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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, check us out at patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. On December 6th, 1991, one quiet night in Austin, Texas, a fire brightened the dark sky.
Firefighters rushed in to put out the blaze in a local favorite yogurt shop. After the firefighters extinguished the flames, a gruesome discovery shocked the town. Four young female victims lay dead, naked, burned, and posed. This is Forensic Tales, episode number 87, The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders. ♪♪
Thank you.
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell. Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings.
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Just before midnight on December 6th, 1991, Austin, Texas, Police Sergeant John Jones Jr. clocked in for his night shift. He clocked in knowing that he would be the only homicide detective on duty that night. But just like any other night, Sergeant Jones Jr. was expecting it to be just another quiet night in Austin.
Although Austin, Texas had around 1 million people, it still had that small town feel. It just wasn't a place known for violent crime. A few moments after Sergeant Jones Jr. clocked in for his night shift, a fellow Austin police officer announced over the police radio. The police officer was calling in about a fire he spotted while out in his patrol route.
Over the police radio, the officer said that a fire had started inside of a can't-believe-it's-yogurt shop located in the Hillside Strip Mall in the 2900 block of West Anderson Lane. Because the call came in after the yogurt shop had closed for the evening, firefighters thought they were just responding to a possible electrical fire or maybe a simple kitchen fire.
Within minutes, Austin firefighters and police officers arrived at the yogurt shop to extinguish the flames. Hundreds of gallons of water were dumped on top of the shop to put out the fire. After the firefighters put out the fire, investigators began their initial investigation to try and figure out what exactly caused the fire.
Two members of the Austin Fire Department were the first ones to go inside. And when they got inside, they ran into something that would change the course of the entire investigation. Inside the badly burned yogurt shop, firefighters stumbled upon the bodies of four young female victims. This discovery meant that this was no longer a fire investigation. Instead, it was a crime scene.
One body was found in the middle of the shop's back room, between the bathrooms and the walk-in freezer. The other three bodies were found stacked on top of each other in the rear of the back room. All four victims were naked, bound, and gagged with their own clothes. Their bodies also appeared to have been posed with some of the girls' legs spread apart.
On one of the victims, investigators recovered an ice cream scoop that looked like someone had purposely placed it in between the girl's legs. The victims were identified as 13-year-old Amy Ayers, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, and her younger sister, 15-year-old Sarah Harbison.
17-year-old Jennifer Harbison was a senior at Lanyard High School in Austin, where she served as the president for the school's chapter of Future Farmers of America, or FFA for short. Jennifer was incredibly athletic and ran both the 400 and the 1600 meter relay for the high school's track and field team.
Jennifer's father had recently purchased her a Chevy S10 under two conditions. Number one, she got a job to help make the payments. And number two, she agreed to occasionally drive her younger sister Sarah around if her parents couldn't. No surprise, Sarah agreed to the agreement.
To help pay for her new Chevy car, Jennifer got a job working at the yogurt shop. Her friend Eliza convinced her that it was a great place to work. Jennifer's younger sister Sarah was also murdered inside of the yogurt shop that night. 15-year-old Sarah was a freshman at the high school as well as her sister. And just like her older sister, she also excelled both academically and athletically.
On top of being an all-star student in the classroom, Sarah was a star on the high school's volleyball and basketball teams. She was also the leader of the school's JV cheerleading squad. Also killed that night was Jennifer's co-worker and very close friend, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas.
Eliza also attended high school with Jennifer and Sarah and started working at the yogurt shop because it was only a couple of blocks away from her mother's home, making it a simple and easy place to go for a part time job while being a high school student. Because of her job at the yogurt shop, Eliza was able to purchase her own car.
Both Jennifer and Eliza worked at the shop during the week for a couple shifts, and then they also worked together on the weekends. For Jennifer and Eliza, it was a fun job. It allowed for the girls to make some money. They were close friends, so they also got to hang out with each other during their shifts. And it allowed for them to just spend time together.
