- 15 hours ago
The Yogurt Shop Murders Season 1 Episode 4
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Short filmTranscript
00:19Rob and I wrote letters back and forth while he was in the Travis County Jail and he had a
00:27lot
00:27of time on his hands so he would write us long letters and this is the first one that he
00:30wrote to us.
00:34Dear Claire, when you're in jail time is weird. Some days a second takes all day and others a day
00:45take seconds. When you're in a cell 23 hours a day time stretches to infinity. I read a lot. I
00:55read
00:55the whole Dune series. That's probably one of the greatest sci-fi fantasy series around and I
01:01consider it a classic. I'm not much into puzzles. I think I sent him some puzzle books or something
01:07but I do listen to NPR although I prefer the BBC News. I've used the situation to grow into a
01:14better
01:15person in the last nine and a half years. You can't see it since you've only known me for about
01:21a week
01:22but ask my mother or even my father. You may even have them on film talking about this already.
01:29I have no clue what you've gotten so far. I've grown in so many ways it's impossible to explain.
01:36Please write back soon. Sincere best wishes, Rob. That was his first letter and we wrote back and
01:44forth a few times before he got released on Bond. Yeah.
01:53I was living in a devil town. Didn't know it was a devil town. Oh Lord, it really brings me
02:11down
02:12about the devil town.
02:29Oh Lord, it really brings me down about the devil town.
02:47To hear that my sentencing had been overturned is huge.
02:53Oh man, that was, that was, I was standing at my cell door when it, because the officer comes to
03:00you
03:00because it doesn't come at the normal time of mail. Legal mail is different. They bring it to you.
03:04I'm like, hey, what's this? It's from the court of criminal appeals and I opened it up and went,
03:09oh wow. What they overturned our convictions on was a Sixth Amendment violation of a right to confrontation specifically.
03:23In Springsteen's trial, they took my written statement and they had an officer read parts of it into the record.
03:30In my trial, they took excerpts out of his video interrogation.
03:38The Constitution says you have an absolute right to confront your accuser.
03:44I refused to get on the stand at his trial. He refused to get on the stand at my trial.
03:51So where in there were we allowed to confront our accusers?
03:59This was sort of a gray area of the law. And while this case was on appeal,
04:04the Supreme Court of the United States came down with a decision that really totally changed the law
04:09and made it much more black and white, which got this case reversed.
04:13New developments today in one of Austin's most notorious crimes.
04:16The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Michael Scott got an unfair capital murder trial in Travis County.
04:21They say his confession was improperly introduced to jurors
04:24and he didn't get to face Robert Springsteen, one of his accusers.
04:28Scott's and Springsteen's convictions were overturned.
04:30The appellate court ruled that the men's constitutional right was violated.
04:34Every time I hear those words, that their rights were violated, I don't...
04:42Our girls were murdered.
04:46The highest court in Texas decided on a vote of five to four.
04:52So four of the justices said, nope, it didn't make any difference, but it just takes a majority.
04:58Five of them said it did, so they're going back for a new trial.
05:02How long have you been in prison at that point?
05:09Six and a half, seven years.
05:14That's a rough guess on that one.
05:19One of the things that people don't get is the sequence of events.
05:22The crime happened in 91.
05:24All right, in 99, Michael Scott confesses, Springsteen confesses.
05:29Springsteen loses his case.
05:31Scott loses his case.
05:33One gets death, one gets life.
05:34Seven years later, both cases are reversed and they come back for new trials.
05:41So the district attorney decided that since the confessions indicate that the girls, or at least one of the girls,
05:50was raped, they might find DNA evidence to use for a new trial.
05:55Do you have more yet?
05:58Do you have more yet?
05:59Do you have more yet?
05:59Do you have more yet?
05:59Do you have more yet?
06:00Do you have more yet?
06:01At the first trial, they had already done profiling, and there was no foreign DNA on those swabs.
06:08That's because, at the time, they needed globs of liquids.
06:14But now, they tested it by kind of a new technology called YSTR, which can find much smaller amounts of
06:26DNA.
06:28The state had gotten knowledge of this new YSTR testing and thought, this could be it, because now we're not
06:35allowed to use these confessions against each other.
06:38We're going to prove with science that he did it.
06:40There's an X chromosome, and there's a Y chromosome.
06:44If you're XX, you're a female. If you're XY, you're a male.
06:47YSTR, what it does is it ignores the female DNA.
06:51We get a call from the judge's office saying, hey, can you come and meet right now?
06:57When we got there, prosecutors said, we have found a full YSTR profile in Amy Ayers, and it doesn't match
07:08any of your defendants, your two or the other two either.
07:20The most important thing the DNA stands for is, it's someone else. It is not any one of these four
07:27boys.
07:28And so, I suppose the state of Texas now is going to say that there were really five boys there
07:35instead of four.
07:36Never mind that is inconsistent with the theories they used to try them the first time.
07:42They thought they were going to get a YSTR result and hammer the point home.
