01x04 - In Your Time

[bunniefuu]

REPORTER: After eight years
and no physical evidence

to tie any of the four men
to the murders,

why did the Austin police
focus on them?

Our job is to figure out
what the facts are.

I learned everything I could
about the crime scene.

As I started to read
Michael's written confession,

it was like,
"That didn't happen,

that's totally inaccurate."

This confession clearly

does not match
this crime scene.

Interrogation practice
can lead to a false confession.

JURY MEMBER: We, the jury,
find the defendant,

Robert Springsteen IV,
guilty.

PAUL JOHNSON: The only thing
we ever had on Forrest

was "party
to an aggravated robbery."

REPORTER 2: A Travis County jury
sentenced Michael Scott

to life in prison.

PAUL: Because Maurice
never confessed,

they didn't think
we had enough evidence

to assure a conviction.

The only reason Michael
and Robert come into play

is because of Maurice Pierce.

March of 2008, prosecutors
had been doing more DNA testing.

It is not any one
of these four boys.

You have to then explain
where does it come from.

Well, it comes from the k*ller.

CLAIRE HUIE: Rob and I
wrote letters back and forth

while he was
in Travis County Jail,

and, uh, he had a lot of time
on his hands

so he would write us
long letters,

and this is the first one
that he wrote to us.

"Dear Claire..."

♪ [GENTLE PIANO MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

"...when you're in jail,
time is weird.

Some days
a second takes all day,

and others a day takes seconds.

When you're in a cell,
23 hours a day,

time stretches to infinity.

I read a lot.

I read the whole Dune series.

That's probably
one of the greatest

sci-fi fantasy series around,
and I consider it a classic.

I'm not much into puzzles."

I think I sent him
some puzzle books or something.

"But I do listen to NPR,
although I prefer the BBC News.

I've used this situation to grow
into a better person

in the last nine
and a half years.

You can't see it

since you've only known me
for about a week,

but ask my mother
or even my father.

You may even have them on film
talking about this already.

I have no clue
what you've gotten so far.

I've grown in so many ways
it's impossible to explain.

Please write back soon.
Sincere best wishes, Rob."

That was his first letter,

um, and we wrote back and forth
a few times

before he got released on bond.
Yeah.

♪ [MUSIC FADES] ♪

♪ ["YOGURT SHOP MURDERS"
THEME MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

♪ I was living in a devil town ♪

♪ Didn't know
it was a devil town ♪

♪ Oh, Lord,
it really brings me down ♪

♪ About the devil town ♪

♪ I was living in a devil town ♪

♪ Didn't know
it was a devil town ♪

♪ Oh, Lord,
it really brings me down ♪

♪ About the devil town ♪

♪ [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

MICHAEL SCOTT:
To hear that my sentencing

had been overturned was huge.

Oh, man, it was...

I was-- I was standing
at my cell door when--

[STUTTERS]
'cause the officer comes to you,

'cause it doesn't come
at the normal time of mail.

Legal mail is different.

They bring it to you,
and I'm like, "Hey, what's this?

It's from
the Court of Criminal Appeals."

And I opened it up
and went, "Oh, wow!"

♪ [MUSIC CONTINUES] ♪

MICHAEL: What they overturned
our convictions on

was a Sixth Amendment violation

of a right
to confrontation, specifically.

In Springsteen's trial,

they took my written statement
and they had

an officer read parts
of it into the record.

In my trial, they took excerpts
out of his video interrogation.

The Constitution says,
"You have an absolute right

to confront your accuser."

I refused to get
on the stand at his trial.

He refused to get
on the stand at my trial.

So, where in there
were we allowed

to confront our "accusers"?

This was sort of
a gray area of the law.

And while this case
was on appeal,

the Supreme Court
of the United States

came down with a decision

that really totally
changed the law

and made it
much more black and white,

which got this case reversed.

REPORTER 1:
New developments today

in one of Austin's
most notorious crimes.

REPORTER 2: The Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals ruled

that Michael Scott got
an unfair capital m*rder trial

in Travis County.

REPORTER 3:
They say his confession

was improperly introduced
to jurors

and he didn't get
to face Robert Springsteen,

one of his accusers.

REPORTER 4:
Scott's and Springsteen's
convictions were overturned.

REPORTER 5:
The appellate court ruled that

the men's constitutional right
was violated.

Every time I hear those words

that their rights
were violated, I don't...

Our girls were m*rder*d.

PAUL JOHNSON:
The highest court in Texas

decided on a vote
of five to four.

So, four of the justices said,

"Nope, it didn't make
any difference,"

but it just takes a majority.

