Timeline for yogurt-shop murders case

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The two suspects in the 1991 murders of four teenage girls at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop walked free Wednesday afternoon after spending more than a decade in jail.

Accompanied by their attorneys and family members, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott were met by intrusive heat and a dozen news cameras as they took their first free steps in more than 10 years just outside the doors of the Travis County Jail at 500 W. 10th St.

The men will await their retrial with their families and friends instead of behind bars after District Judge Mike Lynch ruled Wednesday morning the prosecutors in the yogurt-shop murders could postpone the trial for the suspects, allowing them to leave jail on a personal recognizance bond.

Springsteen and Scott are accused of killing four teenage girls at a North Austin yogurt shop in December 1991. Much of the evidence at the crime scene was destroyed when the perpetrators set it on fire.

The following is a timeline for the case surrounding the yogurt shop murders in December 1991:

Yogurt-shop murder case timeline

December 6, 1991: Police find four teenage girls bound, gagged and burned, some atop each other, at the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop on Anderson Lane. They were later determined to have been raped and murdered. All were friends, two were sisters and one of the girls worked there. They were closing up for the night before it happened.

• Amy Ayers, 13
• Sarah Harbison, 15
• Jennifer Harbison, 17
• Eliza Thomas, 17

December 1991: Police discover a gun on Maurice Pierce that became a catalyst for pursuing the four defendants in the case.

September 9, 1999: Michael Scott talks to police and is interrogated for more than 18 hours, and police say his confession explains it all: The boys were trying to rob the yogurt shop when it turned deadly. Scott implicates Springsteen, who points the finger back at Scott later. (Defense attorneys will later allege investigators fed Scott details that he repeated under pressure, including how he held the gun to the girl’s head. Defense attorneys claim it is a coerced confession.)

September 14, 1999: Michael Scott gives police a written statement about what happened at the yogurt shop the night of the murders.

October 6, 1999: Community and national pressure builds, but police arrest four suspects in connection with the case nearly eight years after the crime and hundreds of suspects throughout the years, including “devil worshippers” and so-called “people in black.” Police arrested the men in the following places:

• Michael Scott in Austin
• Robert Springsteen in Charleston, W. Va.
• Maurice Pierce in Lewisville, Texas
• Forest Welborn in Lockhart, Texas

December 14, 1999: After a five-hour videotaped interview confession from Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott’s written statement, District Judge Jeanne Meurer is convinced the there is probable cause and certified Maurice Pierce and Forest Welborn as adults. Robert Springsteen is indicted on four counts of capital murder.

December 28, 1999: Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott and Maurice Pierce are indicted on capital murder charges.

May 2, 2000: The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms released a report finding the gun discovered on Maurice Pierce in December 1991 was probably not the murder weapon after all. Officers begin scouring the Colorado River under the Loop 360 bridge , looking for the gun that both Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen said may have been dumped the night of the murders. In the nine years since the murders, six floods have washed out the river.

May 16, 2000: Det. Paul Johnson says an APD ballistics expert told him back in January 1999 that Maurice Pierce’s .22-caliber gun was almost certainly not the murder weapon.

June 30, 2000: A Texas Department of Public Safety report shows that none of the boys’ DNA was found at the crime scene, even after testing for rape, checking fingernails and examining mucus found under one of the girls. Judge Jon Wisser throws out all four charges against Forest Welborn, and Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle drops the case against Welborn after two grand juries fail to indict him.

May 2001: A Travis County jury convicts Robert Springsteen of the murders and sends him to death row.

September 2002: Jury convicts Michael Scott and sentences him to life in prison.

January 2003: Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle says there is not enough physical evidence or testimony to keep Maurice Pierce in jail or to warrant a trial, and all charges against Pierce are dropped. Pierce is set free and moves out of Austin.

June 2005: Because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled convicted killers 17 years old and younger cannot be executed, Gov. Rick Perry commutes Robert Springsteen’s death sentence to life in prison.

May 2006: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturns Robert Springsteen’s capital murder conviction on the basis that he never got to confront his accuser in court,