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[Music] [Applause] [Music] Welcome to True Crime Garage, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks
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for listening. I'm your host Nick, and with me as always is a man who thinks kiss me, I'm Irish is a Valentine's Day
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greeting. He is the very lovable captain. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Happy Valentine's
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Day to everybody celebrating. For those who don't celebrate Valentine's Day, happy Taco Tuesday.
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[Music] Today in the garage, we are drinking Island Reserve Russian Imperial Stout by
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the wonderful people at Cisco Brewers Incorporated. Here's a great after-dinner beer for everyone, Captain.
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Cisco Brewers Island Reserve Russian Imperial Stout has a jet black pour. It's full-bodied, very dark in color,
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good coffee and chocolate flavor with nice hints of fruit, and finishes dry. How many bottle caps you want to give
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this? >> Let's give it four and a quarter bottle caps out of five. This after-dinner
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dream was brought to us by this outstanding garage team. First up, we have Steven and Robin in Terre Haute,
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Indiana, two of our favorites. Cheers to Steven and Robin. >> Now, let's head on over to the Sunshine
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State. That's right. We're going to say thank you to Jonathan in Boca Raton, Florida. Jonathan says, "I remember the
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mall murders." That was episode 43. "I live just 3 miles from there, and you guys covered that case very well." Thank
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you, Jonathan. Next, we have Sonya in Taunton, Massachusetts. Let's stay in the great
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state of Massachusetts and say hi to Eve of Destruction in Wayland. Also, we have
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Paula up in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, who says, "Check out Mountain Town Brewing." I'm guessing this next one is
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from Michigan, as well. We have Carol, who says, "I love you guys, even though I'm a Wolverine, and Nick uses whom and
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whomever incorrectly most of the time." So, for those of you scoring at home, that's
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Carol two and Nick nothing. And last but not least, let's go to Elizabethtown and
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give a big shout-out and a big thank you to Chad. Chad says, "I've been a fan since day one, and my library has grown
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extensively because of your recommended reading." So, thank you to everybody who
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pitched in for the beer fund this week, and if you want to do so for next week, go to truecrimegarage.com and click on
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and you can follow us on all social media platforms. Stop the show right now and follow us on YouTube. All right,
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Captain. Everybody gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer, and let's talk some
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true crime. [Music] Notorious unsolved crimes in Texas, the yogurt shop murders.
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[Music] Four teenage girls were murdered in North Austin at the yogurt shop. It was set on fire.
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And when it was put out by firefighters, that's when they found the bodies inside.
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[Music] Tied up, stacked on top of each other. All the girls shot in the head, execution style.
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The firefighter with me tapped me on the shoulder and pointed down, and he asked
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me, "Is that a body?" And I I had to step back, and it was. I saw another body. I knew that
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that it wasn't right. Something was not right. I mean, play that over in your mind time
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and time again. If we ever get to a point where we have a national database for some of the
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different subtypes of DNA that we have, I that could be one of the keys to to bringing this investigation back into
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the courtroom. [Music] 1991 in Austin, Texas, four teenage girls were bound and killed in a small
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yogurt shop. The store, of course, was robbed. And now, 25 years later, this case remains unsolved.
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>> The yogurt shop murders took place back in December of 1991. This case has gripped the city of Austin since, and it
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has been quite the drama. Mhm. First of all, you have the horrible murders that took place, but then you have an
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investigation with many peaks and valleys. I had heard of this case years ago, but
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never really looked into it. And I do want to add that this case has been requested to be covered on this show by
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many. When I first started looking into this case, well, at first of all, it's a very
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strange case with strange circumstances. Mhm. But as I got knee-deep in this thing, it started to occur to me, and I
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can't I can't shake this thought, that this case is like a meshing of two cases that we have covered before. First, you
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have it's like the Burger Chef murders, you know, that we covered back in episode two. And also very much like the
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West Memphis Three case that we covered in a three-part series in episodes 40 to 42.
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And I'll tell you why I'm making these connections here. First, the Burger Chef murders, for maybe more obvious reasons,
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both of these events took place in places of business, uh both being food or snack places, involving a robbery and
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ultimately the killing of persons in the store. In the Burger Chef case, all of the persons killed were working at the
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store at the time that night. >> And they were mainly teenagers. Yeah, and they were actually taken to another
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location first, but nonetheless, it's quite a similar situation. Now, for the West Memphis Three case and the
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connection there, the reasons are a little more subtle, but it's it's well, let's say, quote unquote, the
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interesting confessions. Basically, little to no evidence, but just a simple confession or confessions
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that led investigators to persons they believed to be responsible for the murders in both cases, being that of
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young men, or more appropriately, a group of teenage boys. And in both cases, the West Memphis Three and what,
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you know, a lot of people call this the yogurt shop murders, I kind of view it as the Austin City Four. Mhm. Uh there's
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four victims, and there's going to be four major suspects. Um but with with both of those cases,
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we're talking about horrendous murders, very horrifying. Yes. Yes. So, this all takes place on a Friday, December 6th,
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1991. 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison drops off her little sister, 15-year-old Sarah.
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Now, Sarah is with her friend, who is 13 years old. Her name is Amy Ayers. She drops them off at a local spot. They
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are going to catch a movie and hang out afterwards. Jennifer had to go go to work that evening. She worked at the I
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Can't Believe It's Yogurt Shop. This is located in a strip mall on West Anderson
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Lane in Austin, Texas. I Can't Believe It's Yogurt is a basically a frozen yogurt chain, and uh
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similar to like a froyo. Mhm. Yeah, we used to have one of these back in the day, probably around the time of
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this crime here in in this city. Um and it's great place to drop in for a snack,
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especially in summertime in the hot days. Uh great place to take a date to. You know, these are usually smaller
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shops. Ice cream shop jobs are normally run by teenagers, and it's a Friday night, so we don't even actually have
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adult on staff. We have Jennifer Harbison, uh who's working the closing shift with another 17-year-old girl,
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Eliza Thomas. And as said, this is the evening shift, the closing shift. Jennifer and Eliza would be closing up
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the shop for the night at the end of their shifts. Now, keep in mind, this is not a huge store, so it will just be the
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two of them cleaning up and closing the shop for the night. And this is something that they had done before.
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Sometime later in their shift, Jennifer's little sister Sarah and her friend Amy arrive at the yogurt shop.
