we can do that."

333
00:22:53,998 --> 00:22:57,209
-And they reached out to Parabon Labs.
-So, I'm gonna build these trees

334
00:22:57,293 --> 00:22:59,712
back to great-grandparents.

335
00:22:59,920 --> 00:23:03,257
They developed a genealogical profile
to get some distant relatives.

336
00:23:03,757 --> 00:23:06,343
And then that's when you start
building out those family trees,

337
00:23:06,427 --> 00:23:07,845
and seeing where they converge.

338
00:23:08,804 --> 00:23:10,723
And that's your potential suspect.

339
00:23:13,893 --> 00:23:15,394
This was kind of the start of it all.

340
00:23:15,477 --> 00:23:20,274
This was what opened... the door
for the rest of these cases in 2018.

341
00:23:21,567 --> 00:23:24,904
Instead of an exact match
like they're looking for in CODIS,

342
00:23:24,987 --> 00:23:26,655
we are looking for relatives.

343
00:23:26,739 --> 00:23:28,949
And usually
they're very distant relatives.

344
00:23:29,617 --> 00:23:31,285
Partial matches.

345
00:23:31,368 --> 00:23:34,914
These are the potential contributor
of this DNA.

346
00:23:36,206 --> 00:23:39,501
When I researched
one of these potential matches,

347
00:23:39,585 --> 00:23:41,754
I found this article.

348
00:23:42,963 --> 00:23:46,717
This guy was convicted
of attempted murder and rape

349
00:23:46,800 --> 00:23:49,178
in 1985 in Florida.

350
00:23:49,929 --> 00:23:53,557
He immediately jumped out at me.
So, I dug more deeply.

351
00:23:53,641 --> 00:23:56,268
I found his daughter's Facebook page.

352
00:23:56,769 --> 00:24:02,232
I saw a man in the picture
who looked so similar to those sketches.

353
00:24:03,150 --> 00:24:05,444
And not only did it look like him,

354
00:24:05,527 --> 00:24:09,156
but I thought he had the same hat
and the same glasses.

355
00:24:13,410 --> 00:24:17,289
So, this is a good candidate
because of his history.

356
00:24:18,791 --> 00:24:19,833
He was sentenced to 12 years,

357
00:24:19,917 --> 00:24:22,878
but he got paroled in '89.
So, he's out in '90.

358
00:24:23,837 --> 00:24:25,214
But he was deceased.

359
00:24:26,507 --> 00:24:27,883
And he was buried in Arkansas.

360
00:24:29,593 --> 00:24:32,471
And so, they got a judge's order,
and they dug him up...

361
00:24:34,765 --> 00:24:35,975
put it in to CODIS,

362
00:24:36,058 --> 00:24:38,644
and he was a perfect match
for all those crimes

363
00:24:38,727 --> 00:24:39,812
we just talked about.

364
00:24:39,895 --> 00:24:42,356
-...three-state serial rapist...
-...sexually assaulted a 14-year-old.

365
00:24:42,439 --> 00:24:44,692
Robert Eugene Brashers.

366
00:24:46,610 --> 00:24:52,241
The unknown DNA profile collected
from Jenny's body and from all the others

367
00:24:52,783 --> 00:24:54,827
belonged to the deceased subject,

368
00:24:54,910 --> 00:24:58,789
now confirmed
to be Robert Eugene Brashers,

369
00:24:58,872 --> 00:25:02,584
a 40-year-old man
from Paragould, Arkansas.

370
00:25:03,794 --> 00:25:06,213
All these cases were solved in 2018.

371
00:25:07,089 --> 00:25:08,173
Now, for our case,

372
00:25:08,257 --> 00:25:10,050
I get all this information
from these guys,

373
00:25:10,134 --> 00:25:12,094
and I'm like,
"All right, this is probably our guy."

374
00:25:12,177 --> 00:25:16,557
I mean, Robert Brashers
had the same Y-STR, at 27 for 27,

375
00:25:16,640 --> 00:25:19,309
with the same make and model gun
as in Kentucky.

376
00:25:19,393 --> 00:25:22,312
And he's a serial killer,
with very similar M.O. as the yogurt shop.

377
00:25:22,396 --> 00:25:26,692
Like, "All right, this is our guy,
but we're not 100 percent."

378
00:25:29,028 --> 00:25:33,615
What if this is as good as it gets?
How would I build, essentially...

379
00:25:33,699 --> 00:25:36,493
At the end of the day,
it's still a circumstantial case.

380
00:25:37,369 --> 00:25:39,830
We need to make sure
that we are 100 percent.

381
00:25:40,664 --> 00:25:42,249
Because somebody went to death row,

382
00:25:42,332 --> 00:25:45,544
and, you know, we're basically overturning
34 years of work...

383
00:25:47,004 --> 00:25:48,881
do we have enough to call it?

384
00:25:51,675 --> 00:25:54,011
At this time, I'd like to introduce
Detective Dan Jackson,

385
00:25:54,094 --> 00:25:55,596
the lead investigator of this case.

386
00:25:57,973 --> 00:26:00,267
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Daniel Jackson.

387
00:26:00,350 --> 00:26:04,521
I'm the lead detective, like she said,
and I've been on the case since 2022.

388
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:09,151
So, I'm gonna walk y'all through
how we got to where we are today.

389
00:26:09,234 --> 00:26:11,737
I'll start with a brief overview
of the history of the case,

390
00:26:11,820 --> 00:26:14,198
and take you back to December 6th, 1991.

391
00:26:16,825 --> 00:26:18,118
As you can see, it appears to be

392
00:26:18,202 --> 00:26:21,371
just your everyday middle America
retail space in a strip mall.

393
00:26:23,457 --> 00:26:25,584
The customers would be there in the front.

394
00:26:26,627 --> 00:26:29,088
And then in the back
is where the fire was started,

395
00:26:29,129 --> 00:26:30,923
and the girls bodies were discovered.

396
00:26:32,841 --> 00:26:34,968
Sarah, Eliza, and Jennifer were together,

397
00:26:35,052 --> 00:26:37,054
and Amy was a little bit closer
to the front.

398
00:26:38,222 --> 00:26:42,142
There was evidence of sexual assault.
All four had been shot in the head

399
00:26:42,226 --> 00:26:46,105
with a .22 caliber pistol.
And Amy was also shot with a .380 pistol.

400
00:26:46,730 --> 00:26:49,650
The original ballistics report said
that in all probability,

401
00:26:49,733 --> 00:26:53,695
the weapon used
was an AMT brand Backup model .380.

402
00:26:54,363 --> 00:26:58,575
That's an AMT semi-automatic .380,
and the model is a Backup model.

403
00:26:59,576 --> 00:27:02,830
There was one confession
from a juvenile named Maurice Pierce.

404
00:27:03,956 --> 00:27:05,499
Eight days after the murders,

405
00:27:05,582 --> 00:27:08,544
Pierce was at Northcross Mall
with his friend, named Forrest Welborn.

406
00:27:09,086 --> 00:27:11,672
He was carrying a .22 pistol
in his waistband.

407
00:27:11,755 --> 00:27:13,507
He was arrested
and taken to the homicide office,

408
00:27:13,590 --> 00:27:15,801
where he was interrogated
by Detective Hector Polanco.

409
00:27:20,472 --> 00:27:24,935
In 1999, Pierce, Forrest Welborn,
Robert Springsteen, and Michael Scott

410
00:27:25,018 --> 00:27:26,103
were re-interrogated.

411
00:27:26,687 --> 00:27:29,481
They were able to get confessions
from Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott.

412
00:27:34,027 --> 00:27:35,863
Michael Scott received
life without parole,

413
00:27:35,946 --> 00:27:38,073
and Robert Springsteen received
the death penalty.

414
00:27:38,157 --> 00:27:41,577
While they're appealing their conviction,
a landmark Supreme Court case comes out.

415
00:27:41,660 --> 00:27:45,330
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeal granted
a new trial for Springsteen and Scott.

416
00:27:45,414 --> 00:27:47,249
No comment right now, please.

417
00:27:47,332 --> 00:27:50,377
By this time, we had a new DNA technology
called Y-STR testing.

418
00:27:50,878 --> 00:27:53,922
All four of the original suspects
were excluded from this profile.

419
00:27:54,006 --> 00:27:56,133
-Welcome home, guys!
-The charges were dropped.

420
00:27:56,216 --> 00:27:57,509
Then over the next several years,

421
00:27:57,593 --> 00:27:59,469
hundreds of reference samples
were collected.

422
00:27:59,553 --> 00:28:02,306
First responders, family,
friends, associates.

423
00:28:02,389 --> 00:28:04,808
I think we tested
three or four hundred different people

424
00:28:04,892 --> 00:28:06,476
in this case over the years.

425
00:28:07,144 --> 00:28:09,771
Just recently, we reached out
to all labs in the country

426
00:28:09,855 --> 00:28:11,481
that do Y-STR typing,

427
00:28:11,565 --> 00:28:14,568
and asked if they could manually search
against our unknown profile.

428
00:28:15,110 --> 00:28:16,320
We got a hit.

429
00:28:16,403 --> 00:28:21,366
A sexual assault and murder from 1990
out of Greenville, South Carolina.

430
00:28:21,450 --> 00:28:25,245
This was the profile that they had.
"Robert Eugene Brashers."

431
00:28:31,168 --> 00:28:34,004
His Y-STR has been found
in the following three places.

432
00:28:34,463 --> 00:28:36,757
This is three sexual assault kits
of those young girls.

433
00:28:45,682 --> 00:28:48,101
It's hard to be 100 percent
with just a Y-STR.

434
00:28:48,602 --> 00:28:51,104
So, we're trying to figure out how to get
from, "We're pretty sure it's him"

435
00:28:51,188 --> 00:28:52,272
to, "We know it's him."

436
00:28:53,315 --> 00:28:54,483
We start researching Brashers,

437
00:28:54,566 --> 00:28:56,652
figure out what he's doing
around this time, where he's at.

438
00:28:56,735 --> 00:29:00,906
December 8th, 1991,
less than 48 hours after yogurt shop,

439
00:29:00,989 --> 00:29:03,617
Robert Brashers is stopped
at a Border Patrol checkpoint

440
00:29:03,700 --> 00:29:06,870
going westbound on I-10
between El Paso and Las Cruces.

441
00:29:07,704 --> 00:29:09,206
It was a random cold stop,

442
00:29:09,289 --> 00:29:11,083
just like any time you go
through a border checkpoint,

443
00:29:11,166 --> 00:29:13,210
except the Border Patrol agent
realized something was up.

444
00:29:13,293 --> 00:29:15,212
He didn't like the way
Mr. Brashers was answering,

445
00:29:15,295 --> 00:29:18,590
ran his plate, and it showed it
to be a stolen car out of Georgia.

446
00:29:18,674 --> 00:29:20,884
It was stolen on November 29th.

447
00:29:21,927 --> 00:29:22,928
During this interaction,

448
00:29:23,011 --> 00:29:24,888
he was also in possession
of a .380 pistol.

449
00:29:26,306 --> 00:29:29,685
That .380 pistol was an AMT Backup model.

450
00:29:30,602 --> 00:29:32,437
It was the same make and model
identified by ballistics

451
00:29:32,521 --> 00:29:34,106
as the weapon used in the yogurt shop.

452
00:29:35,607 --> 00:29:39,653
So, he was westbound leaving Texas
with an AMT .380 Backup model

453
00:29:39,736 --> 00:29:41,321
less than 48 hours later.

454
00:29:43,657 --> 00:29:46,743
So, we took additional items
to DNA Labs International.

455
00:29:46,827 --> 00:29:49,830
Now, these items
have been previously tested in years past.

456
00:29:49,913 --> 00:29:51,206
They were preserved.

457
00:29:51,290 --> 00:29:53,417
"Maybe someday
we could do something with this,

458
00:29:53,500 --> 00:29:56,086
but we can't today,
we'd just be wasting the DNA."

459
00:29:56,169 --> 00:29:59,464
We don't think we're ever gonna be able
to get enough DNA for a CODIS upload.

460
00:30:00,090 --> 00:30:03,218
Well, we don't necessarily need
to upload to search.

461
00:30:03,302 --> 00:30:05,095
We just need enough DNA to compare.

462
00:30:05,178 --> 00:30:07,639
So, we need enough STR markers
to do a direct comparison

463
00:30:07,723 --> 00:30:10,017
from our crime scene to Robert Brashers.

464
00:30:10,892 --> 00:30:12,269
And this was gonna be it.