Five of them said it did,

so they're going back
for a new trial.

CLAIRE:

Six and a half, seven years.

That's a--
That's a rough guess...

on-- on that one.

CARLOS GARCIA: One of the things
that people don't get

is the sequence of events.

The crime happened in '91.

All right. In '99,

Michael Scott confesses,
Springsteen confesses.

Springsteen loses his case,
Scott loses his case.

One gets death, one gets life.

Seven years later, their--
both cases are reversed

and they come back
for new trials.

♪ [SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

PAUL: So the district attorney
decided

that since the confessions
indicate that the girls,

or at least one of the girls,
was r*ped,

they might find DNA evidence
to use for a new trial.

INVESTIGATOR:

ROB:

PAUL: At the first trial,
they had already done profiling,

and there was no foreign DNA
on those swabs.

That's because at the time
they needed globs of liquids.

But now, they tested it
by kind of a new technology

called Y-STR,

which can find much
smaller amounts of DNA.

The state had gotten knowledge
of this new Y-STR testing

and thought, "This could be it,
'cause now we're not allowed

to use these confessions
against each other.

We're going to prove
with science that he did it."

There's an X chromosome,
and there's a Y chromosome.

If you're XX, you're a female.
If you're XY, you're a male.

Y-STR, what it does
is it ignores the female DNA.

We get a call
from the judge's office saying,

"Hey, can you come
and meet right now?"

When we got there,

prosecutors said, "We have found

a full Y-STR profile
in Amy Ayers."

"And it doesn't match
any of your...

of your defendants.

Your two
or the other two, either."

♪ [MUSIC FADES] ♪

The most important thing
DNA stands for

is it's someone else.

It is not any one
of these four boys.

And so I suppose the state
of Texas now is going to say

that there were really five boys
there instead of four.

Never mind that is inconsistent
with the theories

they used to try them
the first time.

They thought they were going
to get a Y-STR result

and hammer the point home.

Instead, they got the truth
and they can't deal with it.

AMBER FARRELLY:
The theory comes up

by the state of Texas,
"Well, it must be contamination.

Something had to happen
to this sample."

It could be contamination

or it could be
another, uh, person involved.

♪ [TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

PAUL: So the crime scene
collection procedures

in 1991,

with the lab processing
procedures

and handling procedures.

Y-STR can pick up
cast-off skin cells.

So, anybody that had contact,
was even close to these swabs,

could have contaminated
the evidence.

ANGIE AYERS: You've got to think
of the crime scene.

And you've got, I don't know,

four inches of water
that has flooded.

You've got naked girls
on the floor with water.

It could be anything.
It could be...

I mean, it's a restaurant.

People are in there
all the time.

AMBER: So they began testing
every firefighter

that was there on the scene,
over 50 of them.

Any of the officers
that were there,

any other
law enforcement personnel,

the medical examiner.
They test Amy's father...

her brother...

anybody who else
that they think it could be.

After testing more than 200 men

who just even looked
at this body,

were anywhere near this body,

there's nobody else,

except for maybe somebody
that's not in this pile,

i.e., the real k*ller.

The idea that it could
be contamination, yes.

It's a possibility.
Is it probable? No.

A full profile inside
a vaginal swab of...

of the youngest victim?

No. That's not contamination.
That's your k*ller.

[ROADWAY NOISE]

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

Since the original trial
of this case,

new developments
in DNA technology

have become available.

Currently, it is clear to me

that our evidence in the death

of these four young women
includes DNA from one male

whose identity
is not yet known to us.

Given that,
I could not in good conscience

allow this case to go to trial

before the identity
of this male donor

is determined
and the full truth is known.

♪ [RISING TENSE MUSIC PLAYING] ♪

[CROWD CHEERING AND APPLAUDING]

♪ [MUSIC CONTINUES] ♪

JOE SAWYER: For the first time
in the history

of criminal justice
in the state of Texas,

two young men were released
on personal bond

on four counts
of capital m*rder.

I determined I couldn't keep

those defendants
in jail any longer,

so I let them out
on personal bond

and gave the state a deadline
to be ready to go to trial.

ROSEMARY: I remain confident
that Robert Springsteen

and Michael Scott
are both responsible

for the deaths
at the yogurt shop.

I can assure this community

that we're going to continue
to work on this case

until we take it to trial again.

First thing I told Robert

was that I was sorry
it took so damn long

for this day to come.

He hasn't been free
for over ten years.

The promise I made him
is that he's never going back.

We're going to win this case,

and I don't care
how that's done.

Trial, dismissal, whatever.

