The Yogurt Shop Killings

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Speaker 2 Every year marks another year, you know, that there's no closure.

Speaker 6 I still have insomnia 30 years after the fact.

Speaker 8 I wish I'd solved the crime for the families.

Speaker 8 We tried.

Speaker 8 This is the I Can't Believe the Shield.

Speaker 2 I was a cop for 32 years at Austin PD.

Speaker 8 I'll always be associated with that case.

Speaker 8 There's no getting away from it.

Speaker 8 I just hope one of these days we can put this thing to bed.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 You hear about the call 2900 West Anderson?

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'm headed over there.

Speaker 6 The call occurred at 1127 p.m.

Speaker 9 Tom is out for

Speaker 10 time for

Speaker 11 did you get my en route there?

Speaker 5 I was the lead investigator on the I Can't Believe This yoga shop murder case.

Speaker 5 On December 6, 1991,

Speaker 12 there was a robbery, fire, and murder committed.

Speaker 11 That's all right, I'll make the call myself.

Speaker 8 The victims were Jennifer and Sarah Harbison,

Speaker 5 Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers.

Speaker 5 I can still see them.

Speaker 2 I can still see the inside of that place.

Speaker 6 That stuff's indelibly burned in my mind.

Speaker 13 There has never been in Austin a more grisly, ugly crime.

Speaker 14 There's four girls in there, and they're all beautiful girls, and they're very young. They're cleaning up, they lock up the yogurt shop, and then we believe it to be two individuals, came in,

Speaker 14 they forced them to the back room at gunpoint.

Speaker 16 I lost my sister Eliza Thomas in the yogurt shop murders. I was 13.

Speaker 16 Yeah, I was 13 when my sister died.

Speaker 16 The whole city was in shock.

Speaker 16 Everywhere we drove, there were these billboards with a picture of my sister on it.

Speaker 10 And so it's like, you just hold on to anything you can to get through these moments that are so impossible.

Speaker 12 We went where the case took us.

Speaker 4 We're either going to charge some people and get them in jail or clear them from this case.

Speaker 13 I don't know how many murders I've tried. It's unlike anything I've ever done before.
It's nothing but one unexpected twist after another.

Speaker 18 Do you believe that there is right now some evidence that could lead to the killers?

Speaker 10 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 14 I know who did this. I just don't know his name.

Speaker 2 Is this

Speaker 9 the end of the beginning or the beginning to the end?

Speaker 22 Aaron Moriarty reports the yogurt shop murders.

Speaker 18 So what is all of this here?

Speaker 3 These are my notes.

Speaker 18 It's been more than 30 years since John Jones began the painstaking search

Speaker 18 for the killers of four teenage girls in an Austin yogurt shop.

Speaker 6 Oh, that's the big book.

Speaker 4 This one is really from day one.

Speaker 18 He has long since retired from the Austin Police Department and moved out of Texas. But copies of some of the case files move with him.

Speaker 7 Hypnosis, polygraph, confessions.

Speaker 18 You know, I notice this sitting here.

Speaker 7 Yep.

Speaker 18 We will not forget.

Speaker 18 You haven't?

Speaker 23 Nope.

Speaker 2 Can't.

Speaker 18 The images of December 6th, 1991 remain all too vivid.

Speaker 9 I can definitely still see it.

Speaker 11 What do y'all got out there? I'm in route, Air Force 35.

Speaker 18 It started with that call from Dispatch.

Speaker 11 Okay, I'm copying the firepart you cut out on the first part of that number.

Speaker 18 To go to a scene of a fire that would turn into something far worse.

Speaker 10 Apparently, a roughly outside is cleaning

Speaker 11 Last half-4, we're in route.

Speaker 12 And then about halfway out there, they call me again on the radio and said, we found a fourth body.

Speaker 18 A local TV news crew happened to be filming Jones on a ride along that night.

Speaker 2 What place of business is this?

