Yogurt Shop Murders: charges dismissed today, part 2

Before I continue with today's observations, let me explain that the charges were dismissed "without prejudice", which means the charges against Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott may be refiled at any time--there's no statute of limitations for murder--but the state would still have to return to a grand jury if they refiled. The state maintains its position that Springsteen and Scott "are responsible for these murders..." More about the state's press conference in a minute.

Today's courtroom was packed--usually only one television camera is allowed inside and today there were many--and also included elected head District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, assistant DA John Neal, and police chief Art Acevedo. Bob Ayers, father of youngest victim Amy Ayers, was also there. I haven't seen any of the victims' family members attending any of these two years of pretrial hearings until today.

What led up to today's dramatic dismissals? In August, state District Judge Mike Lynch granted the state a continuance to continue its Y-STR DNA testing to try to identify newly discovered male DNA recovered from vaginal swabs taken from youngest victim Amy Ayers.

At that time, Lynch also issued an order designating today's hearing as the deadline for the state to give a "good faith determination" as to whether they'd be ready for a jury trial roughly set for January. Lynch told the state that he would not grant any more continuances for them based on the same basis of continuing its DNA testing.

Today, assistant DA Efrain De La Fuente announced that the state is not ready for trial, is still conducting its Y-STR testing, and has not yet identified the DNA's source. Therefore, De La Fuente said, "we have no other choice but to file an order for dismissal." The defense had no objection, of course, and even waived reading the state's motion before it was given to Judge Lynch.

Lynch signed the order, granting the dismissal motion "as to each indictment, as to each of the two defendants" and said that as soon as the order was filed with the clerk, Scott and Springsteen would be free from all their current bond obligations. And then we were in recess.

Defense attorneys briefly spoke to the press, encouraging everyone to have sympathy for the victims' families because they have suffered the most in this whole ordeal and expressing hope that continued DNA testing will identify the unknown male, that the killer "is still out there."

Robert Springsteen didn't stick around to speak to the press, but Mike Scott and his wife Jeannine answered a few questions. Scott said he was "glad to be where I'm at today" and when asked if or how he could not feel resentment, he simply said, "move forward." The couple said they couldn't comment now on whether they'd stay in Austin.

At the press conference in the DA's office, head DA Rosemary Lehmberg read from a written statement before taking some questions. In her statement, she said, "Make no mistake, this is a difficult decision for me and one I would rather not have to make. I believe it is the best legal and strategic course to take and is the one that leaves us in the best possible posture to ultimately retry both Springsteen and Scott."

Then police chief Art Acevedo spoke about the importance of DNA for properly convicting or exonerating, especially "in a state that leads the country in wrongful convictions." While saying that the state's focus is still on these suspects (Springsteen and Scott), Acevedo also said, "they are probably the right suspects."

When asked if Springsteen and Scott could now move to another state if they wished, Lehmberg said, "They're free to do whatever they want."

Wednesday, 10-28-09, 1:36 p.m. yogurt shop murders: charges dropped!

At today's (postponed for months) Yogurt Shop Murders pretrial hearing, defendants Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen walked into state District Judge Mike Lynch's courtroom with free will instead of being led in from holding cells by sheriff's deputies.

They walked out of the courtroom with free will and as truly free men for the first time in more than 10 years, after Judge Lynch signed an order granting the district attorney's office's motion to dismiss all murder charges for both Scott and Springsteen.

More details coming.

The Dead Woman's Mail

I guess some salesperson at Mercedes-Benz Credit Corp. must be really desperate to get some new accounts: I just picked up today's mail and found what appears to be a credit offer from Mercedes addressed to Marie, the murdered or suicided previous owner of our house who has been dead since 1987! (See my September "Was She Murdered?" series of posts for the Marie story.)

Household Shrines: They Started with River Phoenix

I remember being really shocked when I heard that River Phoenix died Halloween night, 1993. He was only 23. I don't really know why this seemed so incomprehensible to me--it wouldn't seem shocking now--but it was then, so I created a River Phoenix memorial shrine in an old trunk under the fake fireplace. I framed a photo of him (from a magazine) and surrounded it with candles, silk flowers, ribbon, and various charms and baubles. Some people thought I was being morbid, but I liked it: it gave me a fleeting sense of control about things over which I would never have control or understand.

