Murdered Innocents (18 page)

“Yes.”

“Where did you shoot her?”

“I shot her in the head. I had her on the ground facing—I had to have shot her in the head. Right in the face.”

“In the face,” repeated Merrill. “You’ve got to pull that trigger, Michael. You will not be able to get rid of all that screaming, all the smell of the lighter fluid, all the smell of burning flesh.”

“I remember I shot her in the head.” Scott started to cry again. “I pointed the gun and I closed my eyes and I pulled the trigger.”

Smoke break. All three men left the room.

 

 

Scott returned. Three minutes later, Merrill and Meyer entered the interview room.

Scott spoke again.

“I remember Robert off to my right. He had the Hispanic girl (possibly referring to the dark-skinned Eliza Thomas, who was not Hispanic). He had her up on her—he was fucking her from behind. I remember her giving him a hard time. She’s fighting. She’s moving.”

“And you’re trying to get your wanger up to have sex with this girl?” asked Merrill.

“Yes. And I can’t do it.”

“You bump her, but you don’t get it in?”

“I don’t get it in.

“He does her. I want to say he shoots her in the back of the head. It wasn’t Maurice who handed me the gun. It was Robert who handed me the gun. He hands me the gun. I look at the gun. I point at her head and I close my eyes and I shoot. I open my eyes and I see red.”

The conversation returned to Scott’s current status. “There is no point in me running,” Scott assured the officers. “There is no place in this fucking world that I can hide from y’all. If I wanted to, I can disappear. I can disappear into the woods, if I wanted to. That’s not what I’m going to do. There’s no point in running.”

“You’ve been brutalized here for a couple of days here,” Merrill told him.

“Yeah, but that’s y’all’s job. And it’s what I deserve right now. I have no animosity for you guys.”

 

 

The interview ended and the lights were turned out in the room.

 

Detective Robert Merrill tracked down Robert Springsteen IV in Charleston, West Virginia. He located Springsteen’s supposed address. He, Detective Ron Lara, and Sergeant John Neff hopped on a plane with the intention of questioning Springsteen in regard to the yogurt shop murders. They arrived on September 14.

The following morning, Merrill contacted Detective Eric Hodges, of the Charleston Police Department (CPD). Merrill and Hodges drove to the 900 block of Bridge Street and got out of Hodges’s unmarked police car, walked up to the front door and knocked.

No one answered.

The detectives decided to contact the local Kroger grocery store where Springsteen worked. They asked for Springsteen’s most current address. The two officers got back in the vehicle and drove over to the 2200 block of Falcon Street. Again they got out of the car and walked up to the front door. Merrill had a gun secured away in his fanny pack.

They knocked on the door.

Springsteen answered the door. Not the front door, where the knock came from, but rather the side door.

The officers walked around to the side of the house. They introduced themselves to the young man. They asked if he would talk with them at the police station. He agreed.

Springsteen was dressed in a dark button-down shirt, a “wife beater” undershirt, a dark baseball cap, and a belly pack. He used the rest room and called his wife. After he spoke to her, he came outside and left with the two officers. He was not under arrest, nor was he handcuffed.

The three men arrived at the CPD and went inside. They entered the elevator and rode it to the second floor. The officers asked Springsteen to wait in the lobby, which he did, unattended, for almost fifteen minutes.

Merrill eventually returned to the lobby and asked Springsteen if he would follow him into the interview room. Springsteen readily agreed. Merrill, joined by Lara, entered the nondescript room. Springsteen joined them.

The officers immediately told him they wanted to interview him in regard to the yogurt shop murders. He nodded his head.

The detectives inquired about Springsteen’s background. He had two stepchildren and a stepgrandson. He and his wife, Robin Moss, lived in a 109-year-old cabin. He worked in chemical plants. He was born in South Heights, Chicago. His parents were divorced. He told the officers that he liked to “fish, hunt, PlayStation. A game called Mud. Zork. Beyond Zork.”

Springsteen said his grandfather had retired from IBM. His father was a contract computer programmer. “Uncle owns his own consulting company out in Tase Valley. My other uncle, he’s the head of the auto CAD design department for corporate K mart.”

He told the detectives that he did not have many friends in West Virgina. His best buddy was a man named Roy Rose. Actually, Rose was his only friend. He recalled how he and his wife celebrated their wedding anniversary with Roy and Charlene Rose on Eastland Lake. The Roses had rented a boat for their anniversary.

“How long will this take, because I’ve got another job to go to?” Springsteen asked.

