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[Music] [Music] [Music] 16-year-old Sarah Sarah Yarborough is being remembered as talented, creative,
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and kind. Sarah was an A student at the high school. Whenever you saw Sarah, she
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always had a smile. This case is about a 16-year-old girl who had the right to grow
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up. This case is about Sarah and everything that she should have been allowed to become.
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It was Friday the 13th in December of 1991. Her parents were out of town for her brother's soccer game. She stayed
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home. I was reluctant to leave Sarah. She didn't want to come, of course, cuz she
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had her whole weekend planned out. So, she had a friend come over and stay with her that weekend.
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We went to a basketball game, went and got junk food at the grocery store, a little bit of fast food. You know, we're
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16. We were carefree. There was absolutely nothing that would make any of us think that the next morning
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everything would change. So, Saturday morning, Sarah woke up kind of in a panic.
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She woke up and said, "I'm late for practice." She put on her drill team uniform and
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ran out the door. She went to the school and discovered that she was early, so she parked in her
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car and waited for the rest of her team to show up. Shortly after the phone call started,
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where's Sarah? Do you know where she is? Sarah was found within an hour. Where was her body discovered? So, her
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car was still in the parking lot. Her body was approximately 100 yards away, still on the school property. Part of
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her clothing was removed. She had nylon stockings tied in a ligature around her her neck.
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[Music] I just remember just saying, "Not Sarah, not Sarah, not Sarah." over and over again.
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The suspect is a white male, 6 feet tall, with a medium build. They had DNA evidence. They had everything. They had
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witnesses. In that first week or so, it sounded like they had so much evidence for at least a short while. It felt like
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he said, "Of course they're going to catch him." And then when they didn't and they
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didn't, your expectations change. You don't know if it's your next door neighbor. You don't know if it's some
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random stranger. There was that constant fear of is this going to happen again? We literally had a monster in the
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community and we just we didn't know who it was. [Music] [Music] How often do you think about December
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14th, 1991 and what happened on that day? quite a bit. It's a very traumatic thing
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to go through. [Music] It's been over 30 years, but the details of that day have never faded for Drew
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Miller. I had my friend spent the night at my house. We woke up that morning, watched cartoons, ate cereal, left to go
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skateboarding. Drew, who was just 13 at the time, lived down the street from Federal Way High School near Seattle,
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Washington. The school grounds have changed quite a bit, right? Drastically, yes. The tennis court's the only thing
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that's still here. Drew often took shortcuts through the school to go skateboarding, as he and his friend did
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that day. We used to hop the fence right here and cut through here. It was freezing cold that day. I
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mean, there was ice in all of the mug bubbles. We just, you know, started smashing them cuz it's fun. You know, it
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sounds like breaking glass. That's when Drew says they noticed a man in the bushes.
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Right where you see the edge of this dugout right here. That was all bushes that were probably this tall. So, we
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couldn't see him until he stood up. He's just staring at us from the bushes. That was pretty jarring. But
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then he just walked out of the bushes. So, then we just assumed he's just smoking weed or something. The
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mysterious man kept to himself and walked ahead of the boys. Drew says they didn't think much of it until they came
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across a horrendous scene. There in the bushes where the man had just been was the body of a young
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woman. It was horrible. Absolutely horrible. The way that he left her body, she clearly fought for her life.
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Drew says his shock turned to fear when he realized the man who was still just feet in front of them was now staring
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directly back at him. Does that look still haunt you? Oh yeah. Yeah. It's frozen in my mind. The boogeyman then.
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Legitimate boogeyman. The boys raced to Drew's house and police were called to the scene.
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[Music] When we approached the victim on one of the pieces of clothing, we saw the name
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Sarah. Detective Scott Strathy with the King County Sheriff's Office was one of the first officers on the scene. And of
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course, later we found out that that was Sarah Yarborough. [Music] Even for experienced
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investigators, this scene was really hard to deal with. Just the innocent nature of this
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young woman in her school drill team uniform with her hot curlers still in her hair. This was just pure unadulterated
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evil. [Music] Investigators believed this was a sexually motivated murder. She was
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partially clothed. Her jacket, her undergarments, her bra had been removed and placed next to her body. Police
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discovered that the car Sarah had driven that morning was parked in the school parking lot about 300 ft from where her
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body was found. There didn't really appear to be any sort of a struggle in the car itself. Detective John Free with
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the King County Sheriff's Office Major Crimes Unit would later join the investigation.
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She had a container of orange juice that she had made that morning. It was just sitting in the front seat. Nothing was
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tipped over. So, the question was, how did she get from her car to this hill? What led her there?
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Sarah was one of these people that would help anyone with anything at any time. And part of our working theory was, was
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she coaxed into following, you know, the suspect? Did he say something like, "I'm
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looking for my lost dog," or, "I can't find my car keys." Perhaps Sarah in an attempt to assist
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this person may have followed him to that area. Tell me about this one. That was less
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than a week, I think, before she died. I said, "Could I take your picture cuz your great grandma really wants a
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picture of you and your drill team?" And she goes, "Okay." It was just too incredible to believe
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that it could even happen. Sarah's parents, Laura and Tom Yarborough. I mean, who thinks that your
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daughter's going to be murdered? Tom and Laura had the excruciating task of having to tell their two sons the
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tragic news. Sarah's youngest brother, Andrew, was just 11 years old at the time. At that age, you probably never
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seen or heard your parents cry much, but that that pain in the voice is very, very vivid. Sarah, who had just started
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her junior year in high school, had big plans for her future, starting with college. She didn't want to go to a
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state school. She wanted to go to a school far away. She loved to travel. I actually would hear her say, "I can't
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decide if I want to be a museum curator or an engineer like my father." Yep. And
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I was always rooting for the museum curator. Liberty Barnes, Christy Gutierrez, Amy
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Perero, and Mary Beth Tommy were some of Sarah's closest friends. So, this was after the last day of 10th grade. And
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we're just kind of goofing around afterwards. And that totally I mean, you can see there's Sarah right in the
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middle of it being goofy. [Music] The fiery red hair. Was that her personality a lot? Yeah. She was
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artistic. She was creative. She was smart. She was feisty. imaginative, all of those things. She would be the last
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one to wait for someone, always be there with a smile. She would help with homework. It was her ultimate
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kindness. After Sarah was ripped from their lives, they say their sense of safety was gone forever.
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You grow up getting all the safety conversations with your parents and bad things can happen and it's all this sort
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of like vague possibility out there and then all of a sudden it was like no no no no it can really happen. It really
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did just happen. It was all hands on deck. The sheriff's office put everything they had into
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solving this case as as soon as they could. And the killer left behind important
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evidence. Sarah had not been raped, but the killer's DNA was found on pieces of her clothing.
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There was semen found on her underwear and on her jacket. We had a full male DNA profile.
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DNA technology was new back in 1991, but investigators hoped that DNA would someday lead them to Sarah's killer. In
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the meantime, they had eyewitnesses. I thought for sure somebody would know him. Drew and his friend who was with
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him the morning they found Sarah's body worked with police and a sketch of the man they saw in the bushes was released
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to the public. Police would later release a more elaborate sketch. I very vividly remember going through yearbooks
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going, "Okay, who looks like this sketch?" Everyone, it felt like at one point was was a suspect. But as days
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went by and as leads dried up, police kept coming back to Drew and his friend. They just made me feel like I was the
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only person that could help them solve this. I know that wasn't the intent, like, you know, the officers are just
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doing their best. How much pressure were you feeling? It's unimaginable pressure.
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And despite everyone's best efforts, it would take years to find Sarah's killer.
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This case was never forgotten. [Music] [Music] In early June of 1993, one and a half years after Sarah
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Yarro's murder, local media were there as students gathered in the courtyard of Federal Way High School to honor her.
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Bill Fuller, a family friend who helped spearhead the move for a memorial to remember Sarah, unveiled it with help
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from Sarah's younger brother, Andrew. It was quite a day. A lot of tears as they
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looked at it and could could see Sarah in that bench. Bill Fuller has known the Yar Bros for
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years and his daughter was in Sarah's class. Sarah was fun to be around. That was probably what we missed the most is
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she was fun to be around. The bench reads carpedium sees the day. A mantra Sarah lived by. Encased in
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bronze are some of her favorite possessions, ballet shoes, a replica of Sarah's beloved dog, Gibby, and books.
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Nice that people cared about her so much. Andrew Yarro, now an adult, admits that he struggled as a young teenager.
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It was especially difficult to see those sketches around town of the man police believed murdered his sister. You know,
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there was drawings of the person's face all over in businesses in town. You know, I do recall that quite a bit. Just
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having that kind of a constant reminder. Looking back, I feel like we didn't do a
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very good job with the boys. I think that we were so consumed by our own grief that we didn't take time to help
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them. I think we didn't really know how to help them. I mean, it wasn't something we had experience with. We
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didn't know anything about grieving ourselves or how to help them through it. And they weren't alone in their
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grief. Shannon Grant, the last friend to see Sarah alive, says she lived with constant regret. I wish we could go back
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and do it all over again. That I would have asked the other drill team members what time practice
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was, you know, maybe dropped her off. I mean, there's a lot of the whatifs. The milestones were especially painful.
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There was survivor guilt. Like, why am I filling out my college applications when
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Sarah wanted to go to college? This isn't fair. Every joyful occasion had this Yes. sorrow that went with it. That
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was There's one missing from the crowd here. Graduation Day, June 12th, 1993, was an
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emotional day, but even more so since it fell on what would have been Sarah's 18th birthday. Laura Yarro came to
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support her daughter's friends. I do not know where she found the strength to do
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that. She loved that green dress, right? Yeah, she wore green quite a bit with her hair.
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Lori Yarro says Sarah's friends helped ease her grief somewhat and she thinks she filled the void for them as well.
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Sometimes they would say, "Well, I'm going to date this person and I just wanted to let you know cuz I wasn't sure
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if Sarah would approve of this person." So, they would seek approval through you. You became sort of their surrogate.
