It’s been more than three months since Maurice Pierce, who was once jailed as a suspect in the infamous 1991 yogurt-shop murders, was shot and killed by Austin Police Department Officer Frank Wilson during a traffic stop and struggle in the North Austin neighborhood where Pierce’s older sister lives. Police say he grabbed a knife from Wilson’s belt and slashed the officer’s throat. Wilson recovered and returned to work in January. Still, Pierce’s family members say they’ve heard nothing from the APD about the shooting – nor have investigators asked them any questions about the night he was killed, Dec. 23, 2010. Instead, his wife and older sister say police detectives have questioned them almost exclusively about the nearly 20-year-old quadruple murder.
Pierce’s wife, Kimberli Pierce, says that in the wake of her husband’s death, investigators who told her they were newly assigned to the department’s cold case unit have asked her repeatedly to tell them about his involvement in the grisly slaying of the four teenage girls who were stripped, bound, shot, and burned in a fire on Dec. 6, 1991. Reneé Reyna, his sister, says that detectives have come to her workplace to ask similar questions. Meanwhile, aside from cursory questions about her brother’s whereabouts before he was shot that evening, she says they’ve failed to ask any relatives about the circumstances preceding the shooting; instead, “all they want to know about is the yogurt shop.” She says she’s repeated to them exactly what everyone in the family has said since Pierce was first questioned in late 1991: “My brother didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Pierce was one of four men arrested in 1999, nearly eight years after the murders, and charged with killing Eliza Thomas, 17; sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, 17 and 15; and Amy Ayers, 13. The men, in their early 20s at the time of the arrests, were themselves just teens at the time of the crime. In 2001, Robert Springsteen was convicted and sentenced to die for his alleged involvement, and Michael Scott was convicted and sentenced to life in prison the following year. Both convictions were subsequently overturned. Pierce was jailed for several years awaiting trial before his charges were dismissed in early 2003 due to lack of evidence. The case against a fourth man, Forrest Welborn, was also dropped after two grand juries failed to indict him.
The cases against the four were problematic, in part because no physical evidence linked any of them to the crime scene. In 2009, charges against Springsteen and Scott were dropped after the discovery of male DNA found inside Ayers that does not match any of the four men. Investigators say they’re still searching for a match to that DNA – though if the Pierce family’s recent experiences are any illustration, APD and the Travis County District Attorney’s Office appear not to be seeking answers outside the theory they’ve held on to for the last decade.
Since the charges against Pierce were dropped in 2003, Pierce had had several other run-ins with police. Notably, in April 2008, after he was pulled over for speeding in Collin County, police say he fled the scene, hurting an officer in the process. Pierce denied that he hurt anyone. (For more, see “Family Questions Pierce’s Arrest,” May 9, 2008.)
The inquiry into the circumstances surrounding Pierce’s death is still ongoing and will be presented to a grand jury upon completion, says APD spokeswoman Anna Sabana. According to APD Cmdr. Don Baker, police supervisors determined that Wilson was fit to return to duty despite the ongoing investigation. Before Chief Art Acevedo took the helm in 2007, it was standard practice for an officer to remain on administrative leave until the closing of an inquiry and presentation before a grand jury; such decisions are now discretionary.
There are, essentially, three concurrent lines of inquiry surrounding Pierce: the criminal investigation into his death, the internal affairs investigation into whether Wilson violated any departmental policies in connection with the fatal event, and the continuing investigation into the yogurt-shop slayings. Sabana says that investigators on the yogurt-shop case are “moving forward” with other lines of inquiry and are not exclusively focusing on Pierce or the other three suspects initially charged with the crime. Still, they approached the family in an effort to find out whether, “now that he has passed, if there is anything they want to say” to police about Pierce’s possible involvement in the murders.
Baker said internal affairs investigators still plan to talk with family members about Pierce’s actions the night of his death, but much of the inquiry will not involve the family because none of them were with Pierce when he was shot. Moreover, police say, officers handling the criminal inquiry have tried on several occasions to contact the family but have not had their calls returned. It seems part of the problem is that cold case detectives were the first to contact them; those conversations were rather confrontational, souring the family’s feelings toward investigators.
According to Reyna, the detectives she’s spoken with insist that the family knows Pierce was involved in the crime and came to her workplace to grill her about the night of the murders. “We know you know what happened and who he was there [at the yogurt shop] with,” she recalls them telling her. “I told them they were barking up the wrong tree.” She says they insisted that they had evidence connecting Pierce to the crime. If that were the case, she asks, why didn’t they ever rearrest and charge him with the crime? Pierce’s wife has maintained that he gave her a ride home on the night of the murders and that the timing would have made it impossible for Pierce to participate in them.* Reyna says she remembers her brother coming home that night and watching TV coverage of the crime with the family; he thought the news was “terrible,” she recalls.
The family says that police continued to harass Maurice Pierce after the charges against him were dismissed in January 2003. Pierce often thought police were following him, Reyna says, and other members of the family, including her adult sons, saw police tailing them on occasion. Pierce said over the years, “I feel like I’m being followed,” Reyna recalls. “Everywhere I go, they’re there.”
Though the exact circumstances of Pierce’s death are still under investigation, family members doubt they will get straight answers from APD. According to police, Pierce ran a stop sign and, when he was pulled over, fled on foot. When Wilson caught up with him, police say, Pierce fought with the officer, grabbed his knife, and sliced Wilson’s throat; Wilson was then able to get his handgun and shoot Pierce, killing him. Reyna doesn’t believe that Pierce would try to hurt an officer. Instead, she thinks her brother might have come upon the knife while trying to defend himself against the officer’s aggression.
The case is expected to be presented to a grand jury later this spring.
*Corrected from original publication.This article appears in April 8 • 2011.