Murdered Innocents (20 page)

“Maurice did.”

“How many guns were there?”

“Just one.”

“No, come on, how many guns were there? That’s a gimme.”

“Maurice had the twenty-two and Forrest had the three-eighty.”

Lara pensively asked Springsteen, “What did they make you do?”

“Shoot her.” For the first time, Springsteen admitted shooting one of the girls. “He wanted me to shoot her in the back of the head, but I did not want to shoot her.”

“Was she already down?” Merrill inquired. “Was she still up? What happened?”

“What was she doing when you shot her?” Lara followed up.

“Crawling,” Springsteen softly spoke. “It was unreal. Crying and screaming.”

“Did she talk to you?” Lara asked.

“If you call screaming talking, I guess.”

“After you shot her, what happened?”

“I threw the gun away.”

“She wasn’t dead yet, was she? You fucking know if you fucking raped her, just say it.”

“I stuck my dick in her pussy and I raped her.”

“Is she dead yet?” Merrill posed a question.

“No, she wasn’t dead yet.”

“Describe the position. Faceup or facedown?”

“I’m thinking [she] was lying on her stomach.”

“Kind of on her stomach, is that what you said?”

“Like, yeah, kind of like this.” Springsteen stretched his right arm up and over three different ways. The final pose he struck was with his arm stretched out and lying underneath his chest and sticking out.

“How did she die?”

“Maurice came up and shot her again in the head.” Springsteen pointed his index and middle fingers toward the back of Lara’s head. He did not look as he reenacted the pulling of the trigger.

“You fucked her,” Lara plainly stated.

“Yeah.”

“Did you fuck her anally?”

“No.”

“Did you have an orgasm?”

“I don’t know.”

Merrill intervened, “Was your wanger hard?”

“No more than a couple of minutes. That’s why I don’t think I had an orgasm; by this time, it was all fucked up more than anything I’ve been through.”

“It was pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

“Worse.”

“How did that little girl die?”

“Maurice was angry with me because she wasn’t dead. I didn’t shoot her right, and I think he said, ‘Now, goddamn it, you can’t do nothing, you can’t even fucking shoot her.’”

“That piss you off?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Did Maurice have sex with one?”

“I’m sure he did.”

“Did Mike?”

“I think he tried, but I don’t think he could.”

“He couldn’t get his wanger up?”

“Yeah.”

The officers paused for a moment. Eventually Merrill asked Springsteen, “Do you feel better?”

“Yes, I do, but I don’t. I feel worse. To tell you the truth, I’m scared to death.”

Merrill asked Springsteen whether he thought he was under arrest.

“Should I have a lawyer?” Springsteen asked Merrill. “I don’t know nothing about nothing.”

“If you want a lawyer.”

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get railroaded. I’m sure you probably wouldn’t do it on purpose.”

“Well, how could I railroad you?”

“Well, you know.”

“Go tell your wife, tell her that you fucked up. Did you tell anybody else about this?”

“No.”

“Ever?”

“No, not a soul. Not even God.”

“God knows.”

 

 

After a few minutes, Merrill read Springsteen his Miranda rights.

“I want this interview to be over so I can go home and talk to my wife,” Springsteen declared.

“Are you invoking your right to your attorney?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Get out.”

Springsteen stood up from his chair. He leaned over and picked up some trash.

“Just trying to clean up my mess.”

 

Three weeks after Robert Springsteen confessed to the yogurt shop murders, the police went into action. Officers were staked out in four cities: Charleston, West Virginia, for Springsteen; Buda, Texas, for Michael Scott; Lewisville, Texas, for Maurice Pierce; and Lockhart, Texas, for Forrest Welborn. All four young men were arrested without incident.

Mayor Kirk Watson announced the arrests in the yogurt shop murders to his constituents of Austin. The mayor spoke of defining moments in a person’s life—both positive and negative. He also spoke of defining moments for a community. He reiterated how wonderful were the innumerable positives the city of Austin had to offer. He also spoke of the significance of growth for a city and the unfortunate side effects that often accompany such change.

“There has probably been no other single event in our community that has made us feel less like a sleepy college town than the murders of four young girls in December 1991.

“How could something so horrific, so unexplainable, happen here?”

Mayor Watson expressed his sympathies for the families of the victims.

He praised the efforts of the Austin Police Department, which may have solved the “crime that has haunted our very souls.”