Because Eliza had worked at the shop for several months, Jennifer and Eliza were generally left unsupervised while working. The youngest girl killed that night was 13-year-old Amy Ayers. Although she was a couple of years younger than the other three girls, Amy was friends with Eliza, Jennifer, and Sarah because they were all members of the FFA chapter together.
Because of their membership in the FFA, Amy became best friends with Sarah. But since the girls went to different schools, they couldn't see each other as much as they wanted. But on the night of December 6, 1991, Sarah and Amy made plans to have a sleepover where they would spend the night catching up.
On December 6, 1991, Jennifer stopped at her boyfriend Sammy's house. After spending some time with Sammy, Jennifer returned home around 7 p.m. to pick up her clothes and get ready for her shift at the yogurt shop that night. But before she could head into work that night, she needed to take her younger sister Sarah and her best friend Amy to the mall that was right down the street from the yogurt shop.
The plan was for Jennifer to drop Sarah and Amy off at the mall, and then she would head into work. After her shift, Sarah and Amy were going to hitch a ride back with Jennifer to Sarah's house where the girls planned to sleep over. After dropping the two younger girls off at the mall, Jennifer and Eliza clocked in for their evening shifts at the yogurt shop. Eliza started her shift at 7 p.m., and Jennifer clocked in for hers at 8 p.m.
Both girls had a relatively short shift that night because the yogurt shop closed at 11 p.m. sharp. Throughout the night, dozens of customers stopped in for frozen yogurt. It was a Saturday night, so it wasn't uncommon for the shop to get crowded with people wanting to end their nights with something sweet to eat.
Sometime between 8.15 p.m. and 8.30 p.m., a customer and woman named Louisa Jones stopped by the yogurt shop to pick up some frozen yogurt for her husband. Later on, Jones recalled that she noticed two young men sitting at one of the booths near the front door while ordering her yogurt.
She described the men as, quote, regular-looking teenagers and didn't seem to think too much about them. Just after 9 p.m., Jennifer took a short break to drive down to the mall to pick up her sister and Amy. Jennifer drives Sarah and Amy back to the yogurt shop, but instead of going inside, the younger girls went next door to a pizza shop.
The idea was that they would wait inside of the pizza shop, order some dinner, and then wait until Jennifer was done with her shift next door. 30 minutes later, around 9.30 p.m., Eliza's mom stops into the yogurt shop. It was almost a routine for Eliza's mom, Maria Thomas, to stop in the shop on the weekends while her daughter worked.
Not only did she want to go check in on her teenage daughter to make sure that everything was okay, but she also stopped in to, of course, order herself some frozen yogurt. So after ordering her yogurt and spending a couple minutes inside of the shop, Maria says goodbye to Eliza and that she'll see her later on that night when she gets home and she gets done with her shift.
The next person who entered the yogurt shop that night was a former police officer, Daryl Croft. Sometime between 9.30 and 10 o'clock p.m., Daryl Croft entered the shop with a couple of his buddies. Later on, after the murders, Daryl Croft described seeing a couple of other customers inside of the shop when he arrived.
He recalled seeing two couples and then a younger man who was by himself, and he remembered that the younger man by himself appeared to be acting, quote, fidgety, and that he was displaying just some unusual and odd behavior while ordering a single can of soda.
Other than that, so other than the two couples and the younger man, Daryl Croft didn't recall seeing anything out of the ordinary. So he and his buddies ordered their frozen yogurt that night and then left the shop. Between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., the last hour in which the yogurt shop was open, several more customers came into the shop.
The final sale recorded on the cash register was logged at 10.42 p.m. The sale was to a couple who just got done watching a movie at a local movie theater and stopped in to grab some yogurt before heading home. The couple remembered seeing two individuals, both who appeared to be men, sitting at a table near the cash register. Both men were described as wearing jackets or sweatshirts.
One man appeared to be skinnier than the other. But other than that, that basic description, the couple didn't get a good look at the two men. But these two people are believed to be the last people inside of the yogurt shop before it closed at 11 p.m. and before the murders and before the fire started.
By the time the couple left the shop around 10.47 p.m., either Jennifer or Eliza started the shop's closing procedures and started wiping down the tables for the night. As either Jennifer or Eliza is wiping down the tables, she starts stacking the chairs on top of the tables.