No one answered him. Instead, the detectives asked Springsteen if he remembered being brought in for questioning about the yogurt shop murders, which took place on December 6, 1991, after Maurice Pierce had been arrested for carrying a gun at Northcross Mall.

“Yeah, they put me in cuffs. Put me in a cruiser. Took me down and questioned me,” Springsteen responded in a light voice tinged with a hint of a southern drawl. “They asked me this and asked me that. Four hundred fifty questions.”

Springsteen informed Merrill and Lara that it would be easier for him to write things down than to say them. “I’m specific learning disabled. My brain operates backwards of the way a normal left-right thinker does. I think the opposite, so I do everything backwards. It’s like trying to explain neon blue to a blind person. If you gave me a set of six numbers, I could only remember two.” He informed them he took Ritalin.

The detectives asked Springsteen what he knew about the yogurt shop murders.

“I hadn’t heard nothing about it. Because I pretty much kept to myself and didn’t have very many friends. Forrest was a pretty good friend of mine. I met Maurice through him.” He claimed he did not hook up with Welborn or Pierce that night.

He spoke of three other friends of his: Tom Powe, a different guy named Mike, and his girlfriend, Kelly. He could not remember her last name.

Springsteen described an uncomfortable home life with his father and his father’s girlfriend, Karen Huntley. He claimed Huntley would only buy bread and hot dogs and that there was never anything to eat. He said he did not get along with Huntley, so he decided to move back to West Virginia. He broke up with Kelly before he moved back.

Lara turned the focus of the interview to the night of the murders. He asked Springsteen to tell them what he did on December 6, 1991.

Springsteen said he went over to Welborn’s house near the McCallum High School campus. Pierce stopped by and picked up Welborn and Springsteen. He dropped them both off at Northcross Mall. “We dicked around for a little bit.” Around 2:00
P.M.
or 3:00
P.M.
, they went into one of the arcades in the mall. By this time, Michael Scott had joined them. He believed Powe might have been with them as well.

“We ended up going to
Rocky Horror Picture Show
that night.” Springsteen claimed he attended the cult favorite audience-participation midnight movie at the Northcross Mall movie theater twice a week, every week. When they arrived at the theater, he believed Pierce had to go to his sister’s house. Welborn left with Pierce in “an ’82 Texas State Ranger or Caprice. It was a real nice ride.”

Springsteen backed up to when they first arrived at the mall. He believed they arrived at 3:00
P.M.
or 4:00
P.M.
Pierce and Welborn left around at 5:30
P.M.
or 6:00
P.M.

Springsteen and Scott were sitting outside, watching the waitresses from the local Hooters restaurant, when Pierce and Welborn came “screaming down, more than twenty-five miles per hour, through the mall” parking lot.

“‘Man, what the hell are you doing?’” Springsteen asked Pierce.

Pierce said there were some Mexicans who threw rocks and bottles at his car, three to five of them. “We never found them,” Springsteen told the detectives. “Six or six-thirtyish. Fooled around for one to two more hours.”

Springsteen sat comfortably in his chair. He gestured animatedly with his hands as he told his story. He stated that he and Scott went back to the mall around 8:00
P.M.
They played video games in the arcade from 8:00
P.M.
to midnight. Welborn and Pierce were supposed to return sometime between 11:00
P.M.
and midnight. They intended to go to a party; however, Pierce never showed up, Springsteen claimed. Springsteen stayed and watched
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
. He left and went home to Scott’s mother’s house. He arrived at 1:30
A.M.
He stated that an older white man, about forty-five, with long white hair, drove him and Scott home in a tiny Suzuki. The boys stayed up late and watched
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves,
starring Kevin Costner.

Springsteen told the officers he was not aware of the murders until he had been brought downtown to be questioned by Detective Paul Johnson more than a week later.

Lara began to notice some inconsistencies in Springsteen’s story. He pressed him on it.

Springsteen blamed his faulty memory on years of drug usage. “I followed the Dead for nine months, from seventeen to eighteen. I’ve done horrible things to my body, which I’m regretting now with asthma. Acid. Pot. No heroin or crank.”

Springsteen talked about the joyride to San Antonio the night after the murders. His girlfriend, Kelly Hannah, supposedly went with them. He claimed he bought a copy of the Sunday
Austin American-Statesman
from a 7-Eleven convenience store off Highway 2222, where he bought a paper twice a week. He also admitted to reading the newspaper during the trip.

“Hell, I ain’t got no reason to lie to you guys.” Springsteen shifted around in his chair as if agitated. Lara scooted his chair closer to him. “To tell you the truth, I really don’t know what I know anymore.”

“Well, that doesn’t make you look very good,” Lara replied.

