Almost 34 years after his 13-year-old sister was murdered in the 1991 Austin, Texas, yogurt shop killings, Shawn Ayers and his wife, Angie, are helping spearhead a nationwide cold case effort. As they continue pursuing answers, they are also examining whether an additional perpetrator may never have been identified.
The couple’s sister, Amy, was one of four teenagers killed in the case. Their experience led them to join former prosecutors Mindy Montford and Anne Marie Schubert in founding the National Cold Case Center.
The organization grew out of the Ayers family’s decades-long search for justice. The nonprofit supports unsolved homicide investigations, offers training for law enforcement and provides resources to families affected by unresolved killings.
Angie and Shawn Ayers launched a national cold case initiative while continuing to seek answers in the Austin, Texas, yogurt shop murders, where Shawn’s sister was among four teenage victims. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
“What we went through and what we saw—not just in our own case, but in the stories shared by other families—made us want to establish a nonprofit for many years,” Angie told News Media.
Amy Ayers was one of four teenagers killed in the Austin, Texas, yogurt shop murders. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
The Austin yogurt shop murders
Amy, 17-year-olds Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas, and Jennifer’s 15-year-old sister, Sarah Harbison, were killed on Dec. 6, 1991, inside the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! store on West Anderson Lane.
Images of the four victims in the “Yogurt Shop Murders.” (FOX 7 Austin)
Jennifer and Eliza were working the store’s final shift of the evening. Sarah and Amy had come to meet them, planning for all four girls to leave together for a sleepover.
Shortly before midnight, emergency crews were dispatched after a fire was reported at the shop. The blaze, along with water from the sprinkler system, altered the scene and compromised crucial evidence, FBI records say.
Investigators found Sarah, Eliza and Jennifer together in a storage area. The three had been undressed, gagged and restrained with their own underwear before being shot in the back of the head with .22-caliber ammunition.
Amy was found elsewhere inside the store. Court records say she had a ligature around her neck and burns covering as much as 30% of her body, according to court documents.
Memorial tributes were displayed Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, honoring the four teenage girls killed at the Austin, Texas, yogurt shop in 1991. (AP Photo/Paul J. Weber)
FBI documents indicate that Amy was shot twice. The first round, fired from a .22-caliber weapon, did not hit her brain. A second bullet, from a .380-caliber pistol, entered through her cheek and jaw area.
Investigators recovered a .380 casing from a floor drain, and autopsy findings identified four .22-caliber bullets in the victims’ bodies.
Killer identified
For decades, the case was clouded by false confessions, arrests, convictions and appeals. In September 2025, DNA testing and ballistics analysis pointed to serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers as the man responsible for the murders.
Brashers died by suicide during a police standoff in Missouri in January 1999. As a result, the families never received the chance to face him in a courtroom.
Authorities identified Robert Eugene Brashers in September 2025 as the killer in the yogurt shop murders. (Bryan Preston/News Media)
Investigators had already connected Brashers to other violent offenses, including murders in South Carolina and Missouri.
Austin police said ballistics evidence showed that the .380-caliber handgun used in the yogurt shop killings was the same firearm Brashers used when he took his own life during the Missouri standoff.
For the Ayers family, identifying Brashers didn’t answer whether someone else participated in the yogurt shop killings. Angie questioned whether another perpetrator may have been involved, since two weapons were used during the attacks.
“I may be incorrect, but I don’t think that I am,” Angie told News Media. “There’s never been an instance where he [Brashers] used both of those guns in his other cases.”
Robert Brashers’ mugshot. (Missouri State Highway Patrol)
“There has been absolutely no definite answer on whether or not he was by himself, or had an accomplice.
“So, to us, we still don’t have all the answers, and knowing that this case is still ongoing, I don’t think anyone can say that they know exactly what happened because we can’t ask.”
Wrongful convictions
Years before identifying Brashers, Austin investigators focused on four local teens: Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce and Forrest Welborn.
Austin police arrested all four in 1999. Springsteen and Scott confessed during police questioning but recanted before trial, saying investigators pressured them into giving false statements.
