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Hi, Crime House community.
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It's Katie looking for another Crime House original podcast to add to your rotation. You will love Clues with Morgan Abshur and Kaylin Moore. Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kaylin dig into the world's most notorious crimes, clue by clue, from serial killers to shocking murders.
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They follow the trail of clues, break.
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Down the evidence and debate the theories. It's like hanging out with your smart and true crime obsessed friends.
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Listen to clues on Apple podcasts, Spotify.
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Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Crime House. False confessions are something that have always fascinated me. The idea that an ordinary person could admit to something unthinkable. Most of us believe we'd never break. But under the right pressure, almost anyone can. For decades, the Reid technique dominated U.S. interrogations, using psychological pressure to extract confessions. Sometimes true, sometimes disastrously wrong. Tonight, we're looking into one of Texas most haunting cases. The yogurt shop murders. For years, justice slipped away because of false confessions and a flawed investigation. And now, 35 years later, science has finally uncovered the killer's true identity.
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After 34 years, Austin's most infamous cold case appears to have been solved. It was 1991 when four teenage girls were shot and burned in an Austin yogurt shop. Now infamous crime known as the yogurt shop murders. I said that Austin lost its innocence. Today we have some closure.
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Hi, welcome to Crime House Daily.
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I'm your host, Katie Ring. Here we follow the cases making headlines now, where justice is still unfolding. Follow us wherever you're listening. And if you want ad free episodes, subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. This episode discusses active criminal cases and breaking news. The information we share is based on what's publicly available at the time of recording and may change as new evidence comes to light. We aim to inform, not to decide guilt or innocence. So everyone mentioned is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
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Just got a new puppy or kitten. Congrats. But also yikes. Between crates, beds, toys, treats, and those first few vet visits, you've probably already dropped a small fortune. Which is where Lemonade pet insurance comes in. It helps cover vet costs so you can focus on what's best for your new pet. The coverage is customizable, sign up is quick and easy, and your claims are handled in as little as three seconds. Lemonade offers a package specifically for puppies and kittens. Get a'llemonade.com pet your future self will thank you. Your pet won't. They don't know what insurance is.
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There are some Crimes that have almost become part of the identity of the city. They occur in. December 6, 1991 is one of those crimes and one of those dates. In Austin, Texas, this was a night. Four teenage girls, 13 year old Amy Ayers, 17 year old Jennifer Harbison, her 15 year old sister Sarah, and their 17 year old friend Eliza Thomas were at the I can't believe it's yogurt shop on West Anderson Lane. Four girls with futures, families, dreams and plans. Four girls who should have walked out of the shop and gone home. But instead, the shop was set on fire. And when firefighters pulled back the smoke and debris, they uncovered a crime so brutal, so senseless, that Austin has never fully healed from it. For families, the days that followed blurred into a lifetime. Police briefings, media attention, false starts, high hopes and crushing disappointments. And for the city, the yogurt shop murders became a shadow. A reminder that even in a place that felt safe, unimaginable violence could erupt. In the years that followed, investigators chased leads from every corner of Austin. Some fizzled, some seemed promising. And some, like the confessions that eventually came from a group of young men, seemed for a while like the final answer. But those confessions didn't match the evidence. They didn't match each other. And eventually they fell apart. False confessions are a complicated topic, and in this story, they matter. They shaped the investigation, influenced public opinion and sent young men to prison for years. But they are not the heart of this episode. It's about four girls. About what happened to them in the final minutes of their lives. About the families who kept going even when the case grew cold. And about a city that never stopped asking, who would do something like this and why? For more than three decades, that question echoed unanswered. Then something unexpected happened. While HBO was working on a documentary series about the yogurt shop murders. Interviews, archival footage, case files, police reports. Detectives behind the scenes were quietly making breakthroughs. New technology, new DNA interpretation, new investigative angles. And finally, a name. This is the yogurt shop murders. And after 35 years, we finally know who did it. This is the story of four young girls whose lives were stolen. Of a city haunted for decades. Of an investigation that lost its way. And of the truth that refused to stay buried. Let's get into it. 17 year old Jennifer Harbison was a hard working high school senior doing what most kids do that age, trying to figure out what came next after graduation and which college she might end up at. Her 15 year old sister Sarah had just started high school and was a freshman she was taking full advantage of all of the wonders about high school. Sports clubs, new friends, you name it. It was an exciting time. Everything was a new experience and she was coming into her own. Jennifer and Sarah were their parents, pride and joy. Their mother Barbara said her whole universe revolved around them. Sat Sarah's friend. 