DNA evidence links a dead man to the 1991 killings of 4 girls at Texas
yogurt shop
[September 27, 2025]
By JIM VERTUNO
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Police named a dead man Friday as a new suspect in
the 1991 unsolved killings of four teenage girls at an Austin yogurt
shop, saying DNA evidence led to a “significant breakthrough” in the
brutal crime that has haunted Texas’ capital and stumped investigators
for decades.
In a statement, Austin police said DNA tests led investigators to Robert
Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999 during a standoff with law
enforcement. He has since then been linked to several killings and rape
in other states.
The announcement came amid renewed attention on the case with the
release last month of “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” an HBO documentary
series. Police said the case remains open and scheduled a Monday news
conference to detail their findings.
The murders stunned Texas’ capital city and became known as one of the
area’s most notorious crimes. Austin police investigators and
prosecutors had stumbled over the case for years as they waded through
thousands of leads, several false confessions and badly damaged evidence
from the burned-out crime scene.
“Our team never gave up working this case,” Austin police said.
Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison,
ages 17 and 15, were bound, gagged and shot in the head at the “I Can’t
Believe It’s Yogurt” store where two of them worked. The building was
then set on fire.
Investigators have said that around closing time, someone entered the
store through the back door, attacked the girls and set the fire. The
bodies were found when firefighters were still battling the blaze.
The autopsy report offered glimpses of the lives of teenage sisters and
friends: Ayers wore small, white earrings. Sarah Harbison was wearing a
gold necklace and a Mickey Mouse watch. Jennifer Harbison wore a high
school ring and a Timex watch.
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Tributes lay on a memorial Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, for four teenage
girls who were killed in a yogurt shop in 1991 in Austin, Texas. (AP
Photo/Paul J. Weber)
It also suggested the horror: their hands were tied with underwear
and mouths were gagged with cloth. Ayers was shot twice.
In 1999, authorities arrested four men on murder charges. Two of
them, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, were teenagers at the
time of the murders. They initially confessed and implicated each
other. But both men quickly recanted and said their statements were
made under pressure by police.
Still both were tried and convicted. Initially Springsteen was sent
to death row, but his sentence was then reduced to life in prison.
Their convictions were overturned and they were set for retrial a
decade later.
A judge ordered both men freed in 2009 when prosecutors said new DNA
tests that weren't available in 1991 had revealed another male
suspect.
In 2018, Missouri authorities said DNA evidenced linked Brashers to
the strangulation of a South Carolina woman in 1990, and the
shooting of a mother and daughter in Missouri in 1998. The evidence
also connected him to the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old girl in
Tennessee.
Brashers died in 1999 when he shot himself during an hours-long
standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Missouri.
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