It was a long-awaited moment for four men. Thursday, a judge cleared their names after they were long ago accused of one of the most heinous crimes in the state. North Texan Maurice Pierce was among those charged in the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders. Years after his death, his wife and d aughter were there when a judge declared he was innocent. “They can go on about their lives without this cloud of suspicion over them,” said Executive Director Of The Innocence Project of Texas, Mike Ware. Back in 1999, Pierce was one of four men arrested in that gruesome Austin murder that happened eight years earlier. Police found teens Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer and Sarah Harbison bound and gagged with gunshot wounds inside the burned-out yogurt shop where two of them worked. Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen were convicted. Springsteen was sentenced to death row. Their convictions were later overturned. Forrest Welborn was charged but never tried. Pierce spent three years in jail before his charges were dismissed. He later died in a struggle with Austin police during a traffic stop. “They can’t get back the last three decades of their lives. They can’t get back everything that they’ve lost,” said Ware. Ware and other attorneys worked to help the men clear their names after DNA evidence led police to a new suspect last September. Investigators say it pointed to suspected serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers, who died years earlier in a standoff with police. “When the police get the wrong people and arrest the wrong people, the actual perpetrator, as happened in this case, goes out to commit more crimes. In this case, the actual perpetrator slipped out from under them and went on to commit many more horrible murders and sexual assaults,” Ware said. “While the police were trying to get local kids to confess to something they didn’t do, he was out committing more murders all over the country. We see this again and again, and it’s got to stop.” ...read more read less