Austin police say they believe they have identified the man responsible for the yogurt shop murders of 1991 that left four Austin teens dead.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis said the only physical evidence located at the scene of the crime has been matched with Robert Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999 after a standoff with police in Missouri.
"This is one of the most devastating and haunting cases in this city's history," Davis said. "For the families of Amy, Eliza, Sarah and Jennifer, today marks a critical step forward in honoring, not only their memory, but getting at truth and accountability."
The murders of the four teenage girls have gripped Austinites since 1991. One December night, two employees of an "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!" location near Northcross Mall, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, were closing up shop with Harbison's sister, Sarah, and her friend, Amy Ayers. They were fatally shot and the building set on fire. Police believe at least one of the victims was sexually assaulted.
Austin Mayor Kirk Watson said the breakthrough allows victims' families – and the city – to "express a deep sigh" after decades of uncertainty in Austin.
Barbara Wilson, the mother of victims Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, said she was "full of gratitude" for the efforts by police to finally give families an answer.
"It has been so long and all we ever wanted for this case was the truth," she said. "We never wanted anyone to go to jail or be charged with anything that they did not do. Vengeance was never it, it was always the truth."
'We're here now'
Austin police laid out a beat-by-beat timeline of the investigation stretching all the way back to 1991.
Lead Det. Dan Jackson said the department – along with state and federal partners – used a combination of ballistic and genetic evidence collected from crimes across the country to connect Brashers to the murders. Jackson told families the discovery of Brashers as a suspect simply wasn't possible in the nearly 34 years since the murders.
"This is something that could not have happened until 2025," Jackson said. "And I'm sorry that it took 34 years for us to get here, but we're here now."
Jackson has led the investigation into the yogurt shop murders case since 2022. He said that the identification of Brashers was due to new genetic connections to ballistic and forensic evidence from the murders.
Jackson said a recent match on a shell casing of the .380 pistol used during the yogurt shop murders connected them to another cold case in Kentucky.
In June, Jackson resubmitted the shell casing to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, a program that collects and stores images of bullet casings to help link crimes, which led to the crucial connection to Brashers in July.
Breakthroughs in DNA testing also helped identify Brashers. In 2018, Austin police re-submitted Brashers' DNA and it came back with a more complete genetic profile of the suspect, Jackson said. Investigators used the new profile to connect Brashers with another similar crime in South Carolina.
Earlier this month, police re-tested Ayers fingernail clippings from the autopsy, which confirmed Brashers DNA was present. Jackson said his DNA was likely in Ayer's fingernails because she was trying to defend herself during the attack.
"Amy's final moments on this earth were to solve this case," he said. "It's because of her fighting back."
Brashers was also connected to a case in Memphis in which he carried multiple weapons, tied his victims and sexually assault young women, police said.
'Overwhelming weight'
In 1999, Travis County prosecutors charged four men in connection with the murder. Police secured confessions from two of those suspects, Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, and both were convicted. Scott was sentenced to death for capital murder and Springsteen was sentenced to life on the same charge. Both men later said their confessions were coerced by Austin police.
Maurice Pierce was also charged and held in a Travis County jail until charges were dismissed and he was released in 2003. Forrest Welborn, another suspect, was let go after a grand jury opted not to indict him.
In 2006, Scott's and Springsteen's sentences were thrown out by Texas' highest criminal court, and their charges were later dismissed by the Travis County district attorney in 2009 after new genetic evidence surfaced.
"This case stole decades of my life, but the truth has finally come to light," Scott said in a statement on Monday.
Travis County District Attorney José Garza said his office will "take responsibility" for wrongly prosecuting Scott, Springsteen and Pierce.
"The overwhelming weight of the evidence points to the guilt of one man and the innocence of four," he said.
He added that the case is not officially closed and that "investigative steps" need to be made, but added that his office would be in contact with families as the cases progresses.
'Do not give up'
The crime was recently the subject of an HBO docuseries and, until now, there had been no breakthrough in the case for years.
The announcement of Brashers as the lead suspect today seemed to provide some closure to a painful, unresolved chapter in Austin's history.
Sonora Thomas, sister to Eliza Thomas, reflected on the years when the case wasn't in the national spotlight – and the kindness she's received from Austinites since the murders. She tearfully recalled a clerk telling her a decade ago that her family was "always in [her] prayers" and that she'd always received "an outpouring of love from strangers" in Austin.
"I know now what happened, and that does ease my suffering," she said. "And I can continue to pass on all the kindnesses that have been shown to me over the decades and and hope that I can ease the suffering of others."
Angie Ayers, wife of Shawn and sister-in-law to Amy, thanked law enforcement as well as the Texas Attorney General's cold case unit for bringing some resolution to families.
"Thank you for not forgetting the girls," she said.
Angie said she hopes this case encourages police departments in Texas and across the country to reopen cases, and she encouraged families of victims with unsolved cases to "keep going."
"When your gut is telling you to push, do not give up."
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