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They are going to help the two older teenagers with the closing duties, and then catch a ride with Jennifer
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afterward. There was going to be a a sleepover that night. Some The closing time was scheduled for
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11:00 p.m. Mhm. So, during this time, you know, we we've all seen this done before, or we've worked at similar
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establishments, and this means not only do you have your doors open, and you're working through your your customer line,
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and and ensuring everybody's having a good >> huge customer base at on this day,
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because it is December. But it is Texas, so it is a it's a warmer environment, so
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>> should have didn't think about that. >> Yeah, like here in Columbus, some of the
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ice cream shops even close for the wintertime. >> right. >> Yeah, so this is something we're not
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really accustomed to. But during this closing shift, not only are you trying to uh keep the customers happy and make
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sure everybody's served in a timely manner, but you're also doing closing duties. You know, you're cleaning up the
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place and closing it for the night and it requires a certain amount of administrative type duties where you'd
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be collect you know, counting the money and filling out some paperwork and maybe
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doing a little bit of light inventory or paperwork. And then on the flip side you're going to have a little bit of
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just hustle and bustle. You know, you got to sweep the floors, mop the floors, you know, wipe down the windows, all
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that stuff. And we we know how this goes down, right Captain? Because when when people that are working at a store,
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working at a restaurant like this, you if especially on a Friday night when you have things that you want to do
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afterwards, usually you're trying to do some of these closing duties even before
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you've officially locked the door for the night. You know, you're trying to trying to expedite the whole situation
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so you can get out of there in a timely manner. Mhm. Around 10:00 p.m. a man named Daryl Croft enters the shop and he
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is there to buy yogurt for himself and two friends. Now, Daryl Croft is quite observant. He's a former police officer.
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>> Yeah, or he's just buying three portions for himself. Uh at at the time he ran a security
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company. Um there's a line of customers and Croft noticed that there is a man who is
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waiting in line, but this man is letting people go before him. The man is wearing
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a military fatigue style jacket. Mhm. Uh this man approaches Croft and asks him if he's a cop. I guess Croft had one of
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those vehicles, you know, with the lights on top of it. So obviously it the vehicle looks like a police car, but it
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is in fact his security vehicle. Uh so the man asks him if he's a cop and then offers to let Croft uh take, you
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know, place his order before him, go in line before him. Croft is a bit put off by this and thinking that the man might
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be up to something. So Croft does not take the man up on his offer. Thus it's now time for the guy in the
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army jacket to place his order and he asked simply just for a can of soda. He doesn't order any yogurt at all.
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After the man paid for his can of soda, he went to the back of the store. Uh Croft then approaches the counter
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Mhm. and he places his order and he asked Eliza. Eliza is the shift supervisor that night. So she is on the
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register. Uh he asked, you know, where did the man go? Why did he go to the back? And she
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says, you know, he had asked to use the restroom and that she had allowed him to
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the back of the store to use the store's restroom. Croft still is put off by the man and
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decides that even after receiving his order, he's going to stick around a little longer than necessary. You know,
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he kind of wants to keep an eye on the place. Right. It's you know, it's his nature. He's a former police officer. Um
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but after a few minutes go by, you know, his he's he's got frozen yogurt. It's starting to melt.
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>> Right here. This is direct evidence that this gentleman bought three servings of
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yogurt for himself and not for him and two friends. Well, like I said, the the man that he's waiting on, that he's
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trying to keep an eye on, the guy in the army jacket, he doesn't come back. >> He doesn't come back. So uh Croft
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decides that he's going to leave. Now, Croft would end up giving a fairly detailed description of this man. He
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described the man as a white male, about 6 ft tall, mid to late 20s with a medium
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build, dark hair. He was clean shaven. He had a clear deep voice and a long pointed nose. So Croft just described
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me. Yeah, I find it very odd that he went into a yogurt shop and didn't order frozen yogurt.
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>> Right. >> That's the only reason you'd need to be there. But uh then when he orders the soda and
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then heads off to the restroom, it's like, well, maybe he's just being polite by ordering the soda so he's not just
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using the restroom and and and not paying for anything. Possibly. My guess is that Croft, you know, kind of got the
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hint that maybe this guy was kind of lingering or loitering for for some time for a reason. Right, right, right. Which
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I or he's just a complete savage and goes to yogurt shops for a soda. Now, we are
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going to fast forward just a little bit. So just before 11:00 p.m. there is a married couple who are in the yogurt
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store. So this is just before closing, right? Just before the girls will lock the front door, finish cleaning and
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restocking, count the register and then leave for the night. >> Yeah, and this is the best part of the
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night if you're the employee. Well, things are winding down. There's only four customers in the store at this
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time. >> Well, and you're excited to go home. Yeah, you have the married couple who
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say that they see two men sitting at a booth and this is while the girls are cleaning the shop. They're and this is
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important here, stocking the napkins in the dispensers that are on the tables and picking up chairs and flipping them
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upside down and placing them on the tables as they clean each table and move on to the next. Uh the details of this
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couple's account, we we don't have. We don't have them. This is not something that's been presented to the public. Not
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everything here has been released but about this particular part of the evening. But the couple says that the
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men were sitting together at the booth, of course, and they are acting strange. Mhm. Uh we don't know what exactly that
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means, uh but the woman says that the man made her uncomfortable. Mhm. The couple leaves the store just minutes
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before closing time and the two men are still present in the store when they leave. So we got creepy McCreeperson and
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his buddy old oddball and they're the last two known customers in the yogurt shop that night. Yeah, we would call
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these campers, you know, when I used to work at the restaurant and at the bar, people that just kind of sit there with
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with basically nothing on their table for far too long and probably, you know, it's so close to closing time. Sometimes
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it's a few minutes afterwards. We go, oh, I got a group of campers at table 13. Well, and these campers, these
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creepy campers is what we should call them. Neither one of them were eating yogurt. They're both just drinking
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sodas. And I know that sounds like such a silly thing to keep harping on, but maybe that's why this married couple,
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why the woman was kind of so put off by these two, that she thought that they were strange or acting She says acting
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strange. We don't know exactly the details of that. Um but but she's afraid of them. Now,
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the the married couple has left. As as Captain just said, we got the two weirdos still sitting at the booth.
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>> The creepy campers. Now, closing time is 11:00 p.m. At 11:03 p.m. Mhm. someone pushed the no sale key
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on the register. This is opening the register drawer. So this would have been recorded on the register. So we know
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this happened. It's believed this may have been the start of the robbery and the start of the horrible events to
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come. Now, just before midnight, then rookie Austin police officer Troy Gay was on
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patrol near Northcross Mall. Uh he reported smoke coming from the rear of the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt Shop. Uh
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now, as I said, the yogurt shop is located in a strip mall. And this is just down the street from the Northcross
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Mall where the the rookie officer is stationed. Uh according to the media reports at the
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time, nearly 50 firefighters responded to this call at the yogurt shop. >> Jesus.
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After extinguishing the flames, they made a grizzly discovery. So keep in mind here
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what's going on, right? We how destroyed this place must be. There is a fire and
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a pretty decent size one at that. >> Well, and and all that the people know, all that the firefighters know is that
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this is called in as a fire. It's not called in as a burglary or anything. And that's going to come into play because
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what happens is when the firefighters get there, they start doing their job. They start trying to put out the fire.
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This place is ablaze. Uh it's a you know, a family owned business. These are franchised. It's connected to other
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businesses. So now they're trying to save that whole area. And as they do that, they make that
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gruesome discovery. Well, and even after they put out the fire, the place is full
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of smoke. Uh objects in the store are melted, burned, and ruined. Um there would be soot everywhere and water from
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the firemen's hoses. So much that there were puddles of water all over the place.