465
00:30:12,352 --> 00:30:14,187
We were pushing all of our chips
on the table with this.

466
00:30:14,271 --> 00:30:15,689
This was gonna be the last-shot effort.

467
00:30:15,772 --> 00:30:18,442
But we were pretty confident
with the technology and the circumstances

468
00:30:18,525 --> 00:30:20,652
that this was gonna be pay dirt.

469
00:30:22,696 --> 00:30:25,574
One of the things we retested
was Amy's fingernail clippings

470
00:30:25,657 --> 00:30:26,700
from the autopsy.

471
00:30:27,451 --> 00:30:30,078
They were able to get quite a bit of DNA
out of Amy's fingernail clippings,

472
00:30:30,162 --> 00:30:32,789
and it was directly compared to Brashers,
and it matched,

473
00:30:32,873 --> 00:30:36,251
so that it's two-and-a-half million to one
that it's likely Robert Brashers

474
00:30:36,335 --> 00:30:39,421
underneath Amy's fingernails
than it is to an unknown individual.

475
00:30:42,174 --> 00:30:43,592
At this point,
there's no physical evidence

476
00:30:43,675 --> 00:30:45,802
that links Springsteen,
Scott, Pierce, or Welborn

477
00:30:45,886 --> 00:30:47,429
to the yogurt shop crime scene.

478
00:30:47,512 --> 00:30:49,473
There's no evidence
that connects the previous four suspects

479
00:30:49,556 --> 00:30:51,141
with Robert Eugene Brashers either.

480
00:30:51,224 --> 00:30:53,310
The surviving victims
of Brashers' violence

481
00:30:53,393 --> 00:30:55,645
always reported he was alone
when he acted.

482
00:30:55,729 --> 00:30:57,773
He never is known to have an accomplice.

483
00:30:59,941 --> 00:31:04,446
Now, I just wanna reiterate that
this is a combination of technology,

484
00:31:04,529 --> 00:31:07,032
good police work
from multiple agencies and cooperation,

485
00:31:07,115 --> 00:31:08,241
and timing.

486
00:31:08,325 --> 00:31:11,495
This is something that
could not have happened until 2025.

487
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:14,414
And I'm sorry that it took 34 years
for us to get here...

488
00:31:15,374 --> 00:31:19,795
but we're here now, and, you know...

489
00:31:21,380 --> 00:31:25,133
Amy's final moments on this Earth
were to solve this case for us.

490
00:31:25,217 --> 00:31:26,927
It's because of her fighting back.

491
00:31:27,511 --> 00:31:29,096
Thank you.

492
00:31:51,076 --> 00:31:55,914
Have we been able to explain
why Brashers was here in Austin?

493
00:31:55,997 --> 00:31:59,459
No, we don't know why he was in Austin.
We have found no connection.

494
00:31:59,543 --> 00:32:01,711
We're still searching for that answer.

495
00:32:01,795 --> 00:32:04,673
Just about how techniques and technology
has changed since then

496
00:32:04,756 --> 00:32:06,466
to make sure
we're not in a situation like this

497
00:32:06,550 --> 00:32:09,553
where four people
get wrongly accused early on,

498
00:32:09,636 --> 00:32:13,056
and then we find, you know,
a potential real suspect decades later.

499
00:32:13,140 --> 00:32:17,102
No cases are going to be closed
solely based off of confession.

500
00:32:17,185 --> 00:32:18,353
We need other evidence for that.

501
00:32:18,437 --> 00:32:21,314
And so that has changed,
and things have changed since then.

502
00:32:21,398 --> 00:32:24,234
I took the approach of,
"I'm not gonna listen to the confessions."

503
00:32:24,317 --> 00:32:27,821
I've never listened to them.
I've never read them, the transcripts.

504
00:32:27,904 --> 00:32:31,992
And the first time I heard any footage
from the confessions

505
00:32:32,075 --> 00:32:33,535
was the HBO documentary.

506
00:32:33,618 --> 00:32:38,081
Because my point of view is I don't know,
but I'll go where the evidence leads me.

507
00:32:39,749 --> 00:32:42,752
Are there likely
other cases like this in Texas?

508
00:32:42,836 --> 00:32:46,506
I mean, he's already been
in South Carolina, Tennessee, Missouri.

509
00:32:46,590 --> 00:32:49,301
Is it likely,
and are you looking for that?

510
00:32:49,384 --> 00:32:51,928
So, I would say it is likely
there are other victims out there,

511
00:32:52,012 --> 00:32:53,305
because of what we know of him,

512
00:32:53,388 --> 00:32:56,016
when he was not in prison,
he was committing heinous crimes.

513
00:32:56,099 --> 00:32:59,102
Last week, we knew of three murders.
This week, we know of eight.

514
00:32:59,186 --> 00:33:01,271
To say there's not a nine or ten,
I'm sure there are,

515
00:33:01,354 --> 00:33:02,856
and we will be working on that.

516
00:33:02,939 --> 00:33:04,983
Do you believe
that justice has been served,

517
00:33:05,066 --> 00:33:07,027
or there's still some more work to go?

518
00:33:18,747 --> 00:33:23,460
New analysis saying the .380 shell casing
found at the murder scene

519
00:33:23,543 --> 00:33:28,173
is a big part of this breakthrough.
It's linked to a gun that Brashers had

520
00:33:28,256 --> 00:33:30,133
after a chase with authorities
near El Paso.

521
00:33:30,842 --> 00:33:35,180
There is no DNA evidence that links any
of those original suspects to the murders.

522
00:33:35,263 --> 00:33:36,348
You're feeling pretty good

523
00:33:36,431 --> 00:33:41,269
-about putting that shirt back on.
-I did. I didn't get it out in 1999.

524
00:33:41,353 --> 00:33:43,813
-I heard the words I wanted to hear.
-You did?

525
00:33:44,439 --> 00:33:45,565
Yeah, that...

526
00:33:46,775 --> 00:33:49,319
the last four weren't involved.

527
00:33:49,861 --> 00:33:52,656
It ain't about the confessions,
it's about the evidence.

528
00:33:52,739 --> 00:33:55,158
But I lived to see this day.

529
00:33:57,285 --> 00:34:00,288
We are so happy that what we did there...

530
00:34:00,830 --> 00:34:03,166
-Yeah.
-...helped you guys, get you some answers.

531
00:34:03,250 --> 00:34:05,335
What we get coming out of this is

532
00:34:05,418 --> 00:34:09,130
just like when we solved our cases,
the team that came out of that,

533
00:34:09,214 --> 00:34:13,134
and now, Austin PD is part of that team.
So, when the next one comes up,

534
00:34:13,217 --> 00:34:15,136
-and I think there'll be a next one.
-Yes.

535
00:34:15,219 --> 00:34:16,221
-Yes, there will be.
-Good.

536
00:34:16,304 --> 00:34:19,431
And this team will carry forward,
and help those people.

537
00:34:19,516 --> 00:34:21,518
So, it just keeps building momentum.

538
00:34:22,768 --> 00:34:26,690
It's a strange feeling.
It's a certain sadness.

539
00:34:29,150 --> 00:34:32,445
The loss never goes away
for those families.

540
00:34:33,071 --> 00:34:35,156
You also need to now look at

541
00:34:35,239 --> 00:34:38,909
how does such a horrific
investigative failure occur?

542
00:34:39,953 --> 00:34:42,330
These families have suffered
because of that.

543
00:34:44,373 --> 00:34:48,168
My other thought is that
there's actually eight victims here.

544
00:34:48,878 --> 00:34:52,299
There's eight victims,
and another one of those lost his life,

545
00:34:52,382 --> 00:34:53,507
Maurice Pierce.

546
00:34:53,592 --> 00:34:57,053
You know, I just hope there's a day comes
when there's another press conference

547
00:34:57,137 --> 00:34:59,431
when they put the pictures
of those four boys,

548
00:34:59,931 --> 00:35:02,475
and explain
how they're gonna compensate them.

549
00:35:22,787 --> 00:35:26,374
There's not a whole lot
that's the same from 1991.

550
00:35:29,919 --> 00:35:32,130
Jeez, more condos.

551
00:35:35,425 --> 00:35:36,718
Everything's changed.

552
00:35:39,888 --> 00:35:41,014
Well, I feel like...

553
00:35:42,307 --> 00:35:45,268
all of us there
at the original crime scene and...

554
00:35:48,104 --> 00:35:49,814
our efforts were validated.

555
00:35:52,025 --> 00:35:57,989
We didn't process the scene
according to 2000 or 2010 standards.

556
00:35:58,073 --> 00:36:03,119
We processed it to 1991 standards,
and went beyond that.

557
00:36:03,787 --> 00:36:08,166
We did the best we could do
based on what we had in place then.

558
00:36:13,380 --> 00:36:16,132
Turns out, maybe we could have solved it

559
00:36:16,216 --> 00:36:20,136
if Border Patrol had read
the teletype we sent out.

560
00:36:20,887 --> 00:36:27,560
We said we were looking for a .22,
and an AMT .380 Backup.

561
00:36:28,478 --> 00:36:30,689
But it just wasn't meant to be, I guess.

562
00:36:40,073 --> 00:36:41,282
I went numb.

563
00:36:42,909 --> 00:36:43,993
It was shocking.

564
00:36:45,870 --> 00:36:47,247
A serial killer, really?

565
00:36:47,914 --> 00:36:48,915
It was...

566
00:36:50,792 --> 00:36:55,338
It was-- It's still a little hard
to realize. Pure evil.

567
00:36:58,383 --> 00:37:01,720
He went in there.
His concern was no money.

568
00:37:01,803 --> 00:37:05,014
He was not on drugs.
He was not on alcohol.

569
00:37:05,807 --> 00:37:09,310
He was in, more or less,
his right mind, and...

570
00:37:11,020 --> 00:37:12,522
he just liked to kill.

571
00:37:13,690 --> 00:37:16,776
I understood
a robbery going bad possibly,

572
00:37:16,860 --> 00:37:18,445
something like that,

573
00:37:18,528 --> 00:37:25,410
but for someone to go in with that mindset
is hard for me to accept...

574
00:37:26,077 --> 00:37:28,538
that we have people like that.

575
00:37:37,505 --> 00:37:40,383
On February the 19th,
the judge has set a hearing.

576
00:37:40,967 --> 00:37:45,722
We'll be filing a motion
that the state will join in

577
00:37:46,347 --> 00:37:48,725
to declare

578
00:37:48,808 --> 00:37:52,228
that he is actually innocent,
and that he is exonerated,

579
00:37:52,312 --> 00:37:56,608
and the judge will officially declare that
and sign an order reflecting all that.

580
00:37:58,151 --> 00:38:01,738
We will support that with evidence,

581
00:38:01,821 --> 00:38:04,574
making it very clear to the world
and for the record

582
00:38:04,657 --> 00:38:05,784
that they're innocent,

583
00:38:05,867 --> 00:38:09,037
and that that is true
not just beyond a reasonable doubt,

584
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:10,663
but to a moral certainty.

585
00:38:13,458 --> 00:38:17,420
I would like for it to be a part
of this hearing of what went wrong.

586
00:38:17,962 --> 00:38:19,547
An airplane crashes, you know,

587
00:38:19,631 --> 00:38:22,717
the FFA moves in
and does an extensive investigation.

588
00:38:22,801 --> 00:38:24,636
But I think this is analogous to that.

589
00:38:24,719 --> 00:38:29,057
This whole horrible,
tragic scenario, event...

590
00:38:29,974 --> 00:38:33,853
has been like a horrible airplane crash.

591
00:38:34,938 --> 00:38:39,609
There's a huge injustice here
that needs to be corrected.

592
00:38:44,864 --> 00:38:49,244
We met at Lamar Middle School.
We were 13 and 14.

593
00:38:50,328 --> 00:38:53,248
We dated, really, ever since.

594
00:38:56,751 --> 00:38:58,211
You know, we had her young.

595
00:38:59,963 --> 00:39:03,174
We got married when we were 21 and 22.

596
00:39:05,385 --> 00:39:08,012
Shortly after that,
that's when all of this happened.

597
00:39:08,096 --> 00:39:10,765
I was 23 and he was 24
when he got picked up.

598
00:39:12,725 --> 00:39:16,729
October 6th, 1999. They had SWAT there.

599
00:39:16,813 --> 00:39:19,274
I was basically in a nightgown
when I came out,

600
00:39:19,357 --> 00:39:20,817
'cause I heard all the commotion.

