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Season Six: One Unknown Male pt. 1
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We are using this episode to talk about an unsolved 90s quadruple murder that appears to now be closed. Part I
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Transcript
Listener Discretion Advised
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Introduction to True Crime Story
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:59
Speaker
This is like one of those weird intersections where true crime news is also like a really interesting story that has a lot of twists and turns.
00:01:11
Speaker
And he was on my list for this fall. One of these serial killers that's involved in all of this. But I figured this would be a good time to talk about it because apparently they've made an announcement. There's recently been a documentary that you were telling me about that's out about this.
00:01:30
Speaker
But this case has like a lot of sort of crazy twists and turns to it.
Yogurt Shop Confusion and History
00:01:36
Speaker
Do you remember i Can't Believe It's Yogurt Chops? I don't know. i actually get it confused with like tcb y which is the country's best yogurt. that's yogurt Right.
00:01:50
Speaker
So I'm not sure. i don't know. i don't even know. like i don't know if I Can't Believe It's Yogurt was a nationwide chain or... So i i I remember what it a little yogurt or ice cream shop was like, though.
00:02:07
Speaker
So in 1996, there was an acquisition made a shop called, i can't believe it's yogurt. So you were talking about TCBY, which was originally this can't be yogurt.
00:02:21
Speaker
They get sued. They changed their name. and say It stands for the country's best yogurt. But a company called Yogenfrois, which is a Canadian chain, of they mainly focus on frozen yogurt and smoothie stores.
00:02:36
Speaker
In 1996, they end up acquiring, I can't believe it's not yogurt. I can't believe it's yogurt. They end up acquiring, I can't believe it's yogurt. The premise behind that is that it tastes so good it can't just be yogurt. Right.
00:02:50
Speaker
Right. Right. As opposed to ice cream. Right. It comes out like almost like soft serve ice cream would. Right. and you And then it's confusing because I can't believe it's not butter.
00:03:05
Speaker
Right. It's like a whole thing with butter, right? Yeah. So we're just going to go ahead and say... right we just gonna we're gonna go ahead and say that I frequently say I can't believe it's not yogurt, but it's actually, i can't believe it's yogurt. Well, to be fair, when you said it initially, I actually had to think about it. So it's not like, I mean, it's an uncommon mistake.
00:03:30
Speaker
So I can't believe it's yogurt. It's founded down in Dallas, Texas 1977 by a couple, Bill and Julie Bryce. It ends up being owned under their parent company, which is Bryce Foods.
00:03:43
Speaker
And then... They get into a lawsuit in 1984, and they sue TCBY, known as This Can't Be Yogurt, which I was familiar with TCBY.
00:03:55
Speaker
I was not familiar with I Can't Believe It's Yogurt. um i Actually, there was like a TCBY that I remember. It became a different brand later, and then it became like a a bunch of one-offs.
00:04:09
Speaker
Well, it's funny because educational background is in business, so I can't help but call things out. But the whole like ah licensing and franchising of these little mom and pop shops, it was a whole thing. And then for this is a good example of that. I don't know how many stores they had, but then people realized, like, all I have to do is rename it, right?
00:04:33
Speaker
Right. right And so it could be like Bob's yogurt, right? Right. And then you don't have to pay the licensing because the margins... For the most part, the margins on these ah types of stores, we're talking about like a small, usually in like a retail mall strip or whatever.
00:04:53
Speaker
ah The margins aren't really enough to ah continue paying the big licensing fees, right? Right. Which can be like a ridiculous amount of money.
00:05:06
Speaker
But it happened with like ah Dairy Queen, Ultimately, TCBY kind of wins out. They end up with about 2,000 stores. They're like all over the U.S. They're in multiple other countries.
Crime Story Unfolds at Yogurt Shop
00:05:21
Speaker
ah They end up in a situation where in the mid-90s, around the same time that we're going to be talking about, they became a part of like the Taco Bell, McDonald's, Subway, Burger King type level of ah fast food. And they co-branded with a bunch of those different products.
00:05:40
Speaker
ah companies Now, that's TCBY. What we're focused in on is I can't believe it's yogurt because they have like a pretty interesting story attached to one of their shops.
00:05:54
Speaker
Now. We're specifically going to talk about 1991, even though like some of this is going to unfold over time. ah This is going to be between it's going to be between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 1991.
00:06:13
Speaker
The way that we learn about this story to begin with is just around midnight on Friday, December 6th of 1991.
00:06:25
Speaker
There's a patrolman with the Austin, Texas Police Department, and he sees a fire coming out of the I Can't Believe It's yogurt store. He reports it into dispatch, and after he reports it in ah firefighters arrive on scene and the fire is extinguished.
00:06:46
Speaker
But firefighters discover inside the store there are four unclothed bodies. And that story is the story that we're gonna hear about time and again. Now,
00:07:00
Speaker
ah People Carries' a story in December of 2023 where they're talking about this, because you know we're 30 some years past.
00:07:12
Speaker
And we find out, if if you go and read any of these like standard stories, we find out that there's four girls in this yogurt shop.
