# The 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders Have Been SOLVED: What We Know So Far

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 3 Oct 2025, 13 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO7856883329.mp3

Join me as we discuss the 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop Murders and how they were recently either completely or partially solved. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill True Crime Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8dVJtzeHcJgd_Z0bHrJTHQ Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 true crime, unsolved mysteries, cold cases, missing persons, murder investigations, serial killers, criminal profiling, forensic evidence, DNA breakthroughs, crime documentaries, historical crimes, criminal psychology, court trials, wrongful convictions, criminal justice system, police investigations, crime scene analysis, infamous criminals, mysterious disappearances, solved cold cases, forensic science, true crime podcast, shocking murders, unexplained deaths, notorious cases, crime history, criminal conspiracies, real crime stories, dark history, homicide cases, unsolved murders, criminal investigations, crime suspects, forensic breakthroughs, chilling true crime, mysterious deaths, high profile cases, true crime analysis, strange disappearances, criminal justice

## Transcript

[0:00] In early December 1991, the Austin suburbs were bustling
[0:03] with holiday shoppers. Families crowded strip malls and
[0:07] couples enjoyed nights out. Hidden beneath this festive
[0:11] veneer, a small frozen yogurt shop in North Austin prepared to
[0:15] close for the evening. 2 teenage employees, 17 year old Jennifer
[0:20] Harbison and her friend Eliza Thomas were tidying up while
[0:24] Jennifer's 15 year old sister Sarah waited for a ride. 13 year
[0:30] old Amy Ayers, another friend, was there too.
[0:33] None of them would make it home. And when firefighters responded
[0:37] to a blaze at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop, they
[0:40] discovered a scene that would traumatize the city for decades.
[0:45] This incident at this Austin yogurt shop would go on to be
[0:48] one of the nation's most haunting unsolved mysteries
[0:51] until it was recently solved. But despite its recent status
[0:55] update, a pressing question remains, and the authorities
[0:59] continue to search for a second perpetrator.
[1:04] The evening of December 6th, 1991 began like many others, for
[1:08] the Harbison sisters. Jennifer and Eliza were wrapping
[1:12] up their shift when Sarah arrived, accompanied by her
[1:15] friend Amy. Witnesses later reported seeing
[1:19] men hanging around the strip mall, and a man was observed
[1:22] entering the shop just before closing shortly before midnight.
[1:27] A passing patrol officer noticed smoke, and when firefighters
[1:31] arrived, they encountered heavy flames and a pungent odor.
[1:36] Firefighters knew what that smell meant, though the full
[1:39] horror of what had happened was not yet known.
[1:42] As the smoke cleared, they made a gruesome discovery. 4 bodies
[1:47] clustered in the back storage area.
[1:50] Investigators determined that the girls had been bound with
[1:53] pieces of their own clothing, gagged with cloth, subject to
[1:57] illicit assault and shot in the head with at least two different
[2:01] weapons. Their bodies had been doused
[2:04] with a flammable liquid and set alight.
[2:09] Austin police quickly launched an extensive investigation.
[2:13] Dozens of detectives canvassed the area, interviewed hundreds
[2:16] of potential witnesses and gathered physical evidence,
[2:20] including two sets of shell casings.
[2:23] Unfortunately, the fire and sprinklers had destroyed much of
[2:27] the evidence. DNA technology was in its
[2:30] infancy, and investigators didn't have the tools that would
[2:33] later become standard. Frustration grew as leads
[2:39] stalled, and in the weeks following the attacks, police
[2:43] released composite sketches of two men seen near the yogurt
[2:46] shop. Tips poured in, leading
[2:49] investigators to interview a wide range of individuals, from
[2:53] Drifters to disgruntled employees.
[2:56] Among those arrested was a 16 year old named Maurice Pierce,
[3:00] who was found carrying a weapon at a mall two days after the
[3:03] attack. Ballistic tests eventually
[3:07] showed this weapon hadn't been used in the Commission of the
[3:09] crime. However, Pierce told police he
[3:13] and three friends, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen and
[3:17] Forrest Welborn, were all involved.