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Yes. As life slowly moved forward, investigators kept working the case. I describe it as like a relay race where
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the baton was handed off from one detective to the next over the years and decades. I kind of refer to myself as
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the fifth beetle in this investigation. By the early 2000s, investigators had received over 3,000 leads, and advances
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in technology made them hopeful. They entered the DNA from the crime scene into the recently established KOTUS
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system, a national DNA database that includes profiles of convicted offenders. The strategy was to
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continually try to see if there would ever be a match while also investigating leads. But over time, there appeared to
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be no match. For us to have DNA evidence from the suspect, but not have that linked to anybody, it just didn't make
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sense. It it seemed hard to believe that the suspect hadn't committed any other prior
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crimes where his DNA wouldn't be in the system. That's when he says detectives realized
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they had to go in a different direction. My name is Colleen Fitzpatrick and I'm one of the pioneers of forensic genetic
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genealogy. In 2011, investigators reached out to Fitzpatrick to inquire about using
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forensic genetic genealogy, the practice of using software to compare unknown DNA
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profiles to information from public DNA databases and searching family trees to identify suspects. Genetic genealogy is
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well known now and has been used to solve numerous cold cases, but at that time it was in its infancy. When I
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started in this field, it didn't exist. Fitzpatrick says most police agencies had been skeptical of this new
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investigative tool. The police thought I was crazy. You know, this little old lady with a crazy idea, and I was
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actually almost laughed out the room, but the King County Sheriff's Office took a chance on Fitzpatrick. It was for
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free. I just wanted to see if it worked. What are you going to lose if you try something? The Yar Bros were encouraged.
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I think it wasn't until we met Colleen Fitzpatrick that I really began to think, oh, you know, that they're going
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to find this person. And it didn't take long before Fitzpatrick came up with the name of a
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possible suspect that surprised just about everyone. Everyone went, "No way. From the beginning, it was very
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promising and the story took some really bizarre twists. In 2011, 20 years after Sarah's murder,
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when forensic genetic genealogologist Colleen Fitzpatrick started working the Yarborough case, she traced Sarah's
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killer's family tree back to a man named Robert Fuller, whose family had come to
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America on the Mayflower. I found numerous matches to the name Fuller. When Fitzpatrick gave the name Fuller to
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the King County Sheriff's Office, they immediately knew of one person with that last name. Bill Fuller, the Yarro's
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close family friend who helped get that memorial bench built for Sarah. Naturally, that piqu our interest.
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From the beginning, Sarah's family and friends believed Bill Fuller had nothing to do with Sarah's murder. He didn't
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look at all like the suspect. The wrong hair color. He's short. He's not tall. He just didn't fit the profile at all.
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Fuller's age didn't match the profile either. He's 79 years old now, but was 48 years old at the time of Sarah's
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murder, at least two decades older than the man Drew Miller described. There was
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no way that I could be even remotely connected to the case. He fully cooperated with police and
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voluntarily gave them a DNA sample. It didn't match the DNA found at Sarah's crime scene. Yet, Fitzpatrick remained
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optimistic. The good news is that we came up with a possible last name to investigate, and this was the first
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break in the case in 20 years. Fitzpatrick knew that Sarah's killer was in the Fuller family tree
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somewhere. So, she and her team went back to work. And as the years went by, she knew she was only getting closer,
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especially after 2018 when forensic genetic genealogy was used to identify the Golden State Killer. Golden State
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Killer really started the big revolution. Things had evolved that we had the data to work with. The
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technology was in place that we could go for it. Then in September of 2019, Fitzpatrick's team made a breakthrough.
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They came up with two new possible suspects. Brothers Edward and Patrick Nicholas, who as the DNA showed, were
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distant cousins of Bill Fuller. You know, this is 8 years of on and off and looking at it, never giving up. This is
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it. This is exciting. Edward Nicholas was a registered sex offender. His DNA was in the system. It
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was in COS. But Edward's DNA wasn't a match. So they zeroed in on his brother Patrick, who in
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2019 was a divorced loner who lived a couple of towns away from Federal Way. We learned that he was working at a at a
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auto parts store. Lived alone, uh, no children, no friends or acquaintances that would even visit him. Everything
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that he did was mostly by bus. He wasn't driving. Detective Re says he discovered that
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when Sarah was murdered, the bus route Nicholas often took happened to go past Federal Way High School. Back then,
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Nicholas was just 27 years old and around that time looked very much like the description of the sketch.
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It looked promising at that point, but we still needed to get a DNA sample from him to match up to the DNA evidence that
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we had. So, in late September 2019, investigators came up with a plan. We assigned a team of undercover detectives
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to start doing surveillance on Patrick Nicholas in the hopes of obtaining a surreptitious DNA sample. Eventually,
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undercover detectives followed Nicholas to a laundromat. They saw him go outside
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and smoke a cigarette. And Patrick Nicholas was seen throwing the cigarette butt on the ground that was collected by
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our detectives. That's what you needed right there. That cigarette butt. Yes. Actually, he dropped two cigarette butts
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and a napkin that fell out of his pocket and all three items were collected. The DNA samples were rushed to the crime
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lab and within days, detectives received the call they had been waiting for. The
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DNA matched. This was our suspect. Perfect match. Yes, Patrick Nicholas was arrested. There
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were so many suspects over the years. Was Patrick Leon Nicholas ever named as a suspect? Out of 4,000 tips, he was
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never named. I was I was pretty in shock. The news was a relief for Sarah's family and
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friends who had never given up hope that they would get answers. One thing the detectives kept telling us was
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eventually technology is going to solve this case. I trusted that and they turned out that they were
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right. And I remember going out to my car and balling, just balling. Finally, finally they got him.
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When Drew Miller, who had seen Sarah's killer back in 1991, saw Patrick Nicholas's face, he
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says he knew they had the right person. What did he look like? The same guy, just older. Just the same evil eyes.
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Those evil eyes stayed the same all these years later. Yeah. But it was not over yet. Why do you
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think you're here? I have no clue. During his interrogation, who am I being charged for? When detectives
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specifically asked him about Sarah's murder, he gave an alarming response. What we're investigating is is the death
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of a young girl named Sarah the young girl. Interestingly, he asked what year this
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was. And that really sent up a flag. Why? Why would you ask that? He's being told this is a murder case. We're
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wondering at this point, are there other victims? This is it. I'm not going to say anything. After one and a half
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hours, Nicholas asked for an attorney and stopped talking. But his criminal record would speak volumes.
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I am the one that got away. On a quiet morning in June 1983, 8 years before Sarah's murder,
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21-year-old Anne Crony was sitting by her car along the Columbia River in Richland, Washington, when a man
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approached her. He seemed normal, kind of friendly, actually. Just friendly. I had asked him
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if he'd done any water skiing yet because he said he had just moved to town and he said he couldn't swim. And
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he said, "My name is Pat Nicholas." After a few minutes of small talk, she became uncomfortable. I noticed his
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voice was getting shaky and I told him I had to go. I went to close the door and he put
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a knife to my throat. Everything kind of stopped at that moment. He told me to take my clothes
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off. Nicholas stuffed Anne's underwear into her mouth to prevent her from screaming, forced her out of the car,
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and led her to the riverbank. We got about halfway down the bank, and he told me to stop. I ran and dove in the river
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cuz I was thinking he couldn't swim. Swam as hard as I could. Swam for your life. I swam for my life.
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Passers by found Ann at a dock nearby and called police. As it turns out, 19-year-old Patrick Nicholas was no
00:27:51
stranger to law enforcement and had a record. He had raped two women and attempted to rape a third. He'd been
00:27:59
convicted of rape as a juvenile and had actually only just been out for a few months when he attacked
00:28:08
me. Days after Anne's attack, he was tracked down, arrested, and plead guilty to attempted rape. He told authorities,
00:28:17
"I realized that I have a problem concerning raping girls." At his sentencing hearing, Anne
00:28:24
spoke out. I was actually very angry and asked the judge for the maximum sentence
00:28:31
and the judge did agree and sentenced him to 10 years. So I thought it was over. I thought that justice had been
00:28:39
served. But Patrick Nicholas did not serve the full 10 years in prison. He was released
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after just 3 and 1/2 years and was never notified. She barely thought of him again until October 2019.
00:28:56
The police knocked on my door and said that there were detectives in Seattle that wanted to talk to me about
00:29:03
a cold case. They informed Anne that Patrick Nicholas had been arrested again, this time for the murder of Sarah
00:29:10
Yarro. They told me that there were similarities in the cases and I was crushed.
00:29:22
It had never occurred to me that what I escaped from was a murder. What's more, if Nicholas had served his
00:29:30
full prison sentence, he would have still been behind bars that December morning in
00:29:36
1991, unable to murder Sarah Yarro. How angry are you to hear that he was released that early? And very, it
00:29:45
brought up a lot of the old anger and even more anger because the system failed.
00:29:50
King County Deputy Prosecuting Attorneys Celia Lee and Mary Barbosa describe him
00:29:56
as a serial predator with a clear pattern. All of the women were approached at or near their car. He
00:30:04
would strike up conversation and then pull a knife and tell them that they needed to walk where he would order them
00:30:10
to take off their clothes and then rape them. Nicholas had also been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor in 1994.
00:30:20
3 years after Sarah's murder, five sexual assaults that investigators knew of, none of which had required him to
00:30:28
submit his DNA. So, there was no record of him in the Cotus database. But in pre-trial hearings, the judge ruled that
00:30:36
Nicholas's criminal history could not be entered in as evidence. She found that it would be unfairly prejuditial to the
00:30:45
defendant. But the prosecutors were hopeful their case was strong enough. All right for the jury. In early 2023,
00:30:54
more than 30 years after Sarah Yarro's murder, her accused killer, now 59 years old, went on trial. Sarah's childhood
00:31:04
friends were there. I so clearly remember the morning before the trial started just going, I don't know if I
00:31:09
can do this. It's like, you know, I had so many different emotions flowing through and it was like, no, we need to
00:31:15
be there. There was this absolute love for Sarah and the Yar Bros that was so strong. Did you feel like they were a
00:31:24
lifeline for you? Yeah. Be seated. You weren't in it alone. You were all in it together. As the trial got underway, the
00:31:32
focus was on the DNA. What was your strategy then in trying this case? Well, we needed them to trust the science.
00:31:40
There was a field that was emerging called forensic genetic genealogy. Patrick Nicholas's public defender,
00:31:46
David Montes, challenged how forensic genetic genealogy was used to first identify Nicholas. I want to dig into
00:31:54
the science because the first time that kind of defense had been used in Washington state. They used technology
00:32:01
that is not only unproven, but just whack really. He's not the person that killed Sarah. The police needed an
00:32:09
answer more than they needed the right answer. And so they turned to new novel, untested technology. Genetic genealogy
00:32:19
is a new field. It really hasn't been tested out. Should we be making important decisions based on something
00:32:25
that is not well or deeply understood? But the prosecutors said that argument was moot because Patrick Nicholas's DNA
00:32:34
matched the DNA found at the Yarro crime scene. And Detective Free says the numbers were astronomical. The odds were
00:32:42
one in 120 quadrillion that quadrillion. Yeah. Right. That it it was somebody else.
00:32:51
If the numbers pointed to Nicholas's guilt, law enforcement says so did evidence found at his house near the
00:32:58
time of his arrest in 2019. It was almost like a layer. There was no working electricity at this house.
00:33:05
Stacks of pornography all throughout the the place. We also found a newspaper from 1994 that had on his front page an
00:33:14
article about the Serbo case. And going through one of the kitchen drawers, we found a torn photograph taken from a
00:33:21
magazine, a woman in a cheerleading outfit. When the prosecutors showed that photo in the
00:33:31
courtroom, the oxygen left the room. Yeah. Montes downplayed their significance. I think both of those
00:33:39
pieces of evidence were not especially strange given the general state of his house. There were stacks and stacks of
00:33:45
newspapers all over his house. This is evidence tape. Patrick Nicholas didn't flinch as the evidence was shown,
00:33:54
showing no emotion throughout the trial. But Sarah Yarro's presence was felt, especially when now retired Captain
00:34:02
Scott Strathy carefully unpackaged and displayed Sarah's clothing that had been in storage for over 30 years. her drill
00:34:12
team jacket, shoes, sweater, even her nylon stockings. This was like opening a a time capsule. All of a sudden, they
00:34:22
were real things. They weren't even photographs. They were the things she had on her body when she
00:34:29
died. You just you sort of felt yourself crumble. After nine long days of testimony, the
00:34:37
case went to the jury. All eyes for the jury. It took them just over a day to reach a verdict. I was shaking and like
00:34:46
just that like there was so much adrenaline and so much anticipation. We the jury find the defendant Patrick
00:34:52
Leon. Everything just dropped and it's like what? [Music] Why do you think it took law enforcement
00:35:00
so long to identify Patrick Nicholas as a suspect? Take a look at a timeline of the case at 48 hours.com.
00:35:13
This is the state of Washington versus Patrick Leon Nicholas. Sarah Yarro's loved ones had waited over 30 years for
00:35:20
this moment. We the jury find the defendant not guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree premeditated.
00:35:31
Patrick Nicholas was found not guilty of the first charge premeditated firstdegree murder. I remember dropping
00:35:38
my head to my hands. I was angry. I was in disbelief when that first one came in
00:35:44
not guilty. I closed my eyes. But there were other charges and there was still hope of a conviction. Guilty
00:35:52
of the crime of murder in the first degree. Guilty in the second degree. Patrick Nicholas was found guilty of
00:35:59
firstdegree murder and seconddegree murder. The jury ruled both had been committed with a sexual motivation. I
00:36:06
remember hearing the family behind me cryur and I made eye contact with the jurors
00:36:12
and nodded at them. You know, they got it. They got it right. I feel so grateful for those detectives, for the
00:36:20
boys, for the previous victims, for every witness who took the stand. So grateful that all these people came
00:36:28
together. Two weeks after Nicholas's conviction, dozens of people who had been involved
00:36:34
in every part of Sarah's case gathered back at the courthouse for his sentencing hearing. Prosecutors asked
00:36:40
the judge to impose extra time to take into account all of Nicholas's crimes. The sentencing hearing was exhilarating
00:36:50
in a way that I never expected. M it was probably the most raw human courage I have ever seen in my life.
00:37:03
[Music] Sarah's death left our family broken and we've never been the same. The pain in
00:37:11
my father's voice over the phone telling me Sarah was dead. Person after person took to
00:37:18
the podium to say all that Patrick Nicholas had taken from them. Coming face to face with pure evil that day has
00:37:26
deeply impacted my entire life. He took her life and what was sure to be a brilliant future from
00:37:34
her. In taking Sarah, he took the innocence of every one of us to face Patrick Nicholas and to say what they
00:37:41
had been wanting to say to his face for 30 years. Patrick Nicholas is pure evil.
00:37:48
There was so much power in the room. It was electric. And then Anne Crony, who wasn't allowed to testify at Sarah's
00:37:56
trial, started speaking. He just did like a double take and shuddered when Anne stood up. Like he saw a ghost. Yes.
00:38:05
I'm sure he didn't expect to ever see my face or hear my name ever again. We rely
00:38:10
on a system of justice that is designed to protect us from predators like Nicholas. And this system failed me. It
00:38:18
failed Sarah, her family, friends, and countless others. I asked the court to please not make the same mistake. After
00:38:25
everyone spoke, Judge Josephine Wigs addressed the court. And when I think about this poor
00:38:33
child, this poor child, what she experienced fighting for her life. Judge Wigs put her fist on the thing and said,
00:38:46
"This was a child." She kept saying that and all I could think was, "Oh my gosh,
00:38:52
that's right. We were children." Yep. Nicholas received a sentence of almost 46 years. For Sarah's family and
00:39:02
friends, the sentence brought mixed emotions. I don't know that this is justice. It is a verdict and it is
00:39:10
putting someone away for something that they did. But he got 30 years that she didn't get. It makes me mad that he was
00:39:18
free for so many years. And who knows however many other people were hurt during that time. I I don't know that
00:39:26
we'll ever know and that could have been avoided. Forensic genetic genealogy helped solve Sarah's case, but
00:39:34
prosecutors say similar technology could have identified Patrick Nicholas years earlier if only familial DNA searches
00:39:42
were allowed in Washington state. In a familial DNA search, an unknown DNA sample is compared against profiles
00:39:50
already in Kotus to search for possible family members. Remember, Patrick Nicholas's brother's DNA had been in
00:39:59
Cotus for years. The legislation just doesn't exist in this state to allow that search. California uses it. the UK,
00:40:08
as I understand, York, New York, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Florida. Do you think it's time to get that law
00:40:16
changed? We do. We do. The Yarboroughs agree and hope that Sarah's case can make a difference. I would like to know
00:40:24
that other parents don't have to wait 30 years. What do you hope her legacy is? I think
00:40:32
her legacy is she was always someone who brought people together. She's brought all the people together that attended
00:40:40
the trial. That's the kind of person she was. For Drew Miller, who at 13 found Sarah's body, the connections made at
00:40:49
trial finally brought him some peace. Knowing he's in prison is fantastic, but knowing her family and friends is way
00:40:59
more important to me cuz that's what's given me the actual healing that I needed. This is probably the beginning
00:41:07
of our junior year. Sarah's friends will always remain bonded by the past and Sarah's stolen future.
00:41:14
Not only was she beautiful, her soul was beautiful. And the grace and the beauty
00:41:19
that she carried and left with all of us, we won't forget her. We will never forget her.
00:41:31
[Music] New CBS Next. He's not breathing. A surgeon's girlfriend found dead. Provided those drugs. Was this a case of
00:41:48
a controlling doctor's depravity? This was not just some simple accident. This was much more. A new 48 hours next on
00:41:56
CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus. [Music] On December 19th, 1979, Michelle Marteno was a 18-year-old
00:42:20
high school senior. She was impossible to miss. She had the big blonde hair. She was that striking. She was
00:42:30
striking. Just a smart, kind, nice person. She was a member of the concert choir.
00:42:40
They had a banquet which she attended. Afterwards, Michelle ended up going to the mall. So did a bunch of her friends
00:42:47
from the choir. The mall had just opened. It was 2 months old. It was the place to be in
00:42:54
Cedar Rapids at the time. So she would have been parked right in this area. Yeah, she would have been
00:43:00
parked facing this direction. She left the mall shortly before it closed. It closed at 10 p.m. that night.
00:43:08
You're talking December in Iowa. It's very dark. It's very dark. Michelle walks out and gets in her
00:43:17
car. This person snuck up on Michelle, opened the door, and climbed in. She was stabbed and cut a total of 29
00:43:26
times. This was a real fight. It looks personal. It's a lot of stab wounds. It's
00:43:35
overkill. It's always the boyfriend, the girlfriend, the husband, someone really,
00:43:41
really close to the person. Did either of you know Andy Sidell? I knew Andy through Michelle. That was her
00:43:48
boyfriend. I took an instant dislike to Andy. He was very possessive of Michelle. I
00:43:56
believed Andy did it. I did not see anything from the men in her life that would give any of them motive to do
00:44:02
something like this. I definitely didn't see that from Andy Sidell. Entire police force dedicated time and
00:44:11
energy to try to find answers to what happened to Michelle. After a couple of years, the leads were
00:44:17
starting to dry up. The case then goes cold. Yeah. We really had given up hope. We truly had. These guys never gave up.
00:44:27
The investigation never really stopped. I've been through every piece of paper in here, probably close to 8,000 pages
00:44:35
of reports here. The biggest break came in 2005. The DNA was the key. We collected DNA from 161 people.
00:44:48
We were looking for a needle in a hay stack. We just need to get lucky. It took us 13 years until we had a
00:44:55
suspect. We immediately call up the lab. Is this our guy? What was the answer? Yes. What are you doing in that moment?
00:45:03
I don't know what I was doing. I was speechless. So, do you think he just all these years
00:45:10
thought he got away with it? Well, yeah, cuz he did. [Music] [Music] this tragic case that's been haunting
00:46:06
this community for years. Just before Christmas in December 1979, every single police officer in
00:46:17
Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was called to work on the horrific murder in the parking lot of Westdale Mall. I never seen
00:46:24
anybody stabbed that many times, including now retired detective Harvey Deninger. Something like that was
00:46:31
unheard of around here. Michelle Martino, an 18-year-old high school senior, had been found violently
00:46:40
stabbed in the front seat of her car. Her killer unknown, confounding generations of investigators. We
00:46:48
couldn't come up with anything. And we just kept plugging away. How old were you? I was 5 years old. Do
00:46:56
you remember the case? No, not not from when I was little. Harvey's son, Matt. But every single year on December 19th,
00:47:05
Michelle Martino was a brighteyed blonde. The local news would have a Michelle Martino segment. 27 years ago,
00:47:11
her life was cut short. So, it was really hard to miss the severity of it. Decades later, Matt, now a detective
00:47:21
himself, joined the investigation into Michelle Martino's murder. I love how old this map is. 36 years after his
00:47:29
father had begun working the same case. Wouldn't it be something if I could find
00:47:33
our suspect and my dad is still alive. And as he dug into the thick files, the son went to his father to help him make
00:47:43
sense of it all. I wanted someone to talk to about it and I wanted someone that really understood it.
00:47:50
The crime had stunned the small city of 110,000. It scared the hell out of us. Tracy Price went to high school and sang
00:47:59
in the choir with Michelle. It just hit me like a brick. It was just shocking. Mike Hyrick had dated Michelle in high
00:48:08
school and says her murder shattered the city's all-American image. If that could
00:48:13
happen and the person wasn't caught, anything could happen. This one, I think, is one of our
00:48:21
favorite pictures. She's sleeping with her dog. So cute. Here we're into the hair stage. Lots of hair pictures. Yep.