Now, later on, the police reported that the only two chairs that were not stacked on top of the tables that night after closing were the two chairs that the two mystery men sat in right before closing. Sometime during the last half hour or so of the yogurt shop being open, Sarah and Amy made their way into the shop from the pizza place right next door.
The girls likely waited inside of the yogurt shop while Jennifer and Eliza finished closing up for the night. Investigators later discovered their pizza box in the back room near their bodies. After 11 p.m. and before the call came in about the fire, what happened next is unknown.
Although the girls had been badly burned in the fire and their bodies were almost unrecognizable, investigators determined that each girl had been shot in the head, execution style, with a .22 caliber gun. The youngest victim, 13-year-old Amy, was the one who the police found in a different part of the yogurt shop.
Based on the evidence, the police theorized that the killer or killers initially stacked all four girls on top of each other in the rear of the store's back room. However, sometime after being shot at least once, Amy was able to get up and try to make her way towards the front of the store.
That's when one of the killers saw her, pistol whipped her, and then shot her a second time, proving to be the fatal shot. The other three girls, Jennifer, Sarah, and Eliza, were found stacked on top of each other closer to the yogurt shop's back room.
Now, the location of their bodies is significant. This yogurt shop isn't a big establishment. You've got the front doors located on rock wood. Once you got inside, there were about seven round tables in the middle of the shop. And then you've got booths on both sides against the walls. Then behind the seven or so round tables was the cash register and service counter.
Then you've got the counter with the yogurt machines. Behind the yogurt machines, to the right, was a small entrance to the shop's back room. This is where all four of the girls were found. So in this back area behind the storefront, there's a walk-in cooler to the left. Then you've got a couple of bathrooms to the right and then a few sinks in the middle to wash dishes.
Then there's also the yogurt shop's back office, which contains the safe. Now where the girls were found tells a story. Based on when the police saw the fire, it would have been shortly after the yogurt shop closed for the night. So one possible theory is that the girls were attacked in the back room while closing up for the night. Maybe they were almost leaving through the back door.
Or another theory is that the girls were confronted in the front part of the store. Then the killers escorted them into the back room where they were ultimately assaulted and killed. This way, no one who was possibly walking down the street in front of the yogurt shop could have seen what was happening inside.
Although the fire likely destroyed a lot of potential forensic evidence in the case, the police uncovered several key pieces in the days following the murder. The first piece of crucial evidence was that the last logged transaction on the cash register happened at 11.03 p.m. So at 11.03 p.m., somebody hit the no sale button on the register.
Now, if you've never worked retail or in a restaurant before, the no-sale button is the button that opens up the drawer containing the money without performing a transaction.
But for security purposes, most cash registers automatically record when the no-sale button is pushed because employers and owners of establishments will want to know about every time the cash register is opened, especially when it's opened outside of a regular transaction.
Now, the yogurt shop manager confirmed that a total of $540 in cash was stolen from the shop that night. The money was likely stolen when the killer or killers pushed the no-sale button and opened up the cash register at 11.03 p.m. The second key piece of evidence came from the arson investigator's report.
Austin Fire Department investigator Melvin Stahl reported that the fire started around 11.42 p.m., a whole 42 minutes after the yogurt shop closed for the night and 39 minutes after the no sale on the cash register. This means that whoever robbed the shop and murdered the girls stayed inside of the building for almost 45 minutes.
This certainly would have been long enough for the killers to apprehend all four girls, sexually assault at least two of them, based on the evidence, rob the cash register, tie the girls up with their own clothes, shoot them execution style with that .22 caliber pistol, and then pose their bodies before setting the shop on fire and then making their getaway.
Like I mentioned before, the fire played a big part in this case. Not only did the fire itself destroy any possible forensic or physical evidence left behind by the killers...
But because the fire burned so fiercely and so much water was dumped inside by firefighters, whatever forensic or physical evidence did exist would have either been burned in the fire itself or possibly washed away by the firefighters. Because the killers stole a little over $500 from the yogurt shop, the first theory early on was that it was a case of a robbery.
