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Yogurt-shop murder suspect remains in jail

Family members say Springsteen faring well

 

Todd C. Frankel <tcfrankel@dailymail.com>

Daily Mail staff

 

Thursday April 13, 2000; 01:51 PM

 

The last time Robert Burns Springsteen was in West Virginia, he stood on the tarmac at Yeager Airport dressed in an orange prisoner's jumpsuit.

 

Texas Rangers and police detectives loosely surrounded him. He raised his shackled hands above his head and gave a thumbs-up gesture to his family before being loaded onto a turboprop plane headed to Texas.

 

Much has changed since that scene on a sunny day in November 1999.

 

Springsteen, a Charleston native, is now 25 years old. He has put on a few pounds, started to get a double chin, because he is locked in a Travis County, Texas, jail cell for 23 hours a day, family members say.

He has nothing to do but wait for his trial on a murder charge to begin.

 

"He's doing amazingly well considering the situation," said Brett Thompson, the young man's ex-stepfather, who helped raise him.

 

Springsteen is one of three men formally accused of killing four teenage girls at an Austin, Texas, yogurt shop in 1991. A fourth man is a suspect, but has not been indicted. All four suspects, who were teenagers at the time of the crime, claim they are innocent.

 

A trial date has not been set yet, although family members say authorities have indicated it would not come until October at the earliest. A hearing in Travis County court was scheduled for today to discuss pre-trial matters.

 

The slayings occurred on Dec. 6, 1991, just before closing time at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in an Austin strip mall. Jennifer Harbison, 17, and Eliza Thomas, 17, were working that night. Harbison's 15-year-old sister, Sarah, and Amy Ayers, 13, stopped by to visit. All four were shot and killed, at least one was raped, before the store was set on fire.

 

Police believe it was a botched robbery. Only $14 was stolen.

 

The case provoked outrage in Austin. But for years it went unsolved, despite the occasional popup of new suspects.

 

Then, on Oct. 6, 1999, Charleston detectives armed with a Texas arrest warrant burst through the door of Springsteen's home on Falcon Drive near Sissonville Road and took the young man away.

 

Arrested in Texas the same day were Maurice Earl Pierce, Michael James Scott and Forrest Brook Welborn. Only Welborn has not been indicted for the murders.

 

Police said the case had been cracked after Scott allegedly stated during an interview that he was involved in the crime. Authorities also claimed Springsteen acknowledged his role in the killings during a similar interview in Charleston.

 

Both men have recanted those statements.

 

Springsteen tried to fight extradition to Texas, but a Kanawha Circuit Court judge and the state Supreme Court ruled that he needed to plead his case in Austin.

 

This led to the scene at Yeager Airport last November.

 

Now, the man who once attended Stonewall Jackson Junior High School and Cabell Alternative School spends his days reading a lot and talking with a chaplain and family members, said his father, Robert Springsteen, who lives in Texas.

 

With a 20-minute phone call to the jail costing $16, Thompson and Robin Moss, Springsteen's wife, run up $300 monthly phone bills.

 

The ordeal has brought the families of the murder suspects closer. Thompson said he regularly phones and e-mails many of them. He even tried to have another suspect's parents, who live in Texas, visit Springsteen. But jail authorities turned them down.

 

It's been a struggle, Thomson said. "They're killing us."