20/20

Yogurt Shop Murders

86 min
Feb 28, 2026about 2 months ago
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Summary

This 20/20 episode chronicles the 1991 Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, Texas, where four teenage girls were killed, and the subsequent 34-year investigation that wrongly convicted four innocent men before DNA and genetic genealogy identified serial killer Robert Eugene Brashears as the sole perpetrator.

Insights
  • Coercive interrogation techniques (Reed Technique) can produce false confessions from innocent suspects, leading to wrongful convictions despite lack of physical evidence
  • Advances in DNA technology and genetic genealogy can solve decades-old cold cases by identifying perpetrators through family tree analysis and database matching
  • Serial killers often operate across multiple states and jurisdictions, making coordination between law enforcement agencies critical for pattern recognition
  • Wrongful convictions have cascading life impacts on the accused, their families, and communities, requiring systemic accountability and reform
  • Cold case units with dedicated resources and fresh investigative approaches can break through stalled investigations by reconsidering evidence with modern forensic tools
Trends
Genetic genealogy emerging as breakthrough tool for solving cold cases and identifying serial offenders across state linesIncreased scrutiny of Reid Technique interrogation methods and false confession risks in criminal justice systemGrowing importance of DNA database coordination between federal, state, and local law enforcement agenciesCold case units and foundations becoming standard in major police departments to address backlog of unsolved murdersSerial killer investigations revealing need for better interstate law enforcement information sharing and coordinationWrongful conviction exonerations driving criminal justice reform and victim compensation discussionsAdvanced forensic technologies (YSTR DNA profiling, ballistics database matching) enabling resolution of decades-old crimesMedia attention and community engagement playing role in generating tips and maintaining pressure on cold cases
Topics
Serial Killer Investigation and ProfilingDNA Evidence and Forensic Technology AdvancementGenetic Genealogy in Criminal InvestigationWrongful Convictions and ExonerationsReid Technique Interrogation MethodsCold Case Investigation UnitsInterstate Law Enforcement CoordinationVictim Advocacy and Family SupportCriminal Justice System ReformMurder Investigation ProceduresEvidence Preservation and Chain of CustodyBallistics Database MatchingSexual Assault Kit ProcessingPolice Interrogation EthicsHomicide Detective Work
Companies
FBI
Federal agency that arrived at yogurt shop crime scene to assist Austin Police with investigation of four murders
ATF
Federal agency that assisted with crime scene processing and maintains ballistics database used to match shell casings
Parabon
DNA analysis company that developed degraded DNA samples for genetic genealogy analysis in the case
CODIS
Law enforcement DNA database system used to match crime scene DNA profiles across jurisdictions
Memphis Police Department
Processed backlog of sexual assault kits in 2013, including 1997 rape kit that matched yogurt shop DNA profile
Austin Police Department
Primary investigating agency for yogurt shop murders; later exonerated four wrongly convicted men in 2025
Travis County District Attorney's Office
Prosecuted case and later formally exonerated the four innocent men after DNA identified actual perpetrator
People
Robert Eugene Brashears
Serial killer identified as sole perpetrator of yogurt shop murders and at least 8 other murders across 4 states
C.C. Moore
Genetic genealogy expert who built family tree analysis that identified Robert Brashears as the killer
Dan Jackson
Cold case detective who reopened investigation and coordinated DNA testing that led to Brashears identification
Mindy Montford
Travis County prosecutor working cold case investigation who committed to families and helped exonerate innocent men
Amy Ayers
13-year-old victim whose fingernail scrapings contained DNA evidence that ultimately identified the killer
Jennifer Harbison
17-year-old victim and yogurt shop employee murdered in the 1991 attack
Sarah Harbison
15-year-old victim and sister of Jennifer, murdered at yogurt shop
Eliza Thomas
Victim and yogurt shop employee murdered in the 1991 attack
Michael Scott
Wrongly convicted of yogurt shop murders; sentenced to life in prison; exonerated in 2009 after DNA excluded him
Robert Springsteen IV
Wrongly convicted of yogurt shop murders; sentenced to death; exonerated in 2009 after DNA excluded him
Maurice Pierce
Wrongly accused of yogurt shop murders; charges dropped after 3 years; died in 2010 under suspicion
Forrest Wellborn
Wrongly accused of yogurt shop murders; grand jury refused to indict; formally exonerated in 2025
Barbara Wilson
Mother of victims Jennifer and Sarah Harbison; advocated for justice and case resolution for 34 years
Sean Ayers
Brother of victim Amy Ayers; worked with sister Angie to push for case resolution and cold case foundation
Angie Ayers
Sister-in-law of victim Amy Ayers; drove cold case investigation efforts and victim advocacy
Deborah Brashears
Daughter of serial killer Robert Brashears; learned of father's crimes in 2018 after authorities connected him
Detective John Jones
Austin homicide investigator who responded to yogurt shop crime scene on night of murders
Quotes
"Everything I tell you is the truth. I hope I don't bring a ton of shit down on me."
Unknown suspect in confessionOpening segment
"The yogurt shop murders have been repeatedly described as the day Austin lost its innocence."
NarratorMid-episode
"I am confident that Robert Brashears is the only person responsible for this crime."
ProsecutorFinal press conference
"That's what's so scary about serial killers, is that you can't spot them. They are among us."
C.C. MooreInvestigation segment
"I know who killed your daughter."