13 year old Amy Ayres was a true country girl who loved animals. She was a daddy's girl and her father Bob dreamed of seeing her achieve her goal of becoming a veterinarian. And then there was 17 year old Eliza Thomas, Jennifer's co worker. She loved animals as well and she even owned a pig and had her sights set on entering a livestock show. All four girls had big plans, big dreams. But on December 6, 1991, those dreams were shattered when Jennifer, Sarah, Amy and Eliza's Friday night took a turn. No one saw coming. Around 11pm Eliza and Jennifer were cleaning up and closing down the shop while Sarah and Amy kept them company when a man snuck into the shop, locked the door behind him, held the girls at gunpoint, forced them all into the back room away from any potential witnesses and made them strip down naked. He then bound all of them with their own clothing and essayed all the girls except Eliza. Amy was found in a different area in the shop and it's believed she may have tried to escape and fight back. All girls had a single gunshot wound to the head, but Amy was shot twice, once with the.22 caliber gun used to shoot everyone else and once with a.380 caliber gun. She had skin under her fingernails, a bruise under her chin likely from being struck, and she had been strangled before she was shot. After he did all of this to the girls, the suspect set the shop on fire and fled. At 11:47pm a patrolling officer happened to be driving in the alley behind the shop when he noticed the fire. So he called for backup and at 11:50, three firefighters arrived on the scene. When the firefighters entered, one of them saw a foot and as they made their way to the back, they discovered the bodies and called for police right away. When the Austin Police Department arrived, it was incredibly difficult to try and collect fingerprints or really any evidence because the smoke and soot covered every surface and what little evidence the fire didn't destroy was water damage from putting it out. Austin police Detective John Jones knew he was going to need help, so he called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Detective Jones was wearing a green and white shirt that night and made a promise to the victim's families that the next time they saw him wearing it, he would know who killed their children. There was no other option. They were going to solve this case, and Detective Jones wouldn't be alone. An entire team called the Yogurt Shop Task Force was formed which included members from the Austin pd, the Travis County Sheriff's Department, the District Attorney's office, the FBI, the atf, and the Department of Public Safety. Due to witness testimony from a woman and a separate couple that were at the yogurt shop late at night, there were two sketchy looking teen boys at the shop. When they left, they had also found shell casings, most of them from a.22 caliber handgun, and then a single one from a.380 caliber handgun which had rolled into the floor drain. There was also enough DNA intact for investigators to get samples for SA kits and their fingernails were clipped as well. But unfortunately, DNA testing wasn't advanced enough to do anything with that yet. So for now, their best lead was the guns. As soon as forensics identified what kinds of guns they needed to search for, the authorities sent that information out nationwide. But the police couldn't find either one of the weapons. Their two biggest leads turned up nothing. So officers on the task force decided to cast their net even wider and started talking to everyone they could, from family members to drifters. One of these people was 16 year old Maurice Pierce, who the police talked to after he was found walking around in a nearby mall with a.22 caliber handgun a week after the murders. Maurice said he didn't have anything to do with it, but he had loaned his gun to a friend, 15 year old Forrest Welburn, and according to Maurice, Forrest committed the murders. Investigators were able to track Forrest down and he mentioned a couple of other friends, two 17 year olds named Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott. It all seemed pretty suspicious, but there was no evidence actually tying any of them to the crime scene. So for the moment, the task force let all four boys go, although they did keep Marisa's gun. After that, the case kept hitting dead ends until Mexican authorities arrested two men in connection with the yogurt shop murders. One of the men, who is the leader of a biker gang in Mexico, looked similar to the sketch of one of the suspects. But it turns out that this was the first false confession in this case. After further investigation, they discovered that one of the men who confessed said that the Mexican authorities put a bag over his head, a rag in his mouth, handcuffed him, and threatened to hurt his family if he didn't admit to the Murders. After this, investigators continued their search, and at one point, they were looking into more than 300 people as possible suspects. They chased down thousands of tips, trying to make sense of a senseless crime and a crime scene that had been gutted by fire and washed out by sprinkler water. It was a daunting task, to say the least, and for a long time, it led absolutely nowhere. But in 1997, the case was transferred to a new lead investigator named Paul Johnson. Johnson decided to go back through some of the initial interrogations and came across the tape of Maurice Pierce and decided to take another look at him and everyone he had mentioned in his interrogation. Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, and Forrest Welburn, who were all in their 20s by this point. Investigators called them in for voluntary interviews under the guise of just clearing things up and helping out. But these were full on interrogations, using all of the classic Reid techniques, as well as some tactics that the handbook says to specifically stay away from. Don't threaten physical harm. Don't promise leniency. Don't lie about legal consequences. Don't feed details that the suspect later repeats. Don't conduct marathon investigations, because all of these could lead to false confessions. But investigators broke every single one of these rules and at one point, even held a gun up to Michael Scott's head. After hours of intense interrogation by police, Michael and Robert both confessed to the crime and implicated each other. As I mentioned earlier, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around these false confessions, but it was absolutely wild seeing how the police gaslit and broke these guys down from saying they were nowhere near the yogurt shop and were at the Rocky Horror Picture show to saying they essayed and killed these girls themselves. Michael ended up saying that the four boys had gone to the yogurt shop that night to rob it. Forrest had stayed behind as a lookout while the other three went in. They weren't expecting all four girls to be there, so they tied them up and Robert essayed them. Then Maurice used his.22 caliber to shoot two of them and made Michael shoot the others. And Robert used his.380 caliber to also shoot Amy. Robert told a similar story, Although in his version, Maurice and Michael were the ringleaders that night, not him. Both Robert and Michael would attempt to withdraw their confessions later. They thought it was the only way to get out of questioning at that time. A few tips. One, I am not a lawyer, but every lawyer I know says to never go in for a voluntary interview without a lawyer. I don't care if you Are completely innocent and you don't want to seem guilty or just want to help. Get a lawyer before talking to the police. And as long as you are not detained or arrested, you are legally allowed to walk away. Some things you can say if you're in this position. I'm not comfortable speaking without a lawyer. No, I do not wish to be interviewed. I'm going to go home now. I'd like to leave. Am I being detained or arrested? Two, if you are arrested, ask for a lawyer and zip it. Yes, even if you are innocent. Three, the police are legally allowed to lie to you. Don't take their word for fact. And four, if you are in the middle of an interrogation like Michael Scott, and you say, I think I need a lawyer, it is not enough. You need to be explicit about it. And again, zip it. Unfortunately, the men did not have this advice and were taught to trust the police. So they took them at their word. When police said things like there was no showing of the Rocky Horror Picture show that night, Springsteen believed them and completely mistrusted his own memory, starting a spiral that eventually led him to admit he did these things in a false confession. All four men were arrested for capital murder. But eventually charges against Maurice were dropped for lack of sufficient evidence, and Forrest was no billed, meaning the jury refused to indict him and decided the evidence wasn't strong enough to charge him. Maurice was the person Paul Johnson suspected was the instigator and ringleader. But he exercised his fifth Amendment right and walked free because of it. Michael and Robert, on the other hand, knew that they were in trouble as soon as the prosecution started using their confessions against them in court. Ultimately, both men were found guilty. Michael was sentenced to life without parole, and Robert was sentenced to the death penalty. Even though there was no physical evidence linking them to the crime scene. They still had to do the time until 2004, when everything shifted. The Supreme Court's landmark decision in Crawford vs. Washington ruled that a person's written or videotaped statement couldn't be used against someone else in court unless they could be cross examined. Under the sixth Amendment right, you have the right to face your accuser. But since both defendants had redacted their statements, they would just say that on the standard, which would tank the prosecution's case. But the judge allowed Scott's redacted transcripts implicating Springsteen to be read by an investigator. And a tape of Springsteen's confession was played at Scott's trial. The court deemed these trials violated their rights, and in 2007 an appeals court ordered new trials in March 2008. Before the new murder trials, authorities had the SA kits from the case re examined with a technique called YSTR testing. This kind of test looks at genetic information on the male chromosome, which helped them tell the samples apart from the girl's DNA. DNA technology was still very basic at the time of the murders, but detectives had done their due diligence and collected any swab that could have potentially been helpful. And the new YSTR revealed some scary new information. All four original suspects were excluded from the YSTR profile. None of the DNA matched the male profile found in the evidence, which meant one thing the perpetrator was still on the loose.
