Deceased Serial Killer Linked to Texas Yogurt Shop Cold Case Murders

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Austin police have linked the killing of four teenage girls at a yogurt shop in Texas’ capital city in 1991 to Robert Eugene Brashers, a serial killer and rapist known to have killed at least two women and one 12 year-old girl.

On Dec. 6, 1991, four teenage girls were found dead inside the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” yogurt shop along a bustling business road in north Austin. All four girls were found bound and stacked on top of each other — each shot in the head. Some had been sexually assaulted.

The case was never solved, and it’s become one of Texas’ most well-known cold cases. Thirty-four years later, the case is back in the spotlight after DNA and ballistics testing identified Brashers as the suspect, according to Austin Mayor Kirk Watson’s office.

Though Brashers had a notable record of violent crimes, his name was relatively unknown until 2018, when DNA testing tied him to the murders of two women and a girl (one of the women’s 12 year-old daughter, who he raped) in the early 1990s. He was also named in the rape of a 14 year-old Tennessee girl in 1997, per reporting by Nexstar’s WREG in Memphis.

Brashers was previously convicted for attempted murder in a 1985 incident in Fort Pierce, Florida, where he shot a 25 year-old woman twice in the head after she refused his advances. He served 12 years in prison.

Brashers died by suicide after a 1999 standoff with police at a Missouri motel. During the incident, Brashers took his wife, daughters and stepdaughter hostage before ultimately shooting himself. His death was ruled a suicide though he died days later from his injuries.

The victims in the Austin yogurt shop murders were 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison and her sister Sarah, 15, Eliza Thomas, 17, and 13-year-old Amy Ayers.

Nexstar’s Grace Reader contributed to this story.