00:48:32
Janelle Stonereaker is Michelle's big sister, 12 years older. Michelle was the flower girl at her wedding. She and her
00:48:39
husband John say nothing could have prepared them for the horrible news they got the morning after Michelle was
00:48:46
killed. We just hugged and we couldn't believe she was gone. My dad was very stoic about it, but he
00:48:57
was angry and my mother was just brokenhearted. It was a devastating blow to parents who had been through so much
00:49:07
with Michelle already. Janet Martino had suffered five miscarriages and was 44 years old when Michelle was born. It was
00:49:16
great. I mean, it was just so exciting when my sister was born and she was the miracle baby. When she was 12, Michelle
00:49:25
was diagnosed with scoliosis, a curvature of the spine. She had to wear a brace that went from her neck to her
00:49:32
hips. She felt very different, very self-conscious. So, that was a tough period.
00:49:40
But at age 14, she was able to shed the brace. And then Janelle says everything changed for Michelle. Farrah Faucet was
00:49:48
in with the hair and my sister always had the long blonde hair. So she thought, "Okay, I can do I can do the
00:49:54
hair." You know, Michelle was blissfully unaware. She was of all this uh attention that she was
00:50:03
getting from men. She caught the eye of Andy Sidell, who at 16 was a year older than Michelle. We
00:50:11
met him roller skating. Michelle's friend, Gail Dawson, remembers him, and there was this
00:50:17
flashy sports car guy, you know. Michelle and Andy were together for 2 years and then broke up. Friends say she
00:50:25
didn't want to be in a committed relationship. And Andy apparently didn't take it too well. After they broke up,
00:50:32
he wanted to know her every move, who she was dating, why she was dating that particular person. He would talk to her
00:50:39
friends. He just wouldn't go away. Police learned Andy had run into Michelle at the mall that fateful night.
00:50:48
They brought him in for questioning. Did he have an alibi? Andy did have an alibi. Andy was at home shortly after
00:50:55
the mall closed and his mom uh provided an alibi. The problem with Andy's alibi,
00:51:01
though, is that moms would say a lot to protect their children. Every male that knew her
00:51:09
was a suspect that they had to clear. You must have been a suspect. I was. Mike Hayrick was questioned as well. And
00:51:16
even though he was more than a 100 miles away at college when Michelle was murdered, police knew he had also dated
00:51:23
her. All of it was a little intimidating. It was hard. It was scary. Mike says the police were tough on him.
00:51:32
At one point they thought that I wasn't telling them everything and they laid the crime scene photos out in front of
00:51:38
me and it was hurtful. Mike was never considered a serious suspect because he was not in Cedar
00:51:46
Rapids at the time of the murder, but Andy was. And Andy's behavior at Michelle's funeral only reinforced many
00:51:54
people's suspicions about him. He was almost in the casket. He was so emotional. He has arms around her and he
00:52:05
was just sobbing. And he said to me, "I have to know who she loved when she died. Did she love me or did she love
00:52:13
Mike? Who did she love when she died?" But police had no hard evidence pointing to Andy Sidell. He left Cedar Rapids
00:52:24
soon after high school and joined the Navy. There's a large amount of us that were convinced that he did kill her.
00:52:32
I thought it was just a matter of time before he was arrested and charged. There was no one
00:52:40
else. There really wasn't another suspect. [Music] As police investigated those closest to
00:53:09
Michelle Martino, looking for potential suspects, they were also looking at the possibility that Michelle may have been
00:53:16
killed outside the mall by a stranger. She was out there and she was looking for a coat that her mom had put on
00:53:23
layaway for her for Christmas and she was going to pay it off. Michelle had $186 with her to pay for
00:53:30
the coat, but ultimately decided she didn't want it. Tracy Price had run into her at the mall that night and gave her
00:53:38
a protective warning when he saw her holding the cash. Put that away. You know, don't be flashing money out here
00:53:45
in the middle of everybody. Tracy only learned later that Michelle was a little anxious that night.
00:53:52
She was nervous about going out to the mall by herself and that she had told someone that she felt like she was being
00:53:58
followed. You didn't notice anybody watching her, paying close attention to her. I never got that feeling.
00:54:06
Michelle headed to her car in the dark. So, she was parked pretty far away. Yeah, she was parked a ways out here. I
00:54:14
think she gets in. I think she probably turned that car on herself and and was warming it up for a minute to get the
00:54:20
frost off the windows. And I think that in that moment before she puts it in drive and leaves, I think he's at the
00:54:26
door, pops it open, pushes her over, and climbs in. Sounds like a robbery. On the
00:54:32
surface, it would sound like a robbery, but she did have cash on her. It wasn't taken. She did have a a bag with some
00:54:39
items she had purchased in the back seat. Those weren't taken. So, is it a sexual assault? It very well could have
00:54:45
could have been the plan. Although the autopsy showed she was not sexually assaulted, Michelle had defensive slice
00:54:52
wounds on her hands and body. You have to assume that that pretty much any motive that you can logically think of
00:54:59
was a possibility and that Michelle decided she wasn't going to allow that to happen. She fought.
00:55:07
Whatever the motive, the asalent had come prepared. They found rubber glove indentations on the outside of the car
00:55:15
in dirt. They found them inside the car in blood. It was clear that that person was trying to conceal their identity.
00:55:21
Investigators had no fingerprints, no witnesses, and few leads. Although they had a blood soaked crime scene, DNA
00:55:30
technology was still years away. It's frustrating. By 1986, this case is sitting on ice. It's that cold. No one
00:55:40
can think of anything uh more to do at that point. Michelle's family was even more frustrated. It seemed that
00:55:49
everybody had been looked at. We thought the investigation was pretty much dead in the water. It would take almost two
00:55:56
decades, but the case would come alive again. In 2005, Detective Doug Larrison was in
00:56:03
charge. Coincidentally, he had gone to high school with Michelle. Although they were not close, her murder had deeply
00:56:11
affected him. So that had been on your mind since you were 18 years old. How do we get this solved? Right. I felt the
00:56:18
responsibility towards my classmates actually to get this crime solved. In the years since Michelle's murder,
00:56:25
DNA had emerged as a forensic tool. Technology changes, science changes, so I wanted to proceed and move the case
00:56:33
forward. And Larrison did just that. He was reading Michelle's file when he discovered that sometime earlier,
00:56:41
another detective had sent blood scrapings found on the gear shift of the car out for testing, but nobody had
00:56:48
followed up on the results. And it just stays in the file until somebody finds it and it can get lost in the file. And
00:56:54
until somebody actually sits down and reads the file, do they go, "Oh, wow. We have DNA." Those different investigators
00:57:00
don't necessarily network with one another. But Larrison found that lab report and
00:57:06
it showed that not only did the gear shift have DNA, it was male DNA. He had probably cut himself and that's
00:57:14
how his DNA and his blood got mixed with her blood on the gear shift selector. Larrison then sent Michelle's dress,
00:57:22
which had been safely tucked away in an evidence locker, to the lab for further testing.
00:57:28
What did they find? A spot of blood on her dress with a full male. DNA profile and uh it was consistent with the male
00:57:36
DNA profiled on the gear shift selector. Larrison had identified a crucial piece
00:57:42
of evidence. I think it's just common sense that that's probably your killer right there. Detectives had the
00:57:48
evidence. Now all they needed was the suspect. We know we just need one person. We just need to get get lucky,
00:57:56
you know, have the sunshine on us just one day when we find one person that matches that. But it would take many
00:58:03
days, more than a decade. And it wasn't luck. It was cops who wouldn't quit until they finally narrowed in on one
00:58:11
very surprising suspect. Oh boy. This is it. We have finally gotten down to the wire on this.
00:58:19
[Music] [Music] here in America's heartland for friends like Tracy Price who saw Michelle
00:58:40
Martino the last night of her life. Every anniversary it goes through your head. You know, here's another
00:58:47
year. Still don't know. For ex-boyfriend Mike Hyrick, we all were victims in a way. Well, your
00:58:57
innocence was stolen. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Then the fear set in. And for close friend Gail Dawson, Michelle's
00:59:05
murderer left a mark on all their lives. You're scared. You're afraid to go places.
00:59:14
The killer had vanished. But by 2005, investigators were on to something new. Science. And that male DNA profile in
00:59:26
Michelle's dress and the DNA from the blood on her car's gear shift. Would it be fair to say you found a needle in a
00:59:32
hay stack? I think there was a lot of needles in in a lot of hay stacks in this case. For lead investigator Doug
00:59:39
Larrison, old evidence suddenly had fresh potential. He shipped the blood samples to Cotus, the nationwide
00:59:46
database of DNA collected from arrested offenders. If Michelle's murderer had a previous record, Cotus will give us a
00:59:54
hit and tell us who matches the profile. So, you send it to Cotus and what happens? Well, we never got a hit.
01:00:02
Dead end. The DNA from Michelle's dress and car did not match up with anyone in the
01:00:09
huge government file. So, now we had a job to do. Starting with locating all the people
01:00:17
Cedar Rapids cops had originally interviewed. We collected DNA samples from over a hundred different people.
01:00:24
Cops had to convince them to take a DNA test. It was timeconuming. Mike Hyrick and Tracy Price were tested. Both came
01:00:31
up negative. At the top of Larrison's list was Michelle's old boyfriend, Andy Sidell. I think he was probably the main
01:00:40
suspect from the very beginning of this case. Andy Sidell had lived for 27 years
01:00:46
with many in his hometown believing he was a killer. I said, "Listen, Andy, if you give us your DNA and it doesn't
01:00:55
match, then you're eliminated. You're cleared." So, he voluntarily gave his DNA and he was eliminated.
01:01:06
But whoever ended Michelle's life left a different but lasting mark on Andy. Michelle's parents both died before that
01:01:15
DNA test exonerated him. They likely went to their graves believing Andy was their daughter's killer. I feel very bad
01:01:23
about that. Andy was a victim himself because many, many fingers were pointing at Andy.
01:01:31
Larrison moved on. classmates, friends, family searching for a match with that male DNA. So, you do a 100 different
01:01:39
people. What comes back? Everybody's eliminated. No matches. It had been 10 frustrating years for detective Doug
01:01:47
Larrison. I was kind of burned out. So, I went to my supervisors and I said, "Hey, I think you need to get somebody
01:01:53
to replace me on this case." One of these had the FBI profile in it. And that's when Matt came in. Matt Deninger,
01:02:00
Harvey's son. that second generation searching for Michelle's killer. In 2015, he took over as lead detective.
01:02:09
They would tell you our computer records only go back to 1990. Facts hadn't changed, but DNA technology had once
01:02:17
again advanced further, offering tanalyzing possibilities. We've got this DNA profile. How can we get more
01:02:24
information from it? Can we find out eye color, hair color, race? Deninger reached across the country to Virginia's
01:02:31
Parabon Nano Labs and they said, "Yeah, we know what you're trying to do and guess what? We can make a picture of a
01:02:39
potential suspect from that DNA sample." Did you think that that could be possible?
