Transcript
A (0:01)
Hi Crime House Community. It's Morgan Absher, and if you love digging into the most gripping true crime stories, then you need to listen to another Crime House original Crimes of with Sabrina Deanna Roga and Corinne Vien. Crimes of is a weekly series that explores a new theme each season from Crimes of Paranormal, unsolved murders, mysterious disappearances, and more.
B (0:22)
Sabrina and Corinne have been covering the true stories behind Hollywood's most iconic horror villains, and this month they'll be diving into the paranormal. Listen to Crimes of every Tuesday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
A (0:36)
One of this week's partners is Peloton we know that it takes just one small detail to crack open a case. And with Peloton, it takes just one step to start your fitness journey. Breakthrough.
B (0:47)
That's why the new Peloton Cross Training Tread plus, powered by Peloton iq, is the perfect thing to get you closer to your goals. With personalized plans and weekly recommendations, Peloton IQ builds a routine that adapts to you, your schedule, your mood, and your milestones.
A (1:01)
Whether you're training for a goal or just trying to make fitness fit your life, Peloton keeps you motivated and on track. It's Peloton's most advanced equipment yet, with intelligent strength coaching that tracks every rep, corrects your form and recommends the right weights.
B (1:17)
No guesswork, no mystery, just strength coaching that keeps you safe and helps you get stronger. And just like every good investigation, there are always twists.
A (1:26)
With the swivel screen, you can move seamlessly from running to strength training, yoga or Pilates, whatever the case calls for. It's more than a workout. It's your personal breakthrough waiting to happen.
B (1:38)
So let yourself run, lift, sculpt, push, and go explore the new Peloton Cross training Tread plus@1peloton.com Cold cases can sit on shelves for years without answers. But this year we've seen some amazing advancements in cases that police thought would never get solved. I want to tell you about three of those today, and they all have twists that no one saw coming and they get twistier as they go, so you're going to want to stick around. As always, welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding. I'm your host, Kaylin Moore. Now, this episode is coming out near Thanksgiving here in the States and around that time of year, I always think of things to be thankful for. And to me, the solving of cold cases, the closure that that gives families, is something that I think we can all be very grateful for. Now this is going to be one of our last episodes before we start some more winter specific stories in December. Think cozy mysteries, haunted castles, the kind of stuff you're going to want to curl up by a fire and drink hot chocolate too. So you'll want to be here for our December programming. But for now, I want to start off our episode by telling you about an incredibly high profile true crime case that had a major, major breakthrough this year and was ultimately solved. The Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, Texas. It's when your heart starts pounding. Now, a quick refresher on this case in the event that you're not familiar. 11:47pm Friday night on December 6, 1991 in Austin, Texas, something was definitely not right at the strip mall off of Anderson Lane. The owner of a party supply store was working late that night when he heard popping noises coming from one of the nearby stores. He ran outside and he immediately saw dark smoke billowing from the next door. Froyo shop called I Can't Believe It's Yogurt. By the time he tried to call 911, a group of firefighters were already approaching the scene and once they got there, the firefighters tried to enter the building, but they found that the front door was locked. Now that was to be expected. The workers had probably locked the door when they decided to close up for the night. If anything, that was a good sign because maybe the shop was empty empty and no one had gotten hurt in this fire. Unfortunately, that was not the case. The firefighters forced their way into the shop and saw the layout of the store. There was a charred counter that was directly in front of the door. Past some tables. There were booths on the right and left side of the shop as well, covered in soot. And then past the counter was the back of the store and that is where the fire seemed to have started. Through all the debris in the back part of the shop, they could make out the shapes of three bodies of teen girls that had been badly charred by the fire. None of them were wearing clothes and they had been gagged and tied up. They looked as though they had at one point been stacked on top of each other, but had maybe fallen over at some point once the fire started raging. Now even further in the back of the shop, separate from the three girls, was where they found the fourth and final body, also of a teen girl. She was not quite as badly burned as the others, but her body was still in gruesome shape. She seemed to have been shot twice through the face and head and once the medical examiner had done the autopsies it was confirmed that one of the girls was sexually assaulted. The medical examiner also swabbed the bodies for any DNA evidence, but never tested them for accelerant. So we don't know if something was poured on them to start the fire that night. The victims were eventually confirmed to be Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, who were both 17 and worked at the shop. Jennifer's sister, 15 year old Sarah Harbison, and Sarah's friend, 13 year old Amy Ayers. Now, Sarah and Amy had been planning on having a sleepover that night at Sarah and Jennifer's house. They were just waiting that night for Jennifer to close up so she could drive them home. They were normal teen