00:07:24
Speaker
Now, what's interesting about them is you know, i don't know who you think of when you think of like who's working in fast food restaurants, but this is pretty typical.
00:07:36
Speaker
um There is like a younger person in here. ah Her name is Amy Ires. She's only 13 years old. Then we have Sarah Harbison. and She's 15 years old. But the other two girls, Jennifer Harbison is 17 and Eliza Thomas is 17.
00:07:53
Speaker
so And Eliza and Jennifer were the ones working. Right. but and So when you when I think of 17-year-olds, that's a pretty typical person running a counter at any kind of fast food place. But I can definitely also picture it at the stores that you were talking about.
00:08:12
Speaker
like I remember Orange Julius was run by teenagers. Dairy Queen was run by teenagers. And, of course, in this case, is I can't believe it's Yogurt. Right. And it's amazing. um So this happened in 1991.
00:08:24
Speaker
And it's amazing at how much work these girls would have to do, which I mean, I was a teenager in the 90s. I had to work hard at my first job, too.
00:08:35
Speaker
But they had to put in a lot of work for very little money and they really enjoyed what they did. right Yeah. This is kind of minimum wage kind of job where you're there to socialize and to make a little extra cash. And like you said, have fun.
Murder Scene Details
00:08:53
Speaker
So what we discover is that all four of these girls have been shot in the head execution style. We discover that Sarah, the 15 year old, and then the two 17 year olds, Eliza and Jennifer,
00:09:09
Speaker
They had been gagged and bound with their own underwear. All three of their bodies were severely charred, and each of them had a.22 caliber shot to the back of the head.
00:09:21
Speaker
Now, unlike those three, Amy, the youngest girl, she is found in a separate part of the yogurt shop. She was not charred, but she had received ah second and what's described as very early third degree burns.
00:09:41
Speaker
And according to the express news, who's kind of riding the people coattails on the 30 years plus, they say that she had burns over 25 to 30% of her body.
00:09:55
Speaker
So what's interesting about all of this is we talk about a lot of these older cases and they're quote unquote unsolved. That is not um how this case goes.
00:10:11
Speaker
And it when I say it has twists and turns, it does some things that you and i we we question when like there's multiple perpetrators, whether it's really multiple perpetrators that did this.
Initial Investigation and Suspects
00:10:25
Speaker
In this instance, um the story that we get is that the girls had all been and and murder Now, I don't know exactly who was raped or how that was done. I'm going to go through sort of the summaries of what I've been able to put together here.
00:10:47
Speaker
We know at least one of them had been raped. Now with Amy, the girl who's found ways away from the others, she had been shot in the back of the head, but that bullet had sort of missed the mark.
00:11:03
Speaker
So she had a second bullet wound. that likely caused severe damage to her brain, and it would exit through essentially the side of her cheek along her jawline.
00:11:14
Speaker
You can find a lot of summaries online. A lot of people have covered this over the years from the perspective of it being an unsolved case. um And it's not that we're not covering it from that direction, but we wanted to focus in on sort of some of the stranger things that have happened here.
00:11:32
Speaker
Now, investigators identify initially a big pile of suspects. There's a 15-year-old that's caught with a weapon that is a.22LR gun.
00:11:46
Speaker
And the interesting thing about this case is there's a second gun on the scene that's a.380 pistol. So we have two guns in play here, but the 15-year-old is caught with one of them.
00:12:00
Speaker
And he gives up some information and he's pretty heavily interrogated by the Austin police department. But ultimately what the police realize is that he seems to be trying to get himself out of the trouble of having been caught with the gun.
00:12:17
Speaker
So he and three friends who he has implicated in this quadruple homicide and sexual assault of these four teenage girls, they end up being clear. None of them were older than 17 at the time, but they do go back several years later and they put a new detective on this 1991 Austin yogurt shop, Podrupal homicide.
00:12:46
Speaker
He is going to take another swing at these four teenagers. So by the time he's on this case, they're all going to be in their twenty s And they they put these four, who were named Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welburn, through a series of interrogations.
00:13:09
Speaker
And they start to get confessions. So there's no record of what was said to these men in the 1991 interrogations.
00:13:22
Speaker
And that's one of the problems that you have with these cold case homicides. And it's one of the few things that like police use to justify having held back information or not released information.
00:13:34
Speaker
But in this case, it's impossible to know if the original investigators on these 1991 homicides had potentially given away details that would allow for these confessions to seem a little more real or plausible.
Trials and Coerced Confessions
00:13:57
Speaker
So this information could have been used to further implicate the suspects in later interrogations if they had kept a good record of it, and it would have been a way to sort of discern whether or not they'd done it.
00:14:11
Speaker
Now, Of the four, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, they're going to go to trial. This is a trial that's going to be entirely based their alleged statements or their confessions.
00:14:32
Speaker
Have you ever looked these kids up? Well, I've actually seen some of the interrogations from... Okay. The second round? Well, yeah, because the first round...
00:14:43
Speaker
I don't even think they were interrogated. I think it was just, um it was a lot less in depth. It's just they they were at a point in time where this, like, serious crime hadn't been ah solved yet.
