Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - The Yogurt Shop Murders: Four Lives Lost, Decades of Questions

Episode Date: February 18, 2026

On a December night in 1991, Amy Ayers, Sarah Harbison, Jennifer Harbison, and Eliza Thomas were working their shifts at a North Austin yogurt shop when tragedy struck. By morning, the store was reduced to ashes, the girls were gone, and a community was left reeling. The investigation that followed was clouded by conflicting statements, false confessions, and critical evidence lost to the fire. Morgan and Kaelyn revisit the girls’ final moments, the clues that emerged from the rubble, and the twists that turned this case into one of Austin’s most heartbreaking and confounding mysteries. Head over to our Clues YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@CluesPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Clues to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.  🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals including Crime House 24/7, Crimes Of…, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding Episode Sponsor:A year from today isn’t that far away. Get started now at https://www.HelloAlma.com/clues. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Dr. Hrini-Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets uncomfortable, banished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is Crime House. In 1991, police walked into a burning yogurt shop

and stumbled upon what would become the biggest unsolved mystery in Austin, Texas. Today, we're talking about the yogurt shop murders and how a 34-year-old cold case has finally been solved. Hi, guys, welcome back to Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. As always, I'm Kayla Moore,

and I'll be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files released for these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Apshire. I'm the one who's diving into anything I can find online, including Reddit forums, and looking at those lesser-known details and pulling at the threads that just don't add up. Don't forget to share your thoughts on social.

Morgan and I are always combing through your comments. We love them. Love the comments. And if you want ad-free listening and early access, you can subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. Let's get into this case and the clues that defined it. This episode is brought to you by Grooons. I am really, really prioritizing my health.

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for yourself, save up to 52% off with code Clues. At Grooons. That's Clues at G-R-U-N-S dot CO. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break, this is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic, real facts, so let's take a minute to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real Fact, 964, it is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013. it is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 2033.

Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple Real Fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a Snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be their most refreshing part of your day. Snapple. Make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to clues.

Now, for those of you who listened to our Thanksgiving episode that we dropped, it was an episode of heart starts pounding where I briefly covered this case, got into the weeds a little bit on how it got solved. But today we're going to do a really big deep dive into the whole thing. Yeah, this one, I fell down the rabbit hole quite a bit. I actually will get into it, but I watched the entire press release. And we were just joking. And I didn't realize there was only like 721 views on it. And I'm like three of them. So we are up to date on this case and everything that's come out recently because even if you look eight months ago, there's a bunch of videos that came out kind of remembering the case and bringing it to light again.

And it was, I mean, they had no idea. And here we are. This case is finally cracked. It's solved. Yeah, it was really interesting. I lived in Austin, Texas last year for the year. And we, my husband and I, we talked to people who still remembered the girls. They were friends with the people involved.

Like the city was still really reeling from the crime when it was unsolved. And so I'm curious, too, for those who are listening before we dive in, like, what is the big cold case where you live? I think a lot of people can relate to this having a cold case that just kind of, I don't know, looms over the city. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious because maybe there are cases that you guys would want us to cover.

So drop them in the comments. And stick around to the end because I have more information on if you have a loved one who whose case has gone cold, part of this episode actually explains how you can have that case reopened. So it's something that you might want to stick around for. I just got the chills. That's really, really good to know. And just a reminder, there's going to be some, if you're watching the YouTube video, images, videos. We might play some recording sometimes.

You'll be able to see that in the video. It'll help you kind of make sense of the case a little bit more. And if you are listening to the episode, you can find all of those same things on our socials. That's at Clues Podcast on Instagram. A warning for this episode. It does include pretty graphic discussions of violence, sexual assault of a minor, suicide, and murder. Please listen with care. All right.

So the case starts on Friday night, December 6, 1991. 13-year-old Amy Ayers and 15-year-old Sarah Harbison spend the night hanging out at the North Cross Mall in Austin, Texas. The girls were going to have a sleepover at Sarah's house that night, but they needed a ride home. So they go meet up with Sarah's sister, 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, less than a mile away. She's working at her job that night. And she works at a frozen yogurt shop called I Can't Believe It's Yogurt. Jennifer was working the closing shift that night. She was supposed to lock up at 11 o'clock p.m. with her high school friend, 17-year-old's Eliza Thomas.

Amy and Sarah planned to hang out with the girls until then, help them close up, Now, the shop didn't have surveillance cameras at the time, so it's not really clear what time the two girls got there. CCTV systems were still pretty expensive and difficult to maintain back in 1991, but they were at least there by 9.45 p.m. When Eliza's mom stopped by to say hi, Eliza's dad visited 15 minutes later at 10 o'clock p.m. And both of them said that they saw all four girls there in the shop. But then, at around 1147 p.m. A cop is driving down the alley behind the shop, just doing his rounds. When he sees that there's smoke pouring out from the windows, it's pretty late.

So he figures that no one's inside the shop and he radios dispatch. By 11.53 p.m., the first Austin Fire Department vehicle arrives at the yogurt shop. And again, they figure it's late. The place is probably empty. No one called from the inside either. So they figured if it was a fire, someone would have called from inside the store if they were in there. but still they end up dispatching a victim rescue team just in case. Two firefighters go ahead and they enter the store with these high-powered hoses.

And the way the shop is laid out when you open the door, you can see the counter across from you. And then there's like tables and booths on the left and the right. But then there's also the back of the store. And they can tell that the fire is coming from the back of the store. So they make their way back there with their hoses. And they start spraying the scene down to make sure that the fire goes out. And the smoke starts clearing a little bit, and that's when the firefighters see something absolutely horrific.

It's a charred human body of a teenage girl. And then there's two more teenage girls lying on top of each other. And finally, a fourth teen girl in the prep area. She's not as badly burned as the others, but she's very obviously dead. It's hard to make sense of the scene right away. But just from seeing the fire that was raging, they kind of immediately assume it was a tragic accident. There's nothing initially about the scene that makes them think that it's a homicide. At least not yet.

But as the investigation starts to unfold, the truth takes a much darker turn. Before we get further into the story, I want to talk about the victims a little bit, starting with 13-year-old Amy Lee Ayers. She was described as being a classic Texas cowgirl. She did her first horse show at just three years old. By the time she was a teenager, Amy was a veteran competitor. her life revolved around animals and the outdoors. She taught tricks to her dogs.

She loved to go fishing. She wanted to be a veterinarian, and she had already joined the future farmers of America. And it was a passion that she shared with her friend, 15-year-old Sarah Louise Harbison. Sarah was described as being outspoken. A much tougher country girl, she loved to learn. She took after her big sister,

17-year-old Jennifer Ann Harbison, whose own grades set the bar pretty high for her sister. Jennifer was on the track and drill team at Lanier High School where Sarah had also just started. Jennifer's friends spoke about her sense of humor, how she never let things really get her down. But instead of competing with one another, the sisters inspired each other. Their parents' separation, which happened earlier, had brought them closer, and they were each other's best friends. Along with 17-year-old Eliza Hope Thomas, Eliza actually got Jennifer the job at I Can't Believe It's Yogurt. And Jennifer's parents agreed to get her a car if she worked to help pay for it.

So Jennifer asked Eliza for an introduction to her boss at the yogurt shop. And pretty soon Jennifer was driving her very own dark blue Chevy truck. But Eliza and Jennifer were really different people, according to those that knew both of them. Jennifer was the life of the party. Eliza was a shy child who loved cats and art. But they were both loyal, kind-hearted, high achievers willing to work very hard. I mean, anyone who's worked at a restaurant or a yogurt shop or fast food, whatever, as a teenager, knows that you have to be like a pretty hard worker to do that. For Eliza, that meant practicing clarinet, singing with the school choir.

Plus, both she and Jennifer were looking forward to graduating soon. They were almost done with high school. But everything would change on December 6th, 1991. Now, back at the scene. So sometime after midnight, the shop's manager arrives at the scene. She told police that Jennifer and Eliza were working the closing shift that night, so they assumed that those were the two bodies of the girls because they were very hard to identify just by looking at them. However, they didn't initially know who the other two girls there were because there wasn't supposed to be anyone else working that night. However, Amy did leave her overnight bag in Jennifer's car, so police were able to use that to identify the two remaining bodies as Sarah and Amy.

