'Our girls': Austin yogurt shop murder victims remembered after emotional closure in case
"20/20" covers the investigation into the 1991 murders of four teen girls.
Four horrific murders inside an Austin yogurt shop puzzled investigators for decades and left parents wondering if they would ever find resolution in their daughters' deaths.
Nearly 35 years later, family and authorities are opening up about the impact of the notorious 1991 cold case after it was finally solved.
"When the yogurt shop murders took place, it changed Austin forever... [it] really took our innocence away," Mindy Montford, a former prosecutor with the Texas Attorney General's Cold Case and Missing Person's Unit told "20/20."
A new "20/20" episode, "Yogurt Shop Murders," airs Friday, Feb. 27 at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streams the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
You can also get more insight by following "20/20: The After Show" weekly series, hosted by "20/20" co-anchor Deborah Roberts, on the 20/20 podcast feed on Mondays.
On Dec. 6, 1991, teens Amy Ayers, Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison and Eliza Thomas were planning a sleepover after closing the shop. But they didn't make it home.
Just before midnight, an Austin Police Department patrol officer reported a fire at the yogurt shop. First responders rushed to extinguish the blaze on West Anderson Lane, only to uncover a grisly scene.
The four girls had been herded to the rear of the shop and shot, execution-style, according to police. The girls were left nude and tied up, and there was evidence of sexual assault, authorities said. Their charred remains were discovered beneath fire and water damage. In the early morning hours, the families of the girls were notified.
Amy Ayers, 13, was described by her family as "just a cowgirl" and "an old soul at an early age." She was involved in the Future Farmers of America (FFA) organization, where she befriended the older girls.
Barbara Ayres-Wilson remembered her daughters Jennifer Harbison, 17, and Sarah Harbison, 15, as "lovely people" and recalled that her older daughter "loved working together" with Eliza at the yogurt shop.
Eliza Thomas, 17, was remembered by her younger sister, Sonora Thomas, as "very social" and "energetic."
"She was really into fitness and fashion," Sonora Thomas said. "Trying to discover who she was during that period."
Eight days after the crime, authorities found 15-year-old Maurice Pierce armed with a .22 firearm -- the weapon police initially suspected was used in the girls' murders. Pierce was carrying the weapon in Northcross Mall, which the two younger girls visited the night they were killed, officials said.
He told investigators he was with his friends Forrest Welborn, Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen on the evening of the yogurt shop murders.
Police questioned the boys. After administering polygraph tests on Pierce and Welborn, all four were dismissed.
"[Police] didn't have fingerprints, hair, DNA, nothing that tied any of these boys or anyone to this crime at all," Defense Attorney Amber Farrelly told "20/20." "They had, at the beginning, a lot of gossip."
The devastated families created billboards, helped with tiplines and offered rewards. No concrete leads emerged as years passed.
Amy Ayers' father, Bob Ayers, tirelessly pursued answers for the families.
"Every chance I got, I went to the police department to make sure they were working on the case," Bob Ayers said.
In the late '90s, Texas investigators launched a new effort to solve the cold case. As they combed through the 33 boxes of evidence, police were drawn back to the original suspects.
Scott and Springsteen returned to the police department, where they endured hours of interviews. Scott was interrogated for days, while Springsteen's questioning began after working an overnight shift.
They eventually confessed but said soon after that they were coerced and recanted their confessions, insisting they were innocent. Welborn and Pierce vehemently denied their involvement in the case.
All four men were arrested in 1999. The district attorney obtained indictments against three of the defendants: Springsteen, Scott, and Pierce. Two grand juries failed to bring an indictment against Welborn.
At Springsteen's 2001 trial and Scott's 2002 trial, their confessions were entered as evidence against each other. They were convicted of capital murder, but those convictions were overturned in 2006 and 2007 after a Supreme Court ruling in a different case said written confessions of one person can't be used against another.
Pierce spent three years in jail waiting to be tried before his capital murder charges were dismissed.
After DNA ruled out the four initial suspects in 2009 and without any further evidence to support their involvement, Springsteen and Scott were released with their cases dismissed pending further investigation.
The girls' actual killer remained unknown.
Angie Ayers, who married Amy Ayers' brother Shawn, said she could see how time started to weigh on their family. She stepped in to help reignite the push for answers.
"My in-laws and Shawn had gotten to a point in the case that [they] had nothing left in them. We'd already gone through trials," Angie Ayers recalled to "20/20." "[Shawn] said, 'I need you to do this. Would you help us?' And I went, 'Absolutely.'"
She became the point-person for disseminating updates from investigators to the victims' family members. She even suggested investigators enlist a genealogical expert.
In 2021, the Austin Police Department requested the formation of a new cold case unit. Detective Dan Jackson was assigned to take over the case.
Jackson had an expelled shell casing collected from the yogurt shop drain analyzed by experts. Forensics showed the casing was linked to one from a 1998 Kentucky cold case -- the discovery suggested that the same gun was used to commit both crimes.
Encouraged by a new lead in the case, Jackson also reached out to the Texas CODIS administrator who requested that labs across the country manually search for the unknown DNA collected from Amy Ayers' fingernails.
YSTR profiles identify genetic information found on the Y profile of the male chromosome. A YSTR profile with similar genetic data matched a sample collected from a South Carolina assault and murder case.
After connecting with authorities in South Carolina, Jackson researched their suspect: Robert Eugene Brashers. Brashers had a string of violent charges across the U.S. and died in 1999.
"What are the odds that the same Y profile comes back to a serial killer? And when you start researching this guy, you find out that these are similar crimes, this M.O. is very similar to yogurt shop on more than one occasion," Jackson told "20/20."
Jackson was among those who told the Ayers family about the breakthrough.
"We told them in the very beginning, check Amy's fingernails," Amy Ayer's mother, Pam Ayers, recalled. "We knew that she would've fought."
Meanwhile, the men that had originally been accused of involvement in the case lived under a cloud of suspicion for decades. Pierce died in a police altercation in 2010.
Scott, Springsteen, Pierce, and Welborn were exonerated by the State of Texas on Feb. 19, 2026.
District Attorney José Garza, who had pursued the exonerations with his Conviction Integrity Unit, apologized to the men and their families after the hearing.
"You were wrongfully accused and you are innocent, and I am so sorry for the role that our office played," Garza said in a press conference.
Scott expressed his relief in the February hearing.
"For decades, I have carried the burden of wrongful conviction," he said. "Every day, I have carried the weight of a crime I did not commit. No court ruling can return the years and the love that were taken from me. But it can acknowledge the truth -- I am not guilty."
While the families of the victims say they finally have closure, they told "20/20" they wish to preserve the legacy of their beloved daughters.
"Jennifer and Sarah and Amy and Eliza did not get to be a part of the community, and the community is less for it because they were really good citizens," Ayres-Wilson said. "They would've made a difference somehow."
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