“No, it doesn’t.” Springsteen nodded his head in agreement.

“You don’t forget the truth. But you do forget intermittent lies.”

“I can tell you two things. I do not know, have never known, whether Maurice or Forrest were involved in that. I’m talking about the murders.”

“What would you say if we told you that
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
was not showing that night?” Lara asked.

“I would be surprised.”

“Why would a sixteen-year-old buy a paper?”

“Why would an eight-year-old boy buy a gun and kill somebody?” Springsteen countered. “The strangest things happen all the time.”

Springsteen shifted in his chair again. He said, “Let me be frank with you guys. If I’m being accused of something, then I would like a lawyer present. I would like this to come to an end. One way or another.”

“You’re free to get up anytime you want,” replied Merrill.

Springsteen did not get up, so Merrill asked him about Scott. Lara stood up and exited the interview room. Merrill told Springsteen they had been speaking to Scott. Merrill also told him they were talking to Pierce. The detective said both young men told quite different stories from Springsteen’s.

“In my opinion, I think Maurice was the liar, but Forrest would do whatever Maurice told him to do,” Merrill informed him.

“Of the four guys, you’re the only one whose story is not the same as theirs. Mike Scott said, ‘It was an awful, evil thing,’ as a matter of fact.

“We don’t believe Maurice. We believe Michael.

“Who called the shots?” Merrill demanded.

“Maurice,” Springsteen answered without hesitation.

“Maurice said it was you.”

“I know nothing more than what I told you. I was never in the yogurt shop. Never. Ever. I wish you guys could give me a lie detector test and ask me all these questions. I’ve never been there. I don’t even think I’ve been within one hundred yards of it ever.”

“People are getting things off of their chest now,” Merrill said. “Getting the weight of the world off their shoulders, and they’re telling everything they know about that night. And they are telling, you were with them the entire night.”

Merrill asked Springsteen if he ever owned a gun. The young man said he saw Pierce with one in a shoe box under Pierce’s father’s bed. It was a .22.

“I was like, ‘Oh, it’s a cool gun.’”

Lara informed Springsteen that he could light up a cigarette in the interview room. The young man did so immediately.

As Springsteen attempted to calm his nerves with nicotine, Merrill moved in for the kill by saying that Springsteen knew more than he was saying. Springsteen looked at Merrill with a menacing stare as he blew smoke out of his nostrils like a snorting bull.

“If I was there and participated,” Springsteen responded, “I would think that I would be a pretty fucked-up person. I probably couldn’t hold a job. I couldn’t be married, have a wife.”

Merrill commented that Springsteen had seven jobs in the last five years. The detective said that he had one job in twenty years. He then mocked Springsteen’s current job as a stock boy at Kroger.

“My life’s not wonderful,” Springsteen defended himself. “It’s not horrible.”

“Michael Scott says you were as big a victim as he was. That Maurice was the leader.”

Springsteen just nodded his head and continued to smoke and to glower.

Lara claimed there were witnesses who saw him in the yogurt shop on the day of the murders.

“I don’t eat yogurt, to tell you the truth.”

Lara mentioned to Springsteen there were all sorts of new advances in technology that could help determine a person’s DNA.

Springsteen sat quietly. He responded by saying, “You both seem like real nice knockout guys and have been real friendly and kind.”

“Well, thank you,” Lara responded. “You seem like a nice person too.”

“But I was not in that store—”

“It’s time to get it off your chest,” Merrill interjected. “Off your shoulders. ‘I’m ready to be a man and say what happened.’ I’ve talked to good liars in my life. You’re not one of them.”

“I never have been. That’s why I don’t lie.”

“You are now.”

“If you believe so,” Springsteen defiantly replied.

“I believe so. I’m going to sleep great tonight when I go home and go to bed. I don’t hear screams in the middle of the night.”

“I don’t either.”

“I don’t see that picture.”

“I don’t either.”

“Did you shoot one of them girls?” Merrill pressed.

“No, I did not.”

Detective Lara moved his chair in even closer toward Springsteen, who looked the detective directly in the eye.

“I can’t take responsibility for something I didn’t do.”

“You let us know how you want to play,” Merrill said. “It don’t matter to me.”

“I guess you guys need to tell me what my options are.”

Merrill mentioned the screaming of the girls again. Springsteen sighed and rolled his eyes.

Merrill showed him the photographs of the four girls. Lara got right in his face and told him Sarah reminded him of Scott: “The way her eyes and nose are.”

Merrill stood up and left the room.

Lara asked Springsteen, “Is it possible you killed those girls?”