The police found evidence of cleaning supplies throughout the store, suggesting that the teenagers were right in the middle of the store's closing procedures when they were attacked. The police found a rag in the middle of the store, which suggested that one of the teens was in the process of wiping down the tables. They also discovered that the yogurt dispensers were half-cleaned.
Normally, the dispensers are changed every night during the closing procedures. Again, all evidence pointed to the fact that the girls were interrupted sometime after closing. But something about this robbery theory just seemed off. One of the things that troubled the people of Austin, as well as the Austin Police Department, was that four teenagers were killed for $500.00.
It just seemed so excessive to rob a yogurt shop for a couple hundred dollars, but then end up murdering and sexually assaulting four teenage girls. Again, all for a total of $540.
So after the theory of a robbery came the theory that this might be then a robbery gone wrong. Maybe the killer or killers didn't really intend to commit the murders, but as they robbed the place for the $540, things got out of hand.
And sometime during that robbery, the perpetrators decided that they needed to murder all four girls. And then since they committed a quadruple murder, they then decided that they needed to set the place on fire in order to avoid getting caught. In the months leading up to the murders, there were several reported robberies in the Hillside Center, the same shopping mall where the yogurt shop was.
One of the most notable robberies was Suzanne's, a local shop located right next door to the yogurt place. Over a few months, and this is the months leading up to the murders, the Suzanne's store had been robbed at least eight separate times. In fact, the robberies in the shopping center had gotten so bad that some of the stores decided that they needed to put up bars on their windows to keep the robbers away.
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During the autopsies, the medical examiner concluded that the suspects used more than one small caliber handgun. They used at least two different guns in the murders. It also seems likely that at least two offenders were involved because of how complex the fire was. Whoever was responsible started this fire only using materials found inside of the yogurt shop.
Investigators believed they used styrofoam cups filled with lighter fluid to help jumpstart the fire. They also found styrofoam cups directly on top of the girls' bodies that suggested that these offenders knew exactly what they were doing or they at least had some sort of previous experience starting fires.
That's because styrofoam is highly flammable. So they knew that if they stacked as much foam as they could on or near the girls' bodies, that this fire would burn the bodies at a much higher rate. By all accounts, it's believed that these offenders did not force their way inside of the yogurt shop that night.
At the scene, the police did not find any evidence to suggest a forced entry, but instead were likely already inside of the shop right before closing time and when the girls would have locked the doors. By the Monday following the murders, Bryce Foods, the company that owned I Can't Believe It's Yogurt, put out a $25,000 cash reward for any information in the case that would lead to an arrest.
Several days had already passed without any arrest, and the people of Austin were becoming desperate to find the people responsible. Early on, the Austin Police Department was bombarded with tips in the case. Hundreds of people were calling into the police, believing they knew or saw something that night. Girlfriends were calling in their ex-boyfriends.
teenagers who went to high school with the girls were calling in fellow classmates. So while investigators vetted every tip that came in, they started to look into the teenagers' lives to try and figure out if there was someone, anyone, in any of their lives who would want to do this. But that turned into a dead end.
Eight days after the murder, the Austin Police Department received their first big tip in the investigation. The police learned about 16-year-old Maurice Pierce. Maurice Pierce was arrested at the North Cross Mall for illegally carrying a .22 caliber handgun. When Pierce was arrested on weapon charges, he was hanging out with his friend, Forrest Wellburn.
The police suspected that the two teenagers just might be involved in the yogurt shop murders since they were both arrested with the same caliber pistol that was used in the murders. When Maurice Pierce was arrested and brought in for questioning about those murders, he surprised everybody. He confessed. Well, sort of at least.
He told the Austin police that his gun, his .22 caliber pistol, was the handgun used in the yogurt shop murders. But he said he wasn't the one who used it. He said that he loaned the gun to his friend Forrest Welburn, the same friend who he was arrested with at the shopping mall.
But he didn't actually confess to being inside of the yogurt shop, just that his .22 caliber gun was the gun used in the murders. Now, he also told police that after the murders, he and Forrest Wellburn, as well as two of their other friends, stole a car and jumped town. These two friends were Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott.
