A yoghurt shop burned to the ground. What investigators found inside was even worse.

In Austin, Texas, there once was a frozen yoghurt chain store called 'I Can't Believe it's Yogurt'.

It was popular with families and young people throughout the '80s and '90s.

Today, that yoghurt shop is no more. Over the years, it has been replaced with a payday loan store, the only noticeable remnant of its origins being a nearby plaque that commemorates four young lives lost on December 6, 1991.

Their names were Eliza Thomas, sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers.

The quadruple murders at the yoghurt shop have long haunted the city of Austin.

Thirty-four years on, police have finally identified the man they believe to be responsible; a suspected serial killer.

Watch: the case unpacked 31 years later. Post continues below.

The victims.

Jennifer and Eliza were working in the yoghurt shop on that Friday night in December 1991. Nearing the end of their shift, Jennifer's younger sister, Sarah and Sarah's friend Amy visited the shop.

Sarah was 15, Amy was just 13. The girls planned to get a lift home with Sarah's older sister after the yoghurt shop closed at 11pm. None of them made it home that night.

Just before midnight, a police officer reported a fire in the shop, and first responders discovered the bodies of the girls inside. They had been bound, gagged, and died of bullet wounds to the head. Some of them had been sexually assaulted.

More than 1,000 people attended a church service for the girls, and a candlelight vigil drew even more mourners six months later.

Eliza's sister told the TV program 48 Hours that it took her a long time to grapple with the fact her sister wouldn't be coming home again.

"I remember fantasising for days that my sister had somehow escaped and ran away and was hiding ... I was constantly fantasising that she was going to come back. I fell apart under that pressure."

Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison. Image: Police.

The investigation.

Investigators suspected multiple people took part in robbing the shop and killing the girls.

It proved difficult for authorities to find who was responsible, considering the fire had destroyed much of the evidence.

In 1999, Austin police announced four men — Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn — had been charged with capital murder in the case.

A sense of relief swept Austin. The men, aged in their 20s at the time of their arrest, would've been teenagers at the time of the murders.

They were interrogated by various detectives and some of the men confessed. Two of the four were sent to trial, entirely due to self-incriminating statements. But both retracted their confessions before trial.

Scott was placed on death row in 2001 and Springsteen was sentenced to life behind bars in 2002. But the convictions didn't hold.

It turns out, a detective had held a gun to Scott's head during a multi-day interrogation.

The memorial for the four victims of the Yogurt shop murders on Anderson Lane. Image: Getty.

New and improved DNA tests also came back without any matches. Scott and Springsteen were released on bond in June 2009 and their charges were dismissed. It's now assumed the confessions of these men were coerced.

Investigators were back to the drawing board, trying to find the killers.

In recent years, there have been updated efforts to get new leads via DNA advances.

Authorities began searching through a public online DNA database used for population studies to see if there was a match to the DNA evidence found on the four girls. And there was an initial match.

The doorway of the 'I Can't Believe It's Yogurt' shop following the murders of the four girls. Image: Getty.

However, the DNA was submitted anonymously by the FBI into the database, and the FBI wouldn't budge on unearthing who it belonged to due to privacy restrictions.

After pressure from the public, media and politicians, the FBI agreed to work with police to see if further testing could be done. However, in 2020, more advanced testing revealed the sample from the crime scene no longer proved to be a match to the sample in the public DNA database.

But with DNA research advancing quickly, investigators hoped new advances in science would lead to a match.

Then, in 2022, lawmakers passed a bill with this case directly in mind.

The 'Homicide Victims' Families Rights Act' bill aimed to help make cold cases easier to solve by putting pressure on the system to keep giving the cases the attention they deserve. The legislation made it compulsory for federal law enforcement to review case files and apply the latest technologies and investigative standards.

Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis speaks at a news conference about the murders. Image: Getty.

Now, in 2025, police believe they have finally found their man responsible.

This week, the Austin Police Department said it had made a "significant breakthrough" and named Robert Eugene Brashers as the suspect involved.

Brashers died by suicide in 1999 during a standoff with police. He has since been linked to several killings and rape in other states, Associated Press reports.

Police said they received thousands of tips and dozens of "confessions" over the years, but most led nowhere.

The Austin American-Statesman reports Brashers was never considered a possible suspect during the investigation and had no connection to Austin.

Brasher was also not connected to at least three other murders across the US until 2018, through the advent of "genetic genealogy".

"Make no mistake about this gentleman: He is a serial rapist and a serial killer, but no more," New Madrid County, Missouri, Sheriff Terry Stevens told a press conference in 2018.

With a photo of sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison in the background, Mayor Kirk Watson speaks at a news conference this week. Image: Getty.

In June, Austin cold case detective Daniel Jackson resubmitted to a federal system the ballistic findings from a handgun taken from the yoghurt shop that was used to kill Amy, per AP.

It came back as a match to an unsolved 1998 crime in Kentucky that police said had similarities to the Austin crime.

Then in August, the case cracked wide open.

South Carolina officials told Austin detectives that advanced tests on a sample taken from under Amy's fingernail were a match to Brashers from a 1990 murder in South Carolina.

"Amy's final moments on this Earth were to solve this case for us," Jackson said. "It's because of her fighting back."

Police confirmed the gun Brashers used to shoot himself was the same make and model as the weapon used in the Austin killings.

Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza told a press conference the "overwhelming weight of the evidence points" Brashers as the killer and the innocence of the men previously arrested and convicted, per AP.

"If the conclusions of APD's investigation are confirmed, as it appears that they will be, I will say: I am sorry, though I know that that will never be enough," Garza said.

It remains an open and ongoing investigation.

The impact of their deaths.

Eliza's mother died in 2015, never knowing who was responsible for Eliza's murder.

She told one news outlet she decided to move away from Austin because being there hurt too much.

"Running into people who were constantly asking how the case was going was very hard on me and especially my daughter," she said.

The Harbison family lost their only children. As their mother Barbara said: "My life was focused around them from here to eternity. Someone took eternity away from me."

Amy's father Bob Ayers said his daughter was a "daddy's girl".

"I lost my daughter. I lost my first dance. I won't see her graduate. I won't see her become a veterinarian," he said.

Barbara Wilson, mother of Jennifer and Sarah Harbison. Image: Getty.

In a statement issued by his attorney this week, Scott said: "This case stole decades of my life, but the truth has finally come to light." His attorney called for Scott's full exoneration, per AP.

Barbara said: "We never wanted anyone to go to jail or be charged with anything that they didn't do. Vengeance was never it. It was always the truth."

Eliza's sister Sonora Thomas said she thought she would die not knowing what happened and had to come to terms with that.

"I now know what happened, and that does ease my suffering," she said.

Feature Image: Police/Getty/Mamamia.