601
00:39:20,900 --> 00:39:23,403
After nearly eight years,
police have arrested four suspects.

602
00:39:23,486 --> 00:39:25,446
-It just didn't seem real.
-...Maurice Pierce...

603
00:39:25,530 --> 00:39:28,283
You really think that
if there's no evidence,

604
00:39:28,366 --> 00:39:29,826
this doesn't happen.

605
00:39:29,909 --> 00:39:32,453
-Pierce's wife didn't wanna talk.
-Tell me a little bit about your husband?

606
00:39:32,495 --> 00:39:34,247
-No comment. No comment.
-About your husband?

607
00:39:34,330 --> 00:39:37,041
-Their investigation has ended...
-I sent her to school.

608
00:39:37,125 --> 00:39:40,003
Her principal called me,
because the news showed up

609
00:39:40,086 --> 00:39:42,714
at her school, her elementary school.

610
00:39:42,797 --> 00:39:46,175
So, I knew then I needed
to not be sending her to school.

611
00:39:46,259 --> 00:39:49,470
And then everything changed.
I had to be available for court.

612
00:39:49,554 --> 00:39:51,514
I couldn't really work.

613
00:39:51,598 --> 00:39:53,266
We can hopefully finally begin...

614
00:39:53,349 --> 00:39:55,852
I really think that
he thought he would go,

615
00:39:55,935 --> 00:39:57,729
and they would let him out.

616
00:39:58,438 --> 00:40:01,691
He wouldn't be spending
three-and-a-half years in jail

617
00:40:01,774 --> 00:40:03,026
waiting on trial.

618
00:40:04,652 --> 00:40:07,739
They kept him
in solitary confinement for two years.

619
00:40:07,822 --> 00:40:11,951
So, he was out one hour a day,
and that's when he would call me.

620
00:40:12,035 --> 00:40:15,663
He didn't see sunlight
except for when he got to go to court.

621
00:40:16,706 --> 00:40:19,375
The light in his eyes went away.

622
00:40:19,459 --> 00:40:22,545
They changed colors,
and they didn't ever go back.

623
00:40:22,629 --> 00:40:25,214
They kind of were a dull gray to me.

624
00:40:25,298 --> 00:40:28,426
He used to have
really bright, pretty blue eyes.

625
00:40:28,509 --> 00:40:31,846
It was just not the same.
He was not the same.

626
00:40:32,680 --> 00:40:36,976
She lost her childhood at the age of seven
when her dad got picked up.

627
00:40:37,060 --> 00:40:39,270
Even she changed.

628
00:40:39,354 --> 00:40:40,688
Are you excited to see your daughter?

629
00:40:40,772 --> 00:40:43,191
When I was arrested,
I proclaimed that I was innocent

630
00:40:43,274 --> 00:40:45,068
of all the charges
that were filed against me,

631
00:40:45,151 --> 00:40:47,362
and I am standing here today
with that same proclamation.

632
00:40:47,445 --> 00:40:48,947
He didn't get to see this day.

633
00:40:49,030 --> 00:40:53,660
He didn't get to let the world know
that he was innocent all along.

634
00:40:54,285 --> 00:40:57,205
We do not have the evidence
to convict him right now,

635
00:40:57,288 --> 00:40:58,748
but life is long.

636
00:40:58,831 --> 00:41:01,000
In the news, it's like a blip,
"Oh, he was in for three years."

637
00:41:01,084 --> 00:41:06,089
But it was constant darkness,
and then he got out,

638
00:41:06,172 --> 00:41:09,801
and it was just a constant battle
of the cloud,

639
00:41:09,884 --> 00:41:11,344
and of overcoming, and...

640
00:41:11,928 --> 00:41:14,806
...ask for dismissal of the cases
pending further investigation.

641
00:41:21,604 --> 00:41:24,983
Our focus continues
on our suspects at hand.

642
00:41:25,066 --> 00:41:29,654
There is no question that these suspects
are still the focus of our investigation.

643
00:41:30,238 --> 00:41:33,574
To have to live with that,
I mean, that stayed on his record,

644
00:41:33,658 --> 00:41:37,578
pending further investigation
for four murders.

645
00:41:39,914 --> 00:41:45,461
I really feel like they went after him,
and just never let up.

646
00:41:47,630 --> 00:41:50,550
He was always very scared of the police.

647
00:41:51,050 --> 00:41:54,429
He thought they were always gonna get him
for these murders.

648
00:41:54,512 --> 00:41:56,556
And they did. In the end, they did.

649
00:41:56,639 --> 00:41:58,725
The officer managed to fire

650
00:41:58,808 --> 00:42:01,144
a single round
that did strike the suspect.

651
00:42:01,227 --> 00:42:05,606
It just doesn't feel like
it's real justice.

652
00:42:05,690 --> 00:42:09,944
And I wanna be respectful
to everybody, but...

653
00:42:10,987 --> 00:42:13,197
my dad will never come back.

654
00:42:14,282 --> 00:42:17,493
It's a little too late... for him.

655
00:42:27,211 --> 00:42:28,546
Look, there's Eliza.

656
00:42:28,588 --> 00:42:33,134
...seven seventy-five, all done.
Seven seventy-five, 375. Three-fifty...

657
00:42:33,217 --> 00:42:38,014
To me, FFA is a place... Well, it...

658
00:42:40,683 --> 00:42:43,853
Right now, I see her
on her little cutting horse stallion,

659
00:42:43,936 --> 00:42:44,979
cutting a cow...

660
00:42:45,938 --> 00:42:47,023
on a horse.

661
00:42:52,361 --> 00:42:54,739
Those girls are still with us.

662
00:42:56,616 --> 00:42:57,992
-Hi!
-Hi!

663
00:42:58,076 --> 00:42:59,118
Hi!

664
00:42:59,786 --> 00:43:05,416
My memories of them, they fade, you know.
They've been gone so long.

665
00:43:06,417 --> 00:43:08,252
But they'll always be little girls to me.

666
00:43:08,336 --> 00:43:11,547
I still laugh about things
that they said or did, and...

667
00:43:12,840 --> 00:43:13,841
they were funny.

668
00:43:27,271 --> 00:43:29,357
No, I'm not counting the days anymore.

669
00:43:30,441 --> 00:43:31,734
It's over.

670
00:43:42,036 --> 00:43:47,250
I don't know, it's...
I'm still in kind of a numb feeling.

671
00:43:47,333 --> 00:43:52,463
I think the certainty, just knowing,
does help me, yes.

672
00:43:54,549 --> 00:43:57,969
Even... There's evidence, hard evidence,

673
00:43:58,052 --> 00:44:02,306
where before we didn't have
all that hard evidence

674
00:44:02,390 --> 00:44:04,308
to work off of.

675
00:44:04,934 --> 00:44:09,272
And to me, that is a big factor, you know?

676
00:44:10,565 --> 00:44:11,649
It's the end.

677
00:44:12,900 --> 00:44:13,985
The end of wondering.

678
00:44:15,027 --> 00:44:18,364
Like, if you're walking around, like,
with your shoulders to your ears

679
00:44:18,447 --> 00:44:20,616
for 30 years, all of a sudden,
you get to relax.

680
00:44:20,700 --> 00:44:22,451
That's a different feeling.

681
00:44:22,535 --> 00:44:26,539
I guess the stress or the wonderment,
the "I don't know..."

682
00:44:27,290 --> 00:44:28,583
is no more.

683
00:44:29,333 --> 00:44:32,753
I was still in shock for a day or two,

684
00:44:32,837 --> 00:44:37,633
and it was probably a week later
that I finally dealt with the fact that

685
00:44:37,717 --> 00:44:41,762
my heart was opened up more,
and I didn't know it was closed.

686
00:44:41,846 --> 00:44:44,265
I thought I had done a really good job
of working through this,

687
00:44:44,348 --> 00:44:48,060
and getting through this,
but this changed my heart,

688
00:44:48,561 --> 00:44:49,562
and I...

689
00:44:50,563 --> 00:44:52,190
I can't tell you how grateful.

690
00:44:53,065 --> 00:44:54,942
Grateful. So much gratitude.

691
00:44:55,026 --> 00:44:57,528
I wasn't expecting
that at all from this co...

692
00:44:58,321 --> 00:44:59,447
But I got that.

693
00:45:00,698 --> 00:45:05,953
That's so good, such a good thing to get,
'cause so many people never get that.

694
00:45:07,038 --> 00:45:10,124
But we did. We got the closure.

695
00:45:10,208 --> 00:45:13,336
That terrible "closure" word
that nobody likes to use.

696
00:45:13,419 --> 00:45:17,131
And we got it. We got that. And...

697
00:45:18,633 --> 00:45:22,678
that's... My life is good.
My life is good.

698
00:45:27,141 --> 00:45:29,143
Every year, then I've gone out,

699
00:45:29,227 --> 00:45:30,770
and I've taken care
of the girls' headstones.

700
00:45:30,853 --> 00:45:34,565
I'm going to this year.
But I'm so at peace that I'm ready...

701
00:45:36,025 --> 00:45:39,528
I'm ready to go on with my life,
and have some fun,

702
00:45:40,029 --> 00:45:41,989
and do some things that I wanna do.

703
00:45:42,782 --> 00:45:46,285
And they're so at peace,
it just... I can just feel Amy...

704
00:45:47,536 --> 00:45:49,288
wanting me to do that.

705
00:45:49,372 --> 00:45:52,875
I may not take care of those grave sites
as much as I used to,

706
00:45:53,501 --> 00:45:55,544
because they're on their own now.

707
00:45:57,713 --> 00:45:59,298
And I feel they're at peace.

708
00:46:00,883 --> 00:46:05,179
I didn't know how angry I was.
And I realized, like, "Damn, I've been...

709
00:46:06,055 --> 00:46:09,308
I've been pissed for a long, long time,
and didn't realize it."

710
00:46:09,392 --> 00:46:11,310
I looked at my kids different,
looked at my wife different.

711
00:46:11,394 --> 00:46:14,939
Looked... Everything I looked at
was different.

712
00:46:15,022 --> 00:46:17,483
I guess I'm gonna have
to find something else to worry about.

713
00:46:18,859 --> 00:46:21,612
It's just... I just...

714
00:46:22,822 --> 00:46:24,156
You can breathe again...

715
00:46:25,074 --> 00:46:26,951
because we know the truth now.

716
00:46:35,418 --> 00:46:39,505
Because of the evidence, and we know.

717
00:46:42,591 --> 00:46:43,718
And we know.

718
00:46:51,434 --> 00:46:54,270
I don't understand it either,
to be honest.

719
00:46:57,940 --> 00:47:02,695
No. I mean... That's cold, isn't it?
No, I do that for my own self-protection.

720
00:47:02,778 --> 00:47:06,449
I don't wanna get involved
in the emotional trauma

721
00:47:06,532 --> 00:47:07,825
of what they went through.

722
00:47:07,908 --> 00:47:10,411
I've already been through a lot,
I don't wanna take that on.

723
00:47:10,494 --> 00:47:15,458
And I mean, that's a horrible thing.
What happened to them was horrible.

724
00:47:19,879 --> 00:47:21,213
No. They...

725
00:47:22,631 --> 00:47:25,426
They are not part of this case any longer.

726
00:47:26,344 --> 00:47:27,386
I don't go there.

727
00:47:27,887 --> 00:47:31,557
I mean, I know that
they suffered, you know?

728
00:47:32,058 --> 00:47:36,812
But my suffering
is totally different than theirs,

729
00:47:36,896 --> 00:47:41,108
and I have to deal with my pain, and...

730
00:47:43,277 --> 00:47:44,487
I really don't think about it.

731
00:47:44,570 --> 00:47:46,822
I mean, every now and then,
it's like, you know,

732
00:47:47,323 --> 00:47:48,616
kinda got a raw deal.

733
00:47:50,868 --> 00:47:56,290
But... two confessed and went to prison.
Two didn't confess, did not go to prison.

734
00:47:56,374 --> 00:47:58,584
So, in my mind, the two that did...

735
00:47:59,710 --> 00:48:00,920
they didn't help themselves.

736
00:48:01,003 --> 00:48:03,714
I don't know,
it's just I haven't got to them yet.

737
00:48:03,798 --> 00:48:05,383
When it all comes down, and...

738
00:48:06,801 --> 00:48:09,345
that it wasn't them,
and the courts say it wasn't them,

739
00:48:09,428 --> 00:48:11,472
and it's finalized...

740
00:48:12,390 --> 00:48:14,517
they didn't... Well, I can't say that.

