Yogurt Shop Murders: The Lives the System Destroyed
Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski | True Crime News & Commentary
True Crime Today
3.3 • 907 Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michael Scott lost his family. His daughter was three when he was arrested. His wife. His anniversary. Gone — not because of anything he did, but because detectives sat a man with learning disabilities in a room for 18 hours until he said what they wanted to hear. Robert Springsteen survived death row, had his sentence commuted, his conviction overturned, and his charges dropped — only to have the DA publicly declare she still thought he was guilty. He didn’t attend his own exoneration hearing. Forrest Welborn was charged but never tried after two grand juries refused to indict. He carried the accusation for 25 years before a judge said the word “innocent.”
And Maurice Pierce — the first name in the file, 15 years old when Hector Polanco extracted a confession that was thrown out the next morning — spent three years in jail, endured continued police harassment after release, and was killed during a confrontation with officers in 2010. His daughter spoke for him at the 2026 exoneration: “The world finally hears what you were trying to say all along.”
Part 4 of this series is about the cost. Not the legal cost. The human cost. The kind that doesn’t get reversed by a judge’s ruling.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske. |
| 0:03.5 | Here now, Tony Brewski. |
| 0:07.3 | On February 19th of 2026, Michael Scott stood in a Travis County courtroom and spoke for the first time. |
| 0:12.7 | He's a man the state of Texas was about to declare innocent. |
| 0:16.8 | His voice was steady, but his words came from a place that had been filling for 27 years. |
| 0:25.3 | "'I lost my family,' he said. |
| 0:26.9 | "'I lost my youth. |
| 0:28.6 | "'My daughter was three years old when I was arrested. |
| 0:30.8 | "'We had just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. |
| 0:33.3 | "'I lost the chance to build a family. |
| 0:36.4 | "'Every day I have carried the weight of a crime I did not commit. |
| 0:41.8 | He didn't raise his voice. He didn't plead. He simply described what had been taken. |
| 0:46.5 | In the same flat, exhausted tone of a man who had been saying the same thing for decades and was only now being heard. |
| 0:55.0 | That's what wrongful conviction sounds like when the cameras finally face the right direction. |
| 1:00.5 | By the time anyone was listening, the damage was already. |
| 1:04.3 | Permanent. |
| 1:06.2 | This is part four, the yogurt shop murder series on Hidden Killers. |
| 1:09.1 | The confessions were coerced. |
| 1:10.5 | The convictions were overturned. DNA proved someone else was in that yogurt shop but being released from |
| 1:16.1 | prison is not the same thing as being free and this episode is about the cost of what the system |
| 1:22.3 | took from these men and their families that no exoneration can return. |
| 1:28.8 | As we go through it, give us your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube. |
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