Murdered Innocents (3 page)

 

Austin police sergeant John Jones exited the scene of carnage inside the yogurt shop. Flanked by two television station personnel, Jones attempted to make sense of the situation before him. The nineteen-year veteran officer never witnessed an atrocity of such magnitude in the relatively quiet city of Austin.

One of the most important people on the scene was arson investigator Melvin Stahl. The nineteen-year fire department veteran was called on to determine the origin and cause of the fire. Stahl described his responsibility as a “process of elimination.” His job was to dig through the fire scene and locate any burn patterns. These consist of “pour patterns,” or patterns that appear where a flammable liquid is dripped onto floors or walls. He would also look for different types of metal and determine their melting point, which let him know how hot the fire may have been.

Austin arson investigators are not called to every fire. Usually they are called in cases of undeterminable causes of fire, a large loss of property fire, any multiple fires, or any fire fatality. Several arson investigators arrived at the Hillside Center that evening. Melvin Stahl was the first on the scene. He spotted Sergeant Jones and approached him. He asked if he could enter the shop and take photographs. Jones assented and Stahl proceeded inside. He believed photographing the scene as soon as he walked through the doors was necessary, because crime scenes may be altered due to disturbances caused by those who work the scene. After taking some photos, Stahl returned outside and ran into Jones who informed him that Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) agent Charles “Chuck” Meyer had been contacted, as well as the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) crime lab. ATF is called to a fire when there are fatalities involved. At the time, DPS was solely responsible for processing homicide crime scenes. The decision was made to not remove the bodies of the four girls until DPS arrived. Stahl reentered the yogurt shop and took more photographs.

After he finished photographing the layout of the store, Stahl drew a sketch of the fire scene. He also conducted interviews with various firefighters and police officers. He even escorted the EMS personnel to the back of the shop where the bodies were located. One of the EMS technicians leaned in and took a close look at the body of Amy Ayers. Without touching her in any way, he pronounced her DOS—dead on scene. The technician walked over to the three bodies of Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Jennifer Harbison. Again, without hesitation, he pronounced the girls DOS.

The EMS technicians’ jobs were done.

When they left, Stahl resumed taking pictures. He did not want to start working on the fire scene until DPS arrived and dealt with the bodies and trace evidence.

Stahl would wait a long time.

 

Four hours after they were contacted for one of the worst mass murders in Austin’s history, three DPS officials showed up. According to criminalist Irma Rios, the reason they arrived so late is that she had to piece together a team late at night going into a weekend.

Not an easy task, especially during the holiday season.

Thirty-year-old Rios, a seven-year employee of DPS, headed the team. She was assisted by latent-print examiner Rachel Riffe and photographer Mike Holle. It was Rios’s duty to search for and locate evidence and determine the origin of that evidence, if possible. Riffe would lift any usable fingerprints. Holle would photograph the victims, the crime scene itself, and any other activity in the room.

Rios had almost no experience with arson homicides. She had only processed one scene prior to that night, according to her own testimony. Rios noted several officers on the scene, including Jones, Detective Mike Huckabay, Lieutenant Andy Waters, and Sergeant Jesse Vasquez. As she entered the back portion of the shop, she also noted that several firefighters were present. Many of them were hanging outside the open double doors. Some were still traipsing through the scene.

Rios began to search for evidence.

She instantly noted the damage wrought by the fire.

“There was so much devastation,” Rios explained. A plastic phone that was mounted on a wall in the kitchen melted but remained in place. Several utensils above the washing sink were melted. She noted the nude body of thirteen-year-old Amy Ayers. Her corpse lay facedown in almost an inch of water saturated with soot. Rios made notation of the three severely burned corpses farther back. She wrote that they were nude too. As the DPS officials looked closer, they found various articles of clothing: a pink sweater, black Reebok tennis shoes, and some cowgirl boots.

Mike Holle was responsible for photographing the victims. He took numerous shots of the girls. Many of the pictures show the fourth body, which rested almost underneath two metal shelves next to the walk-in cooler. The body belonged to Jennifer Harbison. Less than two feet away lay the body of her sister, Sarah, whose bound body was draped across the body of Eliza Thomas. Between Sarah’s legs lay a metal ice scoop, what firefighter Kimmons mistook for an ice-cream scoop. The burned, naked girls’ bodies resembled a lunatic game of pickup sticks. Holle snapped the pictures.

Rios collected what little evidence she could. The dousing of the fire and the broken water pipe may have washed out potential evidence. She went with what was available.

