Austin police say DNA has identified a long-dead serial offender as the killer in the 1991 yogurt shop murders that left four teenage girls bound, shot and set amid a fire in a North Austin store, a case that haunted the city for nearly 34 years. Investigators named Robert Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999 during a police standoff, after new forensic testing tied him to evidence from the scene, according to authorities. Families of the victims were briefed ahead of a formal briefing, and police called the development a “significant breakthrough.”
The victims—Eliza Thomas, 17; sisters Jennifer, 17, and Sarah Harbison, 15; and Amy Ayers, 13—were discovered after firefighters responded to the blaze at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” shop on Dec. 6, 1991. The brutality of the crime and a sprawling investigation led to thousands of leads, false confessions and, years later, overturned convictions of two local men when emerging DNA excluded them; they were released in 2009. Police now say new testing points to Brashers, whose violent record in other states had already been established through prior cold-case work.
A retired Austin detective told CBS News that a bullet casing recovered from a shop drain was consistent with the pistol Brashers used to kill himself, and that the DNA connection provided the investigative pivot needed to identify him. Brashers had previously been linked by DNA to murders and a rape in South Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee, and was never known to have ties to Austin, which complicated earlier efforts to place him on investigators’ radar.
Authorities described the case as solved through DNA and genealogy techniques, while noting the suspect cannot be prosecuted because he is deceased. Officials have scheduled further briefings to explain the evidence that led to the identification and how it reconciles with earlier, discredited prosecutions. The development follows renewed public focus spurred by a recent documentary series; police emphasized their cold-case team “never gave up,” and that modern testing finally met legal thresholds that earlier techniques could not.