Detective Dan JacksonFamily notification scene
Full Transcript
Is this on? Season 3 of Proof, Murder at the Bike Shop, is available now, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm scared to be sitting here in this damn chair talking about this shit. This is a guy confessing a murder to her, and she has no idea what day it happened. Everything I tell you is the truth. I hope I don't bring a ton of shit down on me. Listen to Season 3 of Proof now, wherever you get your podcasts. There was evidence in the house, and they would not listen to me. It's not me. I didn't do it. It was a cool evening. Of course, the city was getting into the holiday spirit at that time. Amy was going to the mall with Sarah, and Jennifer went to work at the yoga shop. We believe that it was business as usual. The shift started about 7 o'clock. It was set to close around 11 p.m. Two of the girls had left to go to the mall and were coming to the yogurt shop. They were going to have a big slumber party, a big sleepover. It's Friday night. They're wanting to get out of there. The girls were all picking up, cleaning up the yogurt store. Something horrific and evil was about to walk in that door. They were supposed to be home by 11, but they were already dead by 11. It all started late one Friday night with a police radio call to Detective John Jones. Jonesy? Yeah. Uh, you're about to call 2900 West Anderson? Yeah, I'm headed over there. Okay. I'll meet you out there. An Austin police homicide investigator happens to have a news crew riding with him in the car that night, and he gets a call and starts speeding to the scene. All we have is three fatalities. Last hand, four. Four and a half. Triple fatality. A murder. Great. The case that would become known as the Yogurt Shop Murders begins on a December night in 1991 in Austin, Texas. There was a police officer, and he was just patrolling the neighborhood, and he noticed smoke coming out from one of the doors, and it turned out to be the yogurt shop. So he pulled in to investigate and immediately called for fire officials to respond to the scene. Fire suppression efforts were aimed towards trying to put out this fire. And while doing so, they happened to trip over a body. And that is when they discover a horrific scene. Then they recognize it's two, and then three, and then finally four. The yogurt shop, it's probably like a typical retail space in a strip mall. You have the consumer area up front, tables and chairs, and there's a counter kind of in the middle, and then there's the back room where the storage and office and everything is. I got there right after the fire had been knocked down. Very smoky, there was water dripping from the ceiling. It was overwhelming, more than anything. I mean, a fire, four dead folks, young, burned, shot and hit. Three of the girls were just totally not identifiable. They were burned too much. As soon as the Austin Police Department realized the scope of what they were dealing with, they called in extra investigators to help them. Specifically, the FBI arrived at the scene, the ATF arrived at the scene. It was an uphill battle to begin with, the processing that crime scene. Everything gets doused with water. Because they did such a good job in putting the fire out, a lot of our evidence was destroyed. There was evidence of sexual assault at the crime scene on the victims as well. So all four girls were nude, and their clothing had been used to tie each other up. They also took DNA from those victims. So part of your standard sexual assault kit at an autopsy besides swabs, is you also would take fingernail clippings. For that very reason, because you think if a woman's being sexually assaulted, there's a good chance she's gonna fight back. And the fact that we were able to get any DNA and any evidence from this scene is pretty remarkable, especially given the year, 1991. You know, DNA really was not something we talked about back then. Initially it was thought that it was possibly a robbery gone wrong, a robbery that turned into a horrific murder because cash rubbed been pulled out and there was some cash missing. We're dealing with four beautiful teenage girls. Two of them were sisters, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, Amy Ayers and Eliza Thomas. beautiful girls, and it's just a tragedy. These girls were so innocent, enjoying their high school years and their friendships and just having a really good time that night together. So Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison were working the evening shift that Friday night. It was set to close around 11 p.m. But two other girls, Jennifer's sister, Sarah Harbison, as well as her dear friend Amy Ayers, they were at the mall earlier that evening but went to the yogurt shop. They were going to have a big slumber party, a big sleepover. They've swept, they've mopped, they've cleaned the yogurt machines, put napkins in the napkin holders, all that good stuff. The girls were doing what they do every time they shut the shop down. They were putting the chairs up on the tables. They were taking the money out of the cash register. The girls were herded into the back of the shop where they were forced to strip. They were forced to tie each other up with their underclothes, bound and gagged. They were sexually assaulted. And then they were each shot in the back of the head, execution style. And the place was set on fire. So all four girls were shot with a .22. And then Amy, the youngest victim, was also shot a second time with a .380 semi-automatic pistol. And that shell casing actually made its way into the floor drain. The fact that Amy had a .380 and a .22, that she was shot by two different weapons, still remains a very intriguing piece of this case. Logically, you think two people, or at least two people. Why would you have two guns? So that was the working theory that it was more than one person. It was a very limited amount of resources back in 1991 to devote to this case. We're talking about, you know, a six-man homicide unit. So they were stretched thin from the very beginning. I've been in homicide a pretty good time and this is probably the worst one I have ever seen for the mere fact that it involved four young ladies all at the same time. Over three decades after a horrible crime took the lives of four teenage girls and changed Austin forever, our hearts haven't healed. They're still broken for the precious girls we lost. The Austin police have announced that a significant breakthrough has been made in the yogurt shop murder case. Austin in 1991 was kind of a sleepy college town. A third the size of it is now. and people, you know, back then didn't lock their doors at night. We all felt pretty safe and really never thought about anything bad ever happening because it was, everybody just kind of knew everybody. It was just small. But when the yogurt shop murders took place, it changed Austin forever. The yogurt shop murders have been repeatedly described as the day Austin lost its innocence. This is Jennifer's pin from the yogurt store for her uniform. I didn't even know that was here. My name is Barbara Wilson, and I am the mother of Jennifer and Sarah Harbison. Jennifer was of course my first born and she was very vivacious and loving. Jennifer and Sarah were so close. They always called Sarah, Sarah Louise, little knees. They made me feel secure. They raised me as much as I raised them. My sister was very social, energetic. She was really into fitness and fashion and, you know, had fantasies of modeling and doing lots of different things. She was 17, so she was trying to discover who she was. There's all of us with the horse. The youngest of the girls was 13-year-old Amy Ayers, still an eighth grader. And like her parents and big brother Sean, little Amy was a rancher at heart. I see her riding her horse. Her hair is blowing in the wind and she's just riding and having fun. I see Sean holding her when she was a baby. He wanted a sister. I mean, that was the first time I got to hold her. So it's like I died, that's when I became a big brother. She had strawberry blonde hair about the length of mine. And she wore a hat, a straw hat in the summer. We were joined at HILP. And she'd go out with me to take care of the animals, and we were always riding together. and she was just a cowgirl. So in December 1991, it was a cool evening. Of course, the city was getting into the holiday spirit at that time. Amy was going to the mall with Sarah, and Jennifer went to work at the yogurt shop and then they were going to go home to Sarah and Jennifer's house. I remember the doorbell ringing and I looked out the bedroom window and saw police cars. I told him, I said, the police are here. And we went to the front door. This all started at 5.30 in the morning. I heard someone knock at the door and I jumped up when I went to the door there were three people standing at my door they asked me about if I had a daughter yes and those questions are just not you don't want those questions asked because you know there's something and you don't know what it is and it's bad you don't want to feel that but you know it's here. The devil has