Well, case closed then, right? Well, not exactly. The police decided to administer polygraph tests on both Maurice Pierce and Forrest Wellburn, and both of the teenagers passed. Other than the teenagers confessing to being down the street from the yogurt shop on the night of the murders, the police couldn't find any other solid evidence against them.
And the Austin Police Department couldn't prove that Pierce was telling the truth about his gun being used in the murders. That's because their ballistics team couldn't say whether or not the bullets came from his gun or not. So even though you have one teenager almost confessing to the murders by saying that his gun was used in the crime,
The police still can't make an arrest. There just wasn't enough evidence against any of the four boys. And without enough evidence, all four of them were free to go. And the investigation returned to square one.
As the weeks turned into months without an arrest, the city of Austin was devastated. Nobody could understand who could murder four innocent teenagers just to steal 500 bucks. Nothing about this crime made sense. As each day passed, hope was starting to fade without any solid leads or suspects, and people worried that we might never catch the killers.
Years went by in the investigation, and the Austin police eventually turned over the case to new detectives, cold case detectives. By 1999, almost eight years after the Yogurt Shop murders, investigators finally got a break in the case. Four suspects were taken into police custody, and these are names you remember.
All four men in their 20s, Forrest Welburn, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, and Maurice Pierce. The same four teenagers suspected in the murders were back in police custody eight years later. But this time, the Austin Police Department felt like they really had enough solid evidence against them. And their evidence was in the way of confessions.
At the time of the murders, back in 1991, Welburn, Scott, and Springsteen all attended high school together at McCollum High School, although all three of them would eventually drop out before graduation. Maurice Pierce didn't attend the same high school as the other three, but just like his friends, also dropped out of high school.
Now, the four teenagers ended up becoming friends, and they all lived in the Austin, Texas area. In December of 1991, Forrest Welburn was 15, Robert Springsteen was 17, Michael Scott was 18, just an adult, and Maurice Pierce was the almost youngest at 16 years old.
So when the investigators reopened the case nine years later, they kept coming back to Maurice Pierce's confession to the police about his gun that he gave back in 1991. But now they weren't just focusing on Pierce's statements to the police. They started speaking to all four of the men.
During a taped police interview on September 9th, 1999, Michael Scott told the police what they had been waiting to hear for almost nine years. Scott, a high school dropout, told the police that he and his three friends were the yogurt shop killers.
After Scott's confession, the police then turned their attention to Robert Springsteen. And just like with Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen also confessed to the murders. He said that the four boys, who were teenagers at the time, robbed the yogurt shop, raped two of the girls, and then murdered all four of them.
So based on Scott and now Springsteen's taped confessions, Austin police theorized about a timeline on what happened on the night of the murders. The police theorized that just before closing time around 11 p.m., one of the boys went into the shop to scope things out and unlock the back door. Forrest Wellburn waited in the car and served as the getaway driver.
Once all three of the boys were inside of the yogurt shop, they sexually assaulted at least two of the girls, forced them to take their clothes off, bound the girls with those pieces of clothing, shot them execution style, and then proceeded to set the fire, which then would destroy any possible physical or forensic evidence.
After those two confessions, prosecutors tried to indict Forrest Welburn, the getaway driver, but prosecutors lacked enough evidence to link him to the case. So after two failed grand jury indictments, all charges were dropped against Forrest Welburn. Criminal charges were also dropped against Maurice Pierce.
This was especially tough on the police and the victims' families because leading up to the trial, the police believed that Pierce was the mastermind behind the robbery and murders. But unfortunately, just like with Forrest Melbourne, Austin prosecutors didn't think they had enough evidence against him. It was a different story, though, for Springsteen and Scott.
Austin prosecutors tried both Springsteen and Scott separately, and both men were found guilty of capital first-degree murder. In their cases, the prosecution had enough evidence against them. Of course, there taped police confessions. After their convictions, Springsteen was sentenced to the death penalty, and Scott received 99 years in prison.