REPORTER 6: What does
it feel like to be out?

It's wonderful,
and I'd like to thank God

and my families and my attorney
for this opportunity. Thank you.

[CROWD CHEERS AND APPLAUDS]

REPORTER 7:
Knowing that it is a possibility

a match may never be found
doesn't bother this mom.

The case is still a good case.

We didn't need the DNA
in the first place.

They are going to pay every day
of their life.

[CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING]

And I would be, if I were them,

I would probably
just stay in the jail

where it's safer for them
because there's a lot of people

who are upset over this.

[INDISTINCT CHATTER]

This case is very simple.

It's about a bad interrogation

in which interrogators crossed the line

into using the kind of tactics
we know cause false confessions.

They suffer from something
called confirmation bias,

which means that they're looking

for any evidence of guilt
because that's what they already think.

So, this is Carlos Garcia,
and I think what he's doing here

is practicing his opening statement

for the retrial
that would have come up in,

I think it was 2008, 2009
he was doing this.

Trying to get Michael to remember details.

And Michael gets scared,
and he can't remember.

Well, he's going to start going,
"That's the g*n, ain't it?

Come on, tell me."

Michael will say, "Yeah, that's the g*n.
The g*n he shot the girls with."

Paul Johnson knew,
as he's watching on that videotape...

He's sitting in some other room close by,
watching this stuff go down.

And Paul Johnson knows
at that moment that that's not the g*n.

Because Paul Johnson had had it tested.

And the Austin Police Department
ballistics person says,

"It's very unlikely this g*n you have
is the g*n that k*lled those girls."

I don't think quite enough emphasis

had been put in the first trial
on the fact

that the g*n did not match,

that there was really no physical evidence
linking these boys to the crime.

APD knew that the g*n did not match,

even though they're indicating
in Michael Scott's interrogation

that they had the matching g*n.

In 17 years
since this crime was committed,

not one single atom
of physical evidence

connecting these boys
to that crime scene has ever been found.

Not one.

How long was that?

-Forty-eight minutes.
-Okay.

Yeah, that needs to be cut down
by 20 minutes.

Man.

In my own opinion, Johnson screwed it up.

Not only did he screw it up,
he hid things that did not fit.

So, every test from the lead,

from the b*ll*ts that were in the girls,
they can't say it really did come

from Maurice's g*n
or for sure that it didn't.

What Maurice had said was,

"This g*n that I was arrested
with is the g*n

that Forrest took to k*ll the girls."

But we have always known
that Maurice had access to other g*ns.

So, even though we couldn't
get a positive identification,

it still wouldn't have cleared Maurice
because we knew he had other g*ns.

This g*n that he was arrested with,

it would only be a match
if you believe Maurice.

I think I'm an honest person.

I tell the truth.

I think I'm honest in everything I do,

and I think my investigation
was done in an honest way.

And to me, the convictions confirmed
what I had always thought,

that not only had they done it,
but that we proved

beyond a reasonable doubt
that they had done it.

Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen

have walked into court dozens
of times before,

but this was the first time
they walked in as free men.

Both men have been out
of jail since June,

when State District Judge Mike Lynch
released them on bond,

and said prosecutors had to put up
or shut up by today.

Courtroom, come to order, please.
Everyone rise.

of Travis County is now in session.

The honorable Mike Lynch presiding.
You may be seated.

Good afternoon. We're on the record.

In August, the court issued an order

due to the unique nature
and circumstances of this case

that set today as a date
for the parties to announce to the court

whether or not they'd be ready
to begin a jury trial.

As the court is well aware,

the state is conducting testing
to identify the male donor

that we uncovered
through some Y-STR testing

from one of the vaginal swabs
of one of the victims in our case.

So because of that,
Your Honor, given the fact

that we have not yet
identified the male donor,

the state sees no other viable option
at this point, Your Honor,

but to file a motion with the court

for dismissal pending
further investigation

of this matter into the identity
of this male donor.

-Anything else from the state?
-No, sir.

Apparently having no objections,
the court will grant the motions

as to each indictment,
as to each of the two tenants.

When the state wasn't ready by that date
because of these evidentiary issues,

I pretty much forced them
to dismiss the case without prejudice.

I think we were just enforcing the law
and doing what was fair.

I can see how most everybody
is unsatisfied...

Excuse me.

...with there being
no final determination.

But I'm assuming the defendants

are very happy to be out of jail
and not under charge anymore.

Mr. Springsteen, can we talk to you?

No comment right now, please.

There is no victory here.

The primary question in this case
has still not been answered.

Who committed these crimes?