come to your door. I heard my mom scream. So I went to the living room and asked my mom what was wrong. And she looked at me and said, Amy's dead. And I just kind of went numb. And then looked around me and there's cops everywhere. I just remember my body started shaking and my teeth started chattering. and I couldn't really even hear what was being said. They were telling us some story about there being a fire. See, I'm still not processing any of this very well, that there was a fire and the girls didn't make it. Did it burn? Was it caused the fire? I mean, we didn't know anything. They were trying not to tell us that they had been shot. The families had to reconcile two very different types of emotions Number one, this profound grief and sadness and shock. But on the other hand, this desire and this question about who killed their daughters and why. We live between the bookends of time. And their short chapters have begun and they have ended too soon. Let perpetual light shine upon them. There were hundreds of people at the funerals of these girls. I said, look around. I said, look what we've got behind us. Kids. That's all I see is kids. We had a lot of support. We really did. The victim's family say they're counting on community support to find the killers. They say if this call for help isn't enough, they'll put up 14 billboards throughout the city asking that justice be done. So there began this outpouring of tips to the Austin Police Department. Quite literally thousands of tips from people who called in. There was this all-out effort by the Austin community to help solve this crime. It takes only eight days for one of those tips to produce the first solid lead. Detectives follow that tip to a shopping mall less than half a mile from the yogurt shop and to a 15-year-old teenager named Maurice Pierce. Different individuals had seen Maurice Pierce with a .22 firearm, that they had been bragging to other people about being at the yogurt shop. 2020 is partnering with Vybe's open-ear wireless headphones. That's V-Y-B-Z. If you listen to a lot of true crime, you probably like to listen with a good pair of headphones. But it can be tricky to find a pair that provides great sound quality that's not too immersive. 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Again, that's abcsecretsavings.com slash 2020. abcsecretsavings.com slash 2020. I'm R.J. Decker, the private investigator uncovering the sunshine state's darkest secrets. Tuesday, it's the premiere of ABC's hottest new crime show. R.J. freaking Decker has that live and breathe. He's a private eye. It's not a standard murder. It's someone bigger. And a public mass. Trying to get sent back to prison today? You go to prison one time and suddenly it's all the jokes. R.J. Decker, series premiere. Tuesday on ABC and stream on Hulu. Shoal Creek is a creek that runs through Austin, and when people think of Austin, they think of Shoal Creek. There was a creek behind the yogurt shop, and as tips were coming in and witnesses were being interviewed, there came to be known the Creek people. So underneath the bridge, kids would congregate there, smoke weed, drink beer. There was a thought that possibly the murder weapon or weapons might have been disposed in the creek, that people had been hanging out at the creek prior to the murders and after. And so authorities, as part of the investigation, began trying to learn the names of some of those people and young men who were there. Police are looking for your help in solving this murder because there's not a lot of evidence to go on. There began this outpouring of tips to the Austin Police Department. Quite literally thousands of tips from people who said that they had seen various things. The fact that they didn't have suspects, that they didn't have someone who did this, and that they didn't solve this crime, terrified people. I felt sick. I mean, it scared me to death. I'm frightened that it's happened close to home, at home. As of this morning, the murderers are still at large. Who are they? Where are they? When will they strike again? The answer? Anyone, anywhere, anytime. The yogurt shop was maybe a couple of blocks from North Cross Mall here in Northwest Austin. And so all the kids were congregate at the mall. About eight days after the murders, Maurice Pierce is a teenager who is found at North Cross Mall with a .22. This is Maurice Pierce. He was 15 in 1991. He was bragging about a gun about a .22. do. And authorities initially became really excited that they thought maybe they had found the perpetrator. And they call him in for questioning, and he is questioned at length. And it's during questioning that Pierce tells investigators that on the night of the murders, another boy named Forrest Walborn borrowed his gun and later returned telling Pierce he'd done something bad and that he smelled of smoke. They actually wired up Pierce, put a bug on him to see if he could get Forrest to tell the story again. And Forrest was kind of like, what are you talking about? And they did talk to Forrest. And Forrest says no. The next day, me and Maurice and my other friends, Robert and Mike we stole a car and drove to San Antonio together And the police were drawn to the fact that these four original suspects Maurice Pierce Forrest Wellborn Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen had been involved and had staked out the yogurt shop earlier in the evening and planned to return to rob it. So the operating theory that the police are working with is that Pierce and Wellborn, along with two other friends, Scott and Springsteen, all teenagers, rob the yogurt shop, assault and kill the girls, set the store on fire, and then steal a car and skip town. To investigators, all the pieces seem to fit together. They have the motive, they have the opportunity, according to them, and the .22 caliber murder weapon, all except for one thing. There was absolutely no evidence at all. They didn't have the ballistics for the .22. They didn't have fingerprints, hair, DNA, nothing that tied any of these boys or anyone to this crime at all. They had at the beginning a lot of gossip, teenage gossip. And we're talking about boys that are 15, 16, and 17 years old. The Austin Police Department administered polygraph exams of both Pierce and Wellborn. but essentially they decided that any information that they had was not legitimate and that they were likely not involved in the yogurt shop murders. And then they test Maurice Pierce's .22 and it doesn't match. It's not the gun. Period. End of story. For the families, this just added to their pain and turmoil and grief. they were not able to get a simple, clear, direct answer about who killed their daughters. Today, the families of the four teenage girls murdered in a Northwest Austin yogurt shop held their first joint news conference. We all were together for so many press conferences trying to keep it alive and trying to deal with our own grief through that whole process. Their message? Together, we can find and stop these vicious killers. As police chase down every possible lead, the search for the killer, or killers, drags on from days to weeks and then finally to months and still nothing. Billboards begin to go up all over Austin in a desperate effort to shake loose any clue. And every time we see those faces, it gives us hope and joy and sadness. We want those pictures up. We want people to know that these beautiful girls were alive and part of this city, and they made a difference every day. On the six-month anniversary of the Yogurt Shop murders, people converged at the state capitol. People were holding lighted candles. Investigators are still no closer to cracking the case. As hopes for an arrest begin to fade, public frustration begins to grow. For the Austin Police Department, it continued to put a bright spotlight on their investigation. The pressure for them to solve this case was above and beyond any case that they've ever experienced before ever. And I dare to say that this was the biggest case that ever happened in Austin's history. Ten months after the crime itself, Authorities became very excited after a man who was arrested in Mexico confessed to the murders. The man on the right goes by the nickname The Terminator. And that's exactly what 24-year-old Carlos Saavedra claimed he did when he raped and killed four Austin teenagers. I'm in the area, I'll just come and just, I just love to be able to touch something that's close to them. I shouldn't have to be out here. I'll be able to be at home with her. One day at a time. Some days it's one hour at a time. Knowing that people that did not know the girls or us or any of the families at all would care that much, It was eye-opening to see how many people actually get affected. We did a weekend where we were on the corner of where the yogurt shop was. A lot of people had gone out and passed out flyers, asked people, you know, did you see anything? People that didn't know us, you know, were willing to try to help us. One of the breakthroughs in the yogurt shop investigation came about 10 months after the crime itself. Authorities from Mexico called Austin police and