She moved in toward the bodies.

Rios noticed stains on the body of Amy Ayers. As she approached the youngest girl’s noncharred corpse, she noted what appeared to be a gag around her neck. Amy also lay on top of a knotted-up blouse. Rios’s attention returned to the stains—they appeared to be blood drops on Amy’s left leg. There were a few more drops on her left shoulder. Rios pulled out her swabbing material to gather the evidence. The blood was difficult to remove. It stuck to the girl’s skin. Rios hunkered down and swabbed hard with her damp cotton Q-Tip. Some of Amy’s skin came off in the process.

After gathering the blood, Rios examined the rectal and genital areas of Amy’s corpse. She was looking for traces of acid phosphatase, an enzyme found in various body fluids, including semen. She inserted a Q-Tip into Amy’s rectum. She then swabbed the vaginal area of the victim. The presumptive test for the rectum turned out negative. She saved the vaginal swabs for testing later in the DPS laboratory.

Rios moved on to the pile of girls. She detailed the restraints used on each of the girls. She also conducted enzyme tests on the three bodies. All of the rectal tests for the girls were negative. The only additional vaginal swab test conducted on the scene was on Sarah. It, too, came back negative. There was, however, a strange glop of mucus that floated underneath Sarah’s crotch. Rios collected it with a Q-Tip and deposited it along with the other vaginal samples for later lab work.

When the DPS unit finished its work, they turned the bodies over to the medical examiner (ME). Rios could not recall how long she spent inside the yogurt shop.

After the bodies were removed, Rios and her team continued to look for pertinent evidence. She collected shoes, clothes, and various bloodstains around the room. Such a search and gathering is normally conducted using a grid search, or poring over the crime scene, inch by inch, in areas marked off as grids so that the officers can keep track of their findings and know what areas they have covered. Rios did not conduct a grid search, but rather something she called “U shaped.” She did, however, discover a fired slug as she sifted through the debris. Also, another DPS lab technician at the scene discovered the shell casing for the slug.

The DPS team removed the ceiling tiles that were melted and had fallen down on top of the bodies. The tiles felt like mush in their hands.

Rios exited through the back double doors when she noticed a Dumpster. She asked one of the police officers to take a look inside. The officer grabbed only the top layer of trash, peered under, and saw nothing.

After several hours, the DPS officials left the scene.

Rios felt confident that she and her team did an extensive and thorough job.

 

Robbins Academy student Maurice Pierce and his buddy Forrest Welborn, a McCallum High School freshman, sneaked onto the Town North Nissan Dealership car lot at Lamar Boulevard and Highway 183, just off Mopac. It was located about three miles from the yogurt shop. The delinquents were looking for some wheels so they could get out of town.

Pierce spotted a brand-new gold Pathfinder.

Later that night, he and Welborn, along with their buddies Robert Springsteen IV and Michael Scott, took the SUV out for a spin. A little hell-raising, a little drinking, and a little gunplay were in order, followed by a trip to San Antonio.

All harmless fun as far as they were concerned.

Austin, Texas. The capital of the third most populous state in the United States. Home to the University of Texas, the Texas Longhorns, and a thriving liberal bastion populated with hippies, musicians, and politicians. Before 1991, Austin was a sleepy little college town with barely a hint of crime or pervasive violence. It was a quiet haven away from the hustle and bustle of other metropolitan meccas of Texas: Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.

Students from all over the world attend the highly respected educational institution. Several don’t leave after graduation. Many people fall in love with the sleepy city.

In 1991, however, times were a bit tougher with the aftermath of the real estate bust of the late 1980s still lingering in the air like the smoke from a Texas Aggie bonfire. The Gulf War raised blood levels between collegiate liberals and neocon politicos who patrolled Congress Avenue. Also, the tragedy of guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan’s 1990 helicopter death continued to cast a pall over the city known for its live-music scene.

But Austinites do not stay down for long. In fact, in August 1991, the city council officially named Austin the “Live Music Capital of the World.” The economy was also slowly rebounding, in part due to the controversy over the city’s favorite watering hole, Barton Springs. In 1990, the Save Our Springs (SOS) Coalition fought to prevent Freeport McMoRan, an international mining company out of New Orleans, from erecting a planned urban development of more than four thousand acres directly adjacent to the creek. The fight was successful. It opened the door for a new economic boom in the state’s capital.

There was another, important, attractive quality about Austin: low crime rates.

Or so people thought.

