Murdered Innocents (7 page)

 

WHO KILLED THESE GIRLS
?

The smiling faces of Amy Ayers, Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, and Eliza Thomas stared back at the passing motorists of Austin’s main thoroughfare that connects the state capital to San Antonio going south and to Dallas going north. The billboard, measuring twelve by twenty-four feet, donated courtesy of the Patrick Media Group, asked “Who Killed These Girls?” and listed the police task force telephone number. It also listed the amount of the reward money available to anyone who could provide tips in connection to the murders. It was one of twelve billboards the company donated for free.

The parents of the girls were moved by the gesture. Through tears, Barbara Suraci insisted that the “murderers just have to come forward. They can’t look at this and not feel so much guilt and shame. They have to come forward.”

Meanwhile, two months after the murders, Lieutenant Andy Waters, police spokesman, offered, “I think it will be solved. We don’t feel like this type of information can be covered up forever.”

 

Shawn “Buddha” Smith gave the first written statement in the yogurt shop murders case. He also gave everyone a major headache. It would not be the last.

Detective Mike Huckabay sat down with another criminal to discuss the yogurt shop case. Alex Briones was recently arrested for the murder of an elderly woman in Windcrest, north of San Antonio. He bound the woman, raped and sodomized her, shot her in the head, and lit her body on fire. Briones decided it was time to come clean about another murder.

Or rather, murders.

Briones’s written statement started off with, “I want to tell Sergeant Huckabay . . . about my involvement in the deaths of the four girls who were killed on December the 6th, 1991, at the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt shop on West Anderson Lane.”

Briones claimed that he and an unnamed buddy “borrowed” a truck earlier that day and drove over to the Hillside Center to plan a burglary. Briones added he burglarized a nearby apartment a few weeks earlier, so he felt comfortable in the neighborhood. After they cased the shopping center, Briones went home while his buddy returned the stolen truck.

Later that same evening, Briones and his friend hopped the Metro bus to Anderson Lane. The two men got off and began looking at various stores. They stopped in front of the yogurt shop, peered through the front window, and noticed that there were no customers inside. Briones spotted one girl, Eliza, cleaning tables in the front dining area. He spotted another girl, Jennifer, behind the counter. He motioned to his friend and the two men slithered inside.

“I noticed that the keys to the door were in the lock on the inside of the door,” Briones recalled. He asked Eliza if he could use their rest room. She smiled and told him yes. Briones headed toward the back of the store, behind the serving counter, and into the men’s rest room.

“I went inside the rest room and I smoked some crack.” He stayed there for ninety seconds or so, while his buddy hung out in the front of the store. He returned and stood beside his pal.

Without warning, Briones grabbed Eliza by the arm, pulled out a gun, and stuck it to the back of her head.

“If you cooperate, I ain’t gonna hurtcha,” he whispered to her. He forced her back to the counter, where Jennifer stood. He pointed the gun at her and told both girls to get down on the floor behind the counter. His buddy dragged the girls over to the cash register. Briones grabbed Eliza and pulled her up on her feet. He pointed his gun at her and demanded she open the register. She took out the register key and did as she was told.

Briones could not remember if he took anything from the register. He did remember herding the two girls to the back of the store. He could not believe his eyes. His friend had two additional girls on the floor, one on her back and one on her stomach. They were younger than the two girls in the front.

Briones’s buddy was stripping the clothes off the two girls. He tied their feet together and their hands behind their backs. He inserted gags into their mouths. He grabbed the girl who was on her stomach and raped her. The other girl’s sobs were muffled by the gag.

While his buddy violated the girl, Briones tied up Eliza and Jennifer. Both girls’ cries for help were upsetting him. He asked them to “be quiet” but they would not listen. After he constrained both girls, he began to disrobe them.

“One of the girls that was with me was real young and pretty,” he recalled to Huckabay. “She had blondish colored hair and a real good body. I don’t know what I did with the other girl, but I raped the young one.” He forced her to lie facedown while he ravaged her from behind, her hands tied behind her back.

Briones claimed to not quite remember everything else so vividly. He blamed it on alcohol, crack, and cocaine. He did, however, remember hearing gunshots ring out.

“All of a sudden, I started hearing shots. They were real loud. My ears started ringing.” In his drug-fueled haze, he claimed that he looked down at the girl.

“I remember shooting the girl that I had raped, in the back of the head,” he solemnly admitted, “and she was screaming.”

After he shot the girl, he grabbed some paper napkins, lit them on fire, and placed them on top of some cardboard boxes near two metal storage shelves.

