How Investigators Identified a New Suspect in the Yogurt Shop Murders Case

Thirty-three years since four young girls were fatally shot in a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, on Dec. 6, 1991, the Austin American-Statesman broke the news Friday that Austin police have named a suspect: Robert Eugene Brashers, who committed suicide in 1999. “We have identified a suspect in these murders through a wide range of DNA testing,” according to a statement from the city of Austin. Until this week, the ongoing investigation into the murders of Amy Ayers (13), Jennifer Harbison (17), Sarah Harbison (15), and Eliza Thomas (17) focused on four male suspects—Maurice Pierce, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, and Forrest Welborn—but there was never any physical evidence that linked them to the crime scene. However, police did make an effort to get swabs from the girls for future DNA testing. For more than three decades, police thought the incident was a robbery gone wrong. The case remained unsolved for so many years in part because the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt shop was set on fire, damaging potential evidence. In addition, no video footage at the store was captured, and police couldn’t track customers who paid in cash.  The New York Times reported that investigators tracked down Brashers through genetic genealogy, in which the genetic profile of a suspected assailant is inputted into an online genealogy database. The new development comes after HBO aired a popular documentary series on the case in August called The Yogurt Shop Murders, which explored the top theories on who murdered the girls and featured victims’ families. It did not take a stance on who murdered the girls, allowing viewers to make up their own minds. Why these four girls were murdered is still unclear. It remains to be seen whether this new development in the case will provide any indication of a motive in the killings.