Murdered Innocents (11 page)

 

One year after the parents of the slain victims filed a lawsuit against I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt Ltd., Brice Foods Inc., and Charles Morrison, of Morrison Properties, the defendants in question offered to settle. The case was set to be heard before a judge on February 28. Instead, the defendants made an offer of $12 million, which the parents accepted.

Jeff Rusk, attorney for the families, said that one main reason the families settled was because I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt instituted changes and upgrades in security after the suit was filed. Records indicated that in 1991, the West Anderson Lane yogurt shop’s budget was $271,000. The total budget for security for that store had been only $50.

“There will be some people who are still alive because of these changes,” stated Barbara Suraci. Not only were better safety measures being implemented in all ICBY stores, but also in other restaurants in Austin.

Burger King Central Texas district manager Lewis Jernigan snapped to when he heard about the lawsuit settlement. “Something like that will get your attention in a hurry.”

Others were encouraged to reassess their safety precautions right after the murders. Doug Thomas, president of Schlotzsky’s, a submarine sandwich chain that originated in Austin in 1971 and has kept its home office there, said, “We went and reassessed all our security measures and we did add some things. But there’s a limit to what you can do.”

A similar sentiment rang throughout the food-service industry in the state. Texas Restaurant Association representative Julie Sherrier stated her opinion very clearly: “Restaurants are public places. As an industry, we can’t be responsible for every Joe Schmo with a gun.”

I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt CEO Bill Brice mentioned his company’s nearly spotless safety record for fifteen years before the massacre: “We have gone through a painstaking process of deciding what to do in an increasingly crime-ridden society to keep people safe.”

But much like
Daily Texan
writer Ted Willmore, Brice wondered how far restaurants needed to go to provide security. “We can’t put up barbed wire and armed guards and search people going into our stores.”

The parents of the girls were determined to insure that their daughters’ deaths were not in vain. According to Rusk, they planned to use a large portion of the settlement money to create an organization, SAJE: We Will Not Forget, to help educate parents, businesses, and teenage employees about workplace safety. The name SAJE was derived by using the initials of each of the girls’ first names.

In January 1994, Skip Suraci, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison’s stepfather, decided a career change was in order. Motivated by the deaths of his stepdaughters, Suraci made the choice to attend law school. He was accepted to Tulsa University in Oklahoma, about seven hours north of Austin.

“What brought me here was this terrible event that thrust me into this world of law enforcement and criminal investigation,” Skip Suraci told the University of Tulsa
Collegian
. “Unfortunately, in today’s society, the prevalence of violent crime makes each person a potential victim. I needed to know more than just a passing overview of the law to be a figure at all in the investigation.”

Skip Suraci was so consumed with his daughters’ case that he could not properly focus on his job as a project manager for Dell Computer. He needed to become a part of the investigation. He believed law school was the best avenue.

“At my age, it was a rather gutsy move to leave home and arrive at some foreign location three weeks before classes. It was a leap of faith.”

It was not a decision he made lightly.

“I had to do some deep soul-searching as to what was next for me,” he stated. “I came to realize that my children are gone, but, good or bad, I’m not. It would have been easier if we all had gone together. But we were left behind.”

Suraci spoke of his plans for after graduating. “First, I want to move back to Austin and see what my wife wants to do.” He continued to speak of some lofty goals. “I might also practice law, both as a prosecutor and a defender, helping underrepresented people.” He knew that some people would be surprised by that admission “because I naturally have more of a prosecutorial bent from what happened to me. However, to be a good prosecutor, you have to know the other side too.”

Skip Suraci summoned the memories of Sarah and Jennifer when he talked of his reason for studying law: to be a part of the investigation of the deaths of his two lovely daughters.

“I’m still searching for answers. I want to be able to open the doors.”

 

The four girls were not the only people who suffered from what occurred on December 6, 1991. Sergeant John Jones, after 2½ years of leading the investigation on the case, had enough. He ate, drank, and slept the case. It consumed him every waking hour. It devoured him during rare moments of sleep.

It also took its toll on him physically and emotionally. The yogurt shop case almost destroyed him and his family. Jones was tired and he needed off the case. He was burned-out.

Jones did not want it, but he received a reassignment. He was relocated to the Assault Unit.

“The case came before everything else. My own psyche was a victim of that,” Jones admitted with a sigh. “My home life took a backseat a couple of times, which is a definite no-no.

“It almost ended my family. It came close, too damned close.”

Jones suffered from severe bouts of depression over the case. His temper flared. He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. He sought secular help from a psychologist. He sought higher help from his church. He described himself as “haunted.”

“It sent me to a psychologist, and I’m still going . . . to keep my head above water. In between battling the administration and trying to do justice in this case, it was draining me down to zero.

“If there’s anything that’s been positive that’s come out of this case, it’s been my renewed faith in a Supreme Being, someone to watch over me.”