Jennifer, Eliza, and Sarah were also later confirmed through dental records. Meanwhile, police sent a team of officers to go notify the victim's families. Local TV reporters were already swarming the crime scene and it wouldn't be long until the story was all over the news. I mean, maybe some of you have visited Austin, Texas recently. The Austin, Texas that exists today was not Austin in 1991. This was basically a small town. Like Word traveled fast and everyone knew. everyone pretty much. So by the time that TV reporters hear about this story, it's like spread

everywhere. And so detectives are digging through the ash just looking for any clues that would help them figure out what it happened. There's also an arson investigator on the scene who was focused on the burn patterns on the walls, really looking for the source of the ignition. And as they're sifting through the debris, they find something that really changes this investigation. It's kind of what they had known the whole time as well, that this was not just an accidental fire that had happened. I mean, there's so many things about the scene that are way too weird for it to be that. This was definitely a quadruple homicide. So Detective John Jones, along with other officers and the arson investigator with the Austin PD, they stayed up all

night searching through all of the rubble for any clues that could have survived the flames and water. And it's really interesting because we actually do have footage from that night. John Jones actually had a film crew with him. They were doing a ride-along. So, like, we have a clip for you guys of, like, when that first call to him came through. And they're like, oh, it's a fire, maybe a robbery. And the radio kind of breaks up.

And he goes, can you repeat that second half? And they go homicide. And, like, you can just tell, like, again, small town. And he just happened to have that film crew with them, right? Happened to have the film crew with. So we do have some clips of, like, kind of this early scene a little bit. So as they're combing the shop for clues, they find a 380 caliber shell casing in a floor drain had survived, and that gives us clue number one. The gun that used these types of bullets was a pretty small cheap gun.

It could be concealed super easily. The grip even fits in like the palm of your hand. But there's another interesting thing about this casing. Most 380s have the same rifling. It's fancy gun talk, but in other words, the spiral grooves that cause the bullet to spin as it's fired usually go a certain direction. But the casing here had been fired from a gun with a different rifling from most 380s, and it actually went the opposite direction. So this basically told investigators that there was only one model that would fit this casing. and that is an AMT backup semi-automatic handgun.

And back in 1991 in most states, including Texas, where this case is happening, it was still banned for people to have these small concealed handguns, very little demand for them. And it wasn't really useful for hobbyists or most private owners. It wasn't accurate at distance, couldn't be reloaded quickly. So, like, this wasn't a super popular gun to have. So they're probably thinking if they find someone with this gun, it's got to be their suspect.

It's got to be. I mean, this gun was marketed to police officers and security guards as like a hidden backup gun in case their primary weapon didn't work or was stolen or whatever. There's not many of them out there. Detective Jones believed that if he could find the 380 that matched the casing, this case is going to be open and shut. Like, no, no problem. But something that was still puzzling to investigators was motive.

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so that you can focus on what matters most. Download the Instacart app now and get groceries just how you like. Well, unfortunately, a lot of the evidence did get washed away by the time that the fire was extinguished, as happens in a lot of arson cases. So police, when they're looking at their crime scene, they're like, there's not a lot here that's going to tell us what happened. But maybe if we find the motive as to what this person or people came to this yogurt shop to do that night, like, if we can figure out that motive, maybe we'll be able to crack the case that way. Why would someone want to do this, basically? And that led to the first theory, which was robbery, feels like the most obvious theory. Back in the early 1990s, homicide was the second most common cause of workplace deaths.

That's so wild. It's crazy to them. Like, not actually. incident related injury. Well, maybe that's number one. But like, it's probably number one. Homicide? I don't know. But then, yeah, the second most common thing is being killed at your job, which is crazy. But in a lot of those cases, robbery was the motive. So I'm sure like banks over index on that. Yeah.

So the police considered that first and foremost. And there were some weird details about the scene that kind of helped them start piecing together this theory. So at 11.03 p.m., they could tell that the cash register recorded the last transaction of the day. a quote, no sale, meaning that the drawer was open, but there was no sale that was made. The shop also had a combination safe called a drop safe in the floor. So at the end of each day, employees would take the remaining cash from the register and drop it into the safe without having to open it. And the reason that they set it up this way is a robber can't come into the store and say open up the safe.

The employees don't have the ability to open up the safe. They can just drop the money in without having to open it. Makes sense. But the employees would have been very, very. vulnerable in those few moments between closing the store and then dropping the cash in the safe. Yeah, like there's still a window where someone could come in and just grab the bag of money. Yeah, absolutely. And there's big windows in the front.

Like, someone could just watch them taking the cash out, putting in it, like know exactly when to basically rob the place. The store manager noticed that there did appear to be money missing that night. So police could not rule out the idea that this was a robbery gone wrong. But the thing that didn't exactly line up with that theory is that there, are parts of the scene that are way more, I can only describe them as like sadistic than a traditional robbery. And that was basically in the way that the bodies of the girls were positioned. So three of the victims, Sarah, Eliza, and Jennifer were found in the rear storage room. They were nude and two of them had been stacked on top of each other.

Eliza had been gagged and her hands were tied behind her with her bra. Sarah was also gagged. Her hands were tied with a pair of underwear. Jennifer had her hands behind her, but there was nothing binding them. She did, however, have a ligature around her neck. And from the way she was positioned, police assumed that she had been sexually assaulted. But they didn't test her right away. Then 13-year-old Amy's body was found away from the other girls closer to the entrance of the back room and bathrooms. She was also nude.

And since her body was less burned than the other girls, investigators could discern a little bit more from her, and they could see that there were bruises on her lower lip. There was also a ligature around her neck as well, and a blouse was found under her body, but it wasn't tied to her. Sexual assault evidence kits would go on to be used on all of the girls. Amy's fingernails were clipped for DNA samples,

and given the position and the ways that the girls were bound, investigators start feeling like these murders were most likely sexually motivated. So the following day, December 7, 1991, Detective John Jones goes and he meets with the victim's families. And he has gone on to say that this was the saddest meeting that he ever had in his entire career as an investigator. The case had a special residence for him because he himself had four daughters. Detective Jones promised the families that he was going to catch whoever did this to their little girls, though I imagine at that time he just didn't know how. as the conversation continued, one of the family members, there's this funny little anecdote that they gave.

One of the family members gently made fun of him by asking him where he got his shirt because he was wearing this shirt that he had on when he was called to the crime scene. And it was a day glow green shirt with white stripes. And apparently the family members all thought it was a little tacky. You guys, it's an ugly shirt. It's pretty ugly. Like objectively ugly. And so they're kind of joking about this shirt. And he goes, okay, well, when you see me, in this hideous shirt again, it will be because the case is solved. After that meeting, he goes home and he puts that shirt away. He's like, I'm not going to put this shirt back on until the case is solved. And all he could do really was just hope that one day he'd be able to wear it again. So the Austin police called in multiple federal investigators, as well as the Texas Department

of Public Safety, which was basically the state CSI unit at the time. They needed extra help with the case. And this kind of plays into Austin just being essentially a small town at the time. but there were only six investigators in the homicide unit in Austin, and four of them were immediately assigned to the case, but that was not going to be enough for something of this magnitude. Meanwhile, Detective Jones and his team hit the streets for statements. Over the next few days, they wanted to talk to the victim's friends, family, classmates, teachers,

basically anyone who would know more about the victims or know of anyone who would want to harm them. And it seemed like everyone in Austin was really eager to help get this case solved. it was very scary at the time and also, like I said, a lot of people knew these girls, so they just wanted to help in any way possible. The phones of the police department kept ringing off the hook as the story spread. Seemed like everyone in Austin had a tip about this case. It's around this time that a bunch of false confessions start coming into the investigators as well. Detective Jones got so used to talking to what he described as attention seekers. He had this canned line he would use on them saying, quote,