excitedly told them that they had obtained this confession. Two men, Cortez and Saavedra, they were Mexican nationals and they were suspected of being the killers. APD flies down there to interview them. The man on the right goes by the nickname The Terminator. And that's exactly what 24-year-old Carlos Saavedra claimed he did when he raped and killed four Austin teenagers. The problem is, as Austin police began studying the confession, many of the details did not match any details of the crime scene. They didn't know the details of the crime. They were false confessions. Got your hopes up a little bit, like somebody's going to be held accountable for this, finally. And then they come back and said it wasn't them. At the end of the day, there were something like over 50 confessions in this case, and hundreds of more tips beyond that. There was much desperation, I think, in trying to find who the killers were. There was posters, there was rewards. You'd see the posters of the girls on the billboards. There was a huge effort to try and solve the crime. We know all there is to know about the crime itself, and we've got everything ready except who to charge with. It was a fight. We got excuses like, well, there's more homicides happening every day. And all of a sudden I said, that's fine. But, you know, just keep working on this one. Despite all efforts, there are no major breakthroughs. And more importantly, there are no arrests. In the late 1990s, there was a new effort to try to solve this crime. Investigators dust off the old files. They take a new, fresh look at the evidence and wind up going all the way back to square one. 33 boxes of evidence and videotapes and audiotapes and things. The police were drawn to the fact that these four original suspects, Maurice Pierce, Forrest Wellborn, Michael Scott, and Robert Springsteen, were all involved in this. They bring in Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen for interviews and interrogations. What we're going to be talking about today is kind of taking you back to 1991. I'll be honest with you guys, I have a fistful moment. Well, and one of the reasons that we're here is to help you try and remember. We're just kind of going back over things and trying to do the best we can. Kind of talk to people that I really want to talk to that well. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself? Well, I'm married to a 46-year-old woman. I have two stepkids and a stepgrandson. They were interviewed over and over and over again. Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen were subjected to 18 hours and five hours of interviews, respectively. I can tell you, if I was there and had someone ever participated in that, I would think that I would be a pretty **** person. This is where the case takes a major turn. Michael Scott indicates that he and the other three boys were, in fact, involved in these horrific murders. He said that Maurice Pierce was something of the ringleader of the crime, Forrest Wellborn was the lookout, and that he and Robert Springsteen were the primary offenders in terms of killing the young victims and robbing the store. Boris Welburn and Maurice Pierce never confess to the crime. In fact, they say emphatically they had nothing to do with the yogurt shop murders. After hours of unrelenting interviews, Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen confess to these murders. Robert Springsteen, when he confessed, the last step of read interrogation is that you have them write the confession and sign it. Robert Springsteen refused to sign it. He immediately takes it back. Michael Scott takes it back, but he goes ahead and signs his. Is it possible you kill those girls? I guess it's possible. It is possible. Anything's possible. That's what you said. All right. Yeah, I know it. You watched him and you didn't want to watch him. I don't think so. I don't... I'm not gonna say no anymore because you guys got a really compelling case and I'm starting to remember a few things here and there. What's your turn? Because there are strengths. What else do you hear? Piss has got shot. Don't hold back now. I'm not holding back, guys. Y'all made a bunch of memories trigger. I remember being sick and disgusted with myself. I remember my ears ringing. I remember the one that I tried to rape still being alive. Robbie handed me a gun. Look at that gun. This is wrong. I remember hearing, do her, you're next. I pointed that gun and I pulled the trigger. Early this morning, the Austin Police Department, with assistance from other law enforcement agencies, served four arrest warrants charging four individuals with capital murder. These charges stem from the murder during the robbery of a yogurt shop on December 6, 1991. Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott confessed, so they charged the two of them with four counts of capital murder. It's important that these young men get all they deserve in our judicial system so that we never have to go back through this again. Austin breathed a collective sigh of relief. The families were relieved to get to the truth of what happened the night of December 6, 1991. My son, Michael, is the yogurt shop suspect. Almost as quickly as the relief came from these arrests. They know the four boys didn't have anything to do with this. There was no physical evidence linking them to the scene. No DNA, no fingerprints, nothing. There is something definitely wrong with this case. In Texas, police say they have solved a sensational eight-year-old murder case. That is what this case is about, bringing to justice four individuals for the brutal murder of four little girls. Michael Scott, Forrest Walborn, Maurice Pierce, and Robert Springsteen arrested for the four yogurt shop murders. You have been charged with the offense of fugitive from justice from the state of Texas for capital murder. We want to know where these young people came from. We want to know their backgrounds. We want to know how their lifestyle became a murderous one. You're going to have to get my attorney to make a statement or I don't know what else to tell you. From the time of the murder to the arrests, the four men have had rather unremarkable lives. Robert Springsteen is now living in West Virginia. Maurice Pierce is married and a father. Michael Scott, also a father. Meanwhile, to the south of Austin, Forrest Wellborn has developed a business and is seemingly doing well. District Attorney obtained indictments against three of the four defendants. Yet at the same time, two separate grand juries failed to bring an indictment against Forrest Wellborn. A second Travis County grand jury refused to indict Forrest Wellborn, forcing the state to drop charges against him. A ballistics report provided by the ATF also said the gun that Maurice Pierce had on him that night at North Cross Mall was not the firearm that was used in the commission of the murders. There are now all of these cracks and misgivings in the case. Additionally, the defense claims the interrogations were coerced using a controversial, high-pressure interrogation method called the Reed Technique, developed in the 50s and still used today, but criticized by many in the legal community for possibly leading to false confessions. The Reed Technique, I view as sort of a form of psychological warfare. bear. When Michael Scott was interrogated, it was over a series of days, they had his brain so messed up that he didn't know which way was up or down. He believes them when they say he were involved. He believes it. That's why he's so scared. But the whole point is, he begins to doubt his memory. What you're doing to yourself is just putting yourself in the predicament that you're just digging deeper and deeper. I kind of just beat myself over the head and try and remember who No, you're not. You're not doing any of that. Robert Springsteen comes in. He had just gone off work. He worked the night shift. And he is just done with this. I'm just so confused with everything because I guess my version of what happened and everybody else's version of what happened is too completely, totally different things, which I don't understand. When the confessions don't match, then they keep at them. So it's making him change to match what they believed happened. So, in this portion of the interview, investigators present false information to Robert Springsteen, a common and legal method of the Reed technique. Well, the Reed method says you can lie to people. Ended up going to the Rocky Horror Picture Show that night. Would you be surprised if I told you that the Rocky Horror Show wasn't even showing that night, on Friday, December 6, 1991? Yeah, I wonder. Really? But the movie was indeed playing the night of the murders. Questioning throws off his memory and why he could say he wasn't at the yogurt shop. Scott begins to believe all this stuff they're telling him. He's like, okay, so now I'm trying to get these memories out. What were they tied up with? It's not hard. I want to say extension cord. Really? Well, why do you say that? I remember it being white. Something white. Okay, but with something white? Like real hard. Napkins? No, not