Foursome left town after slayings, suspect says

By Leah Quin American-Statesman Staff

Posted: Dec. 3, 1999

One of the yogurt shop slaying suspects told police that all four of the accused were together the day after the crime, although a police report indicates he may be mistaken about the time, according to court testimony Thursday.

Forrest Welborn told detectives that he, Maurice Pierce, Robert Springsteen IV and Michael Scott traveled to San Antonio on Dec. 7, 1991, in a stolen Nissan Pathfinder. On the way, they bought a newspaper and read an account of the Dec. 6 slayings of four teen-age girls in an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt store in North Austin.

Welborn and Pierce were juveniles at the time of the killings. The state is seeking to have them tried as adults.

Austin police detective John Hardesty testified during the adult-certification hearing Thursday that he believed the suspects stole the Nissan the night of the slayings and left town. However, a police report indicates the theft happened between 8 p.m. Dec. 7 and 9 a.m. Dec. 9.

Welborn's lawyer, Robert Icenhauer-Ramirez, asked Hardesty if he could be wrong about his theory of the crime, since the report indicates that Welborn was mistaken about the date.

"That's how the report reads, yes," Hardesty replied. "But I can't discount what he said happened on the night of the sixth."

In videotaped interviews played Thursday in court, detectives questioned Welborn about his inability to remember where he was between the time he left Northcross Mall about 9 p.m. and the time he said he saw firetrucks at the nearby yogurt store.

Fire engines didn't arrive at the store until nearly midnight, when a police officer noticed the store was burning. The girls' bodies were found in the back of the store.

Detectives have testified this week that they know of no physical evidence linking Pierce and Welborn to the crime scene.

However, on Wednesday, detectives served search warrants on all four suspects, asking for blood and hair samples. The warrant said evidence had been collected from the scene and the victims' bodies that could be compared to the suspects' DNA.