With no cameras in the courtroom the true crime community is relying on the few people that actually can get inside the tiny courtroom in Delphi, Indiana where Richard Allen is on trial for the murders of Abby Williams and Libby German for information. I am listening to the various accounts of people actually able to attend the trial and adding my own take on their take.

In this first episode I take about the 2 days that were used to select a jury.

Sources:

Lawyer Lee

Defense Diaries

Andrea Burkhart

Truth and Transparency- Lana

The Murder Sheet

Barbara MacDonald

Dave Bangert

In this episode I talk about the trial and conviction of the second defendant to be tried for the Austin Yogurt Shop murders, Michael Scott and the subsequent successful appeals of Michael Scott and Rob Springsteen.

Sources include:

Beverly Lowry, Who Killed These Girls?

Corey Mitchell, Murdered Innocents

Years after the murders 4 young men were arrested and 2 eventually would go to trial and be convicted. In this episode I discuss the first trial which would result in Rob Springsteen's conviction and death sentence.

Sources include:

Corey Mitchell, Murdered Innocents

Beverly Lowry, Who Killed These Girls?

The 4 suspects, Rob Springsteen, Mike Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn are all arrested. And in this episode I cover pre-trial motions, battles over the evidence, and the state's attempt to find some evidence against the accused other than those confusing confessions.

Sources include:

Beverly Lowry, Who Killed these Girls?

Corey Mitchell, Murdered Innocents

I have been talking about the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders. Four teenage girls were raped and murdered in closed frozen yogurt shop in Austin, Texas in 1991. After 8 years of investigation the police focus on 4 young men that were teenagers at the time of the murders. And even though all 4 men are completely innocent 2 of the men confessed to a crime that they didn't commit.

It's hard to understand that innocent people confess to crimes that they didn't commit. In an attempt to understand this phenomena in this episode I cover the Reid technique, a method of interrogation that manipulates a suspects mind.

But from the beginning there were problems with the Reid interrogation method. One of the first cases were the Reid technique was used was the questioning of Darrel Parker in relation to the death of his wife, Nancy Parker. Darrel confessed to killing his wife and it would not be until decades later that his name would be cleared after a serial killer confessed to Nancy's murder.

The New Yorker, The Interview, Douglass Starr

Chris Minor, WQAD8 for ABC, Quad City man gets justice 56 years after wrongful murder conviction

HEEDING THE LESSONS OF HISTORY: THE NEED FOR MANDATORY RECORDING OF POLICE INTERROGATIONS TO ACCURATELY ASSESS THE RELIABILTY AND VOLUNTARINESS OF CONFESSIONS Steven A. Drizin* & Marissa J. Reich**

Eight years after 4 teenage girls are found murdered in a burning Austin, Texas yogurt shop the police have focused their cold case invetsigation on 4 suspects that had been removed from the active suspect list almost immediately after they came under suspicion in the weeks after the murders.

With no evidence that implicates any of these suspects, no fingerprints, no DNA, no eyewitnesses the police focus on getting the suspects to confess. It works. 2 of the suspects confess and implicate each other and their 2 other friends in the murders.

In this episode I focus on the false confessions of Mike Scott and Rob Springsteen.

About 8 years after the murders of 4 teenagers in an Austin, Texas yogurt shop the police focus on 4 young men that where teenagers at the time of the murders. What put these guys on the police's radar? One young man had been found in the local mall with a gun a gun in his waistband 8 days after the murders. The teens had been inactivated as suspects earlier but after reviewing the casefiles the police refocus on the 4 young men, and they start by questioning Mike Scott who will wrongfully confess to a quadriple murder, setting into motion 2 trials and 2 wrongful convictions. And this whole time no one is looking for who really killed Eliza Thomas, Amy Ayers, and Sarah and Jennifer Harbison. Wrongful convictions hurt both the acused and the victims.

5 years after 4 teenagers are murdered at closing time at a yogurt shop on Austin, Texas the case is given a new lead investigator Paul Johnson. Johnson is assigned with going back into the files and seeing if there are any old leads that should be followed up on. He focuses on Maurice Pierce a teenager who was stopped at the mall near the yogurt shop just 8 days after the murders, Maurice was carrying a .22. All four victims had been shot with a .22.

Over the next few years the investigation focuses on Maurice and 3 of his teenage friends. Even when Maurice was first picked up at the mall he passed a lie detector test where he denied being involved in the murders and his .22 underwent ballistic testing that showed that it wasn't the murder weapon.