- www.texas-justice.com
- [Austin American Statesman]
- Austin 360 news Friday, October 22
- Bail reduced for 2 yogurt shop suspects
- By Laylan Copelin
• Friday, October 22, 1999 [Image]
Trying to persuade a suspect to admit to the 1991 killings of four girls at a yogurt shop, Austin police recently arranged a surprise meeting at the crime with another suspect they say had confessed.
Police testified Thursday that they already had videotaped confessions from two suspects, Rob Springsteen Jr. and Mike Scott, when they staged a surprise meeting between Scott and Forrest Welborn at the North Austin shopping area where the yogurt shop had been.
Police had been questioning Welborn on and off for years. "We believed Forrest had additional information," Detective Ron Lara testified Thursday at a bail reduction hearing for Welborn and Maurice Pierce, the fourth suspect in the killings. "We decided if he was taken over there, he'd remember some events." Police took Welborn, who was not under arrest at the time, from his Lockhart business to the old yogurt shop site on West Anderson Lane without telling him Scott would be there. However, Lara testified, the effort didn't work.
The meeting, described in court Thursday, is one of few our newsroom details police have made public in their investigation. The four suspects were arrested two weeks ago. But police have been unusually tight-lipped about the case, and little is known about how, after eight years, they decided to charge four suspects whom they considered early in the investigation. All were teen-agers at the time of the crime.
Thursday, state District Judge Jeanne Meurer reduced the bail for Welborn and Pierce after three hours of testimony and arguments. She reduced Welborn's $1 million bail to $375,000, and Pierce's $1.5 million to $750,000. According to testimony from their families, the two are unlikely to be released on bail any time soon. Both families, who were seeking much lower bail, said they could not raise that much money. The suspects would have to put up at least 10 percent of the new bail amounts to get bonds for release.
Previously, the police in sworn documents said they believe Pierce, Springsteen and Scott killed the girls during a Dec. 6, 1991, robbery while Welborn stayed outside with the car. Thursday's hearing provided new details about the continuing investigation into the killings. Among them:
* Any physical evidence that could tie the four suspects to the crime is still being analyzed at the state crime lab.
* Police think Welborn fled from the car sometime during the crime, Lara testified. But the detective said the other three suspects picked up Welborn in the parking lot as they left.
* Investigators questioned all four of the suspects soon after the killings. Previously, the police had said only that they talked to Pierce and Welborn when Pierce was arrested, eight days after the killings, while carrying a .22-caliber revolver in Northcross Mall. Police say a .22 -caliber revolver was one of two guns used in the killings.
* Pierce was given a polygraph in 1991 because he told police the gun was the murder weapon, although he said he had loaned it to Welborn the night of the killing. Lara, who was not part of the 1991 investigation, testified that Pierce may never have been asked if he was the killer because detectives considered him a possible witness, not a suspect. Investigators in 1991 assumed Pierce was lying, and ballistics apparently could not tie the gun to the crime.
* Detectives told Pierce and Welborn they would be arrested weeks before the arrests happened. Pierce's wife, Kimberli Pierce, testified today that they were told of his impending arrest after he submitted to hypnosis in a Dallas lawyer's office.
For the rest of the hearing, prosecutors and defense lawyers sparred over the pasts of the two accused men. Lara cited every brush with school and law enforcement authorities, from unsubstantiated allegations that Welborn made bomb threats as a student to Pierce being a suspect in a car theft. Defense lawyers argued police have two suspects with only minor convictions.
Guillermo Gonzalez, Pierce's attorney, said his client's only adult record was a conviction for driving while intoxicated, for which he served probation. Welborn's only adult offenses were driving with a suspended license and not paying several traffic warrants, said his attorney, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez.
Under cross-examination, Lara admitted Welborn has no criminal history indicating violence.
Both lawyers argued for lower bail amounts because neither man had fled, even though police had been questioning them about the crime off and on for almost eight years. Even after they were told they would be arrested, Gonzalez said, "They weren't going anywhere. They hadn't gone anywhere for eight years."
Prosecutors rebutted that the likelihood of flight increased once the two were arrested and understood the consequences of the capital murder charges. If convicted, Welborn and Pierce, both juveniles at the time of the crime, could face life imprisonment.
Scott and Springsteen could face the death penalty if convicted because they were 17 and legally considered adults. They are being held without bail.
You may contact Laylan Copelin at lcopelin@statesman.com or 445-3617.
presented by The Austin American-Statesman and Austin360.com
All rights reserved. | © Copyright 1999 | ©