[3:22] Over the next few years, these four men, then teenagers, became
[3:26] the focus of the case. The investigation suffered from
[3:32] tunnel vision and controversial techniques, and in retrospect,
[3:37] the techniques appear to have been designed to get a
[3:39] confession rather than the truth.
[3:42] Detectives interrogated the suspects repeatedly, sometimes
[3:46] for hours, without lawyers present.
[3:50] Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen eventually
[3:52] confessed, implicating each other and describing details
[3:56] that some investigators believed only the perpetrators would
[4:00] know. Critics argued the confessions
[4:03] were coerced and Springsteen had developmental difficulties and
[4:07] Scott had been threatened by detectives with the big state
[4:10] sponsor DP. In 1999, a new investigative
[4:16] team revived the case and all four men were arrested.
[4:21] Prosecutors charged Scott and Springsteen with a capital
[4:24] offense, while Pearson Wellborn faced lesser charges.
[4:28] Springsteen was convicted in 2001 and Scott in 2002, each
[4:34] sentenced to life in prison. From the outset, the convictions
[4:39] were controversial, and defense attorneys argued that the
[4:43] confessions were inconsistent. They also argued that they
[4:47] contradicted physical evidence and were obtained under duress.
[4:52] Further, there was no DNA linking the men to the crime,
[4:56] and the weapons used in the crime were never recovered from
[5:00] this group. In 2006 and 2007, appellate
[5:06] courts reverse Springsteen's and Scott's convictions, citing
[5:09] improper use of Co defendants confessions.
[5:13] However, the authorities were still free to bring the case
[5:16] against them again given the decision on appeal.
[5:20] Further DNA testing revealed that none of the four men were
[5:24] involved in the indecent assaults that took place on the
[5:26] victims. While this didn't necessarily
[5:29] mean they weren't involved and there could have been an unknown
[5:33] 5th man, this made the confessions even less logically
[5:37] coherent. Prosecutors ultimately
[5:40] acknowledge they no longer had enough evidence and dropped the
[5:43] charges. In 2009, Michael Scott and
[5:47] Robert Springsteen walked free after spending nearly a decade
[5:50] in prison. Maurice Pierce, who maintained
[5:53] his innocence, was eliminated by an Austin police officer during
[5:57] an unrelated altercation in 2010, putting an end to any
[6:01] questions about his role. Forrest Welborn was never tried
[6:05] for his alleged role in the attack on the girls at the
[6:08] yogurt shop, despite having been initially charged in relation to
[6:12] the events. With the functional exoneration
[6:17] of the original suspects, the case returned to square 1.
[6:21] Investigators continued to pursue leads, but the trail grew
[6:25] cold and in 2017, the Austin cops established A-Team to get
[6:31] justice for the slain girls. However, the initial hit from
[6:35] this case wouldn't be from genetic genealogy as some might
[6:38] have suspected, but rather from a shell casing retrieved from
[6:42] the scene. And Full disclosure here, when I
[6:46] had someone in the comments tell me that this case had been
[6:48] solved, I immediately thought it was going to solely be due to
[6:52] forensic genetic genealogy. In July 2025, Detective Daniel
[6:59] Jackson resubmitted the casing to the National Integrated
[7:02] Ballistic Information Network. Advances in 3D scanning and an
[7:07] expanded database allowed NIBIN to find matches that earlier
[7:10] tests missed. When Jackson's request returned
[7:13] to hit, it linked the Austin casing to an unsolved 1998
[7:18] double slaying in rural Kentucky.
[7:21] Importantly, that slaying also involved an illicit assault, and
[7:26] there was biological evidence left behind that irrefutably
[7:29] tied the perpetrator to the scene.
[7:32] The Kentucky case involved a very similar weapon, further
[7:35] raising the possibility that the same weapon had been used in
[7:39] Austin. The nib and hit was a pivotal
[7:44] moment, and Austin cold case detectives reached out to
[7:47] Kentucky investigators and shared the DNA profile they had.
[7:51] The two jurisdictions shared what they had, and the two
[7:54] profiles matched. In August 2025, a South Carolina
[7:59] state lab located a matching genetic profile in an unsolved
[8:04] 1990s slaying. The match pointed to Robert
[8:08] Eugene Brashers, a serial predator who had been identified
[8:12] through forensic genealogy in 2018.