00:14:58
Speaker
And the gun link was, like, the strongest thing they could come up with. um Okay. With regard to um i believe, Michael, ah actually, who had the gun?
00:15:13
Speaker
Michael Scott, I believe. Well, so, because he was at the the same mall that Amy and Sarah had been at before Jennifer had left the yogurt shop.
00:15:26
Speaker
She went to go pick them up and brought them back. Right. ah And so, you know, like, I don't know, a week to 10 days later, ah the kid was found with the.22. And...
00:15:39
Speaker
and it caused a ruckus because the girls had all been shot in the head with right? right. right right Okay. And so that, you know, all these years later, that was the strongest thing they had to go on.
00:15:54
Speaker
And they brought in Springsteen and ah Michael Scott— And the reason they were the only two to go to trial is because, my knowledge, the other two didn never confessed. But if you watch some of the interrogation tapes, they talk them into it.
00:16:14
Speaker
They walk them into the the confession? It's one of the worst ah situations I've ever seen with regard to false confessions, right?
00:16:26
Speaker
ah They literally go through and like, they're giving them all this information and they talk them into the fact that like, they could have possibly done it, but they don't remember it.
00:16:42
Speaker
And they can, if they think hard enough about it, they will remember it. It is the craziest thing I've ever seen happen. And yet it, it happened.
00:16:54
Speaker
And, Once I started seeing that, I was like, this is done for, right? Because it doesn't matter yeah you know, if they if they had done it at that point, it wouldn't even matter because of what I'm watching happen.
00:17:14
Speaker
And it was a shame, but they were getting desperate. This was like one of the worst crimes of like all time in that area. As far as the, you know, it was four young girls, two of whom were working at the, I can't believe it's yogurt, and then one of the girl's younger sisters and then her friend.
00:17:41
Speaker
That just happened to be there. And so because of the gravity of that, you know, the public was outraged that it hadn't been solved. And so that was the solution they came up with was like,
00:17:54
Speaker
It had to be the one connection they had, which was the kid with the gun. And and it was
Convictions and Overturning
00:18:00
Speaker
a whole thing. They had him put on a wire. And it didn't pan out to anything, but the cops ran with it anyway.
00:18:09
Speaker
Right. He even got some key details wrong. One of the things that comes about that's wrong is Springsteen had the gun. They knew it was a.22 caliber pistol, but Michael Scott remembered it being some kind of semi-automatic.38 caliber, which so they kind of attribute that to being the fourth bullet because three of the victims are shot with.22 caliber ammunition, but the other one had been shot with caliber weapon.
00:18:36
Speaker
caliber weapon So even his mistake didn't help them. So we end up with kind of a kerfuffle of things going on here.
00:18:47
Speaker
They put Springsteen and Scott on trial. the The prosecution goes into great detail about how bad these crimes were against these young victims, but they don't really present any other evidence than these incriminating statements that they've labeled as confessions.
00:19:03
Speaker
So these two kids... While they're not kids, while trial is going on, they were kids when this all happened. Because specifically, Springsteen was 17.
00:19:14
Speaker
And i believe Michael Scott was 15. But they're both convicted of capital murder. Now, because of the way the law was in that moment, Robert Springsteen is, he's essentially sentenced to death as a 17-year-old who had committed that crime.
00:19:35
Speaker
That's going to change later. But Michael Scott is sentenced to life imprisonment because he was under the age of 16 when all this occurred. We can pull up their profiles from the National Registry of Exonerations.
00:19:50
Speaker
And they're they're pretty interesting profiles to check out. Here's Robert Springsteen's. It says, minutes before midnight on December 6, 1991, firefighters were summoned to a fire at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop in Austin, Texas.
00:20:05
Speaker
In a back room, they found the nude bodies of four girls, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison was 15, Amy Ayers who was 13.
00:20:17
Speaker
All had been tied up and shot in the back of the head and then a fire was started to try and cover up the crime. ah It's considered one of the most infamous crimes in Austin history. Four teenage boys soon came under suspicion.
00:20:28
Speaker
That's Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, who we've talked about. says they're both 17 in the
00:20:35
Speaker
ah run down on the National Registry of Exonerations. I don't think that's right. I think it's 15 and 17. ah Maurice Pierce is 16. Forrest Welburn is 15. All of them were friends who had been in interrogated after one of them was caught carrying a.22 caliber revolver in the mall.
00:20:52
Speaker
Three of the victims had been shot with.22 caliber ammunition. The other with a.38 caliber weapon. When the ballistics examination was unable to link the gun to the bullets from the victims, they initially are released.
00:21:07
Speaker
In February 1998, with the case gone cold, police decided to conduct a new investigation of the crime. They re-question Michael Scott by telephone. He denies involvement. But on September 9th, 1999, they bring Michael Scott in for questioning again.
00:21:23
Speaker
This time he's in a police station. So these are the interrogations that you're able to see some of. At one point during a 12-hour interrogation, Michael Scott says he knows the abilities of the killers.
00:21:36
Speaker
So on September 10th, this interrogation resumes, and ultimately, Michael Scott said that he had probably shot one of the girls, and that he had fired a gun once, and that he had set the fire.
