Austin police solved the 1991 “Yogurt Shop Murders” using advanced DNA technology, identifying Robert Eugene Brashers as the suspect.
AUSTIN, Texas — On Monday, the Austin Police Department (APD) held a press conference detailing how advanced DNA testing led them to identify the suspect responsible for the 1991 murders of four girls in the infamous “Yogurt Shop Murders” case.
On Friday, Sept. 25, law enforcement sources confirmed that the 1991 case had been solved using genetic genealogy technology. The perpetrator was identified as Robert Eugene Brashers, an American serial killer who died by suicide in 1999.
Brashers’ DNA profile has previously been connected to a number of other serious crimes, including a 1990 murder in Greenville, South Carolina; the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old in Memphis; and the 1998 double murder of a woman and her 12-year-old daughter in Missouri.
The breakthrough in the case came after nearly 34 years through Y-STR testing, which analyzes the male chromosome. This testing technique uses publicly available DNA data and family tree mapping to identify suspects through relatives.
Austin Police Det. Daniel Jackson, who was assigned this case in 2022, outlined how the case got to where it is now, connecting the fire at an “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” shop in North Austin with multiple other cases of similar motives.
Investigators laid out the diagram of the yogurt shop, with the fire started in the back of the shop.
The perpetuator, determined to be Brashers, entered into the shop near closing time when no other customers were inside the business at that time. The four victims – Jennifer Harbison and her younger sister, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas and Amy Ayers – were all found naked, tied up with their own clothing as “ligatures and bindings.”
Investigators said there was evidence of sexual assault, and all four girls were shot in the head with a .22 caliber pistol. Ayers was determined to have also been shot by a .380 caliber pistol, and it was revealed the building was set on fire before the suspect left the yogurt shop.
When the incident happened in 1991, detectives went into the shop and collected evidence with swap tests of possible DNA not only at the scene, but also during the autopsies.
Investigators said the only physical evidence that was recovered at the scene was one spent .380 shell casing that was found in the floor drain. No .22 casings were found in the shop.
The fire and the water from fire department “basically destroyed pretty much anything else” from the scene.
Ongoing investigation
In the days following the murders, police received thousands of tips and multiple false confessions. Among them was a statement from Maurice Pierce, a 16-year-old who had been found carrying a .22 pistol near Northcross Mall, which was down the street from the yogurt shop. Under hours of interrogation by a homicide detective, Pierce confessed and implicated his friend, Forrest Welborn. Welborn, in turn, claimed Pierce, along with Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, had gone to San Antonio after the murders.
The four teenagers were initially questioned and released. But in 1999, police revisited Pierce’s confession. Scott and Springsteen were reinterviewed and ultimately confessed under separate interrogations. Both were charged and later convicted of capital murder. Springsteen received the death penalty; Scott was sentenced to life without parole.
However, no physical evidence ever linked the men to the crime scene. Their convictions relied heavily on their confessions, which were later called into question.
During their appeals, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Crawford v. Washington, changed how hearsay evidence could be used in court, ruling that statements made by a nontestifying co-defendant could not be used against another defendant. Since neither Scott nor Springsteen took the stand in their own trials, both convictions were overturned.
In preparation for new trials, prosecutors continued to seek physical evidence. A new form of DNA testing, Y-STR, which analyzes male-specific chromosomes, was used on a sexual assault kit from the case. The profile that emerged excluded all of the four original suspects: Scott, Springsteen, Welborn and Pierce.
In 2009, charges against Scott and Springsteen were dismissed, pending further investigation.
Investigators say numerous DNA testing strategies were utilized, with over 300 to 400 people tested in this case. Investigators say “the most difficult part is most of the evidence collected was only a few picograms.” A picogram is a small amount of few cells that were found in the test.
In 2018, the unknown-Y profile was submitted for retesting with new advancements in testing. The Y-STR expanded the markers to 27 genetic locations for a more complete profile of the suspect.
Jackson said he was able to meet with several genealogy experts after being assigned to the case in 2022.
Jackson said the .380 cartridge was not submitted into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, and with testing more widely available, he determined it was needed to test it again. In the initial investigation, ballistics reported in all probability that the weapon used in the murder of Ayers was a .380 semiautomatic gun.