01:02:44
No. No. I had no good concept that that was possible. Um, it sounded a little bit sci-fi, but I was ready to try. We
01:02:53
had to do something. The portrait was striking. Parabon called the technique snapshot. It put a
01:03:01
face on a phantom. What we learned from that is our suspect was probably a white
01:03:06
male, blonde hair, blue eyes. This first image, let's show you here. And so we had a press conference. Investigators
01:03:13
had narrowed down the suspect's genetics, but they did not know his age or have a clue as to how he wore his
01:03:20
hair. So different sketches were created, each with a different look. [Music] A town hungry for justice searched its
01:03:37
memory for a match. Do you get a lot of tip calls? We got hundreds. Any of them pan out? No. It's every blondhaired,
01:03:46
blue-eyed guy that ever walked the face of the earth and step foot in Iowa. Are you just confused? I was really confused
01:03:52
and I did not know where to go next. That answer came from an infamous but totally unrelated case. California's
01:04:03
so-called Golden State Killer. Joseph D'Angelo was arrested in 2018. Charged with a decadesl long spree of serial
01:04:11
murder and rape. That was big news. That was big national news. Then I read the article and it talked about genetic
01:04:18
genealogy. And you went bingo. I went bingo. Genetic genealogy. the charting of DNA
01:04:25
from one family member to another, a DNA family tree. Parabon was ready to test that same DNA one more time. They said,
01:04:35
"We'll use the sample you already gave us for the uh snapshot images." I said, "Let's do it."
01:04:41
Parabon searched a public national database called Jed Match of people who submitted their own DNA voluntarily to
01:04:49
trace their own personal family tree. And in July of 2018, we got a report back from him. They said, "Good news. We
01:04:58
found a relative of your killer." Brandy Jennings is our gal in Vancouver, Washington. She's the second cousin,
01:05:06
right? Once removed. Exactly. Brandy Jennings, an office manager and single mom, was a distant relative to the male
01:05:13
whose DNA was found on Michelle's bloody dress and in her car. So, you start with
01:05:19
her. We start with her. Deninger spent months building Bry's family tree all the way back to her great great
01:05:27
grandparents. We used genealological records, birth records, marriage records, gravestone records, anything we
01:05:34
could find to fill in a bunch of these unknowns. As more blood relatives of Brandy Jennings provided their DNA, a
01:05:41
genetic puzzle filled in and the detective reached out to Parabon once again and they recalibrated things and
01:05:48
said, "Listen, we think your best odds are these three brothers who live in Iowa.
01:05:55
Three brothers, all from Iowa, all likely sharing some DNA with the blood found in Michelle Martino's car. A
01:06:04
38-year trail was heading straight back home. 20 minutes away. I was pretty excited about this
01:06:11
[Music] one. By October of 2018, Detective Matt Deninger's painstaking ancestry searches
01:06:33
had narrowed the suspects down to three brothers in Iowa, and all of them were still alive. We immediately started
01:06:41
doing research on these three brothers. Donald Burns, Kenneth Burns, and Jerry Burns. Deninger and his team set up a
01:06:50
plan. They would collect DNA samples from the brothers to see if any were a match.
01:06:56
and they would do it without them knowing. You think one of them is a suspect, you can't tell any of the
01:07:01
three. Not only can I not tell any of the three, but I was careful who I told in general. Iowa is not the biggest
01:07:08
state in the union, and you never know who knows who. They followed one brother to lunch and grabbed his straw. For the
01:07:15
second, a toothbrush was collected from his garbage. And then the third brother,
01:07:20
Jerry, we drove up to Manchester. We had already established kind of a pattern or
01:07:26
or some locations to try to find him. After a couple of hours, he spotted Jerry Burns at this pizza restaurant.
01:07:33
And he drank at least two sodas out of a glass with a straw. All three brothers samples were sent to the lab. Don and
01:07:42
Kenneth were not a match, but the results showed Jerry Burns's DNA was an exact match. For Deninger, the message was
01:07:53
clear. I I was definitely speechless. I'm almost speechless today thinking about it. It turns out that Parabon
01:08:00
sketch of the suspect was very similar to a young Jerry Burns. But Burns wasn't an obvious suspect. We are
01:08:09
not finding any connection at all. No connection to Michelle. No connection to that car.
01:08:16
Even more baffling, Jerry Burns's resume was the opposite of a cold-blooded killer. He had no criminal record and
01:08:24
was even a respected businessman with a wife and three kids. Deninger picked a particular day
01:08:31
to interview Burns at his business. Hello. December 19th, 2018. Hey, how are you today, Jerry? My name's Matt. The
01:08:40
Cedar Rapids Police Department. exactly 39 years to the day after Michelle was murdered. I wanted to rattle him. I
01:08:49
wanted to bring that up during the interview and see if that would do anything to him. Copy of the Using a
01:08:56
hidden camera inside a coffee mug. Deninger tried to get a confession. The reality is we have your DNA at the crime
01:09:02
scene and so we know you were there that night this happened. How would we get your DNA at the crime scene there,
01:09:08
Jerry? I don't know. But Jerry acknowledged he had been to the mall with his family in the past. Did you go
01:09:14
to Westdale Mall? Oh yeah, we've gone to Westdale Mall. Although Jerry couldn't remember when he was at the mall,
01:09:21
Danglinger continued to press him. Terry, what happened that night? I don't know. Despite Burns's denials, the DNA
01:09:29
was enough to arrest him for the murder of Michelle Martino. Anything you say can will be used
01:09:36
against you in a court of law. On the ride back to Cedar Rapids, a camera was rolling again. This time in the police
01:09:43
car and Deninger believes Jerry offered something revealing. He said a few things about blocking stuff out,
01:09:52
traumatic events. I think it's possible it's happened. I'm sure something like that would be
01:09:58
possible to block things out your memories. You're a homicide detective. Your gut tells you something. What does
01:10:04
your gut say? My gut told me the second he refused to deny it or give me a plausible explanation that we had the
01:10:11
right guy. For Michelle's sister Janelle, news of the DNA match and the arrest signaled
01:10:18
hope. And a day she and her husband John thought would never come. We were just hooping and hollering and we were just
01:10:27
talking and talking. We were just so excited. But for the Burns family, it all came as
01:10:34
a complete shock. Jerry's daughter Jennifer and his brother Dawn could not believe the man they know and love could
01:10:42
ever be capable of such a gruesome act. We did not believe it. This could not be
01:10:47
our dad. He couldn't have done it. There was just no way. I mean, he was he was always there for his family.
01:10:54
Circumstances just made it highly improbable from our perspective. First of all, there was no connection between
01:10:59
Jerry and Michelle Martino. None. Leon Spees is Jerry Burn's attorney. He believes his client's demeanor during
01:11:07
the police interview wasn't out of the ordinary. I challenge anybody to to predict how any person is going to
01:11:14
react, let alone react being caught out of the blue with an investigator trying to attribute them to a a horrible,
01:11:22
horrible crime. He did not commit this murder. In February of 2020, Michelle Martino's
01:11:29
accused killer went on trial more than four decades after her murder. Due to the buzz surrounding the case in Cedar
01:11:37
Rapids, the judge granted a venue change to Davenport, Iowa, an hour away. The evidence will show that Michelle Martino
01:11:46
was murdered that night by the defendant, Jerry Burns. Prosecutor Nick Maybanks felt the weight
01:11:54
of his hometown on his shoulders. A lot of eyes on this case. There are generations that grew up with this story
01:12:01
and the generation who lived through the horror and suspicion. Always seemed to be a happy Several of Michelle's friends
01:12:08
were called to testify, including Michelle's ex-boyfriend and once prime suspect Andy Sidell, who says he and
01:12:16
Michelle were on good terms the last time they saw each other. There was no reason for us to to part ways in a bad
01:12:23
way. We just kind of grew apart as we evolved growing into adulthood. Do you swear or Mike Hayyrick was also called
01:12:31
and had to relive Michelle's murder all over again. This trial was hard on me for a lot of us. Brought it all back
01:12:39
into focus in a way that it hadn't been in focus since those early, early days. This was a random act of violence
01:12:46
committed by a stranger. From the start, the prosecution faced a number of hurdles. The case and the evidence were
01:12:53
decades old. Tried to take 40 years of investigation and condense it into a story. And a lot of things about this
01:13:03
suspect didn't make sense. What's that like for you? You have a suspect who has no criminal background that we're aware
01:13:11
of. Mhm. And this heinous crime that looks extremely personal, right? Yeah. You have no story. I don't. Yeah. And
01:13:20
after he was interviewed, we didn't have much of a story either. A story the Burns family believes was problematic
01:13:26
from the start. They wanted an explanation of how his DNA got there. Well, how is he supposed to know from 40
01:13:34
years ago? You know, I can't even remember what I did last week every day. So, would you say it's impossible that
01:13:39
Jerry murdered Michelle? I'd say it is. There's absolutely no way it could have happened. I don't think there's any way
01:13:46
that my dad could have done this. The prosecution's case hinged on that one critical piece of evidence. Jerry Burns
01:13:55
DNA. We got the science. We got the guy. There's a one in 100 billion chance that
01:14:00
it could be somebody else's. There's only 8 billion people or so in the world. But Lean Spees argues the DNA
01:14:07
evidence isn't foolproof. There are lots of misconceptions about DNA. It's not the silver bullet that law enforcement
01:14:13
often portrays it to be. As the state's case wound down, prosecutor Nick Maybanks had one last
01:14:31
card to play. He called a new witness, Michael Allison, a drug offender who had become friendly with Jerry Burns in
01:14:39
jail. Yes, I do. I asked him directly if I asked him, Jerry, did you do do the crime? And he said, I can't talk about
01:14:47
this. But Burns did say something curious. He feels like uh no matter what happens in
01:14:56
this case that he he wins because he had had the opportunity to be out there with
01:15:00
his family all these years. Allison said Jerry later made another comment while they were playing cards
01:15:07
that disturbed him so much he volunteered to testify. He had told me if I keep beating him in
01:15:14
peuckle he was going to have to take me to the mall. It disgusted me. In his defense case, Leon Spees calls
01:15:22
only one witness, Dr. Michael Spence, a molecular biologist. He says while there
01:15:28
is no doubt the DNA in Michelle's car belonged to Jerry Burns, how it got there was another matter.
