Men wrongly accused of grisly yogurt shop murders in Texas reach $35
million settlement with city
[May 13, 2026]
By JIM VERTUNO
The city of Austin will pay $35 million to three men and the family of a
fourth who were wrongly accused of the 1991 rape and murder of four
teenage girls at a yogurt shop, a case that initially sent one of the
men to death row and another to life in prison, under a tentative
settlement reached Tuesday.
Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn and Maurice Pierce
had all insisted they were innocent of one of the city's most notorious
crimes. They were finally declared innocent by a judge in February after
investigators determined the crime was committed by a suspect who died
in 1999.
The settlement must still be approved by the city council at a later
date. Details of the payments to the men and their families were not
released.
“This settlement closes the final chapter of a devastating story in
Austin’s history," Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax said in a
statement. "We are pleased to have reached an agreement with those who
were wrongly accused and wrongly convicted in this case and hope that
this settlement brings a sense of closure to everyone affected by this
horrific event.”
Scott and his attorney Tony Diaz said in a joint statement they are
hopeful the settlement will help improve investigation practices and
safeguards against wrongful convictions.
“Discussions and negotiations are ongoing regarding police reforms that
would help ensure that nothing like what occurred in this case ever
happens again,” they 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
set on fire.
Investigators chased thousands of leads and several false confessions
before the four men, who were teenagers when the girls were killed, were
arrested in late 1999.
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Michael Scott, left, hugs Sharon Shipman, the mother of yogurt
shop suspect Forrest Welborn, after he was exonerated at a hearing
for four men wrongfully accused in the 1991 Austin yogurt shop
murders at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center in Austin,
Texas, Feb. 19, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP,
File)
Springsteen and Scott were convicted based largely on confessions
they insisted were coerced by police. Both convictions were
overturned in the mid-2000s.
Welborn was charged but never tried after two grand juries refused
to indict him. Pierce spent three years in jail before the charges
were dismissed. He died in 2010 in a confrontation with police after
a traffic stop.
Prosecutors wanted to try Springsteen and Scott again, but a judge
ordered the charges dismissed in 2009 when new DNA tests that were
unavailable in 1991 and the previous trials revealed another male
suspect.
Investigators determined in 2025 that new DNA science and reviews of
old ballistics evidence pointed to Robert Eugene Brashers as the
sole killer.
Since 2018, authorities had used advanced DNA evidence to link
Brashers to the strangulation death of a South Carolina woman in
1990, the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee and the
shooting of a mother and daughter in Missouri in 1998.
The link to the Austin case came when a DNA sample taken from under
Ayers’ fingernail came back as a match to Brashers from the 1990
killing.
Brashers died in 1999 when he shot himself during an hourslong
standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Missouri.
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