“I wanted to burn the place because I couldn’t recall what all we had touched.” As smoke filled the store, Briones scurried out the front door. He ran to the end of the building, stopped, and lit a cigarette. He then pulled out his crack pipe and smoked crack. He pulled out his vial of cocaine, dabbed it with his finger, and glazed his lips. He had no idea which way his buddy went. Briones headed over to a black neighborhood and scored more coke.

A few days later, he tossed his gun, a black .22-caliber automatic, off the Congress Avenue bridge into Town Lake. He also mentioned that his buddy’s gun looked like a .38 automatic, but he was not sure.

At the conclusion of Briones’s statement, Huckabay showed him several photographs of Hispanic males who matched the description of his buddy. After sorting through most of the photos, Briones picked out the picture of Abel Arredondo.

Huckabay released Briones back into custody. When the man left the room, the detective slowly shook his head. Once again, they had been fed more bullshit.

Abel Arredondo, Briones’s “buddy,” was sent to prison in the summer of 1991 for attempted burglary. While in prison, he was diagnosed with AIDS. He was eventually paroled, but not until January 1992. He was almost dead upon his release.

Disgusted, Huckabay marched out of the room, where he encountered Sergeant Polanco.

 

Several members of the yogurt shop task force were concerned about the Alex Briones confession. They were also concerned about the Shawn “Buddha” Smith false confession. There was one common denominator in each questionable situation: Hector Polanco.

Polanco was removed from the task force completely. Many on the force believed he may have engaged in questionable tactics that led to the various false confessions. Austin chief of police Jim Everett stated that Polanco had been reassigned from homicide altogether to the Field Services Bureau and Patrol Department.

According to the University of Texas student newspaper, the
Daily Texan
, Victor Polanco, Hector’s father, leveled charges of racism. He believed his son was removed from the task force because the higher-ups did not want a Mexican-American to head such a high-profile case.

“He’s not a ‘yes boy,’” Victor Polanco said of his son. “That’s why they fired him.” Polanco’s father also spoke of an earlier incident when his son supported a fellow Hispanic officer, Rodrigo Herrera, in a contentious situation with the police department. Someone in the police force apparently accused Herrera of writing a memo that criticized his supervisor. Herrera hired a lawyer to disprove those claims and Polanco stood behind him. Victor Polanco believed that that situation, combined with his son’s skin color, led to his removal from the yogurt shop murders task force.

The task force needed every top-quality individual it could get to help crack the continuing investigation. Polanco’s track record up to that time definitely placed him in that category. He joined the Austin police force in March 1976. He worked his way through the ranks for several years before he landed a coveted investigator position in the homicide division. He held that position for 3½ years before being promoted to senior sergeant.

Polanco was considered one of the best investigators on the police force. He was also a highly decorated officer. He received well over forty commendations—many because of his ability to assist in homicides in which Hispanics were involved as suspects, victims, and/or witnesses. His ability to speak fluent Spanish made him a go-to guy in numerous cases.

According to court documents, Polanco was also a strong supporter of minority causes within the police department. Polanco was not shy about promoting his Mexican heritage. In fact, he practically wore it as a badge of honor. Needless to say, he considered it a personal affront when his boss, Lieutenant David Parkinson, called murders of minorities “misdemeanor murders.” Polanco considered such derisive comments par for the course with the Austin Police Department and their substandard treatment of Hispanics and other minorities. He often argued about the disparity in pay between minority police officers and white police officers; lower funding for research for minorities; and less time provided for proper investigations by minorities.

Despite Polanco’s vociferous style, he still was named supervisor of the yogurt murders investigation. After Briones’s false confession, however, other members of the task force, especially Detective Mike Huckabay and Sergeant John Jones, wanted him off.

The district attorney’s office began its own investigation into Polanco. They did not find anything that proved he coerced a confession out of Briones. The DA’s office took no action against Polanco.

But that was not the end of the turmoil.

The Austin Police Department Internal Affairs (IA) unit decided to look into the allegations against Polanco. Internal Affairs extended its search of the sergeant even further back. The main focus shone on the case of a February 1991 murder of Travis County sheriff’s deputy William Redman. Allegedly, a suspect by the name of John Salazar was brought in for questioning by Sergeant Brent McDonald. Polanco was not working for Redman, but he did assist in eliciting a confession from Salazar. McDonald sat down alone with Salazar, who started to confess to the murder of the sheriff. He abruptly stopped talking, however, leaving McDonald high and dry. Polanco decided to take a crack at it. He entered the room with Salazar. Three hours later, Polanco emerged from the interview with a signed confession from Salazar.

There was one problem with this scenario. Unbeknownst to either McDonald or Polanco, the real killers had already confessed to the murder of Sheriff Redman. Furthermore, it was later determined that Salazar was in the custody of the Austin Police Department at the same time as the Redman murder. In other words, he could not have been physically present to kill the sheriff.