girls having a normal teen girl night when tragedy struck. The Harbison parents would later recall how much both Jennifer and Sarah were both into sports. Jennifer excelled at track and Sarah absolutely dominated in basketball. The girls also loved animals and spent as much time around them as they could. Amy was a natural at horseback riding and she even had her own horse. Her mom described her as an old soul and her happiest when she was around animals. Sonora remembers her sister Eliza with an incredible amount of love as well. And so after this tragedy struck, the community very clearly was reeling over these deaths. Austin in 1991 was not the Austin that you think of today. Not even close. It was small. They didn't really have homicides like this. So police got to collecting clues to figure out who could have done it. But they were a little bit out of their element and they really wanted to find out at this time if this had been done by someone within their own community. They confirmed that the weapons used in this attack used.22 caliber and three.80 caliber bullets. Because of the extensive damage that was done by the fire and then the water that was used to put the fire out, collecting evidence was extremely difficult and they weren't really able to collect any fingerprints at the scene. But because the front door was locked, police were able to assume that the crime had taken place after the store had closed and the girls had locked up around 11pm that night. And the attacker must have fled through the back of the store. Now, based on the crime scene and witness statements that were collected from people who had been in the yogurt shop hours before it closed. The police put together an idea of what they thought had happened that night. So around 10pm, one hour before closing, a few witnesses remembered seeing a man come in. They didn't see his face, they didn't really hear his voice as he spoke to the girls behind the counter. He didn't order anything and instead he asked to use the bathroom. The girl said yes and he went in. He still hadn't come out by the time the customers who saw him left the store. And they're not sure what happened. So one theory became that maybe this man could have snuck into the back without anyone seeing him. Maybe he jammed the rear door open knowing that he was going to escape out the back later and then he either then hid out in the bathroom until the store closed or. Or he came back later through the back door that he had previously propped open. But there were other witnesses who pointed out two other men who seemed suspicious in the store that night. One with a padded tan jacket and another one that was thin and had light brown hair. But no one really got a good look at these guys faces. Some customers reported seeing those two guys sitting in a booth near the counter of the yogurt shop not long before the store closed around 10:45pm that night, which was about five minutes before the girls would have started closing up. And the last witness to leave the shop at around 10:47 that night remembered seeing that the two men were still inside as they left. So these men in theory were the last people to see the girls alive. It wasn't a ton to go off of, but just a week after the murders took place, police had a suspect in custody. A 16 year old boy named Maurice Pierce was seen at North Cross Mall kind of sauntering around with a loaded.22 caliber pistol, the same kind of gun that was used in the murders. And he had it kind of tucked in the waistband of his jeans and he had bullets in his pockets. Now the North Cross Mall was only two blocks from the yogurt shop. Amy and Sarah had actually walked over from the mall to meet Jennifer on the night of the murder. Maurice was immediately taken into police custody and they this set off a really horrible chain of events that would last decades and ultimately ruin lives. The police couldn't prove that Maurice's gun was the murder weapon. There actually wasn't any physical evidence that tied the 16 year old to the crime. But you have to remember police were out of their element and they were really eager to make an arrest. And in order to do that they would have to get a written confession to get the murder charges to stick. After hours of interrogation without a lawyer, Maurice Pierce told the police that his friend, a 15 year old boy named Forrest Welburn, had borrowed his gun the night of the yogurt shop murders. He said that Forrest disappeared for a while and then later returned sweaty smelling of hairspray, which the police thought was maybe the accelerant that was used to start the fire. And the day after this part of the interrogation happened, Maurice claimed that Forrest confessed to the killings. Detectives wired Maurice for a second conversation with his friend Forrest. But on tape, Forrest just insisted that he was only joking. Again, there was no evidence that linked either of those boys to the crime. But a homicide detective pressed the boys relentlessly for confessions. When that ultimately failed, Maurice offered a separate lead different from Forrest. He said that there were two other boys, 17 year old Robert Springsteen and 15 year old Michael Scott, that were involved in the killing. Police went and they interrogated those boys too. But again, they hit another wall because all four of these boys were denying any involvement in the crime. And with no physical evidence to tie any of them to it, they were all released. And after that, the case really went cold. But then in 1998, so seven years later, this detective named Paul Johnson reopened the investigation. He wanted to revisit those original four suspects. So he brought Michael Scott in again. And after nearly 18 hours of questioning in 1999, Scott confessed that he, Springsteen, Pierce and Welborn had gone to rob the shop that night and ended up killing the four