napkins. Can't turn around the napkin. Was it electrical cord? Can you tell us? I can't remember. Finally, he hits on something that was actually like underwear or socks or whatever. There you go, Mike. Now you got it. Now you're working. Now you remember. You remember, right? One of the detectives is trying to get him to confess and goes behind him and puts his gun behind his head. Does that look like a gun you've seen before? It looks like a gun I've seen before, but I'm not positive. Is that the gun you shot somebody with, Mike? No. Is that the gun you walked up behind somebody with and shot in the head? Is that the one? Talk to me, Mike. Yes, sir. You did that, didn't you? Yes, sir. He doesn't have to say, I'm going to shoot you, but anyone who is in the in that situation, I think would feel scared. Between the feeding of facts, the threat, and this false memory belief, plus the fear they put into him, they basically scared him to death. What happened at trials is they tried Springsteen first. And at Springsteen's trial, they used part of Scott's confession against him. And then at Scott's trial, they used part of Springsteen's confession against him. So they used their confessions against each other. Despite the confessions being recanted soon after they were given, they were still used as a key piece of evidence. The trials were horrible, by the way. They were just horrible. We were trembling. I mean, just trembling for the verdict. We, the jury, find the defendant, Robert Springsteen IV, guilty of the offense of capital murder. Is this what you wanted, Barbara? Well, we want some kind of ending. Michael Scott is also found guilty. The juries believed the statements and ultimately returned convictions. And in compliance with the laws of the state of Texas, I hereby assess your punishment at death. Robert Springsteen was sentenced to death by lethal injection, and Michael Scott was sentenced to life in prison. Maurice Pierce sits in the Travis County Jail for about three years awaiting trial, and prosecutors drop the charges against him. All they've got is that they were together, so they have to let him go. I am innocent of all charges pertaining to the Yogurt Shop case. Fifteen years after the crime, the cases of Springsteen and Scott are remanded to be retried after the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a separate case that two men's statements could not be used against each other in separate trials. So if you accuse me of something, then by God, get up on that stand and I'm going to cross-examine you about that. You can't cross-examine a written confession. The Criminal Court of Appeals in Texas said because of the Supreme Court case that they deserve a new trial. And so they sent it back to district court to be retried. In 2008 and 2009, prosecutors are wrestling with what they are going to do. The state says they will retry the case. But when prosecutors test the crime scene DNA with improved technology called YSTR, which looks at male genetics only, they find none of the four boys match the DNA recovered from the crime scene. That evidence made clear that there was no physical evidence tying the boys to the crime. And the convictions are dismissed. And so as of October 2009, both guys were now free, but the cases are dismissed pending further investigations. Which means that at any time, these charges can be brought back to them again, and they can be arrested at any time for these. It's been a long time in common, and I'm happy to be here. No comment right now, please. For the families, this was yet another aspect of this terrible, emotional rollercoaster. That was pretty bad, because we thought we had the guys that did it. Our fear was, will they do it again? And now, in many ways, they felt as though the investigation was back to square one. somebody had done this before at that point they realized this was a much bigger case they called and said there's been a break in the case he said i know who killed your daughter i loved my father and then i found out that he's a serial killer it's the paradise podcast i am your host ryan michelle bethe with my husband sterling What's up? Join us here on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+, where we'll discuss each episode with the cast and crew of Paradise. I'll be getting all the secrets from Dan Fogelman, James Marsden, Shailene Woodley, Julianne Nicholson, and Sterling Kelby-Brown. Paradise, the official podcast, is now streaming. And stream Paradise on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+, for bundle subscribers. Terms apply. From 30 for 30 Podcasts. Did you think someone got shot? Brian Pata, senior defensive lineman from Miami, gunned down. The key to this case, it's Brian. Boy, he's ripping. An hour before he died, he was on the phone arguing with somebody. This might be a hit. You want the truth. They just want a conviction. We're placing arrest. We had a killer amongst us Murder at the U Listen now Happy birthday to you! This is a day that we brought Amy home from the hospital. And he was proud of her. Sean wanted his sister. He's just beaming, looking at her. He was a good big brother to her. Played with her. Loved on her. This is the first day of school picture. Her and Sean. This is the ag one that we talked about showing her hog, that she won a trophy for showmanship the first year she ever showed. She was proud of that one, too. We were, too. How many kids can say they rode a world champion cutting horse? That's where they stop. Okay. Some more. I had virtually given up on solving our case. I mean, I'd just come to the resolution. We weren't going to solve it. I would know when I died what happened, but I would have to live with that. but thanks to Angie, we've made it this far. For me, it was the right thing to do. I wanted to help them. I wanted to help my sister-in-law, because it was not right what was done to her and her friends. Angie Ayers is a fiery force. She also brings this deep and rich passion on behalf of the sister-in-law she never met. And it's not an easy road to travel. You got to pick yourself up by the boots to have the guts to go down and talk to the police department and talk to the district attorneys. It's been a fight and it takes an emotional and a physical toll. trying to find the answers that you deserve. And there are others joining this long battle to find answers for Amy and the girls. The heirs meet Travis County Prosecutor Mindy Montford, who is now working the cold case investigation for the district attorney's office. As someone who's followed this case from living here and remembering when it happened. And that's my neighborhood. So I've known about this for so long and had so much empathy and respect for you all. We were nervous because we had gone through so many people before. But I do remember after the meeting, you took the chance to walk us down. And you turned to us and you had tears in your eyes. You said, I'm always going to be here. I'm going to continue to fight no matter what. Sean and I talked about that on the way out when we were walking. And I was like, I hope she stands up to it. And you have. I meant it. I know you did. You had DNA, and so many of these cases don't have that. And so I knew it was just a matter of time, but that we had to try everything. So remember, back in 2009, the Austin authorities released the suspects because the DNA technology had advanced, and they were finally able to obtain something called a YSTR profile, and neither Springsteen nor Scott's DNA matched. So now the hope is, can the latest science help match who this DNA actually belongs to? We have tested hundreds, hundreds of people, first responders, serial killers, family members, police officers, against that YSTR profile we've had to try to identify the individual without success for years. Four teenage girls bound, gagged, and shot in the head in an I-can't-believe-its yogurt shop. And now on this 30th anniversary of this heartbreaking crime, a case that to this day still has more questions than answers. But at some point, the Austin Police Department formally requested that the newly formed cold case unit within the AG's office assist APD with this investigation. I was told, you're going to really be excited because we've got this new detective coming on board and enter Dan Jackson. So this is the entryway to the cold case office. The first thing you see when you start your day is this here. And what we have is a to-scale diorama of the strip mall where the yogurt shop is located. And then we also have here is pictures of the four girls and a short biography about each girl and then a slight short synopsis of the case. And it sort of reminds you while we're out here and what we're doing here and why this unit was actually started to begin with was to work this case. Mindy introduced us and I said, oh, I don't remember my exact words, but I know that I said something to the effect, oh, so you're only the next investigator, 200 and something. And he was like, I would like to make the last one. But Dan took this. He looked outside the box. He told us he never seen any crime scene photos, never read