Where are those people?
And we need to find them.

But most of all, I think we should
reserve our sympathy and our concern

for the families of those girls.

You can go to court,
but you can't get justice.

All you get is the law.

Justice to you may be different
than justice to me

or anybody else down the street.

-Yeah.
-Justice may be revenge.

Make no mistake...

this was a difficult decision

and one I'd rather not have to make.

But I believe it is the best legal
and strategic course to take

to ultimately retry
both Springsteen and Scott.

There is no database
for this particular type of profile.

This is a Y-only profile,
and there's no database for that.

Can you talk about what this means
for the justice system?

Because either you've let
two murderers walk out of court today,

or the wrong guys have been locked up.

How should people have faith
in the justice system

when neither one of those
seems to be a good outcome, is it?

Twenty-four citizens of Travis County
have heard this case

and have convicted
both of these men before.

This is just a new turn of events.

We need to keep searching
for the donor of this DNA.

I don't, as I said, believe it would
be fair to give it to a jury now.

Just ask them to guess or surmise.

And so we'll wait.

-Congratulations.
-Thank you.

But just now you looked confident today.
You looked like... You looked confident.

So, this is his first day as a free man.

Mostly free, out of prison anyway.

You look great. I mean,
I think you look good.

I think you look healthy...

Even though the charges
have been dropped against you now,

you're very close to having
been exonerated in the public view.

I've not been exonerated.

My charges have only been dismissed.

So, I went...

kind of from one jail to another.

sh*t.

f*cking 100-dollar pair of pants
and the damn belt won't fit in the loops.

It wasn't an exciting thing
that I guess a lot of people

would think that it would be

because you can't not think about it.

There's always that question,
"Will I ever be exonerated?"

-Hi! It's nice to meet you.
-Producer with us.

Make yourselves at home.

I can start another pot of coffee.
We got Gatorade and Diet Dr. Pepper

-and, of course, water.
-Very sweet. We're good.

I think we just want to get
a little bit of B-roll,

just like sort of what are you doing
on a daily basis now?

This here is my kitchen, so to speak.

I've got a little toaster oven.
I've got a microwave.

I've got a skillet.

Robert Springsteen, now 35 years old.

He never expected to spend
the past ten years in prison.

There's been a lot of hoopla and madness
going on here the last several years

and I would like to get some
of the records set straight on this

and have the people know the truth.

Were your fingerprints ever found

-anywhere at the yogurt shop?
-No.

-Your blood?
-No.

-Your DNA?
-No.

-Any hair?
-No.

But he does have trouble explaining why,
after denying for hours he was involved,

that he finally confessed to the police.

How does that happen?

I don't know.

There's psychological aspects
to it that I don't understand.

In a way, yes, and in a way, no.

I've talked to several attorneys
and several experts,

and they've all said,
"You know, it can happen to anybody."

And people are just now really starting

to find out the truth
about false confessions

and coerced confessions.

Good? Yeah. k*ll him, Belle.

Hello, Miss Belle.

I've told you all the line, right?

That John Wisser asked me
what line of poetry

I would use to characterize
the end of my case.

And I told him
it was T.S. Eliot, you know?

I mean, it's dissatisfying.

It's simply over
because science doesn't have an opinion.

And here we sit.

And there you go, by God.

You want a cigar?

No, I'm good, thanks.

I was just talking
to Judge Lynch this morning.

I mean, this case is over,
but it's never gonna be over.

And that was one
of the things we talked about.

He asked about you
and I told him.

He thinks you're gone.

You know, I just said,
"You're in West Virginia and I told you

that you're never coming back to Texas."

The DA's office believes you're guilty.
The cops are almost rabid about it.

If they could catch you behind the wheel,
you would not make it out of Austin.

They would find a reason
to put you in jail.

That's what I'm saying.

Even if the charges were dropped,

it would be a sensational news story.

You know, yogurt shop defendant.
Belle, honest to God.

Belle, I am going to stick you...

No! No, I don't care what you think.

I really like Texas. I hate to leave,

but it's the best thing
to do right now, so...

Well, we don't know for sure that it is,

but it gives the appearance
of being pretty bad,

and we just don't want there to be
any issues, you know?

So it's better to be safe than sorry.

Eastbound N2. There's a parking lot here.

EMS 10-18,
I've got an officer down.

What started as a routine traffic stop
ended with the sh**ting death

of a man that had a history
with Austin police.

The officer managed
to fire a single round

that did strike the suspect.

We are discovering the man k*lled
was Maurice Pierce.

Police say Pierce ran
through a stop sign

and started jumping
over fences to get away

through this neighborhood.

