On December 6, 1991, four girls were brutally murdered at an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas — and the case remains unsolved to this day.
HBOThe four victims of the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders, Eliza Thomas, Amy Ayers, Sarah Harbison, and Jennifer Harbison.
Shortly before midnight on Dec. 6, 1991, a patrol officer in Austin, Texas, noticed a fire at an “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” shop. When firefighters responded, they discovered more than a fire inside — they discovered the nude bodies of four teenage girls who’d been bound and shot to death. With that, the investigation into the Austin Yogurt Shop murders began.
To this day, the mystery still hasn’t been solved. Police have still not found the killer, or killers, who murdered 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, her sister 15-year-old Sarah Harbison, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, and 13-year-old Amy Ayers, on that terrible December night back in 1991.
Over the years, multiple people have confessed. But even though two men were convicted in the early 2000s, those convictions were later overturned. That said, investigators have not lost hope, and are determined to use modern technology like DNA testing to finally crack the case.
This is everything you need to know about the Austin Yogurt Shop murders, one of the most chilling cold cases in American history.
Inside The 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop Murders
The story of the Austin Yogurt Shop murders began on Dec. 6, 1991. That evening, two girls were working at an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas: 17-year-old Eliza Thomas and 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison. That night, Jennifer’s 15-year-old sister Sarah was in the shop, as well as Sarah’s friend, 13-year-old Amy Ayers.
HBOThe interior of the yogurt shop where the girls’ bodies were found.
No one knows exactly what happened to the girls that night. But shortly before midnight, a patrol officer making his rounds noticed smoke coming from the shop. He called in the fire department, and, inside, the firefighters found the bodies of Jennifer, Sarah, Thomas, and Ayers.
The girls had been stripped, bound and gagged, and shot in the head. At least one had been sexually assaulted.
But though investigators suspected that the murders could be the result of a robbery gone wrong — as money was missing from the store’s cash register — much of the evidence at the scene was destroyed by fire and water.
Austin Police DepartmentFire ripped through the store, destroying much of the evidence.
Not only had the fire torn through the entire shop, destroying crucial evidence, but it had also burned the girls’ bodies beyond recognition. Store manager Reese Price, who was then 24 years old, was called in to identify her employees and found that she couldn’t.
“There wasn’t anything there to identify,” Price stated in the HBO docuseries The Yogurt Shop Murders. “Fire is very destructive. It’s not forgiving.”
Despite these challenges, investigators set out to determine who had killed the girls.
Constructing The Profile Of The Killer — Or Killers
Given the destruction of the scene, investigators had very little to go on. They knew that the killer or killers had used two different guns: a .380 pistol and a .22 revolver, according to the Austin Chronicle. But much of the early investigation into the Yogurt Shop Murders was guesswork.
Austin Police DepartmentThe fire inside the yogurt shop destroyed crucial evidence after the girls were murdered.
The FBI ultimately developed a profile of the likely killer or killers, describing them as “underachievers” probably “in their late teens to early twenties” who resented “any form of discipline.” The profile suggested that the killers had committed the murders under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and that they likely had a past criminal history.
Boiling down the profile to a single word, police described their suspect as a “thug.”
HBOThe exterior of the yogurt shop where the four girls were killed in 1991.
But despite a cash reward for any information about the Austin Yogurt Shop murders, it would take years for police to make any arrests. When they did, it was because they’d circled back to some of their earliest suspects.
The Austin Police Arrest Four Men In Connection With The Yogurt Shop Murders
The first arrests in the Yogurt Shop Murders came after investigators examined one of their old leads. Just eight days after the quadruple homicide, police had arrested 16-year-old Maurice Pierce. Pierce had been caught wandering around Northcross Mall, near the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop, carrying a .22 caliber revolver.
Pierce’s gun was the same type of weapon that had been used in the Yogurt Shop Murders. And, under questioning, Pierce claimed that he had participated in the homicides alongside three other boys: 15-year-old Forrest Welborn, 17-year-old Michael Scott, and 17-year-old Robert Springsteen IV. However, there was no evidence tying them to the crime scene and police ultimately concluded that Pierce “was lying and had just made up the whole story about the gun being used,” according to court records.
But eight years later, in 1999, police reexamined Pierce’s story. They re-interviewed Scott that September and, after a lengthy interrogation, Scott confessed to the murders and implicated the three others. Police then interrogated Springsteen, who also confessed, and claimed that he had sexually assaulted one of the girls.
Austin Police DepartmentPolice interrogated two suspects in 1999. Both confessed. And yet both convictions were eventually overturned.
With that, Scott, Springsteen, Welborn, and Pierce were arrested and charged with capital murder. Though charges against Welborn and Pierce were ultimately dropped due to lack of evidence, Scott and Springsteen went to trial.
Both men plead not guilty and claimed that their confessions were coerced. But they were found guilty. Springsteen was sentenced to death in 2001, and Scott was sentenced to life in prison in 2002.
But neither of the two convictions would stick.
The Case Against Scott And Springsteen Falls Apart
After Scott and Springsteen were found guilty for the Austin Yogurt Shop murders, flaws emerged in their conviction. Their separate confessions had been used against each other, but Scott and Springsteen weren’t permitted to question each other in court, a violation of the Sixth Amendment.
Austin ChronicleYearbook photos of Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen.
What’s more, it came out that Pierce’s gun was not a definitive match to the .22 used during the quadruple homicide, and that investigators had held a gun to Scott’s head during his interrogation.
In 2006, Springsteen’s conviction was overturned. In 2007, so was Scott’s. Hoping to retry the men, investigators then turned to DNA testing, which had advanced since the 1990s. But, to their surprise, an examination of male DNA found at the scene determined that it was not a match to Scott or Springsteen — or even to Pierce or Welborn.
With that, the Austin Yogurt Murder Case went colder than ever. But investigators are still hopeful that they’ll be able to one day solve it.
Will The Austin Yogurt Murders Ever Be Solved?
If Scott and Springsteen were not involved in the murders, who killed Eliza Thomas, Amy Ayers, and Jennifer and Sarah Harbison in 1991? The case remains unsolved. But investigators haven’t given up.
Although DNA at the scene did not match the four suspects, investigators are still hopeful that it will be a match to someone, some day. Though there are no matches right now, advances in DNA technology might help solve this cold case for good in the near future.
Indeed, Detective Dan Jackson, who took over the case in 2022, remains optimistic that it could be solved.
“If I didn’t think I could solve it, then why get up every day?” Jackson told USA Today in 2025. “I think that with new technology, new information that we have − that I can’t go into — even since I’ve taken the case over, the ability to do more with less when it comes to forensics is light-years ahead than it was a few years ago.”
“I am confident that I will solve this,” Jackson declared.
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