07:46Instead, they got the truth, and they can't deal with it.
07:53The theory comes up by the state of Texas, what must be contamination.
07:59Something had to happen to this sample.
08:01It could be contamination, or it could be another person involved.
08:09So, the crime scene collection procedures in 1991, with the lab processing procedures and handling procedures, YSTR can pick up
08:22cast-off skin cells.
08:24So, anybody that had contact, was even close to these swabs, could have contaminated the evidence.
08:31You've got to think of the crime scene, and you've got, I don't know, four inches of water that has
08:35flooded.
08:36You've got naked girls on the floor with water.
08:39It could be anything. It could be, I mean there's a restaurant, people in there all the time.
08:45So, they began testing every firefighter that was there on the scene, over 50 of them.
08:51Any of the officers that were there, any other law enforcement personnel, the medical examiner.
08:56They test Amy's father, brother, anybody who else that they think it could be.
09:06After testing more than 200 men, who just even looked at this body, were anywhere near this body.
09:13There's nobody else, except for maybe somebody that's not in this pile, i.e. the real killer.
09:20The idea that it could be contamination? Yes, it's a possibility. Is it probable? No.
09:25A full profile inside a vaginal swab of the youngest victim? No, that's not contamination. That's your killer.
09:42Since the original trial of this case, new developments in DNA technology have become available.
09:50Currently, it is clear to me that our evidence in the death of these four young women includes DNA from
09:58one male,
09:59people whose identity is not yet known to us.
10:02Given that, I could not, in good conscience, allow this case to go to trial
10:08before the identity of this male donor is determined and the full truth is known.
10:35For the first time in the history of criminal justice in the state of Texas, two young men were released
10:42on personal bond on four counts of capital murder.
10:47I determined I couldn't keep those defendants in jail any longer, so I let them out on personal bond
10:53and gave the state a deadline to be ready to go to trial.
10:59I remain confident that Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott are both responsible for the deaths at the yogurt shop.
11:07I can assure this community that we're going to continue to work on this case until we take it to
11:12trial again.
11:13The first thing I told Robert was that I was sorry it took so damn long for this day to
11:18come.
11:18He hasn't been free for over ten years.
11:21The promise I made him is that he's never going back.
11:24We're going to win this case, and I don't care how that's done, trial, dismissal, whatever.
11:29What does it feel like to be out?
11:30It's wonderful, and I'd like to thank God and my families and my attorney for this opportunity.
11:40Knowing that it is a possibility a match may never be found doesn't bother this mom.
11:45The case is still a good case.
11:47We didn't need the DNA in the first place.
11:49They are going to pay every day of their life.
11:52And I would be, if I were there, I would probably just stay in jail and safer for them
11:57because there's a lot of people who are upset over this.
12:12This case is very simple.
12:14It's about a bad interrogation in which interrogators cross the line into using the kind of tactics
12:21we know cause false confessions.
12:23They suffer from something called confirmation bias,
12:26which means that they're looking for any evidence of guilt because that's what they already think.
12:32So this is Carlos Garcia, and I think what he's doing here is practicing his opening statement for the retrial.
12:44That would have come up in, I think it was 2008, 2009 he's doing this.
12:49He's trying to get Michael to remember details.
12:54And Michael gets scared and he can't remember.
12:57Well, he's going to search on.
13:00That's the gun, ain't it?
13:01Come on.
13:02Tell me.
13:03Michael will say, yeah, that's the gun.
13:05The gun he shot the girls with.
13:08Paul Johnson knew as he's watching on that videotape.
13:12He's sitting in some other room close by watching this stuff go down.
13:16And Paul Johnson knows at that moment that that's not the gun.
13:20Because Paul Johnson had had it tested.
13:24And the Austin Police Department Ballistics person said it's very unlikely that this gun,
13:28that you have Paul Johnson, is the gun that killed those girls.
13:31I don't think quite enough emphasis had been put in the first trial on the fact that the gun did
13:38not match.
13:39That there was really no physical evidence linking these boys to the crime.
13:43And APD knew that the gun did not match even though they're indicating in Michael Scott's interrogation that they had
13:51the matching gun.
13:53In 17 years since this crime was committed, not one single atom of physical evidence connecting these boys to that
14:03crime scene has ever been found.
14:06Not one.
14:08How long was that?
14:10Uh, 48 minutes.
14:13Okay.
14:13Yeah, that needs to be cut down by 20 minutes.
14:17And then...
14:19In my own opinion, Johnson screwed it up.
14:22Not only did he screw it up, he hid things that did not fit.
14:28So every test from the lead, from the bullets that were in the girls, they can't say it really did
14:37come from Maurice's gun or for sure that it didn't.
14:42What Maurice had said was, this gun that I was arrested with is the gun that Forrest took to kill
14:50the girls.
14:52But we have always known that Maurice had access to other guns.
14:58So even though we couldn't get a positive identification, it still wouldn't have cleared Maurice because we knew he had
15:05other guns.
15:07This gun that he was arrested with, it would only be a match if you believe Maurice.
