What is the story of the Yogurt Shop Murders and have they been solved?

Warning: The following article mentions sexual abuse and homicide. Please learn with warning.

In Dec. 1991, 4 teenage ladies were discovered lifeless in a frozen yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, that had also been set on hearth. Since then, four men have been implicated in the crime, but no convictions caught, and the yogurt shop murders stay unsolved these days.

The night time the four teenage ladies died, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison had been off paintings at I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! in Austin when 13-year-old Amy Ayers and 15-year-old Sarah Harbison — Jennifer’s sister — met up with them to go home, according to CBS News.

At some level, authorities imagine a minimum of two men entered the shop, stripped the women bare, tied each and every one of them up with their clothes, and shot each one in the head using two other weapons before surroundings the place on fireplace.

Those flames destroyed much of the evidence, and despite a large investigation involving native police and even the FBI, the yogurt shop case went chilly.

The 1999 break in the case

Early on in the investigation, 4 men who were teenagers at the time — Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn — had been questioned about what came about. A few days after the yogurt shop killing spree, Pierce used to be arrested with the identical sort of gun in all probability utilized in the murders. Without sufficient evidence against them, then again, all four had been launched.

Fast forward to 1999, when a brand new team of investigators takes a recent look at the case, and the 4 males are back beneath scrutiny. At that time, two of the 4 men — Springsteen and Scott — confessed but later backtracked, claiming they had been coerced. Meanwhile, fees in opposition to Pierce and Welborn were dropped.

The Springsteen and Scott convictions

With charges brushed aside against Maurice Pierce and Forrest Welborn, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott have been put on trial, however the only evidence towards them was once their disputed confessions. Still, Springsteen and Scott had been convicted, but the ones convictions were later overturned on technicalities. At least one other man confessed, but he later said he was tortured, in step with People.

By that time, DNA trying out generation had come a long way since 1991, and a partial sample from one of the murdered ladies that night time was examined. The results matched none of the four men thus far implicated in the crime — Pierce, Welborn, Springsteen, and Scott — nor did the sample fit every other males who might have plausibly treated the proof.

And with that, the investigation was once back to square one.

The two thriller men

According to CBS News, consumers and different staff have been interrogated, and a number of of them discussed seeing two different unidentified males in the shop that day around the time the shop closed. With DNA samples no longer matching anyone suspected in the crime, authorities imagine those two males could be in charge.

In 2022, Attorney Amber Farrelly, representing Springsteen and Scott, instructed 48 Hours, ” … [S]everal other folks speak about a man or two guys, and they describe them in the similar means? And we don’t know who those two guys are? And they’ve by no means referred to as in? … That raises, individually, the suspicion… that these are the gents who did it.”

A DNA match

With a DNA sample obtained however no leads, government investigating the yogurt shop murders turned to the FBI, and there was once a fit. The DNA sample had no name hooked up to it in the public records. The FBI, alternatively, did have a name, however Austin authorities could no longer get entry to it for felony reasons.

As of 2022, federal and local government had been working in tandem to permit that knowledge to be launched. Also that year, President Biden signed into regulation The Homicide Victims’ Families’ Rights Act, impressed in part by way of the brutal murders of the four teenage women in 1991.

According to Senator Cornyn of Texas, who subsidized the bill, the legislation ” … will help be sure that federal law enforcement evaluations now and again decades-old chilly case information and applies the newest technologies and investigative standards. This process will lend a hand deliver grieving households answer in the midst of tragic cases, and I'm proud of the bipartisan make stronger for this bill, which is now legislation.”

Meanwhile, crime victim suggest Andy Kahn added, “This is going to provide [victim’s families] a glimmer of hope, some just right information, that some recent eyes are going to try their cases” (by way of KHOU 11).

The 2023 true-crime documentary on the yogurt shop murders, People Magazine Investigates: Who Killed Our Girls? is streaming now on ID and Max.

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