AUSTIN, Texas — The man who last year was identified as the suspect in the 1991 killings of four teenage girls in an Austin yogurt shop could now be linked to another murder case in Kentucky from 28 years ago.
Back in September, Robert Eugene Brashers—a serial killer who died by suicide back in 1999 after a standoff with police in Missouri—was identified as the suspect in the “yogurt shop murders” through DNA testing after over 30 years since the tragedy in the Texas capital.
On Wednesday, police in Lexington, Kentucky, said Brashers was the person responsible for the death of 43-year-old Linda Marie Rutledge in November 1998. Rutledge was shot and killed at the Nixon Hearing Aid Center, which was then set on fire—similar to what happened in Austin.
The Lexington Police Department said the case has been “officially solved,” and it was due in part to a ballistic match Austin detectives alerted them to back in July 2025. The Austin Police Department reached out to Lexington police after they received a match from the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), which said a shell casing from the hearing aid center matched one at “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt,” the store where the Austin teens were killed.
The Kentucky State Police Forensics Lab then examined both shell casings and found that they came from the same firearm. DNA evidence from both the Austin and Kentucky cases was then tested and found to be a match.
“While her case may be solved, it does not bring Linda back, but we hope that by knowing who killed her, her loved ones can begin to heal,” a news release from the Lexington Police Department said.
Brashers is suspected of having committed at least eight murders in the ‘90s in Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas.