This summer has challenged my ability to produce a blog each week. But even though I missed last week, I have not abandoned my readers. My previous blog explored the case of Lindsay Buziak, a young real estate agent murdered in Vancouver, British Columbia, in 2008. Her killer has never been identified. Neither have police solved this week’s case, the murder of four teenage girls in an Austin, Texas, yogurt shop in 1991.
The Yogurt Shop Girls
It was December 6, 1991, not quite three weeks before Christmas. Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas, both 17, worked their shifts at the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! store located at 2945 West Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas. As the 11:00 p.m. closing time approached, Jennifer’s sister, Sarah, 15, and her friend Amy Ayers, 13, joined Jennifer and Eliza. The two younger girls planned to get a ride home with Jennifer after the store closed.
Minutes before midnight, a police officer on patrol reported a fire in the shop. Responding firefighters put out the fire but found a grisly scene inside. The nude bodies of all four girls lay on the floor, each shot in the back of the head by a .22-caliber firearm. A pair of panties bound Sarah’s hands behind her. She had also been gagged and sexually assaulted. Eliza had also been gagged and had her hands tied behind her back. Amy’s body, found in a different part of the store, had a “sock-like cloth” around her neck. She had suffered two gunshot wounds.
The Yogurt Shop Investigation
From the start, the effects of the fire hampered investigators. Jennifer’s, Eliza’s, and Sarah’s bodies suffered severe burns. Amy’s body, found in another part of the yogurt shop, suffered less severe burns, but damage to the shop itself from the fire and efforts to extinguish it compromised the crime scene.
One early person of interest was a 15-year-old caught with a .22 weapon inside an area mall just days after the killings. He seemed like a promising suspect. But his gun could not be identified as the weapon used in the killings, and detectives decided he was trying to wrangle his way out of a gun charge. They eliminated him and three friends he implicated. All four boys were younger than eighteen at the time.
Eight years later, in 1999, a new detective assigned to the case decided that the four were, in fact, viable suspects. Now in their twenties, several detectives sat the four down for relentless interrogations. Two of the four, Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, confessed to participating in the yogurt shop murders. Both later recanted, saying detectives coerced the confessions.
The Yogurt Shop Murder Trials
In 2001, Robert Springsteen went on trial for capital murder. Although the trial lasted three weeks, Scott’s confession was the only substantial evidence against him. Scott refused to testify in court, so the prosecutor read parts of his (Scott’s) confession to the jury. After thirteen hours of deliberation, they returned a guilty verdict, and Springsteen went to death row.
Prosecutors used the same playbook when it came time for Scott’s trial a year later in 2002. They used Springsteen’s confession as evidence against Scott. Springsteen himself did not testify. This jury also returned a guilty verdict, although Scott was spared the death sentence because he was a minor at the time of the crime.
In 2006, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Springsteen’s conviction, ruling that the prosecution had improperly used Scott’s confession against him, violating his Sixth Amendment rights. A year later, in 2007, the same court overturned Scott’s conviction on identical grounds.
DNA Testing Provides No Answers
Texas prosecutors vowed to retry the cases. As they prepared for the new trials, defense lawyers requested that the state resubmit evidence for DNA testing. Prosecutors agreed since the capabilities of DNA testing had grown significantly in the seventeen years since the murders.
The tests revealed the DNA profile of a man on biological evidence taken from two of the victims, Amy Ayers and Jennifer Harbison. The DNA of another man was found on clothing used to bind the wrists of a third victim, Eliza Thomas. A partial DNA profile of a third person was also found on Jennifer Harbison. None of these profiles matched Scott or Springsteen. Nor did they match the other two original suspects, Maurice Pierce and Forrest Welborn.
Authorities released Scott and Springsteen on bond on June 24, 2009, finally dismissing the charges against them on October 28.
Epilogue
Almost thirty-two years have passed since Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers died that horrible December evening. No credible suspects have emerged after the appeals court overturned Scott’s and Springsteen’s convictions.
In February 2022, it was announced that advanced DNA technology was bringing investigators closer than ever to solving the case. However, the announcement provided no details. No suspect has been identified or arrested since.
On December 23, 2010, Austin police officers Frank Wilson and Bradley Smith made a routine traffic stop on a car driven by former suspect Maurice Pierce. Pierce fled, and a foot chase ensued. When Pierce pulled a knife and stabbed Wilson in the neck, Wilson shot Pierce dead (Officer Wilson survived).
You can read more about the yogurt shop murders in Beverly Lowery’s Who Killed These Girls? and Corey Mitchell’s Murdered Innocents.
Today, the site of the former yogurt shop is home to an oriental rug gallery. A memorial plaque to the four slain girls is across the street.
The case is still open. If you have any information about the yogurt shop murders, call 512-472-TIPS [8477].
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