741
00:48:15,684 --> 00:48:17,478
I was gonna say
they didn't put themselves there,

742
00:48:17,561 --> 00:48:18,604
but they kind of did.

743
00:48:28,531 --> 00:48:31,409
The original investigators...
Let's see, how'd they put it?

744
00:48:31,492 --> 00:48:33,869
Had some shortcomings in the case, yeah.

745
00:48:36,497 --> 00:48:39,291
We could have went and filed
any of those confessions we had.

746
00:48:39,875 --> 00:48:41,544
Got a warrant for arrest,

747
00:48:42,044 --> 00:48:44,672
and then worried about
making the case later.

748
00:48:44,755 --> 00:48:47,633
That didn't work out so well
for Paul and them.

749
00:48:51,303 --> 00:48:54,181
Same thing you always ask me.
"How you feeling right now?"

750
00:48:56,475 --> 00:48:59,854
"What would you like to say
to Maurice Pierce now?"

751
00:49:01,313 --> 00:49:02,481
Considering that...

752
00:49:03,482 --> 00:49:07,653
I think he made the statement
that he didn't really care

753
00:49:07,736 --> 00:49:09,196
whether he was dead or not.

754
00:49:11,323 --> 00:49:12,783
"What are your thoughts now?"

755
00:49:14,702 --> 00:49:18,873
Maurice may be dead,
but Robert Springsteen is still alive,

756
00:49:18,956 --> 00:49:23,127
and so is Michael Scott,
and... so is Forrest Welborn.

757
00:49:24,879 --> 00:49:27,965
"They're all still alive.
What would you like to say to them?"

758
00:49:28,883 --> 00:49:31,927
And maybe the jury found them guilty,

759
00:49:32,011 --> 00:49:34,972
because of the way
evidence was presented to them.

760
00:49:45,191 --> 00:49:47,109
So, I have three horses over here.

761
00:49:58,537 --> 00:50:00,664
They don't get a lot of attention.

762
00:50:05,377 --> 00:50:06,879
I don't really care too much

763
00:50:06,962 --> 00:50:10,132
about what the public thinks
about my investigation.

764
00:50:10,633 --> 00:50:11,634
A case like this,

765
00:50:11,717 --> 00:50:16,680
where somebody that we were not
investigating is matched to the crime,

766
00:50:18,516 --> 00:50:21,060
I would expect people
that are concerned...

767
00:50:22,311 --> 00:50:26,815
to question the previous investigation
that didn't point to this guy.

768
00:50:27,650 --> 00:50:30,361
But I did watch the press conference,

769
00:50:30,444 --> 00:50:36,867
and what they said at the press conference
seems to absolutely indicate

770
00:50:36,951 --> 00:50:41,330
this new guy was there and was involved.

771
00:50:41,413 --> 00:50:43,832
What I don't think it shows

772
00:50:43,916 --> 00:50:46,794
or anything that they said
at the press conference shows

773
00:50:46,877 --> 00:50:51,840
that other people, or maybe even the ones
that we filed on, were not there.

774
00:50:51,924 --> 00:50:53,133
Just because he was,

775
00:50:53,217 --> 00:50:58,222
I don't think that shows
that our guys or other guys were not.

776
00:51:03,018 --> 00:51:09,108
What kind of shocked me is that he said
he's never listened to the confessions.

777
00:51:14,154 --> 00:51:15,447
If he would listen to the confessions

778
00:51:15,531 --> 00:51:18,701
or read the investigations
that had to do with the confessions,

779
00:51:18,784 --> 00:51:21,287
there would be things
that could not be explained

780
00:51:21,370 --> 00:51:24,832
by our guys not having been there.

781
00:51:34,008 --> 00:51:36,927
Nobody says that exactly.

782
00:51:37,011 --> 00:51:41,098
The only thing we could figure out

783
00:51:41,682 --> 00:51:48,105
is that the person
that they're not identifying

784
00:51:48,188 --> 00:51:53,986
was so bad and scary
that they would rather not.

785
00:51:57,364 --> 00:51:58,699
And... Very likely.

786
00:51:59,241 --> 00:52:02,202
That kind of person
might scare these little teenagers.

787
00:52:04,997 --> 00:52:08,459
If they all had something to do
with going into the yogurt shop

788
00:52:08,542 --> 00:52:12,838
and they're scared of him
to point the finger at him or,

789
00:52:12,921 --> 00:52:16,216
"Okay, I'm not going to point the finger
at him, I'll point the finger at Forrest.

790
00:52:16,300 --> 00:52:17,593
He doesn't scare anybody."

791
00:52:43,494 --> 00:52:49,541
It's like an old Austin
kind of feel to me.

792
00:52:50,250 --> 00:52:53,212
You know, I know that there's a lot
of country music getting played,

793
00:52:53,295 --> 00:52:57,216
but that's not all that gets played.
It just... I don't know,

794
00:52:57,299 --> 00:53:00,678
it just reminds me
of the old days, sort of.

795
00:53:02,596 --> 00:53:07,434
This is chile rellenos with chicken.

796
00:53:08,519 --> 00:53:12,356
And this is vegetable with pasta.

797
00:53:12,439 --> 00:53:15,275
But this was a repeat request.

798
00:53:23,242 --> 00:53:26,912
We lived not too far away
from Northcross Mall.

799
00:53:26,995 --> 00:53:30,916
I actually had to pick him up
at the juvenile center

800
00:53:30,999 --> 00:53:35,087
because he and Maurice
were at Northcross Mall.

801
00:53:36,880 --> 00:53:43,220
When I got there, they told me
that Maurice had a gun with him.

802
00:53:43,971 --> 00:53:46,432
I picked Forrest up and brought him home.

803
00:53:46,515 --> 00:53:50,477
It was later that we found out
that they were being questioned

804
00:53:50,561 --> 00:53:53,272
about the yogurt shop murders.

805
00:53:57,192 --> 00:54:01,113
He would be walking to school,
and there would be a car parked outside.

806
00:54:01,196 --> 00:54:05,242
And the detective would get out and say,
"Get in the car. We're going for a ride."

807
00:54:08,412 --> 00:54:10,205
He was 15 years old.

808
00:54:10,289 --> 00:54:14,293
He didn't know he didn't have to get
in the car and go with him.

809
00:54:15,461 --> 00:54:17,254
He didn't have anything to hide.

810
00:54:18,297 --> 00:54:21,133
We knew there were a lot of kids
being questioned.

811
00:54:21,216 --> 00:54:25,012
I guess I didn't realize
how serious it was.

812
00:54:26,054 --> 00:54:31,018
The detectives brought him
to my house and said,

813
00:54:31,101 --> 00:54:36,064
"We have two confessions and we're going
to make the arrest in two weeks."

814
00:54:36,607 --> 00:54:40,068
"And Forrest has the opportunity
to save himself,

815
00:54:40,152 --> 00:54:43,489
so you need to convince him to confess."

816
00:54:44,323 --> 00:54:46,700
So, every day for two weeks,

817
00:54:46,784 --> 00:54:51,705
I sat at his shop with him
because I wanted to make sure he was safe.

818
00:54:51,789 --> 00:54:55,083
The day I went back to work,
they arrested him.

819
00:55:14,937 --> 00:55:16,897
There's no time when it's not there.

820
00:55:17,940 --> 00:55:19,274
I want it to go away.

821
00:55:27,699 --> 00:55:31,995
It's still very difficult
to even talk about, or think about, or...

822
00:55:44,341 --> 00:55:46,927
I've had people try to tell me
I should be celebrating,

823
00:55:47,010 --> 00:55:49,388
but it's still not over, you know.

824
00:55:49,471 --> 00:55:52,015
It's not a celebration moment.

825
00:55:53,725 --> 00:55:58,981
I hope everybody believes that,
you know, I wasn't there now, you know.

826
00:55:59,064 --> 00:56:00,482
A lot of people...

827
00:56:01,859 --> 00:56:03,360
think of me as a murderer.

828
00:56:03,861 --> 00:56:05,404
And I've had to deal with that.

829
00:56:06,280 --> 00:56:11,410
Lost jobs, lost relationships,
lost friends. You know.

830
00:56:14,162 --> 00:56:16,039
It's been really difficult.

831
00:56:30,929 --> 00:56:34,850
Betrayal, you know?
He was my best friend at the time.

832
00:56:35,601 --> 00:56:40,063
And to have him try to say
that I was there and I had a part of it

833
00:56:40,147 --> 00:56:43,525
was just absolutely insane to me.

834
00:56:43,609 --> 00:56:44,818
That's where I lost...

835
00:56:46,069 --> 00:56:48,864
I lost a lot of hope in people,
you know, especially friends.

836
00:56:48,947 --> 00:56:51,867
I wasn't able to really trust anybody.

837
00:56:51,950 --> 00:56:54,369
Ended up dropping out of eighth grade...

838
00:56:55,579 --> 00:56:57,039
because I just couldn't do it.

839
00:56:57,122 --> 00:56:58,123
I'm so sorry.

840
00:57:02,544 --> 00:57:04,004
I went back the next year.

841
00:57:04,755 --> 00:57:08,508
But I only stayed for a couple months
and left.

842
00:57:17,059 --> 00:57:18,060
Yes.

843
00:57:21,104 --> 00:57:22,105
Yeah.

844
00:57:32,783 --> 00:57:33,784
Wait a minute.

845
00:57:44,586 --> 00:57:46,213
-You okay?
-I'm good.

846
00:57:46,755 --> 00:57:50,258
Okay. Just had to take a breath.

847
00:57:56,890 --> 00:57:57,975
Yeah, it's very hard.

848
00:57:58,058 --> 00:57:59,476
I know. I'm really sorry.

849
00:58:04,189 --> 00:58:07,067
Well, they came...
I had a business site in Lockhart

850
00:58:07,567 --> 00:58:09,027
while I was doing automotive repair.

851
00:58:09,111 --> 00:58:11,989
They came, surrounded the place

852
00:58:12,531 --> 00:58:14,866
and arrested me,
took me away from my business,

853
00:58:14,950 --> 00:58:16,368
charged me for the crime.

854
00:58:18,245 --> 00:58:19,663
Ended up losing that business.

855
00:58:21,081 --> 00:58:24,126
Thought I was going to prison for the rest
of my life for something I didn't do.

856
00:58:24,209 --> 00:58:25,293
Thought it was over.

857
00:58:27,879 --> 00:58:28,922
-No.
-Yeah.

858
00:58:29,006 --> 00:58:31,550
I wasn't going to talk to him ever again,
and I never did.

859
00:58:34,553 --> 00:58:37,639
Now, it's hard for me to really bring
somebody in that close anymore,

860
00:58:37,723 --> 00:58:42,227
and, you know,
I have some friends, but not super close.

861
00:58:42,310 --> 00:58:44,855
If I find someone that does like me,

862
00:58:45,605 --> 00:58:48,233
then that's one of the first things
I have to let them know,

863
00:58:48,734 --> 00:58:49,901
is that I've been...

864
00:58:50,861 --> 00:58:54,406
wrapped up in all this
with the yogurt shop murders. And...

865
00:58:54,990 --> 00:58:57,409
So, it normally
doesn't work out very well.

866
00:59:02,205 --> 00:59:03,331
Six months.

867
00:59:04,958 --> 00:59:06,251
I've tried, but...

868
00:59:07,669 --> 00:59:09,963
you know, I mean,
it's the worst crime in Austin, you know.

869
00:59:10,464 --> 00:59:14,718
So, to get involved with, you know...
I've never really been cleared.

870
00:59:15,218 --> 00:59:17,888
I've never, you know,
had anybody come out and say,

871
00:59:17,971 --> 00:59:20,682
"Oh, he's innocent,"
you know, let the world know.

872
00:59:26,730 --> 00:59:28,482
You know, I'm sad for him and his family.

873
00:59:31,234 --> 00:59:35,155
But still, I've been angry at him
for so long for what...

874
00:59:36,573 --> 00:59:41,620
he said to the detectives, and I thought
we were best friends and so...

875
00:59:46,500 --> 00:59:48,376
I don't care anything about them.

876
00:59:48,460 --> 00:59:52,547
Anybody that can try to say
that I was there and did it,

877
00:59:53,381 --> 00:59:57,219
I have no sense in talking to 'em
or have any feelings towards them.

878
00:59:57,302 --> 00:59:59,513
I know it's really bad to say, but...