any of the confessions, none of that stuff. He was looking for evidence. When I took the case over, I was like, this case will never progress until you figure out who that unknown profile is. We had sent a couple of things off that didn't result anything promising. So yeah, all the leads ended up going nowhere. And then at the end of June of 2025, I don't know why I went down this rabbit hole, but I was thinking about that 380 cartridge that was pulled from a drain, thinking about what we could do with it. The ATF maintains this database and now you can take your expended shell casing, give it to Niven, and they will do one of these computer searches and they will search this database of thousands and thousands of other expanded showcasing and remarkably every once in a while you get a hit. One of our detectives submitted it and that afternoon my phone rang and he was like, hey you got a second? So he called, he goes, hey I'll get you on speakerphone with a couple of people. He goes, are you sitting down? I said, yeah. He goes, we got a hit. From a 1998 unsolved case out of Kentucky. I still get chills thinking about it because when Dan started reading me the police report, And I'm hearing this victim was shot in the head with a .380, possibly sexually assaulted, and the business was burned. But we could find no connection between, other than that gun, but it was still on the name. So we still don't know who did it. At that point, Dan Jackson asked crime databases across the country if they would do something called a manual search, upload only the strand of DNA that they have into their databases to see if there is a possible match. So we reached out to all the labs and asked them to do this. All the states returned information saying no hits, no matches, except one state, South Carolina, said yes. And that was a huge break. Bingo. A lead 34 years in the making. and suddenly, we've got a serial killer on our hands. After 34 years, Austin authorities have gotten a big break, like nothing else in this investigation so far. But little do they know, it's been years in the making, thanks to a new science called genetic genealogy. There's one name in this area that really stands out, and that's C.C. Moore. I have been involved in over 360 law enforcement cases that I've been able to help law enforcement resolve. Genetic genealogy is the combination of using documentary sources and DNA to learn more about someone's family history. I started filming a series with ABC News called The Genetic Detective. The work I did laid the foundation for the investigators who identify the killer in the yogurt shop murders. C.C. Moore's investigation actually kicks off with a different cold case from 1998 in a Midwestern town 800 miles away from Austin. March 28, 1998, a teenager and his father came home and made a terrible discovery. Megan and Sherry Shear, a mother and young daughter, had been viciously murdered. It was definitely the worst crime scene at the time that I had seen. Sherry had three gunshot wounds to the head. Megan Shear was laying near Sherry. She also had a gunshot wound to the head. Her hands had been bound behind her back with an extension cord. Unfortunately, Megan was sexually assaulted, and so they were able to collect DNA from the perpetrator off of her body. Investigators got their first big break in the case, and it came about 40 miles south in Dyersburg, Tennessee. About 9 o'clock at night on the same evening that Sherry and Megan had been murdered, a mother in Dyer County, Tennessee describes coming home with her kids and a maroon van pulls in. The man walks up and she describes the man pulling a gun from the waistband of his pants and pointing it directly at her. She tries to start shutting the door on his arm. That's when he shoots. The bullet goes through the door and hits her in the shoulder. She survived and he pulled back out to the van and took off. The crime laboratory technician was able to match the bullets and say that the same gun was used in both crimes. What's amazing to me is that that wasn't enough for him. Two murders and a rape wasn't enough. He tried to go and victimize somebody else in the very same day, and I think that tells us something important about him. The survivor, the woman who fought him off, she was able to describe him to law enforcement, and so that was a really key piece of information. So in 1998, we were interviewing suspects that had criminal histories, that had been involved in assaults and sexual assaults, and looked similar to the composite that we had posted on the media. Nothing worked. The Shear family was beloved in their community, and Zuri State Police, this was a really important case to them. But years passed until they were able to do more with that biological evidence. And once DNA technology advanced, they were able to get that DNA profile created and uploaded into the law enforcement database CODIS. Our hope was when we submitted this profile, it would send us a name back of a suspect that had been arrested in the past. but instead we were linked to a cold case that occurred in 1990 in greenville south carolina in south carolina in april of 1990 a young woman named genevieve zetricky was found murdered in her apartment jenny was 28 years old she had been strangled she had been sexually assaulted when i arrived at a crime scene there was blood everywhere jenny's body was in a bathtub with her hands behind her back. What we inferred from the crime scene was somebody had done this before. During the autopsy there was a rape kit administered. There was a cervical swab made that produced a DNA sample. We stored the DNA in hopes that science would eventually catch up. They now realized they were dealing with a serial killer. and it covered a much bigger area than they had ever imagined. We thought we had a decent lead, and we exhausted that lead, and we turned up nothing. It was frustrating for them. It seemed like such a big development. How could they not find this guy? After we exhausted all those leads, we didn't know exactly where we were going to go from there. A lot of jurisdictions across the country, there was a backlog of processing rape kits. In 2013, the Memphis Police Department did an inventory of all of their sexual assault kits. The Memphis Police Department found that 6,179 needed DNA testing. And so there was a rape from 1997 where the kit had not been processed. Once that was processed, they were in for a big surprise. And in May of 2017, a third CODIS hit matched the crimes in Greenville, South Carolina and Portageville, Missouri. There was nothing substantial to go on that would help us find out who he was. When law enforcement runs out of all of their avenues of investigation, investigative genetic genealogy can step in and help solve it. Well, the good news about the Memphis crime being tied to the others is there was an abundant amount of DNA to work with from that rape kit. They take this degraded old DNA and they help to make it viable for genetic genealogy so I can do my job. So from the DNA that Parabon was able to develop, Cece Moore was able to create this family tree. A lot of times I'm lucky and I'm able to narrow it down to just one immediate family, one candidate or a set of siblings. But in this case, there were quite a few cousins who could potentially be our DNA contributor. So I started looking at each of them. And this one person had a history that made me really sit up and take notice. That this had to be the guy. When I saw this man, I immediately recognized him from the sketches. We'll be right back. I said a lot of no. That's all right. My wife says a lot of no as well. The Greatest Average American, Wednesdays, 9, 8 central on ABC and stream next day on Hulu. How old were you when you realized you were the son of a president? I don't think anyone's ever asked me that before. It affects his love story. John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bissette. I didn't think I could love someone like this until you. From executive producer Ryan Murphy. It's not a question of if I want to spend the rest of my life with you. No, it's not! It's if I'm cut out to be Mrs. JFK Jr. FX's love story, John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bissette. Watch now on FX Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers. C.C. Moore is working to solve multiple cold cases using genetic genealogy and building this family tree that eventually will help detectives back in Austin solve the yogurt shop murders. I zeroed in on a man named Robert Brashears. When I started digging into him, I very quickly found a newspaper article that he was charged and convicted of a violent crime in Florida in 1985. He had attacked a woman, shot her, attempted sexual assault, but she had gotten away. And so I started digging further on him. I was looking at one of Robert Breshear's daughter's Facebook pages. And on that page was a picture that really jumped out at me. And it didn't have any labels, But he was wearing what looked like the exact same hat. Look at that. And the glasses. So that told me that I was looking at the right person. When I communicated my