Speaker 2 This is the, I can't believe it children.

Speaker 23 Okay.

Speaker 4 Fire department had just knocked down the fire.

Speaker 7 I mean, there was still

Speaker 3 a lot of water in there, a lot of smoke still.

Speaker 2 It was all muted grays and blacks.

Speaker 2 There is no color in there with the exception of the girls.

Speaker 18 The girls were quickly identified. Two had been working at the shop, closing up that night.
Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison were both 17 years old.

Speaker 18 Jennifer's 15-year-old sister Sarah and their friend, 13-year-old Amy Ayers, had met them there to head home.

Speaker 18 The four girls had been gagged, tied up with their own clothing, and shot in the head. Investigators would learn that at least one of the victims had been sexually assaulted.

Speaker 18 The yogurt shop had also been set on fire, destroying potential evidence.

Speaker 2 There was smoke and soot on every surface, so kind of made fingerprinting kind of difficult.

Speaker 18 This was a crime like none Austin had seen before.

Speaker 18 Jones knew he needed help and from the scene contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI, and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Speaker 12 As soon as we knew what type of guns we were looking for, that information went out.

Speaker 7 nationwide.

Speaker 18 Gunshot wounds showed two different types of guns were used, leading investigators to believe that there were at least two killers on the loose.

Speaker 14 What were the two guns?

Speaker 7 380 and a 22.

Speaker 6 And we recovered all of the rounds.

Speaker 18 The weapons, though, were not found, and a task force worked to come up with potential suspects.

Speaker 8 They were from all spectrums.

Speaker 5 I mean, we looked at everybody from family members

Speaker 8 to drifters.

Speaker 18 And while police tracked down leads, the families and the city of Austin grieved.

Speaker 18 The Harbison family lost their only children, daughters Jennifer, a hardworking high school senior, and Sarah, who was enjoying sports and clubs as a high school freshman.

Speaker 18 Their mother, Barbara, spoke with us in 1992.

Speaker 25 My life was sort of focused around them from here until eternity.

Speaker 25 Someone took eternity away from me.

Speaker 4 I lost my daughter. I lost my first dance.

Speaker 18 Bob Ayers is the father of the youngest victim, Amy, a country girl with a love for animals.

Speaker 4 I want to see her graduate.

Speaker 4 I want to see her become a veterinary.

Speaker 7 She was a daddy's girl.

Speaker 16 I remember the shock.

Speaker 18 Sonora Thomas, 13 years old when her only sibling Eliza was murdered, had a hard time dealing with the loss of the sister she looked up to.

Speaker 16 I remember fantasizing for days that my sister had somehow escaped and run away and that she was going to come back. And so that's what I was kind of holding on to.

Speaker 18 Her parents struggled as well.

Speaker 16 My family never talked about my sister after she died.

Speaker 18 Never?

Speaker 17 No.

Speaker 18 It's too.

Speaker 16 It's too painful.

Speaker 18 Sonora did as best she she could, picking up some pieces of her sister's life. Eliza, an animal lover, had a pig she planned to enter in a livestock show.

Speaker 18 Just a few months after the murders, Sonora took over those duties.

Speaker 26 Third place, Sonora Thomas.

Speaker 18 While Sonora may have seemed to be coping, the reality, she says, was far different.

Speaker 18 You had to grow up quickly.

Speaker 16 Very quickly. I would say I fell apart under that pressure.

Speaker 12 We knew they were hurting because, you know, we were hurting too.

Speaker 18 Here you go, open your little mouth.

Speaker 18 Jones, a parent himself, felt the family's grief. He promised to do all he could to help them.

Speaker 3 We told them what we could, and I assured them that we would keep them apprised as to everything that was happening, and we did.

Speaker 18 Jones also made a pledge to the families involving the shirt he wore on the night of the murders.

Speaker 12 I kind of made a promise to them the next time they saw me with that green and white shirt on that that was a signal to them that you know we knew who did it.