Detective Mike Huckabay took over the case. He, too, had suffered mental anguish over the investigation. “I’ve burned more sick leave in the last two-and-a-half years than I have in the last twenty or twenty-five years,” Huckabay emphasized. He informed Jones that he was deeply depressed. Jones suggested a visit to his psychologist. Huckabay said it was “probably the best move I ever made, because she made me realize all this is normal.”

Neither man was pleased with Jones’s reassignment. Jones felt that the task force would always get bogged down with “petty politics” among the departmental divisions—usually surrounding a lack of personnel. Police officials disagreed.

“I never heard one concern about a personnel shortage or any lack of human resources on that case,” claimed Deputy Chief Bruce Mills.

Alas, when Jones was told he was not only off the yogurt shop case, but out of homicide altogether, he claimed, “The bottom dropped out of me.” He summed up his mental state best with a song lyric from the 1970s television variety show
Hee Haw
: “Deep, dark depression, excessive misery.”

Jones continued to discuss the logistics of the task force and how it fell apart at the seams. “The mechanics is where this thing fell apart. What I got was a call on my day off saying, ‘Come in. You’re being transferred in a week.’

“That was a slap in the face. It hurt.”

“I personally don’t like the way it was handled with John,” asserted Huckabay.

The parents of the four girls were not happy, to say the least. They had grown quite fond of Sergeant Jones and believed that no one knew more about the case than did the respected detective.

“We feel abandoned,” complained Barbara Suraci. “We’re being processed out just like John Jones was.” She continued: “The man dedicated his life to what happened to our children, and we can’t help but love him for that.”

Norma Fowler, Eliza Thomas’s stepmother, was also sorry to see Jones go. “I think that we have just been unbelievably, uniquely lucky in how positive our interactions with the police have been, and I think a lot of that is due to John.”

Despite the frustration of the transfer, Jones understood the necessity of a fresh pair of eyes on the case. His rekindled affair with a Supreme Being also may have led to a more rational outlook. “Two years ago, the line would have been, ‘This son of a bitch is going to be solved soon.’ Now, it’s going to be solved when it’s ready to be solved. It’s up to the man upstairs.” Jones continued: “It might be tomorrow, it might be a year from now, and it might be twenty years from now. It might be those guys in Mexico. It could be somebody we’ve already talked to. It could be McDuff.”

Jones spoke of the shirt he wore on December 6, 1991. He hid the shirt and vowed never to bring it out again until the girls’ murders were solved. “I told the families that the next time they see me wearing that shirt, they’ll know it’s over.”

Sergeant John Jones’s shirt would remain in the closet for a long time.

 

Three years later, and still no definitive answers. The Hispanic suspects Porfirio Saavedra and Alberto Cortez were still in jail in Mexico, but not for the yogurt shop murders. They received fifteen-year sentences for rape and cocaine possession in the Cavity Club abduction. They were imprisoned in Santa Marta, a medium-security prison outside of Mexico City, where they received visits from their wives and children.

Austin police did not seem to place any more attention on the two men. “We’re kind of stalemated on the guys in Mexico,” said Lieutenant David Parkinson.

Barbara Suraci, however, was much more definitive in her belief of how Austin police were handling this aspect of the case. “The investigation has ground to a halt,” she said. “Unfortunately, the Austin police don’t have the clout [or] the expertise to pursue these men in Mexico because of all the international laws.”

Saavedra gave more details about why he confessed to the yogurt shop murders: “The Mexican police said they would beat my wife and rape her.” According to police authorities, confessions extracted via beatings are not uncommon in Mexican prisons. Saavedra feared for his wife. “I refused to confess until they said they would rape my wife.”

Saavedra and Cortez had not even been interviewed by any of the Austin police detectives in more than two years. Saavedra claimed to have taken a lie detector test with Lieutenant Parkinson, which he supposedly passed with flying colors. He also claimed that Parkinson told him, “I don’t think you did it, but I think you know who did.”

Alberto Cortez added, “They have the wrong people. We did bad things, but we didn’t kill anyone.”

Apparently, Mexican government officials did not even remember the yogurt shop murders or the two suspects. This discouraged Barbara Suraci.

“The chances are that this is a forgotten case,” the crusading mother stated. “Not in the hearts and minds of the people, but we’re talking about a system, and systems don’t have hearts and minds.”

She, like the other parents, were left once again to face Christmas without their loving daughters.

 

Over the next three years, things remained relatively quiet with the case. According to Mike Huckabay, in 1994, Doug Dukes took over as lead investigator and Sergeant Butch Biehle took on the role of supervisor. No major developments surfaced in the case during that year.

In October 1994, Barbara Suraci moved out of her home on Tamarack Trail into the Scofield Farms neighborhood in North Austin to be closer to her daughters.

In 1995, the Ayers moved out of their cozy little home on Ohlen Road in North Austin to a quarter-horse ranch in the Texas Hill Country. It would have been the perfect setting for their daughter to raise pigs and ride cutting horses, which are used to separate cows on the open range. Robert Ayers became a full-time rancher, while Pam Ayers worked in the cafeteria at Dripping Springs Middle School.