findings to law enforcement, I actually laid out these pictures. Robert Eugene Brashears, a name law enforcement had not heard up until the point she said it to them. In just hours, she gave them the answer that they'd been looking for this whole time. They found out that they'd been chasing a ghost because Brashears had been long dead. And I learned that Robert had killed himself during a police standoff in January, 1999. Law enforcement was very hopeful they would be able to get DNA directly from Robert to compare against their crime scene DNA. That's the ultimate match. So we got a court order to exhume his body and take samples of his remains to have DNA tested. From Greenville, South Carolina. Days turned into weeks, weeks to months, months to years. To Portageville, Missouri. We've traveled all the way across the United States, done countless interviews. The search for a serial killer and rapist. This is a terrible, terrible thing. officially ended Friday when three departments said they got their guy. Robert Brashers. Robert Brasher. Robert Brashers was the suspect. I was so overwhelmed. I cried. I laughed. I was thankful that the family had closure. Usually when I work these cases, once they're resolved, I'm able to set them down and move on. But I was never able to let this one go. In the hundreds of cases I've been involved in, there are no others that have stood out to me in the same way that this one did. He really haunted me. He haunted my dreams. I woke up thinking about him hundreds of times over the years. I just couldn't let him go. I felt that there was a lot more to his story, and I believed wholeheartedly there were other unsolved cases. And C.C. Moore was right, but it's going to take another seven years for this to come full circle back in Austin. Detective Dan Jackson and his team decided to ask every single crime lab in the country that collects YSTR DNA data, which focuses only on the male Y chromosome, to manually search the sample collected from the yogurt shop crime scene. I got an email that said that you've got a YSTR profile matched in Greenville, South Carolina, and it had an offense date. So, of course, I Googled murder with that offense date, Greenville, South Carolina, and the name Robert Eugene Brashears pops up. Well, what are the odds that the same Y profile comes back to a serial killer? And when you start researching this guy, you find out that this MO is very similar to a yogurt shop on more than one occasion Now we have a face Now we have a name So at that point we decided let take the fingernail scrapings from Amy Ayers. Amy Ayers was a fighter. We knew that there had been a Y profile identified in those scrapings. However, it just was a very small amount. It was degraded. We wanted to wait till the perfect time when technology had improved. So we sent the scrapings and we waited. They said, Robert Breshears is under Amy Ayers' fingernails. This is him. That's what's so scary about serial killers, is that you can't spot them. He just looked like a normal person. So the date is September 26, 2025. Something tells me my son would tell me I need to capture this moment. We are going to deliver some news and tell the families. who is responsible for the deaths of their children. So the families aren't going to get justice necessarily, but they're going to get answers. And we promised them that years ago. And we're deliberate on that today. They were in Bryan, Texas at a horse show. And we sort of caravaned to the rodeo arena. And we pulled up, and they're waiting for us in the parking lot. We all kind of had a gut feeling that this was going to be good news this time. Didn't know just what good news, but something good. I broke down when I first, when the words first came out of my mouth. And he sat down, and he didn't say anything for a long time. Then he finally, tears running down his eyes, his cheeks. He said, I know who killed your daughter. The room changed to me. Dan, everybody else disappeared. Time stopped when he said that. I said to Dan, are you 100%? I walked through where we started and where we finished and just laid it all out in detail, starting with the shell casing that matched Kentucky to the DNA underneath Amy's fingernails. She scratched and she fought back. And because her fighting back, you know, that preserved DNA and led us to solve this case 34 years later. We told them in the very beginning, check Amy's fingernails. We knew that she would have fought. We've always thought she'd fought, and we know for sure she did. And he looked at me, he said, he's a serial killer. Rashears is the face of evil. He's manipulative, he's smart, but he is sadistic. When he is not in prison, he is murdering and raping. Authorities have already linked Robert Eugene Brashears to a trail of crime across the Southeast. But many questions remain, including how he came to choose the yogurt shop and those victims. Was there a reason he was in Austin or was it a spontaneous sidetrack from his original destination? His father lived in Glendale, Arizona at that time. And so it makes sense it might be driving through Texas. But that wasn't something that law enforcement had found when I was working with them. Authorities do a search of Brashears' name in a criminal database and discover that his name had been in the federal files for decades. Brashears was stopped a little less than 48 hours after the murders at a Border Patrol checkpoint near Las Cruces, New Mexico. Border Patrol had the wherewithal to think, this guy is just not acting right, and to pull him over. The Border Patrol agent, he had Brashears step out of the truck and he reached in to get the registration, see whose truck it was, and he saw a gun. He removed the gun. Somehow, Rashears gets in the truck and takes off. This area is in the middle of the desert, so it's pitch black out there, and then just stops, gets out, puts his hands up, gives up. He was driving a stolen car, and he was in possession of a 380. So we can put him basically getting the hell out of the state right after yogurt shop murders occurred. We believe Brashears throughout the .22 and any, possibly any other evidence he had kept from the shop out the window when he was driving for a mile in the dark. Remember, all four girls in the yogurt shop had been shot with a .22 caliber pistol, but only Amy was shot a second time with a different gun. There'd been that spent 380 shell casing found in the yogurt shop drain, but back in 1991, Border Patrol doesn't know any of this. The way state and federal authorities shared information was limited back then and less sophisticated. Border Patrol confiscates Brashears 380, and nothing at the time links Brashears to this horrible Austin Murrow case. He ends up making bail, pleas, gets stopped in February in Georgia with another stolen car, and burglary tools, police scanner, ends up getting charged federally for all this. Once he's sentenced, his father petitioned to get the gun back and was released to him. Now we know why. The gun was pretty important to him. But Brashears wanted it back because it linked him to a yogurt shop. Robert Brashears is sentenced to five years in prison for stolen property and unlawfully possessing a firearm. This was not a straightforward type of criminal who was following the exact same pattern each time. He was in different locations, different MOs. Brashears seems to have been on the move for decades. After graduating high school, he joined the Navy in 1976. He was soon discharged and by 1980 was living in New Orleans, Louisiana. One of the things that really intrigued me when I was researching Robert Breshears was that he faked his own death. He had two obituaries that were almost 20 years apart. One of them was when he died in January 1999. And then the other was in November 1980. It talked about how he lived in New Orleans. It named all his family members. And so what I immediately thought was he was trying to hide from something. This was a guy who was trying to cover his tracks. And the more authorities investigate this case, the crazier it gets. Not only did Brashears appear to fake his own death, he was turning out to be one of the most elusive serial killers of the entire 1990s. That's what's so scary about serial killers, is that you can't spot them. It's not like TV. They are among us. They have families. They have church groups. They have jobs. These are functional human beings. I loved my father. I held him on a pedestal. There is nobody else in this world that could have ever been better than my father. This family picture, this was in the summer of 1997. He's smiling. You can see his teeth in the picture. Like, he is happy. He has his girls, and he's taking them to another state. By 1997, Robert Breshears is released from prison, and by all appearances, he seems to be settling down. He's working in construction and moves to Arkansas with his longtime girlfriend, Rose, and their five-year-old daughter, Deborah. I remember my daddy being very muscular, or if he wore a t-shirt, he'd have his t-shirt rolled up holding the cigarettes in his shirt. Like, he just looked like a normal person. Life was great at