15:13I think I'm an honest person.
15:16I tell the truth.
15:17I think I'm honest in everything I do and I think my investigation was done in an honest way.
15:27And to me, the convictions confirmed what I had always thought.
15:33That not only had they done it, but that we proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they had done it.
15:52Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen have walked into court dozens of times before, but this was the first time they
15:58walked in as free men.
16:00Both men have been out of jail since June when State District Judge Mike Lynch released them on bond and
16:06said prosecutors had to put up or shut up by today.
16:10Courtroom, come to the ward, please. Everyone rise.
16:12106 out of the District District Court of Travis County is now in session.
16:16The Admiral Mark Lynch presiding. You may be seated.
16:22Good afternoon. We're on the record.
16:25In August, the court issued an order due to the unique nature and circumstances of this case that set today
16:32as a date for the parties to announce to the court
16:36whether or not they'd be ready to begin a jury trial.
16:41As the court is well aware, the state is conducting testing to identify the male donor that we uncovered through
16:52some YCR testing from one of the vaginal swabs of one of the victims in our case.
16:57So because of that, Your Honor, given the fact that we have not yet identified the male donor, the state
17:02sees no other viable option at this point, Your Honor,
17:05but to file a motion with the court for dismissal pending further investigation of this matter into the identity of
17:12this male donor.
17:13Anything else from the state?
17:15No, sir.
17:16Apparently having no objections, the court will grant the motions as to each indictment, as to each of the two
17:24tenets.
17:26When the state wasn't ready by that date because of these evidentiary issues, I pretty much forced them to dismiss
17:32the case without prejudice.
17:34I think we were just enforcing the law and doing what was fair.
17:41I can see how most everybody is unsatisfied with there being no final determination.
17:54But I mean, I'm assuming the defendants are very happy to be out of jail and not under charge anymore.
18:01No comment right now, please.
18:06There is no victory here.
18:08The primary question in this case has still not been answered.
18:11Who committed these crimes?
18:13Where are those people?
18:15And we need to find them.
18:16But most of all, I think we should reserve our sympathy and our concern for the families of those girls.
18:26You can go to court, but you can't get justice.
18:29All you get is the law.
18:31Justice to you may be different than justice to me or anybody else down the street.
18:38Yeah.
18:39Justice may be revenge.
18:46Make no mistake, this was a difficult decision and one I'd rather not have to make.
18:59But I believe it is the best legal and strategic course to take to ultimately retry both Springsteen and Scott.
19:07Could you ever do a broad search of CODIS or a big sexual offender database?
19:11There is no database for this particular type of profile.
19:15This is a Y-only profile and there's no database for that.
19:19Can you talk about what this means for the justice system?
19:22Because either you've let two murderers walk out of court today or the wrong guys have been locked up.
19:27How should people have faith in the justice system when neither one of those seems to be a good outcome,
19:31is it?
19:32Twenty-four citizens of Travis County have heard this case and have convicted both of these men before.
19:39This is just a new turn of events.
19:41We need to keep searching for the donor of this DNA.
19:45I don't, as I said, believe it would be fair to give it to a jury now.
19:48Just ask them to guess or surmise and so we'll wait.
20:11Congratulations.
20:14She won't be.
20:16She's welcome.
20:17Or so if you want to hear today.
20:23I'm so glad to hear today.
20:23I'm so glad to hear today.
20:34So this is his first day as a free man, mostly free, out of prison anyway.
20:41And you look great.
20:42I mean, look, like, I think you look good.
20:44I think you look healthy.
20:49Even though the charge has been dropped against you now, you're very close to having been exonerated
20:57in the public view.
20:59I've not been exonerated.
21:01My charges have only been dismissed.
21:04So I went kind of from one jail to another.
21:13Shit.
21:16Fuck a hundred-dollar pair of pants and the damn belt won't even fit in the loose.
21:19It wasn't the exciting thing that I guess a lot of people would think that it would be
21:26because you can't not think about it.
21:29There's always that question, will I ever be exonerated?
21:33Hi.
21:34I'm a producer with us.
21:35It's nice to meet you.
21:36Make yourselves at home.
21:37I can start another pot of coffee.
21:39We got Gatorade and Diet Dr. Pepper and, of course, water.
21:43Very sweet.
21:44We're good.
21:44I think we just want to get a little bit of B-roll.
21:47Just, like, sort of, what are you doing on a daily basis now?
21:51This here is my kitchen, so to speak.
21:54I've got a little toaster oven.
21:56I've got a microwave.
21:57I've got a skillet.
22:05Robert Springsteen, now 35 years old, he never expected to spend the past 10 years in prison.
22:12There's been a lot of hoopla and madness going on here the last several years, and I would
22:17like to get some of the records set straight on this and have the people know the truth.
22:21Were your fingerprints ever found anywhere at the yogurt show?
22:25Your blood?
22:26No.
22:27Your DNA?
22:28No.
22:28Any hair?
22:29No.