879
01:00:01,389 --> 01:00:04,267
It doesn't hurt my feelings
that they went to jail at all,

880
01:00:04,351 --> 01:00:08,230
because what they tried to do to me,
try to make me sit in there.

881
01:00:08,814 --> 01:00:14,486
I've got pulled over all the time
by the police, once a week.

882
01:00:15,112 --> 01:00:19,783
I've been incarcerated 50 times

883
01:00:20,408 --> 01:00:22,577
for nonsense.

884
01:00:23,954 --> 01:00:25,664
I don't know
what's going to change it, but...

885
01:00:26,832 --> 01:00:27,833
maybe one day.

886
01:00:30,794 --> 01:00:31,795
There's...

887
01:00:37,801 --> 01:00:41,471
The four girls, they weren't the only ones
that lost their lives.

888
01:00:46,518 --> 01:00:47,519
No.

889
01:01:10,083 --> 01:01:14,713
Well, in our case,
the person that killed our daughter,

890
01:01:15,213 --> 01:01:17,591
there's justice
because he's no longer here.

891
01:01:21,094 --> 01:01:22,220
I don't.

892
01:01:22,304 --> 01:01:24,639
I don't think of him as human.
It's just...

893
01:01:26,641 --> 01:01:28,560
he's the reason, and that's it.

894
01:01:29,519 --> 01:01:33,148
Right now, he's a monster,
and I'm okay with that.

895
01:01:33,231 --> 01:01:37,152
I just feel
like there's evil people out there.

896
01:01:37,235 --> 01:01:39,446
I don't know what makes them that way.

897
01:01:39,529 --> 01:01:43,116
I don't want to spend too much time
sort of thinking about them

898
01:01:43,200 --> 01:01:46,536
or understanding them
or what their backstory is.

899
01:01:57,797 --> 01:01:59,341
I guess because he's dead.

900
01:02:00,217 --> 01:02:01,885
That's where all the peace comes in.

901
01:02:03,220 --> 01:02:07,515
He's not gonna hurt
or do anything else to anybody else.

902
01:02:07,599 --> 01:02:11,186
I just want to know
what life he had that made him this way.

903
01:02:11,770 --> 01:02:13,438
Children are not born evil.

904
01:02:13,939 --> 01:02:18,235
We cause them to be this,
and I want to know what happened.

905
01:02:18,318 --> 01:02:21,655
Was he not held enough?
Was he not loved enough?

906
01:02:22,364 --> 01:02:25,408
Or did he just decide not to care,

907
01:02:26,159 --> 01:02:29,204
not to care about anybody but himself
somewhere along the way?

908
01:02:38,797 --> 01:02:42,759
You know, he's one of those serial killers
who didn't want to be famous,

909
01:02:42,842 --> 01:02:45,720
didn't want his crimes to be known.

910
01:02:45,804 --> 01:02:48,431
And so now that he's infamous,

911
01:02:48,515 --> 01:02:51,268
it is interesting
to think about what that means,

912
01:02:51,351 --> 01:02:55,689
how much energy is put
into thinking about him at this point.

913
01:02:55,772 --> 01:02:56,815
It doesn't matter.

914
01:02:59,401 --> 01:03:03,697
What's the use of spending too much time
and energy thinking about him?

915
01:03:04,447 --> 01:03:08,201
Now, I wish I felt that way
because I've been obsessed with him

916
01:03:08,285 --> 01:03:12,289
and I've spent thousands of hours
researching him.

917
01:03:14,124 --> 01:03:18,336
I've identified lots of serial killers,
and they didn't all stick with me.

918
01:03:19,170 --> 01:03:23,216
This guy was incredibly evil,
incredibly violent.

919
01:03:23,300 --> 01:03:25,385
He has literally haunted my dreams.

920
01:03:26,011 --> 01:03:29,514
My feeling was
that his story wasn't finished

921
01:03:29,597 --> 01:03:32,851
and other people
were still waiting for answers.

922
01:03:33,852 --> 01:03:39,190
My years-long obsession has led me to want
to talk to people who knew him

923
01:03:39,274 --> 01:03:42,360
because I feel like any little clue

924
01:03:42,444 --> 01:03:46,406
could potentially lead us to another case
that he's responsible for.

925
01:03:56,207 --> 01:03:59,669
I feel like I have more paperwork
on my father than I do anything else.

926
01:04:02,380 --> 01:04:05,633
I have one photo of me and my father,
and that is the family photo

927
01:04:05,717 --> 01:04:07,385
that, of course, is all over the internet.

928
01:04:10,930 --> 01:04:14,351
This picture was taken the summer of 1997.

929
01:04:14,434 --> 01:04:16,978
The night we moved to Arkansas,
this picture was taken.

930
01:04:19,314 --> 01:04:22,692
I didn't know of anything,
anything bad about my father.

931
01:04:22,776 --> 01:04:25,153
I had just met him not long before that.

932
01:04:25,236 --> 01:04:27,447
He pulled in the driveway one day
and said, "Hi, I'm your father."

933
01:04:27,530 --> 01:04:29,949
My mother said,
"Hey, this is your daddy for real."

934
01:04:31,493 --> 01:04:35,455
And then this is my daddy.
And then he's dead. Not long after.

935
01:04:38,750 --> 01:04:40,293
I was around more people growing up

936
01:04:40,377 --> 01:04:43,588
that were strange
than I was normal people.

937
01:04:44,547 --> 01:04:45,757
Criminals, people that...

938
01:04:45,840 --> 01:04:47,926
Like, the weird feelings
that you get around certain people,

939
01:04:48,009 --> 01:04:49,135
those were my normal.

940
01:04:50,178 --> 01:04:52,055
My mother was not the greatest person.

941
01:04:52,138 --> 01:04:55,016
So, the people that,
you know, you're born from,

942
01:04:55,100 --> 01:04:56,768
if they're that way, then how do you know?

943
01:04:57,894 --> 01:05:01,147
Differentiating that was very hard
until I got older.

944
01:05:03,483 --> 01:05:06,069
To me,
people being shitty to you is normal.

945
01:05:08,029 --> 01:05:11,199
For a very long time,
that's how my life was.

946
01:05:12,784 --> 01:05:15,745
The only part of my life
that I thought was the most normal

947
01:05:15,829 --> 01:05:17,914
was all actually coming out
to be a lie now,

948
01:05:17,997 --> 01:05:20,583
because that was the time of my life
when I was with my father.

949
01:05:20,667 --> 01:05:22,627
Here you go. Here we go.

950
01:05:22,710 --> 01:05:26,214
The little bit of time
that I met him until he died,

951
01:05:26,297 --> 01:05:28,716
it was the best time of our entire life.

952
01:05:28,800 --> 01:05:31,344
We didn't have to want for anything.
We didn't have to question anything.

953
01:05:31,428 --> 01:05:32,429
Like, we were never hurt,

954
01:05:32,512 --> 01:05:35,640
never touched by men
or anything in that nature.

955
01:05:35,723 --> 01:05:37,350
My mother didn't run off on us.

956
01:05:38,184 --> 01:05:40,311
It was like the white picket fence
type family.

957
01:05:40,395 --> 01:05:42,439
Like, you got three girls,
a father that goes to work,

958
01:05:42,522 --> 01:05:43,523
a mother that goes to work.

959
01:05:43,606 --> 01:05:46,484
We have cookouts,
we have birthday parties, like...

960
01:05:47,110 --> 01:05:48,319
just normal.

961
01:05:48,403 --> 01:05:49,654
A lot of people will tell you,

962
01:05:49,737 --> 01:05:52,031
you would have never thought
my father was who he was,

963
01:05:52,115 --> 01:05:53,616
but he was a very evil man.

964
01:05:59,038 --> 01:06:02,459
Come to find out he was on the run
for breaking and entering a woman's house

965
01:06:02,542 --> 01:06:05,503
in 1998 over Easter weekend.

966
01:06:05,587 --> 01:06:09,007
It was Easter morning when he was caught
in her house. Why are you not at home?

967
01:06:09,090 --> 01:06:11,301
You have three children at home.
It's Easter.

968
01:06:12,469 --> 01:06:14,554
In 1998, he...
Breaking and entering

969
01:06:14,637 --> 01:06:17,724
into someone else's house
he used to work in.

970
01:06:18,349 --> 01:06:21,186
He broke in her house
and cut her phone line.

971
01:06:21,269 --> 01:06:23,480
He had a kill kit on him.
He was going to kill this woman.

972
01:06:23,563 --> 01:06:25,440
Why? I don't know,
she didn't do nothing to him.

973
01:06:27,859 --> 01:06:32,655
He had black gloves, zip ties, a gun.

974
01:06:32,739 --> 01:06:34,407
He had multiple of those kits.

975
01:06:35,408 --> 01:06:37,202
He left the gun there, got arrested,

976
01:06:37,285 --> 01:06:39,287
called my mother
and told my mother where the gun was.

977
01:06:39,370 --> 01:06:40,914
And my mother called my grandpa

978
01:06:40,997 --> 01:06:43,166
and my grandfather went
to go pick up the gun.

979
01:06:44,042 --> 01:06:45,919
My mother and grandfather
had to have known something.

980
01:06:46,461 --> 01:06:51,090
Like, there's people that as long
as you don't hurt my family, it's okay.

981
01:06:51,174 --> 01:06:55,178
And that's what I'm afraid of.
I'm afraid of that being the truth.

982
01:06:57,222 --> 01:07:00,475
Normally, without him on the run,
we called him Robert or Daddy.

983
01:07:00,558 --> 01:07:03,019
But when he was on the run,
we were told to call him Mitch.

984
01:07:03,102 --> 01:07:04,562
Like, before we went out to eat,

985
01:07:04,646 --> 01:07:07,273
he put a little wig on
because we knew he was "on the run."

986
01:07:07,357 --> 01:07:09,234
So, you know,
he couldn't look like hisself.

987
01:07:09,901 --> 01:07:13,029
He used to dress up as a woman
and rob Shoney's and Waffle Houses

988
01:07:13,112 --> 01:07:14,155
in the middle of the night.

989
01:07:14,239 --> 01:07:17,283
Would go test drive a car
and then put the key in this little putty,

990
01:07:17,367 --> 01:07:19,452
remake the key,
and he'd go steal that car that night.

991
01:07:19,536 --> 01:07:20,870
Like, he'd done a lot,

992
01:07:20,954 --> 01:07:23,414
but you wouldn't have thought
that he murdered people.

993
01:07:24,040 --> 01:07:25,625
I remember when the Scherer murders,

994
01:07:25,708 --> 01:07:28,711
the broadcast come up on the TV
and my mother got scared.

995
01:07:28,795 --> 01:07:31,130
And he's like, "Oh, no,
that would never happen here, we're fine."

996
01:07:31,214 --> 01:07:33,925
Yeah, because you done it.
But he was nonchalant.

997
01:07:35,260 --> 01:07:37,178
There's no telling
how many more crimes that he's done

998
01:07:37,262 --> 01:07:38,888
that no one will ever know about.

999
01:07:38,972 --> 01:07:40,682
That's what I'm coming to terms with.

1000
01:07:41,599 --> 01:07:43,101
If I have to live with this every day,

1001
01:07:43,184 --> 01:07:45,645
I at least need to know
that I've said sorry to these people.

1002
01:07:45,728 --> 01:07:50,441
Someone that is a blood kin to him
is sorry for what he's done.

1003
01:07:53,695 --> 01:07:56,114
I don't want to upset anyone
by reaching out to them.

1004
01:07:56,197 --> 01:07:58,324
I've never reached out
to the Scherer families,

1005
01:07:58,825 --> 01:08:04,038
but I've reached out to family members
in South Carolina, and in Austin...

1006
01:08:06,416 --> 01:08:08,293
and told them that I'm sorry.

1007
01:08:10,003 --> 01:08:13,506
I want to break
all the generational curses as possible.

1008
01:08:16,091 --> 01:08:19,178
This was for the two men
that were falsely accused

1009
01:08:19,261 --> 01:08:21,555
of my father's crimes in Austin, Texas.

1010
01:08:22,055 --> 01:08:23,808
"Hi, my name is Deborah Brashers,

1011
01:08:23,890 --> 01:08:26,269
and I understand the words
that I'm about to say

1012
01:08:26,352 --> 01:08:27,854
may not mean much to you.

1013
01:08:28,354 --> 01:08:31,524
I'm not the one who caused the pain
and hardship you've endured,

1014
01:08:31,608 --> 01:08:34,193
but I am a descendant
of that person who did.

1015
01:08:34,277 --> 01:08:38,156
I cannot begin to imagine everything
you've been through since 1999.