[8:16] Brashers had reserved his final bullet for himself, and he
[8:19] voluntarily ended his own spree in 1999, leaving behind a trail
[8:24] of unsolved crimes. Interestingly, the ballistic
[8:29] testing on the weapon Brashers used in that last act would
[8:33] later be confirmed to be the one he had used to take some of the
[8:36] victims lives at the yogurt shop.
[8:39] On September 29th, 2025, Austin police held a press conference
[8:44] to announce that they had finally solved the yogurt shop
[8:47] case. Robert Eugene Brashers was born
[8:52] in 1956 and spent much of his life drifting across the
[8:56] American South. He had a history of violence,
[9:00] indecent assaults, and burglary and was known for his extreme
[9:04] violence. In 1985, he shot his neighbor
[9:08] during a dispute in Alabama, and later he was linked to several
[9:12] unsolved slayings. As of right now, he is confirmed
[9:16] to have slain at least 7 people and is believed to be
[9:19] responsible for many other crimes as well.
[9:25] In January 1999, Brashers was arrested in Missouri for
[9:29] unlawful possession of a weapon and was suspected of kidnapping.
[9:33] He was released on bond and fled, but the US Marshals
[9:37] successfully tracked him to a motel in Kennett, MO.
[9:41] It was there during a last stand, that he chose to give
[9:44] himself the DP in that hotel room.
[9:49] Although investigators have identified Robert Brasher's as
[9:52] the main perpetrator, questions remain.
[9:56] Police have hinted that at least two men committed the crime
[9:59] because two different weapons were used, and witnesses
[10:02] reported seeing more than one man near the shop.
[10:06] Brashers may have worked with an accomplice who remains unknown.
[10:10] Some believe that Brashers met the accomplice in the months
[10:13] before the crime. He had previously been stopped
[10:16] by Border Patrol near Del Rio, TX, just two days after the
[10:20] attacks while traveling with an unidentified male.
[10:23] The man's identity has never been confirmed, and it's unclear
[10:26] if there was a DNA profile from the man recovered from the
[10:29] scene. Another question revolves around
[10:34] why Brashers targeted the yogurt shop.
[10:37] Unlike his other crimes, which involved break insurance at
[10:41] private homes, the yogurt shop was a high risk public space.
[10:46] Some speculate that Brashers and his accomplice intended to rob
[10:49] the shop and then encountered the girls.
[10:52] Others think that the girls were the primary targets, perhaps
[10:56] after being stalked. Brashers has a history of
[10:59] disturbing and illicit violence even outside of this, so it's
[11:03] possible that he may have linked up with another serial predator.
[11:09] Further, the speculation that there may have been more than
[11:12] one offender is supported by logistic considerations.
[11:16] Controlling 4 victims, binding them and carrying out the
[11:21] horrible acts would have been significantly more difficult for
[11:24] a single person than for two men.
[11:28] Personally, I don't find this point to be all that compelling,
[11:33] and I suspect 4 teenage girls who are confronted by 1 armed
[11:37] man wouldn't be fighting back in any meaningful way.
[11:41] In fact, I suspect this would likely be the case even if these
[11:44] were 4 unarmed, burly adult males.
[11:50] The full or partial resolution of the yogurt shop slayings
[11:52] illustrates just how far forensic technology has come in
[11:56] the last few decades. Had this crime taken place
[11:59] today, the perpetrator or perpetrators would have been
[12:02] clapped in cuffs within months, given the power of these testing
[12:06] techniques. But perhaps more poignantly,
[12:10] it's unlikely that the four innocent victims would have ever
[12:13] met this end at all. Brashers likely wouldn't have
[12:16] been given the opportunity to start his crime spree if he
[12:19] lived in the era of ultra modern forensic techniques.
[12:24] Anyway, it looks like there's still some significant work to
[12:27] be done on this case by investigators.
[12:29] While it hasn't yet been confirmed that a second
[12:32] perpetrator exists, I hope to have an update on this case
[12:35] shortly. Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here
[12:41] reminding you to take a moment to subscribe and hit the
[12:44] notification bell and also turn on all notifications.
[12:48] Also, don't forget to hit that hype button as well since it
[12:51] increases the visibility of my content in the algorithm as
[12:54] well.

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