that's a nice confession. Where's the gun? Because again, he's looking for the gun. He's like, that's going to be the thing that helps us solve this. So even though the tip line isn't proving to be all that helpful, one thing that is helpful to this investigation is they end up going and speaking to every customer they could find that had visited the yogurt shop the day of the murders. I can't believe it's yogurt was located in a strip mall. So really convenient place, a lot of people went there. And it was also next to a party supply store. On the night of the murders, the owner of the party store was their work. that night. So his statement is our second clue. As he was closing his store, he heard noises on the roof next door. Like he could kind of tell they were like on the roof, but like over from his. And then a series of popping sounds was heard. When he looked outside, he actually could see smoke coming out of the front of the yogurt shop. The smoke was so dense. It actually barreled into his store. So he went to prop open his back door and try to get some fresh air in there. And that's when he saw the back door

of the yogurt shop was also partly open and there were flames inside. Before he could even call for help, though, is when that officer drove through the alley behind the strip mall and called it in himself at 1147 p.m. As we know, the fire department arrived at 1153 p.m. So basically his timeline suggested that the murders happened immediately before the fire started, likely as I was a lot of cover-up. But he wasn't the only witness. There were a bunch of other accounts from actual customers that were inside the shop that night, which those statements are our third clue. One of the statements we have was from a regular at the yogurt shop named Dirl Croft. Dirl was actually a former police officer who ran his own security company. The girls knew him, as did Eliza's mom, who saw Dural there

when she visited Eliza at work that night. He ordered at around 10 p.m. An hour before the store closed. He had his security uniform on because a man in a military-style jacket asked him if he was a cop. Then he led Dural cut in line. Dirl described the man as white,

about six feet tall, mid to late 20s with a medium build. He had dark hair, was clean-shaven, with a clear, deep voice, and a long pointed nose. But Dural got suspicious when the man just ordered

a soda or maybe nothing at all. Like sources kind of differ on this of like if this person even ordered anything. And then the guy walked behind the counter into the back room, which was like really weird. And Dural even asked Eliza about it. And that's when Eliza said he was just using the employee bathroom. Eliza's mom also said she saw the guy, but said he was with another young man in the shop that night. Dirl only saw one person.

But other witness statements also talk about there being two. suspicious men at the scene as well. There was a married couple there that said they ordered yogurt at around 10.42 p.m., 40 minutes after Dural, and they said that they saw two men sitting at a table. One was heavier, one was thinner, and they were huddling close together with no food or drinks on their table. The wife thought that the men might have been eavesdropping on Jennifer and Eliza, who were chatting behind the counter as they kind of did their work.

And at 1047 p.m., when the couple left, the two men were, still sitting there at that table, the couple said that those two were the last customers at the store. Because it closed at 11 p.m. Yeah, this is like closing time. I remember reading too that the girls would start closing at 10.50, like 10 minutes before actually closed so they could leave right at 11. So if you're leaving at 1047 and there's still people inside, that's a little suspicious. That would have been like right as they're starting to wipe tables. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they're definitely lingering, which is odd, especially if they have no food or drinks on their table. Like, why are you still there? So this kind of points investigators to the fact that, like, these men were alone with all four

victims at closing time. And there's evidence that corroborates this in photos taken after the murders. You know, a part of the nighttime routine was, again, wiping the tables and, like, flipping the chairs up and putting them on the tables, like, so you could mop the floor and get that clean. And all of the chairs had been turned upside down on top of every table, except for one. That same table also had an empty napkin dispenser while all of the others were refilled, kind of indicating to officers that, like, they had gone to those tables but maybe didn't get to that one because they didn't want to interrupt two people that were still sitting there. So it was clear to them that it was in use, basically up until this all happened.

As Detective Jones and his team were collecting these statements, they learned another pretty important clue. The autopsy results were in, which is clue number four for us. The reports were sealed to protect the victim's privacy. Like, again, all of these victims are minors. Medical examiner found two important things. Three of the four girls, Amy, Jennifer, and Sarah were all victims of sexual assault. The autopsy offered new details about the murder weapon. Eliza, Jennifer, and Sarah died from a single contact gunshot wound to the back of their heads, meaning that the barrel of the gun was touching the victim when it fired. This is something that gets used a lot in this case is like it's called execution style shootings. And I like did not know what that meant, but it's,

it's when the gun is placed on the head and it has the contact. In other words, like there's no way this was an accident or occurred during a struggle. Like it just kind of shows the depravity of this and how helpless these victims were. And something that was noted was Amy actually had two contact gunshot wounds, one on the top left side of her head and one behind her left ear. Police also learned that the 380 caliber gun only fired one shot that night. All of the other bullets were from a 22 caliber, meaning that there were at least two different guns used at the crime scene.

So now they're really in a tailspin. And they're like, are we looking at one killer or are we looking for two people? Well, after piecing together all the clues and the witness statements, investigators came up with a theory as to how these murders happened. They think that the suspect or the suspects came into the store as a customer and asked to use the bathroom to basically case the back of the store, that storage room. They may have opened the back door at that time. And then they either lingered in the store until after the front door was locked or they'd left and then later returned through the door that they had propped open in the back. The crime was likely planned with multiple concealed guns, the 22 caliber as their primary weapon,

and the 380 caliber as a backup. Police also were looking for connections to a kidnapping and sexual assault that happened nearby in November of 1991, less than one month before the yogurt shop murders. But aside from the sexual assault and the Austin location, nothing else about that crime really matched this one at all. The timing was just kind of a scary coincidence. And then there's another weird theory, but some investigators did think that because this case was so bizarre because they had never seen anything like it before, that it had to have been connected to the occult in some way. Yeah, the witchcraft theory was really out of left field for me.

Yeah, they tried to pin it on witches, essentially. Yeah. I look for Satanists in the area. I mean, they did get a warrant. They went and investigated this one woman. who kept coming up in their tip line, and they went through her house, and they found, like, chicken bones and this and that. And nothing, you know, turned up. But they, they did thoroughly investigate those leads. Was that Claire, the lesbian? I think so. Yeah, there was one woman where

they're like, she practices witchcraft and is a lesbian. She must have done this. And the police had to go investigate it. Yeah. They were, like, pulling over people who they thought wore goth clothes and, like, other teenagers because this is coming off of the satanic panic of the 80s and it was very much alive and well in Texas. Especially, yeah, I mean, Texas. Yeah. Is Texas part of the Bible Belt? I'm really bad with geography, you guys. Math, geography. Not my strong point. But Texas is included in the Bible belt, I think, right? Yeah. I mean, this one here says that it's Texas is part of it. But definitely Satanic panic, there were, there were a couple cases that happened, like high profile ones that happened in Texas at the time. And so they thought that, you know, they should really investigate all of

those people. And nothing really came from any of those investigations. And it ended up just being a waste of resources and time. But they felt like they had to at least look down that path. Yeah. But even after all of that, it became very clear that the guns were the biggest clue that they had to work from. And in some ways, kind of the only clue, like there was just really not a lot of evidence in this. because of that on December 14th, 1991, this is just eight days after the murders, police actually arrested their first suspect. And this is where the story truly starts to spiral out of control and goes down a very dark path for a long time. Yeah, get ready, guys. Yeah, get ready.

This is where, I mean, this whole botch board is going to be colored in. So police find the 16-year-old boy, his name is Maurice Pierce. He's carrying a loaded 22 caliber pistol outside of the North Cross Mall. And that immediately flags police for a couple of reasons. One is the same type of gun that was used in the crime. And two, the North Cross Mall is where Amy and Sarah were earlier the night that they died. It was just a few blocks away from I can't believe it's yogurt. So on the 14th, they arrest Maurice and they bring him in for questioning.

Now, Maurice doesn't match the suspects, the people inside of this shop that were described really at all. He's a lot younger than the mid to late 20s person that Durrell had seen. seen, but the police were not ready to rule him out just yet. So they bring in this officer who has a reputation for, quote, high pressure techniques. And that's who interrogates Maurice. But no matter how hard this officer pushes, Maurice does not confess to the crime. But he does something that kind of no one expects. And he throws a friend under the bus, this 15-year-old he's friends with named Forrest Wellburn.

Maurice says during this interrogation that he loaned his 22 caliber gun to his friend Forrest and that Forrest had used it to commit the yogurt shop murders. Obviously, this is a huge break in the case when this happens. This is like the only thing they have. It's a confession. Yeah. So the next day, December 15th,

the police figure that they have this brilliant idea and they're going to get Maris to wear a wire. And they have him meet Forrest on the street. He takes him to a laundromat where they often hang out and they start talking about that night. Maurice is supposed to, at least at the cop's request, basically lead him into saying, like, what happened that night? Like, hey, remember the time I let you use my gun and you went to this yogurt shop and you told me you killed all the people inside? Forrest has no idea what Maris is talking about when they have this interaction.

All they got out of him was this story about taking a joyride to San Antonio, which is 80 miles from Austin, in a stolen Nissan Pathfinder the night after the murders. Forrest said the joyride included Maurice and two of their other friends, Robert, Springsteen and Michael Scott, both 17 years old at the time. So police don't really have the confession they were hoping to get, but they bring in Robert and Michael from that story as well, because they want to interrogate them about the crime. Maybe they know what was going on, but they soon get released as well. And this last ditch effort to figure out if any of the boys are lying or, you know, was it Maurice that lied about Forrest having the gun or is it Forrest lying about

taking this joy right instead or like not being involved in the crime? Investigators end up giving Maurice and Forrest's polygraph test, both of them. And both of them pass, but both of them have different stories. Maurice said Forrest borrowed his gun. And Forrest said he had no idea what Maurice was talking about. And both of them passed with those answers. I mean, as we know, polygraph's not the highest... No, they're not admissible in court.

And also, they're, like, teen boys, like, maybe... I don't know, like, the questions can be so vague, too, of, like, Did you ever let Forrest borrow your gun? Yes. Maybe it wasn't that night. At some point in time. Yeah. And it's just measuring like your body's data. Like does your blood pressure go up?

Do you like, it measures like stress essentially. Yeah, exactly. And they already were talking to this like high pressure technique investigator. So their stress responses are all whacked anyways. Yeah. So like there's no way that this is going to come out accurately. They end up just letting both of these boys go. But they do keep Maurice's 22 caliber gun and they try to connect it to the bullets from the crime scene because they hope that that's going to be.

be, I mean, for pun intended, kind of, but like the smoking gun and all of this. But test firings produced no conclusive results, which meant that they were totally back to square one. This episode is brought to you by Quince. So lately, I feel like I've wanted to be more intentional about the stuff that I've been wearing every day. I want to lean into pieces that feel effortless and comfortable, but still look put together. That's the key. It just makes getting dressed simpler. And Quince is a go-to.

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I'm Hannah. I'm Suruti. And every week on Red-Handed, we break down a different. fascinating case. From the most recent US trials everyone is obsessing over like Brendan Bancfield, Karen Reid and Ellen Greenberg, to the most unbelievable stories from around the world, there's nothing we love more than digging into every detail of the cases we cover, getting beyond a basic analysis and cutting to the heart of the story. Red Handed has over 400 episodes ready to binge right now. Plus be sure to check out our weekly sister show,

shorthand, where we unpack everything, from the Black Death to Area 51. If you're looking for smart, detailed true crime with personality, check out red-handed wherever you get your podcasts. So one month after the murders on January 6, 1992, I mean, police have at this point not really made any progress. That day, they hold a press conference to assure the public that they were doing everything they could. The chief of police announced the creation of a task force assigned to the case, which included members of the Austin Police Department, the Travis County Sheriff's Department, the district attorney's office, the FBI, the ATF, and the Department of Public Safety. And they all had something to share with the public.

Our fifth clue, which is a profile of the suspects. At the time, they believed that there were at least two of them. And they were likely white and in their teens to mid-20s. They thought one suspect was the mastermind, someone who had maybe a dominant personality. They also likely knew the area and had spent time watching the yogurt shop before the murders. they expected the mastermind to be emotionally immature and underachiever and really quick to anger and that this probably wasn't his first crime, though it might be his first murder.

And I just wanted to give a quick shout out because we had a listener DM me about some of the issues with criminal profiling because a lot of times on the show we do talk about profiles that like the FBI makes. We, you know, laud the original like serial killer. profilers of the 70s, but there's still a lot of flaws with that type of psychology. Yeah. So they're basically trying to make a profile on this person, but there's still some issues with that. And we had a very smart listener reach out to me with some cool resources about looking into that.

So at the same time as all of this is happening, the public starts stepping up to help. In February of 1992, two months after the murders, a local business paid for 12 billboards around town, showing the victim's faces alongside the slogan, quote, who killed these girls? Locals raised enough money for a $25,000 reward, and with donations that were made on top of that, they were able to up it to $125,000. That starts attracting a lot more press attention as well. And that same month, 48 hours filmed an episode following Detective Jones and his partners as they looked into the case more.

But the reality of all this was the investigation was only getting. colder. Now, despite looking at more than 1,200 potential suspects, the Austin Police Department eventually had to reallocate its resources. In June of 1993, that's 18 months after the crime had taken place. The task force was reduced. A year later in 1994, Detective Jones was actually taken off of the case and he was transferred out of the homicide division. Morgan's grabbing the botch board on that. This is where we start to decline after he's off this. Yeah, you know, and He's like come forward and said that he believes that this was punishment for not signing off on any of the confessions that had come in over the years. Yeah.

And he, I mean, he, when you watch the interviews with him, he just said, he's like there wasn't any physical evidence. Like, you know, we had these boys come in and confess, but there was no physical evidence tying them to this crime. And he said he really wanted to ensure that justice was served correctly. Like they got the right guy. They weren't taking on any false confessions. they kept getting. I mean, they were coming through. So taking him off, especially if it was punishment, definitely deserves a botched mark. Yeah, he wanted justice to be served. And I think a lot of the other departments involved in this wanted someone to go to jail so the public could feel a little bit

better. Or so that they didn't look so incompetent. Like, oh, we couldn't catch you, did this to four of our girls. Yeah. Right in our backyard, our tiny little town. Like, yeah. Exactly. It was embarrassing in their eyes, but you got to get the right person. Yeah. Persons. Like we don't even know at this point. So, come on. It sounds like they were mad, too, that he didn't take the Maurice Pierce confession more seriously. But Jones said that he did not feel like Maurice's confession was credible. It was just low-hanging fruit. And also, I mean, they were using, like, really intense

interrogation techniques to get him to say that. So of course, he doesn't take this confession. Allegedly. Allegedly. Allegedly. But this allowed his report. placement to take a second look at the suspects that he had ruled out previously because he did not believe they were responsible. That does not lead to much progress. The victims do get this small win though in 1994. The families actually sued the yogurt shop and the strip mall for not having more security and they did settle out of court for $12 million. But after that, the case goes cold for years. By 1996, a lot of the original task force members had moved on. So they form this second task force, and they start taking a look, once again, through

some of the suspects that Jones had deemed not very credible. And in doing so, they take another look at the now 21-year-old Maurice, and they re-interview his friend, the now 20-year-old forest. Nothing new comes of it at least for now. But then three years later in 1999, a third task force was a third task force was a new. formed. I would just be so annoyed as a citizen of Austin being like, okay, we're just keep disbanding the task forces and then like putting together new task forces and they just keep interviewing the same teenage boys every single time. I know. And it's like you have to catch new people up to

speed. Like if you're just going to start another task force, quit disbanding the one you already have that is up to speed. It's time is money. Like I get fresh eyes can also help sometimes. Fresh eyes can help. But who is the first person they reinvestigate when they make the third task force Morgan. It is Maurice. Yes. They go and they re-interview Maurice again. And at the time, they also re-interview two other people connected to Maurice. And that's Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen. At the time of the murders, both of those boys were 17 years old. They were living together as roommates. Remember, Forrest originally told the police that he went on a joyride with Michael and Robert the night after the murders, but that they all had zero connection to this case and like really did not know much about it. But the

The police wanted to hear from Michael and Robert again. Oh, of course they did. Now, they had all told different stories about the night of the crime, which did seem suspicious to the police. That's odd. But now the police are really hoping that they'll confess to something, that this suspicion that they have means that they were actually guilty of something and that they'll come forward and confess to the cops.