00:21:48
Speaker
So he's implicating himself with the techniques the police are using that you just described, which is to sort of make him think he'd forgotten about it, i guess would be the right phrase. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen.
00:22:00
Speaker
but From there, on September 13th, Michael Scott is is interviewed one more time, and he says he remembers seeing Pierce with one of the girls in a separate room inside of the yogurt shop.
00:22:15
Speaker
He said he thought he had gagged one of the girls with paper paper towels or napkins. So he's implicating Maurice Pierce, who was 16 at the time. By Michael Scott's recollections, he recalls the.22 caliber pistol comes from Robert Springsteen.
00:22:31
Speaker
But he remembered little about this other weapon, He says it might have been a semi-automatic.38 caliber. So at the time, Robert Springsteen is in Charleston, West Virginia.
00:22:44
Speaker
He ends up being arrested there because he was living there. Police videotape him confessing to sexually assaulting and killing one of the victims.
00:22:56
Speaker
Did you get the chance to see any of his interrogation? Yes. It was the same thing. Yeah, that's another one where they're using that same technique.
00:23:07
Speaker
Right. and it's the He literally is saying, you know, i didn't do this. I wasn't involved in it. And as the tape of the interview continues on, it evolves to, like, a full confession.
00:23:25
Speaker
It's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life. but they charge all four of them, Scott, Springsteen, Pierce, and Welburn. They're all charged with first-degree capital murder. But ultimately, they end up dismissing the charges against Maurice Pierce and Forrest Welburn.
00:23:41
Speaker
So Robert Springsteen's going to go on trial, and he'll be the first up. He's convicted on May 30, 2001, but his conviction rests almost entirely on his confessions.
00:23:54
Speaker
By then, he had recanted the confession, and he claimed it had been coerced. So he gets sentenced to death, and that sentence is later going to be reduced to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court sort of rules that juveniles can't be sentenced to death, even though they're adults, while their trial is going on, they were juveniles when the crime occurred.
00:24:17
Speaker
Michael Scott ends up being convicted on September 22, 2002.
00:24:21
Speaker
His conviction was based primarily on 20 hours of videotaped interrogation that they show during the trial. And during this 20 hours, he admitted participating in the crime.
00:24:35
Speaker
But like Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott eventually would claim that the confession was false and it was the result of being coerced by the police. Now the jury in his case,
00:24:48
Speaker
even though he's I think he was younger, but depends on which summary you read. He's sentenced to life in prison because the jury could not unanimously agree on a death sentence, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.
00:25:03
Speaker
In 2006, Robert Springsteen's conviction is going to be overturned because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is going to rule that Michael Scott's confession could not be used against him in violation of his Sixth Amendment rights to cross-examine witnesses.
00:25:19
Speaker
So basically, they played part of Michael Scott confessing to convict Robert Springsteen, and that's what kind of tips the scales in his favor.
00:25:32
Speaker
On June 6, 2001, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is also going to set aside Michael Scott's conviction under the same set of circumstances. They say that prosecutors had used Robert Springsteen's videotaped confessional or incriminating statements at Michael Scott's trial.
00:25:53
Speaker
Against Michael Scott. Right. So they've been used in both trials against each other. Does that make sense? Right. And it violates the confrontation clause. Right. Which is essentially that if someone's going to blame you,
00:26:07
Speaker
for something, you have the opportunity to confront them during your trial and they weren't, they didn't testify against one another. So they didn't have the opportunity to be questioned. Right.
00:26:20
Speaker
That just puts these cases in sort of a limbo. And what's going to happen next is they're going to be subject to retrial.
DNA Evidence and Release
00:26:30
Speaker
Now, as the cases are being prepared for retrial,
00:26:34
Speaker
defense lawyers motion to get some DNA tests that will be performed on evidence in the case. The prosecution, it agrees because they felt like DNA testing had become more discriminating and exact ah in the time since the the crime had occurred. So the crime occurs in 1991. We're now years in the future.
00:27:00
Speaker
In 2008, the thought is that we'll be able to pin it on one of these guys with DNA testing, possibly all four of the original people.
00:27:11
Speaker
But the tests reveal that the DNA profile of a man whose biological evidence was taken from two victims, that's Amy Ayers and Jennifer Harbison, which is interesting because that's two different age groups. You've got 13-year-old and 17-year-old.
00:27:28
Speaker
But ultimately, the DNA ah from there is pulled, and the DNA of another man is found on clothing that was used to bind the wrist of a third victim named Eliza Thomas.
00:27:42
Speaker
So they also find a partial DNA profile of a third person on Jennifer Harbison. None of those DNA profiles match for Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, or Forrest Welburn.
00:27:57
Speaker
So by June of 2009, Scott and Springsteen are going to be released on bond. And by October of 2009, the prosecution decides that they're going to dismiss the charges against them.
00:28:11
Speaker
Now, multiple lawsuits get filed in state and federal court seeking compensation. don't know if you saw this, but they were all dismissed.
00:28:22
Speaker
Like all of the lawsuits for wrongful conviction kind of get squished. I'm not surprised by that. So in the course of all this, we get a little glimpse into like what had happened here.
