The Yogurt Shop Murders and Serial Killer Robert Eugene Brashers: First Person: Anne Marie Schubert on Justice, Genetic Genealogy, and the Golden State Killer

Summary

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Murder Sheet: The Yogurt Shop Murders and Serial Killer Robert Eugene Brashers

Episode Date: October 28, 2025
Guests: Anne Marie Schubert (former Sacramento County District Attorney)
Hosts: Áine Cain (journalist) & Kevin Greenlee (attorney)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Murder Sheet features a wide-ranging interview with Anne Marie Schubert, renowned for her leadership in prosecuting violent crimes and pioneering the use of DNA and genetic genealogy in cold case investigations. The discussion revolves around Schubert’s decades-long career, her instrumental role in the Golden State Killer arrest, and, most recently, her involvement in breaking the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders—where DNA evidence linked serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers to the 1991 slayings. Schubert also shares insights into the evolution and challenges of cold case investigations, her advocacy for increased resources and public involvement, and the critical role of humility and teamwork in solving difficult cases.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Anne Marie Schubert’s Path to Becoming a Prosecutor

• [07:47] Schubert reveals she initially went to law school without a clear direction, but an internship with a “super cool, kind of hippie judge” (Lucy McCabe) exposed her to criminal law and ignited her passion for public safety.
  • Quote: “I just fell in love with this idea of public safety. ... I was very lucky that I found something that I was very passionate about.”
• [08:53] Her career focus: balancing accountability, justice for crime victims, and rehabilitation for offenders—especially in nonviolent crimes. DNA quickly became a pivotal tool in her career.

2. Pioneering Work on DNA & Cold Cases

• [10:08] First major DNA case in the mid-90s involving a teenager kidnapped and raped in Solano County, which established DNA’s reliability in California courts.
  • Quote: “I realized right away that this tool was the greatest thing we’ve ever seen for law enforcement.”
• [12:40] Schubert advocated for and set up Sacramento’s cold case unit, pursuing cases including child kidnappings, rapes, murder, and notably, the then-unsolved Golden State Killer series.
  • Quote: “The key to solving cold cases is you have to be a digger. You have to be extremely persistent. Almost the, quote, pain in the ass factor of never giving up...”
• [13:23] Details the 1979 abduction and murder of Eva Chu, a pregnant woman—solved decades later via DNA.

3. Understanding & Profiling Serial Offenders

• [17:01] Schubert explains the depravity and sociopathy common to serial killers/rapists like Joseph DeAngelo (Golden State Killer), while cautioning that not all abusers become offenders.
  • Quote: “They’re just sociopaths. Just individuals that care nothing about the rights of other human beings...”

4. The Golden State Killer Case—Breakthroughs & Impact

• [20:07] Schubert describes the GSK arrest as “like finding a needle in a haystack” but credits team persistence and innovative use of genetic genealogy.
  • Quote: “...when I first got involved with that case...I always knew that the key to solving that case was the DNA. Period.”
• Schubert highlights the “seismic shift” the case triggered in DNA-led investigations and the value for victim’s families.

5. Life After the DA’s Office—Consulting & Advocacy

• [22:40] Since retirement, Schubert remains active, consulting for law enforcement, teaching about genealogy, and advocating for better resources.
  • Quote: “There’s well over 1.3 million crime scene profiles in [CODIS] that still need to be solved...I look at this as...we have a lifetime ahead of us, far beyond my lifetime, to do the work.”

6. Public Involvement & Cold Case Funding

• [25:02] Schubert urges people to lobby for government funding and support nonprofit initiatives. She and Mindy Montford are creating a National Cold Case Association for resource pooling and crowdfunding.
  • Quote: “I’d rather give my 20 bucks to helping solve a cold case than 20 bucks to a politician. ... There’s even crowdsourcing out there.”

7. Behind the Scenes: The Yogurt Shop Murders Break

• [27:16] Schubert’s involvement began after meeting prosecutor Mindy Montford. She brought a team with both Golden State Killer and genetic genealogy expertise into the Texas investigation.
  • Quote: “...they built this team and they were—you know, they didn’t have any egos about it...”
• [30:27] Lessons and methods from the GSK case (“Golden State Killer alumni”) were applied, combining extensive data review, expert collaboration, and new laboratory technologies.
• [32:45] Describes the painstaking process of evidence review—tracking its chain through various labs and the crucial role of YSTR DNA analysis that led to eliminating false suspects and identifying Brashers.
  • Quote: “The YSTR, I think for all of us, was kind of a head scratcher...obviously, now we know it was the actual killer’s DNA.”

8. The Culture of Collaboration & Avoiding Ego

• [35:28] Schubert stresses the need for humility and openness: “Sometimes people’s egos get in the way, like, ‘If I can’t solve this damn case, nobody is.’ ... Let’s just all come together...offer our input...eliminate those egos. ... It’s about the families and the victims.”
• Removes “tunnel vision” and ensures evidence-based, not theory-based, investigation.