1016
01:08:38,238 --> 01:08:40,992
My father's actions took so much from you.

1017
01:08:41,075 --> 01:08:43,828
Even though I wasn't involved
in his choices,

1018
01:08:43,911 --> 01:08:47,457
I still feel deep regret
for the pain his actions caused you.

1019
01:08:47,540 --> 01:08:49,709
I wanted to reach out
and acknowledge what happened

1020
01:08:49,792 --> 01:08:52,712
and tell you that someone recognizes
the wrong that was done.

1021
01:08:52,795 --> 01:08:54,339
You didn't deserve what happened

1022
01:08:54,421 --> 01:08:56,674
and I'm sorry
for all you lost because of it.

1023
01:08:57,258 --> 01:08:58,760
Sincerely, Deborah Brashers."

1024
01:09:00,094 --> 01:09:02,180
And it took me a couple of days
to write that,

1025
01:09:02,263 --> 01:09:04,515
like write exactly
what I wanted to write in it.

1026
01:09:05,183 --> 01:09:07,769
I'm gonna have to print it out
and send it to them.

1027
01:09:10,729 --> 01:09:12,231
This is right before he showed up.

1028
01:09:16,819 --> 01:09:17,987
-You wanna try it?
-Yep.

1029
01:09:18,071 --> 01:09:19,822
Okay, okay, let's try this one.

1030
01:09:20,531 --> 01:09:22,200
I haven't talked to the boys.

1031
01:09:23,201 --> 01:09:24,285
There you go.

1032
01:09:24,368 --> 01:09:29,874
I hope they are enjoying some kind
of peace as a result of this news.

1033
01:09:30,582 --> 01:09:33,377
I can't imagine what it's like
to have that kind of weight

1034
01:09:33,461 --> 01:09:37,631
where even the people who say
they think you're innocent

1035
01:09:38,508 --> 01:09:40,551
-maybe don't really believe it.
-Come up here.

1036
01:09:40,635 --> 01:09:41,928
I didn't think they did it.

1037
01:09:42,886 --> 01:09:45,055
-And then there was the question.
-Come up here, Mom.

1038
01:09:45,139 --> 01:09:48,350
And I was really convinced.

1039
01:09:48,434 --> 01:09:50,520
-And the question was still there.
-Mom, I do...

1040
01:09:50,603 --> 01:09:52,563
I spent a lot of time
with Robert Springsteen.

1041
01:09:52,647 --> 01:09:56,234
He managed that tension
with so much grace.

1042
01:09:58,069 --> 01:10:01,030
And now knowing for sure
he didn't do it, like,

1043
01:10:01,114 --> 01:10:02,990
how is he not
the angriest person on earth?

1044
01:10:03,074 --> 01:10:05,576
And he's not. He's not angry.

1045
01:10:06,786 --> 01:10:08,454
Because I asked him directly.

1046
01:10:08,538 --> 01:10:11,958
I'm not angry, I'm not...
As you guys have seen, I'm not really...

1047
01:10:13,126 --> 01:10:15,753
I'm not really that emotional about it,
or that mad about it,

1048
01:10:15,837 --> 01:10:19,090
or, you know,
I let all that anger and stuff go.

1049
01:10:19,173 --> 01:10:21,759
Rob and I spent
a lot of time alone together.

1050
01:10:22,385 --> 01:10:25,221
And if I thought he was a murderer,
I wouldn't have done that.

1051
01:10:26,055 --> 01:10:28,516
And then with Michael Scott, he says,

1052
01:10:28,599 --> 01:10:30,852
"I think I might have had something
to do with it."

1053
01:10:30,935 --> 01:10:32,395
They really screwed me over.

1054
01:10:33,396 --> 01:10:34,689
He didn't, so it's still...

1055
01:10:34,772 --> 01:10:37,358
Even in his own mind,
he can't trust himself.

1056
01:10:38,401 --> 01:10:41,070
Now, he can tell himself fully,
"I didn't."

1057
01:10:41,154 --> 01:10:42,280
Okay, I'm following you.

1058
01:10:43,030 --> 01:10:44,574
Nice.

1059
01:10:47,744 --> 01:10:51,581
If he were still alive,
I would be terrified for everyone.

1060
01:10:52,081 --> 01:10:55,376
The force of the evil present
is terrifying.

1061
01:10:56,419 --> 01:10:57,420
Nice.

1062
01:10:58,004 --> 01:11:02,800
On the one hand, it's a relief
that it's kind of over and he's done.

1063
01:11:02,884 --> 01:11:07,013
But it is anticlimactic that he's dead.

1064
01:11:07,096 --> 01:11:12,560
It feels like he was always this unknown
and he remains an unknown.

1065
01:11:16,272 --> 01:11:17,607
He just kind of swept through town

1066
01:11:17,690 --> 01:11:20,318
and caused a lot of destruction
for a lot of people.

1067
01:11:25,281 --> 01:11:28,367
After I identified him in 2018,

1068
01:11:28,451 --> 01:11:32,663
I started looking for cold cases
in all the places I knew that he lived.

1069
01:11:34,248 --> 01:11:35,666
That's why I was so disappointed

1070
01:11:35,750 --> 01:11:38,294
I couldn't have helped
solve the yogurt shop case.

1071
01:11:38,961 --> 01:11:43,633
They didn't have enough DNA
for us to perform genetic genealogy.

1072
01:11:45,885 --> 01:11:48,387
If only I had known that right here

1073
01:11:48,471 --> 01:11:52,266
should be the stop
at the Texas border in December,

1074
01:11:53,059 --> 01:11:54,685
things would have been very different.

1075
01:11:56,646 --> 01:11:58,314
I would have known immediately

1076
01:11:58,397 --> 01:12:02,318
that he was a very strong suspect
for yogurt shop.

1077
01:12:05,446 --> 01:12:09,617
So, back to December 8th, 1991,
he's getting out of Texas.

1078
01:12:10,451 --> 01:12:13,454
He goes to jail that night
on a stolen truck

1079
01:12:13,538 --> 01:12:15,540
and a felon in possession of a firearm.

1080
01:12:18,626 --> 01:12:20,878
Somebody bonds him out five days later.

1081
01:12:20,962 --> 01:12:22,713
Someone pays for his bond,
I don't know who.

1082
01:12:25,007 --> 01:12:27,009
And then fast-forward a couple months.

1083
01:12:28,636 --> 01:12:31,973
February of '92, he gets arrested
in Cobb County, Georgia,

1084
01:12:32,056 --> 01:12:34,350
in a stolen vehicle from Tyler, Texas.

1085
01:12:34,976 --> 01:12:37,812
So, basically he bonds out,
backtracks through Texas,

1086
01:12:37,895 --> 01:12:41,315
steals another truck and ends up
in Georgia, where he gets arrested again.

1087
01:12:42,817 --> 01:12:47,780
I think that's when he had burglary tools,
police scanner, a fake police ID.

1088
01:12:47,864 --> 01:12:49,365
I think, like, a wig.

1089
01:12:50,533 --> 01:12:53,703
The possession of a firearm by a felon
is taken federally,

1090
01:12:53,786 --> 01:12:56,038
and he gets five years in prison.

1091
01:12:56,914 --> 01:13:01,043
Once he's sentenced, though,
that .380 is given to his father.

1092
01:13:01,127 --> 01:13:04,380
His father is able to get it out
of police custody.

1093
01:13:04,839 --> 01:13:07,383
Talking to an ATF guy, they're like,
"Yeah, that's not an easy thing to do.

1094
01:13:07,466 --> 01:13:09,760
You got to fill out, like,
a lot of paperwork. It's kind of a pain."

1095
01:13:09,844 --> 01:13:12,263
And we're talking,
like, maybe a 75-dollar gun.

1096
01:13:14,724 --> 01:13:18,102
So, when he gets out in '97,
he gets his gun back.

1097
01:13:19,270 --> 01:13:21,814
But, at first we couldn't believe it,
but then that actually led us

1098
01:13:21,898 --> 01:13:24,567
to help solve other cases
because he kept the gun.

1099
01:13:25,192 --> 01:13:27,570
We would have never linked
any of these cases to Kentucky.

1100
01:13:27,653 --> 01:13:29,322
We would have gotten neither hit

1101
01:13:29,405 --> 01:13:31,449
because the gun would still be sitting
in a federal archive.

1102
01:13:32,158 --> 01:13:36,078
Completely, like, unforeseen chain
of events led to all this.

1103
01:13:40,625 --> 01:13:43,294
And then January of '99,

1104
01:13:43,836 --> 01:13:46,088
police officer is driving through
the parking lot

1105
01:13:46,172 --> 01:13:48,633
of a Super 8 motel in Kennett, Missouri...

1106
01:13:49,967 --> 01:13:52,219
sees a car that kind of sticks out.

1107
01:13:53,346 --> 01:13:54,597
Plate comes back stolen.

1108
01:13:54,972 --> 01:13:57,767
They look in the car,
there's like some kids' toys or something.

1109
01:13:57,850 --> 01:14:00,019
Front desk is like, "Well, the only people
staying here with kids

1110
01:14:00,102 --> 01:14:01,520
is room number whatever."

1111
01:14:01,604 --> 01:14:02,897
What do you want?

1112
01:14:02,980 --> 01:14:05,483
Brashers' wife gives a fake name
of who her husband is.

1113
01:14:05,566 --> 01:14:08,110
"He left," you know,
"I don't know when he's coming back."

1114
01:14:08,194 --> 01:14:09,820
And they start looking around the room,

1115
01:14:10,363 --> 01:14:13,532
and they find him
hiding underneath the bed with a gun.

1116
01:14:15,242 --> 01:14:16,953
It becomes a police standoff.

1117
01:14:21,540 --> 01:14:23,042
We woke up to guns everywhere.

1118
01:14:23,584 --> 01:14:25,294
There are police officers
right here to the left.

1119
01:14:25,336 --> 01:14:27,922
There's like five
to seven of them, guns drawn.

1120
01:14:28,005 --> 01:14:30,299
And there's a police officer over here
holding the bed up

1121
01:14:30,383 --> 01:14:33,010
and my father's laying underneath
the bed with the gun to his head.

1122
01:14:34,428 --> 01:14:37,765
They put my mother in handcuffs,
and then they took us out in the hallway.

1123
01:14:37,848 --> 01:14:38,975
And where we were sitting at,

1124
01:14:39,058 --> 01:14:40,601
you could look down
and you could see the pool,

1125
01:14:40,643 --> 01:14:42,520
and you could look up
and see the reflection behind you

1126
01:14:42,603 --> 01:14:43,854
as to everything that was happening.

1127
01:14:43,938 --> 01:14:45,898
As the door opens, you can see, like,

1128
01:14:45,982 --> 01:14:47,900
my father's throwing stuff
out of the room.

1129
01:14:47,984 --> 01:14:51,946
And about that same time,
I heard a big boom,

1130
01:14:52,029 --> 01:14:53,698
and then I seen police officers go in.

1131
01:14:54,281 --> 01:14:56,867
He throws out
a bunch of their clothing and stuff,

1132
01:14:56,951 --> 01:14:59,996
and he also throws out
a nine-millimeter pistol.

1133
01:15:00,079 --> 01:15:02,373
And then he shoots himself in the room.

1134
01:15:07,837 --> 01:15:12,967
He had shot himself
with an AMT .380 Backup model.

1135
01:15:14,719 --> 01:15:16,721
The serial number is the same one
he was stopped at

1136
01:15:16,804 --> 01:15:18,180
two days after yogurt shop.

1137
01:15:20,433 --> 01:15:21,642
So, it was like full circle.

1138
01:15:21,726 --> 01:15:25,438
He used that gun to commit his murders,
and then he killed himself with it.

1139
01:15:29,984 --> 01:15:31,902
He had a nine-millimeter
and he had a .380.

1140
01:15:31,986 --> 01:15:33,070
If I was going to shoot myself,

1141
01:15:33,154 --> 01:15:34,655
I would definitely pick
the nine-millimeter.

1142
01:15:34,739 --> 01:15:38,159
It's more powerful.
So, he picked that gun for a reason.

1143
01:15:38,826 --> 01:15:41,954
That was his trophy.
And that's what he killed himself with.

1144
01:15:44,790 --> 01:15:48,461
They, of course, interrogated us,
asked us all kinds of questions.

1145
01:15:48,544 --> 01:15:50,337
And we lied. "That's Mitch. That's Mitch.