01:15:36
Is it Dr. Spence a plausible explanation that the DNA of Jerry Burns could have come about
01:15:44
by a transfer? Yes, that's a distinct possibility. Every time you come into contact with something, you're shedding
01:15:52
DNA. You're leaving a biological trail of yourself. She was in a shopping mall before she was killed. A shopping mall
01:15:59
that the Burns family had used. She sat down with a friend at a food court, a food court that Jerry Burns and his
01:16:05
family may have sat at. But how did Jerry's DNA end up on the Buick's gear shift? Jerry's brother, Don Burns,
01:16:13
believes there could be an innocent explanation. He worked in a dealership that sold Buick cars. So there is a
01:16:22
possibility that if if records show that that car went through that dealership, his DNA could be in that car. But
01:16:30
Detective Matt Deninger isn't buying it. My question for them would be, did the dress go to the dealership, too? This is
01:16:39
this fantasy world. Common sense says that that's not the case. Impossible. Impossible.
01:16:47
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, good morning. In his final arguments, prosecutor Maybanks tells the jury there
01:16:54
was only one way Jerry Burns's DNA got into that car. There was no chance of outside
01:17:03
contamination on this dress. We know how it happened and we know who did it. In his closing
01:17:11
argument, SPE attacks the integrity of the investigation. you can consider not only the evidence but also the lack or
01:17:18
the failure of evidence produced by the prosecution. And he tells jurors to consider how unlikely it is that a man
01:17:25
like Jerry could commit a crime like this. The state scenario here is that Jerry
01:17:32
Burns a married man with two young children at home leaves drives to Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the night, leaving his
01:17:42
wife and children behind armed with a knife, armed with rubber gloves, goes to a Westale Mall on
01:17:50
the chance that he's going to encounter Michelle Marteno, designs to kill her, and then
01:17:57
leaves and drives back home splattered with blood, presumably with a knife wound in his hand. That's the scenario
01:18:06
the government wants you to believe. The jury begins deliberations on a Monday afternoon. Remember, you are the judges
01:18:14
of the facts. Nerves are on edge. I was not thinking slam dunk. All it takes is one juror to have a hung jury. But just
01:18:24
3 hours later, I said, "We have a verdict." So, we rush into the courtroom, sit down, and we wait.
01:18:33
[Music] Thank you. We, the jury, find the defendant, Jerry Lynn Burns, guilty of the charge
01:18:43
of murder in the first degree. Guilty. The courtroom was silent. We almost couldn't breathe. It
01:18:55
was just amazing. It was fabulous. We were aware of how quiet it was on Jerry's side and that there was
01:19:10
no reaction. Unfair. I'd say I was stunned. The verdict came back so fast. I don't
01:19:17
know if the jury really took time to look at the facts. What do you feel in that moment? Extreme relief. The weight
01:19:26
of the world was off my shoulders now. Harvey Deninger, the investigator who was there at the beginning of the case
01:19:34
40 years earlier, saw his son help end it. I'm proud as heck of him. I really am proud to to get an answer,
01:19:44
you know, while he can he can still appreciate it. He said today how proud he is of
01:19:50
you. Well, All right, we're going to take a break. Finally, there was an answer to the
01:19:59
question that had haunted Cedar Rapids for so long. But there is a lingering question. Was Michelle Martino Jerry's
01:20:08
only victim? I just seen something about Jodie Hus and Troop recently. In his interview with Deninger, Burns
01:20:15
randomly mentioned the name of Jodie Husen Troop. You are watching News Channel 3 Daybreak. She was a blonde
01:20:21
news anchor kidnapped near her car in a parking lot in 1995 and never found. She
01:20:28
worked in Mason City, Iowa, 2 hours from where Burns lived, though there is no evidence he knew her. Do you suspect
01:20:35
that Jerry Burns was involved in other crimes? I don't know the answer to that. My gut
01:20:42
tells me there's probably something else out there. Mason City police will not disclose
01:20:48
whether they are investigating Burns in the Who's Andrew disappearance and his DNA is not connected to any other cases.
01:20:56
But in Michelle Martino's case, she played a unique role in revealing her killer. She fought so hard that she
01:21:04
caused the murderer to cut himself. He left his DNA and so Michelle helped solve her own murder.
01:21:13
This human right here Four decades after Michelle's death, her friends, family, and generations of
01:21:21
investigators gathered to celebrate her memory. This case wasn't isn't just about her
01:21:26
death, it's about her life. Nick Maybanks worded it the best. I mean, he said it's not about how she died, it's
01:21:34
about how she lived. You can't help but wonder where life would have led her. Her name will be forever etched in local
01:21:44
history as part of Cedar Rapids most haunting crime. You've been a prosecutor for 20
01:21:50
years. Is this the biggest case you've ever had? Yeah. Every case you want justice, but a case like this touched so
01:21:56
many people over so many years. There'll never be another one like it. [Music] [Music]
01:22:55
every year marks another year, you know, that there's no closure. I still have insomnia 30 years
01:23:04
after the fact. I wish I'd solved the crime for the families. We tried. I was a cop for 32 years at Austin PD.
01:23:38
I'll always be associated with that case. There's no getting away from that. I just hope one of these days we can put
01:23:46
this thing to bed. [Applause] Jumpy. Yeah. Uh, you hear about the call 2900 West Anderson? Yeah, I'm headed
01:23:56
over there. The call occurred at 11:27 p.m. Homicide 4. Homicide 4. Did you get my in there?
01:24:09
I was the lead investigator on the I can't believe it's yoga shop murder case. On December 6th,
01:24:18
1991, there was a robbery, fire, and murder committed. It's all right. I'll make the call
01:24:25
myself. The victims were Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Heirs. I can still see them. I can still
01:24:41
see the inside of that place. That stuff's indelibly burned in my mind. There has never been in Austin a more
01:24:51
gristly, ugly crime. There's four girls in there and they're all beautiful girls
01:24:57
and they're very young. They're cleaning up. They lock up the yogurt shop and then we believe it to be two individuals
01:25:04
came in. They force them to the back room at gunpoint. I lost my sister Eliza Thomas in the
01:25:14
yogurt shop murders. I was 13. Yeah, I was 13 when my sister [Music] died. The whole city was in
01:25:26
shock. Everywhere we drove, there were these billboards with a picture of my sister on it. And so it's like you just
01:25:34
hold on to anything you can to get through these moments that are so impossible.
01:25:40
We went where the case took us. Open the door. Police. We're either going to charge some people and get them
01:25:47
in jail or clear them from this case. I don't know how many murders I've tried. It's unlike anything I've ever
01:25:56
done before. It's nothing but one unexpected twist after another. Do you believe that there is right now
01:26:04
some evidence that could lead to the killers? Yes. Yes, I know who did this. I just don't know his name. Is this the
01:26:14
end of the beginning or the beginning of the end? [Music] [Music] So, what is all of this here? These are
01:27:07
my notes. It's been more than 30 years since John Jones began the painstaking search for the killers of four teenage
01:27:20
girls in an Austin yogurt shop. Oh, that's the big book. This one u is really from day one. He has long since
01:27:28
retired from the Austin Police Department and moved out of Texas, but copies of some of the case files moved
01:27:35
with him. Hypnosis, polygraph, and confessions. You know, I noticed this sitting here.
01:27:43
Yep. We will not forget. You haven't? Nope. Can't. The images of December 6th, 1991 remain all
01:27:53
too vivid. I can definitely still see it. What do y'all got out there? I'm in route 35.
01:28:04
It started with that call from dispatch. Okay, I'm copying the fire part. You cut
01:28:11
out on the first part of that to go to a scene of a fire that would turn into something far worse. Apparently a lovely
01:28:20
homicide is three fatalities. Last half. [Music] And then about halfway out there, they
01:28:34
called me again on the radio and said, "We found a fourth body." A local TV news crew happened to be
01:28:40
filming Jones on a ride along that night. What place of business is this? This is the uh I can't believe it's
01:28:50
yogurt. Okay. Fire department had just knocked down the fire. I mean, there was still a lot of water in there, a lot of
01:28:59
smoke still. It was all muted grays and blacks. There was no color in there with
01:29:07
the exception of the girls. The girls were quickly identified. Two had been working at the shop, closing up
01:29:16
that night. Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison were both 17 years old. Jennifer's 15-year-old sister Sarah and
01:29:25
their friend, 13-year-old Amy Heirs, had met them there to head home. The four girls have been gagged,
01:29:35
tied up with their own clothing, and shot in the head. Investigators would learn that at least one of the victims
01:29:42
had been sexually assaulted. The yogurt shop had also been set on fire, destroying potential evidence. There was
01:29:50
smoke and soot on every surface, so kind of made fingerprinting kind of difficult. This was a crime like none
01:29:58
Austin had seen before. Jones knew he needed help and from the scene contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
01:30:07
Firearms, the FBI, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Soon as we knew what type of guns we were looking
01:30:15
for, that information went out nationwide. Gunshot wounds showed two different types of guns were used, leading
01:30:24
investigators to believe that there were at least two pillars on the loose. What
01:30:30
were the two guns? 380 and a 22. And we recovered all of the rounds. The weapons
01:30:36
though were not found and a task force worked to come up with potential suspects. They were from all spectrums.
01:30:43
I mean, we looked at everybody from family members to drifters. And while police tracked down leads, the
01:30:53
families and the city of Austin grieved. The Harbison family lost their only children. Daughters Jennifer, a
01:31:02
hardworking high school senior, and Sarah, who was enjoying sports and clubs as a high school freshman. Their mother,
01:31:10
Barbara, spoke with us in 1992. My life was sort of focused around them for from here until eternity. Someone
01:31:18
took eternity away from me. I lost my daughter. I lost my first dance. Bobs is the father of the youngest victim, Amy.
01:31:28
A country girl with a love for animals. I want to see her graduate. I want to see her become a
01:31:37
veterinarian. She was a daddy's girl. I remember the shock. Sonora Thomas, 13 years old when her
01:31:47
only sibling, Eliza, was murdered, had a hard time dealing with the loss of the sister she looked up to. I remember
01:31:56
fantasizing for days that my sister had somehow escaped and run away and that she was going to come back. And so
01:32:04
that's what I was kind of holding on to. Her parents struggled as well. My family
01:32:10
never talked about my sister after she died. Never? No. It's too It's too painful.
01:32:22
Sonora did as best she could picking up some pieces of her sister's life. Eliza,
01:32:28
an animal lover, had a pig she planned to enter in a livestock show. Just a few months after the murders, Sonora took
01:32:36
over those duties. Third place, Sonora Thomas. While Sonora may have seemed to be coping, the reality, she says, was
01:32:45
far different. You had to grow up quickly. Very quickly, I would say I fell apart under that pressure. We knew
01:32:55
they were hurting because, you know, we were hurting, too. Here you go. Open your little mouth. Jones, a parent
01:33:01
himself, felt the family's grief. He promised to do all he could to help them. We told them what we could, and I
01:33:09
assured him that we would keep them a prize as to everything that was happening. And and we did. Jones also
01:33:15
made a pledge to the families involving the shirt he wore on the night of the murders. I kind of made a promise to
01:33:22
them the next time they saw me with that green and white shirt on that that was a
01:33:27
signal to them that, you know, we knew who did it. And Jones seemed assured they would find the killers. And we
01:33:34
stayed in constant contact with the behavioral science unit at the FBI and Quantico. They said that I should, as
01:33:43
the face of the investigation, project an air of confidence that would cause the the bad guy to shiver in his boots.