00:28:36
Speaker
um And I'm going restate some of the things I just said and some of the things Meg just said, but that's just for the purpose of like giving you place and time on all of this. So the prosecution had used tactics of using excerpts of each suspect's alleged confession at the other's trial.
00:28:52
Speaker
That's what violated the confrontation clause because the co-defendants weren't testifying. Both convictions were overturned on just this. The men are freed in 2009. The prosecution had said they would be retrying them.
00:29:07
Speaker
But it is this forensic work on these DNA profiles, which turns out not to be theirs, or the other two, that makes this difficult. So the prosecution is going to abandon like what their original statement was in terms of retrial.
00:29:26
Speaker
So Texas courts had ruled out that they were going to be compensated because what Texas felt like was happening was they did not prove that he didn't commit the crime.
00:29:39
Speaker
One of the detectives in the interrogations is a guy named Hector Polanco. He had been accused of coercing false confessions in a previous notorious case, which involved exonerated defendants Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danty.
00:29:56
Speaker
Both of them were released after 13 years in prison. i Danziger had been assaulted, which resulted in some pretty serious injuries for him.
00:30:08
Speaker
Have you ever heard of either one of those two guys as far as the celebrations go? Only um to the extent that the same law enforcement officer had to deal with it as spring as the yogurt shop murder case.
00:30:26
Speaker
Well, I'm going inject a little bit of that here just so we get some context. That's a crime that occurred three years earlier. So it's not that far back in time. On October 24th of 1988, 20-year-old named Nancy DePriest had been working alone in a Pizza Hut restaurant also in Austin, Texas, and And she was tied up, raped, and murdered.
00:30:48
Speaker
Days later, an employee of the Pizza Hut, he saw two men, Christopher Ochoa, 22, and Richard Dandinger, 18, eating pizza and drinking beer.
00:31:00
Speaker
And it seemed like they were raising toast in honor of Nancy DePriese. So police believe that a master key had been used to gain entrance to that Pizza Hut restaurant.
00:31:12
Speaker
And because these two guys seemed to be doing something that had been deemed suspicious, the two men who were roommates and who also worked at another Austin area Pizza Hut, they became the lead suspects in that case.
00:31:28
Speaker
So in November of 1988, police questioned both of these men. They deny having anything to do with the crime, although according to police, Richard Danzinger, he seemed to know details about the crime that were not public knowledge.
00:31:45
Speaker
So with these two guys coming in they collect blood, hair, saliva samples from both of them, from Christopher Ochoa and from Richard Danzinger. And they send this off to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
00:31:59
Speaker
Now, they run serology on this and they run early DNA on this. According to a serologist named Sarah Becker, she reported that Christopher Ochoa could not be eliminated as the source of a semen sample from the scene.
00:32:15
Speaker
This has been revealed much later on to be misleading. The test failed to reveal a blood type dissimilar to the victim. But there was no potential source of the cement that they could actually exclude because in ah later expert's testimony, they're going to say that the victim's blood group markers would have, quote, masked the perpetrator in certain scenarios.
00:32:43
Speaker
So essentially, they weren't at the phase where they could determine exactly what these samples said about the suspect because they could not pull the victim away from it. Does that make sense for early blood testing?
Related Crime and Confession
00:32:56
Speaker
Yes. So later on, those biological samples are going to be sent off to the Forensic Science Associates, which is an independent laboratory. They did a DNA test on it called DQ-alpha.
00:33:09
Speaker
And a guy from Forensic Science Associates, who's a DNA analyst named Edward Blake, he reported that Christopher Ochoa was among 16% of the Mexican-American population who could not be eliminated as a potential source of the s semen sample from this particular sexual assault.
00:33:29
Speaker
Now, they end up eliminating Richard Danzinger, and they also eliminate Nancy DePriest's husband. They're not going to be potential sources of the biological evidence in that case.
00:33:42
Speaker
They bring Christopher Ochoa in and they interrogate him. After two 12-hour sessions with Austin Police Senior Sergeant Hector Polanco, same guy we were just talking about, and Detectives Bruce Boardman and Ed Belegia, Christopher Ochoa signs a confession that included important details about the murder.
00:34:03
Speaker
In the course of signing this confession, He implicates Danziger as well. He says that Richard Danziger shot the priest and that both men had raped her.
00:34:14
Speaker
So at this point, Christopher Ochoa is facing the death penalty. He accepts an offer from the prosecution. He pleads guilty to murder in May of 1989. As part of this plea deal, he has to testify against Richard Danziger at his trial.
00:34:30
Speaker
So Richard Danziger goes on trial in Travis County, Texas in the following year, in January of 1990. Christopher Ochoa is called to the witness stand.
00:34:42
Speaker
whether it's on purpose or by accident or simply because of his actual relationship to the crime, he ends up contradicting his statements to the police. And he says that he, not Richard Danziger, had shot Nancy DePriest.
00:34:58
Speaker
According to Christopher Ochoa's testimony, he says the two had planned to rob that Pizza Hut. They had tied up and raped Nancy DePriese and that he ended up shooting her because he said she recognized him.
