Austin Remembers as Yogurt Shop Case Resolves

From 1991, a photo of the I Can’t Believe it’s YOGURT! building as it sat the morning after fire fighters cleared the scene. Inside the bodies of four young ladies were discovered, murdered. The cold case has sat as somber at this picture until now. File Photo | KVUE - Austin

I was in Austin in 1991, but I wasn’t fully immersed in media work yet. Back then, I had two jobs. I was a stringer for several news outlets, including the Austin American-Statesman and The Austin Chronicle. I did not cover the 1991 murders that took place at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” shop on Anderson Lane.

My second job was at Southern Maid Donuts, working the night shift as a donut maker. I actually loved that job, but I really couldn’t make the dough I needed to live (see what I did there?).

I lived about six blocks from the yogurt shop. On the night of the fire, I was headed to work just before midnight. My job took me past the shop by a couple of blocks, and as soon as I stepped outside, I could smell smoke. Sirens screamed past me as emergency crews raced to the scene. I kept walking.

Back in 1991, we didn’t have cell phones to snap a quick picture, and my camera was at home. I never carried it to the donut shop. But as the days and weeks unfolded around the case, I wished I had. From that point on, I carried a camera everywhere.

On December 6, 1991, Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, ages 17 and 15, were bound, gagged, and shot in the head inside the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” store where two of them worked. The building was then set on fire.

Investigators said that around closing time, someone either entered the store or came in through the back door, attacked the girls, and set the fire. Firefighters found the bodies while still battling the blaze, but their efforts badly damaged the crime scene.

Billboards went up all over Austin, especially in the north side. Tips poured in, but as the years passed, the case grew colder. The fire had destroyed most of the evidence, and investigators were left frustrated and stymied.

Two days after the murders, a man carrying a pistol in a stolen car was arrested at a border checkpoint west of El Paso.

Decades later, investigators used advanced DNA testing and a fresh look at old ballistics evidence to identify Robert Eugene Brashers as the likely killer. Brashers, who died by suicide in a police standoff in 1999, has since been linked to other violent crimes in multiple states.

When I first read the news, it transported me back to that time—the somber atmosphere in the offices of the Statesman and Chronicle. The best reporters and photographers in the business were on that story, and all I could do was watch and learn. I read every word written, asked questions when I could, and began to understand the difference between truth, fiction, and facts that could be proven. Louis Black, the publisher of The Chronicle, was adamant: no speculation, no loose talk in public. Facts only. Not that I believe any reporter in Austin in 1991 would sensationalize such a grisly, gruesome crime. They didn’t need to. Austin was already in shock.

Is this really the final chapter of a 34-year-long mystery that touched so many lives? I hope so. I hope investigators got it right this time, after so many failures that sent innocent men to prison on bad DNA evidence and coerced confessions—all of whom have since been released.

So for the last time I print these names: 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison and her younger sister, 15-year-old Sarah Harbison; 17-year-old Eliza Thomas; and 13-year-old Amy Ayers, may you all rest in peace. May God keep you and may you know that no one gave up looking for the man responsible for a loss that is unmeasurable.