9. Emotional Resolution & Meeting the Victims’ Families

• [39:45, 41:03] Schubert on learning the breakthrough and meeting the Ayers family after the Yogurt Shop Murders were solved:
  • Quote: “Amy Ayers spoke for all of those other kids ... by telling us through that DNA who was the perpetrator. ... That’s what brings it all home.”
  • Meeting the family was “a little surreal,” underscoring the personal impact of resolution.

10. The Future of Cold Case Work

• [42:23] Schubert remains committed to tackling cold cases and scaling efforts through national organizations and nonprofit projects.
  • Quote: “We have the capacity to solve 90% of crime if you have DNA...Don’t we owe it to [victims] to do everything in our power to solve that for them?”
• [44:11] Emphasizes eliminating suspicion and preventing repeat offenders; cites Steve Kramer (FBI): “We have the power to eliminate the word serial from our language.”

11. Final Reflections on the Yogurt Shop Case

• [44:45] The real reason the case was solved: “...passion and persistence of the people involved...without that passion, we’re going to struggle.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Importance of Persistence:
  • “You have to be extremely persistent. Almost the, quote, pain in the ass factor of never giving up...”
    – Anne Marie Schubert [13:23]
• On Collaboration:
  • “Let’s just all come together, offer our input, eliminate those egos. Because at the end of it, this is not about us. It’s about the families and the victims.”
    – Anne Marie Schubert [35:47]
• On the Value of Genetic Genealogy:
  • “We use something that really had never been done before and it worked. And now it’s changing the world on our ability to not just solve crime, exonerate the innocent, identify people sooner than later, prevent future crime.”
    – Anne Marie Schubert [21:42]
• On the Emotional Toll:
  • “Amy Ayers spoke for all of those other kids, herself and those other victims, by telling us through that DNA who was the perpetrator.”
    – Anne Marie Schubert [40:30]
• On Responsibility to Victims:
  • “Don’t we owe it to them to do everything in our power to solve that for them?”
    – Anne Marie Schubert [43:25]

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Schubert’s career origin & passion for law: [07:47]
• First DNA case and the start of cold case advocacy: [10:08]
• Reflection on Golden State Killer case: [20:07]
• Post-retirement consulting & CODIS stats: [22:40]
• Discussing funding and public involvement: [25:02]
• Getting involved in the Yogurt Shop Murders investigation: [27:16-30:27]
• Behind the scenes—the collaboration & evidence review: [32:45]
• Egos and tunnel vision in cold case work: [35:28]
• Hearing about the break in the Yogurt Shop case: [39:45]
• Meeting the Ayers family & emotional impact: [41:01]
• Vision for continued cold case advocacy: [42:23]
• Concluding thoughts on what solves cases: [44:45]

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Conclusion

This episode offers a deep inside look at the relentless, collaborative, and humane work required to bring justice in some of America’s most notorious and challenging unsolved crimes. Anne Marie Schubert’s testimony stands as a tribute not just to technological advances in forensics but to the persistence, humility, and passion of investigators, prosecutors, lab scientists, and the affected families themselves.

Anyone interested in true crime, forensic science, or justice reform will find this an inspiring and informative listen. The enduring message: “Set aside the egos, and never stop digging—the answers are out there, and we owe it to the victims to find them.”

Transcript

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[Anne Marie Schubert]

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[Anya Cain]

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[Kevin Greenlee]

Content Warning this episode includes discussion of rape, murder and the murder of a pregnant woman and her baby. It also includes profanity.

[Anya Cain]

On December 6, 1991, a serial killer descended upon the I can't believe it's yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. He found four girls there, 17 year old Eliza Thomas, 13 year old Amy Ayers and the Harbison sisters, 17 year old Jennifer and 15 year old Sarah. Utter horror followed. By the end of the night, the yogurt shop was burning. Firefighters and police discovered the girls bodies. They were nude, gagged, bound with their own clothing, sexually assaulted, shot to death. Four young men served prison time for this heinous crime, but DNA evidence exonerated them only recently. Just a few weeks ago, there was a big break in the case. DNA and ballistics evidence tied a serial killer named Robert Eugene Brashers to the crime. The Austin Police Department's Detective Dan Jackson spoke at a press conference. He indicated that he and Austin authorities had some help. One of the people he thanked was Ann Marie Schubert.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Anne Marie Shubert dedicated her career to prosecuting criminals for vicious violent acts. She worked her way up to become the District Attorney of Sacramento county in California and she served in that office from 2014 to 2023.