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>> Right. One of the firefighters walking through the shop after the fire had been
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extinguished, he points to something on the floor and he asked the firefighter next to him, "What is that?" And the
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object he is pointing to is a foot. Can you imagine the thoughts that are going through that firefighter's head? Well,
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now a new call has to go out, right Captain? Because originally they're responding to a fire and the
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firefighters discover that we have a fatality. And actually the call that goes out is that they discovered three
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fatalities after extinguishing the fire. This call is going to the police at this
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point, obviously. And just seconds later that call from the dispatcher that came
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to the police police cruiser radios, well, it it has to be updated because shortly, just seconds afterwards, it's
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updated to four fatalities were found. Well, now the firefighters have to start treating this as, you know, a crime
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scene and they're already aware that the work that they did to put out the fire has already contaminated that crime
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scene, which is going to make this way harder for the police officers and law enforcement and the detectives to
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collect evidence. Mhm. And I and I said four fatalities, that is in fact the call that went out, but but technically
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Amy, the 13-year-old, she was clinging to life uh when discovered, but but she died very shortly after after the
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discovery. So four girls lay dead inside the shop. Three were found together. This would be in the back room prep
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area. The other girl, Amy, was found closer to the back of the shop. This is near the store's restrooms. And like we
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said, Amy is 13. Mhm. Sarah's 15. And then we have Jennifer and Eliza that are both 17. Just kind of put into
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perspective. I mean, we have a couple we do have two older teenagers, but you know, Sarah and Amy were were just
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babies. >> Mhm. And Eliza, Sarah, and Jennifer were the three that were found in that back
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room prep area. Now, they were actually found together. Two of them were stacked
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on top of one another, and the third girl lay next to them. Investigators believe, as do I, that all three of them
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were probably stacked on top of each other, but due to the chaos when the firefighters were putting out the fire
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and sweeping the ceiling, walls, and floors with their high-pressured hoses, that the girl which was on top was
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probably knocked to the floor. One of the first responders described the girls as charred nearly to the bone.
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Investigators immediately concluded the blaze was set to cover up the crime. >> You mean the arson happened to cover up
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the murders. Yes. Yes, sorry about that. But the thing here is, Captain, we have
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multiple crimes happening in a very short period of time in a small space, right? We have the arson that was that
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the fire set to cover up the murders. Was the murders due to something going wrong in a robbery? Because one would
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assume this is a robbery gone wrong when you start to look at this thing. And there was a robbery. You know, we we
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said that the at some point no someone had hit the no sale button on the register. We don't know if this was one
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of the girls or if this was a robber. But what we do know is there is $540 missing from the store that night. That
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seems like a very small amount of money to kill four innocent girls over. Yeah, it's to me this looks like
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it makes absolutely no sense. Even if you if you try to go down the path of a robbery gone wrong.
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I don't know that you commit four murders to cover up a a $540 robbery. And and furthermore, it seems to me like
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you could have picked another business where there would have been potentially more more money. If this in fact if
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money was the actual object that you were seeking that night. How about you talk a little bit about one of the main
00:22:02
characters in this case, Detective Jones. Yeah, so here's an interesting situation regarding this case. Detective
00:22:08
Jones was working the night shift that night. And he was one of the officers that received the call about the
00:22:14
fatalities. He's on his way to the store. The strange thing here is he's actually being
00:22:21
he has a ride-along that night. Right, he's being followed by a news team. >> Yeah, they're doing a piece on crime in
00:22:27
the city. And they're following him around, so we get a lot of news footage from this
00:22:34
crime scene right from the get-go. So, Detective Jones, as you said, he's one of the not only one of the first law
00:22:41
enforcement officers to the scene that night, but he would end up being the lead investigator early on in this case.
00:22:48
He's called to the scene, and he describes the scene to the news team after he goes inside. He comes back out,
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and he describes the scene as a wholesale of carnage. And to make matters worse, we got four teenagers.
00:22:59
Well, and actually at the time they didn't even really fully know that. I mean, I've heard Jones talk about this
00:23:05
case time and time again. And one thing, and I'll try to try to say it as best as
00:23:09
I can, but when he's referred to his immediate reaction to what he's seen, you know, he says, you know, I've seen
00:23:16
burned bodies before. You know, the enormity of that is huge. But and then to have the stacked bodies
00:23:23
But he says, we couldn't tell a lot back then, right, when we were in the building.
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We couldn't even tell race or sex. So, that tells you how bad the scene was. Mhm. And this shop was, you know, a
00:23:36
pretty typical any kind of retail shop that would be in a strip mall. Mhm. And what we have at the scene is we have the
00:23:44
locked front door. Mhm. So, we could assume that the girls were able to lock the front
00:23:50
door on some capacity. And then normally you lock the front door, you take care of all your belongings. You might have
00:23:55
to run out trash through the back. But they found the back door unlocked and open like a a crack. Yeah, and the
00:24:05
the owner of the store would kind of help police with this with this situation to kind of take them through
00:24:12
how this closing time would work. And what he states is that the back door itself, it's deadbolted. And and there
00:24:19
would be no reason for the girls to open up that door that night. Okay, so they so they didn't have to throw trash away
00:24:26
that night. Right. Having the back door unlocked and opened was strange. Was super strange to the owner. And it might
00:24:32
be just a simple situation as maybe the owner says, you know what, leave the trash near the back door.