In reality, Texas was considered to be one of the most dangerous states in the country in 1990 and 1991. According to the Criminal Justice Policy Council, six Texas cities—Austin, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, El Paso, and Fort Worth—were among the top fourteen most dangerous cities in the United States.

Austin scored the fourth-worst crime ranking in Texas in 1990. The major reason was due to property crimes, where it ranked fourth overall. Its violent-crime ranking was seventh with only forty-six homicides committed that year. There were 280 reported rapes, 1,461 robberies, and 1,539 assaults. Not too bad for a city with nearly half a million residents.

These lower violent-crime totals, however, do not mask the fact that Austin has a very spectacular history of violence.

Many people are familiar with the 1966 University of Texas Tower massacre perpetrated by former college student Charles Whitman. The sniper has been immortalized in several media, including a book,
A Sniper in the Tower
, by Gary M. Lavergne, a television movie entitled
The Deadly Tower
, an independent film entitled
The Delicate Art of the Rifle
, and in song with Kinky Friedman’s “The Ballad of Charles Whitman.” He is even admired for his handiwork in the Stanley Kubrick 1987 film
Full Metal Jacket
by Gunny Sergeant Hartman who talks about “what one motivated Marine and his rifle can do.”

There are several cases, however, that have not been splashed all over the headlines, but they did spill blood on the Austin concrete.

One of the most notorious cases took place in downtown Austin from 1884 and 1885. A serial killer known as the “Servant Girl Annihilator” hacked up eight women, most of them black servants, with an ax. The murders predated the more infamous “Jack the Ripper” killings by three years. In both cases, no killer has ever been found.

Eighty years later, on July 18, 1965—one year before Charles Whitman went ballistic—James Cross Jr. committed a multiple murder in an apartment on Manor Road. Cross raped and strangled two University of Texas Chi Omega sorority members, Shirley Stark and Susan Rigsby. When he was finished, he stuffed their bodies into a closet and invited his girlfriend over for a dinner rendezvous.

In 1974, two young Mormon missionaries, Mark Fischer and Gary Darley, were dismembered with a band saw in a taxidermy shop. The killer, Robert Kleasen, was convicted, but he was then released from prison three years later after it was determined that evidence against him was seized by police illegally.

In 1984, Henry Lee Lucas, drifter and alleged serial killer of more than three hundred people, was convicted in the “Orange Socks” case of a girl whose body was found in Georgetown, just north of Austin, in 1979. The classic independent horror film
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
is loosely based on Lucas and his buddy Ottis Toole’s murderous misdeeds. Most of Lucas’s confessions turned out to be bunk. Apparently, several police organizations used Lucas to clear out a bevy of unsolved murders.

On October 4, 1983, another unsolved quadruple arson murder occurred. Jesus Gomez, sixty-nine, Louise Nash, sixty-seven, Frances Reyes, forty-five, and Natalio Rodriguez, sixty, were killed while they slept inside a boarding house East Second Street in East Austin. Some unknown killer or killers tossed a flammable accelerant into two rooms and lit them on fire. Many people believed the case went unsolved because no one in the Austin Police Department cared about the victims, who were low-income Hispanics.

In 1989, twenty-one-year-old University of Texas premed student Mark Kilroy disappeared while on a spring break trip to Matamoros, Mexico. One month later, his body, along with thirteen others, was unearthed from a shallow grave on a ranch called Rancho Santa Elena. Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, a charismatic religious fanatic, sacrificed young people as an occult offering for protection during his drug-smuggling escapades. Kilroy was one of his victims. The case was also commemorated in music in a
corrido
known as “Tragedy in Matamoros,” by the group Suspiros de Salamanca.

Another tragedy occurred two years later, almost seventy miles north of Austin. On October 16, 1991, Belton, Texas resident-cum-musician-with-a-messianic-complex George Hennard rammed his Ford Ranger pickup truck through a large glass window of a Luby’s Cafeteria, jumped out of the vehicle armed with two semiautomatic weapons, and began firing indiscriminately at the diners. After he killed twenty-two patrons, in the process becoming the most prolific mass murderer in the history of the United States, Hennard hid in the bathroom alcove and turned the gun on himself. A twenty-third victim died later in the hospital.

The Luby’s massacre occurred seven weeks before the yogurt shop murders.

Something about the yogurt shop murders, however, touched Austinites more so than all of the other previous crimes. People were already on edge because of the Luby’s tragedy, but it was something more. Most pointed to the youth and innocence of the girls. Others cited the fact that the killer or killers had not been discovered immediately.

The only certainty was that the city of Austin changed forever.