22:30But he does have trouble explaining why, after denying for hours he was involved, that he
22:37finally confessed to the police.
22:39How does that happen?
22:40I don't know.
22:42There's psychological aspects to it that I don't understand.
22:47Do you regret the decision to confess?
22:56In a way, yes, and in a way, no.
22:59I've talked to several attorneys and several experts, and they've all said, you know, it
23:05can happen to anybody, and people are just now really starting to find out the truth about
23:12false confessions and coerced confessions.
23:19Good, yeah, kill him, Bill.
23:22Hello, Miss Bill.
23:24I've told you all the line, right, that John Wisser asked me what line of poetry I would
23:28use to characterize the end of my case, and I told him it was T.S. Eliot, you know.
23:34This is the way the world will end.
23:36This is the way the world will end, not with a bang, but a whimper.
23:40I mean, it's dissatisfying.
23:43It's simply over because science doesn't have an opinion.
23:47And here we sit, and there you go, by God.
23:51You want a cigar?
23:54No, I'm good, thanks.
23:57I was just talking to Judge Lynch this morning.
24:00I mean, this case is over, but it's never going to be over.
24:04And, I mean, that was one of the things we talked about.
24:06He asked about you, and I told him.
24:10He thinks you're gone.
24:12You know, I just said, you're in West Virginia, and I told you that you're never coming back
24:18to Texas.
24:19You know, the DA's office believes you're guilty.
24:22The cops, I mean, are almost rabid about it.
24:27If they could catch you behind the wheel, you would not make it out of Austin.
24:31They would find a reason to put you in jail.
24:33That's what I'm saying.
24:35Even if the charges were dropped, it would be a sensational news story.
24:41You know, yogurt shop defendant.
24:43Bill, honest to God.
24:45Bill, I am going to stick you.
24:50No, no, I don't care what you think.
24:52Here you come.
25:26I really like Texas.
25:28I hate to leave, but it's the best thing to do right now, so.
25:32I didn't realize the cop situation was so serious.
25:36Well, we don't know for sure that it is.
25:39But it gives the appearance of being pretty bad.
25:42And we just don't want there to be any issues, you know?
25:45So, it's better to be safe than sorry.
26:08What started as a routine traffic stop ended with the shooting death of a man that had a history with
26:15Austin Police.
26:16The officer managed to fire a single round that did strike the suspect.
26:21We are discovering the man killed was Maurice Pierce.
26:25Police say Pierce ran through a stop sign and started jumping over fences to get away through this neighborhood.
26:31When Wilson finally caught up with him.
26:33The officer was attempting to control him and get him in custody.
26:37He said he felt something wet.
26:39He realized that Maurice had gotten the knife off of his belt and had cut his throat.
26:44Officer Wilson is in stable condition.
26:48Minutes later, neighbors called police saying the attacker was dead in a yard down the street.
26:52Maurice Pierce is the name many Austinites know well, connected to that infamous yogurt shop murders.
26:58Members of Pierce's family say that pass followed him, saying he didn't trust police.
27:06Senior Sergeant of the Homicide Detectives, the next morning he called me and I chewed his butt out.
27:13I said, you should have come and got me that night.
27:15I don't want to hear Maurice Pierce dead.
27:17I want to see Maurice Pierce dead.
27:20What I had always hoped was going to happen, that we would get evidence to get him to trial.
27:28And it would be for capital murder and he would get a life sentence.
27:33So when I found out that he had been killed, it really didn't bother me.
27:40Which may sound harsh, but it's true.
27:46Over the years, Maurice Pierce kept talking to the cops like they would interview him and he would always talk
27:52to them.
27:55Pierce was always afraid of the cops.
27:57It kept bothering him because he was always that prime suspect.
28:02Johnson would go up and bother him and talk to him and he would always talk.
28:07I think you understand that me being the one responsible for working this case,
28:12I'm frustrated that you have information about it and I can't get that information from you.
28:18As long as you are finding out the absolute truth about this case.
28:22But the other cops, when they first questioned me at the police department,
28:27I'm 16 years old and they scared the living hell out of me.
28:29Telling me all this, they know I did this.
28:31When I had nothing to do with it, I was nowhere, I was not even there.
28:35I had nothing to do with that.
28:37You said, Forrest took the gun, he came back and he said he killed the girls with that gun.
28:44When did I say that?
28:45Ten days after it happened?
28:46When they were questioning me?
28:47Uh huh.
28:49And you know, I don't know, I wasn't there.
28:52And I don't have the entire interview.
28:55Yeah, you have from five o'clock in the morning on.
28:57Right.
28:57What happened to the main part of the interview?
29:00What happened to the part to where they were scaring the living shit out of me?
29:04Throwing photos in my face telling me this is what the girls look like now and all this.
29:08What happened to all that?
29:10I don't think they had a tape going.
29:12That's why I'm so damn scared.
29:14Okay, well I haven't thrown anything at you.
29:16When you put a little 16 year old person in here and you tell them,
29:18Oh we know you killed these people.
