AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge on Thursday declared four men who were wrongfully accused of the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders innocent, formally clearing their names in a courtroom for the first time since the killings of four teenage girls that haunted the city for decades.
“You are innocent," state District Judge Dayna Blazey said during a hearing in a packed Austin courtroom.
The declaration closed a dark chapter for the men and their families, and for a city shaken by the brutality of the crime and investigators' inability to solve it. Blazey called her order "an obligation to the rule of law and the obligation to the dignity of the individual.”
Cold case detectives announced last year that they had connected the killings to a suspect who died in a 1999 standoff with police in Missouri.
Two of the four original suspects, Michael Scott and Forrest Welborn, were in the packed courtroom with family members to hear prosecutors tell the judge that they are innocent. Robert Springsteen, who was initially convicted and spent several years on death row, did not attend. Maurice Pierce died in 2010 in a confrontation with police after a traffic stop.
“Over 25 years ago, the state prosecuted four innocent men ... (for) one of the worst crimes Austin has ever seen,” Travis County First Assistant District Attorney Trudy Strassburger said at the opening of the hearing. “We could not have been more wrong.”
A declaration of “actual innocence” could also be a key step for the men and their families if they seek financial compensation for years they spent incarcerated or struggled to live under a cloud of suspicion.
“My son's name has finally been cleared after more than 25 years of being called the monster, the murderer and everything else,” said Phil Scott, Michael Scott's father. “Son, be proud.”
Killings shocked Austin and confounded investigators
Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, ages 17 and 15, were bound, gagged and shot in the head at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” store where two of them worked. The building was set on fire.
Source: WPLG