Speaker 18 And Jones seemed assured they would find the killers.

Speaker 3 You know we stayed in constant contact with the behavioral science unit at the FBI and Quantico.

Speaker 9 They said that I should as the face of the investigation project an air of confidence that would cause the bad guy to shiver in his boots.

Speaker 4 So look in the camera and be confident.

Speaker 18 And when we followed him working the case in 1992, he did just that.

Speaker 30 You know, let me just say this, whoever you are out there, you're going to be mine one of these days.

Speaker 18 Where are you at? Okay. Right here.
But trying to figure that out was daunting.

Speaker 4 342 people that have been

Speaker 6 listed as suspect.

Speaker 2 But we're looking at pages and pages of suspects here.

Speaker 18 One of those early suspects was a teenager named Maurice Pierce. He was arrested eight days after the murders at a mall near the yogurt shop, carrying a.22 caliber gun, the type used in the murders.

Speaker 2 The.22s

Speaker 9 were unmatchable.

Speaker 18 So you can't say it wasn't his gun?

Speaker 31 No.

Speaker 6 But there was no way to prove that it was his gun.

Speaker 2 He gave a statement. Matter of fact, I took his statement.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 4 he implicated three other boys.

Speaker 18 Jones says Maurice Pierce claimed that he was driving a getaway car and that three acquaintances, Forrest Welbourne, Michael Scott, and Robert Springsteen, were involved in the murders.

Speaker 18 But Pierce's story began to fall apart.

Speaker 2 It started to crater when

Speaker 9 we wired him up to go talk to Forrest.

Speaker 9 And we were listening in on the wire, and it was pretty obvious Forrest didn't know what Maurice was talking about.

Speaker 18 And when Welbourne, Scott, and Springsteen were brought in for questioning, they too denied any involvement. It was decided there was just not enough evidence to charge them.

Speaker 6 Stop right here, right here.

Speaker 18 And the search for other suspects continued.

Speaker 18 Two months after the yogurt shop murders, with no viable suspects, police were chasing leads no matter where it took them.

Speaker 26 They're into vampires,

Speaker 26 the occult, graveyard riots.

Speaker 18 The task force became aware of a counterculture type group of local residents known to be into the supernatural.

Speaker 26 They go out and dance and take pictures on tombstones.

Speaker 18 And investigators began to hear that this group might be connected to something far more serious.

Speaker 12 The tips were that they were talking about

Speaker 4 the murders.

Speaker 18 Talking about the yogurt shop murders.

Speaker 12 The yogurt shop murders, yes.

Speaker 18 There was one woman in particular whose name kept coming up in connection with these tips.

Speaker 7 She got stopped at Oathwood Cemetery.

Speaker 18 The task force planned a raid on her home.

Speaker 23 Meet my computer.

Speaker 18 Hoping to see if any evidence might be found there.

Speaker 23 Right here.

Speaker 18 Police!

Speaker 18 Police!

Speaker 4 It was creepy in there.

Speaker 32 All that stuff back there.

Speaker 3 But as it turns out, a lot of that stuff stuff was rat bones and theatrical parts.

Speaker 6 But it was a good lead until we finally figured out that they're just living a make-believe life.

Speaker 26 Sergeant Hook could be out of the task force.

Speaker 18 The raid may have been a bust, but it wasn't long before the task force had its eyes on another person of interest.

Speaker 18 This sketch shows a man that multiple eyewitnesses told police they saw sitting in a car outside the yogurt shop on the night of the murders.

Speaker 4 And it was somebody we really wanted to talk to.

Speaker 6 So we put it out there.

Speaker 18 And the response they got came from an unexpected source.

Speaker 6 A couple other investigators from the sex crimes unit came up and go, we have a sketch that looks just like that.

Speaker 18 Three weeks before the yogurt shop murders, a young woman in Austin had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted. Police had released this sketch of three men wanted in connection with that crime.