00:35:12
Speaker
He testified that between the two of them, so Ochoa and then Danziger, they had sexually assaulted the victim eight times. The only forensic evidence that links Richard Danzinger to the crime is a pubic hair found near the blood and the restaurant that Juan Rojas, who is a forensic analyst for the Texas department of public safety.
00:35:36
Speaker
They say that this hair found at the scene is microscopically consistent with Richard Danzinger's pubic hair. Anytime you hear microscopically consistent, it is probably BS.
00:35:49
Speaker
Well, and it, it, You can say that all day long. I would say that like 99.9% of all hairs are microscopically consistent. um Yes, this is hair.
00:36:01
Speaker
Exactly. And, but it doesn't indicate anything. It just sounds good, right? When they're lacking other evidence. I don't even think they use that anymore, but. We get asked in court, but or Juan Rojas in court, he gets asked on whether he's confident about each characteristic that he's observed in terms of these consistencies.
00:36:22
Speaker
And he says, yes, I am absolutely correct. They also bring in a lab analyst from the Texas Department of Public Safety, and they testify that semen was detected on the vaginal swab from the sexual assault kit.
00:36:36
Speaker
that blood type detected from the sample was similar to the blood types of both Richard Danziger and the victim. In fact, because the test failed to reveal a blood type dissimilar to a victim, no potential source of the semen could ever be excluded because the victim's blood would be in that category of markers that we discussed where it would mask the potential perpetrator but until they could sort the two.
00:37:02
Speaker
So Richard Danziger presented an alibi defense. He claimed that he had been with his girlfriend that night. And on February 1st of 1990, he ends up convicted of rape.
00:37:13
Speaker
So both men, Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger, they end up being sentenced to life in prison. In February 1998, so eight years after this conviction,
00:37:26
Speaker
A man named Achim Joseph Marino, he was a convict who was serving three life sentences in a Texas prison for aggravated robbery. And he had become a born-again Christian.
00:37:38
Speaker
He writes a letter to governor at the time, George W. Bush, and it begins, re-murder confession.
True Perpetrator Confesses
00:37:47
Speaker
In the letter, Marino ends up saying, my conscience sickens me because I alone raped and murdered Nancy DePriest.
00:37:55
Speaker
And he indicates that Richard Danziger and Christopher Urchua were not involved. He says, I tell you this, sir, I did this awful crime and I was alone. So Marino says that evidence tying him to the crime, including Nancy DePriest's keys, could be found at his parents' home.
00:38:12
Speaker
Marino said he had begun writing and confessing to the police in 1996, but after getting no response, he was appealing to Governor Bush to take some action. After the police received another letter from Marino,
00:38:25
Speaker
It contained a detailed description of the scene, and they decided it was time to begin reinvestigating. Officers go to his parents' home. They find the keys and other evidence, including bank pouches and a pistol.
00:38:39
Speaker
Investigators then approach both Richard Danzinger and Christopher Ochoa again. By then, Richard Danzinger was housed in a mental institution because he had sustained because he had sustained severe and permanent brain damage after he was attacked by another inmate in prison.
00:38:58
Speaker
Now, Christopher Ochoa, who later said he was still intimidated by the police who interrogated him, he told the same story he had told at trial. In June of 1999, Christopher Ochoa reaches out to the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which was headed by Keith Finley and John Prey.
00:39:16
Speaker
Students in their classes there began investigating this claim of potential innocence. In September 2000, Edward Blake from the Forensic Science Associates, he reported the results of testing on the DNA samples using more discriminating DNA tests. This is the semen samples.
00:39:36
Speaker
He says those tests eliminate Ochoa as a potential source of the semen sample, for which he had not been eliminated back in 1989. Furthermore, in November of 2000, Blake ends up reporting that further DNA tests on the semen recovered from the victim excluded both Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danzinger.
00:39:56
Speaker
However, Marino could not be eliminated as the source of the semen. So they released them on bond. Christopher Ochoa goes January 16, 2001.
00:40:08
Speaker
And then Richard Danziger was released March 22, 2001. And by February 6 of 2002, both men were exonerated. So both men file wrongful conviction lawsuits against Travis County and the city of Austin.
Detective's Methods Questioned
00:40:23
Speaker
Richard Danziger, who requires lifelong care due to brain damage, he gets $9 million dollars from Austin and $1 million dollars from Travis County. And he gets $500,000 from Christopher Ochoa for wrongfully implicating him in the crime.
00:40:39
Speaker
Richard Danziger was also awarded $250,000 in state compensation. But all this money is really going to go to his medical care. Christopher Ochoa ends up receiving $5.3 million dollars from the city of Austin.
00:40:54
Speaker
Ultimately, this is all because of that one guy. This guy has wreaked some havoc in the world, I would say, wouldn't you? Yeah, I would. And it makes me wonder,
00:41:10
Speaker
like it's almost like when you are, like, watching a horror movie and you're like, don't go up the stairs, right? To see... Like, his work on this stuff, I can't tell if, like, he was just too far in or, like, when he when the picture comes together, that doesn't make sense.