girls. Then after that happened, they set the whole place on fire. But he didn't mention anything about a sexual assault, which the police thought was a little strange. He said that he and Springsteen were the shooters. And after a little bit of coaxing and leading by the police, he admitted that Springsteen had sexually assaulted one of the victims. Neither Pierce nor Welburn ever confessed to anything involving the crime, though. And based solely on these statements, all four boys were charged with capital murder. Scott received life in prison. Springsteen was sentenced to death. And if you go back and listen to any of these interrogations, which I did while doing some of the research for this episode, you can really hear how flawed these interrogations were. The police keep asking leading questions. It's like they know that the boys have no idea what happened in this crime. So they keep asking them things like, well, did you sexually assault them? Well then what did you do? Did you go over to one of them after that? And it's really the sexual assault element that they're leading them towards. One of the boys actually ended up asking for a lawyer during his interrogation, but he was ignored by the cops and ultimately never received one. And despite how chaotic the scene was at the time of the attack, none of the four boys left a shred of DNA, ballistics, or any physical evidence that they had ever been there. And now one of them was sentenced to die for this crime. Luckily, though, the convictions did collapse on appeal. The confessions were riddled with inconsistencies on top of the lack of physical evidence, and there really was just not enough to actually convict them. Over the next couple of decades, Investigators chased more than 1200 suspects and countless confessions that all proved to be false. The case remained unsolved Until a dramatic break nearly 35 years after the girls were murdered. The big break in the case Was set into motion by an act that was actually signed into law just three years ago in 2022. It was called the homicide victims families Rights act of 2021, and it was motivated by the yogurt shop murders. Specifically, the law was enacted to make sure that the latest technological advances Were being used to help solve cold cases. And this set off A really lucky chain of events in this case. So in 1991, when the swabs were taken on the bodies for DNA, the forensic technology didn't really allow for DNA to be used to test against suspects DNA. They just didn't have that technology yet. But in 2022, they did, and the police could pursue new leads in the case to using this new type of DNA testing that was available to them. And that same year, A man named Dan jackson Became head of the austin police department's unsolved homicide unit, and he decided that he wanted to take another look into the case. This reopened it for a third time. And in june of this year, Dan Jackson pulled out Two really crucial pieces of evidence for retesting. The first was the bullet casing from a.380 caliber gun. That bullet hadn't been tested through this one database, Called the national integrated ballistics information network, in years. So Dan decided he was going to create A new profile for this bullet casing and run it through that system again, Just to see if there were any matches. And lo and behold, there were. He got a match. It seemed like the gun that was used in the yogurt shop murders had potentially been used in an unsolved murder in in kentucky. And that murder shared some really weird coincidences with the overshot murders, because in that unsolved murder, A woman was sexually assaulted and then fatally shot, Just like one of the girls in the yogurt shop murders had been. And that really got Dan thinking, and it made him pretty optimistic. Were these done by the same guy? And if so, did that mean his DNA was now in a system somewhere? Well, DNA material was collected in 1991 at the yogurt shop from underneath Amy's fingernails. It had never been tested because back then, the technology just wasn't good enough. And they didn't have enough DNA to run more than one test on it or really to even upload it to CODIS or the Combined DNA Index system, which is a national database that lets crime labs share and compare DNA profiles. It uses technology to match DNA from crime scenes to other cases or to known criminals, helping investigators connect violent crimes and find suspects. They only had from this little sample of DNA, the suspects Y chromosome DNA, but it was at least something that could potentially lead them to the right person at some point. So what Dan did was he sent the profile of the DNA that they had to to individual police departments around the country, and he asked them to manually check it against profiles that they already had in their system. This was an incredibly tedious way to do this process. And I can only imagine that part of him was worried that other police departments simply wouldn't do this because of how tedious it was. But really, this was the only chance he had. And then, just like with the ballistics testing, he got a match from a police department in Greenville, South Carolina. The DNA tested matched DNA from the perpetrator of a sexual assault and murder that was committed in the area. And not only did the DNA match, but there was an eerily specific similarity between the two cases. The victims were tied up using their own clothing, which had happened in the yogurt shop murders and also happened in that case. Now, the crime that had shared DNA with the yogurt murders had been unsolved for decades. But in 2018, thanks to a genealogist named Cece Moore, the perpetrator had been named, and it was not anyone that police had on their radar. But just like that, 34 years later, the killer in the yogurt shop murders was finally identified as a man named Robert Eugene Brashers.