When Wilson finally caught up with him...

The officer was attempting to control him
and get him in custody.

He said he felt something wet.

He realized that Maurice had gotten

the knife off of his belt
and had cut his throat.

Officer Wilson is in stable condition.

Minutes later,
neighbors called police,

saying the attacker was dead
in a yard down the street.

Maurice Pierce
is the name many Austinites know well,

connected to that infamous
yogurt shop murders.

Members of Pierce's family say

that past followed him,
saying he didn't trust police.

Senior Sergeant
of the homicide detectives,

the next morning, he called me
and I chewed his butt out.

I said, you should have come
and got me that night.

I don't want to hear Maurice Pierce dead.
I want to see Maurice Pierce dead.

What I had always hoped
was going to happen,

that we would get evidence

to get him to trial,
and it'd be for capital m*rder,

and he would get a life sentence.

So when

I found out that he had been k*lled,

it really didn't bother me,
which may sound harsh, but it's true.

Over the years,
Maurice Pierce kept talking to the cops,

like, they'd interview him,
and he would always talk to them.

Pierce was always afraid of the cops.

They kept bothering him,
'cause he was always that prime suspect.

Johnson would go up and bother him
and talk to him, and he would always talk.

Pierce died because of his PTSD.

I have no doubt.

If Maurice Pierce doesn't decide
to take a g*n to the mall

on December 15th 1991,
he'd still be alive

and none of us would be here
right now talking about this.

I try not to keep
a lot of cop stuff in my house.

I take my shoes off at the front door,
just try to leave it as much as possible.

But then I come home and work from home
for a couple hours every day.

So I guess it's kind of a moot
in some sense.

When I was in the homicide division,
I solved a hundred percent of my cases.

I left there with no open casework.

Maybe I jinxed myself,
came over here and like,

"Oh, you think you're good?
Well, here's yogurt shop."

O.J. Simpson, he needed a ton
of blood for DNA back then.

That's when DNA became kind
of a household thing,

was the Simpson trial.

And now we're talking picograms,

which is like a thousandth
of a nanogram,

that you can't even see
with the naked eye.

And it seems like
each time you talk to these labs,

they're able to do more with less.

Be real careful.

There you go.

So this is reconstructed
from the crime scene photos and video.

And, of course, this is the front
where all the customers would sit

and then the back where the fire started
and the girls were.

That is the first thing we see
'cause we have all the girls up here

with a biography about each one.

And this is...

Yeah, it's the first thing
you see every morning.

So, it's a reminder
that these girls have histories,

have families, have faces and had lives.

And it's not just a case.

It's much more than that.

We have some of the original
yogurt shop material here.

These two filing cabinets
is full of original material.

And then there's multiple other
filing cabinets at a different location.

So, just again,
the vastness of this case,

this is only a portion
of some of the hard copies.

Here it is. So we still
have all the original VHS.

I mean, this is interviews,
this is in-car camera,

this is like the original VHS,

and I guess if we wanted to watch it,
we'd have to find a VHS player somewhere.

So we have this unknown DNA,

and I gotta figure out who that is.
That's goal number one.

It could be contamination,
or it could be another person involved.

What's the probability
that it's contamination?

We have the original '08 profile
that went to one lab.

And then as early as 2017 and 2019,

we're finding that profile
in other places.

A different-- totally different lab.

And totally different,
unrelated pieces of evidence.

So how would you have contamination

when you've got different areas
of the crime scene,

different people with different
chains of custody,

and these items going to different labs
in different time periods?

It would be like winning
the lottery repeatedly,

like the chances of somehow
samples that are unrelated

and handled by different people
in different labs

at different time periods
somehow got contaminated

by the same male profile?

That does not exist.

So, I suppose the state
of Texas now is going

to say that there were really five boys
there instead of four.

It's not contamination by, like,
lab personnel or anybody on the scene,

but to say that that is our fifth person,

or it shows that the four
were not there at all,

it's some other person, like,

until we figure out
who that profile belongs to,

like, that's just speculation.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

-Yeah.
-I'm...

staying out of it until I figure out
who that person is.

It could come back to somebody
totally unrelated to this case,

like their DNA got transferred
for a totally normal reason, right?

Like a friend or something.

Or it may be a complete dead end.
We still don't know.

We can't think of DNA as proving
guilt or innocence.

DNA is something that says,
"I have a sample

and I may be able to tell you
who is the source of this sample

or who's not a contributor of the sample."

But how it got there, when it got there,

that's up to the whole investigation
and all the other factors in that.