So the police try again. And this time, they are not leaving without a confession from these boys. So on September 9th, 1999, this is almost. eight years after the murders. 25-year-old Michael Scott agrees to meet an Austin detective for a voluntary interview. And if you've listened to this show for long enough, you know that when you go do a voluntary interview with the police for a homicide investigation, it typically does not go well. If you show up without a lawyer.

Yeah, no lawyer here. But of course, I mean, Michael's not really thinking about that at the time. Because in his head, he's like, I didn't do this. I'm innocent. I don't need a lawyer. No, and he's also part of the community. he was 17 years old. The girls were 17 years old too. Like, they were all this around the same age when this happened. Like, there's probably part of him, too, that just wants this to be solved

because this is very scary. So when Michael goes to talk to the police, it turns into an 18-hour interrogation that spans three days. September... 18 hours. 18 hours. No lawyer. September night, September 10th, and September 12th. By the end of this interrogation, Michael confesses to the crime. and he also implicates all four boys in the original group of suspects. On September 14th, that's five days after the interrogation began. Michael signed a detailed eight-page written confession, and this is what he said. He said that that night, he went to the yogurt shop along with Robert, Forrest, and Maurice, intending to commit a robbery. Forrest stayed in the car, acting as a lookout, while the other three went in through the back door.

Robert was carrying a 380 caliber and Maurice was carrying the 22 caliber gun. Despite having supposedly case the place earlier, they were surprised to see four girls inside. They weren't able to steal any money because it had already been dropped in the safe. So Robert tied up the girls and he demanded Michael help him. And then he sexually assaulted one of them, he said. Marie shot two of the girls, then handed the gun to Michael and made him shoot the other two. Amy survived the first shot. She ran to the other door, so Michael shot her again with his gun.

And after that, Robert told Michael to start a fire. He sprayed lighter fluid on cups, napkins, plates, and the bodies before lighting the match, and then all of them fled. All four boys spent the rest of the weekend out of town driving that stolen Nissan Pathfinder that showed up in their original story. And a few days after returning to Austin, they got rid of Robert's 380 caliber gun by burying it in a dry creek bed. but supposedly Michael dug it up later and got rid of it somewhere else. Now, after this confession, detectives decide they're not going to put Michael behind bars. They actually let him go home, but they keep him under surveillance because they wanted to get another confession as well, this time from Robert. So they end up flying to West Virginia where a 25-year-old Robert now lived with his wife.

And at first, when they ask him about this crime, Robert denies everything. In fact, he seems super confused by the whole thing. Like, none of this is registering with him at all. But again, he goes in. They talked to him for five hours. Most of it is described as aggressive interrogation. And all of a sudden, he, too, begins to confess. And we are going to get into some of the clips from these interrogations.

Yeah, I can't wait to see your comments on them. Yes. But we'll get to that. It doesn't explain to you if I was there and I'd remember these things. No, don't. No, do not. Police basically figure by the end of this interrogation that Michael's story is confirmed. The biggest difference, though, was that Roberts' version had Maurice and Michael as the ringleaders of this whole operation, rather than himself.

He even gave a few additional details, like he asked to use the store's bathroom as an excuse to prop open the back door with a pack of cigarettes. That detail matched Dirl's recollection of a suspicious man using the bathroom, and that was, was really the thing that the police had been waiting for someone to corroborate that little piece that they had. Now they had two full confessions, both containing specific details about the murders that previously had not been released to the public. And Morgan, how could two people know anything about a crime scene if that information had not been released to the public? Is at least what the cops are thinking. On October 6, 1999, just before the eighth anniversary of the murders, police arrested for us.

Wellburn, Maurice Pierce, Robert Springsteen, and Michael Scott. The only problem in all of this, and I'm sure you can see where this is going, is that both of those confessions were completely false. Yep, that's why they're right here. And the police 100% knew it. So let's break down a little bit how a false confession like this happened, not once, but two times. The Austin Police Department admitted that there was no physical evidence tied to any of those four suspects, Michael, Robert, Maris or Forrest. Four teenage boys walked into this yogurt shop did not leave a scrap of DNA fingerprints, nothing.

Which, okay, there was a fire and some water, but you have one of them admit in their confession that they sexually assaulted one of the girls. Like, something should click. There should be something that then physically ties them. There is no physical evidence. Yeah, botched. No witnesses could place any of those boys at the scene. of the crime the time that had happened.

There was one witness who said they saw two suspicious teens in the yogurt shop that night. And so that actually comes from Lucella Jones. She recalled seeing two teenage males at the yogurt shop that night. One of them had his hand in a bag and was playing with something. She said it sounded like marbles or something clicking together. And it frightened her. Jones was shown a photo spread containing Marisa's photograph. And she said that Maurice looked the most like one of the boys that she saw in the

yogurt shop, but she did not make a positive identification. She also did not identify either Michael Scott or Robert Springsteen in the other photo spreads. There ended up being more physical evidence that pointed away from these four boys. In January of 1999, nine months before the arrests, a ballistics expert with the Austin Police Department filed a report to the head of the third task force when it was formed. And it said that Maurice's 22 caliber weapon was almost certainly not the murder weapon. Police completely ignored that fact and they went ahead with the arrest anyways.

And on top of that, there was even more news that came out. After the four arrests, police collected DNA samples from all of those boys and none of their DNA was found at the crime scene. Now, to be fair, the police did have DNA evidence from the sexual assault kits, but it wasn't very definitive. There was not a ton of genetic material included in these kits and it had been exposed to fire and water, which damaged it. And with the forensic DNA analysis techniques that they had in 1999, they were only able to say that they did not find a match with the suspect's DNA.

So it still wasn't conclusive, but it was pointing away from the boys at least a little bit. Plus, on top of that, only two of the boys confessed. Maurice and Forrest never confessed, despite long hours of aggressive interrogation as well. So the DA's office even offered to let Forrest go if he just agreed to. testify saying that he was on the lookout in the car that night, but he still refused. And actually, when you hear parts of his interrogation, he is very confused about what's going on. There's even times in the interrogation where it sounds like he almost wants to tell police the right thing. Like, they're coaching him so hard to get to the thing that they want him to say. And he's like

trying to do it almost, but he's just too confused by the whole thing because he clearly has no idea what they're talking about. Yeah. And as for Michael's confused, he's like, and as for Michael's confession, there's a ton of evidence that it was coerced. At one point, a detective either held a gun to Michael's head or tricked Michael into thinking he was holding a gun to his head. And this came after hours of being psychologically badgered by the police. Now, according to their families and their high school teachers who spoke to Texas Monthly, both Robert and Michael had learning disabilities, which may have affected the way that they were responding to the interrogation. You know, when Michael finally gave his full confession, and this is what there's tapes of, police were captured on video feeding him

details of the crime. So when I asked you before, it's on Mark, guys. Well, how could someone know what happened at the crime scene if none of those details were ever released to the public? It's because the cops were telling them the whole time the stuff that had happened at the crime scene. The way that they coached these boys to say that they had sexually assaulted the girls, that's so insane. He literally, and so one of the biggest points of contention is the boys had no idea that the girls' hands were tied or the ligatures around the necks. Yeah. And so cops would say things like, what did you use to tie up their hands? And Michael would go, uh, wire. And the cops would say, no, what else? No, what else? And so he would just keep saying things until he eventually got to the

right thing they were looking for. And then they'd mark it down as like, got him. He admitted. He admitted. He admitted. Underwear. Yeah. After trying 15 other items, like, no. No. Someone who actually did it wouldn't have to be fed information. And then it was the same with the same with the sexual assaults. Like the boys had no idea that sexual assault had happened that night and the police had to essentially coach them into saying that they had sexually assaulted the girls as well. It's horrible. Like obviously I'm getting upset by it because it's just so frustrating to hear. It's just so improper because it just dissuades justice. It sets a precedent for improper tactics being used and it's just like this is not and it's just not right. There's still a person out there or

people out there who did this who obviously are able to commit a crime like this and leave no trace and kind of move like a ghost who could go do it somewhere else like you have not if you don't arrest the right person there's still people at risk absolutely just for those listening and not looking at the botched board we're up to seven right now i feel like and that feels very light i feel yeah no i feel like it's justified if you have a different count if you're keeping count at home along with us please let me know what you have at this point in time, but up to seven. I mean, the coercion, holding a gun to someone's head or making them think you are as you're interrogating them.