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When it comes to the holidays, sometimes it seems like the easiest option would be to just buy someone a gift card and call it a day.
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But if you're like me and really.
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Want to do something special, then skip the headache this year and gift An Aura Frame I've always loved the idea of a digital frame because I have so many pictures. I love and can never choose which ones I want to frame, but I never really loved the way they looked. But my sister who is an interior designer bought our whole family aura frames last year.
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She got us the Carver frame in.
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White and it's the perfect blend of functionality and aesthetics. I just became an auntie so it's also so fun seeing pictures of my niece and nephew pop up on the frame from our shared family album. For a limited time, save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $35 off or as best selling Carver matte frames named number one by Wirecutter by using promo code Crimehouse at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code crimehouse. This deal is exclusive to listeners and frames sell out fast, so order yours now to get it in time for the holidays. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.
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On June 24, 2009, after serving 10 years in prison for confessing to the yogurt shop murders, Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen were finally released from prison on bond in anticipation of their new trials. When the news that the DNA found at the crime scene didn't match any of the four men came out, authorities said they believed it was either contamination or that there was a fifth suspect, but they tested every single man who went anywhere near the girls. Police officers, firefighters, EMTs, medical examiners, parents, brothers. But nothing came up. With the new DNA evidence not matching them and their confessions stricken, there wasn't Anything tying them to the crime. And a few months later, on October 28, 2009, all charges against them were dropped. Over the following years, detectives on the case tested hundreds of people trying to find a DNA match with the new YSTR profile with no success. But they kept at it. In 2022, Austin Police Cold case Detective Daniel Jackson took over the case. And In June of 2025, he had a groundbreaking idea. It had been several years since Anyone had submitted the.380 caliber casing from the crime scene to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, or nibin. Over that time, the database had advanced in major ways. The software was improved and could now support 3D analysis. So Detective Jackson took the.380 caliber casing back out of evidence and submitted it to nibin. He hoped it would tell him if it was connected to shell casings retrieved from other crime scenes. This time the test got a hit with an unsolved murder case out of Kentucky with a similar MO that had also gone cold. And this crime had been committed in 1998, seven years after the yogurt shop murders. This gave Detective Jackson hope that the killer was still out there. And by now DNA testing had developed even further. So in August of 2025, Jackson asked every laboratory in the country with a wide DNA database to do a manual search for a sample that matched the one from the yogurt shop sample. And finally he got a match. A South Carolina lab had a sample from an SA and murder that took place in the city of Greenville in 1990. That was just one year before the yogurt shop murders. This case had identified the killer and included confirmed DNA evidence. The murderer's name was Robert Eugene Brashers. So then Detective Jackson compared notes with the South Carolina Police Department and he found that the cases in Greenville and Austin were extremely similar. For example, the victims in both cases had been tied up with their own undergarments. And the same YSTR DNA profile linked Robert to two more cases. The 1997 essay of a 14 year old girl in Tennessee and the 1998 shooting of a mother and her daughter in Missouri. The police were realizing something huge. Robert Eugene Brashers was a serial killer. Now they could put a timeline together to better understand how this case was solved. Let's rewind and look through Robert's crimes chronologically, starting with his first known victim, Michelle Wilkerson. After Midnight on Friday, November 22, 1985, 24 year old Michelle Wilkerson was outside a bar when she accepted a ride from Robert brushers. Who was 27 at the time. Michelle lived in Fort Pierce, Florida. So she was enjoying the scenery of a citrus grove on the west side of town as they drove. But little did she know that her driver