As a result, the police department determined that Salazar had lied. His confession was false. No charges were filed against him. Polanco, however, was still inexplicably rewarded with the department’s Basics Award for his help in the Redman case.

IA took the matter very seriously. On April 15, 1992, they charged Polanco with aggravated perjury, failure to supplement police reports, and for “bringing discredit upon the police force.” The Austin Police Department and the Disciplinary Review Board supported the charges. They offered Polanco a thirty-day suspension, which he refused. Subsequently they suspended him indefinitely.

According to Mike Huckabay, Polanco nearly crippled the yogurt shop investigation.

“Hector is a good, good investigator,” stated Huckabay, “but Hector is very unethical and very unprofessional in some of the things that he does.

“He crippled the case more than he helped it, because Hector would create tips through informants that didn’t exist and have us go sit on this house and sit on that house and run this down and run that down so he could generate overtime for himself.

“Hector lied about stuff. In my opinion, he sabotaged the investigation.”

 

Nearly 250 students, teachers, parents, and friends gathered together for the twenty-ninth annual FFA Awards Banquet. The occasion, of course, was colored with tears of sadness and longing for their four fellow FFA members. Large framed photographs of the four girls decorated the podium set up before the audience.

The parents of all four girls attended the banquet as well. Skip Suraci commented that the kids in attendance that evening were the “cream of the crop, the best of the best.” These included students such as Sandra Hadja, the school’s official “Country Bumpkin,” who was good friends with Jennifer and also the chapter vice president when Jennifer died. Hadja reluctantly took over her friend’s position in the chapter after her death. “We were like sisters,” she recalled. “I still remember what she said and how she makes me laugh.” Hadja wistfully stated, “I tried to accomplish the goals she set.”

Several other FFA members were also inspired by the girls. Five students received awards that evening for carrying on the work that the girls began. One of those was Eliza Thomas’s sister, Sonora, who won Grand Champion honors with her sister’s pig, Stoney, at the Austin/Travis County Junior Livestock Show earlier in the year. Another student, Melissa Gallimore, also received recognition for her efforts with Amy Ayers’s hog, which took fourth place at the livestock show.

Hadja introduced Kristal Blaha, a fellow FFA member and Lanier High School student. Blaha carried a few items up to the podium. As she stepped to the lectern, she caught the eye of Barbara Suraci and smiled.

“You all have given us some of the most beautiful people we have known,” Blaha confidently stated as she continued to look at the girls’ parents. “We thank you very much.” Blaha asked the parents to come up to the podium. She held four crosses in her hands. She silently walked up to the parents and handed out the crosses. The name of each daughter was engraved on each individual cross. Another student handed out flowers to the other family members of the girls.

Blaha walked back to the microphone and said, “We wanted something the mothers could keep with them at all times.”

The families were visibly moved by the gesture. Barbara Suraci thanked Blaha and the FFA gathering. “You have thought of us so often. We love you all so very much and appreciate these kids, your leadership. The world will be a better place for all you have done.”

As the families returned to their seats, the entire audience got up and gave them a standing ovation.

The following day, the remembrances continued. Lanier High School dedicated two memorials to the girls. The first was a garden of four oak trees planted on the school grounds. The second was a large marble plaque with pictures of all four girls. The presentation of the plaque took place in the campus assembly room in front of 350 students. The inscription on the plaque said, “Their light still shines even though they are not here physically, but are still here Mentally and Spiritually.” The plaque would be hung in the main foyer of the Lanier High School Agricultural Building behind the main campus.

Several students shared memories about their friends. Michelle Froh reminisced about Eliza’s silly laugh and how she would sing country songs to her pig.

“I want to keep alive our memories,” she calmly told the audience. “And someday we’ll talk about them together again.”

Sonora Thomas, Eliza’s younger sister, also spoke of memories. She related the story of how she and her big sister, who had separate bedrooms, communicated via a code that they rapped through the walls with their hands.

“Sometimes I knock on the wall and start crying and remembering everything.” As she spoke, the gathered crowd began to cry along with her. “Now, I’m an only child and it’s very lonely without her.”

In addition to the Lanier students, Mayor Bruce Todd also appeared. He wanted to let everyone know that someone would be caught. He spoke briefly before the rapt crowd.

“The entire community has grieved over this. More so than any single event in the past three decades.” At the conclusion of his speech, he expressed a sentiment that many were beginning to share. “It’s frustrating that we’ve not solved this case yet.”

 

 

To help solve the case, an additional $75,000 was added to the reward money. Merriman Morton, chairman and CEO of Texas Commerce Bank, announced the good news to the press.

“The money was raised by many business people in the community whose names may not come as a surprise to some, but who do want to remain anonymous.”