1146
01:15:50,379 --> 01:15:53,007
I don't know who Robert is.
I have no idea who Robert is."

1147
01:15:54,425 --> 01:15:58,095
So, on the suicide note,
the outside of it says, "To the police."

1148
01:16:00,097 --> 01:16:01,974
And then on the... He wrote in it,

1149
01:16:02,058 --> 01:16:05,144
"In the event you are reading this,
I am dead.

1150
01:16:05,227 --> 01:16:08,105
Please, I beg you,
do not contact my father.

1151
01:16:08,189 --> 01:16:11,442
He has just came out
of the hospital from cancer surgery

1152
01:16:11,525 --> 01:16:14,570
and it will kill him
if the cops tell him. Thank you."

1153
01:16:17,281 --> 01:16:20,076
Like the "Thank you"
on the bottom of this note, just it's...

1154
01:16:21,243 --> 01:16:22,286
like, why?

1155
01:16:24,830 --> 01:16:27,124
He was dead for 20 years
before anybody knew anything.

1156
01:16:28,626 --> 01:16:30,419
I don't think he ever thought
he would get caught.

1157
01:16:36,175 --> 01:16:38,344
How he got into the shop, we don't know.

1158
01:16:39,720 --> 01:16:42,223
He had a different line each time,
it seems like,

1159
01:16:42,306 --> 01:16:43,724
different ruses he would use.

1160
01:16:44,600 --> 01:16:48,813
So, this was... The actual tip
was taken on December 8th of 1991,

1161
01:16:48,896 --> 01:16:50,106
so just two days later.

1162
01:16:50,981 --> 01:16:54,568
The caller, Mr. Croft,
worked for Longhorn Security,

1163
01:16:55,444 --> 01:16:58,697
and he had been a customer
that night at the yogurt shop.

1164
01:17:00,074 --> 01:17:01,951
Said he was in the store till 10:15 p.m.

1165
01:17:02,034 --> 01:17:05,162
and noticed a White male
in his late twenties, acted strange.

1166
01:17:06,330 --> 01:17:09,542
"When I entered the store,
I saw a couple eating at one of the booths

1167
01:17:09,625 --> 01:17:12,044
and another couple
ordering from one of the girls.

1168
01:17:12,878 --> 01:17:14,755
The Thomas girl was at the register.

1169
01:17:15,673 --> 01:17:18,050
There was a White male subject
standing between the place

1170
01:17:18,134 --> 01:17:19,385
where you order at the counter

1171
01:17:19,468 --> 01:17:21,679
and the register
where the Thomas girl was.

1172
01:17:22,680 --> 01:17:25,266
All of a sudden, the subject nudged me
and I turned to him and he said,

1173
01:17:25,349 --> 01:17:27,101
'Are you driving that car
with the lights on top?'

1174
01:17:27,184 --> 01:17:30,437
He was talking about my work car,
which has overheads on it.

1175
01:17:30,521 --> 01:17:32,273
I said it was my car and then he asked me,

1176
01:17:32,356 --> 01:17:34,692
'Are you a cop, or security,
or what are you?'

1177
01:17:35,317 --> 01:17:37,570
The girl asked what he wanted,
and he hesitated for a minute

1178
01:17:37,653 --> 01:17:39,530
and then said, 'I want a cold drink.'

1179
01:17:39,613 --> 01:17:40,865
And this stuck me as funny,

1180
01:17:40,948 --> 01:17:43,909
because why would you just want
a cold drink in a yogurt shop?

1181
01:17:45,327 --> 01:17:47,079
While he was at the register paying,

1182
01:17:47,163 --> 01:17:49,915
he asked the Thomas girl
if they had a restroom.

1183
01:17:49,999 --> 01:17:51,417
She told him that it was in the back,

1184
01:17:51,500 --> 01:17:54,753
and he picked up his Sprite
and walked behind the counter to the back.

1185
01:17:55,754 --> 01:17:57,339
I stood there and talked
to the Thomas girl

1186
01:17:57,423 --> 01:17:58,591
for a good ten to 15 minutes,

1187
01:17:58,674 --> 01:18:01,093
mostly to see if the subject
was going to come back out.

1188
01:18:01,844 --> 01:18:03,888
I kind of had a bad feeling
about him anyway.

1189
01:18:03,971 --> 01:18:05,347
But he never did.

1190
01:18:05,431 --> 01:18:08,392
After a while, my yogurt started to melt,
and I said goodbye and left.

1191
01:18:08,475 --> 01:18:12,271
He was a White male. He was about 5'9'',
and had a medium build.

1192
01:18:12,354 --> 01:18:14,231
After that,
I went to the football game in Houston

1193
01:18:14,315 --> 01:18:15,774
and then we got back to Austin on Sunday

1194
01:18:15,858 --> 01:18:18,360
and I heard
about the news of the murders."

1195
01:18:20,237 --> 01:18:21,697
And that's when it ends.

1196
01:18:23,616 --> 01:18:25,826
We'll never know for sure
if that was Brashers,

1197
01:18:25,910 --> 01:18:27,328
but it definitely fits the storyline

1198
01:18:27,411 --> 01:18:29,955
of maybe he got in there,
used the restroom and didn't come out.

1199
01:18:31,415 --> 01:18:33,584
Or went up and propped open the back door.

1200
01:18:41,675 --> 01:18:44,970
I was sitting here
and there was a sea of red.

1201
01:18:46,597 --> 01:18:48,974
Fire trucks with lights flashing.

1202
01:18:50,559 --> 01:18:53,395
Patrol units with their lights flashing.

1203
01:18:57,191 --> 01:18:59,652
There was smoke.
I could still see smoke...

1204
01:19:00,736 --> 01:19:02,821
coming out where they vented the roof.

1205
01:19:12,373 --> 01:19:15,334
So, I come in here and...

1206
01:19:17,628 --> 01:19:22,716
I knew enough not to go around this way,
and this is where I parked.

1207
01:19:26,720 --> 01:19:28,639
The fingernails made it for me.

1208
01:19:29,515 --> 01:19:33,894
There could be no cross-contamination
with what's under her fingernails, and...

1209
01:19:34,937 --> 01:19:37,856
that is investigator 101

1210
01:19:37,940 --> 01:19:42,069
that on sexual assaults
where the victims live,

1211
01:19:42,152 --> 01:19:44,655
you always scrape the fingernails.

1212
01:19:45,531 --> 01:19:48,033
-You know, bag it up and send it off.
-Who is that?

1213
01:19:48,117 --> 01:19:49,118
I'm sorry?

1214
01:19:52,538 --> 01:19:53,956
Jeez.

1215
01:19:55,582 --> 01:19:56,875
Jeez, Sonora.

1216
01:19:58,127 --> 01:20:01,046
-I don't know what to say about this.
-I know.

1217
01:20:01,505 --> 01:20:04,341
Well, and I wouldn't...
I don't usually come here.

1218
01:20:05,050 --> 01:20:07,553
You know,
it's a little challenging, obviously.

1219
01:20:08,053 --> 01:20:10,014
But this friend
that I had breakfast with said,

1220
01:20:10,097 --> 01:20:12,808
"I wanted to buy flowers
and bring them over to the yogurt shop.

1221
01:20:12,891 --> 01:20:14,310
I don't know if you're up for it."

1222
01:20:14,810 --> 01:20:18,689
And I said, you know,
I'm practicing saying yes to everything.

1223
01:20:18,772 --> 01:20:21,108
And I said, "Sure, let's... lemme try it."

1224
01:20:25,279 --> 01:20:27,364
-How about this, huh?
-Yeah.

1225
01:20:29,366 --> 01:20:30,701
Thirty-four years.

1226
01:20:31,994 --> 01:20:35,331
I mean, it's so heartening
to see all these flowers here.

1227
01:20:35,414 --> 01:20:37,750
It's like so many people
still think about it.

1228
01:20:38,292 --> 01:20:40,753
-Please, go ahead.
-Oh, yes.

1229
01:21:13,327 --> 01:21:15,037
All right, I'll let y'all go.

1230
01:21:15,120 --> 01:21:17,623
-Yeah. Yeah, thanks for coming by.
-Yeah. It was nice meeting you.

1231
01:21:22,628 --> 01:21:24,254
We were cleaning the dining room

1232
01:21:24,338 --> 01:21:26,673
because at that time,
Gatti's had a buffet.

1233
01:21:27,508 --> 01:21:30,761
I was back doing dishes
and Dave was vacuuming and he goes,

1234
01:21:30,844 --> 01:21:34,264
"Oh, look out there, there's fire trucks
out in the parking lot."

1235
01:21:34,348 --> 01:21:36,809
From this shopping center,
to the end of that shopping center,

1236
01:21:36,892 --> 01:21:40,354
to the wallpaper place,
we all shared the same attic.

1237
01:21:41,063 --> 01:21:43,232
So, smoke started coming in.

1238
01:21:43,315 --> 01:21:45,401
You know,
we really didn't know at that time

1239
01:21:45,484 --> 01:21:47,236
until like after 3:00,
4:00 in the morning.

1240
01:21:47,319 --> 01:21:49,571
Then we heard, like, the tragic news.

1241
01:21:54,118 --> 01:21:55,369
Well, thank you.

1242
01:21:55,452 --> 01:21:57,371
-Yeah, thank you so much.
-Thank you.

1243
01:22:03,377 --> 01:22:06,713
Gosh, if we stay here long enough,
we're going to meet all kinds of people.

1244
01:22:06,797 --> 01:22:08,424
I can't believe he was here that night.

1245
01:22:16,640 --> 01:22:17,683
Right.

1246
01:22:17,766 --> 01:22:20,853
And I feel sorry for those boys
that got sent to prison too

1247
01:22:20,936 --> 01:22:23,647
because of the police work then.

1248
01:22:23,730 --> 01:22:24,773
Right.

1249
01:22:24,815 --> 01:22:26,483
They thought they did it,
but they didn't really.

1250
01:22:26,567 --> 01:22:28,569
And it was like, "Oh my goodness."

1251
01:22:29,611 --> 01:22:30,612
Yeah.

1252
01:22:47,713 --> 01:22:50,299
-We lived to see this.
-This is... Yeah.

1253
01:22:51,717 --> 01:22:53,844
It's all the work you did that night.

1254
01:22:57,681 --> 01:23:00,767
To me, it's so sweet that people remember.

1255
01:23:01,852 --> 01:23:04,480
And at the same time,
I hope people forget.

1256
01:23:07,065 --> 01:23:09,276
Let's all create new stories.

1257
01:23:11,361 --> 01:23:16,450
Life has to be generative.
We can't keep holding on to the past.

1258
01:23:16,533 --> 01:23:18,535
I think that's why I'm starting to think

1259
01:23:19,495 --> 01:23:21,538
about, "What's it going to be like
a year from now?"

1260
01:23:21,622 --> 01:23:23,624
I mean, this story will always be with me.

1261
01:23:23,707 --> 01:23:24,875
Gimme a kiss, Sonora.

1262
01:23:26,168 --> 01:23:30,464
But again, it's not like I'm living
in the mystery and the angst of it.

1263
01:23:31,965 --> 01:23:33,383
Yeah, there's the creek.

1264
01:23:38,138 --> 01:23:40,807
I feel like this whole thing
is almost over.

1265
01:23:42,309 --> 01:23:45,854
And at some point
this is just going to be history.

1266
01:23:47,189 --> 01:23:48,732
It'll be something we remember,

1267
01:23:48,815 --> 01:23:51,193
but it's not something
we're living through anymore.

1268
01:23:52,861 --> 01:23:55,781
It's like now we have the answers
and we can...

1269
01:23:59,493 --> 01:24:01,286
put the question behind us.

1270
01:24:01,370 --> 01:24:03,705
Maybe that's the part
we can put behind us.

1271
01:24:08,794 --> 01:24:10,462
So many memories and so many...

1272
01:24:11,004 --> 01:24:13,715
Y'all have seen everything...
The world has seen so much.

1273
01:24:14,633 --> 01:24:15,968
Yeah, that was Sarah's.

1274
01:24:16,843 --> 01:24:19,054
But there's not too many left.

1275
01:24:19,721 --> 01:24:22,808
Now, it's taken over
with my new grandkids.

1276
01:24:24,184 --> 01:24:27,479
Who is this from? Maddie.
She made me a hat.

1277
01:24:28,438 --> 01:24:32,276
By the way, I think y'all are all nuts
for being in this business.

1278
01:24:32,359 --> 01:24:34,861
It's so... It's such a weird business.

