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Police named a lifeless man Friday as a brand new suspect within the 1991 unsolved killings of 4 teenage ladies at an Austin yogurt store, saying DNA proof led to a “vital breakthrough” within the brutal crime that has haunted Texas’ capital and stumped investigators for many years.
In an announcement, Austin police mentioned DNA assessments led investigators to Robert Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999 throughout a standoff with regulation enforcement. He has since then been linked to a number of killings and rape in different states.
The announcement got here amid renewed consideration on the case with the discharge final month of “The Yogurt Store Murders,” an HBO documentary sequence. Police mentioned the case stays open and scheduled a Monday information convention to element their findings.
The murders surprised Texas’ capital metropolis and have become often called one of many space’s most infamous crimes. Austin police investigators and prosecutors had stumbled over the case for years as they waded by way of hundreds of leads, a number of false confessions and badly broken proof from the burned-out crime scene.
“Our staff by no means gave up working this case,” Austin police mentioned.
Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, ages 17 and 15, have been sure, gagged and shot within the head on the “I Can’t Imagine It’s Yogurt” retailer the place two of them labored. The constructing was then set on fireplace.
Investigators have mentioned that round closing time, somebody entered the shop by way of the again door, attacked the women and set the fireplace. The our bodies have been discovered when firefighters have been nonetheless battling the blaze.
The post-mortem report supplied glimpses of the lives of teenage sisters and mates: Ayers wore small, white earrings. Sarah Harbison was carrying a gold necklace and a Mickey Mouse watch. Jennifer Harbison wore a highschool ring and a Timex watch.
It additionally advised the horror: their palms have been tied with underwear and mouths have been gagged with material. Ayers was shot twice.
In 1999, authorities arrested 4 males on homicide fees. Two of them, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, have been youngsters on the time of the murders. They initially confessed and implicated one another. However each males shortly recanted and mentioned their statements have been made beneath strain by police.
Nonetheless each have been tried and convicted. Initially Springsteen was despatched to demise row, however his sentence was then decreased to life in jail.
Their convictions have been overturned and so they have been set for retrial a decade later.
A decide ordered each males freed in 2009 when prosecutors mentioned new DNA assessments that weren’t out there in 1991 had revealed one other male suspect.
In 2018, Missouri authorities mentioned DNA evidenced linked Brashers to the strangulation of a South Carolina girl in 1990, and the capturing of a mom and daughter in Missouri in 1998. The proof additionally linked him to the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old woman in Tennessee.
Brashers died in 1999 when he shot himself throughout an hours-long standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Missouri.
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