29:20When I had nothing to do with it, that scares the living shit out of you.
29:24Do you think you'd remember if you had killed the girls?
29:26Yeah, I remember.
29:27Well, I hope so.
29:28If I killed the girls, I wouldn't be here talking to you.
29:34You were saying, I don't remember, I don't remember, I don't remember.
29:38And then while I was typing, you started crying.
29:42That's not somebody that's not remembering.
29:44You're remembering.
29:46It's cause you cry doesn't mean you're hiding something.
29:48What does it mean?
29:50You're scaring the hell out of me.
29:51That's what it meant.
29:55Pierce died because of his PTSD.
29:59I have no doubt.
30:01If Maurice Pierce doesn't decide to take a gun to the mall,
30:06on December the 15th, 1991, he'd still be alive.
30:10And none of us would be here right now talking about this.
30:13Knock nose into Jackessa.
30:18There he is.
30:30That was hilarious.
30:33If you've ever been here, Eric.
30:33You've never ever been here and that's why...
30:34There he is.
30:35To me who was going to the camp, Christ pike.
30:36That's what I do.
30:37Nowhere did you across every row.
30:37Nowhere is another day just provinca a little ape.
30:45I try not to keep like a lot of cop stuff in my house.
30:49I take my shoes off the front door, just try to leave it as much as possible.
30:53But then I come home and work from home for a couple hours every day.
30:55So I guess it's kind of a moot in some sense.
31:00When I was in the homicide division, I solved 100% of my cases.
31:04I left there with no open case work.
31:08Maybe I jinxed myself, came over here and like, oh, you think you're good?
31:10Well, here's yogurt shop.
31:15OJ Simpson, he needed like a ton of blood, right, for DNA back then.
31:19That's when DNA became kind of a household thing, was a Simpson trial.
31:22And now we're talking picograms, which is like a thousandth of a nanogram.
31:27But you can't even see the naked eye.
31:31And it seems like each time you talk to these labs, they're able to do more with less.
31:51Be real careful.
31:55There you go.
31:57Is this pretty much the way it was?
31:59Yes.
31:59So this is reconstructed from the crime scene photos and video.
32:03And, of course, this is the front where all the customers would sit and then the back
32:06where the fire started and the girls were.
32:11And this is the first thing we see because we have all the girls up here with a biography
32:15about each one.
32:17And this is, yeah, it's the first thing you see every morning.
32:20So it's a reminder that these girls have histories, have families, have faces and had lives.
32:27And it's not just a case.
32:30It's much more than that.
32:33We have some of the original yogurt shop material here.
32:37These two filing cabinets is full of original material.
32:40And then there's multiple other filing cabinets at a different location.
32:43So just, again, the vastness of this case, this is only a portion of some of the hard copies.
32:52Here it is.
32:53It's like we still have all the original VHS.
32:56I mean, this is interviews, this is in-car camera, this is like the original VHS.
33:01And I guess if we wanted to watch it, we'd have to find a VHS player somewhere.
33:19So we have this unknown DNA, and I've got to figure out who that is.
33:22That's goal number one.
33:24It could be contamination, or it could be another person involved.
33:30What's the probability that it's contamination?
33:33We have the original 08 profile that went to one lab.
33:37And then as early as 2017 and 2019, we're finding that profile in other places, a totally different
33:44lab and totally different, unrelated pieces of evidence.
33:51So how would you have contamination when you've got different areas of the crime scene, different
33:58people with different chains of custody, and these items going to different labs in different
34:02time periods?
34:05It would be like winning the lottery repeatedly.
34:07The chances of somehow samples that are unrelated and handled by different people in different
34:13labs at different time periods somehow got contaminated by the same male profile?
34:18But that does not exist.
34:21So I suppose the state of Texas now is going to say that there were really five boys there
34:27instead of four.
34:30It's not contamination by the lab personnel or anybody on the scene, but to say that that
34:34is our fifth person or it shows that the four were not there at all, it's some other person.
34:40Until we figure out who that profile belongs to, that's just speculation.
34:44I really didn't understand that, because everyone says contamination.
34:48The families told me they believe the samples are contaminated.
34:52A former police officer also said that to me.
34:54So I just assumed, okay, these are people who've been working this case.
34:59Yeah.
34:59My brain is a little bit exploding, to be honest, because there's no one else in either confession.
35:04So that would have to mean, like, that undoes the confession.
35:08Like, that doesn't, that does not make sense with the confession, to me, you know?
35:14Yeah.
35:16Yeah.
35:17I'm, I'm staying out of it until I figure out who that person is.
35:24It could come back to somebody totally unrelated to this case, like the DNA got transferred
35:28for a totally normal reason, right?
35:30Like a friend or something.
35:31Or it may be a complete dead end.
35:33We just don't know.
35:35We can't think of DNA as proving guilt or innocence.
35:39DNA is something that says, I have a sample, and I may be able to tell you who is the
35:43source
35:44of this sample, or who's not a contributor of the sample.