But of course they're going to say anything that you want to hear. Police even told Robert at one point that he definitely participated in the murders, but that his memory was like a videotape. And you could play back any event from your past just by, quote, unblocking, suppressing. memories, which also sounds like cult indoctrination. That sounds like an acid trip, not reality. And then they told him to visualize himself at the scene of the crime like he was participating in the murders and to describe to them what was happening. This is actually like psychological, like torture in a way. Like they're like literally implanting memories in this person's head. Yeah. Well, by the end, Robert fully believed that he was guilty because they had kind of like

concepted him. And so there's also this professor, Elizabeth Loftus, she works at the University of Washington. And she found that vividly imagining made up past events can, in fact, create false memories. In a separate study that they did, researchers were able to get people to remember memories that they couldn't possibly have remembered, like memories of being born, of being a newborn before your brain is even developed enough to form memories. Wow. And that technique is basically what they used on Robert as well, just a version of hypnosis in a way. Despite all, of these weaknesses in the case. The DA's office decided to move forward with prosecuting all four men. Two grand juries declined to indict Forrest Wellburn, and he was released after the second grand jury in June of 2000.

But the other three men stayed in prison. In 2001, Robert's case went to trial. With Michael's confession as the prosecution centerpiece, Michael was not called as a witness. And in June of that year, Robert was convicted and sentenced to death. He was sentenced to die for this crime. With no physical evidence connecting him to a crime. No physical evidence connecting him to a crime. He was also a minor when it happened. But a lot of times, just like an interesting tidbit, if you're a minor when you commit a crime and years go by and you're an adult when you get tried for it, juries are way more likely to, I mean, see you.

as an adult and therefore like you get punished to the full extent of the law. I was actually rereading when we talked about Martha Moxley, one of the reasons that Michael Skakel during his trial, because he was a minor when he committed the crime and they were going to put him away for life for committing the crime because he was an adult. And because they couldn't, there was nowhere in Connecticut for a 34-year-old man to serve a juvenile sentence. They weren't going to put him in juvenile detention with the other 17-year-olds, even though he had committed the crime at 17. No, it's a crazy concept.

Yeah, right. It's like, it's this really weird. And so there's a lot of issues with the way that we try children for their crimes in this country. And so that's just one of them. It's like a whole other episode that we could do. So the next year, the prosecutors used the same playbook for Michael's trial. And this time Robert's confession was their biggest piece of evidence. But Robert wasn't called as a witness either.

In September of 2002, Michael was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. In January of 2003, prosecutors decided. that they were not going to try Maurice, saying that they did not have enough evidence to. They at least admitted to that. He was released after more than three years behind bars awaiting trial. Both of the convicted defendants appealed, presenting several arguments for why they deserve new trials. For example, by using their confessions against each other but not calling them as witnesses, prosecutors had put both defendants in a very unfair position.

Criminal defendants in the U.S. have a constitutional right to confront their accusers. So that was a violation of both of their rights. With that, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Robert's conviction in 2006, and they overturned Michael's conviction in 2007. Technically, they could still be retried, and initially the state had planned to do that. But while preparing for a new trial, they end up retesting the crime scene DNA using new techniques that have developed in the last few years since the 1991 attack. and they got a game-changing result. Game-changing.

And we talk a lot about nuclear DNA versus mitochondrial DNA on the show. Again, nuclear DNA is the kind that can identify a specific individual, but it's more easily degraded by things like heat from a fire, water from a fire department, and time. Obviously, a lot of years has passed. Mitochondrial DNA is the kind that tells you if two people are related from their mother's side. But there's actually a third kind of DNA test, which is what the Austin Police Department used in 2008 while preparing for this new trial. This is clue number six for us.

This test called YSTR can isolate Y DNA, which comes from the Y chromosome. So only male DNA would have this. Now, in this case, the amounts of DNA available from the crime scene were tiny. and they were mixed with the victim's own DNA in one of the press releases I watched with the investigator. He said that there were only a few picograms of DNA, which is literally, like he describes it as like just a few cells. Like it was nothing. And that's exactly why the Y DNA was so important here. Obviously, none of the victims had Y chromosomes. It's like, these were all girls. So looking for the Y DNA would make it really easy to separate, like,

because those mixtures also contained their DNA. And the lab was able to find 16 Y DNA markers in those crime scene samples, which was enough to exclude all four suspects Michael, Robert, Forrest, and Maurice. Again, like, so botched. Of course. On June 24, 2009, Michael and Robert were released from prison after almost 10 years of wrongful incarceration. And I was reading about in the state of Texas if you get put away for wrongly convicted, you are entitled to financial compensation, but I believe only if the actual perpetrator is put away. Or if you're like definitively innocent, not just not guilty, but innocent.

And so because they hadn't caught the actual person or people who had done this, like the boys just, they were like, okay, you're like you're out. Yeah, basically go fuck yourself. But it was like tens of thousands of dollars that they could have been awarded in financial compensation. Yeah. There's like a price per year or something I believe in certain states, maybe Texas. But if anyone, if we have our lawyer friend chiming in, a little phone a lawyer button. Yeah.

And you're familiar with Texas. $80,000 a piece that they could have gotten. It's a lot. Yeah. Texas is so interesting legally, especially with recent changes that they're not, like, Texas law schools are not going to be governed by the bar now. So like everyone that's like going to law school in Texas is. like, thanks, you just like invalidated my whole legal degree. So that October, though, all of the charges against them were dropped.

But the investigation was now back to square one. They did, though, have that one new lead, though, the Y DNA. Unfortunately, when they submitted their suspect profile to several databases, it did not generate any new leads. No, and they did not have enough of a sample or a high enough quality of a sample for them to submit to CODIS, which we talk about CODIS a lot. like they couldn't submit to CODIS. Like they could use other databases.

Right. Or if they had like a direct match that they wanted to compare to. But they didn't have enough for like this wide DNA search that we talk about in a lot of cases. To put it in the database. And that's going to be that becomes a huge part of this whole case. The fact that they could not put it in CODIS. So over the years, I mean, they would periodically resubmit this Y DNA for testing as the technology was improving. And then finally in 2018, they get some.

good news. Thanks to a new technology, they end up getting a new profile from that wide DNA sample. And this time, they find 27 markers. Remember, they only had 16 before. So they have 11 more markers that they can use now. And that meant that the profile would be much more useful for confirming a suspect. The only problem was they just didn't have one. They would have to still go out and find a suspect. But then they could, in theory, be able to make a pretty positive identification. So investigators started comparing it to every database they could find that included YDNA, and they found one out of the University of Central Florida that had a match. Unfortunately, though, this was just an anonymous sample that was submitted by the FBI for population research. Yeah, it could have come from like a variety of sources.

Yeah. Like whether it was someone who was incarcerated or literally just like someone volunteering and submitting. And so for privacy reasons, they really. pushed back on allowing this sample to be matched. Yeah, the Austin PD reached out to the FBI and said, hey, can you tell us who this is? And the FBI said, no, bye, bye. Good luck. Good luck. But it is because of, like, privacy. Which, okay, we get. But there was some pressure applied from people in this case. And they did eventually get an okay from the FBI. But like, I think like the FBI essentially wanted to retain control of their samples. So yeah, of course. They sent.

sent in a sample from the yogurt shop murders and the FBI basically sent a letter back saying, no, it's not a match. Thanks, goodbye. So it was determined. It was not a match. Not a match. Once they really looked at the profiles and like actually compared more of the segments or whatever that they found. So we're still without any suspects. Nope. And that's where things stood in 2022 when a 41 year old detective named Dan Jackson with the Austin Police Department took over the entire investigation. And I know what you may be thinking. Another task force is being formed. No, this guy actually really turns it around.

Dan Jackson is a baddie. Our hero. Detective Jackson grew up near Austin. He was a few months younger than Amy. So he remembered these murders really well. Like I said, very small community at the time. One of the first things he noticed now was that everyone had been focusing on the Y DNA sample. I mean, rightly so.