00:24:39
Leave the trash in this location, and I will take the trash out when I arrive in
00:24:43
the morning. >> yeah. Now, regarding the front door, it's a little bit of a different
00:24:47
situation. It's it's locked. They you know, the firefighters found the front door locked. They were able to pry it
00:24:53
open pretty easily. They're hell, they're firefighters. That's what they do. They kick in doors and bust down
00:24:58
doors, put out fires, right? But this door itself, it was locked from the inside, and it was one of those kind of
00:25:04
locks where you would lock it with an actual key. Mhm. And that same key would unlock it from the outside, right? So,
00:25:11
the door was locked with the key still in the lock on the inside of the door. Now, what the girls would would do is
00:25:19
after they finished up everything, they would unlock the front door from the inside. They would leave taking the key
00:25:25
with them, lock the door from the outside, and then they would slide the key underneath the door putting it back
00:25:32
into the store. So, the people that arrive in the morning, presumably these are people that have their own key, you
00:25:37
know, the the owner and maybe a manager or something. Right. They would arrive in the morning, and they would pick up
00:25:42
that key, and the whole process would start over. >> Right. But that way you don't have a
00:25:46
bunch of employees running around with the key. Right. You don't have to million keys out. All right. So, just a
00:25:51
quick recap. We have a fire at the yogurt shop. The the the firefighters show up. They start putting out the
00:25:58
fire, and then they quickly realize that we have a murder scene. Mhm. Um we then
00:26:04
have the detectives showing up. They can't even identify these bodies cuz they're so badly burned and so badly
00:26:10
charred. They realize then the arson was to cover up the murders. >> Uh-huh. And then on By the way, we also
00:26:18
have money missing, and we have one door open, the other door still locked. >> Mhm. Um and we'll get into more of the
00:26:25
findings right after this quick beer break. All right. Cheers, mates. I'm actually switching over from the Island
00:26:32
Reserve to a little Rhine Geist The Truth. Cheers. Hey, I do want to get into the autopsy
00:26:39
report. And I And here's the thing though, Captain. This is always tough in these situation
00:26:44
in any case that we go through because sometimes we cover the autopsy findings, and sometimes we do not. Mhm. Uh and
00:26:50
usually, you know, it's a thin line, and you have to decide when you're going to
00:26:54
cross that line and or not. And typically with a case involving teenagers, we would try to stay away from that. But
00:27:02
in certain situations, that report could mean a break in the case. It it can clear up certain amounts of evidence
00:27:10
that are found. Well, and also depending on what you find during that autopsy, it changes the suspect that you're
00:27:17
looking for. Mhm. And as we said, there later in this case, there's going to be four suspects that that are brought to
00:27:25
the forefront amongst a whole bunch of other groups of suspects. And the problem here is I think you have
00:27:31
to review that autopsy report because within that, there could be clues as to how many perpetrators it took to carry
00:27:38
out this crime. Was it four people? Was it one person? You know, and some of this information helps. And the reason
00:27:45
being is, you know, we talked about the West Memphis case, right? Mhm. West West
00:27:50
Memphis 3. So, so just comparing the two real quick here. And the reason why I think it's important is in this
00:27:57
situation in the yogurt shop murder situation, we have a pinpointed time frame of when the deaths
00:28:08
probably occurred. Right. Because we we know that they're closing about 11:00. Uh and then we know that the
00:28:15
firefighters receive a call and are on the scene about 12:00. Yeah. So, we have about an hour. Mhm. And and we can
00:28:21
surmise that that they were killed during that hour period. Now, in the West Memphis case, what the big what the
00:28:27
big problem with that case was, and in my opinion, is that they were not they were not able to nail down the time of
00:28:35
death. And that being that there were so many people that have been suspected of that
00:28:40
crime, you know, whether it be in the media's eyes or in the eyes of investigators. But one big problem you
00:28:46
have there is when you cannot pinpoint that time of death, well, you could have eliminated a lot of those
00:28:52
suspects just to what time they they were murdered. Well, right. And if you have a time of death, then you can find
00:28:58
out if that person has an alibi or not. But again here, I think what we're going
00:29:02
to find out is does this point to one person, two persons, four people carrying out this crime? That that's the
00:29:08
important thing here. Which is very similar to the West Memphis 3 as well. So, hopefully this will clear some
00:29:14
things up for later on discussion because this shocking case is about to get real cloudy real quick. I do want to
00:29:22
be perfectly clear here though, right? While I do have a quote-unquote autopsy report,
00:29:28
um and I have very little reason to doubt the following report, but I want everyone to understand something that
00:29:36
this is a third-hand account of the autopsy report. Because early in this case, it was determined that the autopsy
00:29:45
reports should be sealed and according to some people these are technically public documents.
00:29:53
Mhm. And that they should be made public because this could help with the actual
00:29:57
investigation. So what I have here is actually a third-hand account of the autopsy reports. This was the reports
00:30:05
were supplied by a former attorney Mhm. >> to a writer and then a a writer reviewed
00:30:11
them and gave a summary of those reports. So what we have here is is this report
00:30:17
and I'll read it read it as it goes. Mhm. Um Well, just I mean the warning is is this
00:30:23
is graphic in nature. So Yes. >> just be warned. So we have the body of Sarah Harbison was found nude
00:30:31
found gagged and her hands were bound behind her back with a pair of panties. Her body was severely charred
00:30:39
and she had been shot through the back of the head with a .22 caliber gun. This was a lead bullet which was recovered
00:30:46
from her brain. Then we have Jennifer Harbison whose nude body was found. She was not bound
00:30:53
but her body was found in a manner that her hands were behind her back. Mhm. Her
00:30:59
body was severely charred as well. But there was no binding on the hands. >> No binding but you don't know what could
00:31:05
have been burnt in the situation. Mhm. Um she had been shot through the back of the head and again a .22 caliber lead
00:31:13
bullet was recovered from her brain. Eliza Thomas she was nude as well and gagged. Her hands bound behind her back
00:31:21
with a brassiere and her body was severely charred and she had been shot through the back of
00:31:27
the head. Again a .22 caliber lead bullet was recovered from her from her brain. Yeah, I mean this is just the
00:31:33
scene is horrific. What a tragic scene. Amy Ayers her body she was found nude as well with a sock
00:31:41
like cloth material wrapped around her neck with a half hitch in the back. Um this would be the manner that it was
00:31:49
tied in. Her body was not severely charred. Now remember she was the one that was found elsewhere. Mhm. Okay, so
00:31:56
this might help lead investigators to figure out where the fire had originated from.