[Anya Cain]

In all her years as a career prosecutor, Anne Marie worked on some pretty horrific criminal cases. She worked on one where a pregnant woman was abducted on the way to a doctor's appointment, then raped and murdered. Her unborn child also died. She worked a case where a killer kidnapped a young couple of sweethearts, finding them, terrorizing them, and killing them both. And then there was the unsolved case of the serial rapist who terrorized Sacramento County, a serial rapist who turned out to be a serial killer dubbed the Golden State Killer, or Joseph James DeAngelo. Along the way, Ann Marie became a champion of utilizing DNA technology to solve crimes, including genetic genealogy. Today, we will talk to her about her career, some of the haunting cases she's worked, and her involvement in the investigation into the yogurt shop murders. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.

[Kevin Greenlee]

And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.

[Anya Cain]

And this is the Murder Sheet.

[Kevin Greenlee]

We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases. We're the Murder Sheet, and this is.

[Anya Cain]

The Yogurt Shop Murders and serial killer Robert Eugene Brasher's first person, Anne Marie Schubert on justice, genetic genealogy, and the Golden State Killer.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Sam.

[Anya Cain]

So, first of all, Annemarie, thank you so much for joining us today on the Murder Sheet. We really appreciate it.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.

[Anya Cain]

You guys, before we get started talking about sort of your role in this recent news from the Austin yogurt shot murders, you know, developing story there, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? And I guess maybe to start off with our question we love to ask attorneys is how did you get into the law? Like, what drew you to that?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Oh, gosh. Well, honestly, I tell people I went to law school for the wrong reasons. I kind of just. I didn't know what to do with my life. I wanted a job that paid a decent salary. And so I kind of went to law school just thinking, oh, I'll just go be a lawyer. Well, halfway through law school, I interned for this super cool, kind of hippie judge in San Francisco named Lucy McCabe. And she did criminal. I'd never been exposed to criminal stuff in my life. And I just fell in love with this idea of public safety. And so that was kind of the origination of all of it. I never looked back. I became a prosecutor right out of law school. I started in 1990, and that's kind of. That's all I've ever done until I retired at the end of 2022 as the DA of Sacramento. So I, I was very lucky that I found something that I was very passionate about and felt like. I used to tell people, you know, if I won the lottery today, I would, I would still show up tomorrow.

[Anya Cain]

So what about being a prosecutor inspired that level of passion?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

A couple things. One, I just have a true passion for victims and bringing the answers to families and some accountability. I mean, over the years it became very important that it's not just about accountability and justice. It's about trying to get people back on track. So people that do commit crimes, particularly nonviolent ones, you know, you want to get them the services and the support that they need. So I really did try to find that balance. But at the end of it all, the really the root for me of, of being a prosecutor was standing up for crime victims, giving them a voice. I totally love trial work. I did a lot of trials in my career, spent the majority of my career in violent crime. And then obviously sometime, you know, I'm going to age myself really badly here. But in the mid-90s, I did my very first DNA case, which really opened my eyes to the value and the importance of this tool to find the truth, no matter where it leads us.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Yeah, you really have a reputation for going after a lot of these so called cold cases using DNA. I mean, there's a long list of really notable cases that you, that you really got answers for. Can you talk about some of those cases and what it meant for you to work on them?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Sure. So my first case was in around 1994, 95. I was a much, much younger prosecutor. I was probably in my late 20s, and I got a case where this young teenage girl was walking home from the bus stop. She had just delivered, she worked for a newspaper, delivered her paper route money, and she was 16 and walking home and she gets kidnapped at knifepoint and dragged between some cars horribly sexually assaulted. It was the very first case. Well, one of the first cases in this particular county, it was Solano county, which is a Bay area. You know, at the same time it was this famous other case going on in California called the O.J. simpson case. And so the microscope really highlighted this whole thing of this new tool called forensic DNA. And so I had to immerse myself in the science of it all. It wasn't just the science, it was statistics. It was, you know, kind of enough to put you over the edge if you don't really, really like this kind of stuff. At the end of it all I had to do a bunch of hearings and things and prove that this tool was reliable. And the court had obviously admitted it. And then it went to trial and the bad guy was convicted. And it was a really big case for this particular county. But it wasn't just about the DNA. It was about the fact that this young teenager was kidnapped and raped and then he also tried to sexually assault another woman. And so that case ended up going up on appeal. It went all the way to the appellate courts and upheld the use of DNA. But for me as a prosecutor, I realized right away that this tool was the greatest thing we've ever seen for law enforcement. And so I then, you know, so that was a guy named Scott Wright. And then I just kind of got obsessed is probably a big word. But I really wanted to do more of these cases. And so I started doing more and more DNA cases. I then came back home to Sacramento and I became a prosecutor here. And then I got really involved in DNA work and I started doing cold case stuff. I advocated in large part because the Golden State Killer, it was unsolved at the time. It was a really big case in Sacramento because the guy had raped so many women at the time that I started advocating for a cold case unit. We didn't know he was a serial killer, but I knew he was a serial rapist. So I worked on a lot of DNA cases. I tried a lot of different types of child kidnappings, sexual assaults of women, rape murders. And then my office graciously authorized me to start a unit in 2001 about. And we went through and found all the cold cases that existed, the rape murders and all that. And we started just really trying to solve them. We solved a lot of cases using DNA. And so over time I just started to become very, very passionate about cold cases.