It's this huge new piece of evidence that they have. But that also caused everyone to have tunnel vision. Yeah. And they're kind of forgetting that, you know, this was like a whole crime scene. There's still other things that we can investigate. And he realized that it had been a very long time since anyone submitted the other big piece of evidence that they had for retesting. And that's the 380 shell casing that was found at the scene. Winter is so last season.

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Irresistible love stories and the book to screen favorites you've already read twice. Off campus, L, every year after, the love hypothesis, Sterling Point, and more. Slow burns, second chances, chemistry you can feel through the screen. Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. It took Detective Jackson a little while to actually get this casing retested, and that is partly because in 2023 he got shot in the line of duty, and he made a full recovery and just jumped straight back into the investigation and wanted to, you know, get back to testing this bullet casing.

Yeah, again, baddie. So, look at him go. In July of 2025, he finally got a chance to re-upload it to the ballistics database called the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network or Nibbin. It is kind of like codis for DNA or like a fingerprinting database. It's like you can you can upload it. Yeah, this is the first time I've really heard. Like how big this can be in like helping with cases. Yes.

And remember too, this is a very specific bullet that came from a very specific gun. Yeah, not common. So it should have been being retested as often as possible. And after he re-uploads the information to this ballistics database, within just a few hours. Hours. His phone rings. Little Sherlock. A little Sherlock moment right there for our lovely detective.

On the other end of this phone call was an ATF agent with clue number seven. They had a match for his bullet. The same gun was actually used in an unsolved Kentucky murder from 1998, seven years after the yogurt shop murders. And that case is still open. A lot of details have not been made public yet. But when listening to Detective Jackson talk about this in the press conference, He just says, like, the ammo and the details of the crime when he heard about it, he goes,

this is it. Yeah. Yeah. This is a match. The details are eerily similar. But it was still unsolved. Unsolved. So they didn't know who it was.

They just knew it was the same weapon. Yeah. So he ends up handing the bullet casing from the yogurt shop over to the Kentucky State Police so that they could inspect the casings alongside one another. And with that, the case is finally back on track. I am a nosy gal. You guys all know this. So I went down like the rabbit hole just because it's not, you know, at this time public. I'm hoping by the time this episode releases, it will have a formal announcement and whatever. But if you look at Google and you just Google Kentucky Cold Case Homicide, 1998, connected to whatever, it does come up. And it is the case of a woman named Linda Rutledge. She was murdered inside of Nixon Hearing Aid Center, which. which was her parents' business. And after she was killed, by multiple shots with a 380 caliber handgun,

the building was subsequently set on fire. So again, like very similar ammo. That's probably by the flags were starting to be raised. Oh, absolutely. So again, not officially confirmed. That's just me doing a Google search. But, you know, we'll see. We'll see what happens.

So after this happens, Dan Jackson is like, we are so close to solving this. We are almost there. We just have to figure out who this person. is. So what he does is he asks every lab in the country with a Y DNA database to do a manual search for the yogurt shop sample. Manual. Remember, it's not uploaded to Kodas. No. They can't go on their computer. They can't search any database. He has to mail packets of papers around the country to all of these different police precincts and be like, will you please type these in and see if it's a match for anything in your system? Or if you have DNA from your cases that sounds similar, can you

look at the why because some of them weren't even looking at the Y DNA. They were looking at other aspects of the DNA profile. And so some of these profiles, they were in, you know, other precincts evidence lockers, but weren't even uploaded yet or hadn't been uploaded recently. Yes. I mean, that's another Sherlock moment for him. He really just is like, what can we do? We have this. And he just, I mean, he was putting in the work. It was such a Hail Mary because it's also an incredibly tedious task. Yeah. I mean, I imagine that there were some precincts that maybe didn't want to do it. And you just have to pray that everyone's going to look into this and care about it as much as you care about it. Yeah. And luckily, they do because someone calls him and says, we have a match. It's a South

Carolina state lab. And they had a profile in their records from a 1990 sexual assault and murder. and there were a lot of eerie similarities about this case. And while we don't know all of the specifics about the case where this DNA was found to be a match, we do know that the victims involved were also tied up using clothing from their own home. It was a crime that had taken place the year before the yogurt shop murders when a 28-year-old named Jenny Zatricky was strangled using her own panty hose in her home. But unlike the Yogurtop murders, that case had been solved. However, it hadn't been solved until decades after the fact as well.

It had also been a cold case for years and years and years. So they wouldn't have even known that it was a match in DNA until 2018. But regardless, they had a match. They had a name. And it was a suspected serial killer named Robert Eugene Brasher's. Now, who was Robert Brasher's? Well, he was based in Missouri, but he tried. traveled frequently for work. He worked in construction. And unfortunately, when this match was made,

he couldn't be tried for the yogurt shop murders because he did take his own life on January 19th, 1999, seven years after the murders. Police had been investigating him for a stolen car, and they actually found his motel room with the stolen car out front. And he proceeded to barricade himself inside of the motel room with his wife and daughter and stepdaughters. And then he took his own life, which, you know, the police was an extreme reaction to just being investigated for a stolen car. But it turned out that Robert had potentially committed dozens of crimes and killed multiple, multiple people. And I think that's what he thought the police were actually finally investigating him for. But the weapon used in his suicide was a 380 AMT backup pistol, which

matched the ballistics of both the yogurt shop gun and the gun in the crime in Kentucky. So based on that information, Detective Jackson made another move. There was still unknown male DNA on Amy's fingernail clippings. Amy was the only one who had scratched the suspect. But once the tiny amount of DNA on her fingernails was tested, it would be used up forever. So that's why they didn't want to test it back in the day. They were waiting. He describes this as like, testing this means you're putting all your chips on the table.

Like this was their one last shot. One shot. shot. But still, on September 15th, 2025, Detective Jackson takes that risk. He submitted Amy's fingernail clippings for testing in comparison to Robert's DNA and it was a match. Specifically, the lab calculated a 2.5 million to one odds of the two DNA samples not being from the same person. And so what does Detective Jackson do when he gets this match? He calls Detective John Jones, who is the original lead detective on the case, and he tells him the good news. I could cry. The case had finally been solved. Now, the families in this case have repeatedly

mentioned over the years that they want the media to talk about how these girls lived, not just how they died. And so we wanted to just include this little tidbit too. But Amy's parents were at a horse show. Amy's favorite activity in the whole world when Detective Jackson reached out to them with the news. He actually drove out to the horse show to talk to them in person rather than telling them by phone or letting the family wait another day for the truth. And Amy's parents felt like Amy was sending them a message by arranging for them to be in writing clothes when they found out fresh off the back of the horse, learning that her case had been solved.

And it was like she was telling them that she was okay and that everything was going to be fine. Detective Jackson also let Amy's family know that she was the one who solved her case. She fought really hard. She scratched brashers so badly that his skin cells were still under her fingernails even after literally going through the fire and the water and everything that destroyed the rest of the crime scene. And Amy's dad told a reporter that he had never been more proud of his daughter. At just 13 years old, she came very close to fighting off an adult male serial killer. And on September 29, 2025, after all the families were notified,

the Austin Police Department held a press conference to let the public know about their findings. And Detective John Jones, who was retired, who no longer lived in Texas, traveled to Austin for this press conference, and he wore that tacky green and white shirt. It really is a bad shirt. Yeah. And he had this little bucket hat on too. It's such a bad shirt, and he had saved it so that he could wear it when it finally got solved. And he had just prayed and prayed and prayed.

And finally, he was able to wear it 34 years later. I know. And it still fits. Still fit. I think he said somewhere, like he's like, it's a little tighter, but still fits. It's a little tighter. But after all these years, he was able to keep his promise. And that is how it got solved.

I mean, there's so, oh, there's still so much with this case that I want to talk about. I really like the confessionals we've been doing for socials. If you haven't seen these yet, you guys, go watch them on our Clues podcast Instagram because we kind of talk about pieces of the cases that are just like still in our heads or we forgot to include in the episode. Now we're like, oh my God. But like there's so much with this one. And Jackson says, he's like, this couldn't have been solved any sooner.