00:32:02
Um >> Well, Amy Amy wasn't badly charred as like the other victims were but she did
00:32:08
have second and third degree burns on about 25 30% of her body. And she had been found shot in the back of the head
00:32:17
just like the same same as the other girls with a .22 caliber gun. Um but the bullet in this case did not enter the
00:32:24
brain. However, there was a second gunshot. Mhm. And in this report it says the caliber is not specified in the
00:32:32
report caused this second gunshot caused severe damage to the brain. So possibly
00:32:37
two weapons two guns. This would be two weapons yes and this bullet exited through the right lateral cheek and jaw
00:32:45
area. All right, so is it possibly two guns or is it definitely two guns? Well, according to this report it sounds more
00:32:52
like possibly two guns but what we would later learn is that it is in fact two guns and I'm going off of this
00:32:59
assumption because of the police were looking for a .22 caliber gun and a .38 or a .380 caliber gun. Okay, and what
00:33:10
this tells me is that probably at the time that when this autopsy was filed >> Mhm. when this report was conducted they
00:33:17
may not have found that bullet at that time. And it may have been recovered from the scene later therefore they know
00:33:24
that it's a .380. Um the the report goes on to state that whereas the cause of death for each of the other girls this
00:33:33
is all this is Jennifer Sarah and Eliza the three other girls other than Amy was
00:33:38
determined by the coroner to be shot with a .22 caliber gunshot wound to the back of the head the cause of death for
00:33:45
Amy was listed as a result of gunshot wounds of the head and asphyxia due to ligature strangulation. Also unlike the
00:33:55
other girls Amy's fingernails were cut for examination purposes and fingerprints were taken. Yeah, it seems
00:34:02
like maybe that we should just assume that with Jennifer Sarah and and Eliza that maybe their bodies were just so
00:34:10
badly charred that they couldn't actually take those for fingerprints. Yeah, I would guess that a certain
00:34:15
amount of evidence was lost due to the amount of fire that that the bodies had to succumb to but the situation here is
00:34:24
it it's showing us a few different things. Okay, one it's showing us that Amy is believed to have spent more time
00:34:31
with with whoever was assaulting her or whomever was you know killing her. Mhm. Um you know they clipped her fingernails
00:34:38
for a reason. Um and this may have been we have a big problem here right Captain
00:34:44
because we have one girl that's found back by the restrooms. She's the same girl that is shot twice the only one
00:34:50
that's shot twice the only one where there's mention of possible strangulation as well. So do we have a
00:34:56
situation where all four girls are shot and believed to have been dead and then whoever did this is stacking the bodies
00:35:05
so that because when you burn the place the whole goal here is if you're trying to cover up these murders is that you
00:35:12
want to burn as much of that evidence away and as much of those bodies as possible. Mhm. Do we have a situation
00:35:19
here where someone had stacked those bodies and for whatever reason Amy had survived? We know that the bullet didn't
00:35:25
hit the brain and then at some point she started to crawl or to move away from the from from the stack and was was
00:35:34
tracked down and then killed near the restrooms. That's very I mean it's horribly sad for the fact you know
00:35:41
Amy again is is the youngest of all four victims. We should also talk about what the city's fire investigator
00:35:49
found now that we've gone through what we've heard of the autopsy. So the city fire investigator Melvin Stahl he
00:35:57
concluded that from reviewing the crime scene that the fire had started in a corner of the shop where the supplies
00:36:05
were stored. So this would be where the fire started then at some point it it worked its way through portions of the
00:36:13
of the store. Yeah, and with the autopsy and with this the fire report this is basically the start of the investigation
00:36:21
and looking for suspects and looking for answers of this quadruple homicide. Yeah, and in this situation detectives
00:36:28
are going to do just like what they would normally do in any homicide type situation. You're going to start off by
00:36:34
interviewing family members and friends of the victims and you're interviewing the store owner and employees as well as
00:36:40
owners and employees of the shops nearby. You're also going to interview the customers who had been in the shop
00:36:47
that day and fielding thousands of tips phoned in from very concerned from the very concerned public because this I
00:36:54
mean this this case blew up the city rightfully so. I mean people were calling in with tips left and right.
00:37:01
Well, and I'm sure there's a bunch of statements from the the store owners next door. Yeah, yeah one such interview
00:37:07
was that of the owner of the next door shop. This is a party supply store. Mhm. This man stated that the only thing out
00:37:14
of the ordinary for that evening was that he had heard popping noises and sounds that he had thought were coming
00:37:21
from the roof. He had also noticed the back door to the yogurt shop was open. It was it was propped open and and this
00:37:29
was abnormal. Now of course the the police are assuming that the popping noises that he had heard were probably
00:37:35
the gunshots. >> Right. But one thing we got to keep in mind here is this store is right next door and in a
00:37:42
strip mall they're sharing they're basically sharing a wall. So this is not like a huge barrier between the two
00:37:48
locations. What what is he hearing? He's hearing popping noises. He's not hearing
00:37:53
screams. He never reports hearing screams or or loud commotions other than these popping noises. So what that tells
00:38:00
me is that we have a a group of victims here that seem to be by going by this one account seem to be controlled by
00:38:10
whomever's carrying out this crime. Yeah, I mean you'd think Well, you'd think also maybe that um
00:38:19
there's some way that they're unconscious at this point. >> Mhm. And maybe that's why they're not
00:38:23
you're not hearing the screams. Cuz you'd think that if you're next to your you know best friend or next to your
00:38:30
sister and and she got shot Mhm. you know what you would be doing. That would be uncontrollable.
00:38:37
You know what I mean? Like that you could have you could have one suspect on each victim and that doesn't
00:38:43
stop you know somebody from making some kind of noise once you you start shooting. Yeah, we have two of the
00:38:50
victims that are gagged. That may have played a role in that that as well. But we also don't know what what's going
00:38:57
on inside these four walls. We don't know what's being said to them. What we do know is just like you said
00:39:04
four victims conceivably you would you would guess that that all four of them would have been shot with that .22. Mhm.
00:39:11
Three of them were killed by the .22 the fourth survived it but was shot by it. So you almost seem like you have a
00:39:17
situation here where they're being executed one at a time. Right. And you're exactly right. You would expect
00:39:24
the remain the alive people to start reacting to what they're seeing or hearing. Um somehow
00:39:33
somehow either these these screams were muffled or they didn't happen at all. And somehow these the perpetrator or
00:39:40
perpetrators of this horrific murder and murders was able to control the scene and control the victims.
00:39:47
>> Well, and like I said, I mean, the possibility it's just likely to me that they would be unconscious by some level.
00:39:55
Um there were only one of them had been reported to show signs of some kind of actual struggle
00:40:02
um and that was Amy. She had had what appeared to have been hit on the face with something.
00:40:08
Um and again, we talked about her probably having more uh you know, probably a closer attack on
00:40:16
her than the other girls. Um the because of the crime scene being so messed up, you know, because of the
00:40:23
fire had destroyed so much of the crime scene, Detective Jones, he knew that this would make the investigation very
00:40:30
difficult at best to identify and collect evidence that remained at the scene. Uh I got to say that Detective Jones, I
00:40:38
believe, you know, did his due diligence here. He immediately calls in for backup. He reached out and brought in
00:40:45
several different organizations into this investigation. He brought in the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and
00:40:51
Firearms. He also brought in the FBI and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Detective Jones was not the only
00:40:59
detective on this case. He was actually working with his partner, uh Detective Huckabee.