In March 1996, Yogen Fruz Worldwide purchased I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt Ltd., and Brice Foods CEO Bill Brice netted a cool multimillion-dollar payday for the transaction.

In June 1996, a case that had already been populated with all sorts of bizarre characters took another unusual twist. Erik Moebius, a former Texas assistant attorney general, became immersed in a legal imbroglio that managed to drag in a vast conspiracy theory involving the yogurt shop murders.

Moebius was convinced that the yogurt shop murders were the result of corrupt insurance frauds perpetrated by several high-ranking officials and bigwig attorneys in Texas. Some of the names bandied about were Roy Minton, one of the lawyers who settled the $12 million lawsuit against Brice Foods, San Antonio attorney Jerry Gibson, who helped on the Brice Foods settlement, Attorney General Dan Morales, state district judge Paul Davis, and possibly several police officers.

Moebius theorized that the yogurt shop case was a “no liability” case and should not have been settled. Moebius believed that the $12 million did not come from insurance money, but rather, from laundered money. He postulated that the money might have been laundered through insurance companies and “murdered out,” or paid out through a settlement death claim.

Moebius believed it was all a part of a pattern throughout the United States known as “reserve fraud.” He claimed that reserve fraud involved “severe injury cases, including murder and arson, in which people were being intentionally injured, murdered, or burned on preselected premises with the intent of creating personal injury claims.” He also wrote that “claimants were also ‘separated’ from their claims by attorney fraud or court action.”

Moebius called the money-laundering scheme a “site-specific murder” that involved “gross premeditation and planning.” He believed that the yogurt shop murders were preplanned and staged. Part of that planning involved hiring a killer to do the deed.

Moebius has even implicated a specific individual in the murders: Bill Moerschell, a thirty-four-year-old unemployed gambler. Moebius claimed that Moerschell was hired as a hit man six months before the murders, and that he was embedded in a condominium directly behind the Hillside Center and the yogurt shop. Moebius also claimed that Moerschell visited the yogurt shop every day for six months straight and that he befriended Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison. He alleged that Moerschell’s name even appeared in Jennifer’s diary. And that both girls visited him at his condo and took care of his dogs.

Moebius claimed that Moerschell moved out of the condo the day after the murders and into his girlfriend’s place. He also stated that the hit man received a cash infusion of $40,000 one week after the murders.

Moebius has also implied that the parents of the girls may have been involved in the murders. He stated that the Suracis made it possible for all four girls to be together at the same time. He also stated that Moerschell was a gambling associate of Skip and Barbara Suraci’s. Moebius also claimed that Moerschell received a postcard in 1992 from Skip Suraci thanking him for “everything.”

Moebius, however, tended to misstate several of the most basic facts. He called Eliza Thomas, Eliza May. He has given out the wrong ages of the girls. He claimed that the four girls were at a movie. He also listed several incorrect elements of the crime scene, such as his claim that all four girls were hanged and mutilated.

One year earlier, Moebius was disbarred from the state of Texas for nine counts of misconduct, including failure to communicate properly with his clients, lying about judges, violating court procedures, and “mental incompetence.” Other sources indicated that he was disbarred due to accusations of child molestation.

John J. “Mike” McKetta, who prosecuted Moebius at the disbarment hearing, said, “Bless his heart, I’m convinced he believes everything he says. But I’ve never been able to follow what he’s saying for more than a few consecutive minutes.” McKetta added, “He never met a coincidence that wasn’t conspiratorial.”

Needless to say, Moebius’s theories were met with disgust and disdain by many people.

In late November 1996, SAJE officially published a sixty-five-page safety manual entitled
How to Survive and Thrive at Work: A Guide for Teenagers (and Parents, Employers, and Other Concerned Adults)
. They also produced a twelve-minute companion video. The goal for the manual and video was to promote workplace safety.

Barbara Suraci stated, “We want to celebrate the lives of our children by saving other children’s lives. We can’t stop the violence, but we can make a difference.”

Pam Ayers talked about when parents “send our children off to work and we assume the employers have done everything they have to do to keep it a safe place.” She warned, “Don’t assume anything. Look at what kind of workplace your children are going to.”

The foreword to the manual cites statistics from the United States Department of Labor that indicate every year over seventy teenagers die at work, more than two hundred thousand are injured on the job, and nearly sixty-four thousand require emergency room medical treatment.

“If only we had known the right questions to ask,” wrote the parents in the foreword, “we could have better evaluated the shop’s security and the girls’ risks in working there. Perhaps they would still be with us.”

The manual provided numerous helpful tips for teenagers on how to deal with potential threats or dangerous situations on the job. There was even a chapter entitled “How to Survive a Robbery.”

The families printed up one thousand booklets initially. SAJE’s goal was to distribute the book to as many employers, parents, and kids as possible. “Knowledge is power,” stated Pam Ayers, “and that’s what we want to give them.”