06:57 PM CST on Monday, February 6, 2006

By Mike Zientek / 11 News

Click to watch Mike Zientek's 11 News at 5 report

Opening arguments began Monday in the retrial of Max Soffar.

Soffar sat on death row for more than two decades for three bowling alley murders that rocked the city of Houston in 1980.

KHOU-TV

Max Soffar

During Monday's arguments, prosecutors told the jury Soffar has admitted involvement to police after he was caught on a stolen motorcycle.

The defense insists that Soffar made the whole thing up.

"The evidence will show that the stories that Max Soffar told did not match the facts, and Max Soffar is not guilty," defense attorney Kathryn Kase told the jury.

Defense attorneys told the jury that Soffar's plan was to collect the $15,000 reward police had out for the killer, because a friend of his actually matched the composite sketch of the man police wanted.

Stay with 11 News for the latest testimony in the trial

Soffar was 24 when he was arrested and later convicted of killing Arden Alane Felsher, 17; Tommy Lee Temple, 17; and Stephen Allen Sims, 25, during a robbery at the Fair Lanes Windfern Bowling Center on U.S. Highway 290.

Soffar, who is now 49 years old, confessed to the murders but gave three different accounts of what happened.

In 2000, an appeals court panel ruled that police violated his right to have an attorney present during the confessions. That decision was later overturned by the full court.

Last year, the same court looked at Soffar's case again and overturned it based on ineffective representation by his attorney.

The attorney never interviewed the only surviving eyewitness to the case and never conducted a ballistics investigation.Soffar was released from death row but Harris County prosecutors decided to retry him.

This time he is represented by well-known defense attorney Stanley Schneider.