had something else on his mind. They started arguing over sex. And when Robert didn't get what he wanted, he reacted in a horrific way. Robert pulled out a gun and shot Michelle twice in the head at close range. But she survived. Michelle ran from the vehicle and crawled through a mud filled ditch. She got to a house that had been converted into an office which had a phone outside that she used to call the police. Can you imagine getting shot twice in the head and being able to crawl to find a phone? Officers got there at 3am to find Michelle, who was barely coherent. She managed to describe Robert and his vehicle and they found him at a nearby beach 20 minutes later and took him into the St. Lucie County Jail. Later he was sentenced to 12 years in prison. But here's what pisses me off. Robert served less than than four of those years. He got out on parole in May of 1989. And less than a year later, surprise, surprise, he committed another violent crime. I just don't understand why the justice system keeps failing to hold violent people behind bars. On April 4, 1990, Robert broke into an apartment in Greenville, South Carolina. It belonged to a 28 year old Michelin Systems programmer named Bill Jenny Zatricki. When Robert broke in, Jenny was in her bedroom. He did disturbing things to her, which I won't go into detail, before strangling her to death. After he finished, Robert tied Jenny's pantyhose around her neck and used them to drag her body through her apartment. He pulled her about 20ft into the bathroom where he put her in the tub and filled it with water. Then he filled the sink with water and dumped the contents of her purse in it. The apartment's maintenance worker found Jenny's body two days later. That brings us to 1991, a year and a half after Jenny's death. Robert brutally killed Jennifer, Sarah, Eliza and Amy at the I Can't Believe it's Not Yogurt in Austin, Texas. Just three months later, on February 18, 1992, Robert was arrested in Cobb County, Georgia for possession of a stolen pistol and vehicle. In the car, he also had a scanner, police jacket, burglary tools, and a fake Tennessee driver's license. He was clearly up to no good. But remember, at this point, no one knows he had committed murder. In 1990 and 1991, he went back to prison on the possession charges serving a five year sentence and was released again in February of 1997. And you guessed it, this guy went on to commit more terrible crimes. Just a month after his release, on March 11, 1997, he tied up three women at a house in Memphis, Tennessee where he also essayed a 14 year old girl. A year later, on March 28, 1998, Robert broke into another house, this time in Portageville, Missouri. Once inside, he essayed and repeatedly shot 38 year old Sherri Shearer and her 12 year old daughter Megan, Then shot them to death just a few hours later. That same day, Robert crossed state lines from Missouri into Dyersburg, Tennessee. There he knocked on a 25 year old woman's door and asked for directions. He then tried to force his way into the home where she was with her small child. He shot her, but she was able to fend him off and survived while Robert fled in his van. The bullet from the scene of the crime linked the case to the Sharer murders a few hours earlier. The homeowner who survived described Robert for a police sketch, but they still weren't able to identify him. Less than a month later, on April 12, 1998, Robert was arrested again, but again not for the murders he had committed. He had gone to the home of a single woman in Perigold, Arkansas who he had previously worked for as a handyman. He cut her phone lines and brought a gun, a video camera and other tools with him. Luckily, he got caught in the process of whatever he was about to do and was taken into custody. But in another complete system failure, this insane man was released a day later. Later, could you imagine how many lives would be saved if the police actually did their job and this guy was actually held in jail, in prison for as long as he should have been. Finally, everything came to a head. Eight months later, on January 13, 1999, police in Kennet, Missouri followed a stolen license plate to a Super 8 motel. There, Robert was hiding out in a room with, you'll never guess, his wife and children. This man, who committed atrocious acts against humanity, was a married father. When authorities found him, he was armed with a semi automatic pistol. At this point, he had an active warrant out for his arrest stemming from the 1998 Arkansas break in. He had a standoff with the police for four hours. And then he did something no one was expecting. He let his wife and children go. Then Robert shot himself. Six days later, on January 19, 1999, Robert Eugene Brashears died in the hospital from a self inflicted gunshot wound. The man who killed and hurt so many women died by his own gun. In the 90s, several