A couple who left the shop just before 11:00 pm, when Jennifer locked the front door to prevent more customers from entering, reported seeing two men at a table acting furtively.
The organized method of operation, ability to control the victims, and destruction of evidence by arson pointed to an adult experienced in crime rather than teenagers, according to one of the original detectives on the case.
[citation needed] Shortly before midnight on Friday, December 6, 1991, a patrolman from the Austin Police Department noticed a fire coming from an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!
[6] Initial investigations had produced a large number of persons of interest, among them a 15-year-old caught with a .22 (not established to be the murder weapon) in a nearby mall days after the killings.
Although he initially gave promising information, after tough questioning the detectives decided that he was trying to get himself out of the gun charge and eliminated him and three petty criminal friends whom he had implicated, none of whom were older than 17 at the time.
The prosecution went into great detail about the horrific nature of the crimes against the young victims but presented no hard evidence other than the confessions.
However, the prosecution's tactic of using excerpts of each one's alleged confessions at the other's trial was ruled to have violated the Confrontation Clause because the co-defendant was non-testifying.
[11] One of the detectives in the interrogations, Hector Polanco, had been accused of coercing false confessions in a previous, notorious case involving exonerated defendants Christopher Ochoa and Richard Danziger.
Austin police admit that over 50 people, including McDuff on the day of his execution, had confessed to the yogurt shop murders.
[21] In 2006, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Robert Springsteen's conviction based on an unfair trial.
[28] Later that day, Lehmberg responded to Lynch's decision with the following statement:[29] On October 28, 2009, all charges were dismissed against Scott and Springsteen.
On December 23, 2010, Austin police officer Frank Wilson and his rookie partner, Bradley Smith, conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle driven by Maurice Pierce in the northern part of the city.
[32][33] On August 3, 2022, President Joe Biden signed The Homicide Victims' Families' Rights Act into law, which was motivated by the Yogurt Shop Murders.