Murdered Innocents (26 page)

 

Roy Rose, Robert Springsteen’s best friend from West Virginia, appeared in court. One problem: he did not want to be there. Rose took the stand before the jury was let in and pleaded the Fifth Amendment.

Asked if he intended to answer questions, Rose replied, “I respectfully refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it may incriminate me.” His attorney, Carolyn Denero, who flew in from West Virginia, argued that if Rose testified to what he believed was the truth, it would contradict his grand jury testimony, thereby, perjuring himself.

Judge Lynch ruled Rose did not have a Fifth Amendment right and he must answer any questions posed to him.

Instead, Rose continued to plead the Fifth.

“Mr. Rose, despite the court’s order, you are saying at this time that you are going to refuse to abide by the court’s order?” asked Judge Lynch.

“Yes.”

“At this time, you are held in contempt by the court. You will be ordered jailed in the Travis County Correctional Facility until such time as you purge your contempt.”

As Rose was escorted away, he muttered under his breath, “Thank you for playing God,” to Judge Lynch, followed by an unintelligible obscenity.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Rose,” snapped a peeved Judge Lynch. “I suggest you conduct yourself appropriately or you will have a double contempt.”

Charlene Rose, Roy’s wife, commented later that she felt like she was in a Third World country instead of the United States, “where they have a dictator in charge. Where people who don’t agree with the policy line just disappear.”

The other important witness to appear on the stand was Detective Robert Merrill, one of the officers who elicited the confession from Springsteen. He spoke of the preparation for the trip to West Virginia and the interrogation. He spoke of his arrival in West Virginia, the coordination with the Charleston police officers, and the setup of the interrogation materials, such as the video camera and audiotape recorder.

Defense lawyer Berkley Bettis argued that the videotape of Springsteen’s confession should not be omitted.

“Judge, what you have seen is an enhanced tape. That is to say, let’s suppose that you had a photograph taken with a camera with a broken lens, and that that photograph was then given to someone with a computer and that computer enhancement was able to remove the cracks, the distortions, the kaleidoscope effect of the broken lens. That is what you have been listening to. What is being offered right now is [a] view through a broken lens.”

Bettis went on to give what may possibly be the longest grammatical sentence in the history of the modern Texas judicial system:

Judge Lynch took Bettis’s analogy a step further. “I would analogize this to someone who caught a crime on videotape in the middle of the night. The tape is fuzzy, unclear in spots, and may not clearly delineate who did what.” Judge Lynch concluded that the tape, however, “could be offered to assist the jury in whatever they did.”

After the judge’s denial, Robert Smith and Detective Robert Merrill proceeded to go over videotape clips of the Springsteen interview and confession. Judge Lynch, the families of the four girls, and the jury received transcripts of the videotape so they could follow along. Springsteen had a copy of the transcript on a laptop computer. After each short clip, Merrill answered questions about what the jury saw. But before the prosecution could truly get started, the end of the workday arrived.

The following day, Merrill was the only witness who took the stand. The prosecution continued to play the Springsteen confession tape, while Merrill retold what the jurors saw.

 

 

For the third day in a row, Merrill sat in the witness stand. He continued to review the prosecution’s most critical evidence against Springsteen. Smith asked Merrill if it was common for a guilty suspect to shift responsibility of a crime to another person. Merrill replied, “It’s common.”

Merrill also noted Springsteen was not upset when told someone had implicated him in the murders. “People tend to get pissed off when they’re accused of a crime they did not do.”

The state returned to playing more clips of the videotape. After several minutes of this, Joe James Sawyer objected.

“All we are doing is reemphasizing the state’s greatest hits out of this tape. I object.”

Judge Lynch responded, “It seems to me, like after introducing a written statement, the state could go back and question the witness about individual parts of that statement. So, I don’t think it’s unfair at this point in time.”

Several minutes later, Judge Lynch asked Smith how much longer he would question Merrill.

“About twelve minutes, maybe fifteen,” Smith replied.

“I like that exact assessment, Mr. Smith. Then I’m supposed to add in the usual forty percent lawyer factor and come up with twenty minutes?” the judge tossed somewhat flippantly.

“Yes, sir,” came Smith’s obedient reply.

Judge Lynch excused the jury so the defense could voir dire Merrill. The issue at hand was whether or not the police erred in not letting David Bungard, Springsteen’s attorney, come into the interview room during the confession. Merrill informed the court the reason he did not stop the interview when Bungard made his presence known was because Springsteen “never made an express request to have an attorney present.”

Judge Lynch agreed with the state.

Sawyer decided to focus on lies. “The one thing you do consistently in this examination is lie to him.”

“Pardon me?” responded Merrill.

“Is lie to him. You lie to him throughout that interrogation, all the way through, don’t you?”

“A little.”

Sawyer mentioned different tactics the officers used on Springsteen during the confession: lies, getting in the suspect’s face, telling him they could stay there all day, etc. “Do you think that this is a risk here that by applying this kind of pressure . . . that an innocent man could be led to make statements that have nothing to do with his guilt?”

“I don’t think with this, no,” replied a confident Merrill.

“With this case in particular, or at all?”

“This interview.”