00:41:04
Plus having brought in all those other organizations, you're going to have, you know, detectives and investigators
00:41:09
involved uh from those places as well. Well, 8 days into this investigation, we got uh Detective Huckabee and Detective
00:41:18
Jones, they're going to receive a break. Yeah, this would be a 16-year-old boy. His name is Maurice Pierce. Now, he had
00:41:25
been picked up at the Northcross Mall. Remember, we had said this was the mall that was just blocks from the crime
00:41:30
scene. And he's picked up because he's carrying a .22 caliber handgun. Yeah, during questioning, Maurice Pierce, he
00:41:37
said that he had lent the gun to his friend Forrest Wilborn, who was 15. And Wilborn had said that he had used the
00:41:44
gun to commit the yogurt shop murders. Right. Now, if you at this point, as far as detectives go, you're
00:41:51
thinking, "Done. Solved." Yeah. Yeah, and but you got to do your due diligence because you need evidence if if if in
00:41:58
fact this Wilborn character carried out the murders. So, one thing that they do is that they
00:42:03
hook Maurice Pierce up and they're they're going to record a conversation that he's going to have with Forrest
00:42:09
Wilborn. And Forrest Wilborn has no clue, according to the recording, what what his friend Maurice Pierce is
00:42:17
talking about. >> Right. And, you know, they're trying to get this they're trying to get some idea
00:42:22
if Forrest Wilborn was actually involved. Now, when they bring in Wilborn, he immediately denies any
00:42:27
involvement, but he did tell investigators that he and Pierce, along with two other boys, this would be Robin
00:42:34
Springsteen and Michael Scott, that at some point they had stolen a a vehicle. Mhm. Uh and this they had stolen a
00:42:42
vehicle because they wanted to joyride to nearby San Antonio. Uh this was a stolen SUV. This took
00:42:49
place not long after the crime, but it was that admission that put Springsteen and Scott and the other two boys on the
00:42:57
police radar. Right. Nonetheless, after lengthy questioning, Jones and his team,
00:43:02
they dismissed Maurice Pierce as a suspect. >> Mhm. They concluded that he was lying
00:43:07
about having lent the gun to his friend and his friend saying that he had used it in the murders. And that's that's
00:43:13
just such an odd thing to lie about, though. Well, and and the thing here with Jones, too, is Jones speaks very
00:43:19
frankly to everybody and and I I like the cut of his jib. I like his character. And and one thing that he
00:43:25
said years later, you know, when brought up the fact of Maurice Pierce and they found him with the gun and now you're
00:43:32
you're talking to his Maurice Pierce's three friends, he basically says, "Yeah, we had to deal with him because he got
00:43:39
caught with a god damn .22." And Jones would go on to say that it yes, it's the same caliber as one of the
00:43:46
two guns used in the crime, but it became clear to Jones that neither Pierce nor Wilborn had any connection to
00:43:53
the crime at all. When he describes Forrest Wilborn, he describes Forrest as "Forrest had no clue." He says, "This is
00:44:01
a guy that couldn't organize a two-car parade." Yeah, that boy didn't know chicken [ __ ] from chicken salad. He was
00:44:06
no criminal mastermind. That's the, you know, to say the least and in Jones' opinion. Moreover, Jones says that
00:44:13
Maurice Pierce, his gun, that .22 that they found on him, it did not match the ballistics of the crime, which is a
00:44:20
strange which is a strange thing because then he almost immediately says that and
00:44:25
he points this out and he's rightful rightful to do so, but stating that .22s are typically thought as throwaway
00:44:32
weapons because the ballistics the bullets are flattened because they're a softer, smaller
00:44:39
bullet. And this usually leaves very few few clues which would help match them to
00:44:45
a particular gun. Uh but the gun that they checked on Pierce was just one of 75 guns. They
00:44:52
test-fired 75 guns and they never found a successful link to any of the guns that were used in the crime.
00:45:00
>> It seems like Detective Jones and Detective Huckabee did a really good job of trying to let the evidence tell the
00:45:07
story and not to come up with a theory and make the shoe fit. You're exactly right. And the other thing here, too, is
00:45:14
we from Jones' statements, future statements, we can we can verify that there was that second gun even though
00:45:21
and and we know now that the autopsy report was not complete because Jones would tell us that the there was a
00:45:28
second gun used in the crime. This was a .380 pistol used to fire the single shot
00:45:33
into Amy. And he stated that a big part of their investigation, which was right to do so,
00:45:39
was looking for that .380. He said because while most .380s have a particular twist to the rifling of the
00:45:46
barrel, the one that was used in the yogurt shop murders, it had an opposite twist. So, if that gun could be found,
00:45:53
which who knows? I mean, it still could be found even 25 years later, this would
00:45:59
be a tremendous help to closing this case and to figuring out who did this crime. Well, it seems like this
00:46:06
16-year-old Pierce is a little bit of a nutcase, right? He's he's basically saying, "Well, I got this gun." He seems
00:46:12
like he's being kind of bragadocious about this whole idea of um you know, my friend was involved, you
00:46:19
know? And then it just seems odd and and like I said, Detective Jones is going, "Well, the
00:46:24
shoe doesn't fit." Right. >> And then we have this other detective that comes in to actually interrogate
00:46:30
Pierce. Yeah, and I I want before we get into that, I want to go into this just a
00:46:33
little bit more here because Detective Jones, he's not a rookie detective, okay? At this point in his career, he's
00:46:40
investigated over 140 homicides. So, this is a seasoned detective. This is a guy that knows what to look for. He's
00:46:48
probably put many, many people behind bars for those murders. Now, this situation, like you said,
00:46:55
do we just have some dumbass 16-year-old boy? And I can say that because I was once a dumbass 16-year-old boy.
00:47:01
>> Okay? And I know how some >> a dumbass 16-year-old boy. >> how some some of these things work,
00:47:06
okay? So, do we have a situation here where this kid and and he's probably not a, you know, a good you know, a
00:47:14
do-gooder. He's probably not a good Samaritan. He's walking around a mall with a with a gun. And and you know,
00:47:22
could could you see kind of a dumbass 16-year-old kid kind of bragging to his friends like, "Oh, you see this gun?
00:47:28
This .22 caliber, it's it's the same kind of gun that was used in the yogurt shop." You know, uh
00:47:34
not meaning it's the exact same gun. Um the other thing, too, though, like what you were going to get into is this
00:47:40
other detective that was involved in the investigation at the time. What we also
00:47:44
see in the West Memphis 3, there's a lot of accounts, whether these were made-up
00:47:49
accounts or not, was that, you know, Damien Echols was going around town basically, you know, bragging about that
00:47:55
he was involved. >> Mhm. You know. Yeah, and and he states things like, "Well, I had people asking
00:48:00
me if I was involved, so at some point I just kind of joked joked to them to their face."
00:48:04
>> Right, right. Which came back to really be a bad idea. >> you in the ass. >> Probably much like this Maurice Pierce
00:48:11
person. Um but we have a detective um who's no longer a detective. His name is Hector
00:48:18
Polanco. Now, he's an interesting guy, right? He is a guy that that Jones would say, you know, we learned this years
00:48:25
later that Hector Polanco was responsible for getting >> For having a bad name. Yeah, for getting
00:48:32
many many people to confess to crimes that they did not commit. What a skill. Yeah,
00:48:39
yeah, he he he was he was strong in the area of coercion, right? He also interviewed Jessie Misskelly. So, which
00:48:47
he did not. We don't want anybody to get confused there. Um but what he's saying is that when
00:48:51
they brought in Maurice Pierce and they wanted to really grill him, right? Put the hammer down. So, they stick him in
00:48:59
an interrogation room with this Detective Polanco. And Polanco was not able Polanco's a bad
00:49:05
name. It's a regular name. I'm sorry if your last name is Polanco. Most of our listeners have the last name
00:49:11
Polanco. 95% of our listeners are Polancos. What he's saying here is that if Polanco could not get this Maurice
00:49:19
Pierce to confess to the crime, >> Mhm. he didn't do it. He absolutely didn't do it. And that's that's
00:49:25
Detective Jones saying this out of experience. Okay, so do you think, listen, I'm just hypothetically, right?
00:49:32
What do I think? We have Pierce in the room. We don't know if he did it, right? Right. But they call in. Oh, he's in the
00:49:39
room because they assume he did it. Okay, no, I'm saying hypothetical. That's what hypothetical was Oh, I'm
00:49:44
sorry. is fictitious land. Okay, we just have a suspect, right? >> Mhm. And and they call you in. Columbus PD
00:49:50
calls you in. Mhm. And they say, "We want you to get him to confess." You think you could do it?
