In Dec. 1991, four teenage girls were found murdered in north Austin. The incident became known as the yogurt shop murders and those murders have remained unsolved for 34 years – until now.
Based on new DNA evidence, the Austin Police Department is prepared to say this case is now closed.
Tony Plohetski, who broke this story for the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE, said the breakthrough in the case happened over the last four months.
“Beginning in June, there were new efforts that really ramped up this investigation. And ultimately now authorities say that an American serial killer by the name of Robert Eugene Brashers, they believe is responsible,” Plohetski said. “And they got to him through a series of ballistic evidence, newly available DNA evidence, as well as on-the-ground police work, obtaining police reports from frankly all over the country to build this case against Brashers.”
» WATCH: Austin Police to give update on yogurt shop murders case
Brashers was never part of the investigation, Plohetski said, since he has no known ties to Austin.
“But authorities have been able to trace him traveling from Georgia westward through the state of Texas, where he was ultimately apprehended two days after the yogurt shop murders in West Texas,” Plohetski said. “And authorities say at that time, he had a 380 that was the same make and model used to kill at least one of the yogurt shop victims.”
Brashers died by suicide in the late 1990s. He was not linked at the time of his death to any murders, though he had been tied to other violent crimes.
“But in 2017 and 2018, through genetic genealogy… authorities were able to actually go back in time and link him to the murder of a woman and her daughter in Missouri, as well as the murder of a woman in South Carolina,” Plohetski said. “He was in a South Carolina DNA database that authorities were ultimately able to link to a DNA sample from the crime scene here in Austin.”
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Plohetski said this DNA evidence was under the fingernails of the youngest victim of the yogurt shop murders, 13-year-old Amy Ayers. Her father, Bob Ayers, said his family always knew his daughter would help solve her own murder.
“So for her to have had DNA under her fingernails that authorities say can be linked to Brashers is so striking and so powerful to them,” Plohetski said. “He told me that he has never been so proud of his daughter in his life. And what authorities told him is that it clearly showed how much his daughter fought this killer in the final moments of her own life.”
