Austin Yogurt Shop Murders
8 min read
Many remember the yogurt shop murders as a defining moment in Austin, about half its current size and not yet a tech and tourist hub. "I remember how shocking and how horrible and horrific that was. We really were a small town, and that kind of thing just doesn't belong in a small town like Austin," said Mayor Steve Adler, who was practicing law in Austin at the time. "I think that it was the beginning of a kind of coming of age, recognizing that we were not insulated from the kinds of things that happened to other cities around the world."
Yogurt Shop Murders
At 11:47 p.m. on December 6, 1991, an owner of a party supply store in the strip mall located at 2949 W. Anderson Ln. in Austin heard sounds coming from the roof followed by popping noises. Smoke was starting to enter his store, so he went to the back to open the door for ventilation. Neighboring him was an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop, and he noticed that the back door of the store was open, and flames were inside.
At that moment, a patrol officer drove into the alley behind the stores, saw the fire, and called it in. Firefighters responded to the scene quickly. The front door of the yogurt shop was locked, but they forced it open with little difficulty. Then they began to extinguish the blaze, which was coming from the back of the shop. As they worked their way through, the firefighters were met with the sight of four naked and burned bodies. The presumed arson had now become a quadruple murder investigation.
3D Model of Shop
Credit: AMERICAN-STATESMAN 1999 FILE
Officer John Jones, an on-duty violent crimes detective, received an urgent call about the gruesome murder scene off West Anderson Ln. When he arrived, the entire building had been torched, and there were puddles of water everywhere, destroying what likely would have been a trove of forensic evidence.
Shelving unit in the back of the shop
Credit: Austin Police Department
The victims were believed to be 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, who worked in the yogurt shop, and her younger sister, 15-year-old Sarah; 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, who also worked in the store; and 13-year-old Amy Ayers. The girls had been stripped, bound, and gagged with their own clothing, each with a bullet hole to the back of the head. The bodies were stacked on top of each other and burnt beyond recognition. Dental records were used to confirm their identification. "We hadn't had one that I knew of like that. Multiple bodies, fire, gunshot wounds, probable robbery," Detective Jones said in an interview with KVUE Reporter Tony Plohetski. "It was a pretty overwhelming scene. There were firemen everywhere. There was water everywhere."
Credit: Austin American-Statesman Staff
Autopsy
According to court documents, Amy Ayers's body was found on the floor of the preparation area. She had a ligature around her neck, and it was determined at autopsy that she had been manually strangled, but not fatally. She also had a bruise on her lower lip. She was naked, and a shirt tied into a knot was found under her body. Ayers had two gunshot wounds, one on the top left side of her head and the other behind her left ear. The first wound was caused by a .22-caliber bullet that did not penetrate the skull; the medical examiner testified that this shot was not fatal. The second, fatal gunshot wound was caused by a .380-caliber bullet that passed through the brain and exited Ayers's right cheek.
The other three bodies were found on the storage area floor, covered with rubble from the fire. Eliza Thomas's body was lying on top of Sarah Harbison's body, and Jennifer Harbison's body was lying beside them. They, too, were naked. The evidence suggested that the three bodies had been stacked and that Jennifer's body had rolled off the pile during the fire. All three bodies were severely burned and charred; Jennifer's body suffered the most severe damage. Thomas's hands were tied behind her with a bra, and she had a gag in her mouth. Sarah Harbison's hands were tied behind her with panties, and she also had been gagged. There was physical evidence that she had been raped, probably with the handle of the ice cream scoop found on the floor between her legs. Jennifer Harbison's hands were behind her back as if they had been tied, but no binding was recovered. She had a ligature around her neck. Each of these girls had been killed by a single .22-caliber gunshot to the back of the head.
3D Model of Shop
Credit: Rodolfo Gonzalez/American-Statesman
Four .22-caliber bullets were recovered from the bodies during autopsy. However, due to the condition of the bullets, they couldn't determine if they had been fired from the same weapon. Court documents stated a .380-caliber bullet and a .380-caliber shell casing were also recovered at the scene of the murders.
The Girls
Jennifer Harbison, 17, was a senior at Lanier High School, while her 15-year-old sister, Sarah, was a freshman on the same campus in North Austin. The Harbison's had lived in Texarkana but moved to Austin with their mother after their parents divorced early in their childhood. The sisters were active in the school's FFA chapter and talented athletes. Jennifer ran track while Sarah played on the volleyball and basketball team. Jennifer's parents had recently purchased a car for her, but with the requirement that she get a job to help make payments. So, she started working at I Can't Believe It's Yogurt.
Eliza Thomas, a 17-year-old Lanier senior, had similarly begun working at the yogurt shop to make extra money. She was part of Lanier's FFA chapter and participated in the school's welding and agriculture program. Amy Ayers, 13-years-old, was a Burnet Middle School student and also attended Lanier's FFA program. She met Sarah Harbison here, and the two became close friends. On the night of the murder, Amy was going to spend the night at the Harbison home. She and Sarah had been together at Northcross Mall and walked about 10 minutes to the yogurt shop to get a ride home with Jennifer Harbison.
(L-R) Sarah Harbison, Jennifer Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Amy Ayers
Credit: American Statesman
Investigation
The biggest issue with this case is that firefighters were called in first. Many people were walking throughout the crime scene, and water had washed away a lot of the evidence. Police believed the fire was set to cover up the murders. The store and bodies had been soaked with an accelerant. Investigators said that robbery appeared to be the motive because $540 was missing from the register.