Speaker 18 One of those suspects bore a striking resemblance to that man witnesses reported sitting in a car outside the yogurt shop.

Speaker 4 You know, I just kind of went

Speaker 2 when I saw the

Speaker 8 composite.

Speaker 18 A tip came in that the men wanted in the kidnapping and sexual assault case had fled to Mexico.

Speaker 18 Two were caught and arrested. One who resembled the person of interest in the yogurt shop sketch.
The development made national news.

Speaker 4 When they got caught in Mexico, we went down there to interview them.

Speaker 18 Jones's team questioned the men, and so too did the Mexican authorities.

Speaker 2 But the Mexican government announced to the whole world that they confessed and they were going to try them for the murders down there.

Speaker 18 They confessed to the yogurt shop.

Speaker 9 Yes, they did.

Speaker 18 But Jones learned those confessions had details that didn't match the crime scene. Even the caliber of guns they claimed to use was wrong.

Speaker 2 There were too many inconsistencies in the confession.

Speaker 18 So Jones's team re-interviewed the men, and he says this time they recanted just about everything.

Speaker 18 It made Jones and other investigators wonder if those confessions were coerced by the Mexican authorities.

Speaker 18 The once-promising lead fell apart.

Speaker 2 It was depressing.

Speaker 18 Over the following years, there would be other confessions, ones that were willingly given.

Speaker 2 You know, we've faced six confessions.

Speaker 18 Six people who confessed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, written.

Speaker 18 That confessed to this crime.

Speaker 2 Yes, they did.

Speaker 18 And they didn't do it. Nope.

Speaker 18 In 1994, after nearly three years of leading the investigation, John John Jones was moved out of the homicide division. He says it was a mutual decision.

Speaker 18 Austin police wanted fresh eyes working the case, and Jones felt it was time to move on.

Speaker 18 Other detectives took over, and as time passed, the victims' families were left wondering why no one had been arrested. Amy Air's mother, Pam, spoke to us in 1996.

Speaker 27 They're probably out there leading a life as normal as they've ever had.

Speaker 12 And ours is never going to be the same.

Speaker 18 That same year, Eliza Thomas's mom moved away from Austin and the painful reminders.

Speaker 18 Running into people who were constantly asking how the case was going was very hard on me and especially my daughter, Sonora.

Speaker 18 Sonora's life had taken a downward spiral.

Speaker 16 In my high school years, things really deteriorated.

Speaker 16 Drugs, using alcohol, being hospitalized, going to a boarding school for, you know, disturbed teenagers, things like that.

Speaker 18 The case seemed stalled until October 1999.

Speaker 34 Some breaking news. Austin police have arrested four men in connection with the yogurt shop murders of 1991.

Speaker 18 There were finally arrests. But would it answer the question on the billboard that had been haunting Austin for nearly a decade?

Speaker 18 After nearly eight years, Austinites are getting some answers in the case of the yogurt shot murder.

Speaker 35 I want to start off by thanking you all for joining us here today.

Speaker 35 For almost eight years, we've all waited to hear the words that our police department is close to a point of solving a crime that has haunted our very souls. Today, we finally get to hear those words.

Speaker 18 When four men were arrested in the fall of 1999 for the yogurt shop murders, relief was felt citywide.

Speaker 22 Sarah, Jennifer, Amy,

Speaker 36 Eliza, we did not forget.

Speaker 18 The girls' families struggled to take it all in.

Speaker 20 There had been so many false leads

Speaker 16 for such a long time.

Speaker 20 It was hard to know how to think about it and how to feel about it.

Speaker 18 But there were finally names and faces to blame. Maurice Pierce, Forrest Welbourne, Michael Scott, and Robert Springsteen.
To the task force, they were familiar names and faces.

Speaker 18 They were the same young men that John Jones and his investigators questioned just eight days after the murders.

Speaker 2 Did you do this?

Speaker 5 I have no comment.

Speaker 18 And ultimately released for lack of evidence.