Flowers and candles mark the site where Eliza Thomas, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers lost their lives. (Bryan Preston/News Media)
Travis County juries convicted Springsteen of capital murder in 2001 and Scott in 2002. Springsteen received a death sentence, while Scott received life in prison.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Springsteen’s conviction in 2006 and Scott’s in 2007.
DNA testing failed to match any of the men to the crime scene. A judge released Springsteen and Scott in June 2009, and prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges that October.
Pierce proclaimed innocence but implicated Welborn. In 1991, he wore a police wire and tried to coax Welborn into confessing. An Austin police officer reported that Welborn denied any involvement. Welborn later passed a polygraph test.
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Welborn never went to trial. When two grand juries failed to indict him, authorities dropped the case against him in 2000.
Decades later, the victims’ names remain etched in memory. (Bryan Preston/News Media)
By then, he had spent months behind bars.
“I’m still really upset and mad at them. If they didn’t confess to something they didn’t do, we wouldn’t be here right now doing this today,” Welborn told Texas Monthly.
Austin police officers arrested Pierce in 1999 on capital murder charges. Prosecutors dismissed Pierce’s charges in 2003, citing insufficient evidence, after he spent more than three years in jail.
In 2010, an Austin police officer fatally shot Pierce in 2010 following a traffic stop. Pierce fled the scene on foot and stabbed an officer in the neck with a knife, prompting authorities to open fire.
Settlement
After investigators linked Brashers to the killings, Travis County Judge Dayna Blazey declared the four men innocent on Feb. 19, 2026. Months later, the Austin City Council approved a $35 million settlement covering the three surviving men and Pierce’s family.
Welborn initially rejected the city’s apology, saying that he lost an auto-repair business while incarcerated and endured years of public ostracism.
“Their apology is not accepted,” he told Texas Monthly. “Their apology means nothing to me.”
Forrest Welborn, left, and his attorney Steve Goodson listen to the news conference after Welborn was exonerated at a hearing for four men wrongfully accused in the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center in Austin on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. Welborn, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen and Maurice Pierce, who is deceased, were declared actually innocent during the hearing. (Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
Welborn later said “it felt good” to have closure, although he wanted some of the detectives who worked the case “to go do some prison time.”
None of the detectives have faced criminal charges in the case, Texas Monthly reported.
The Ayers couple said neither they nor the men or their relatives have contacted the other side.
“We haven’t reached out and they have not reached out,” Angie said.
Welborn could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Austin Police Department and Travis County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment by publication.
Helping other families
Their experience seeking answers in Amy’s case, and hearing other families describe similar struggles, prompted Shawn and Angie to consider starting a nonprofit years ago.
“The frustrating part is being told no, but yet someone somewhere leaks the information and you’re the last one to know when you should have been first and that is still happening today,” Shawn told News Media, recalling his sister’s case.
Shawn and Angie Ayers are pictured with his parents, Bob and Pam. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
Their partnership with Montford began in 2017, when they met with prosecutors about the yogurt shop killings. Montford, a Travis County assistant district attorney at the time, promised to stay with them.
“She made it a point to tell us that she was going to stick with us no matter what until the end,” Angie said.
Montford then connected with Schubert, a former California prosecutor who helped bring the Golden State Killer to justice. The Ayers couple met Schubert at a 2023 cold case conference in Marble Falls, Texas, where the idea for the nonprofit took shape.
Now, they want to help other families find that kind of support.
“It is up and running now… to provide funding and training for law enforcement, to have tools that they need to investigate cold cases, to be able to collect and report accurate data on unsolved cases, and connect law enforcement agencies around the world, and to have peer to peer family support and communication,” Angie added.
Amy Ayers is pictured in an undated photograph. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
“Right now, funding is a, for us is a big thing, so we can get the first cases up and running.”
Shawn said they have spread awareness by attending cold case conferences in several states, including California, Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina.
For the couple, the work extends beyond families still waiting for answers. Solving those cases could also identify killers who remain free.
“There could be a killer living, right next to somebody,” Shawn said. “You can walk right past them and never know.”