Decades After Texas Yogurt Shop Murders, New DNA Evidence Points to Deceased Serial Killer
For more than three decades, the unsolved murders of four teenage girls at an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas, have lingered in the collective memory of the community. The case, known as the "Yogurt Shop Murders," took a dramatic turn in September 2025 when the Austin Police Department announced that Robert Eugene Brashers, a deceased serial killer and rapist, was linked to the crime through DNA evidence. On Feb. 19, 2026, a judge declared the four men who had been wrongfully accused — Maurice Pierce, Forrest Welborn, Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen — formally innocent, exonerating them after decades of legal battles. The City of Austin later agreed to a $35 million settlement to be divided among the men.
The brutal crime occurred on Dec. 6, 1991, when Eliza Thomas (17), Jennifer Harbison (17), her sister Sarah Harbison (15), and their friend Amy Ayers (13) were bound, gagged, shot in the head, and the shop was set ablaze. One victim was sexually assaulted. The atrocity stunned the city and launched a sprawling investigation led by Detective John Jones, who still recalls the scene with chilling clarity: “I can still see the inside of that place. That stuff’s indelibly burned in my mind.”
Over the years, police pursued numerous leads, including false confessions from six different individuals and suspects who fled to Mexico. But the case remained unsolved, leaving families in a state of perpetual grief. Sonora Thomas, Eliza’s sister, described the ongoing pain: “There is a kind of torture that continues by the fact that it’s unsolved and it’s ongoing.”
In 1999, detectives arrested four young men — the same individuals initially questioned days after the murders — after obtaining confessions from Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen. Both were convicted and sentenced to death or life in prison. However, their convictions were later overturned on constitutional grounds, and DNA testing on vaginal swabs from one victim failed to match any of the four suspects. That partial male DNA profile, obtained through Y-STR testing, became the key to the case’s eventual breakthrough.
In 2025, advanced DNA analysis tied the profile to Brashers, who had a history of sexual violence and homicide. Although Brashers died years ago, the identification brought long-awaited clarity — and vindication — to the wrongfully accused men. For Jones, the retired detective who kept a green-and-white shirt as a promise to the families that he would wear it only when the case was solved, the news was bittersweet. “I just hope one of these days we can put this thing to bed, for the families’ sake,” he said.
The case also spurred legislative change: the Homicide Victims’ Families’ Rights Act, signed into law in August 2022, allows families of cold-case murder victims to request federal review with the latest technology. As DNA science continues to advance, investigators and families alike hold out hope that the full truth will one day be known.