first. Life, my, we had about two acres of land. The best part of my childhood was when my father was around. But I feel like it was all a lie. Behind this all-American portrait, Brashear's dark past is lurking, and it's about to catch up with them. My grandmother said the moment my mother met my father, she met the devil. She let the devil in. I look nothing like my father. This is my baby picture. Growing up, I was told he was arrested the night that I was born. That's why he couldn't be there. Deborah first learned about her father's history as a serial killer in 2018 after authorities connected him to unsolved murders in South Carolina and Missouri. It gave me answers, so I couldn't be mad. Just all of it. It made sense. In 1998, when Deborah's just seven years old, her father disappears from home, going on the run for a series of crimes, including breaking into an Arkansas woman's home while armed with a gun. We went to see my father. He was staying in a hotel in Kennett, Missouri. We went to sleep one night and woke up, and the police were there. They were looking at tags in the parking lot. He had a car in the parking lot of the motel that had stolen plates. The police had no idea that this was a serial killer. He was not willing to turn himself in, so he shot himself there in that motel room. This is the note the police found in my father's pocket. And in it, it says, in the event of you reading this, I am dead. Do not contact my father. It will kill him if the cops tell him thank you. And it was very calculated when he chose to kill himself. He knew that it would overshadow what could really come out. The .380 that Brashears used to shoot himself was the same model of gun used to shoot Amy Ayers in that Austin, Texas yogurt shop all the way back in 1991. Brashears' death is ruled a suicide and authorities don't confiscate his gun. Brashears may have known that if they did, the gun could have connected him to the yogurt shop murders. Authorities believe that Robert Eugene Brashears is responsible for at least eight murders in four different states, but they are not ruling out the possibility that he could be connected to many more. Tonight, a major break in an unsolved murder case that made national headlines for decades in this country. Let's begin today with a moment of silence for Amy, Jennifer, Sarah, and Eliza, and for their dear families. The September 2025 press conference was a remarkable moment for the city of Boston. Leaders from law enforcement and criminal justice communities, they believed they had finally solved the Yogurt Shop murders. Robert Eugene Brashers, he is a perfect match to our unknown profile in Yogurt Shop. It has been so long, and all we ever wanted for this case was the truth. Our families are still too small, still missing an essential ingredient. And we are lesser for it. My whole life has really been shaped by this experience. You know, I'm 47 now. I was 13 at the time. What a relief it will be to get some distance. Investigators also describe Brashear's M.O. All of his crimes we know of, he was alone in all of them. He used ligatures to tie up his victims. He used a firearm, most often a .380 or a .22, with gunshot wounds to the head of his victims. He sexually assaulted his victims, often young girls. And sometimes, as we've seen, he set fire to the crime scenes. The evidence points to the innocence of Maurice Pierce, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen IV, and Forrest Wellborn. I am confident that Robert Brashears is the only person responsible for this crime. And that is part of the responsibility that the district attorney's office has now, is to lift the cloud of guilt off of these men. four lives were changed forever. Prosecutors are holding a hearing to, at last, formally clear the names of the four men originally charged with the yogurt shop murders. Over 25 years ago, the state prosecuted four innocent men, teenage boys at the time of the crime. The state did all this believing we were right, but we could not have been more wrong. In a rare move, the current Austin police chief declares that the four men should be exonerated. The position of the Austin Police Department is Robert Brashers is responsible for these murders. It's time for the falsely accused and their families to finally speak. A litany of emotional testimony about how this case and the aftermath ruined so many of their lives. When the yogurt shop murders occurred, I was 17 years old. No court ruling can return the years and the love that were taken from me, but it can acknowledge the truth. I did not commit these crimes. Forrest never confessed to this crime, nor did he say he knew others who were involved. Robert Springsteen spent 10 years in prison. Let us not forget that he could be dead right now. Executed at the hands of the state of Texas. Robert Springsteen, who isn't at the hearing, has his attorney read his statement. I have lived every single day since October the 6th, 1999, being seen as a monster for something I did not do. Maurice Pierce died in 2010 during a confrontation with an Austin police officer. His daughter speaks about growing up with a father who lived under constant suspicion for a crime he did not commit. Accountability must come. Reform is coming. It has to. And finally, the man who made me who I am today, my best friend, my daddy. Daddy, you have your name back. Don't we have to love you more? And finally, the words these families have waited decades to hear. You are innocent. After 34 years, four boys, now men, exonerated. Today's decision is not an act of generosity. It is an obligation to the truth, an obligation to the rule of law, an obligation to the dignity of the individual. But is the case of Robert Brashears truly closed? The question is, what other murders has he committed? Where else has he been? And that's where we're focusing now. When people in Austin look back at the yogurt shop murders, it's a tragedy all the way around. Of course, there were so many people impacted by the murders themselves, the families of the four young victims. But at the same time, there's a cloud that four young men have lived with for decades as well. The evidence is clear. Robert Eugene Rashears committed the yogurt shop murders. To Amy, Eliza, Sarah, and Jennifer, we are so sorry that we have failed you for so long. May you rest in peace knowing that the truth of that horrific night has been revealed. To Mr. Forrest Wellborn, on behalf of the Office of the Travis County District Attorney, I am sorry for what you have been through. You are innocent and you were wrongfully accused. To Mr. Springsteen and to Mr. Scott, you were wrongfully accused and you are innocent. And I am so sorry for the role that our office played in that tragedy. I am so sorry that Maurice isn't here today. He is innocent and he was wrongfully accused. It's not a celebration. Just glad that they finally found the guy and then I could be cleared of all this. I'm sorry that this happened to the girls, you know, and it was a terrible thing. And it's heartbreaking. And I'm sorry that it took this long. The case ultimately represents one of the biggest tragedies in often this history. What we think we need organizational team wise. Mindy and I and Sean would like to start a cold case foundation in order to be able to help other families and bring law enforcement forensics and families and victims together in one one spot. I think that's a very excellent thing to have in here. No one else has had that and I think people would respond to that very well. Right. You know, the fact that there's over 300,000 unsolved homicides in the United States, I think that's important. We just need to get it out there so people know about it. We need to scream it from the rooftops. It could have helped our case had we had it earlier. And while the families of those young girls may now have a sense of justice, they'll always wonder what their girls may have gone on to become. She's 48. She'd probably still be doing something with horses. Doing something with animals, for sure. Anything she wanted to do, she could have done. Being finished with the case has let my heart open up that I could have more love. And I wasn't expecting that because I thought I'd done a pretty good job of keeping it open. But I felt a difference. I felt more love. There's definitely a sense of relief that now we know what happened. I went to the cemetery yesterday to see my sister's grave, and I just, in my mind, I was telling her, like, I know what happened to you now. After more than three decades, David, the families of those four murdered girls finally have some answers. As for Robert Preshears, law enforcement agencies across the U.S. are now expected to continue to review unsolved cases for any possible connections to him. In the meantime, that is our program for tonight. Thank you for watching. I'm David Muir. And I'm Deborah Roberts. From all of us here at ABC News and 2020, good night. We'll see you next time. Creamy warmer. Nachos! Feels like there's more applause for the nachos than my speech. The new season of Scrubs, Wednesdays 8, 7 central on ABC and stream on Hulu.