[Kevin Greenlee]

You really did some extraordinary work in that area. You mentioned Joseph d'. Angelo. I also recall Richard Hirschfeld. What does it feel like to close the books on some of these cases and finally provide answers to the families?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Well, obviously it's tremendously rewarding. I mean, one of the cases that very first cases that we looked at when we started our unit was a kidnap rape murder of a seven month pregnant woman who had left her office to go to her checkup. She was kidnapped in broad daylight. She's seven months old, pregnant, has a two year old daughter, married, her car was found a couple days after she's kidnapped. It was a huge case. 1979, huge case, high publicity, tons and tons of work done by law Enforcement. Two days after, she's kidnapped, her car is found abandoned. And then two days later, her body is found. She's been strangled to death. Her baby died, obviously as well. So it went unsolved despite tremendous efforts by law enforcement. And then all of a sudden we, you know, open this unit and every cop in Sacramento Police Department's like, please try to solve this with DNA. And we did. We ended up matching it to a guy sitting in prison for some horrific crimes, trying to kidnap and kill his, his girlfriend. And he, ultimately, that case was, you know, we solve it, we tell the family. It's, it's really, to this day, sits with me very heavily because of the impact it had on that family. But for me, it's about bringing answers and hopefully some measure of justice. But what I love about cold cases, aside from that and the important role of bringing those answers is they're hard. They're not solved because they're hard. And sometimes with cold cases, the key to solving cold cases is you have to be a digger. You have to be extremely persistent. Almost the, quote, pain in the ass factor of never giving up, driving people crazy, trying to find evidence that someone tells you is missing, figuring out how much you have left of a DNA sample. Can you do this work? Because we've come so far since the mid-90s in our ability to solve cases. Dare I say this, it is the most exciting time in our world at crime fighting and crime prevention because we have, you know, these labs. You know, you mentioned that you're going to interview DNA Labs International, which did some work on the yogurt shop. You know, these labs have come so far in their ability to capture DNA that maybe wasn't captured 20 years ago because of the technology. So it's exciting. And then you've got this introduction of genealogy that even raises it to a higher level. So, you know, even though I retired as a da, I'm still very active. I actually work for a local police agency with their cold cases just because I love it and I think it's such an exciting time.

[Anya Cain]

That seven months pregnant woman who was murdered, that was Eva Chu, correct?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And then to give credit, I mean, once it was, once it was, quote, solved, then it got transferred to another prosecutor who then did the trial. Ernie, Ernie Satel was a very good lawyer. So I don't want to act like I tried that case. I just was very fortunate to be involved on the ground up.

[Anya Cain]

Like, I mean, some of these cases are just so heinous and I guess I wonder you, you were a prosecutor for such a long time and you did some of these really horrible sex crimes and stranger crimes where someone is just abducting and raping and killing oftentimes women or children or whatnot. And did you learn anything about, like, what motivates these offenders or like who these people are? Like, what drives someone to do something so heinous? Because it just seems so inexplicable to, I think most people.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

I suppose it depends on the individual cases. But, you know, there's, I mean, when you're dealing with serial offenders, serial rapists, serial killers, I mean, there's just a depravity to them. Obviously you can go, if you're a behavior profiler, you can go dive into their history. Even DeAngelo had his own history of, of things that probably happened to him as a child. But, you know, not everybody that's abused or neglected turns into a serial killer. There's just something that's, you know, I, I describe Joseph d' Angelo and many of these individuals, they're just sociopaths. They're just individuals that care nothing about the rights of other human beings. I mean, I think about some of these cases and, you know, you in particular, Golden State Killer. This is a guy that not only broke into homes of countless people, but he spent time, hours, and then he would sit there in the midst of these horrific things he's doing to these men and women, and then he goes and drinks a beer or cracks open, you know, a soda or starts eating food and leaves it on the counter. And it's just the level of depravity, of the power and control because he could is really off the charts and grotesque. And so I'm not sure, you know, I'm not a forensic psychologist, but it's just the best thing that I can say. The most, you know, probably correct thing is they're just twisted, depraved individuals.