00:49:56
Uh no no, I don't I don't think I would have that skill. >> You don't think you watched enough
00:50:01
detective shows or like SVU or anything? Uh there was a detective that that worked a famous case up in Canada with a
00:50:10
serial killer and I can't remember his name, maybe McDon- I can't remember his name. He was the guy that was involved
00:50:15
in the the Air Force up there. Uh so this is a guy that would not be easy to break. Uh and I watched they had a
00:50:23
lengthy video of him interrogating this guy and he got him to to talk eventually. And this was this was not
00:50:29
like this was not like a guy that just got into the Air Force. This was a guy that was very high-ranking officer that
00:50:36
that had spent 20-some years in the Air Force up there and he was a respected individually individual in the community
00:50:43
as well as in the government uh government's eyes up there. He he would be the type of criminal that you would
00:50:50
think that you wouldn't be able to get him to spill the beans so to speak say, right? Right. And this guy was able to
00:50:55
do it and I I sat there and I watched the interrogation like three times cuz I thought oh, if I could just pick up
00:51:00
something here Yeah. then you could use this on anybody and it would work. I I can tell you right now I don't have that
00:51:06
ability. >> Well, maybe it was just his time to tell, you know what I mean? Maybe it was
00:51:10
just was building up inside him and it didn't really matter who asked. >> Well, I got to admit when I when I first
00:51:16
sat down and I heard about this situation, I I was being the ever ever being the skeptic
00:51:23
that I am, right? I I expected it just to be something all your typical run-of-the-mill interrogation. This guy
00:51:29
he was never like aggressive or forceful with anything. Um I don't even think he ever lied to
00:51:36
the guy that he was interrogating. But he got him to confess. He got him to start talking and it was I thought it
00:51:41
was masterful. Yeah, and I know there's like some techniques that they use, but uh one of our uh buddies that is a
00:51:48
Columbus uh detective always talks about he never claimed to be like a super intelligent guy. He worked hard, uh did
00:51:55
his job, but he wasn't like into like the psychology of trying to figure out criminals and all that stuff. And so he
00:52:02
would just go in have them talk, you know, confess, you know, and and maybe they did confess, but it would be like
00:52:09
bits and pieces. And then he would just go, "Okay, well, I got to go talk to this guy." And he would go out, you
00:52:14
know, pretend to talk to the guy, get another cup of coffee, come back and go, "We got to start from the beginning cuz
00:52:20
you're lying." And then he would just do that about five or six times and he'd >> Wear them down. Eventually,
00:52:26
they're just like so confused and thinking that this guy has to know something that they just
00:52:31
start spilling the beans. Uh you know, I don't know if we're talking about the same guy, but there there's a a
00:52:36
detective that I spoke to and this is a very this is a pretty regular technique,
00:52:42
I'm assuming, but I had never thought of it at the time. But one thing he had told me cuz I'd asked him I was like,
00:52:47
you know, how many times in these when you're questioning somebody do you just outright lie to them, which I've always
00:52:53
thought was strange, but you you're allowed to do so. >> Right. Um and he told me that, you know,
00:52:59
he's like, "A lot of times you don't have to lie to them." And he's like, "It's really about the way you word
00:53:04
things." And he said, you know, if I if I were talking to somebody that we suspected robbed an ATM machine, well,
00:53:11
what am I going to use? I'm going to use their knowledge that that their general
00:53:15
knowledge that they may know and I'm going to mix in a little bit of stuff that we might know, but I'm not going
00:53:21
to, you know, I'm not going to have to lie because I could look at the guy and tell him,
00:53:25
"Well, what if I said to you that we have you on camera committing this crime?" Right. He's not claiming that
00:53:33
they do, but then immediately the guy's thinking, "Well, of course they have cameras at these ATMs. I was at that
00:53:39
ATM." And then a lot of times >> was not at the ATM and then you go, "Well, that's impossible." Right. Yeah.
00:53:45
Well, now's the point in the investigation because look, that's your big lead, right? Going back to the four
00:53:49
teenage boys that are picked up. That's your big lead and then that after you investigate it and you put them through
00:53:55
the mill there, it really goes nowhere for them. >> What doesn't check out? Exactly. It
00:54:01
doesn't it doesn't fit the crime. Uh so now police are going to start focusing in on the freaks, right? Because you've
00:54:10
you've you've exhausted some of your leads and you got to start looking into, well, what's going on in the area? Yeah,
00:54:17
and also just to keep in, you know, our minds on the time frame, this is 1991. This is 2 years before West Memphis 3.
00:54:24
And and so we this is the height of satanic panic. Yes, and that's that's part of the freaks that they're going to
00:54:30
start focusing the investigation around. They are going to check in with known uh Satanists in the area, rapists, uh
00:54:38
violent offenders, and serial killers. And because this is an extremely violent crime that took place.
00:54:45
>> Right. And you would you would think that if you have to find somebody outside of the circle of the victims or
00:54:52
outside of the circle of the shop itself, that now you're going to have to look for people that are capable of such
00:54:59
horrendous violence. >> Well, and that's one of the things that Detective Jones said is is he didn't
00:55:03
even believe that the the four that they had were capable of something this horrendous.
00:55:08
>> Mhm. Let's go into the thought of the serial killers that we had mentioned, right? So
00:55:13
in 1992, we have a man that is picked up and his name is Kenneth Allen McDuff. Okay, now
00:55:20
some of our listeners are go- this name is going to ring bells with them, right?
00:55:24
>> Mhm. Uh this is a serial killer and he is he was actually first convicted of raping and murdering three teenagers way
00:55:34
back in August of 1966. Um he killed three people, like I said, in 1966 and he was he was known as the
00:55:46
broomstick killer. Mhm. And you think, "Well, why is he involved in this 1991 case?" Well, he was he was caught and
00:55:54
Texas had a problem, okay? Nowadays, we know Texas is one of the fast-track states where they they they convict
00:56:00
people and they execute people with with a quickness uh that's not carried out as fast in
00:56:06
other states. Way back then, it was a bit of a different situation, okay? Because you
00:56:11
did have the the uh capital punishment, the death penalty was abolished in 1972.
00:56:18
So even though that he was convicted and sentenced to death back in back in '66,
00:56:24
that was abolished in '72. So they end up commuting his sentence to life with the possibility of parole. Yeah, which
00:56:31
is ridiculous. Which you also have another you have another bad thing going on here in in the state of Texas.
00:56:39
At some point in his in his while he's in prison, there's an overpopulation problem, okay? All these prisons are
00:56:47
getting heavily overpopulated. So the idea here is you got to let some of these guys out to create some space for
00:56:54
the new guys coming in. Yeah. The thought here is that sounds like a great idea. Well, he would he would not be
00:57:00
high on their list of people to release, obviously, because he's an extremely violent offender. Right. Three murders.