Not long after Scott and Springsteen were convicted and sentenced in the murders, people raised doubt about their involvement. Doubt began circulating as to whether the men really did commit the murders. Even though they had confessed, 1. There was no physical or forensic evidence linking them to the murders. 2.
Number two, many people speculated that both of their confessions were coerced by police and the confessions weren't made of their own free will. Then finally, number three, the people who believed their confessions were coerced had evidence.
They got their hands on the videotaped police confessions showing an Austin police detective pointing a gun at Scott's head to try and get him to confess to the murders. Nearly 15 years later, after the murders occurred,
The Austin court overturned Scott and Springsteen's conviction after the ruling that the court had violated their constitutional rights, specifically the right to confront their accuser. In other words, Springsteen wasn't allowed to confront his accuser, Scott, and vice versa. Therefore, their convictions were overturned.
While the prosecutors debated whether or not to recharge either Scott or Springsteen, they conducted DNA testing in 2008 on evidence collected from the crime scene. The evidence was collected from one of the girls' bodies after the autopsy. In 2008, DNA testing confirmed that they lifted a male DNA profile from one of the girls.
But, and this is a big but in the case, the DNA profile did not match Scott, did not match Springsteen, and the DNA profile did not match the other two men. In fact, the DNA profile didn't match anyone in the National DNA Database.
The DNA results were a massive blow to the investigators, to the prosecutors, as well as the victims' families. Not only did the court overturn two convictions for the violation of constitutional rights, but now there's DNA evidence in the case that does not match any of the four men.
So on Wednesday, June 24th, 2009, Springsteen and Scott were both released from prison. A couple of months later, after they were released and free to go, all criminal charges were dropped against them. And on December 23rd, 2010, the following year, Maurice Pierce was killed in an unrelated incident to the Yogurt Shop murders.
It's now been 30 years since the Austin Yogurt Shop murders, but the Austin Police Department has not given up hope that this case will be solved. According to the Austin Police Department, the discovery is in the hands of the FBI. In 2017, Travis County prosecutors learned about a DNA discovery that they believed could help solve the case.
After all of these years, prosecutors believed they finally had the forensic evidence they needed to identify the true killers. According to Travis County Prosecutor Efren De La Fuente, the Austin Police Department submitted a new DNA profile known as YSTR into a searchable DNA database.
Even though no name was attached, the DNA profile could match a male relative to the killer. So if they could identify a male relative using this YSTR method, they believe they can track down at least one of the killers. But this new type of test only led investigators to yet another roadblock.
The FBI is unwilling to release any names associated with a profile in this database. The National Center for Forensic Science at the University of Florida operates our country's YSTR database. This database contains over 29,000 male DNA profiles.
But, as the website states, this database does not act as a law enforcement agency and that all donors in this database are to remain anonymous.
Therefore, even if the DNA sample collected at the crime scene matches a relative, a male relative, in this YSTR database, the FBI says that they will not disclose any names. Essentially, the sample would be useless.
Now, until the FBI is willing to release the names in the YSTR database, especially if the Austin Police Department submits this unknown male DNA profile into the database and they get a hit, possibly being either the suspect himself or a possible male relative of one of the suspects, then this case is going to be at square one.
And the Austin Police Department, as well as Travis County prosecutors, are going to be at a standstill in the case. Today, in 2021, the prosecution's office in Austin is considering filing a lawsuit against the FBI in order to persuade them to disclose the donors in this database.
The FBI, however, has maintained that they are required to protect the identity of these anonymous donors whose DNA was submitted to the Florida Database for Population Research. So far, the FBI has not budged in the case, and the Austin Police Department have not been able to see the results of the DNA profile that was submitted into this YSTR database.
Sadly, the true identities of the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders remains a mystery. Four innocent young females disgraced, killed, and burned, and with no one to blame. To share your thoughts on the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at Forensic Tales.
Let me know if you think we will ever identify the real killers, or if you think the original four men are the real suspects. To check out photos from the case, be sure to head to our website, ForensicTales.com. Don't forget to subscribe to Forensic Tales so you don't miss an episode. We release a new episode every Monday.
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Not all stories have happy endings.