Posted on 09/27/2025 12:59:59 PM PDT by kennedy
After decades of dead ends, Austin, Texas, police on Friday named deceased serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers as the suspect in the city’s infamous yogurt shop murders.
The announcement follows decades without answers in the December 1991 killings of four teenage girls—Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, and sisters Sarah and Jennifer Harbison—at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” shop in Austin. The girls, aged 13, 15, and 17, were bound, gagged, and shot, before the shop was set on fire.
The breakthrough comes with notable advancements in forensic DNA testing and renewed attention from an HBO docuseries about the case.
Not much is known about Brashers childhood. He was born in Newport News, Virginia in 1958. He was notorious across several Southern states for various violent crimes including rape and murder, as well as theft. Brashers was married and had three children, one of which was biological.
His first recorded violent crime was in 1985 when he shot a young woman, Michelle Wilkerson, in her head and neck. She survived the attack and later identified him as the attempted murderer, leading him to be sentenced to over a decade in prison.
Brashers was released early on parole in 1989. Shortly after, in 1990, police said he raped and murdered Genevieve Zitricki in Greenville, South Carolina. However, he was not identified as the suspect until after his death.
Two years later, in 1992, he was arrested in Georgia for possession of a stolen car and gun, and upon investigation he also had items to impersonate a police officer and burglary tools. The Greenville Police Chief Ken Miller told The Greenville News that he was sentenced on possession charges and released in 1997.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
Proof that pure evil exists in the world. May he burn in hell for eternity.
This is a big flaw in our system; that we treat attempted murder as less than murder.
Should be the same penalty.
Dig him up and kill him again.
THREE STINKING years for violent attempted murder! The penal system in Texas even then sucked.
Actually, that was in Florida.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-palm-beach-post-robert-brashers-mo/31099977/
I totally agree, then again I think that proven rape, and child molester 1st degree should also be subject to the death penalty. There is NO REASON, that the State Supreme Courts cannot sit in and monitor trials in death penalty cases, and rule within a day whether there are grounds for appeal.
The appeal process is designed to line the pockets of Judges and Lawyers. Prove me wrong.
Thanks for the correction.
Apparently, that is where he began his (known) murder spree. He then proceeded rape and murder his way through multiple states before unaliving himself when surrounded by police in Missouri.
It’s just a damned shame his first victim (or her family) weren’t able to end him at the time.
“It’s just a damned shame his first victim (or her family) weren’t able to end him at the time.”
No kidding. Those poor little girls in Texas that he murdered at the yogurt shop. I cannot imagine the terror that went through them. It just makes my blood boil.
The country really needs old fashioned frontier justice.
The big question for me is how did they come to initially arrest and charge the three or four guys who DIDN’T do it?
They confessed. Police were apparently quite persuasive.
You need to know that, like the majority of cold case closed by DNA, he seems to be dead.
I personally find this somewhat interesting.
“Yogurt Shop Murders” sounds like something on the Hallmark Mysteries Network, but I’m sure it’s something more serious than that.
My interest has been caught however by how many of these "DNA solves cold case" things have pinned the crime on someone who is no longer around.
Once you are dead you have no way to defend yourself.
This is probably not the best case to make my point because the guy in question was a rapist and killer but it just seems odd that they don't seem to find many of these people they claim committed these crime until they are dead.
There have been several cases where it seems that a person who led a blameless life suddenly goes out and does a rape/murder of someone they never had any contact with before and then returns to the blameless life bit.
Just seems a bit odd.
The number of people who will actually confess to crimes that they didn’t commit is perplexing... I don’t care what amount of torture or pressure that you place on me... I would NEVER confess to a crime... NEVER!
But people do cop to crimes that they never committed and plenty of them were put to death for it... WTF?
Attempted murder should usually be sentenced the same as murder.
If that were so, and he were sentenced more than ten years for shooting a woman in the head and neck, those young girls would have been spared.
Actually he only served 4 years for shooting the woman.
And killed and raped more victims than the girls in the yogurt shop.
The police decided that the man had killed his dad, arrested him, refused to give him his medication, hammered at him for hours, threatened to kill his dog, and so on. The man finally came apart and confessed. Apparently convinced that in a fugue state he had killed his dad the man decided to attempt suicide in his cell. Thankfully did not succeed.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the dad was miffed and decided to walk it off. Walked to the bus stop and took the bus to go visit his daughter. Found out a couple of days later when the police notified her of his "death" what was going on. Came back.
You would think the police would let the poor man out. You would be wrong. They decided to involuntarily commit him and keep investigating because they were sure he must have killed someone. Because, in a house that was being renovated, with men working with power tools they found, "trace amounts of blood".
It was a mess.
I wasn’t in Austin, but was just a little north of there…a senior in high school at the time. Those girls were about my age (17). So awful.
Interestingly enough, this case was featured in a recent episode of “Dateline NBC” or one of those shows (it came on TV a month or so ago, but I think it may have been a two- or three-year-old rerun already). I thought they were going to reveal new information, but they really didn’t have anything new. They did spend a lot of time with the original lead detective assigned to the case (and even showed a lot of the original footage from the night of the murders, when he had a camera crew following him around even before that crime took place). He was removed from the case after some period of time, in hopes that fresh eyes might be helpful. By the time this follow-up episode of Dateline was filmed, he was long-since retired and living out of state. But the case still ate at him. His marriage had suffered and all of that. It was a pretty fascinating episode of the show; I could not have imagined that the case would go on to be solved so recently after the episode’s airing. I am so grateful for the closure that the families, detectives and prosecutors are finally getting. Some have already passed away, but others surely are being afforded some relief.
I thought this crime would probably never be solved.
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