[Anya Cain]

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[Anya Cain]

Could say with the Golden State Killer case. That's one that really sticks in a lot of people's mind. As you know, there was this announcement of finally a name, finally an arrest and the develop. What did that mean to you as someone who had been the DA of Sacramento and this was such an important case for your community?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

I said this when we made the big announcement. It was like finding a needle in a haystack. But I also have known over time, having worked so many of these cases, that the needle's there. It's a matter of being so damn persistent. And then you have this incredible team of people. I mean, so many investigators worked on this case, but towards the end, with this whole concept of genealogy, it was a small group. But to me, it's so rewarding to know that people never gave up. And when I, you know, when I first got involved with that case, which was, you know, first of all, I was raised in the community where he was raping. But then I become a prosecutor and I'm fortunate enough to get involved in cold cases, I knew, I always knew that the key to solving that case was the DNA period. That was it. We had to put a face to a profile. And so it was there. It was just having to have. You had to be willing to take risks and you had to have people that were passionate enough to just never give up. And so you had these great group of folks. I mean, it's so many people involved. But Paul Holes, who was one of the main investigators, you know, I always give him credit because he's the one that came to me and said, hey, I got this kind of idea, you want to listen to it? I'm like, sure. And so when I heard it, of course I was absolutely, as long as we can do this lawfully, we're going to do it and we got to take those risks. And one of the victims on the case, the rape victims, described that case as a seismic shift in our ability to solve crime. And it's true, that's what it is. We use something that really had never been done before and it worked. And now it's changing the world on our ability to not just solve crime, exonerate the innocent, identify people sooner than later, prevent future crime. There's so much value to the work on all side in terms of just finding the truth.

[Anya Cain]

Can you tell us a little bit about what you've been up to since retiring, what that's been like?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Yeah, so I mean I probably suffer a little from ADHD and don't sit so very well. So I love this work. I love, I mean I love public, I like public safety obviously a lot, but I also really enjoy the use of technology to increase our ability to solve crime, prevent crime. So since I retired I been very much involved in this space of genealogy and DNA. I do consulting on it. I love working with agencies and I teach tons all over the place. Not just, I mean a lot of people still don't really understand how genealogy works, how it worked on the Golden State Killer. So I, I probably travel a couple times a month all over the country to, and the world to talk about the case. But also where do we go from here? What are the best practices? What are the rules? How do we make sure the public trusts us? Because when it comes to genealogy, if we don't have public trust, it's over because we completely rely on people being willing to let their DNA help build trees to identify potential individuals. So I do that and I mentioned to you I have a little part time job where I'm helping a local sheriff's office. Love it. I probably, if my son would say will die with my boots on trying to move the needle forward on. I mean every case matters. I would say the biggest frustration and probably the biggest area that we need help on is resources because we have, I mean just to give you a number, you know, in, you know what CODIS is. Yes, the DNA data bank in the US there's well over 1.3 million crime scene profiles in that data bank, meaning that there's 1.3 million cases that are in there that still need to be solved. Could be rapes, could be murders, could be kidnappings, could be human trafficking. That's 1.3 million cases of just cases that have been put in there. That doesn't count all the ones that are still out there. So I look at this as like, we have a lifetime ahead of us, far beyond my lifetime to do the work. And then you've got this amazing new tool called genealogy that can help move those cases forward. So the resources is the biggest challenge in terms of funding it. So I spent a lot of time harping upon that.

[Anya Cain]

How can people at home help with that? I mean, is it. Is it calling your legislators and asking them to dedicate funding for cold cases? What does that look like in terms of an actionable thing?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Yeah, I think part of it is government funding, for sure. Grant funding exists, but not enough local budgets. So, like, you know, the state of California could dedicate X amount of money or, you know, hodunk police department in mainstream America could. But the other area that I advocate for, that we're seeing now is we have nonprofits and myself and actually Mindy Montford, who is a really good friend who was one of the main prosecutors on the. You know, I give her and Dan Jackson nothing. But they're the rock stars of the yogurt shop murders. They just are. But Mindy and I have become very, very good friends, particularly in the world of cold cases. And so our goal, our kind of bucket list goal, was to create a national cold case association, because, shockingly, there is none. And part of that, part of the strategic platform, I guess you can say of it, is to raise money to provide funding for agencies. So, you know, there is. People want to help cold cases. I mean, I'll be honest. I was in the world of politics for a long time. I'd rather give my 20 bucks to a helping solve a cold case than 20 bucks to a politician. Nothing personal towards the politicians, but, you know, it's just people love this. I mean, you guys do them this podcast because people like to hear about it and they want to help with these cases. So that's part of our goal. And there's a lot of, you know, there's even crowdsourcing out there. There's, you know, some labs that use that. And I want the world to know that this is an area that they can really help with. You know, give your 20 bucks to to solve in a case.

[Anya Cain]

People want answers and people want justice. So I think that's a great idea. So I hope you guys do it.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

We will, we will. It's just. It's just time, but we will. Especially with Mindy.

