Men once wrongfully accused of Austin yogurt shop murders seek formal exoneration

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A Texas judge on Thursday will consider a formal declaration of innocence for the four men who were wrongfully accused of the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders, including one man who was initially convicted and sent to death row in the killing of four teenagers in a crime that haunted the city for decades.

An exoneration ruling would close a dark chapter for the men and their families, and for a city that was shaken by the brutality of the crime and investigators’ inability to solve it for decades.

Cold case detectives announced last year they had connected the killings to a suspect who died in a standoff with police in Missouri in 1999.

That led to Thursday’s hearing before state District Judge Dayna Blazey, which two of the original four suspects, Michael Scott and Forrest Welborn, are expected to attend. Robert Springsteen, who was initially convicted and spent several years on death row, was not expected to attend. Maurice Pierce died in 2010.

“It has been over twenty-five years since the four men wrongfully accused have been waiting for the criminal justice system to clear their names,” Travis County District Attorney José Garza said when the hearing was scheduled.

A declaration of “actual innocence” would also be a key step for the men and their families to seek financial compensation for years they spent in jail or in prison.

The murders shocked Austin and confounded investigators for years

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 were arrested in late 1999.

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 and he was released.

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 had revealed another male suspect.

Connection to a new suspect revealed

The case effectively went cold until 2025. It got new public attention when an HBO documentary series explored the unsolved crime.

Investigators announced in September that new evidence and new reviews of old evidence pointed to Robert Eugene Brashers as the 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 murder in South Carolina.

Austin investigators also found that Brashers had been arrested at a border checkpoint near El Paso two days after the yogurt shop killings. In his stolen car was a pistol that matched the same caliber used to kill one of the girls in Austin.

Police also noted similarities in the yogurt shop case to Brashers’ other crimes: The victims were tied up with their own clothing, sexually assaulted and some crime scenes were set on fire.

Brashers died in 1999 when he shot himself during an hourslong standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Missouri.