35:48But how it got there, when it got there, that's up to the whole investigation and all the other
35:54factors in that.
35:57Anytime you do a DNA test, you have to take some of the sample and use it.
36:01Once we use it, it's no longer there.
36:04So when you have a DNA sample and there's very little, you may only have one shot at
36:09it because you may have to use all of it up.
36:10And then there's no going back after that.
36:12Here they got a Y profile from Jennifer Harbison.
36:15In a lot of ways, you're pushing the envelope here to, you know, cutting edge technology,
36:20if not bleeding edge technology.
36:22So we don't know if this is going to get the answer we want, which is something, or it's
36:29going to just be, you know, a waste in that because no one's done this on this kind of
36:35work before.
36:35It's a last effort because there's nothing else the case can use to try to solve the murder.
36:51Okay.
36:52So we, y'all, we're going to call, bear with us because I'm sorry, we may be able to solve
36:59crimes, but we can't solve technology.
37:02Just saying.
37:03All right.
37:04All right.
37:04So this is my crew right back here.
37:07I told you how.
37:09And they're all so excited to meet you because I've been bragging on you.
37:15Okay.
37:16We have a bunch of questions, but I think that where we want to start is what would you do
37:21different knowing what you know today?
37:24I would have continued investigating the Creek people, Mac and the people that are hanging
37:32out in the Creek there with Mac, not to look at them as suspects, but just to get any other
37:38information because there were tons of tips about Maurice.
37:44Under the bridge where these people were hanging out, that's where Maurice told Polanco they're
37:50storing the communal gun.
37:52This communal gun is what we suspect would have been the .380.
38:20I never knew that all that was said.
38:22That is insane.
38:24Yeah.
38:25I don't even know how to respond to that.
38:27But, I mean, you know, we said the guy, Mace, who lived in North Cross apartment with his
38:33mom.
38:33I mean, he's got to be talking about me.
38:36Yes.
38:36I would have been in this apartment, but on the other side.
38:38Yeah.
38:39This is exactly.
38:40I don't know that anybody else lived in North Cross apartments with their mom that was me.
38:45You know, skinhead, whatever.
38:49I never thought I'd be back here again.
38:51This is.
38:52Yeah.
38:52I feel like my childhood's coming to haunt me.
39:01I feel like this was a spot.
39:03Yeah, the yogurt shops, what, a two-minute walk right over there?
39:07What is it, a couple thousand yards?
39:10I mean, really, really close.
39:12The mall is just on the other side of these apartments, pretty much.
39:15But I feel like there's been a lot of erosion.
39:17I think it was.
39:19I think we would have just been down here to hide and drink beer.
39:22Yeah.
39:22That's it.
39:23In the statements, it said that y'all had guns down here.
39:26That is complete horseshit.
39:28I've been asked about that.
39:28That is so ludicrous.
39:30They asked me about that, and they also asked me for a current DNA sample, because I think
39:34they said they lost the original one, so.
39:36So, number one, we didn't have money, right?
39:39So, if we had the money to purchase said gun, we weren't leaving it in the creek.
39:46So, this idea of some shared community gun is absolute absurdity.
39:52You know, I think we had a lot of bravado, and we wanted to be tough and cool, but we
39:57weren't.
39:58You know, we weren't evil.
40:00We never hurt anybody, and, yeah.
40:06In my experience, people don't want to hear that there's inherently evil people in the world,
40:12and that the vast majority of us are neither good nor evil, but will kind of go whatever way.
40:18Which, you know, may in part explain what happened up there, right?
40:23Somebody was evil, and somebody went along.
40:26I think the part I struggle with is how did that person who went along never, ever spill the beans,
40:32right?
40:33How did they never, ever come clean?
40:35Because, yeah, somebody was evil.
40:38But I tend to believe people will kind of go whatever way.
40:43I don't ever want to be one of those people.
40:54Everyone, I think a really nice good circle all the way around.
40:58Everybody join hands, please.
41:01We thank you, man up above.
41:05We are so grateful that you've brought us here.
41:07We ask that you keep everybody here healthy,
41:09and that today we find some peace and closure.
41:12In Jesus' name, amen.
41:14Amen, amen, amen.
41:15Let's pull this away because the capsule I could tell is there because, look, watch.
41:19Oh, yeah.
41:20So it's there.
41:21So let's move this.
41:23Be careful.
41:25We'll put it back in there.
41:29Was it concrete or was it a box?
41:31I can't remember.
41:34I remember I'm doing it.
41:36There's something there.
41:37I don't know what it is.
41:43I don't know if that's it or not.
41:46You don't remember?
41:48I don't remember.
41:49That year was a whole fall.
41:52Yeah.
41:52Yeah.
41:55Yeah.
42:00Ooh.
42:02Yeah.
42:03I don't know.
42:04I don't know.
42:14With all these roots here, I don't think it's going to be here.
42:17I don't either.
42:18Maybe it's over here.
42:20Shit.
42:21Yeah, I wonder if it's under here.