00:41:31
Speaker
Right. right or if he legitimately believes he's doing the right thing by getting them to confess, right? Like, they really did do it.
00:41:44
Speaker
I can't tell, but Just like with the yogurt shop murders, it's pretty clear that he might as well be writing fiction.
00:41:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what's weird about it is it is fiction, but like the reason his fiction sounds better than anything they could say its because he has all the details from the crime scene that he can insert in his fiction.
00:42:10
Speaker
Oh, yeah. That's the thing that pushes it over the hump, right? Right. That's exactly right. And, but to me, i don't see how he's getting any sort of like job, uh, career satisfaction or whatever from what he's doing, because it's, it's clear That he's writing fiction, convicting the wrong people, etc.
00:42:37
Speaker
And to me, I would be ashamed of myself if I knew, right? Which that leads me to think, well, he just doesn't know, which would make him a terrible detective investigator, right? Yes.
00:42:49
Speaker
Even the jurors acknowledge this. They acknowledge if they had known more about that investigator or more about the evidence that was presented at trial. Seven of them stated they would never have convicted the two men in the yogurt shop case.
00:43:02
Speaker
And we obviously get a lot of admission in this second case that involves Hector Polenko, where like the city and the county are paying out, which is different than the yogurt shop case.
00:43:17
Speaker
And I thought I would end this episode, and we talked about this a little bit, but I thought I would end this with a something that came down related to the release of Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen.
00:43:30
Speaker
On Wednesday, June 24, 2009, Judge Mike Lynch is ruling on a response to a request related to something that Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lemberg has asked for.
00:43:44
Speaker
She wants a continuance in this case. And there is a request that the defendants, you know Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, be freed on bond pending their upcoming trials.
Trial Developments and DNA Revelations
00:43:56
Speaker
So they're going to end up walking out. And then Rosemary Lemberg is going to respond to... Mike Lynch's decision with a statement.
00:44:07
Speaker
Here's that statement. It says, today I requested a continuance in the case against Michael Scott, a defendant in the yogurt shop murders, whose trial was scheduled to begin on July 6, 2009.
00:44:19
Speaker
Judge Mike Lynch granted that motion, but also released both Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen on personal bond, as he indicated he would do this in his previous scheduling order.
00:44:30
Speaker
Requesting a delay in this case was a difficult decision, but one that I believe is the best course toward an ultimate successful prosecution of this very important matter. Knowing that Judge Lynch would release both defendants, we requested certain conditions on their bonds, requiring them to remain in Travis County, report to the court any change of resonance, to have no contact with the victim's families or witnesses, that they not carry weapons or consume alcohol or illegal drugs, that they report to the court on a routine basis and attend all court appearances.
00:45:02
Speaker
As you know, both Springsteen and Scott were convicted by juries in June 2001 and September 2002. Their convictions were then overturned by the appellate court, but their statements to law enforcement were found to be voluntarily given.
00:45:14
Speaker
Since the original trial of these two men, new developments in DNA technologies become available. As we prepared for retrial in March of 2008, we submitted various evidentiary items for what is called YSDR testing.
00:45:28
Speaker
This test looks for male DNA only and is deemed to be the most accurate test for samples that are mixtures of female and male DNA, as is in this case. We sought this testing because we have an ongoing duty and responsibility to use the most up-to-date science available to seek the truth in this and all the cases we prosecute.
00:45:49
Speaker
Currently, it's clear to me that our evidence in the death of these four young women includes DNA from one male whose identity is not yet known to us. The defense asserts the testing reveals more than one unknown male, but the evidence presented at the hearing on Thursday, June 18th contradicts that notion.
00:46:07
Speaker
Now, this is a June 2009 statement, okay? statement okay
00:46:18
Speaker
The reliable scientific evidence in the case presents one and only one unknown male donor. Given that, I could not in good conscience allow this case to go to trial before the identity of this male donor is determined, and the full truth is known.
00:46:36
Speaker
I remain confident that both Springsteen and Scott are responsible for the deaths at this yogurt shop, but it would not be prudent to risk a trial until we also know the nature of the involvement of this unknown male.
00:46:49
Speaker
Okay, just going throw this out there. have never seen a my commitment to the victims or families and this community is that we will not give up until all of the people responsible for these terrible and tragic murders are brought to justice okay just's going to throw this out there i have never seen a better example of talking out of both sides of your mouth Well, no kidding, because, ah i mean, i would love to hear what she specifically has to say now, because she was confident that they were responsible for the murders, right?
00:47:30
Speaker
Yep. Now, it doesn't take much for me to observe in the case, just, you know, on the periphery, to know they had nothing to do with it at all.
00:47:44
Speaker
And it was all like a ridiculous sham. I assume she was going to be able to explain that DNA away Right. And,
00:47:57
Speaker
ah
00:48:00
Speaker
that doesn't really make a lot of sense, does it? No. It just, it just so happens though. it like, she can't at this point. Cause once it becomes, like goes from unknown to known presents like a much better candidate than these kids were.
Theories and Doubts on Case
00:48:16
Speaker
Right.