Speaker 9 I was confident and remain confident this day that we got as far with them as we could then.

Speaker 9 But that doesn't mean that there wasn't something developed later that would cause them to actually go out and arrest them.

Speaker 4 So I was going, yes, good job. I was ready to dig out the hideous green and white shirt.

Speaker 18 But before that shirt could come out of the closet, the one he promised the girls' families he would wear when the case was solved, Jones wanted to know more about what led to the arrest.

Speaker 13 There was no physical evidence, nothing.

Speaker 18 Joe James Sawyer was appointed as Robert Springsteen's attorney. What made them go back and charge these guys?

Speaker 13 Because the new officers, when they reopened the cold case, convinced themselves that we let them slip through our fingers. We had to have had the murderers in the beginning.

Speaker 13 In part, they decided that because they had nothing else.

Speaker 18 There was no new physical evidence suddenly tying any of the four men to the crime, but what police did have were two newly obtained confessions, one from Michael Scott and another from Sawyer's own client Robert Springsteen

Speaker 18 Michael Scott's confession came first he was questioned over four days come on Michael you're doing good tell us let's do this today let's do it her same girl I remember one girl screaming terrified Scott told investigators that he and the others only intended a simple robbery he said they cased the yogurt shop earlier that day and then after dark he said they came back armed with two guns i heard the gun go off

Speaker 35 i only pulled the trigger once

Speaker 18 i hear another gun go off investigators claimed that springsteen later corroborated much of what scott said

Speaker 18 but after intense questioning he went further

Speaker 10 on

Speaker 10 saying it's a

Speaker 10 fan

Speaker 18 springsteen told them he shot one girl and raped her.

Speaker 13 He was so tired of this. He'd already been questioned.
He'd already been through that meal. He thought, you know what? I'll tell you any damn thing you want.

Speaker 18 Sawyer maintains his client is innocent and says the confession was coerced.

Speaker 18 In 2009, Robert Springsteen explained to 48 Hours why he would admit to doing something so horrible, something he says he didn't do.

Speaker 36 I was berated and berated and berated by the police officers until they obtained what it was they wanted to hear. They were not going to allow me to leave.
And I basically,

Speaker 36 they broke me down.

Speaker 18 Let me just ask you, did you have anything to do with the murders at the yogurt shop?

Speaker 36 No, never.

Speaker 18 Even though Joe James Sawyer didn't have Michael Scott as his client, he says he has serious concerns about his confession, too.

Speaker 32 Is that the gun you shot somebody with, Mike?

Speaker 32 Is that the gun you walked up behind somebody with and shot in the head?

Speaker 13 I frankly couldn't believe it. They terrorized him, and he was afraid to say no.

Speaker 18 Forrest Welbourne denied having anything to do with the murders, but police were convinced he was the lookout that night, and Michael Scott placed him at the scene.

Speaker 19 Hi, I'm Aaron Mari with CBS.

Speaker 18 I spoke to Welbourne in 1999 in jail shortly after his arrest. Were you there that night? No.

Speaker 31 Were you there as a lookout?

Speaker 23 No.

Speaker 23 Man's it.

Speaker 18 You had nothing to do with this?

Speaker 36 Nothing at all.

Speaker 18 Wellbourne had been questioned multiple times by investigators over the years, and he never wavered.

Speaker 18 He, like the others, first came on police radar when in 1991, just days after the murders, Maurice Pierce had been caught with that.22 caliber gun at the mall near the yogurt shop.

Speaker 18 Pierce told the detectives back then that he had given the handgun to Welbourne and that it had been used in the yogurt shop murders. Why would he say that?

Speaker 10 I don't know.

Speaker 18 Welbourne has always maintained his innocence, despite pressure from the police.

Speaker 36 They'll get right in my face and,

Speaker 36 you know, tell me everything I said was a lie.

Speaker 18 Remember, false confessions in this case were nothing new.

