DNA ties new suspect to Austin yogurt shop murders; Brashers identified posthumously

Friday, authorities announced that DNA analysis had identified a new suspect in the 1991 Yogurt Shop murders in Austin: Robert Eugene Brashers, a long-dead serial killer tied to a string of killings and rapes across the country. Officials cautioned that more details would be released Monday by the Austin Police Department.

The killings occurred Dec. 6, 1991, at an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop in downtown Austin. Investigators say someone entered through the back door near closing time and attacked four teenagers before setting the building on fire. The victims were Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; Jennifer Harbison, 17; and Sarah Harbison, 15. They were found with their hands bound with underwear and their mouths gagged with cloth, and all were shot in the head.

Eight years later, in 1999, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott were arrested and charged. They were teenagers at the time and initially confessed, implicating each other, but later recanted and said their statements were coerced. After appeals, their convictions were overturned; prosecutors dropped the cases, and a judge ordered both men freed in 2009.

Robert Eugene Brashers died in 1999 during an hourslong standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Missouri. In the years since, advances in forensic DNA analysis allowed investigators to connect him to a string of unsolved killings across multiple states. In 2018, Missouri authorities tied him to the 1998 killing of Sherri Scherer and her daughter Megan near Portageville, about 155 miles southeast of St. Louis, including a sexual assault of a 12-year-old victim. The investigation also linked him to the 1990 killing of Genevieve Zitricki, a 28-year-old found beaten and strangled in her Greenville, South Carolina, home, as well as the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997.

Authorities noted Brashers’ lengthy criminal record, which included attempted murder, burglary and impersonating a police officer.

Brashers’ daughter, Deborah Brashers-Claunch, told local outlets she was an infant when the Austin murders happened and eight years old when her father died. She said she did not know why he ended up in Austin, other than that he worked in construction. She expressed sorrow for the families affected and suggested more crimes could come to light.

The case drew renewed public attention after an HBO documentary series, The Yogurt Shop Murders, released last month. Police said Friday that they would provide more details Monday as the investigation continues in this long-running, high-profile cold case.