1279
01:24:35,988 --> 01:24:38,699
I don't mean to be disrespectful
in any way to anybody

1280
01:24:38,782 --> 01:24:43,120
over all these years who's interviewed me.
No disrespect.

1281
01:24:43,745 --> 01:24:47,457
But I'm so glad that's over with.
What a blessing, I wasn't...

1282
01:24:48,000 --> 01:24:51,253
I didn't know this would ever happen,
but this will be my last interview.

1283
01:24:52,462 --> 01:24:54,965
You're supposed to let this shit go
because this eats you up.

1284
01:25:02,139 --> 01:25:03,181
Hold onto that plate.

1285
01:25:06,893 --> 01:25:08,812
Our fight for this case is over with.

1286
01:25:10,314 --> 01:25:12,065
Our fight is not done for other people.

1287
01:25:13,525 --> 01:25:17,321
Trying to make a place
where we can include forensic experts,

1288
01:25:17,404 --> 01:25:22,826
DNA experts, genealogists, geneticists,
victims' advocates, all wrapped into one.

1289
01:25:22,909 --> 01:25:25,329
So, if people had questions,
they can reach out to one place.

1290
01:25:25,412 --> 01:25:26,580
A nonprofit.

1291
01:25:26,663 --> 01:25:30,751
What we put our energy forward now
is towards that.

1292
01:25:32,419 --> 01:25:35,047
Trying to help other families
with whatever they're going through

1293
01:25:35,130 --> 01:25:36,673
because everybody's journey is different.

1294
01:25:37,799 --> 01:25:40,093
Hopefully to solve some more cases.

1295
01:25:40,177 --> 01:25:43,388
And get some more answers for people,
so they don't have to wonder no more.

1296
01:25:55,859 --> 01:26:00,364
If it turns out that they had nothing
at all to do with it,

1297
01:26:01,073 --> 01:26:02,866
I would feel like I had been fooled.

1298
01:26:02,949 --> 01:26:07,496
If they just happened to make up
the body positions,

1299
01:26:07,579 --> 01:26:08,580
I would just have been fooled.

1300
01:26:08,664 --> 01:26:12,000
I was acting on this stuff
and that didn't happen, who knows?

1301
01:26:13,001 --> 01:26:14,002
Then I was wrong.

1302
01:26:14,086 --> 01:26:17,756
If the investigators get something wrong
or gets fooled,

1303
01:26:17,839 --> 01:26:22,260
it's not his decision
that puts them in prison,

1304
01:26:22,344 --> 01:26:25,347
it's the decision of these 12...

1305
01:26:28,809 --> 01:26:31,311
Well, I still don't think
it's wrong myself.

1306
01:26:33,563 --> 01:26:38,026
I've never seen a case quite like this
where so many people,

1307
01:26:38,110 --> 01:26:39,361
so many professionals,

1308
01:26:39,444 --> 01:26:42,614
were so absolutely sure
that they were right,

1309
01:26:42,698 --> 01:26:45,534
all along tragically very, very wrong.

1310
01:26:51,540 --> 01:26:56,002
There's a whole area of study
that professors write about, et cetera,

1311
01:26:56,086 --> 01:26:57,462
called innocence deniers,

1312
01:26:57,504 --> 01:27:01,133
and it's often police,
prosecutors, et cetera,

1313
01:27:01,216 --> 01:27:03,885
will contort in their own mind,

1314
01:27:03,969 --> 01:27:05,887
"Well, okay, there's this new evidence,

1315
01:27:05,971 --> 01:27:08,348
but the original guy's still guilty,"
and why?

1316
01:27:08,432 --> 01:27:09,683
Two, one.

1317
01:27:09,766 --> 01:27:11,560
The evidence is so overwhelming now

1318
01:27:11,643 --> 01:27:15,063
that I think probably everybody
pretty much accepts it.

1319
01:27:15,147 --> 01:27:18,692
I expect that they will get
a judicial declaration

1320
01:27:18,775 --> 01:27:21,737
that they are actually innocent
and that they are exonerated.

1321
01:27:25,449 --> 01:27:27,451
I don't think we've ever been here before.

1322
01:27:27,534 --> 01:27:31,913
We have a situation
where their convictions were thrown out.

1323
01:27:33,707 --> 01:27:35,876
No one has been convicted of a crime.

1324
01:27:36,626 --> 01:27:39,838
Yet the burden
and weight of the allegation

1325
01:27:39,921 --> 01:27:42,799
has clung to them for 30 years,

1326
01:27:42,883 --> 01:27:45,969
and they carry it with them
everywhere they go.

1327
01:27:50,265 --> 01:27:55,228
The interrogations that led to these
so-called confessions were flawed,

1328
01:27:55,312 --> 01:27:57,564
they were unlawful, they were unjust.

1329
01:27:58,982 --> 01:28:03,528
Unfortunately, there were many
Hector Polancos during that time.

1330
01:28:03,612 --> 01:28:08,033
There was a culture that he didn't start
and he certainly wasn't the last of.

1331
01:28:09,785 --> 01:28:11,995
It was a moment in our history

1332
01:28:12,078 --> 01:28:16,833
that we have an obligation to understand
and to do everything we can to make right.

1333
01:28:17,417 --> 01:28:18,752
There needs to be a reckoning.

1334
01:28:44,194 --> 01:28:45,195
All rise.

1335
01:28:51,576 --> 01:28:54,496
Please be seated. Good morning, everybody.

1336
01:28:57,999 --> 01:28:59,292
Every day in this courthouse,

1337
01:28:59,376 --> 01:29:01,711
the state asks people
to take responsibility

1338
01:29:01,795 --> 01:29:03,922
for harm they've caused to another.

1339
01:29:04,005 --> 01:29:06,800
And then we do what we can
to assist in repairing the harm.

1340
01:29:07,634 --> 01:29:11,221
Today, it's our turn
to accept responsibility

1341
01:29:11,304 --> 01:29:13,265
and to use the truth to mitigate harm,

1342
01:29:13,348 --> 01:29:16,226
so we can help all involved heal
and move forward.

1343
01:29:17,143 --> 01:29:21,064
Over 25 years ago,
the state prosecuted four innocent men,

1344
01:29:21,147 --> 01:29:23,316
teenage boys at the time of the crime,

1345
01:29:23,400 --> 01:29:26,403
in what is known
as the 1991 yogurt shop murders.

1346
01:29:27,070 --> 01:29:30,657
The wrongful prosecutions caused harm
to Amy Ayers,

1347
01:29:30,740 --> 01:29:34,661
Eliza Thomas,
and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison.

1348
01:29:34,744 --> 01:29:36,329
They deserve justice.

1349
01:29:37,831 --> 01:29:40,000
There was harm
to the families of the girls.

1350
01:29:40,083 --> 01:29:44,004
They were asked to trust us when we told
them we had the perpetrators.

1351
01:29:44,087 --> 01:29:46,256
And now they've been asked
to put away the thoughts

1352
01:29:46,339 --> 01:29:48,300
and feelings that festered for decades

1353
01:29:48,383 --> 01:29:52,220
with eyes on the wrong people,
uncertainty, and a lack of finality.

1354
01:29:53,054 --> 01:29:54,973
There was harm caused to this community.

1355
01:29:55,056 --> 01:29:57,893
Believing that teenagers
were capable of these acts

1356
01:29:57,976 --> 01:30:00,103
changed our perception of humanity.

1357
01:30:01,313 --> 01:30:03,231
It goes without saying
that harm was caused

1358
01:30:03,315 --> 01:30:05,317
to the four wrongfully prosecuted.

1359
01:30:05,984 --> 01:30:08,987
Today, we are going to take the first step
in righting that harm

1360
01:30:09,070 --> 01:30:10,989
by shining a light on the truth.

1361
01:30:13,033 --> 01:30:14,701
Please have a seat on the witness stand.

1362
01:30:15,660 --> 01:30:19,205
Did your investigation uncover
any forensic or physical evidence

1363
01:30:19,289 --> 01:30:20,832
connecting any of the four to the murders?

1364
01:30:20,916 --> 01:30:21,917
No.

1365
01:30:22,000 --> 01:30:24,002
Did your investigation uncover
any evidence

1366
01:30:24,085 --> 01:30:26,338
connecting the four
to Robert Brashers in any way?

1367
01:30:26,379 --> 01:30:27,422
No.

1368
01:30:27,505 --> 01:30:31,259
And in the confessions, there were
confessions to the sexual assaults.

1369
01:30:31,343 --> 01:30:34,304
Based on what you knew
about the exclusions of the four

1370
01:30:34,387 --> 01:30:36,473
from the vaginal swabs, is that possible?

1371
01:30:36,556 --> 01:30:37,599
No.

1372
01:30:41,770 --> 01:30:43,563
My name is Michael James Scott.

1373
01:30:44,189 --> 01:30:47,567
On December 6th, 1999,

1374
01:30:47,651 --> 01:30:51,279
when the yogurt shop murders occurred,
I was 17 years old.

1375
01:30:52,572 --> 01:30:55,575
I did not commit those crimes.
I had no involvement in them,

1376
01:30:55,659 --> 01:30:59,162
and I have maintained my innocence
every day since.

1377
01:30:59,829 --> 01:31:02,749
I was accused, tried,
and wrongfully convicted.

1378
01:31:03,959 --> 01:31:06,461
I lost my family. I lost my youth.

1379
01:31:07,379 --> 01:31:09,214
I lost my early adulthood.

1380
01:31:10,799 --> 01:31:15,220
No court ruling can return the years
and the love that were taken from me,

1381
01:31:15,804 --> 01:31:17,597
but it can acknowledge the truth.

1382
01:31:19,224 --> 01:31:20,266
I am not guilty.

1383
01:31:21,893 --> 01:31:24,938
Statement of Robert Springsteen IV.

1384
01:31:25,021 --> 01:31:27,899
This is the statement
of Forrest Brook Welborn.

1385
01:31:29,109 --> 01:31:33,738
My name is Phil Scott.
Michael Scott is my son.

1386
01:31:33,822 --> 01:31:38,451
My name is Janine Casey.
I am Michael Scott's former wife.

1387
01:31:39,285 --> 01:31:43,915
Death by cop is not how I envisioned
my husband's life ending.

1388
01:31:43,999 --> 01:31:48,461
I'm so proud of Forrest for never wavering

1389
01:31:49,379 --> 01:31:52,132
on his innocence in this horrible crime.

1390
01:31:53,008 --> 01:31:58,513
To the Austin Police Department,
the DA's office, and to Paul Johnson...

1391
01:32:02,267 --> 01:32:03,810
your tunnel vision...

1392
01:32:05,603 --> 01:32:07,605
stole my daddy's future.

1393
01:32:09,983 --> 01:32:13,028
Today's decision
is not an act of generosity.

1394
01:32:13,111 --> 01:32:14,946
It is an act of obligation.

1395
01:32:15,488 --> 01:32:18,783
No ruling can restore the time
taken from you.

1396
01:32:18,867 --> 01:32:22,412
No judgment can fully remedy
the burden that you have carried.

1397
01:32:22,954 --> 01:32:26,041
But the court can and does...

1398
01:32:27,292 --> 01:32:31,212
state without qualification or hesitation

1399
01:32:31,880 --> 01:32:34,049
that you are cleared

1400
01:32:35,050 --> 01:32:38,261
and that your innocence is affirmed.

1401
01:32:42,015 --> 01:32:43,683
Three, two, one.

1402
01:32:44,184 --> 01:32:48,396
Today's testimony centered on loss,
the pain of losing families

1403
01:32:48,480 --> 01:32:51,733
and losing youth
as the four men wrongfully accused

1404
01:32:51,816 --> 01:32:55,612
in the yogurt shop murders
waited to have their names cleared.

1405
01:33:12,962 --> 01:33:13,963
And...

1406
01:33:37,612 --> 01:33:39,280
I just want you to know that.

1407
01:33:41,032 --> 01:33:42,867
-Okay?
-Thank you.

1408
01:33:46,037 --> 01:33:47,080
Yes.

1409
01:33:59,259 --> 01:34:00,969
Can you get it up there
without moving the...

1410
01:34:02,554 --> 01:34:06,266
The story has been updated
with a new ending.

1411
01:34:07,475 --> 01:34:09,727
Same spot, but just updated.

1412
01:34:12,689 --> 01:34:14,023
That actually looks good.

1413
01:34:14,107 --> 01:34:16,192
Yeah. Looks pretty even.

1414
01:34:16,818 --> 01:34:17,861
Yeah.