[Anya Cain]

So, speaking of Mindy and yogurt shop, and you mentioned Detective Dan Jackson. Can you tell us a little bit about your sort of involvement in the recent developments in the yogurt shop murders case?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Sure. So I was actually just texting Mindy last night. I'm like, okay, exactly when did we meet? So I met Mindy probably it was after the Golden State Killer, but I was the elected in Sacramento, and I went to a conference in Austin and I met her at a. She was. She was with the Travis County DA's office at the time. And I hope you guys get to interview her because she's just such a. She's just. She's a light, and she just has this tremendous energy. And so we chit. Chatted about the Golden State Killer, and then she raised this whole thing about, oh, we got. We have basically the Golden State killer case here in Austin. It's called the yogurt shop murders. And I, of course, start asking a million questions. What do you got? What kind of evidence? What do you got to do? And so I basically probably pushed my way into saying, oh, I'll do everything I can to help you. We have folks from the DA's office in Sacramento that are very good at this. There are the people that work on the Golden State Killer. So that's kind of. That was the origination of it. And then we started having some meetings. We brought in some subject matter experts. There's some. You know, I don't want to say there's not a lot of people that really understand this, but there's definitely people that are very well known in the industry. You know, you mentioned to me offline that Colleen Fitzpatrick, when the world of genealogy. Colleen is wonderful. But then you've got these other folks. We've got prosecutors. Like, early on with Mindy, we had meetings. This is before Dan Jackson even got assigned the case. You know, there's a prosecutor From Los Angeles DA's office named Marguerite Rizzo. She runs their forensic science unit. Brilliant. We had people on the call that were investigators on the Golden State Killer. And so that started kind of around probably 2019 or so. And so we started having meetings. We started to really dig into what was the evidence. And then Dan Jackson got involved. I don't know. I think it was 2022. Or so. And then we started just collaborating and bringing back, bringing people in. Dr. Bruce Bedoli, who's very well known in this space, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Steve Kramer, who was with the FBI and was part of the GSK team. And you know, we're probably all OCD types and so, you know, you can barely get a word in edgewise in these meetings. But the value of the collaboration is, it's the persistence, but it's also understanding the evidence that is the most important part about cold cases. What do you have and what can you do with it? Because you don't ever want to waste it, because you can't go back in time, you can't recover that DNA once it's been tested. And so listening to the experts and then DNA Labs International got involved. I have nothing but tremendous respect for the work that they do. Very good at what they do. And so that, I mean, it's a long winded answer, but that's kind of how I got introduced. And then kind of they built this team and they were, you know, they didn't have any egos about it. That's things about cold cases sometimes, hopefully, rarely, sometimes egos do get in the way. But it did not happen in this case at all.

[Anya Cain]

It almost sounds like it's. You were able to leverage some of the learnings and the reason and the experience of being through the Golden State Killer transfer that and maybe bring in some of the alumni from that and you know, for lack of a better term, the Golden State killer alumni and then coming in to help this other really high profile case in Texas. Is that fair to say?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

That's fair to say. I mean, I think the other thing about it is, you know, GSK, the arrest happens in April of 2018. And even while that case was going on, when they were the core team was building the trees, we were already thinking about other cases in our county. Okay, if this works, we're doing this case in this case, in this case. And so as soon as GSK happened, we started immediately doing more cases. And that brought even more education. Listen, I mean, the folks from the team that were the team built were the tree builders. Some of them would probably tell you that, you know, they were building the plane as they were trying to fly it. They weren't genealogists by, they weren't Colleen Fitzpatrick, they were Kirk and Monica, who investigator and an analyst who were like, you know, would tell you they didn't even know what a second cousin was at the time they did this case. So they learned a lot I. I would never be able to build a tree, but I can read lab reports, I can understand lab reports, I can educate folks about what does it mean? I'm not as good as someone like DNA Labs International, but as a prosecutor, I understood the importance of digging and understanding your lab notes. And so for me, what I wanted to bring was my own experience, but also just what we learned along the way from the Golden State Killer and cases from before that. So, you know, and at the end of the day, yogurt shop murders. Well, in a way, it was solver's genealogy, because you go back to when Brashers was first identified. You know, CeCe Moore gets the credit because she identified him. But the actual work on the yogurt shop came down to really. Yes, there was science involved that ultimately linked him, but it was also boots on the ground, police work and really innovative ideas by Dan Jackson.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah, I mean, the ballistics, the. The knife and, you know, the YSTR profile, I feel like was important, but it was a piece of that wider puzzle. When you learned what they had, back when you first started on it, were you confident, okay, we can. We can get there, or was it a case where it's like, I don't know. This is. I mean, we'll have to see.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