00:57:08
So what they start off with doing is letting out the non-violent offenders. Well, they do that for quite some time
00:57:14
and even though it doesn't create enough space. So at some point they have to start releasing violent offenders. The
00:57:22
problem here is he had served quite a bit of time and he was considered to be older and therefore the thought would be
00:57:31
that there's a better chance of him being rehabilitated when you compare him to a prisoner that had only spent a
00:57:36
short amount of time in prison. >> Right, but you have three murders under your belt and three rapes, so
00:57:43
you know, hey, let's send this guy out cuz he's too old for that. So due to the extremely crowded prisons Texas prisons,
00:57:50
McDuff is paroled in 1989. Now actually upon his release, McDuff is arrested on a series of parole violations, but he's
00:57:59
not locked up for any substantial length of time. What happens here, Captain? Mhm. Is that
00:58:05
in late December of 1991, along with an accomplice, uh he is in Austin City, Texas. They
00:58:15
pick up a woman named Colleen Reed. Now she is at a car wash. Now this car wash is not
00:58:23
terribly far from the yogurt shop, right? Okay. >> They pick her up and abduct her at a car
00:58:29
wash and basically I don't want to go into the details of of what takes place after that, but she
00:58:35
is killed. She's killed that night. >> Mhm. And her body is is not found for quite some time and it's not found in
00:58:41
1992. Um what happens here is he would after being released, he ultimately ends up killing a couple of people and he's
00:58:49
suspected of killing many more people. The thing here is he he's in the area at the time. Right.
00:58:55
And he's a very bad guy. And and second of all, he's there's some similarities to this crime as to his old crimes. He
00:59:04
was known to have raped the victims before killing them. He was also known to have tied them up and a lot of them
00:59:11
they to use their own belongings. You know, we talked about these girls were tied up with with socks that were theirs
00:59:17
and >> or panties of Yeah. Exactly. And he he had done similar things with stockings
00:59:22
and uh and panties and things like that, shoelaces before. Um the thing here is though that that's
00:59:29
strange is that if he were to have been involved in the yogurt shop murders, this would have
00:59:36
taken place December 6th, 1991. He picked up Colleen Reed December 29th in Austin, 1991. It would be hard for me
00:59:49
to believe that he would have stuck around. You know, we're talking about a guy that was probably
00:59:55
moving about quite a bit, especially moving about the state of Texas. It would be hard for me to believe that he
01:00:02
would stick around for almost a month after that crime. >> but not unheard of for killer to stick
01:00:07
around. No, you're exactly right. You're exactly right. >> Yeah, and with Colleen Reed, he had an
01:00:12
accomplice and so, you know, a lot of people believe and I think a lot of the evidence points out that it was at least
01:00:19
two people that, you know, did these heinous crimes at the yogurt shop. So, again,
01:00:25
you have two people in the Colleen Reed and then those same two people, you know, just you know, less than a month
01:00:33
earlier could have done this. It is possible. I do want to go through real quick how McDuff was eventually picked
01:00:40
up. It wouldn't be until March It was March of 1992. There was an abduction and there was a
01:00:47
murder of 22-year-old Melissa Northrop. Now, Northrop, she was working at her job as a clerk. This is at the Quick
01:00:55
Pack convenience store. This is in Waco, Texas. When she was abducted and driven
01:01:00
from the location in her own vehicle, which was a 1977 Buick Regal. This car was found abandoned 5 days later.
01:01:09
But, it wasn't until April 26th that her body was found floating in a gravel pit
01:01:14
about a mile from where the car was discovered. Her hands had been tied behind her back with shoestrings and a
01:01:21
sock. She had been strangled with a rope. Police were led to McDuff after his abandoned vehicle was found parked near
01:01:31
the store. >> Mhm. And he had once worked with Northrop at the store and was arrested.
01:01:37
He was tracked down in Kansas City, May 4th, 1992. This was after they had shown
01:01:43
his picture on America's Most Wanted and received tips of where he was located. >> Yeah, and this is frustrating for the
01:01:50
cops and frustrating for the detectives cuz clearly, you know, you know, this fits his MO, you know, and you have this
01:01:58
serial killer, you have this animal and and you really want it to to be pinned down on him. Yeah, you he has
01:02:05
to be looked at, right? Because even you might not be able to link him to the area at the exact time, but the problem
01:02:12
is he's somebody that is certainly capable of such. And he has to be looked at. And this is somebody they did look
01:02:19
at and they looked at him very hard. Just couldn't connect the dots to to make it fit.
01:02:23
>> Yeah, but this will not be the last time that we hear from McDuff in the in this
01:02:27
case. >> No, and this also will not be the last time that we hear we bring a serial
01:02:32
killer into the investigation. This investigation is really I mean, it this case doesn't go cold for quite some
01:02:39
time. The investigation's very hot. You're talking about a situation where we have almost 400 suspects.
01:02:47
We've had thousands of people interviewed, thousands of tips received. We've had people that have been
01:02:53
interrogated, questioned. >> Yeah, and these cases normally don't go cold because of the amount of pressure
01:02:58
that they're getting put on the departments from the communities. Yeah, and this case would ultimately see 50
01:03:04
confessions, right? And six of them being written confessions. So, we don't have time to you know, we got
01:03:10
to do this in part two, obviously, but we'll get into some of those confessions. We'll get into some of
01:03:15
these other suspects including more about McDuff and the other serial killer. >> All right, and we our recommended
01:03:21
reading for the week is Yes, our recommended reading for this week is Wolf Boys by Dan Slater. This is the
01:03:28
story of two American teens recruited as killers for a Mexican cartel and their pursuit by a Mexican-American detective
01:03:37
who realizes the war on drugs is unwinnable. Mhm. This is This is what it's like to be an
01:03:43
employee of a global drug trafficking organization. And this also talks about how a 15-year-old American boy goes from
01:03:52
being a star quarterback to a trained assassin. >> This case also takes place in Texas.
01:03:57
That's right. And and more specifically, the border town of Laredo, Texas, where,
01:04:02
you know, sometimes people grow up poor, the streets are dangerous, and sometimes
01:04:07
Mexican-American teenage boys would end up joining gangs like the Zetas, which is a drug cartel with roots reaching
01:04:13
back to the Mexican military. Wolf Boys is a true story. It's the true story of a couple of teenagers that
01:04:20
joined the Zetas. This is a brutal journey into the heart of the Mexican drug trade. And a good-natured teenager
01:04:28
turns into a feared assassin. So, pick up Wolf Boys by Dan Slater by going to our website truecrimegarage.com.
01:04:35
Click on the recommended page. You're going to see all kinds of books on there. And you can do that by going
01:04:40
through our Amazon banner. And we want to thank you for joining us in the garage today. Tomorrow, we'll pick up
01:04:45
right where we left off where where the detectives down in Austin City are hot on the track of finding who did this
01:04:50
horrific murder. And we're hot on the track and we're bringing you along with us. So, until tomorrow, be good, be
01:04:56
kind, and don't forget [Music] [Applause]