Then on April 5, 1994, Kurt Cobain died at age 27. Once again, I was truly shocked and very sad. To this day, I can barely accept that I'll likely never hear a new Kurt Cobain song. I moved River's shrine into a much smaller area and created Kurt's shrine under the fake fireplace instead. Somehow that still didn't seem enough for such a great artist, so I also made a smaller version of the Kurt Cobain shrine in my bedroom, painting his picture frame to match my room.

My now-husband Kurt (who was a housemate, initially) moved in that summer. He eventually convinced me that Kurt Cobain only needed one shrine in our house. But when Jackie O died in May 1994, my other housemate, Albert, walked in the house after work and gave me a worried look. I asked him what was up, and he shyly said, "I don't think there's room for a Jackie O shrine, right?" I didn't make one.

September 13, 1996, Tupac Shakur died at age 25. Somehow I managed to make room for a Tupac shrine, near the fake fireplace, without totally wigging out Kurt or Albert.

We don't have any shrines in the house anymore, but the framed pictures of those three are resting in the old trunk that once housed River's and Kurt's shrines.
--Iris

Was She Murdered? Part 4

Talk to the neighbors?
I guess I'm going to have to break down and do the open-records-act request thing, which I've never done before but was told I should try and that I should be able to get the medical examiner's report, as well as the police report.

But I'm also resolving to now talk to my two neighbors who knew (in a casual, neighbor kind of way) Marie when she lived here. Two years ago I was at a block party, which happened to be around Christmas, and I asked the neighbors a few questions about Marie but then decided it wasn't really an appropriate setting to push my luck.

I did learn that, according to one neighbor, Marie was quite friendly and outgoing--she even invited the neighbors in to show off her kitchen renovation--and regularly walked the block every morning, drinking her cup of coffee. The neighbor told me that the morning of the day Marie died, the neighbor noticed Marie taking her usual walk but also noticed that Marie appeared very upset and agitated, very out-of-character.

The neighbor also told me that Marie's parents could "never accept" what happened, that they continued to come down to Austin from Dallas regularly in their travel-trailer after Marie's death.
--Iris

Was She Murdered? Part 3

Marie's friends had a different theory than the police's.
At this point in my long phone call with Sherry, she told me to go look at the lock on my northwest corner window, as well as the inner wood frame above it. It was clear, from the outline in the old paint, that the lock had been moved over a few inches, and straight up from the lock's previous location, the inner wood frame had some minor damage as if the window had been shoved up forcefully.

This window, physically, is pretty much a straight shot from the bathroom. I checked all the other windows in the entire house, and they all appeared to have their locks in their original positions. There was some similar, yet much more minor, damage on the inner wood frames of a few other windows.

Sherry and some of Marie's other friends and acquaintances believed that Marie's attorney/former-legislator/employer hired someone to threaten or kill Marie to get the embezzled money back and/or make sure she didn't go public with the affair.

Further, they believed that when Marie didn't answer the door, the hired gunman broke in through that northwest corner window, chased her into the bathroom and shot at her twice. Sherry said she thought the attorney/former-legislator/employer paid off the police or strongly suggested they rule it a suicide and keep it quiet.

But why two shots?
Sherry told me that no suicide note was found. She said the police claimed that the first shot into the bathtub/shower was Marie's "practice shot" before her self-inflicted fatal shot.

By the way, I had vaguely noticed the two chips in the shower tiles when we moved in but did not examine them closely, assuming that since this was an old house, the chips were a related to a plumbing repair or something like that. However, after the PI took his photos of the chips, I did take a closer look at them, and they definitely appear to be bullet ricochet marks that someone has tried to paint over a bit. Of course, a little white paint doesn't hide their depth and shape.

Sherry and her friends found it impossible to believe that Marie, who had just bought her first house and was excited about renovating it, who had just bought two puppies, and who had a dinner date planned that night, would kill herself.

Was She Murdered? Part 2

Would the previous owner know anything about Marie's death?
I couldn't remember the name of the woman from whom we bought our house, so I dug through the closing papers for her name and did a very old-fashioned thing: I looked her up in the phone book and called her.

"Hello, Sherry? This is Iris, who bought our house from you 2 years ago. What's the deal with Marie?" Sherry paused a long time then said, "Hang on, let me switch phones." I told her about the private investigator that Marie's parents had hired showing up at our door to take photos of the our shower tile nicks. I had no idea I was in for such a dramatic story.

