Why Family of Yogurt Shop Murders Victim Says Case Isn’t Settled

On the evening of December 6, 1991, a fire broke out at I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! yogurt shop in Austin, Texas. After firefighters put out the blaze, they found the bodies of four teenage girls who were all fatally shot in the head: Eliza Thomas, 17, Amy Ayers, 13, and sisters Jennifer Harbison, 17, and Sarah Harbison, 15. 

Eliza, Jennifer, and Sarah were discovered naked in the storage room of the business, while Amy was found just feet away. Police said that some of the girls were sexually assaulted, and they believed that the person responsible started the fire to destroy any evidence. 

While there were many suspects in this complex case, many of whom gave false confessions, police zeroed in on four teenage boys: Maurice Pierce, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen and Forrest Welborn. In May 2026, the Austin City Council approved giving $35 million in settlements to all four men following their wrongful accusations in the case that became known as the Yogurt Shop Murders. 

Pierce was first arrested within a week of the investigation at a local mall as the gun in his possession was similar to one of the weapons used in the killings. After hours of police interrogation, Pierce confessed to the crimes. However, his confession faced inconsistencies with the crime facts, and the gun was confirmed not to be the one used in the murders.

In 1999, police brought back the four men, who were teenagers at the time of the killings, in for further questioning and charged them with capital murder. However, a grand jury declined to indict Welborn, and the charges against Pierce were eventually dropped due to lack of evidence. 

Scott and Springsteen ended up taking the brunt of the punishments when they both confessed to the Yogurt Shop Murders under police interrogation. Between 2001 and 2002, both men were tried separately and convicted despite a lack of physical evidence connecting either to the crime. Springsteen received the death penalty, which was later reduced to life in prison after the U.S. Supreme Court decided that juveniles could not be sentenced to death since he was 17 at the time of the murders. Scott was given a life sentence without parole.

By 2007, both Scott and Springsteen’s convictions were overturned due to their attorneys arguing that their clients received unfair trials. In 2009, new DNA testing excluded all four men from the case. Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg said that she had dropped the charges against Scott and Springsteen, and they were released. The exoneration process for all four men began in December 2025, and in February 2026, a judge declared Pierce, Scott, Springsteen and Welborn innocent.

From the $35 million settlement, Springsteen and Scott will receive $9.85 million; Welborn is set to get $4.85 million, and the family of Pierce—who died in 2010—will receive $10 million.

“They were accused of terrible acts, and that was wrong, an awful mistake,” Mayor Kirk Watson said during the May 28, 2026, council meeting. “For that, as Austin mayor, I apologize to these men and their families. Today, policing has changed. Investigations have changed. Technology has changed, and we have changed. There's nothing that we or I can change or say to undo past wrongs. We can only mitigate our mistakes with action.” He also hoped that the settlement would bring them relief and closure. 

More than 15 years after the charges were dropped against the four men, in September 2025, advanced DNA technology helped solve who really killed the four girls: Robert Eugene Brashers. Forensic scientists used a DNA sample from under Amy’s fingernail that matched a profile from a 1990 South Carolina murder and sexual assault case, which belonged to Brashers. However, he wasn’t charged since he died by suicide in 1999.

Following the announcement, Detective Joe Jackson revealed that because of Amy’s acts to fight back against her killer, they were able to solve the case. 

“We told them in the very beginning, check Amy’s fingernails,” Amy’s mother, Pam Ayers, told 20/20. “We knew that she would’ve fought.” 

During an appearance at CrimeCon 2026 in Las Vegas, Amy’s brother Shawn Ayers and his wife Angie Ayers argued that justice hasn’t been served, as no one was held accountable for the killings since Brashers died decades ago.

“It’s not solved to us. Yes, we know that one person was there. We found the DNA, right? But is that all?” Angie said.

Despite the trials and witness testimonies, Angie said that the case remains ongoing and that they have many questions. 

“Everything that we’ve known for 35 and a half years got tossed out. We thought that we knew what happened that night. We don’t know. We can’t ask. We’re never going to be able to find out. All we can do is follow the crime scene and what we can kind of piece together,” she explained.

Angie also said that her mother-in-law, Pam, told them that if Brashers had to die, “that meant no one else is going to go through what we’ve gone through.”