Murdered Innocents (4 page)

In the beginning, the “Yogurt Shop Murders” task force worked out of the main APD headquarters located at Interstate 35 and Eighth Street in downtown Austin. Senior sergeant Hector Polanco was named the supervisor over the case, Sergeant John Jones was the case agent, and Detective Mike Huckabay was lead investigator. Jones was responsible for keeping the case in order and directing the flow of the case. Huckabay did all of the interviewing of the major suspects and handled all of the leads.

Fifteen-year veteran Detective Mike Huckabay was Jones’s right-hand man in the task force. Huckabay grew up in Odessa, Texas, with three brothers and a sister. He claimed to have experienced a rough childhood due to a father who drank too much and bounced around from job to job. According to Huckabay, there was a lot of “fussing, fighting, and feuding going on.”

To deal with the stress of home, Huckabay developed a love for work. His first job at the young age of eleven was selling peaches for his grandmother. He also had his own paper route and later worked in a grocery store.

Huckabay attended Odessa Permian High School and played football for the Panthers, the team featured in H. G. Bissinger’s book,
Friday Night Lights
, about the legendary high-school football team. “Our mascot’s name was ‘Mojo,’ which is a mystique,” claimed Huckabay. “I can’t tell you what it means because it is a secret. Only the football players on the team knew what it meant.”

After Huckabay graduated from high school, he joined the U.S. Army, fought in Vietnam, and came home because of a war injury. He received two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Medal for Valor for his efforts.

After the war, Huckabay answered an advertisement in the paper for a position with the Austin Police Department. He got married, worked full-time for the police, and attended college at night at St. Edward’s University, where he received a degree in criminal justice.

Huckabay was the father of two sons, but he was also recently divorced. Despite the stress of a failed marriage, he was known throughout the police department for his genial sense of humor.

Huckabay was not, however, in a laughing mood. He was peeved at how much “holdback” information had leaked out in the yogurt shop case.

Holdback information is information that police officers choose not to leak to the press or public. They hold it back in an effort to discern which confessions are false and which ring true. Only the killer or killers would know this holdback information.

Usually it is something key or unusual.

Like the stacking of bodies in a pile or an ice scoop inserted into a victim’s orifice. Huckabay noticed a recurring theme with several of the tipsters that called in. They usually mentioned such supposedly secret information. The detective suspected a leak from within the police department. Others believed the information came from one of the EMS technicians on the scene that night.

However it leaked, there was no doubt it was out there. It would be a challenge for Huckabay and Jones to keep the holdback information under control.

 

One of the efforts undertaken to keep information from leaking out was highly unusual in the history of Austin. Travis County assistant district attorney (ADA) Robert Smith asked Judge Jon Wisser to seal the autopsy reports of the four girls. ADA Buddy Meyer claimed the request was made because the release of certain information about the murders could “jeopardize the investigation. It’s not necessary in every case, but in this case it is.”

Travis County ME Robert Bayardo, who did not perform the autopsies because he was out of town on vacation, was surprised. It was the first such request in the fourteen years he headed up the medical examiner’s office.

Judge Wisser agreed to Smith’s request and signed a motion to seal the reports. “The district attorney came over and asked me to do it because the details were essential to their investigation.” He justified the order by stating that, “Whenever you arrest someone and they decide to give a confession, you have to have stuff that no one other than the one confessing knows about.”

Meyer later declared that the autopsies would remain sealed until someone was arrested for the murders.

 

A stunned silence hung over Lanier High School. Three of the school’s brightest stars had been taken away. Jennifer, Sarah, and Eliza were dearly loved by their classmates. They were already sorely missed. Most everyone on campus walked around in a daze. Class was the last thing on the kids’ minds. The teachers’ too.

“A death from sickness or an accident, we could understand,” Vice Principal Georgia Johnson told the
Austin American-Statesman
, “but this we can’t understand. Nobody has an answer as to why.”