42:22It won't make any sense.
42:23Yeah, she thinks it was off to the side of the courtyard.
42:27And even the parents are not very, for sure.
42:29So do you, do you think you know?
42:31Can you believe me?
42:33No.
42:48Best buds always, yeah.
42:56There we go.
42:59There we go.
43:00There we go.
43:00Yeah, watch out.
43:00Damn.
43:05Oh no.
43:06Oh man, what a mess.
43:07What a mess.
43:14Bring that trash can over here and we...
43:18Oh, the ribbons?
43:19Mm-hmm.
43:19Uh-huh.
43:20That's off the tree.
43:21Oh wow.
43:22That's what those are.
43:23Those are the ribbons off the tree when they planted it.
43:26Uh-huh.
43:27I do see some names there.
43:29Yeah, they tied them on there when they planted it.
43:31We will not forget.
43:32Right.
43:33This was the...
43:34I think it's nice for them to know that they weren't alone in all of it.
43:39Yeah.
43:39Even if they felt that they were.
43:41Because it's obvious that a lot of people really loved her.
43:45Yeah.
43:45And thought of her a lot.
43:50That's her.
43:52Because...
43:52One time when we were at elementary school, I don't know if she ever did it.
43:55I don't know if she was in it.
43:56And if it dries out, you can tell more about it.
44:02I remember not knowing pieces of it, but I feel like I've always known about it.
44:07I mean, at my grandparents' house, they have like a pillow, and it has her on it.
44:11And I'd always wonder who she was.
44:13And then they have a whole hallway, and the whole hallway has a bunch of different things with her on
44:20it.
44:21I don't know.
44:22You see how it affects them.
44:24Dad doesn't really talk about it a lot.
44:26It's usually Mom yelling at people about it, but...
44:32I don't know.
44:33You kind of wonder how they'd be, how he'd be, if it hadn't happened.
44:37I don't know.
44:39I don't know if he isn't.
44:51Really?
44:53No chapter closed.
45:05there's so many ways the loss of my sister 30 years later shows up in my adult life
45:12my name is sonora and i'm a therapist i'm in private practice in massachusetts
45:19one thing that really drew me to this kind of work is that i've spent so much of my life
45:23trying to
45:24heal right in the very beginning when you lost your child i want to look at a little bit about
45:30what that initial experience was like for you i think there is benefit to telling the story in
45:38different settings in different ways i wanted to give you a chance to write a letter to your child
45:43it could be what's happening in your life in this moment but i don't think the trauma ever loses its
45:49potency like when you ask me can i remember the yogurt shop like i can feel my body changing
45:56when i have that memory you know um
46:03it's so i don't you know that may never change
46:09with 31 years and we're still talking about this stuff and i try not to
46:15quite frankly i probably wouldn't have if i weren't talking to you right but i needed that
46:19connection with you
46:22yesterday we were talking about living through this experience you begin to know things that
46:27other people don't know and i don't think it works that way for everybody no because
46:35some people that i know in my family became more cynical i can't quite find the words for it and
46:42i've been trying to find the words for myself too like why these tragic experiences open me up to
46:48love people more because it could do the opposite by the way they both happen yeah tell me that both
46:57both of those things happen yeah you do get you get really bitchy and cynical about stuff but then
47:03you also you feel like you're on the other side you got closer to the love it's amazing the tools
47:10that
47:10we have to use to heal ourselves and we rarely use them we get so close to the pain that
47:17it's
47:17more comfortable to be there than it is to go to the light to where the where the where the
47:22freedom
47:22is yeah i hear that a lot in the trauma groups that i work with i don't like this but
47:28i'm afraid
47:29i don't know what else there is and this is something that i know i know how to do this
47:33i know
47:33how to hold on to this pain i know how to live with this pain
47:36i have this saying that when i die i hope i'm brave and that i can jump into it
47:43i want to be i wanted the freedom to fall into that next thing whatever that is right to let
47:50go
47:50of the fear let go of the fear i think one of the hard things and i'm realizing 30 years
47:55later
47:57is figuring out how to live your life and live the life you want to live after all this
48:03you know not that you shouldn't care not that you shouldn't whatever but you know you gotta
48:08figure out what you love to do and what you want to do
48:20and it's really hard
48:24but i think it's very important i mean i went back to school
48:2710 years on went into engineering which i love and i think the hard part with homicide is you get
48:37tied into the whole investigation and is it good is it bad does somebody screw up blah blah blah
48:43you know you know it wasn't until i went to an actual focus grief group that i really liberated
48:49myself and i was invited because my dad had died that year and it's like well that was pretty trivial
48:54i hate to say it he was 85 he'd been sick for a long time and i spent the whole
48:59grief group talking
48:59about eliza and that was very liberating to actually focus on the grief and i think you denied that in
49:10the homicide stuff which is all necessary right but it's not necessary for us to do it not necessary
49:16for me to do it yeah right i agree with that so much because we thought we were doing the
49:22right
49:22thing to being public with this because we needed to keep it out in the public so that we would
49:27still
49:28have the support of the community and they could love us and help us find these people you know
49:33every time anything happened we had cameras and as it time goes on it takes a toll on you
49:41it's been 31 years i would not do it the same way
