Texans and true crime fans know the case; the yogurt shop murders in Austin of 1991. Four teenage girls killed inside a frozen yogurt store leaving the city shaken.
Now, decades later, HBO’s The Yogurt Shop Murders feels more urgent than ever- as a Texas judge has formally declared four men wrongfully accused in the case innocent for the first time in a courtroom.
Texas Judge Declares Four Men Innocent
In a packed Austin courtroom, state District Judge Dayna Blazey told the men words they had waited more than 25 years to hear: “You are innocent.”
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Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Forrest Welborn and the late Maurice Pierce were officially cleared in one of Texas’ most infamous murder cases.
Prosecutors acknowledged the state was wrong.
The 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop Murders That Shook Texas
On December 6, 1991, Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, 17 and 15, were bound, gagged and shot inside the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” shop in North Austin before the building was set on fire.
The crime stunned Austin and became one of Texas’ most haunting unsolved cases.
Years later, four teenage boys were arrested. Two were convicted largely on confessions they said were coerced. Those convictions were overturned, and charges were eventually dismissed after new DNA testing pointed to another suspect.
New DNA Evidence Points to Another Suspect
Advanced forensic testing later linked the case to Robert Eugene Brashers, a violent offender tied to crimes in multiple states.
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DNA recovered from under one victim’s fingernail matched Brashers. Investigators also found he had been stopped near El Paso two days after the murders in a stolen car with a pistol matching the caliber used in one of the killings.
Brashers died in 1999 during a standoff with police in Missouri.
Prosecutors now believe he was the sole killer.
The Yogurt Shop Murders Revisits the Case
HBO’s four-part series examines the brutal crime, the disputed confessions and the decades-long legal battle that followed.
It doesn’t sensationalize the tragedy. Instead, it shows how investigations can unravel, and how justice can take years to correct itself.
And now, with the court formally declaring the four men innocent, the series feels less like a mystery and more like a powerful reminder of how complicated justice can be.
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