Yes, she did know a few things:
Sherry told me that she had bought our house from Marie's estate but that she had been acquainted with Marie through mutual friends. According to Sherry, Marie had worked for years for a state legislator who had recently lost his re-election bid and gone back into private law practice. There were rumors that Marie had an affair with him and that she'd recently been caught embezzling from him. Around this same time, Marie bought our house and put a chunk of money into upgrading the kitchen, as well as adding the fence. She also bought a new Mercedes and two Shar Pei puppies around the same time.

According to Sherry, on the day of Marie's death, Marie had a date planned for that evening with someone she'd gone out with several times before. When Marie didn't show up for the date, her date called her and got the answering machine. The date waited a few more hours, calling Marie several more times, leaving more urgent messages for Marie to please call back. By 2:30 a.m., the date decided to grab a friend and go over to Marie's house. They found her dead on her bloody bathroom floor and called the police.

Sherry didn't know details about the police investigation but said that lots of Marie's friends and acquaintances were shocked to hear the police calling it a suicide. There were rumors of a couple of "goons" pounding on the front door earlier in the day on the day of her death. (My neighbor has since told me that her husband had indeed seen a man in a suit with a briefcase knocking on Marie's front door that day.)

Was She Murdered? Part 1

We bought our 1941-built house in 1990.
I refer to it as a bungalow, and although it lacks some of the architectural characteristics of the true bungalow style (deep eaves, large front porch), it does share the bungalow's populist spirit, general layout, and small size.

Onto the death of Marie, who apparently owned & lived in our house around 1986-87. I had housemates back then (now-husband Kurt was not yet one of them). I got home from work one Spring evening in 1992 and housemate Jim was sitting on the couch drinking a Bass and looking uncharacteristically, quietly freaked out.

What's going on?
Jim tells me that an hour ago, a man rang the doorbell claiming to be a private investigator, hired by Marie's parents, attempting to find evidence to get the police to re-open the investigation into their daughter's death,even though the case had been closed about 4 years. It had been ruled a suicide and her parents refused to believe it was a suicide. We had never even heard of Marie before now.

The man went on to say that he would like to take pictures of our shower because he expected to find a bullet mark/chip on two tiles. Jim wonders what kind of scam this might be and doesn't let the man inside, but then the guy describes the exact location, within our shower, of the two nicks in the tiles. Jim looked at the business card, decided the PI was legitimate, and led him to the bathroom to take pictures.

Sure enough, the PI headed straight to the two little chips in the shower wall tiles and took a bunch of photos. He also pointed on the bathroom floor, describing the angle her body was found, diagonally with her head near the hinge-side of the door. The PI also let Jim read the autopsy report, which showed the angle of the gunshot that killed her: above her right breast, maybe shoulder level or higher, with the bullet traveling down diagonally towards her heart.

The PI said that the police said that the other bullet casing found was from a "practice shot" into the bathtub and that the two chips in the tile were ricochet marks from that "practice shot." Jim wasn't given a copy of the report, but he remembered that Marie was somewhere in her mid- to late twenties, had breast implants and a small rose tattoo on her chest.

Although I'd never felt any weird haunted vibes in our house and considered myself fairly sensitive to bad house feelings, Jim and I both decided to spend that night at friends' houses.

The next morning,
I bought a new ceramic candle holder and pale blue candle taper to fit in it and returned home. I sat down by the edge of the bathtub, near the deepest bullet ricochet chip mark, and lit the new candle. I just sort of talked to Marie's spirit, telling her how much I loved living in the house and that, although I didn't understand how she'd died, I felt comfortable here, like maybe she was at peace and that I also wanted her to know her parents were still thinking of her and trying to get the investigation re-opened. I told her I didn't know if she would even want the investigation re-opened but thought she'd want to know that her parents did.

Later that evening,
I called the woman from whom we'd bought the house to see what, if anything, she knew about Marie...
--Iris

I Haven't Lost My Interest in Murder Trials

Laura Hall's attorney, Joe James Sawyer, was back in the news today after a pretrial hearing for another of his clients, Robert Springsteen. Springsteen's murder conviction (so-called Yogurt Shop Murders) was overturned and his new trial is expected to start early next year. I plan to attend some of it.


So, while this blog evolves, I'm narrowing the focus. What does our old house have to do with mysterious murders? I have heard some pieces of stories about a previous owner of this house having been found dead from a gunshot in the bathroom. It was ruled a suicide, but some people who knew her think she was murdered.
--Iris

No One Has Ever Been Arrested

for the murder of Tupac Shakur, who died 11 years ago to this day (after being shot 6 days earlier.) Why?
--Iris