It was a Friday night in Austin. December 6, 1991. The kind of night where the air gets crisp and kids are just looking for a place to hang out before the weekend really kicks off. At the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop on West Anderson Lane, four girls were finishing up their shifts or just visiting. Amy Ayers was only 13. Her friend Eliza Thomas was 17. The Harbison sisters, Jennifer and Sarah, were 17 and 15. By midnight, the shop was a literal inferno. Firefighters fought the flames, but what they found inside wasn't just fire damage. It was a nightmare. When people ask about the yogurt shop murders who did it, they aren't just asking for a name. They’re asking how four girls could be murdered and a building torched without a single person being held behind bars today.
The scene was horrific. Each girl had been shot in the head. Some were bound with their own clothing. The fire was an obvious attempt to erase the evidence, a tactic that, honestly, worked better than the killers probably even hoped. For eight years, the case sat. It gathered dust. It haunted the Austin Police Department.
Then came the "confessions."
The 1999 Arrests and the Four Names You Need to Know
In 1999, things finally seemed to move. Police arrested four men: Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn. This was supposed to be the "gotcha" moment. The city breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, we knew yogurt shop murders who did it. Or so we thought.
The prosecution’s case leaned almost entirely on confessions from Springsteen and Scott. If you read the transcripts, they’re chilling. They describe the scene in detail. But here’s the kicker: they were grilled for hours. The interrogations were intense, the kind of high-pressure environment that modern legal experts now point to as a breeding ground for false confessions. Pierce and Welborn were eventually cleared—Pierce after being held for years and Welborn because grand juries twice refused to indict him.
A Legal House of Cards
Springsteen was sentenced to death. Scott got life. But the victory was short-lived. In 2006, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Springsteen’s conviction. Why? Because the prosecution used Scott’s confession against Springsteen, but Springsteen’s lawyers never got to cross-examine Scott. That’s a massive Sixth Amendment violation. You can’t just use one guy’s word to bury another without giving the defense a shot at him.
By 2009, both men were out. The DNA didn't match.
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The Mystery DNA: The Ghost in the Evidence Room
Technology eventually caught up with the 1991 crime scene. In 2008, a more sensitive type of DNA testing—Y-STR testing—was used on a vaginal swab taken from the youngest victim, Amy Ayers.
It didn't match Springsteen. It didn't match Scott. It didn't match Pierce or Welborn.
It belonged to an unknown male. A "Male 1." To this day, that DNA profile has never been matched to a name in any database. Think about that for a second. While the state was busy trying to keep Springsteen and Scott in prison, the actual biological evidence pointed to someone else entirely.
Someone who might still be out there.
Why the DNA Hasn't Solved the Case
- The Profile is Partial: While it's enough to exclude the original four suspects, it isn't always enough to get a "cold hit" in CODIS (the national DNA database) if the sample is degraded.
- Contamination Issues: The crime scene was a mess. Firemen, water, heat, and dozens of people walking through the shop before it was properly processed.
- The Passing of Time: Every year that goes by, the trail gets colder. People die. Memories fade.
The question of yogurt shop murders who did it shifted from "which of these four guys?" to "who is this mystery man?" It’s a pivot that left the families of the victims in a state of perpetual limbo. Imagine waiting decades for justice, seeing men convicted, and then seeing them walk free because the science simply didn't back up the police work.
Misconceptions and the "Easy" Answer
Most people want a simple story. They want a villain. In the Austin yogurt shop case, the "villain" for a long time was the group of four teenagers. But when you look at the facts, the "easy" answer falls apart.
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There's a lot of talk about a "fifth man" or a different group of suspects. Some investigators, like former Austin detective Hector Polanco, have been criticized for their interrogation techniques. Polanco was legendary for getting confessions, but some of those confessions in other cases later turned out to be wrong. It casts a long, dark shadow over everything Scott and Springsteen said in that interrogation room.
Did they know things only the killers would know? Maybe. But police also have a habit of "leaking" details during long questioning sessions, sometimes without even realizing they're doing it. It’s called "confession contamination."
The Current State of the Investigation
The Austin Police Department still considers this an open, active investigation. They aren't calling it a cold case, though it certainly feels like one. They have a dedicated team that occasionally revisits the evidence. They're waiting for that one phone call, that one DNA match, or that one person who finally decides their conscience is too heavy to keep a secret.
There have been rumors for years. Rumors of a man who fled to Mexico. Rumors of a deathbed confession that never actually materialized.
Honestly, the most frustrating part of the yogurt shop murders who did it saga is that we might have had the evidence all along, but the fire destroyed the best chances for a clean forensic sweep. The fire department's primary job was to put out the blaze; they weren't thinking about preserving a hair follicle or a fingerprint under a layer of soot.
Lessons from the Legal Fallout
- Confessions Aren't King: This case is a textbook example of why physical evidence must back up a statement.
- DNA is Final: You can argue with a witness. You can't argue with a genetic code that doesn't match.
- The Impact of Social Pressure: Austin was a different city in 1991. It felt smaller. The pressure on the APD to solve this was astronomical. Sometimes, that pressure leads to tunnel vision.
Moving Forward: What Can Still Be Done?
If you're looking for a resolution, you won't find one in the current court records. The charges against Springsteen and Scott were dismissed in 2009, but they weren't "exonerated" in the way some people think. The state basically said, "We don't have enough to go to trial right now." They could, theoretically, be recharged if new evidence surfaces. But with the "Male 1" DNA still looming over the case, that seems unlikely.
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The real path forward lies in Genetic Genealogy. We’ve seen it solve the Golden State Killer case and hundreds of others. By taking that "Male 1" profile and running it through public databases like GEDmatch or FamilyTreeDNA, investigators might be able to find a second cousin or a great-uncle of the killer.
It’s slow work. It’s expensive. And it requires a sample that is high-quality enough to create a full SNP profile.
If you want to stay informed on the case, the best thing to do is follow the work of journalists like Beverly Lowry, who wrote Who Killed These Girls?, or keep an eye on the updates from the Austin Police Department’s cold case web portal. The families still hold memorials. They still want answers.
The tragedy isn't just what happened in 1991. The tragedy is that in 2026, the question of yogurt shop murders who did it still doesn't have a definitive name attached to it.
To help push for justice in cases like this, you can support organizations like the Innocence Project, which works to ensure that DNA evidence is prioritized over coerced confessions. You can also stay vocal on social media; keeping these names—Amy, Eliza, Jennifer, and Sarah—in the public consciousness ensures that the state never feels comfortable letting the file just sit in a drawer. The more people who know the messy, complicated truth, the more pressure there is to finally use modern science to find "Male 1."