Speaker 18 Jones said that six written false confessions were obtained when he was in charge. So when he learned that the two confessions were all the new investigators seemed to have, it gave him pause.

Speaker 12 Like, well, maybe I shouldn't get that shirt out just yet.

Speaker 18 It wasn't long before the case against the men began crumbling. Charges against Forrest Welborne were dismissed after two grand juries failed to indict him.

Speaker 18 And later on, charges were dropped against Maurice Pierce for lack of evidence. Everything fell apart except the cases against Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen.

Speaker 18 And with Scott and Springsteen's confessions, the victims' families felt prosecutors had a strong case.

Speaker 17 These young men have been implicated and they have confessed and they can withdraw it, but the truth is they actually were there and they actually did the murders.

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Speaker 18 In 2001, nearly 10 years after the murders of Eliza Thomas, Amy Ayers, and Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, the yogurt shop murder trials began.

Speaker 18 Both defendants, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, faced the death penalty.

Speaker 13 The only thing that ever tied Robert or Mike Scott to that crime scene were their confessions.

Speaker 18 Confessions that both defendants said were coerced. The two were tried separately.
Springsteen's trial was first.

Speaker 18 Neither of the men would testify against one another, so instead, prosecutors used their confessions against one another, reading parts of the confessions to the juries.

Speaker 18 Springseed's lawyer, Joe James Sawyer, was frustrated that he couldn't cross-examine Scott.

Speaker 13 I thought the trial was massively unfair to my client and that it was being done systematically and with deliberation.

Speaker 18 The trial lasted three weeks. The jury deliberated for 13 hours.

Speaker 9 Defendant, please run.

Speaker 18 And then... reached a verdict.

Speaker 32 We, the jury, find the defendant Robert Springsteen IV guilty of the offense of capital murder.

Speaker 26 Guilty.

Speaker 18 Springsteen was condemned to death row.

Speaker 18 In 2002, Michael Scott went on trial. He was convicted as well.
He was sentenced to life in prison. But the case didn't end there.
15 years after the murders came a shocking turn of events.

Speaker 37 In a 5-4 decision, the court behind me said that Michael Scott's constitutional rights were violated during his trial and therefore should should get a new one.

Speaker 18 Both Scott and Springsteen's convictions were overturned on constitutional grounds. The Sixth Amendment gives defendants the right to confront accusers.

Speaker 18 And remember, in Scott and Springsteen's trials, their confessions were used against one another, but they weren't allowed to question each other in court.

Speaker 13 And

Speaker 13 the relief. The relief was incredible.

Speaker 18 But that relief for the defendants came as a devastating blow to the victims' families. We later spoke to Eliza Thomas' mother, Maria, about that moment.

Speaker 18 Every time I hear those words, that their rights were violated, I just feel like I'm going to go insane. Their rights were violated.

Speaker 23 Our girls were murdered.

Speaker 16 It ruins your sense of fairness. It ruins your sense of

Speaker 16 that we live in a just world.

Speaker 18 Even though their convictions were overturned, Scott and Springsteen were not released. A new district attorney, Rosemary Lemberg, was determined to retry them.

Speaker 18 In an effort to find more evidence, her office had ordered DNA tests on vaginal swabs taken from the victims at the time of the murders.

Speaker 18 It's called YSTR testing and was fairly new in 2009 when we spoke with D.A. Lemberg.

Speaker 27 This technology searches for male DNA only.

Speaker 18 A partial male DNA profile was obtained from one of the victims believed to have been sexually assaulted.

Speaker 18 And no one expected what it would reveal. Does that DNA match any of the four young men who were originally accused and two of them who've been convicted?

Speaker 27 It does not.

Speaker 18 The DNA did not match any of the original four suspects, including Scott and Springsteen.

Speaker 18 And that's significant because Springsteen, in that confession he said was coerced, told investigators he raped one of the girls.