01:33:50
So, look in the camera and be confident. And when we followed him working the case in
01:33:56
1992, he did just that. You know, let me just say this. Whoever you are out there, you're going to be mine one of
01:34:03
these days. Where you at? Okay. I'm right here. But trying to figure that out was daunting.
01:34:10
342 people that have been uh listed as suspect, but we're looking at pages and pages of suspects here. One of those
01:34:18
early suspects was a teenager named Maurice Pierce. He was arrested 8 days after the murders at a mall near the
01:34:26
yogurt shop carrying a 22 caliber gun, the type used in the murders. The 22s were unmatchable.
01:34:36
So, you can't say it wasn't his gun? No. But there was no way to prove that it was his
01:34:44
gun. Um, he gave a statement. A matter of fact, I took his statement and he implicated three other
01:34:52
boys. Joan says Maurice Pierce claimed that he was driving a getaway car and that three acquaintances, Forest
01:34:59
Wellorn, Michael Scott, and Robert Springsteen, were involved in the murders. But Pierce's story began to
01:35:07
fall apart. It started to crater when we wired him up to go talk to Forest and we were listening in on the
01:35:18
wire and it it was pretty obvious Forest didn't know what Maurice was talking about. And when Scott and Springsteen
01:35:28
were brought in for questioning, they too denied any involvement. It was decided there was just not enough
01:35:35
evidence to charge them. I stop right here. Right here. And the search for other suspects continued. Get down on
01:35:43
the ground. Get down. Get down on the ground. [Music] Information flow. Anyway, 2 months after the yogurt shop murders,
01:36:04
with no viable suspects, police were chasing leads, no matter where it took them. They're into vampires, uh, the
01:36:12
occult, graveyard rights. The task force became aware of a counterculture type group of local
01:36:20
residents known to be into the supernatural. They go out and dance and take pictures on tombstones.
01:36:28
and investigators began to hear that this group might be connected to something far more serious. The the tips
01:36:36
were that they were talking about um the murders. Talking about the yogurt shop murders, the yogurt shop murders. Yes.
01:36:44
There was one woman in particular whose name kept coming up in connection with these tips. She got stopped at Oakwood
01:36:52
Cemetery. The task force planned a raid on her home. Look at my computer. Hoping
01:36:57
to see if any evidence might be found there. Stop right here. Right here. Unlock the door.
01:37:09
Police. Police off. Get down on the police. Get on the ground. Police. It was creepy in there. All that stuff back
01:37:20
there. But as it turns out, a lot of that stuff was rat bones and theatrical parts, but it was a good lead. So we
01:37:29
finally figured out that they're just living a make believe life. This Sergeant Hook could be out the task
01:37:36
force. The raid may have been a bus. But it wasn't long before the task force had
01:37:41
its eyes on another person of interest. This sketch shows a man that multiple eyewitnesses told police they saw
01:37:49
sitting in a car outside the yogurt shop on the night of the murders and it was somebody we really wanted to talk to.
01:37:57
So, we put it out there and the response they got came from an unexpected source.
01:38:03
A couple other investigators from the sex crimes unit came up and go, "We have a sketch that looks just like that."
01:38:12
Three weeks before the yogurt shop murders, a young woman in Austin had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted.
01:38:19
Police had released this sketch of three men wanted in connection with that crime. One of those suspects bore a
01:38:27
striking resemblance to that man witnesses reported sitting in a car outside the yogurt shop.
01:38:35
You know, I just kind of went when I saw the the composite. A tip came in that the men wanted in the
01:38:44
kidnapping and sexual assault case had fled to Mexico. Two were caught and arrested, one who resembled the person
01:38:52
of interest in the yogurt shop sketch. The development made national news. When they got caught in Mexico, we went down
01:39:02
there to interview him. Jones's team questioned the men and so too did the Mexican authorities.
01:39:10
But the Mexican government announced to the whole world that they confessed and they were going to try him for the
01:39:15
murders down there. They confessed to the yogurt shop. Yes, they did. But Jones learned those confessions had
01:39:21
details that didn't match the crime scene. Even the caliber of guns they claimed to use was wrong. There was too
01:39:30
many inconsistencies in the confession. So Jones's team reintered the man. And he says this time they recanted just
01:39:40
about everything. It made Jones and other investigators wonder if those confessions were coerced by the Mexican
01:39:48
authorities. The once promising lead fell apart. It was depressing. Over the following years, there would be
01:40:00
other confessions, ones that were willingly given. You know, we've faced six confessions. Six people who
01:40:08
confessed. Yeah. Written. That confessed to this crime. Yes, they did. And they didn't do it. Nope.
01:40:17
[Music] In 1994, after nearly three years of leading the investigation, John Jones
01:40:24
was moved out of the homicide division. He says it was a mutual decision. Austin
01:40:30
police wanted fresh eyes working the case, and Jones felt it was time to move on. Other detectives took over, and as
01:40:39
time passed, the victim's families were left wondering why no one had been arrested. Amy's mother, Pam, spoke to us
01:40:47
in 1996. They're probably out there leading the life as normal as they've ever had, and ours is never going to be the
01:40:56
same. That same year, Eliza Thomas's mom moved away from Austin, and the painful
01:41:04
reminders. Running into people who were constantly asking how the case was going was very
01:41:11
hard on me and especially my daughter Sonora. Sonora's life had taken a downward
01:41:18
spiral. In my high school years, things really deteriorated. Drugs, using alcohol, being hospitalized, going to a
01:41:27
boarding school for, you know, disturbed teenagers, things like that. The case seemed stalled until October
01:41:35
1999. Some breaking news. Austin police have arrested four men in connection with the
01:41:41
yogurt shop murders of 1991. There were finally arrests. But would it answer the question on the billboard
01:41:49
that had been haunting Austin for nearly a decade? [Music] After nearly eight years off tonight are
01:42:10
getting some answers in the case of the yogurt shop murder. I want to start off by thanking y'all for joining us here
01:42:16
today. For almost eight years, we've all waited to hear the words that our police
01:42:22
department is close to a point of solving a crime that has haunted our very souls. Today, we finally get to
01:42:31
hear those words. When four men were arrested in the fall of 1999 for the yogurt shop murders,
01:42:39
relief was felt citywide. Sarah, Jennifer, Amy, Eliza, we did not forget. The girls families struggled to
01:42:52
take it all in. There had been so many false leads for such a long time. It was hard
01:43:01
to know how to think about it and how to feel about it. But there were finally names and faces to blame. Maurice
01:43:10
Pierce, Forest Welbborne, Michael Scott, and Robert Springsteen. To the task force, they were familiar names and
01:43:19
faces. They were the same young men that John Jones and his investigators questioned just 8 days after the
01:43:27
murders. Did you do this? I have no comment. And ultimately released for lack of evidence. I was confident and
01:43:36
remain confident to this day that we got as far with him as we could then, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't
01:43:44
something developed later that would cause them to actually go out and arrest him. So, I was going, "Yes, good job." I
01:43:51
was ready to dig out the hideous green and white shirt. But before that shirt could come out of
01:43:59
the closet, the one he promised the girl's families he would wear when the case was solved, Jones wanted to know
01:44:05
more about what led to the arrest. There was no physical evidence. Nothing. Joe James Sawyer was appointed as Robert
01:44:15
Springsteen's attorney. What made them go back and charge these guys? Because the new officers when they when they
01:44:23
reopened the cold case convinced themselves that we let them slip through our fingers. We had to have had the
01:44:32
murderers in the beginning. In part they decided that because they had nothing else.
01:44:40
There was no new physical evidence suddenly tying any of the four men to the crime. But what police did have were
01:44:47
two newly obtained confessions. One from Michael Scott and another from Sawyer's
01:44:53
own client, Robert Springsteen. Michael Scott's confession came first. He was questioned over 4
01:45:02
days. Come on, Michael. You're doing good. Tell us. Let's do this today. Let's do it. Remember seeing girl? I
01:45:09
remember one girl screaming, terrified. Scott told investigators that he and the
01:45:13
others only intended a simple robbery. He said they cased the yogurt shop earlier that day and then after dark. He
01:45:21
said they came back armed with two guns. I hear the gun go off. I only pulled the trigger once. I
01:45:31
hear another gun go off. Investigators claimed that Springsteen later corroborated much of what Scott said.
01:45:39
How you doing? Is that correct? But after intense questioning, he went further. You know
01:45:48
how didn't say it. Springsteen told them he shot one girl and raped her. He was so tired of this.
01:45:59
He'd already been questioned. He'd already been uh through that mill. He thought, "You know what? I'll tell you
01:46:04
any damn thing you want." Sawyer maintains his client is innocent and says the confession was coerced. In
01:46:12
2009, Robert Springsteen explained to 48 Hours why he would admit to doing something so horrible, something he says
01:46:21
he didn't do. I was bered and bered and bered by the police officers until they obtained what it was they wanted to
01:46:29
hear. They were not going to allow me to leave. And I I basically they they broke
01:46:34
me down. Let me just ask you, did you have anything to do No. with the murders at the yogurt shop? No. Never. Even
01:46:41
though Joe James Sawyer didn't have Michael Scott as his client, he says he has serious concerns about his
01:46:48
confession, too. Is that the gun you shot somebody with, Mike? I don't. Is that the gun you walked up
01:46:55
behind somebody with and shot in the head? I frankly couldn't believe it. They terrorized him and he was afraid to
01:47:04
say no. Forest Wellelbborne denied having anything to do with the murders, but police were convinced he was the
01:47:11
lookout that night and Michael Scott placed him at the scene. Hi, I'm Aaron with CBS. I spoke to
01:47:21
Wellbourne in 1999 in jail shortly after his arrest. Were you there that night? No.