I think it was on. I don't know. Because with all due credit, so many labs had looked at this case over the years. Tremendous work by Department of Public Safety. Signature science. Yeah, I think signature science did some work. So there was a number of labs, and everybody has the right intentions. We've put spreadsheets together that would put anybody to sleep on a Friday night if you had too many cocktails. I mean, it was just. It was so much. There was so much work, but it was all the hardest part, and I've experienced this even up till today, about cold cases, is they're comp. Especially when you have a lot of evidence. Okay. Which obviously, yogurt shop. There was a lot of things collected. You got to follow the trails of, where has it been? Where did it go? Which lab looked at this? What is left? How do you find. I mean, I know it gets a little bit in the weeds, but that's where the devil is in the details of understanding it. So putting those spreadsheets together, I think was helpful for everybody to understand. I mean, I put one together. I'm sure Dan Jackson did. Colleen, did everybody put these sheets together? I mean, the whys, when I say the whys, when I talk about the ystrs, if for Your listeners, to go back in time. Remember, there was four people that were charged on this case that by all accounts had zero to do with this. Doesn't mean they didn't have evidence at the time. It doesn't mean that it was bad prosecution work. It wasn't. It was. That was what existed at the time. And then this YSTR comes out, and none of them matched it. And so the DA at the time, Margaret Moore, I think her last name was, she did the right thing. That ystr, I think, for all of us was kind of a head scratcher. Like, what is this? What is this ystr? Is it the actual killer's DNA or is it some random something, you know, innocent explanation? And obviously now we know it was the actual killer's DNA. And so that was kind of the. I would say the head scratcher in all of it. But ultimately, Daniels Jackson's brilliant move of asking for a ystr, what we call a keyboard search was really amazing.

[Anya Cain]

Yeah. And I do want to ask you, with. You mentioned no egos, Right. So what does that look like in terms of how you tackle a cold case? And what would hypothetically bringing ego into it look like as a. Just for people who have not really been on the inside of something like that?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

I still teach cold case stuff, but I taught for about 12 years in California. And the way the class, it's an awesome class, where actually what happens is they bring in an unsolved. And so we have experts there, and we go through unsolved cases for a week and we try to provide new ideas. And what I found, and this is probably just human behavior. It's not particular to cops. Sometimes people's egos get in the way. Like, if I can't solve this damn case, nobody is. You know, and so that can sometimes create. Or sometimes there's tunnel vision. You know, cold cases might not get solved because somebody's fixated on a theory and an individual, when in fact maybe they're not responsible. And so what I value in teaching and in this particular in cold case arena is let's just all come together, offer our input, you know, bring in new ideas and eliminate those egos. Because at the end of it, this is not about us. It's about the families and the victims. And the other thing about it that I've always tried to remind people is with cold cases, nine times out of 10, somebody was under a cloud of suspicion. Like, there's a case out of Pennsylvania that was solved right after Golden State Killer. It was A teacher, Christy Murak is her name. I mean, I had no involvement in this case. I just knew it happened. But Christy Murak is a teacher. Christmas time, she's wrapping presents for her students, and she never shows up to school. And her principal goes and finds her body. She's been raped and murdered. That principle, by all information I've seen on the Internet, was kind of under this cloud of suspicion for years. Oh, he must have done it. He must have done it. And so we have an obligation, let's not forget, we want to identify the guilty, but we have an obligation to raise those clouds of suspicion. Like, the guy didn't do it. But everybody whispers, oh, maybe he did it, or maybe he didn't do it. And so that's where I think this value of just set aside those egos, bring in people, be willing to listen to all ideas. Because cases are cold for a lot of reasons, but sometimes they're cold because they're just hard. They're just hard. And so people have all different kinds of ideas. And you should never underestimate the value of an idea. Yeah.

[Anya Cain]

I think the best cold case detectives and the best detectives in general have to not care who did it. It's not about a personal theory. It's about following the evidence.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Right. 100%.

[Anya Cain]

How are you guys working over the years? You mentioned kind of getting together in 2019, and then were you just sort of staying in touch over time or they're just kind of continuing?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

We would do. We did some calls, a lot of Zooms. We did some in person meetings because of the world of COVID and Zooms. Now we. It's a lot easier to do that way. But, yeah, we would. And then we would have. And I'll give credit to Colleen. Colleen is like, she's the one that, you know, out of the blue, you'll see an email from Colleen. What. What's happening with this? Where is it at? Why haven't they tested this? And. But yeah, Daniel Jackson was very good about keeping us. You know, the thing about Daniel that I came to appreciate, he just. He always kept us updated. He had no obligation to do that either. He didn't have to tell us what was going on, but that was the value, was that he was willing to be open. He didn't care about what agency we were from or where we worked. He just wanted help. That's basically the best thing. And he wasn't afraid to ask for it.