Eight days after the murders, on December 14, Austin police arrested 16-year-old Maurice Pierce. He was carrying a loaded .22-caliber revolver at Northcross Mall, a few blocks east of the yogurt shop. Pierce said his friend Forrest Welborn had used the gun to kill the girls in the yogurt shop in a written statement. However, the shell casings were too damaged to be definitively matched with the gun.
On December 15, officers fitted Pierce with a wire and had him drive around with Welborn, trying to get him to confess. "It was evident to everyone," wrote Officer Jones in a report, "that Pierce was trying to force the issue on Welborn, who appeared to have no idea what Pierce was talking about."
In the course of the investigation, Welborn told detectives about a trip to San Antonio that he and Pierce had taken with two seventeen-year-old friends, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, in a stolen Nissan Pathfinder the night after the murders. The police found and questioned the two. They denied any knowledge of the murders. According to police testimony, they believed that Pierce had a "mental problem" that led him to fabricate the story about the gun. All four boys were let go.
Maurice Pierce top left, Forrest Welborn top right, Michael Scott bottom left and Robert Springsteen bottom right
Credit: CBS News
Jones and his team of investigators tracked down thousands of leads. At one point, they had 342 suspects. Six prisoners even wrote false confessions claiming to be responsible for the murders. Police zeroed in on serial killers and satanists. If you remember my blog last month on Kenneth McDuff, you know how capable this man potentially was of committing such a brutal crime. When police questioned him about the yogurt shop murders in Austin, McDuff flat out said, "Had I done it... I would tell you 'cause I'd be proud of it."
Weeks turned into months and months into years; the case grew cold. Finally, the Austin Police Department supervisors decided to transfer John Jones off the case and out of homicide, hoping a new set of eyes could reveal the truth.
Conviction
In 1999, the department announced the arrests of four suspects. Police charged four young men with the murders: Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn, and Maurice Pierce. The same teenage boy's Detective Jones had interviewed and dismissed just eight days after the girl's bodies had been discovered.
(L-R) Robert Springsteen, Maurice Pierce, Forrest Wellborn and Michael Scott.
Credit: New York Post
In interviews with police, Springsteen and Scott confessed and gave investigators statements demonstrating they had detailed knowledge of the crime scene after over 20 hours of interrogation. They also made statements that put Pierce and Welborn there. The theory police established was these four guys had planned to rob the yogurt shop. Three of them would go in, and then Forrest Welborn would stay outside as the lookout. But something went awry, and the murders commenced.
Charges against Welborn and Pierce were eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence, and the case never went to trial. Instead, they were released after three years in jail. However, despite Springsteen and Scott recanting their statements and claiming their confessions were coerced, they proceeded to trial. When watching the interrogation videos of the pair, you can see the aggressive tactics the detectives are using to break down the young men.
Both Springsteen and Scott were convicted, with Springsteen sentenced to death and Scott sentenced to life in prison. However, Springsteen's sentence was later commuted to life in prison because he was a minor at the time of the murders.
Overturned
Sgt. Ron Lara, who interrogated both men, said they had given details about the crime that had never been made public, like the position of the bodies. But Carlos Garcia, a lawyer for Mr. Scott, said the police had bullied his client into confessing and fed him details of the crime. "They broke all the rules," Mr. Garcia said.
Springsteen's conviction was overturned in 2006 when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that Scott's confession had been improperly used against him in violation of his Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine witnesses. A year later, the court came to the same conclusion about Scott, tossing out his conviction as well.
Robert Springsteen with his attorney Joe James Sawyer
Credit: RODOLFO GONZALEZ/AMERICAN-STATESMAN FILE
Where the case is today
In 2009, advanced DNA testing located a DNA profile belonging to an unknown male. The sample was obtained from the sexual assault swabs taken of the victims. The profile did not match any of the four men initially arrested in connection to the murder. In 2017, an Austin detective submitted a sampling of DNA evidence found in one of the victims into a Y-STR DNA database. Y-STR DNA is a specific form of a DNA profile that helps narrow in on male relatives of suspects.
That evidence led to a match in the database system. However, as the Austin Police Department sought more information on who the matching donor was, the FBI denied releasing the evidence or related information, citing a federal statute protecting anonymous donors and preventing their identities from being disclosed.
In April 2020, the FBI finally sent a letter to U.S. Congressman Michael McCaul from Texas. It indicated that the DNA sample provided by the Austin Police Department was determined not to be a match after further testing was conducted in early 2020.
FBI Letter To U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul
Credit: CBS News
"My theory is if me talking about it to you, or anybody else, can jog somebody's memory out there to perhaps get this thing solved, then it's worth reliving that night. So as much as I want to put it behind me, I kind of can't," Jones said.
Austin police say they are still actively investigating the murders of four teenage girls at an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop 30 years ago. Anyone with information, please call the Austin police homicide tip line at 512-477-3588 or Crime Stoppers at 512-472-TIPS.
Credit: Heikki Mustonen
Sources
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/crime/austin-yogurt-shop-murders-30th-anniversary/269-9001c7f3-3691-499f-b042-83c8746c3e38
https://reportingtexas.com/30-years-later-yogurt-shop-murders-still-haunt-austin/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Austin_yogurt_shop_murders
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/30-years-later-infamous-austin-yogurt-shop-murders-remain-unsolved/
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