Student council president Shauna Kunkel expressed similar sentiments. “Everybody’s still pretty much in shock. There’s a lot of denial. Nobody wants to think this happened.” She finished by saying, “Everybody is hurting.”

To help alleviate some of the hurt, Lanier High School brought in a dozen counselors for the students. As one walked the halls that day, one could see groups of girls huddled together sharing tears. Some of the boys were crying too.

In addition to the tears, rage coursed through the school’s veins. It had been over two days since the girls were murdered and the killer or killers had not been caught.

“There is anger that there is a person or people out there,” wrote Amy Hettenhausen, editor of the Lanier High School newspaper, the
Runeskrift
, “who may never get caught. May never have to pay.”

Other students grieved in a different way. About sixty students headed over to the yogurt shop during their lunch hour. A pallor of disbelief existed that was even stronger than what was felt at school.

Betty Phillips, an Austin Independent School District coordinator of Student Intervention Services, summed it up best: “Their feelings are what you would expect. There is just shock, horror, and indignation.”

Counselors were available at Burnet Middle School to help students deal with the death of one of its most popular students, Amy Ayers. Principal James Wilson proudly stated that “we were able to isolate and identify those kids, and nurture them, and counsel them. To be there and listen.”

Some mourners turned to a higher power for an explanation.

 

Jennifer Harbison attended St. Louis Catholic School, located on Burnet Road, from seventh to eighth grade. Her sister, Sarah, attended from fourth to eighth grade. Despite being located off a bustling cross street, the school has a quiet ambience that seems sequestered away from the worries of modern life. It is tucked comfortably behind a large church with ornate stained-glass windows that beckon one to enter and seek a greater purpose.

The church and school are located less than one mile away from the Hillside Center, one mile away from I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt. The church is easily spotted from the back side of nearby Northcross Mall, the local-hangout for teenagers on the north side of Austin.

The gathering on this day, however, would not be filled with laughter and smart-aleck comments. There would be no horsing around and spying on pretty girls. The occasion was marked, rather, with tears and hugs, wails, and words of strength.

Nearly fifteen hundred people of all ages, predominately students, pressed together inside the cavernous chapel. Lanier High School was closed early so students and faculty could attend the services. Three Lanier school buses provided transportation from the campus on Peyton Gin Road to the church.

The entrance to the church was filled with students wearing their denim FFA jackets. Students from as far away as Midland and Manor came to take part in the ceremony. Each wooden pew was filled to capacity, both in front of the altar and to its side. People knelt in between the aisles. Nearly five hundred more people were unable to get inside the church. Instead of leaving, however, they remained outside.

Those who were inside witnessed four white caskets brought to the altar by pallbearers, themselves just kids. Most were fellow FFA members. Once the caskets were placed on the altar, several bouquets of flowers were gracefully placed upon them. Some of the pallbearers removed their jackets and draped them across the caskets. The front corner of the altar was adorned with a large golden eagle, which seemed to be watching over the girls.

According to Judy Bonham, an administrator at the church, her daughter Elizabeth was good friends with Sarah Harbison. Sarah taught Elizabeth how to play basketball earlier that year. Elizabeth spent the entire weekend after her friend’s death in denial. Her mother stated that Elizabeth kept repeating, “This doesn’t happen to someone her age. She’s too young.” She could not bring herself to cry during the entire weekend.

Judy Bonham stood quietly in the church before the ceremony when a friend tugged at her blouse. The friend motioned toward the altar where Bonham witnessed her daughter draped over Sarah’s coffin. Elizabeth was sobbing vigorously while hugging her friend’s final resting vessel. Bonham instinctively moved to comfort her daughter but was held back.

“Let her cry,” her friend said.

Judy Bonham stopped and watched her daughter. She could not help but shed several tears as well.

The Reverend Kirby Garner conducted mass for the girls.

“There are no words to express the pain and hurt we all feel,” he told the hushed crowd. “We’ve been robbed. Someone we love dearly has been taken away from us.” His quiet voice barely rose over the sobs and words of comfort that were being whispered.