Anytime you do a DNA test,

you have to take some
of the sample and use it.

Once we use it, it's no longer there.

So when you have a DNA sample
and there's very little,

you may only have one shot at it
'cause you may have to use all of it up.

And then there's
no going back after that.

Here they got a Y profile
from Jennifer Harbison.

In a lot of ways,
you're pushing the envelope here

to cutting-edge technology,
if not bleeding-edge technology.

So we don't know
if this is going

to get the answer we want,
which is something,

or it's going
to just be a waste in that

because no one's done this
on this kind of work before.

It's a last effort because
there's nothing else the case can use

to try to solve the m*rder.

Okay, so we, y'all,
we're going to call, bear with us,

because I'm sorry,
we may be able to solve crimes,

but we can't solve technology,
just saying.

All right, so this is my crew
right back here. I told you about.

And they're all so excited to meet you

'cause I've been bragging on you.

Okay, we have a bunch of questions,

but I think that where we want
to start is,

what would you do different,
knowing what you know today?

I would have continued investigating

the creek people,

Mac and the people that were hanging out
in the creek there with Mac.

Not to look at them as suspects,
but just to get any other information

because there were
tons of tips about Maurice.

Under the bridge where these people
were hanging out,

that's where Maurice told Polanco
they're storing the communal g*n.

This communal g*n is what we suspect
would've been the .380.

I never knew that all that was said.
That is insane. Yeah.

I don't even know how to respond to that.

But, I mean, you know, we said the guy,

Mace, who lived in North Cross Apartments
with his mom, I mean,

he's got to be talking about me.

Yes, I would have been in this apartment,
but on the other side.

This exactly?

I don't know that anybody else lived
in North Cross Apartments

with their mom that was me, you know,

"skinhead," whatever.

I never thought I'd be back
here again. This is...

Yeah, I feel like
my childhood's coming to haunt me.

I feel like this was the spot.

Yeah, the yogurt shop's what,
a two-minute walk right over there?

What is it, a couple thousand yards?
I mean, really, really close.

The mall is just on the other side
of these apartments, pretty much.

But I feel like
there's been a lot of erosion.

I think it was...

I think we would have just
been down here to hide and drink beer.

-Yeah.
-That's it.

-That is complete horseshit.
-I've been asked about that.

That is so ludicrous.

And they also asked me
for a current DNA sample

'cause I think they said
they lost the original one, so...

So number one,
we didn't have money, right?

So, if we had the money
to purchase said g*n,

we weren't leaving it in the creek.

So, this idea of some shared community g*n
is absolute absurdity.

I think we had a lot of bravado

and we wanted to be tough and cool,
but we weren't.

You know. We weren't evil.
We never hurt anybody.

And yeah.

In my experience,
people don't want to hear

that there's inherently
evil people in the world

and that the vast majority of us

are neither good nor evil,
but we'll kind of go whatever way,

which may in part explain
what happened up there, right?

Somebody was evil
and somebody went along.

I think the part I struggle with
is how did

that person who went along
never, ever spill the beans, right?

How did they never, ever come clean?

Because yeah, somebody was evil,

but I tend to believe people
will kind of go whatever way.

I don't ever want
to be one of those people.

Everyone, I think a really nice,
good circle all the way around.

Everybody join hands, please.

We thank you, man up above.

We are so grateful you've brought us here.

We ask that you keep
everybody here healthy

and that today we find
some peace and closure.

-In Jesus's name, amen.
-Amen.

Let's pull this away because the capsule,
I could tell, is there

because look, watch.

-Oh yeah.
-So, it's there.

So, let's move this over there.
Be careful.

We'll put it back where it was.

-Was it concrete or was it a box?
-I can't remember.

I remember them doing it.

There's something there.
I don't know what it is.

I don't know if that's it or not.

-You don't remember?
-I don't remember.

-That year was a whole fog.
-Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know.

With all these roots here,
I don't think it's going to be here.

I don't either. Maybe it's over here.

-I wonder if it's under here.
-Doesn't make any sense...

Yes, she thinks it was off to the side
of the courtyard.

And even the parents
are not very sure,

so do you think you know?
Can you help me?

"Best buds always," yeah.

Amy Ayres, 2/21/92,
Mr. Sun's yearbook sponsor.

Here we go.

-There we go. Damn!
-Watch out.

-Oh man. What a mess.
-Newspaper.

Something's in a plastic bag in there.

Bring that trash can over here and we...

The ribbons? That's off the tree.

-Oh, wow.
-That's what those are.

The ribbons off the tree
when they planted it. Uh-huh.

I do see some names there.