Speaker 18 Cece Moore is a DNA expert and genetic genealogist whom we asked about the case and the role of YSTR DNA in criminal cases.

Speaker 15 It is a tool that can eliminate almost everyone. It should eliminate everybody but the suspect.

Speaker 18 If their YSDR does not match, they did not contribute that.

Speaker 15 Because where that DNA was found, yes, in this case, it's very important.

Speaker 18 The district attorney was focused on finding the source of that DNA. She wondered if Springsteen and Scott had another partner.

Speaker 27 I remain really confident that both Springsteen and Scott were responsible for killing those poor girls.

Speaker 18 But in 2009, with no matches on that DNA, Lemberg dropped charges against Springsteen and Scott.

Speaker 18 After nearly 10 years behind bars, they were released but not exonerated, leaving open the possibility they could be retried at a later time.

Speaker 27 This was a difficult decision and one I'd rather not have to make.

Speaker 18 The question remained, though, whose DNA was it?

Speaker 23 I know who it is. The killers.

Speaker 18 You're convinced that that is a certain truth. Amber Fairley was part of both Scott and Springsteen's defense teams.

Speaker 18 She came up with a theory that the mystery DNA might belong instead to two never-identified men who witnesses reported seeing sitting in the yogurt shop just before it closed.

Speaker 14 Those two men were described wearing fatigued colored jackets. They were very slouched over, whispering like they were, it was a very close conversation in a booth.

Speaker 18 Officials tried to track down those two men as well as the source of the DNA.

Speaker 18 And then in 2017, an Austin police investigator searched a public online DNA database to see if he could get a hit. And unbelievably, he did.

Speaker 21 I thought, my God, we actually have a chance, a shot, to solve this crime after so many years.

Speaker 21 I really thought this was it. I really thought we had a a chance to solve it.

Speaker 18 U.S. Congressman Michael McCall, like so many others from Austin, hoped that the recently uncovered DNA in the yogurt shop murder case might finally bring answers to the victims' families.

Speaker 21 We'll never forget that tragic day. It's stained in my memory.

Speaker 18 25 years after the murders, the Austin Police Department went searching for a match to the YSDR DNA that had been found on the yogurt shop victim believed to have been sexually assaulted.

Speaker 18 And in 2017, they got a break. On a public DNA database used for population studies, investigators thought they had found a match.

Speaker 21 I've seen DNA proof homicide cases, and the DNA evidence is really the key here.

Speaker 18 But that sample from the crime scene was not a complete DNA profile. It was just YSTR, the male portion of DNA.
And it was not a very detailed sample, having just 16 markers.

Speaker 15 16 STRs is not a very powerful match. There could be millions of people with that same profile.
So in genetic genealogy, we usually use 67 or 111 markers, or maybe even more.

Speaker 18 But isn't it a place to start?

Speaker 15 It is. It's not absolute, but But if there's nothing else to work with, it is certainly something to look into.

Speaker 18 Still, it seemed to be the most promising lead in years. But there was a problem.
The seemingly matching sample on the public database had been submitted anonymously by the FBI.

Speaker 18 That meant it came from a federally convicted offender, arrestee, or detainee, but had no name attached to it.

Speaker 18 When Austin authorities tried to get that name, the FBI would not provide it, citing privacy laws.

Speaker 21 There are some restrictions on privacy, so it gets into some very sort of,

Speaker 21 you know, dicey issues.

Speaker 18 Frustrated, officials reached out to Congressman McCall for help.

Speaker 21 And so I pressed the FBI very hard.

Speaker 18 Finally, in early 2020, the FBI agreed to work with the Austin Police Department to see if further testing could be done on that YSDR DNA from the crime scene.

Speaker 21 I was very excited about it. The idea that we could bring this case to closure for the families and bring those responsible to justice.

Speaker 18 More advanced testing came up with additional markers, 25 instead of the original 16.

Speaker 18 But as so often happened in this case, what seemed so promising turned into disappointment. Some of the additional markers did not match the FBI sample.