[Anya Cain]

How did you feel when you learned that something was rolling and, you know, there was possibly Some answers in the case coming.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

When I heard not just that something was rolling, but that it was potentially linked to the serial killer. It was kind of that quote, excuse my language, holy shit, are you kidding me? And then it was, you know, them putting the pieces together. I mean, I obviously heard about the NIBIN match. I heard about the wise, the YSTRs. And then, you know, working with DNA Labs International for. For me, you know what got me probably on a. On a personal level was when I, I think the day before the press conference or maybe the day of, there was an article where the father of Amy Ayers said, I'm so proud of my daughter because she told us who did it. And that's really the truth. I mean, Amy Ayers spoke for all of those other kids, herself and those other victims by telling us through that DNA who was the perpetrator. And so I always try to go back to, you know, that sounding board that we can never forget, the human toll of crime. And so I. And then I had the opportunity to meet the family, and it's just like, you know, that's what brings it all home.

[Anya Cain]

What was that like, getting to meet them?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

A little surreal. I mean, I had met Angie Ayers. Angie's the sister in law of Amy. She's the engine. She was the one that drove everybody nuts, I'm sure, because she was so persistent. And I met her through Mindy, but then I met her because we got on a bunch of calls. She wants to help us with this National Cold Case association, which would be fantastic. And so I met the mom. I met a lot of them. But it's just why we do the work. That's the best way to describe it. It's why they've waited 34 years and they've been up and down and, you know, four people were prosecuted that didn't commit these crimes. And so there's that emotional toll. And, you know, I think now I don't want to speak for them, but maybe it's better that he's dead, that they don't have to go through that again. You know what I mean?

[Anya Cain]

The trauma of reliving it all through a trial.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

Right, right.

[Anya Cain]

Well, now that. That is sort of, I guess, like on the books in terms of Robert Eugene Brasher's being and, you know, all of this evidence against him in terms of DNA, but also ballistics and the timing, we know he was in Texas. What's next for you? Are you going to kind of look for other cold cases to possibly work on? Or are you going to just work on the national organization?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

I'm always going to want to help on cold cases. I work for a local agency part time and do work with some great detectives on that. Mindy and I are very committed to starting the National Cold Case Association. I work, I'm on boards of cold case nonprofits. There's a national nonprofit called Project Cold Case, which is an incredible organization that really helps connect families on unsolved cases. I'm never going to leave the world in terms of cold cases. I'll leave the world at some point, but I'm never going to leave my passion. But I just. There's too much to do. There's too many. There's too much to do. I mean, I didn't mention this, but when we talk about genealogy, because of the amount of data that we can now use using genealogy, we have the capacity to solve 90. 90. That's a 9. 90% of crime if you have DNA. Violent crime. That's unbelievable. I mean, CODIS is amazing. It solves 30, 40% of cases. But, you know, don't we owe it. I mean, if let's just take a rape case, you know, the woman or whoever gets raped, they go through the trauma of the incident, then they have to go through the trauma of a sexual assault kit being collected from their body. Don't we owe it to them to do everything in our power to solve that for them? We've asked them to let us use their body to tell us who might have done this. So we do. We owe it to them. And so we should be doing everything in our power. And so as long as I can, I have a voice in this space.

[Anya Cain]

I hope to have one that is so wonderful. And I thought Angie said it really well in the press conference where she said, test the rape kids, open up the cold case files. I think we do owe it to those victims, yes.

[Anne Marie Schubert]

And we owe it to people that are wrongfully put under suspicion, because we don't ever. And my friend Steve Kramer, the FBI guy, he has the best phrase, which is we have the power to eliminate the word serial from our language, meaning get rid of serial rapists, get rid of serial, stop them the first time, and prevent future crime as well.

[Anya Cain]

Is there anything we didn't ask you about this whole, you know, experience with the yogurt shop case or anything else about cold cases in general that you wanted to say or delve into a little bit more?

[Anne Marie Schubert]

No, I. I think my only. My biggest message on this yogurt shop case is it was solved because of the passion and persistence of the people involved. That's Dan Jackson, Mindy Montfort, DNA Labs International, all the science sig sai, all these, all these people that came together for the right reasons. That's why they're getting solved. And so without that passion, we're going to struggle. And so that's why, you know, you just got to get people, you know, victims included, that are willing to just kind of pound the door and pound the pavement and just keep moving these cases forward. So it is the greatest time to be in law enforcement in terms of solving cold cases, for sure.

[Anya Cain]

Thanks to Ann Marie for taking the time to speak with us. We really appreciated it.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email [e-mail] if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.

[Anya Cain]

If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.

[Kevin Greenlee]

Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the Murder Sheet and who you can find on the [e-mail] if you're looking to talk with.

[Anya Cain]

Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening. We've run into some pretty creepy people in our true crime journey and we've even gotten some threats as a result. Safety is often top of mind for Kevin and I.

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