01:47:29
Were you there as a lookout? No. I'm answer it. You had nothing to do with this. Nothing at all. Well had been
01:47:40
questioned multiple times by investigators over the years, and he never wavered. He, like the others,
01:47:46
first came on police radar when in 1991, just days after the murders, Maurice Pierce had been caught with that 22
01:47:55
caliber gun at the mall near the yogurt shop. PICE told the detectives back then
01:48:01
that he had given the handgun to Wellbborne and that it had been used in the yogurt shop murders. Why would he
01:48:08
say that? I don't know. Well has always maintained his innocence despite pressure from the police. They'll get
01:48:17
right in my face and, you know, tell me everything I said was a lie. Remember, false confessions
01:48:25
in this case were nothing new. Jones said that six written false confessions were obtained when he was in
01:48:33
charge. So when he learned that the two confessions were all the new investigators seem to have, it gave him
01:48:41
pause. I go, "Well, maybe I shouldn't get that shirt out just yet." It wasn't long
01:48:48
before the case against the man began crumbling. Charges against Forest Wellorn were dismissed after two grand
01:48:55
juries failed to indict him. And later on, charges were dropped against Maurice Pierce for lack of
01:49:02
evidence. Everything fell apart except the cases against Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen. And with Scott and
01:49:10
Springsteen's confessions, the victim's families felt prosecutors had a strong case. These young men have been
01:49:18
implicated and they have confessed and they can withdraw it. But the truth is they actually were there and they
01:49:23
actually did the [Music] murders. In 2001, nearly 10 years after the murders of Eliza Thomas, Amy Ays,
01:49:46
and Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, the yogurt shop murder trials began. Both defendants, Robert Springsteen and
01:49:54
Michael Scott, faced the death penalty. The only thing that ever tied Robert or Mike Scott to that crime scene were
01:50:02
their confessions. Confessions that both defendants said were coerced. The two were tried
01:50:10
separately. Springsteen's trial was first. Neither of the men would testify against one another. So instead,
01:50:18
prosecutors used their confessions against one another, reading parts of the confessions to the juries. Spring
01:50:25
seats lawyer, Joe James Sawyer, was frustrated that he couldn't cross-examine Scott. I thought the trial
01:50:32
was massively unfair to my client and that it was being done systematically and with deliberation. The trial lasted
01:50:40
three weeks. The jury deliberated for 13 hours. Defendant, please rise. And then
01:50:48
reached a verdict. We the jury find the defendant, Robert Springsteen IV, guilty
01:50:53
of the offense of capital murder. Guilty. Springsteen was condemned to death row. In 2002, Michael Scott went on
01:51:03
trial. He was convicted as well. He was sentenced to life in prison. But the case didn't end there. 15 years after
01:51:12
the murders came a shocking turn of events. In a 54 decision, the court behind me said that Michael Scott's
01:51:19
constitutional rights were violated during his trial and therefore should get a new one. Both Scott and
01:51:26
Springsteen's convictions were overturned on constitutional grounds. The Sixth Amendment gives defendants the
01:51:33
right to confront accusers. And remember, in Scott and Springsteen's trials, their confessions were used
01:51:40
against one another, but they weren't allowed to question each other in court. And the relief, the relief was
01:51:50
incredible. But that relief for the defendants came as a devastating blow to the victim's
01:51:57
families. We later spoke to Eliza Thomas's mother, Maria, about that moment. Every time I hear those words
01:52:07
that their rights were violated, just feel like I'm going to go insane. Their rights were
01:52:14
violated. Our girls were murdered. It ruins your sense of fairness. It ruins your sense
01:52:22
of that we live in a just world. Even though their convictions were overturned, Scott and Springsteen were
01:52:31
not released. A new district attorney, Rosemary Lmberg, was determined to retry them. In an effort to find more
01:52:40
evidence, her office had ordered DNA tests on vaginal swabs taken from the victims at the time of the murders.
01:52:49
It's called YSTR testing and was fairly new in 2009 when we spoke with DA Lmberg. This technology searches for
01:52:59
male DNA only. A partial male DNA profile was obtained from one of the victims believed to have been sexually
01:53:09
assaulted and no one expected what it would reveal. Does that DNA match any of the four young men who were originally
01:53:19
accused and two of them who have been convicted? It does not. The DNA did not match any of the
01:53:27
original four suspects, including Scott and Springsteen. And that's significant because Springsteen in that confession
01:53:35
he said was coerced, told investigators he raped one of the girls. CC Moore is a DNA expert and genetic
01:53:46
genealogologist whom we asked about the case and the role of YSTR DNA in criminal
01:53:53
cases. It is a tool that can eliminate almost everyone. It should eliminate everybody but the suspect. If their YSDR
01:54:06
does not match, they did not contribute that because where that DNA was found. Yes. In this case, it's very important.
01:54:15
The district attorney was focused on finding the source of that DNA. She wondered if Springsteen and Scott had
01:54:22
another partner. I remain really confident that both Springsteen and Scott were responsible for killing those
01:54:30
poor girls. But in 2009, with no matches on that DNA, Lmberg dropped charges against Springsteen and Scott. After
01:54:39
nearly 10 years behind bars, they were released but not exonerated, leaving open the possibility they could be
01:54:48
retrieded at a later time. This was a difficult decision and one I'd rather not have to make. The question remained
01:54:57
though, whose DNA was it? I know who it is. They're killers. You're convinced that that that is a certain truth. Amber
01:55:06
Fairley was part of both Scott and Springsteen's defense teams. She came up with a theory that the mystery DNA might
01:55:14
belong instead to two never identified men who witnesses reported seen sitting in the yogurt shop just before it
01:55:25
closed. Those two men were described wearing fatigued colored jackets. They were very slouched over whispering like
01:55:35
they were it was a very close conversation in a booth. Officials tried to track down
01:55:40
those two men as well as the source of the DNA. And then in 2017, an Austin police investigator
01:55:49
searched a public online DNA database to see if he could get a hit. And unbelievably, he did. I thought, my god,
01:56:00
we actually have a chance, a shot to solve this crime after so many [Music] years. I really thought this was it. I
01:56:23
really thought we had a chance to solve it. US Congressman Michael McCall, like so
01:56:29
many others from Austin, hoped that the recently uncovered DNA in the yogurt shop murder case, might finally bring
01:56:36
answers to the victim's families. We'll never forget that tragic day. It's stained in my memory.
01:56:45
25 years after the murders, the Austin Police Department went searching for a match to the YSDR DNA that had been
01:56:53
found on the yogurt shop victim believed to have been sexually assaulted. And in
01:57:00
2017, they got a break. On a public DNA database used for population studies, investigators thought they had found a
01:57:10
match. I've seen DNA prove homicide cases. The DNA evidence is really the key here.
01:57:19
But that sample from the crime scene was not a complete DNA profile. It was just
01:57:26
YSTR, the male portion of DNA. And it was not a very detailed sample having just 16 markers. 16 STRs is not a very
01:57:38
powerful match. There could be millions of people with that same profile. So in genetic genealogy, we usually use 67 or
01:57:47
111 markers or maybe even more. But isn't it a place to start? It is. It's not absolute, but if there's nothing
01:57:55
else to work with, it is certainly something to look into. Still, it seemed to be the most promising lead in years.
01:58:03
But there was a problem. The seemingly matching sample on the public database had been submitted anonymously by the
01:58:10
FBI. That meant it came from a federally convicted offender, arresty, or detainee, but had no name attached to
01:58:20
it. When Austin authorities tried to get that name, the FBI would not provide it,
01:58:25
citing privacy laws. There are some restrictions on privacy. So, it gets into some very sort of uh, you know, uh,
01:58:32
dicey issues. Frustrated, officials reached out to Congressman McCall for help. And so I pressed the FBI very
01:58:41
hard. Finally, in early 2020, the FBI agreed to work with the Austin Police Department to see if further testing
01:58:50
could be done on that YSDR DNA from the crime scene. I was very excited about it. The idea that we could bring this
01:58:58
case to a to closure for the families and bring those responsible to justice. More advanced testing came up with
01:59:07
additional markers, 25 instead of the original 16. But as so often happened in this
01:59:15
case, what seemed so promising turned into disappointment. Some of the additional
01:59:22
markers did not match the FBI sample. In other words, what seemed to be a match was not. In a letter to Congressman
01:59:31
McCall, the FBI explained the new results, quote, conclusively exclude the male donor of the FBI sample. As such,
01:59:42
the FBI YSDR profile is not an investigative lead. And that was the greatest disappointment because we
01:59:51
really thought we had it. If it didn't match that individual, does it still mean there's somebody out there? This
01:59:58
DNA belongs to somebody, right? It does. It does. Um, and that's why we're we're
02:00:04
not going to arrest till we find the match. How important then is this DNA profile that exists to solving this
02:00:11
case? I mean, it's um it's everything. With DNA research advancing so quickly, there's real hope that one day
02:00:23
that sample of DNA obtained 30 years ago may finally solve this case. Still, it will not erase the pain or the loss of
02:00:34
lives. Every year that goes by, I get farther and farther away from my sister, you
02:00:41
know, and I worry about losing memories. Sonora Thomas struggled for years with panic attacks and physical
02:00:53
pain until with the help of therapy, she realized it was connected to the murder
02:00:58
of her sister, Eliza. With a unique understanding of what trauma victims experience, Sonora wanted to help others
02:01:07
like her and became a therapist. There's so many moments, you know, when your heart is open. You know, you're joyful,
02:01:15
but there's also this loss that's always accompanying your life. Senor found it helpful to look for ways to remember
02:01:24
Eliza. When we got married, we have flower and an empty chair at our ceremony and my sister was mentioned.
02:01:31
Compounding Sonora's pain, her mother died in 2015. Maria Thomas passed away with so
02:01:39
many unresolved questions about the murder of her daughter. There is a kind of torture that continues by the fact
02:01:48
that it's unsolved and it's ongoing. It's always there. John Jones is still haunted by the fact
02:02:01
that the case is unsolved and by what he saw that gruesome night. He has suffered from PTSD through
02:02:10
the years. I had completely shut down uh to where all my energy was directed at at the case. It took a toll on you,
02:02:21
didn't it, John? even 30 years afterwards. Well, yeah, it would on anybody. I think not as much as the
02:02:28
families, you understand? I know whatever pain I'm having pales in comparison to what
02:02:36
they what they're going through [Music] these days. Jones finds solace singing in his church choir. I can relax when
02:02:49
I'm in church. Leave the world behind. Leave outside. No, I I know it's just past the door.
02:02:58
And when he's in that outside world, the families of Amy Heirs, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, and Eliza Thomas are
02:03:07
never far from his thoughts. I feel bad for them. That is still not solved. But Jones has hope. He has kept that
02:03:17
shirt he wore the night of the murders. only worn once. The shirt he promised to
02:03:23
never wear until the case was solved. More than 30 years later, still sitting in there. Still sitting here. It is.
02:03:32
And sometime soon, John Jones looks forward to wearing it [Music] again. I just hope one of these days we
02:03:43
can put this thing to bed for the family's sake. [Music] 48 hours. Don't miss an episode.
02:04:23
[Music] Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music]