00:48:17
Speaker
Right. And what's interesting about that, uh, and we will pick up in the next episode of these words, but what's interesting about that is she says something so important in that statement.
00:48:29
Speaker
And she says the reliable scientific evidence in this case presents one and one only unknown male donor.
00:48:41
Speaker
And it's interesting that they looked at this crime and thought it was for teenagers when all they really have is this one unknown male donor.
00:48:55
Speaker
Well, and it just kind of backs up what I've said all along. um i realize it's possible i could be wrong. Like, I still think it's going to be very, very rarely But that these kind of heinous crimes, like it's one person doing it.
00:49:17
Speaker
And in the event it had been, you know, if it had gone down the way that they wanted to pretend it did with these four kids, one would have been the one doing it and the others would have been scrambling to get to the police to talk because it would have been horrifying for them.
00:49:38
Speaker
But again, that just doesn't, it's not what happens. I don't know, like as soon as I hear investigators or DAs um talk about, like i actually I can't even figure out why that DA said that. She said that there's one unknown DNA sample responsible for these crimes, but I'm sure these two did it. they That they were a part of it.
00:50:03
Speaker
That's so crazy to me. i wonder, hopefully, ah yeah. um Anyway.
00:50:13
Speaker
go ahead. No, that just blew my mind. It's never the case. Well, it's almost never. How about that? Almost never the case that there's going to be two, much less three or four who,
00:50:30
Speaker
or even middle-aged men doing this stuff. it's just It's just not going to be the case. the It's a heinous crime, right? It really is. And we have to understand. so
00:50:45
Speaker
Going under the presumption that they worked, you know, like a typical case where they like rolled out connections to the victims, right? Yeah. ah Like it wasn't a boyfriend or whatever.
00:50:57
Speaker
Like you have to presume that, you know, they worked the case like normal. Based on that, it would always...
00:51:12
Speaker
suggests to me that there is just one perpetrator. Because right like I said earlier, in the event it wasn't just one, somebody's going to talk and they're going to talk quickly because it's a horrifying thing. There's only so many people in the world that are capable of doing this type of thing. And for them to come upon one another to actually work together would be a very rare circumstance.
00:51:40
Speaker
I agree with everything you just said, but I have a question, and this is why like this my last question of of episode one of this. So in that like scenario that you pitched, I always agree that if there's more than one person involved, somebody talks. That's just kind of how it rolls.
00:51:58
Speaker
But how do we put that together with a situation like this where technically two of them did talk? they The reason that they talked is because they were convinced by the police that it was possible that they could have done it and their brains hid the memory from them. Yeah.
00:52:25
Speaker
And that the police were doing nothing more but allowing them to open up where those memories had been hidden and letting them flow out.
00:52:36
Speaker
Yeah. ah It's absurd. It really is. The fact that they talked, you can tell, like, if you have the opportunity, I know it was on the HBO docuseries that came out in August of 2025.
00:52:51
Speaker
ah you can You can see quite a bit of their interaction with these kids that they charged. And it's it's very obvious. That's the whole reason it's on the docuseries. It's so incredibly obvious that...
00:53:06
Speaker
Like, they're feeding them this information and, like, you know, they were in there for a really long time. And i'd like to think that, you know, it's so ridiculous nobody would ever do that.
00:53:22
Speaker
But, like, this, like, it inspired me to tell my child that never talk to the police. Yeah. because of like literally what happened, right?
00:53:35
Speaker
yeah These guys were so were very much not involved in it at all. They go in knowing that and they're talked into it. And so they are actually confessing to something that they know absolutely nothing about.
00:53:50
Speaker
And then it goes on and they're convicted. And the whole time they had nothing to do with it. It's very interesting because you've got, ah there were four victims, but you've got three families involved in this.
00:54:06
Speaker
Two of the girls were sisters, right? Right, yeah. Sarah and Jennifer were sisters. And when it comes down to it, the families had found peace in the convictions because, you know, i can't even imagine what the families went through, but having gone through that, they put stock in the in law enforcement's work,
Victims' Families and Closing Remarks
00:54:34
Speaker
right?
00:54:34
Speaker
And they, it and it did take ah ah quite a long time for them to get the convictions. And so, you know, i don't know that it's the correct way to look at it, but a lot of times you think to yourself,
00:54:49
Speaker
Well, if it's going to take that long, surely they have the right person, right? Right. Because otherwise, what's the point? And watching, ah actually in the docuseries, I think there were again, I watched it.
00:55:07
Speaker
It's been a little while now. um But there were several people who said that they were certain that they had gotten it right the first time, right? And if you'll recall, while there were four people.
00:55:20
Speaker
Two young men involved and two of them, they ultimately had to drop the charges against them because they didn't have enough evidence to proceed to trial.
00:55:31
Speaker
That should have been the very first thing that got their attention and said, what are we doing here? And so what we're going to do is we're going to wrap this episode up and then we're going to bring you a second episode where we talk about some of the more interesting paths this investigation has taken.
00:55:57
Speaker
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00:56:08
Speaker
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00:56:22
Speaker
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00:56:33
Speaker
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00:56:40
Speaker
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00:57:03
Speaker
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00:57:21
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.