49:48i would retreat and go far away and have some quiet time with god
49:55but the thing that we have to be careful about because ours has been so public most people don't
50:01have the support of the community right their brother gets killed and no one ever speaks to them
50:06about it they don't use his name anymore you need that love you need to be held when you're suffering
50:14that was the double-edged sword of the public
50:18we got a lot of attention early because it was hot news hot news four white girls got killed and
50:24um and and the case well we don't know about the case what do we know about the case whatever
50:29they
50:29tell us we we take it for face value because it's it's yeah i would have taken a step back
50:36a little bit
50:36more i think that i but i felt such an obligation to carry this thing out
50:45one shot of just the two of y'all okay these two just us two or she needs a wide
50:50lens from just us
50:54when he's sweet he's so good i knew i was better if i did it yeah and he when he
50:59wants to share what
51:00his experience and he did but he's scared yeah i was glad it made me feel good yeah i know
51:06i'm so glad
51:20i just
51:27just put all this away for a while it's it's been a tough couple of days just to get it
51:32going through
51:33all this again but i love you and i appreciate the opportunity you have given me a huge gift
51:41by talking to me the last few days i cannot thank you enough i learned so much from you
51:50i hope all this helps somebody it helps me that's the only person i care about yeah it helps me
51:55a lot
51:56i'm just so grateful that you're sharing your experience with me i don't have my mom to talk
52:01too but i can talk to you well one crazy ass old lady to the next one it's just if
52:07it should it
52:07should blend really well it should make the same person right all right are you all done with us did
52:15you get the wide shot
52:16you get the same person right all right all right we're here
52:38it's just hard to see
52:47the picture on the wall these are some of the cases that we've solved over the years
52:51how old were some of the cases yeah most of them are from 80s and 90s
53:00i'm sure you've heard the same different kind of spiel from every detective for the last 30 years about
53:04we're working hard you know we're working on it and i'm just the newest guy
53:07uh but and i want you to know that i'm throwing everything i can at this the dna is uh
53:16really the
53:18crux of where we're going with it we're continuing to reevaluate every piece of evidence
53:24um because what may have been untestable a few years ago like because of the what it's made of or
53:32its condition or whatever may or may not be something we can do now we've got a finite amount
53:38uh it's my decision as the lead detective but i'm not making it alone i'm bringing people that are way
53:42smarter than me when it comes to dna um some of the experts across the country that uh provide advice
53:47to make sure that when we move forward with trying to test something or trying to
53:53use some dna up that we're the best odds and if we don't have great odds then we'll just hold
53:57on for a
53:57bit if there's any questions you have for me of course i'll be happy to answer best i can okay
54:04it's
54:05it's nice to get some some info we've said this over the years is that it was always nice to
54:12have
54:12fresh eyes on it we can communicate as family members and police department and hopefully solve
54:19this at the end of the day i'm very hopeful i am confident that technology is moving at a pace
54:27that we will be at a point where we can take a sample to a lab items that were unable
54:32to be tested
54:32before with a realistic expectation of developing a profile sooner than later we are going to solve
54:41this case someday want the public to know that
55:00you'll have your own pain in your own way in your own time you don't need to you don't need
55:03to visit
55:03this one at a certain point the project ends and hopefully the film is finished and you let go
55:11this was a different kind of thing because i didn't finish
55:15it was really complicated i couldn't see all the angles all of the storylines all of the people
55:22so the basic feeling was a feeling of failure and the larger feeling was just that i had let people
55:30down i felt like i let people down you know who gave me a lot of trust
55:36but i knew that it was worth preserving and i'm glad that this footage is finding a home that feels
55:46like a
55:46way of honoring the folks that let me film them
55:57as the years go on it's still sitting out there unsolved
56:07so i used to hide every december 6th couldn't find me i take off work
56:15even when i was still at pd and i did when i was at metro december 6 couldn't find me
56:21you know i was off in a corner about myself it's my version i guess of the day that will
56:29live in infamy
56:31yeah i mean and and it'll probably be that way as long as it's still unsolved
56:45i think i have a memory but it's a photograph and it's a photograph that i've seen many times and
56:52i
56:52sort of create a story around it
56:56i don't think it matters whether the memory is accurate or not because it's your memory
57:05so you're asking how do we deal with traumatic memories and change them or heal them right um
57:16so yeah there is like this big school of thought that says like oh we just tell the story over
57:20and
57:20over and over again but i think some other things need to happen in telling that story over and over
57:28again i think we need to have a lot of support in doing that and to have the compassion of
57:39other
57:39human beings around us as they're witnessing our story there's a real benefit for both
57:47teller and audience member to telling that story and to hearing that story
57:56i think that can change how the memory lives inside of you
58:15look there's a light
58:26so
58:34so
58:35so
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