Speaker 18 In other words, what seemed to be a match was not. In a letter to Congressman McCall, the FBI explained the new results, quote, conclusively exclude the male donor of the FBI's sample.

Speaker 18 As such, the FBI YSDR profile is not an investigative lead.

Speaker 21 And that was the greatest disappointment because we really thought we had it.

Speaker 18 If it didn't match that individual, doesn't it still mean there's somebody out there? This DNA belongs to somebody, right?

Speaker 21 It does. It does.

Speaker 21 And that's why we're not going to rest till we find the match.

Speaker 18 How important then is this DNA profile that exists to solving this case?

Speaker 21 I mean,

Speaker 21 it's everything.

Speaker 18 With DNA research advancing so quickly,

Speaker 18 there's real hope that one day that sample of DNA DNA obtained 30 years ago may finally solve this case. Still, it will not erase the pain or the loss of lives.

Speaker 16 Every year that goes by, I get farther and farther away from my sister.

Speaker 28 And

Speaker 16 I worry about losing memories.

Speaker 18 Sonora Thomas struggled for years with panic attacks and physical pain until with the help of therapy, she realized it was connected to the murder of her sister Eliza.

Speaker 18 With a unique understanding of what trauma victims experience, Sonora wanted to help others like her and became a therapist.

Speaker 16 There's so many moments, you know, when your heart is open, you know, you're joyful, but there's also this loss that's always accompanying your life.

Speaker 18 Sonora found it helpful to look for ways to remember Eliza.

Speaker 16 When we got married, we had a flour and an empty chair at our ceremony, and my sister was mentioned.

Speaker 18 Compounding Sonora's pain, her mother died in 2015. Maria Thomas passed away with so many unresolved questions about the murder of her daughter.

Speaker 16 There is a kind of torture that continues by the fact that it's unsolved and it's ongoing.

Speaker 8 It's always there.

Speaker 18 John Jones is still haunted by the fact that the case is unsolved and by what he saw that gruesome night.

Speaker 18 He has suffered from PTSD through the years.

Speaker 9 I had completely shut down

Speaker 3 to where all my energy was directed at at the case.

Speaker 18 It took a toll on you, didn't it, John?

Speaker 15 Even 30 years afterwards?

Speaker 3 Well, yeah, it would on anybody, I think.

Speaker 9 Not as much as the families, you understand.

Speaker 18 I know.

Speaker 3 Whatever pain I'm

Speaker 9 having pales in comparison to

Speaker 9 what they're going through.

Speaker 18 These days, Jones finds solace singing in his church choir.

Speaker 5 I can relax when I'm in church.

Speaker 18 Leave the world behind? Leave outside?

Speaker 3 No, I know it's just past the door.

Speaker 18 And when he's in that outside world, the families of Amy Ayers, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, and Eliza Thomas are never far from his thoughts.

Speaker 9 I feel bad for them.

Speaker 12 That is still not solved.

Speaker 18 But Jones has hope. He has kept that shirt he wore the night of the murders.

Speaker 5 Only worn once.

Speaker 18 The shirt he promised to never wear until the case was solved 30 years later it's still sitting in there still sitting here

Speaker 9 it is

Speaker 18 and sometime soon john jones looks forward to wearing it again

Speaker 8 i just hope one of these days we can put this thing to bed

Speaker 8 for the family's sake

Speaker 22 48 Hours correspondent Aaron Moriarty has learned a suspect has been identified in the 1991 murder of four teenage girls in an Austin, Texas yogurt shop.

Speaker 22 This is according to one of the original investigators who worked the case. That suspect is Robert Eugene Brashers, who is deceased, says retired Austin detective John Jones.

Speaker 22 Brashers is a serial killer and rapist who committed at least three murders between 1990 and 1998 in the states of South Carolina and Missouri.

Speaker 22 He died in January 1999 by suicide during a standoff with police.

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