The mayor spoke of the effect the murders had on the city. “On December 6, 1991, we, as a city, lost our innocence. Today we regain our confidence. Today, as a community, we can, hopefully, finally begin the process of healing.”

Watson spoke of Austin’s lowest crime rates recorded just one year earlier. Despite that information, the citizens of Austin could not feel comfort until the yogurt shop murders were solved. “Our very lives were shaken by that unspeakable act of violence. When four young girls lose their lives, it defies reason.

“These four girls belonged to this community. I know the community grieved along with the families of Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, Amy Ayers, and Eliza Thomas, and have continued to ask, ‘What happened?’ and ‘How could it happen?’”

Mayor Watson spoke about how the families never gave up hope “that one day we will know the truth.” He commended all the departments responsible for the arrests of the four young men and for, hopefully, providing answers to everyone’s questions.

“I’m very proud of our Chief (Stan Knee) and these people. You make us able to say, ‘Sarah, Jennifer, Amy, Eliza—we did not forget.’”

While Mayor Watson reminded everyone that the girls would not be forgotten, most people did not even know who the alleged killers were.

“The names just don’t ring any bells,” 1992 McCallum High School graduate Jeremiah Dye told the
Austin American-Statesman
. Similar sentiments were echoed by another McCallum graduate, Blair Edgar: “I probably never even had a conversation with them, but the fact that I recognized them is pretty creepy.”

Former McCallum principal Penny Miller was shocked when she heard the news: “None of us can believe that kids can keep a secret like that for that long.”

Of those who did know the boys when they were younger, most were stunned by the charges. Danny Decker, one of Robert Springsteen’s teachers at Cabell Alternative Education High School in West Virginia, stated, “I never saw a violent side, a dark side. Robby was a neat kid.” Decker did not say that Springsteen was angelic. “Maybe robbery, I could see. But to sit and plan the murder of four girls? I just don’t see it.”

Decker also recalled Springsteen as an individual who “march(ed) to the beat of his own drummer. Everyone turned left and Robby turned right.”

Decker also spoke of Springsteen’s difficulties with his stepfather, Brett Thompson. She believed the two “clashed violently.” The teacher mentioned that Robert would visit her eighty-acre farm in Sissonville to escape the stress of home life.

Despite Springsteen’s aggressive tendencies, Decker believed that he was “probably the most compassionate child I saw, as far as petting the dogs, walking the horses. There were absolutely no signs of anything.”

Decker feared the worst for her former charge.

“I’m afraid Texas is really going to do him in.”

Many people who knew the boys as adults were just as surprised. Jackie Loveday, a neighbor of Maurice and Kim Pierce’s in Lewisville, stated, “It comes as a big shock when you’ve been around them. My daughter plays with their seven-year-old all the time.” She spoke with Pierce on that Tuesday. He had been getting a sprinkler system put in his yard. Pierce told her, “Since we’re buying the place, we might as well put some money into it.”

Loveday’s mother, Juvine Graham, had a different attitude. “That house has always been nothing but trouble. There’s always someone fighting.”

Other neighbors had a different opinion of Pierce.

“He’s innocent as far as I’m concerned,” eighty-one-year-old neighbor Jane Akin told the
Lewisville Leader
. “I don’t think he did a darned thing.”

Pierce also impressed people on the other end of the age spectrum. Eighteen-year-old neighbor Paul Herman said, “He was never the kind of guy that looked suspicious. He always seemed pretty friendly to me.”

Akin said Pierce taught his daughter how to ride a bike. She could not envision such a loving young man as a brutal killer.

“It’s such a horrible thing that happened, and I hope they catch who did it. But there’s no reason to think he did it.”

 

 

The families of the suspects obviously did not believe they were responsible.

“My son did not do this,” wrote Robert Springsteen III in an e-mail to the
Charleston Daily Mail
from his home in Mesquite, Texas. “My understanding of this goes beyond that of a father’s concern for his son.

“Austin police have known the whereabouts of my son since 1991 and detectives have been in contact with my son several times since the murders and he has always been cooperative.”

Springsteen III expressed his sympathies for the girls’ parents and asked the media to “control the temptation for ambush and buffalo stampede tactics.”

 

It was a familiar setting for the parents of the slain girls: a cluster of news reporters, a bank of microphones, and bright lights. They hoped this particular setting would differ from previous press conferences. They hoped this time the police actually had the right people in custody.