women across the country were the victims of violent crimes and murders. They were all at the hands of one man, Robert Eugene Brashers, who managed to skirt the law until he finally killed himself in 1999. The authorities were hunting him down for a stolen car plate and they tracked him to a hotel where he was hiding with his wife and kids. After he died, it took decades for officers to link him to the most heinous crimes. Now that we know what they were, let's take a look at how they were solved. In 2005, samples from Jenny Zatricki's murder in Greenville, committed the year before the yogurt shop murders were sent to the South Carolina's law enforcement division's DNA lab. A year later the DNA from her case matched the procedure profile of the March 1998 Missouri murders of Sherry and Megan Sharer. Remember, the Sharer's murders had already been linked to Robert's same day failed home invasion because of the bullet casings that were left behind at the Sharers. So Authorities linked the three cases together, but still didn't know his identity. In 2009 all three cases were featured on America's Most Wanted along with a police sketch from the Tennessee home invasion. Despite the show's wide reach, nobody came forward with information. In fact, it took eight more years and relentless detective work to make any more Progress. Finally, in 2017, the DNA that connected Jenny to the Sharers was matched to another case. The unsolved essay of the 14 year old girl from 1997 in Memphis, Tennessee. That means at the time, five victims, two living and three murdered, had been connected. Now that all of these cases were linked, the police were working together across states. In July of 2018, detectives in South Carolina, Missouri and Tennessee teamed up with a genealogy lab in Virginia. They submitted the DNA from all three cases for comparison and by cross analyzing the samples, they were able to come up with a match for someone. They asked for the suspect's family, likely Robert Brasher's, to submit DNA swabs and the family helped without hesitation. Their help confirmed the authorities theory. In September of 2018 they exhumed Robert Eugene Brasher's body and collected DNA from it. When they sent it to the lab it was a match and they finally had a name to blame for these three unsolved cases. And in August of 2025 they were able to solve a fourth when Brasher's DNA matched the sample from the yogurt. Shop Murders in a weird sense of divine timing. On August 3rd, the first episode of the four part documentary series on the murders premiered on HBO and a few weeks later the news broke about Robert Brasher's being identified as the killer. Not only was Robert a match to the yogurt shop murders, but the bullet he used to kill himself also matched the.380 caliber gun he used to kill Amy Ayers, the young girl who fought back against him at the yogurt shop. Two days later, on August 24, 2025, the series finale of the Yogurt shop Murders came out on hbo. But it didn't show the true conclusion to the case because even though Detective Jackson knew the truth, the public didn't know yet and wouldn't find out for a month. So on Monday, September 29, 2025, Detective John Jones finally got to wear his green and white shirt, just as he promised the victims families. On that day, police named Robert Eugene Brashers the new primary suspect in the quadruple murder. Now a timeline for all of Robert's murders is starting to unfold, thanks to detectives from Austin, Greensville and Memphis who never gave up the search for answers. The yogurt shop murders and all of its connected cases are prime examples of why it's important to keep revisiting cold cases. Although Robert won't ever go to jail for these crimes, the victims loved ones can finally get the closure they deserve. And there could still be more to come. The Kentucky case I mentioned earlier hasn't been solved yet. Police think there might be other victims waiting for justice in their cold case files. If there are any major updates to this case, you'll hear from us. So as always, we'll keep you updated on our socials at Crimehouse 24 7. What did you think of tonight's case? Drop your thoughts and theories in the comments.
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See you next time.
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If you haven't already, subscribe to our YouTube channel @Crime House Daily and follow us on social media rimehouse24.7 for real time updates. Because the pursuit of justice never stops. Foreign. Looking for your next Crime House listen? Don't miss Clues with Morgan Abshur and Kaylin Moore Every Wednesday, Morgan and Kaylin take you deep into the world of the most notorious crimes ever. Clue by clue. It's like hanging out with your smart true crime obsessed friends. Listen to clues on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you listen to podcasts.