Yogurt Shop Murders Investigation: Seven False Confessions and a Broken System

The Austin yogurt shop murders investigation was compromised from the start. The detective who ran early interrogations, Hector Polanco, was implicated in at least seven false confessions across multiple cases. His most notorious failure: extracting a false confession from Christopher Ochoa in the 1988 Nancy DePriest murder, leading to the wrongful conviction of both Ochoa and Richard Danziger. Danziger suffered permanent brain damage from a prison assault. Austin settled for $14.5 million.

Despite this documented track record, Polanco interrogated suspects in the yogurt shop case during the early 1990s. He was eventually removed from the task force, but the...