The families of the four girls sat in the front pews. They attempted to remain stoic, but the events proved to be too overwhelming. Reverend Garner addressed the families on behalf of all Austinites when he comforted them by saying, “We offer our deepest sympathy. We share in your pain. We share in your loss.”

Reverend Garner turned to the gathering at large. “These young women were filled with joy and with life. They were the kind of young girls you would hold up as an example to the community.” He continued, “Each life is short. We all live between the bookends of time.” Again he turned to the girls’ families and stated, “Their short chapters had just begun, and they ended too soon. But they live on in our hearts.”

Reverend Garner attempted to quell the sobs by speaking about various emotions that Austin citizens expressed about the murders. “Questions. So many questions.

“You want to know how I feel?” he asked the congregation. “I feel shock. I feel anger. I feel rage and frustration and pain. I feel helplessness and I feel loss.”

Several in attendance nodded their heads in agreement.

“When we point that finger at the culprit,” Garner continued, “three fingers are pointing back at us—the individual, the community, and society.”

Reverend Garner concluded: “Look at that world. Look at our city. Prejudice, injustice, misunderstanding, discrimination, hunger, and violence. Our ‘tribute’ to these four exceptional young women and our ‘response’ to God is to work for the end of those things. To work for the day when all people can live as brothers and sisters.”

After the ceremony, the caskets that contained the bodies of Amy Ayers, Sarah Harbison, and Jennifer Harbison were transferred north on Interstate 35 to the Capital Memorial Gardens cemetery in Pflugerville, Texas, just outside of Austin.

In the limo ride from the church to the cemetery, Barbara Suraci said to her husband, “Skip, let’s do it again. Let’s have more babies.” Much to her chagrin, Skip answered, “We’ll think about it.” It was not what she wanted to hear.

The families arrived at the cemetery. All three girls were buried side by side by side. Their grave sites have one large plaque that contains all three of their names and dates of birth and death. Next to the raised dates are flip-up cameo-shaped photo holders with acrylic likenesses of the girls. A concrete bench lies directly west of the grave markers and is engraved with the words “Our Girls.”

Barbara Suraci recalled an eerily prophetic moment with her daughter Sarah. The two were riding home in her car and listening to Garth Brooks sing his hit song “The Dance,” on the car radio. Sarah suddenly turned and said, “Mother, if I die young, I want you to play this song at my funeral.” Her mother, of course, could not believe her daughter would say such a thing. Now she complied with her daughter’s wishes. “The Dance” was played at the graveside ceremony. They played another Garth Brooks song, “If Tomorrow Never Comes,” for Jennifer, “Seven Spanish Angels” by Willie Nelson, for Eliza, and “Baby Blue” by George Strait, for Amy.

At the end of the graveside services, Dan Aguilera, a classmate of Jennifer’s and Eliza’s at Lanier, walked away from the crowd. He stopped, turned back toward them, pulled out his trumpet, and began to play “Amazing Grace.” Weeping could be heard amidst the plaintiff wails of his playing as the crowd dispersed.

Eliza Thomas was not buried with her best friend, Jennifer. Her family elected to have her buried in Austin Memorial Park cemetery that same day. She is buried next to the future grave sites of her grandparents James and Sherry Thomas. According to Evelyn Williams, an employee of the Cook-Walden Capital Parks Funeral Home, the Thomases allegedly regretted the decision to bury Eliza alone, away from her friends, her other family.

The same day the girls were laid to rest, the local newspaper, the
Austin American-Statesman
, reported the most detailed information about the murders yet. Reporter Kerry Haglund wrote that a DPS dispatcher informed her that an Austin police teletype report listed several unknown pieces of information about the crime scene:

Haglund also spoke with Austin homicide lieutenant Andy Waters. He stated that the killers started the blaze to cover up any evidence. “Apparently, the offenders believed they would obliterate the evidence, but they were not successful.” He also informed Haglund that tips were pouring in; however, the police had not determined any suspects at the time.

“We are confident that we will solve these murders,” exclaimed Waters, “but it may take some time.”