Like, that ballistics from the Kentucky cold case was only uploaded like this past year. Yeah. So it literally could not have been solved until 2025. Everything had come together all at once. And another unsung hero of this story is C.C. Moore, I talk about it in the Heart Starts Prounding episode we did on Cold Cases solved this year. But C.C. Moore is this genealogist, also out of North or South Carolina, I believe. And she had been re-investigating some of the cold cases that Robert Eugene Brasher's was involved in. And they didn't have any of his DNA.

So she fought to have his body exhumed. Yes, I wanted to talk about that. So they could actually extract DNA from him. So she's also like one of the only reasons that any of this was able to be solved. Yeah, because they matched the Y DNA from their cold case or whatever it was to like genealogical website. It ended up coming in a match with like likely a brother. I believe. And so then they had the body exhumed from Arkansas and match. Like crazy. So much work. Like we've talked about this in other cases. Like it is hard to get a body exhumed. And who's going to pay for it? And it's just like it's a whole thing. So to do that. She made it happen. Yeah. Incredible. But what do you think? So let me ask you this then. Because one of the things that comes up early on in the investigation is the fact that it could have been two people. Yes. Two different guns used. I really wanted to talk about that. Two people seen at the scene. What do you? you think. So I watched again the full press conference from, you know, the family's speaking,

Detective Jackson, a DNA expert, like all the people. And Jackson wants to make it very clear. Like this was Brasher's. He acted alone. And actually, here's how we know he acted alone. And Jackson in the press conference shares another case where Brashers was alone and able to control four women during a 1997 member. Fice home invasion and sexual assault. So four women in a home invasion, like these were four girls and he had two guns. Like we've talked a bit about like fight, flight, freeze, font. Like you never know how you're going to react in that. And like it's horrifying. It's scary. So he was proven that he could have done this and did this alone. And so I fully, I think just

based on what Jackson said. I totally agree. No, I totally agree. I think. I think every other crime he committed that we know of he was by himself too. Yeah, I do want to talk about one crazy, crazy thing. So back in December, December 8th of 1991, less than 48 hours after the yogurt shop murders, Brasher's was actually stopped by Border Patrol between El Paso and Los Cruces. Remember that Los Cruces bowling alley? Yeah. Again, no known connection there.

No, that one ended up getting solved recently too. It's like all the thing. But like at the point, people were like, oh, he's kind of in that area. Like he's clearly familiar. So Brasher's was pulled over by Border Patrol. And they kind of noted he was acting off. They ran the plates. It was actually a stolen car out of Georgia.

So they apprehended him. Somehow he was able to like get back in this car or truck or whatever it was. and he was able to, like, try to evade them and, like, flee a mile down the road, but he eventually just gives up, which odd, but he gives up. And when they apprehend him and start logging whatever he had on him, he was in possession of a 380 pistol. The same 380 backup model, serial number A75-213. This is the same weapon from yogurt shop.

He had it in his car, obviously, like two days after. So they apprehend this gun. And a couple of years later, his dad is able to get the gun back. Which Jackson was like, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get a gun back from authorities. Yeah. And so he ends up getting that gun back and then it's the same gun he uses to kill himself. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Like what? That is, yeah, it's crazy. It seems like there were a couple different opportunities for him to get caught. I know. And just to think, like, I'm. I don't know what the science of that is, but like pulled over two days later, you have this gun that matches this very specific gun. It's like what Jones wanted. Like if they would have kind of like all talked and like, hey, we apprehended this gun.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. In, you know, in between El Paso and Los Cruces, like, it fits your gun. And you already were thinking about Los Cruces because of the bowling alley. I know. Yeah, it's just like they could have talked more. They could have talked more. But I think one thing that Jackson really kind of highlights in his press conference, is like, do you guys see how important it is that we all talk, that we all share information,

that we can all just like freely share information? And like one thing I find really interesting is like there's not a database where police can search like based on MO between all these other precincts. They can search like within their own. But like they don't really have that tool out there yet. Yeah. And it's just like we need to make the information between these different police organizations flow more freely. Just easier. Yeah. Easier to have those conversations.

Yeah. More Sherlock moments would be happening. Well, we can get into a little bit of the activism that's come forward after this. Yes. So our call to action this week comes from the victim's families and from Detective Jackson. So they do believe that Robert Eugene Brasher's likely had other victims that we don't even know about. He was known to be active from 1989 until early 1992 and then again in 1997 and 1998. So Detective Jackson is calling on.

all other law enforcement officers to check their unsolved cases for similarities to brashers known murders. They ask to get in touch with Austin Police Department with any findings. And if you know of any cases that fit, you can do the same thing as well. Some of the traits that Detective Jackson suggests to look for are use of a 380 caliber handgun, tying victims up using their own clothing and sexual assault, especially of teen or preteen girls. The more cases tied to brashers that get officially solved, the more families that have closure. The Austin Police Department tip line is 512472-8477.

Yeah, and something the Austin DA said in this press conference is like it is never too late for justice. So. Yes. If you know anything or if you're an officer out there again, information should be more free and, you know, communicative between you guys. So some cases could really be solved. I also wanted to shout out the Homicide Victims Family Rights Act of 12.

which was something that helped get this case solved. So this is an act that started in 2021. And it allows direct family members of someone who, whose case has gone cold to put pressure on police to basically have the case reopened. So if you are the direct relative of someone whose case has gone cold and you know that the case was investigated federally, this has to be a federally investigated case, it can't just be local or state police that looked in. into it. You can locate that agency's cold case or HBFRA review contact page. You can download and obtain the application form from that agency's website or you can request it from them directly. Complete and submit the application along with any supporting documentation showing your eligibility as a family member and then ask for acknowledgement of receipt and keep all records

like email certified mail copies. In theory, they do have to take a meeting with you if you match the criteria for having like a case like this. Yeah. And this act requires that the cold case be re-investigated using the tools that we have today. Today. And I believe it has to be within the last 30 years. Yeah. That's really good. You brought that up and highlighted that. Yeah, we had a a heart starts pounding listener that reached out to me who's going to like start going through the process for one of their family members. So hopefully this at least gets some movement on some other cold cases. No, that's really important. Really important. And on that, that. And on that, that. note, we are moving on to our missing person of the week.

This week, we are highlighting the case of Gretchen Eve Fleming. Gretchen's described as having brown hair being 5'2, female, American. She has brown eyes, is 125 pounds, and was born on December 24th, 1994. This is coming from news and sentinel.com, but signs and posters offering a reward for information about Gretchen Fleming remain visible around the community more than two years after she was last seen leaving the My Way Lounge in downtown Parkersburg, West Virginia. Fleming, a Parkersburg high school graduate, was 27 years old and living with her grandparents in Vienna when her family reported her missing on December 12, 2022.

Police determined that she was last seen at the My Way Lounge at 5th and Juliana Street in the early morning hours of December 4th. They identified a person of interest in the case, but that person has not been charged in connection with the case. The FBI is involved in looking for her, and they appreciate the public's attention to this case, and along with our partners at the Parkersburg Police Department, continue to encourage those with information, even if they're not certain of its value, to come forward by contacting the Parkersburg Police Department or the FBI at 1-800 call FBI or online at tips.fbi.gov. The Parkersburg Police Department can be contacted at 304-4-8444.

and anonymous tips may be left online at ppd. dot parkersburg wv.gov. And that is all we have for this episode of clues this week. Is it? Thank you guys so, so much for being here. And now we want to hear from you guys. I mean, I asked earlier if there's any high profile cold cases from where you guys live, but we're always looking for more cases to cover.

Absolutely. This is something that affects, I think, a lot of communities. And hopefully we're going to see a lot more. cases like this being closed with, you know, all the new investigative techniques that we have these days. And some good investigators coming in and. Yes. Cracking it open with evidence they've had the whole time. I mean, three Sherlock moments on the board for us and I think they are well earned. So I cannot wait to see more cases and cover more cases where this happens. But at Crime House, we really value your support. So share your thoughts on social media and remember to rate, review, follow,

and subscribe. Subscribe. Take clues to help others discover our show. That's what we have. Yeah, that's it. Until next time, guys. Bye. Bye. Capture your favorite summer feeling with Pandora Jewelry.

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