Pam Ayers stated, “I don’t think it will be real to me until we actually see the men and have an indictment in the case.” She continued, “I know this is real. It’s really happening. But yet, it seems it’s not real either.” Her voice quivered. “It’s an unreal story.”

The surrealism struck Barbara Ayres as well. The former Mrs. Barbara Suraci divorced husband Skip the previous year. They drifted apart since the funeral and his subsequent law school career. Barbara was so angry with her ex-husband that she went back to using her maiden name, Ayres. She said she was inspired to do so after a dream she had where she spoke to her deceased father. In the dream, he told her he was happy she would use the Ayres name. Barbara was happy too because she wanted to distance herself from her former husband. She also wanted to disappear from the public eye for a while.

The arrest of the four young men, however, would pull her back out.

“They’re just people,” she said of the suspects, “and I don’t know who they are, and until I see them, face-to-face, I don’t know how I’m going to have that feeling.”

She spoke of how difficult it would be to have that initial confrontation. “When you have to look at someone who may have killed your children, you kind of have to wait until that happens until you can know.”

One reporter wanted to know how the parents felt about the fact that police had questioned the boys one week after their daughters’ murders. The parents were not aware that happened. Bob Ayers, Amy Ayers’s father, however, was not upset. “It’s water under the bridge. Why get upset about it now? Let’s just take what we’ve got right now.”

James Thomas, Eliza Thomas’s father, backed up Ayers. “It’s been gratifying to know that the investigation has continued.”

The sentiment was continued by Barbara Ayres. She had nothing but praise for the Austin Police Department. “We have been taken care of emotionally and have shared this process, this grieving process, with so many people here in Austin, in the state of Texas.”

Ayres’s main concern, however, was that the judicial process be allowed to follow its own course without too much outside interference. She stressed the importance of fair trials for the suspects.

“It is important these young men get all they deserve in our judicial system, so that we never have to go back through this again, and don’t want to have to go through the appeals, and their families are spared as much as possible,” Ayres requested.

“We don’t want to have the wrong people. We don’t want anybody railroaded.

“We do want justice.”

Barbara Ayres sought justice for the suspects. The court system, however, would not make life easy for them. Michael Scott was being held in Travis County Jail without bail. District Attorney Ronnie Earle stated that Robert Springsteen IV, who was being held without bail in West Virginia, would be extradited to Texas immediately. Judge W. Jeanne Meurer set bail for Forrest Welborn at $1 million and $1.5 million for Maurice Pierce.

Both Scott and Springsteen were staring at capital-murder charges. They could receive life-in-prison sentences or be sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Welborn and Pierce, who were minors at the time of the murders, were facing possible life-in-prison sentences. Earle stated he would seek to have them tried as adults.

 

Going into the hearing for the extradition of Robert Burns Springsteen IV, Kanawha County prosecutor Bill Forbes relayed his biggest fear.

“It’s very common for a murder suspect to get a bond here.”

Forbes noted that most extradition hearings go on without a fight. “There’s virtually no defense for extradition in this state, except for mistaken identity.” He explained that most defendants waive extradition to save their financial coffers for the big fight. The magnitude of the charges levied against Springsteen, however, could inspire him to fight extradition, Forbes reasoned.

“He could be here anywhere from six months to a year, or he could be out of here next week.”

Forbes also mentioned there was no death penalty in West Virginia. He sounded less than sympathetic to Springsteen’s plight of extradition to Texas, infamous for its strong stance in favor of the death penalty.

“If I can’t kill them here,” the colorful attorney quipped, “maybe I can help kill them in Texas.”

At 9:00
A.M.
, Robert Burns Springsteen IV arrived in the courtroom of circuit court judge Charles King. He was represented by attorney David Bungard. Forbes appeared on behalf of the state of West Virginia. They were joined by John Bencheri, Eliza Thomas’s uncle, who drove almost ninety miles from Marietta, Ohio. He carried a high-school photograph of Eliza with him.

“We would challenge any extradition to the state of Texas,” Bungard informed the judge. He cited the potential death penalty punishment by the state of Texas. He also suggested that Springsteen was not the killer.

Judge King granted a follow-up hearing for November 4. It would take place after Texas governor George W. Bush issued a rendition warrant to West Virginia governor Cecil Underwood.

Forbes stated afterward, “We’re in a situation in this state where it’s very simple for anybody to delay anything for a long time.” Forbes, nonetheless, believed it would be “pretty cut-and-dried that he will go back” to Texas.

“Every day you’re not on death row is a good day.”