THE AUSTIN YOGURT SHOP MURDERS

December 7, 1991 residents of Austin, Texas awaken to the tragic news about four brutal murders at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” shop. The horrific discovery was made after firefighters were dispatched to extinguish a structure fire at the ICBIY. It was after midnight when the bodies of Eliza Thomas, 17, Jennifer Harbinson, 17, Sarah Harbinson, 15 and Amy Ayers, 13 were found by investigators. Sarah was the younger sister of Jennifer and had come to the shop with her friend Amy to hang out while they closed. Three of the girls were found stacked on top of one another in the back stockroom area of the shop. All of the victims except Jennifer were bound with their own clothes and had each sustained a gunshot wound to the head – the youngest girl was found not far from the other three but had been shot twice, Investigators surmised she had tried to escape. The medical examiner would later determine that one of the victims had been raped. Over the years multiple suspects would be questioned and even arrested. The focus of the initial investigation centered around Maurice Pierce a teen who was found with a gun in the vicinity of the ICBIY after the fact. Pierce would tell detectives that he and his friends, Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, and Forrest Welborn were responsible for the crimes that night. However, aside from that, there was no real evidence to connect them to the murders. In total there were six written confessions from as far as Mexico City but all were deemed false. In 1999 investigators took another look at the case and, to the shock of many, re-arrested Pierce and his friends, thinking previous investigators had let them slip through the cracks. Scott and Springsteen ended up confessing after hours of questioning, which led to their convictions. However, those were eventually overturned after the extremely questionable techniques investigators used to garner those confessions were exposed. Eventually, Springsteen and Scott were released from prison. To this day the only real evidence is the partial profile of male DNA taken from one of the victims. However the word partial is important because this sample only contains 16 markers. Enough to exclude, but far from identifying. Interestingly enough that sample did not match any of the men who previously confessed. Investigators are sure this unknown male DNA holds the key to the identity of the suspect(s), who many believe might actually have been two patrons dressed in camo at the ICBIY that night. To this day the case remains unsolved but investigators hope advancements in genetic geneaology may someday uncover the real perpetrator(s).