Yeah, they tied them
on there when they planted it.

-We will not forget.
-Right.

This was the box.

I think it's nice for them to know
that they weren't alone in all of it,

even if they felt that they were.

'Cause it's obvious that a lot
of people really loved her

and thought of her a lot.

That's her.

Because one time
when we were at elementary school,

I don't know if she ever...

If it dries out,
you can tell more about it.

I remember not knowing pieces of it,

but I feel like I've always
known about it.

At my grandparents' house,
they have a pillow and it has her on it.

And I'd always wonder who she was.

And then they have a whole hallway,
and the whole hallway

has a bunch of different things
with her on it.

I don't know, you see how it affects them.

Dad doesn't really talk about it a lot.

It's usually Mom yelling
at people about it, but...

I don't know, you kind
of wonder how they'd be,

how he'd be, if it hadn't happened.

Well, another chapter closed.

There's so many ways
the loss of my sister, 30 years later,

shows up in my adult life.

My name is Sonora, and I'm a therapist.

I'm in private practice in Massachusetts.

One thing that really drew me
to this kind of work

is that I've spent so much
of my life trying to heal.

In the very beginning
when you lost your child,

I want to look at a little bit

about what that initial experience
was like for you.

I think there's benefit
to telling the story

in different settings, in different ways.

I wanted to give you
a chance to write a letter to your child.

It could be what's happening
in your life in this moment.

But I don't think the trauma
ever loses its potency.

Like when you ask me,
"Can I remember the yogurt shop?"

Like, I can feel my body changing

when I have that memory, you know?

And so... I don't--
You know, that may never change.

Well, it's 31 years
and we're still talking about this stuff,

and I try not to.

Quite frankly, I probably wouldn't have

-if I weren't talking to you.
-Right.

But I needed that connection with you.

Yesterday, we were talking about

living through this experience,
you begin to know

things that other people don't know.

And I don't think it works
that way for everybody.

No.

Because some people

that I know in my family
became more cynical.

I can't quite find the words for it,

and I've been trying to find
the words for myself too,

like, why these tragic experiences
opened me up to love people more.

Because it could do the opposite.

By the way, they both happen.

Yeah, tell me about that.

-Both of those things happen.
-Yeah.

You do get really bitchy
and cynical about stuff,

but then you also,
you feel like you're on the other side.

You got closer to the love.

It's amazing the tools that we have to use
to heal ourselves, and we rarely use them.

We get so close to the pain
that it's more comfortable to be there

than it is to go to the light,
to where the freedom is.

Yeah, I hear that a lot
in the trauma groups that I work with.

"I don't like this,

but I'm afraid I don't
know what else there is.

And this is something that I know.
I know how to do this.

I know how to hold on to this pain.

I know how to live with this pain."

I have this saying that when I die

I hope I'm brave
and that I can jump into it.

I want the freedom to fall
into that next thing, whatever that is.

-Right, to let go of the fear.
-Let go of the fear.

I think one of the hard things,
and I'm realizing 30 years later,

is figuring out how to live your life

and live the life you want
to live after all this.

You know, not that you shouldn't care,

not that you shouldn't,
whatever, but you know you gotta

figure out what you love to do
and what you want to do.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's really hard.

But I think it's very important.
I mean, I went back to school

ten years on.

Went into engineering, which I love.

And I think the hard part

with homicide is you get tied
into the whole investigation.

Right.

And is it good? Is it bad?
Did somebody screw up? Blah, blah, blah.

You know, it wasn't
until I went to an actual

focused grief group
that I really liberated myself.

And I was invited because my dad
had died that year.

And it's like, well,
that was pretty trivial.

I hate to say it. He was 85.
He'd been sick for a long time.

I spent the whole grief group
talking about Eliza.

And that was very liberating,
to actually focus on the grief.

And I think you deny
that in the homicide stuff.

-Right.
-Which is all necessary.

-But it's not necessary for us to do it.
-Not necessary for me to do it.

-Yeah.
-Right.

I agree with that so much

because we thought
we were doing the right thing

to be in public with this

because we needed
to keep it out in the public

so that we would still have the support

of the community
and they could love us

and help us find these people.

You know, every time anything happened,
we had cameras.

And as time goes on,
it takes a toll on you.

It's been 31 years.

I would not do it the same way.

I would retreat

and go far away and have
some quiet time with God.

But the thing that we have
to be careful about,

because ours has been so public,

most people don't have the support
of the community.

Their brother gets k*lled
and no one ever speaks to them about it.

They don't use his name anymore.

You need that love.
You need to be held when you're suffering.