In July 2025, the task force requested to retest a fired .380 cartridge casing, as the software to test DNA had improved from 1991. The investigation came back with a “hit” to a reported unsolved murder out of Kentucky.
The murders from Kentucky and the “Yogurt Shop Murders” shared a similar MO, according to investigators. A positive correlation was allegedly linked, as the two casings found at both crime scenes indicated the same gun was used.
After doing a Y-STR test again to find the unknown Y-chromosome, Jackson said there was a match after doing a manual search throughout the entire country. The South Carolina state lab was the only lab in the country that reported a match to the unknown Y-STR in the case.
In August 2025, a murder case from 1990 out of Greenville, South Carolina, determined the unknown Y-STR test from the Yogurt Shop Murders matched 27 out of 27 with Brashers.
After Brashers died in 1999, DNA was able to link multiple unsolved murders and sexual assaults that happened across the country to him, investigators said.
DNA was able to connect Brashers to the following cases:
- Murder in Greenville, South Carolina
- Double homicide in New Madrid, Missouri
- Attempted assault in Dyersberg, Tennessee
A sexual assault kit was submitted for testing in 2016 regarding a sexual assault in 1997 on a 14-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee, who was tied up along with four other girls during a home invasion.
In 2017, the Memphis case was connected to the cases in Missouri, South Carolina and the other case in Tennessee.
Genealogy was able to accurately identify Brashers as the potential suspect through Brashers’ family members out of Huntsville, Alabama.
Brashers body was exhumed out of Arkansas following a judge’s order to determine biological evidence. Following the testing in 2018, it was confirmed all the cases matched with Brashers.
Investigators later found Brashers had multiple fake IDs and even faked his own obituary and put it in the newspaper.
How was Brashers named a suspect?
On Dec. 6, 1991, the night of the Yogurt Shop Murders, four teenage girls were killed inside an Austin ice cream shop shortly before 11 p.m. Less than 48 hours later, on Dec. 8, Brashers was stopped at a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint on Interstate 10, between El Paso and Las Cruces, New Mexico.
According to investigators, a border agent became suspicious of Brashers’ answers during routine questioning. A check of his license plate revealed that the vehicle he was driving had been reported stolen in Georgia on Nov. 29.
During the stop, Brashers was found in possession of a .380-caliber AMT Backup pistol, the same make and model used in the Yogurt Shop Murders. He was arrested on charges of auto theft and felon in possession of a firearm.
At the time, authorities did not connect Brashers to the Austin murders.
Decades later, retesting evidence using Y-STR DNA testing provided the breakthrough investigators had long awaited. Samples taken from under Ayers’ fingernails during her 1991 autopsy were retested and produced a Y-STR profile.
That profile matched Brashers’ DNA with a likelihood ratio of 2.5 million to one, indicating it was 2.5 million times more likely the DNA belonged to Brashers than an unknown person.
“Amy’s final moments on this Earth were to solve this case for us,” said Jackson. “It’s because of her fighting back” that they were able to identify Brashers as the perpetrator.
Investigators believe Brashers acted alone in the 1991 attack. They noted he had a history of controlling multiple victims, including a 1997 home invasion and sexual assault in Memphis, where he was able to overpower four women.
Brashers’ criminal history spanned multiple states and cases, and he died by suicide in 1999.
What are the Yogurt Shop Murders?
On Dec. 6, 1991, four teen girls were bound, gagged and killed at an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt shop off West Anderson Lane in North Austin. The building was then set on fire, destroying what could have been a trove of forensic clues.
The victims were identified as 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison and her younger sister, 15-year-old Sarah Harbison; 17-year-old Eliza Thomas; and 13-year-old Amy Ayers. Thomas and Jennifer Harbison both worked at the yogurt shop, while Ayers and Sarah Harbison stopped in before closing time on the night of the crime.
The quadruple murder had a significant impact on the growing city of Austin and left many hungry for answers for decades.
Four men were arrested and charged with capital murder in 1999, but two of their cases were overturned. The other two never went to trial.
In recent years, there had been numerous pushes for additional investigation of the case, including testing of DNA evidence found on Ayers’ body, as reported by KVUE in 2020.
A docuseries centered on the murders, called “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” was released on HBO Max earlier this year.