Investigators believe they have finally solved the infamous and gruesome 1991 killings of four teenage girls an Austin frozen yogurt shop, known as “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” after 34 years.
On Friday, the Austin Police Department announced that it has identified suspect Robert Eugene Brashers through “a wide range of DNA testing.” Brashers, who has previously been linked to three other murders throughout the 1990s as well as the rape of a 14-year-old girl in 1997, died by suicide after a standoff with police over a separate alleged crime in 1999.
“Our team never gave up working this case. For almost 34 years they have worked tirelessly and remained committed to solving this case for the families of Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers, all innocent lives taken senselessly and far too soon,” the police department wrote in its statement Friday, adding: “This remains an open and ongoing investigation.”
This is quite a breakthrough in the case, which gripped the nation and traumatized the city of Austin. The news comes just about a month after HBO rolled out a four-part docuseries shining a renewed light on the murders.
Over the course of four episodes, director Margaret Brown simultaneously unwound all the twists and turns of the 34-year-old cold case while also primarily focusing on the lasting trauma felt by the surviving family members who have tried to make peace with such an unimaginable loss.
In the documentary, and in an interview with Deadline in August, Austin detective Dan Jackson indicated that the police department may be on the path to a breakthrough thanks to advancements in DNA technology.
The lead involved a very small sample of DNA from a vaginal swab of one of the victims, which had remained unidentified until now. Y-STR tests performed on that small amount of DNA were instrumental in overturning the convictions against the prior suspects and did not match anyone known to have been at the crime scene, including investigators.
DNA testing technology has rapidly advanced since 1991, and Jackson alluded that he believed it could soon be possible to build a much more vivid DNA profile with the amount that they have left from that swab. At the time of the murders, that would not have even been fathomable.
“We’re cautiously optimistic about what we can do,” Jackson told Deadline at the time.
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