That was the double-edged sword
of the public.

We got a lot of attention early
because it was hot news.

Four white girls got k*lled.

And the case, well, we don't
know about the case.

What do we know about the case?

Whatever they tell us,
we take it for face value.

Because it's...

Yeah, I would have taken
a step back a little bit more,

I think, but I felt such an obligation
to carry this thing out.

Okay.

-These two?
-Just us two.

-Actually, no, y'all two.
-She needs a wide lens from just us.

Wasn't he sweet? He's so good.

I knew I was better if I did it.

Yeah, and when he wants
to share what his experience is--

-And he did.
-But he's scared, yeah.

-I was glad. It made me feel good.
-Yeah, I know. I'm so glad. Yeah.

I just...

Just put all this away for a while.

It's been a tough couple of days
just to get going through all this again.

But I love you and I appreciate
the opportunity to do it.

You have given me a huge gift.

By talking to me the last few days,
I cannot thank you enough.

I learned so much from you.

-I hope all this helps somebody.
-It helps me.

-That's the only person I care about.
-Yeah, it helps me a lot.

I'm just so grateful that you're sharing
your experience with me.

I don't have my mom to talk to,
but I can talk to you.

Well, one crazy-a*s old lady
to the next one.

-It should blend really well.
-Right? Yeah, exactly.

It should be the same person.

Right.

-All right. Are y'all done with this?
-Did you get the wide shot?

All right, we're here.

It's just hard to see.

The pictures on the wall,
these are some of the cases

that we've solved over the years.

How old were some
of the cases? Very old?

Yeah, most of them
are from the '80s and '90s.

I'm sure you've heard
the same different kind of spiel

from every detective for the last 30 years
about "we're working hard," you know,

"we're working on it,"
and I'm just the newest guy,

but I want you to know that
I'm throwing everything I can at this.

The DNA is really the crux
of where we're going with it.

We're continuing to reevaluate
every piece of evidence

because what may have been

untestable a few years ago
because of what it's made of,

or its condition, or whatever,

may or may not be something we can do now.

We've got a finite amount.

It's my decision as the lead detective,
but I'm not making it alone.

I'm bringing in people way smarter
than me when it comes to DNA.

Some of the experts across the country
that provide advice to make sure

that when we move forward

with trying to test something or trying

to use some DNA up,
that we're at the best odds.

And if we don't have great odds,
then we'll just hold on for a little bit.

If there's any questions
you have for me,

of course, I'll be happy
to answer them best I can.

It's nice to get some...

some info.

We've said this over the years

is that it was always nice
to have fresh eyes on it.

We can communicate as family members
and police department

and hopefully solve this
at the end of the day.

I'm very hopeful.

I am confident that technology
is moving at a pace

that we will be at a point
where we can take a sample to a lab,

items that were unable
to be tested before,

with a realistic expectation
of developing a profile sooner than later.

We are going to solve this case someday.
I want the public to know that.

You'll have your own pain
and your own way and your own time.

You don't need to visit this one.

At a certain point, the project ends

and, hopefully, the film
is finished and you let go.

This was a different kind of thing
because I didn't finish.

It was really complicated.

I couldn't see all the angles,
all of the storylines,

all of the people.

So, the basic feeling
was a feeling of failure.

And the larger feeling was just
that I had let people down.

I felt like I had let people down,

you know, who gave me a lot of trust.

But I knew that it was worth preserving.

And I'm glad that this footage
is finding a home

that feels like a way

of honoring the folks
that let me film them.

As the years go on,

it's still sitting out there unsolved.

I used to hide every December 6th.

Couldn't find me. I'd take off work,

even when I was still at PD,
and I did when I was at Metro.

December 6th, you couldn't find me.

And I was off in a corner by myself.

It's my version, I guess,
of a day that will live in infamy.

Yeah, I mean, and it'll probably
be that way as long

as it's still unsolved.

Sometimes, I think I have a memory,
but it's a photograph,

and it's a photograph
that I've seen many times,

and I sort of create a story around it.

I don't think it matters whether
the memory's accurate or not,

because it's your memory.

So, you’re asking, how do we deal
with traumatic memories

and change them or heal them, right?

So, yeah, there is like this big school
of thought that says like,

"We just tell the story
over and over and over again."

But I think some
other things need to happen

in telling that story
over and over and over again.

I think we need to have
a lot of support in doing that.

And to have the compassion
of other human beings around us

as they're witnessing our story.

There's a real benefit for both teller
and audience member to telling that story

and to hearing that story.

I think that can change
how the memory lives inside of you.

Look, there's Eliza!