The additional $75,000 increased the total reward amount to $100,000. To emphasize how much money he was talking about, representatives from the bank rolled out a stack of one hundred thousand $1 bills.

“This is the largest reward I’ve ever heard of,” opined acting police chief George Phifer, “certainly in the history of the Austin Police Department.” Phifer believed increasing the reward money would inspire someone to come forward finally and give out critical information that would lead to the arrest of the killer or killers. “The community [and] the families need the peace that would come with the solution of this crime.”

 

 

Nearly six months to the day after the murders, Governor Ann Richards, who once received a free serving of yogurt from Jennifer Harbison, was ready to give something back. The governor declared June 5, 1992, “We Will Not Forget Day,” in honor of the girls.

Twelve hundred citizens of Austin descended upon the Congress Avenue Bridge, which overlooked placid Town Lake. Many wore white ribbons on their lapels and T-shirts with the
WE WILL NOT FORGET
slogan. The throng gathered to show their support by marching from the bridge, straight down Congress Avenue, up to the steps of the Capitol. The front of the group held up a long white banner that read,
WE WILL NOT FORGET
.

Again the tears flowed. Hugs were abundant. Austinites once again showed how much they cared.

“It makes me feel good to see all these people come out to show support, love, and concern,” said Pam Ayers. “It’s a good feeling to know the community cares and hasn’t forgotten.”

Travis County district attorney Ronald “Ronnie” Earle spoke to the crowd assembled at the Capitol. He encouraged full community participation in the fight against crime. He also informed the audience that they “needed to push legislators to pass bills that will make sure criminals like [Kenneth] McDuff don’t get parole.” Earle was referring to Kenneth Allen McDuff, a death row inmate who was paroled from death row due to prison overcrowding. He was also the man who kidnapped Colleen Reed from the car wash on Fifth Street in Austin three weeks after the yogurt shop murders. He also murdered at least four other young women.

Maria Thomas, Eliza’s mother, also addressed the crowd. She covered a wide range of topics, from giving thanks to the supporters to questions about the need for a “life without parole” sentence in Texas to the vagaries of the death penalty. The statement with the most impact, however, came when she asked the crowd to put themselves in her shoes.

“Think of this,” she told the crowd. “Think of a mother at a cemetery trying to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to her child.”

There was not a dry eye in the house.

As the rally ended and the supporters went back to their own lives, four white doves were released above their heads, high into the heavens.

 

 

The following morning the Suracis and the Thomases made their way over to the Toney Burger Center in South Austin. It was graduation day for the seniors of Lanier High School. Jennifer and Eliza would have been there wearing their caps and gowns.

When the families arrived for the ceremony, they were greeted with three empty chairs. Someone had adorned them with graduation gowns, white ribbons, and a single white rose. Two of the chairs were for Jennifer and Eliza. The third chair was for Corey Armstrong, a leukemia sufferer, who died two years before.

The ceremony straddled a difficult line between celebration and mourning. While the seniors were excited about their accomplishments and looking forward to their futures, they could not help but feel the pain of loss.

“Every time I think of graduation, I don’t think of it without thinking of Jennifer and Eliza,” proclaimed senior Amy Hettenhausen. “I feel everything I enjoy, I enjoy for them too.”

Senior Class president William Boyd gave the invocation. As he asked for guidance and support for his fellow classmates, he also recalled the missing seniors. “They will always remain with us, spiritually, in our hearts and in our memories.” Boyd looked up at the more than two hundred graduates in front of him.

“We will not forget.”

James Thomas, Eliza’s father, definitely did not want to forget. “I mostly came because I was afraid I’d be kicking myself in ten years if I didn’t.”

After the graduates received their diplomas, a Lanier school official quietly walked up to one of the empty chairs, grabbed a white rose, walked up to Thomas, and handed it to him. Thomas was unable to stifle his emotions. “Damn it, she should have been here.”

Barbara Suraci had a different take on the event.

“Oh God, that was horrible,” she recalled. “That was horrible. It was horrible. It was so sweet, but it was really, really awful. What they did was wonderful. But for us to go through that, it was really awful.”

 

 

Later that night, six months after the girls were murdered, a group of three hundred people gathered to remember. Several graduates decided to spend their evening at the vigil to honor the memories of their friends. Lanier graduate John Schultz stated, “It wouldn’t really be graduation without doing something with your friends.” He glanced toward the empty yogurt shop and said, “They were friends.”

Vigil organizer Neil Stegall put together the event to keep the public focused on the tragedy and to address the growing issue of crime in Austin. “Remember, this happened in your community, by someone who called themselves your neighbors.”

Stegall reiterated the mantra of this case.

“We can’t afford to forget this.”