Austin police have reportedly linked the 1991 deaths of four teens at a yogurt shop to an accused serial killer.

Investigators with the Austin Police Department stated that DNA testing linked Robert Eugene Brashers, who took his own life during a law enforcement standoff in Missouri, in 1994, to the murders.

According to the Austin American Statesmen, investigators said they used “DNA testing, ballistics examinations and old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground police work” to solve the case.

The murders happened on December 6, 1991, at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” shop on West Anderson Lane.

Four girls, identified as Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, 15 and 17, were found with gunshot wounds to the head and stacked on top of each other.

Investigators said that each victim had been tied with their underwear and had cloths in their mouth, KTLA reports. They also had signs of sexual assault.

The killer then set the store on fire, compromising the evidence. DNA found under Amy’s fingernails, however, helped investigators crack the case.

“I have never been so proud of my daughter in all of my life,” her father, Bob Ayers, told the American-Statesman.“Our whole family knew there was something about Amy that would help solve this.”

In 1999, Austin PD developed a task force and later arrested four people. Two men were subsequently released, leaving the two others, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, as the sole suspects.

The pair, teens at the time, reportedly confessed to the murders and turned on each other. They later recanted and said that their confessions were made under duress.

Their convictions were overturned after DNA evidence indicated they could not have been involved.

KCTV 5 reports that Springsteen spent nearly a decade behind bars before his release.

In 2025, Austin Police Detective Daniel Jackson submitted a .380 shell casing to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN).

Police found the shell casing in the store’s floor drain.

“It had not been submitted into the NIBIN system in many years. NIBIN is a National Integrated Ballistic Information Network — it’s kind of like CODIS [the Combined DNA Index System] for shell casings,” Jackson said Monday during a news conference.

Investigators received a hit from an unsolved case in Kentucky, and then, while cross-referencing nationwide DNA samples, obtained a match to Brashers in South Carolina.

“The South Carolina state lab was the only lab in the country that responded that they had a match … the full profile and every allele was the same,” Jackson said.

Brashers was the suspect behind numerous crimes in other states, including Missouri, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

In Missouri, evidence connected him to the 1998 murder of Sherri Scherer and her 12-year-old daughter, Megan. Brashers also sexually assaulted the child victim.

In South Carolina, evidence linked Brashers to the 1990 strangling of 28-year-old Genevieve Zitrick, and in Tennessee, the 1990 rape of a 14-year-old.

Police said he’s also been accused of impersonating a police officer, burglary, and attempted murder.

Brashers’ daughter, Deborah Brashers, who was an infant with the Austin murders occurred, told KXAN-TV that she didn’t know how he ended up in Texas, although it possibly could have been his work in construction.

“I am just finding out recently, today, about them,” Deborah said on Friday. “And when I got the email about them, I was cooking dinner, and I seen it on my phone, and I was like, wait a minute.”

“So, I googled my father’s name, which I hadn’t done in a while, for the longest time, I would Google my name or my father’s name, just to see if there were new things that came out. My first thought was I was born in 1991 August — where was he at then?”

Deborah said she had first found out about her father’s string of crimes in 2018. She knew nothing of his life of crime before then, and was just eight when he passed away.

“I held my father on a pedestal for a very long time because I did not think he was an evil person,” she said.

“I just thought he had mental health issues and he couldn’t deal with it anymore. I never knew that he had psychotic issues that he dealt with that we didn’t know about.”

“I am very sorry to every family that my father hurt.”

“I know that it is not my place at all to tell you I am sorry, but someone has to because he was not sorry for it and half of my DNA is the person that hurt you the most, so I want to tell you sorry, and I am so sorry for everything, but I am finally glad that you are getting answers.”

Meanwhile, investigators have not linked Brashers to ever living or working in Austin. However, they believe he may have been driving through Texas to Arizona, where his father lived.

Check back for updates.

[Feature Photo: Sonora Thomas, sister of victim Eliza Thomas, right, is hugs Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis following a news conference regarding a breakthrough in the 1991 I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt murder case, Monday, Sept. 29, 2025, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)]