Sawyer brought up that Springsteen had not been Mirandized until after the confession and before he gave a written statement. “You knew perfectly well you were going to give him his Miranda rights, didn’t you?”

“I did,” Merrill replied.

“You wouldn’t interrupt that interrogation for anything,” an incensed Sawyer belted out. “Nothing was going to stop it. You weren’t going to stop it at all until you had what you wanted. But you didn’t have it yet, did you?”

“That’s correct.”

“Because we know to an absolute certainty that the moment that .380 was fired, that little girl had died.”

“Yes.”

“So she wasn’t alive to be raped. She wasn’t alive to have Maurice come and finish her off. You know that is not only improbable; it is forensically impossible.”

“That’s correct. But we also know the sequences are out [of order]. We know that she was choked. We know that she was shot. He said he had the .380. We know that’s the bullet that killed her.”

“Why didn’t you keep talking? Why didn’t you ask him about the choking?” Sawyer asked. “I mean, surely you will agree at the end if you had put him on the grassy knoll at the killing of JFK, he would have said he did it.”

“I don’t think so,” Merrill calmly replied.

“He was giving you everything and anything you wanted,” roared the contentious Sawyer.

“No, he wasn’t.”

Sawyer finished with the detective. Prosecutor Smith followed up.

“The fact of the matter is, he can call the game at any time,” Smith stated, referring to Springsteen ending the interrogation. “And you made that clear to him.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So once somebody says, ‘I want a lawyer,’ you’re forbidden under the law from questioning them, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have anything that you are ashamed of, with regard to this interview with Robert Springsteen?”

“No, sir.”

Another key witness, Chandra Morgan, took the stand. She claimed she was with the four boys on December 6, 1991. Morgan, who was thirteen years old at the time, had a crush on Maurice Pierce. She claimed she and the four boys took acid in the Northcross Mall parking lot. She mentioned Pierce had already taken a hit earlier that day. She also testified she and three of the boys, excluding Forrest Welborn, went inside the yogurt shop. She said two of the boys went to the rest room.

They all left and returned to the mall, where Morgan claimed she got separated from the guys. She eventually hooked up with them again, about thirty to forty-five minutes later. Three of the guys pulled up in a car. Welborn was not there. Pierce asked her if she wanted to come with them. Suddenly she spotted Welborn walking from the direction of the Oshman’s Sporting Goods store. She jumped into the car, as did Welborn. Pierce pulled the car out of the parking lot and headed south on Burnet Road. Morgan claimed she heard sirens as they drove on. She wanted to see what the commotion was all about, but the guys told her no and continued.

Morgan testified Pierce drove everyone a mile-and-a-half to Gullett Elementary School at the 6300 block of Treadwell Boulevard. She also claimed Springsteen had a gun on him.

“I saw it in his waistband. Just the butt. It appeared to be a semiautomatic.”

Morgan stated she and three of the boys got out of the car. Welborn stayed inside the vehicle. Springsteen and Scott led the way to a petting zoo on the school grounds. She and Pierce followed, but veered off toward the baseball field.

Outside the presence of the jury, Sawyer expressed concern about Morgan’s mental state. He asked Judge Lynch if she “is under the influence of any drug or narcotic, specifically heroin.” He added, “She is moving like she lives underwater and she really is manifesting behavior that I associate with the use of an opiate—”

Prosecuting attorney Darla Davis interjected, “I have had conversations with her today and I have no reason to think that she is under the influence at all.”

Judge Lynch concluded that “she looks to me like pretty much the standard twenty-two-year-old girl that walks up and down the streets of Austin all of the time. She doesn’t seem to be out to lunch like a lot of people I see in my regular calling of the dockets.”

Davis resumed her examination of the witness.

“Shortly after the night of December 6, 1991, did you see Maurice Pierce again?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Did he say anything to you about being quiet?”

“He wanted me to keep my mouth shut. I think it was two or three days after the event.”

“Did he ever say this to you again?”

“A couple of days after that, I believe he was arrested for a gun, and it was after that.”

Sawyer elected to defer his cross-examination of Chandra Morgan until he presented his client’s defense.

The next witness was Kelly Hannah, Springsteen’s temporary girlfriend at the time of the murders. She testified that Springsteen and Pierce were supposed to stop by her house that night but never showed up.

Next up was Springsteen’s father, Robert Springsteen III. He testified that he called the police to report his son was missing on the morning of December 6, 1991. He had not seen him since 10:00
P.M.
on December 4. He also spoke about his son’s mother and how she was strict with Robert. Springsteen III believed you should give kids plenty of rope. He admitted he pretty much let his son come and go as he pleased.

 

Another situation arose, which left a sour taste in Joe James Sawyer’s mouth. Detective Bruce Boardman testified he interviewed Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott on December 15, 1991, the day after Maurice Pierce was arrested. What frustrated Sawyer was Boardman did not locate his interview notes until four weeks before his testimony.

Almost 9½ years later.

“In my move from homicide in 1992,” Boardman attempted to explain, “I had two boxes that I carried with me from unit to unit. In my last and latest move . . . from internal affairs to the traffic office . . . I started consolidating these two boxes.

“And absolutely to my surprise, I found two eight-and-a-half by eleven legal pads, which—the first one I looked at had the name of Robert Burns Springsteen on it, the date and the time, and I immediately brought it to the attention of the district attorney’s office.”

Boardman’s notes contained some interesting entries. The guys claimed they heard about the murders from someone named “Mace.” The first mention of the guys hanging out with Kelly Hannah. And most significantly, Michael Scott used to date one of the girls.

On cross-examination, Sawyer did not take Boardman to task for the recent “discovery.”

The state also questioned Joseph Wills, a friend of Maurice Pierce and Forrest Welborn’s. Wills testified he saw Pierce with a .22. He also claimed he was in “the Fungus,” a grassy area between Hillside Center and MoPac Freeway, where many of the so-called “undesirables” hung out and got high, when he heard gunshots. Soon thereafter, fire trucks arrived at the yogurt shop. He testified he saw Welborn walking up by Oshman’s.

Wills also admitted he was currently on parole from prison for burglary.

The rest of the day’s testimony covered a hodgepodge of items from a search conducted in the Fungus in 2000, which uncovered a pair of panties and a knife, to “rifling” characteristics of bullets and how certain patterns are created from a bullet and can be traced back to a specific gun.

The day’s testimony concluded with two women from Michael Scott’s past: Meredith Skipper and Amanda Statham. Skipper spoke of the day Scott arrived at her doorstep in the stolen Pathfinder. She indicated something seemed wrong with her then-boyfriend. He appeared uncomfortable and would not open up to her.

Amanda Statham testified that Scott admitted to the killings. She claimed she was at Scott’s house and he and Forrest Welborn were talking about the murders.

“Did you hear Mike Scott say anything to Forrest Welborn?” asked Darla Davis.

“He said, ‘Keep your fucking mouth shut,’” replied Statham.

“How was Mike acting?”

“Panicky.”

“What was he doing?”

“He was yelling out the door to keep his fucking mouth shut.”

A few days after the yelling incident, Statham claimed Scott came over to her house. While there, he admitted his participation.

“Did you ask him why he had been questioned by the police about the yogurt shop murders?” Davis prodded.

“Yes,” Statham responded. “He told me . . . that he, Robert, Forrest, and Maurice had all been questioned or [were] all involved and that he had done it.”

“Michael Scott said, ‘I did it’?”

“He said, ‘I did it.’”

“What was your reaction?”

“I said he was a fucking sick bastard and smacked him upside the head.”

Statham, who was only thirteen at the time, claimed Scott told her details about the murders; however, she could not recall any specifics.

When asked why she did not call the cops and report Scott, she replied, “I thought he was kidding” and “He was a boy even my grandmother liked.”

 

 

The state introduced several DNA experts that all said that they were unable to prove or disprove that any of the DNA found at the yogurt shop belonged to Robert Springsteen or any of the other suspects.

The other key testimony for the day came from Detective Manuel Fuentes, who took the written statement from Michael Scott. On direct examination, Fuentes was allowed to read Scott’s redacted confession into the record.

On cross, Sawyer found it odd that both Scott and Springsteen’s statement had certain similarities. He asked Fuentes if he was “aware of any resonance between the two statements.”

“Resonance?” Fuentes asked.

“Yeah. They begin to sound alike, look alike, that kind of thing.”

“Could be because they are true.”

“Yeah, could be. That would then be all the corroboration that is needed, right?”

“The truth is the truth.”

“Yes. The truth is the truth.”

After the attorneys finished with Fuentes, they informed the judge there were no more witnesses for the day.

Judge Lynch joked, “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I think the lawyers have conspired to end the day early. I’m joking, of course, but the fact of the matter is, we don’t have any additional witnesses.”

For that day, at least.

 

 

There was no court on Monday due to severe rain and a hailstorm, which caused damage to one juror’s home. Tuesday’s return to the courtroom would be the last day for the state’s case.

Outside the presence of the jury, Chuck Meyer testified about serial killer Kenneth McDuff. Meyer was one of the lead detectives in the McDuff case and was present at McDuff’s capture and arrest in Missouri. Sawyer asked if Meyer was aware that on the day McDuff was arrested, a witness by the name of Judy Tinker phoned in a tip placing McDuff at Northcross Mall on December 6, 1991.

The state also brought in James Ramsbottom, a former friend of Springsteen’s, who claimed Rob had a .380 firearm in 1986. Springsteen was twelve years old at the time.

Another gun incident allegedly occurred in the summer of 1991 between Maurice Pierce and Guy Schumann. Pierce supposedly pulled a gun on Schumann at a basketball court in Brentwood Park, less than 2½ miles away from I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt.

Both men, Ramsbottom and Schumann, were serving time in jail during their testimony.

Sawyer declared their testimonials to be “the skunk . . . in the jury box.”

Later that evening, Sawyer was surrounded by a gaggle of reporters. He mentioned the specter of Kenneth McDuff.

“For those of you who were in court today, it was evident that we think there is some strong likelihood that he is the person who committed these crimes. It would really fit his modus operandi.”

Sawyer would get the chance to toss this theory into the ring very soon.