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The Yogurt Shop Murders: How Did They Die? Who Killed Them? A shocking case from December 1991 had the authorities finding four teenagers murdered at a yogurt store in Austin, Texas. In the decades that followed, the police pushed to find answers and the ones responsible, but they encountered many roadblocks.
Correspondent Erin Moriarty looks at how advances in DNA technology might help solve one of the nation's most heartbreaking cold cases: The Yogurt Shop Murders in Austin, Texas. On Dec. 6, 1...
Three of the four Austin yogurt shop suspects were initially sent to trial, Scott, Pierce and Springsteen. Only Springsteen and Scott would eventually be prosecuted beginning in June of 2001, with Springsteen facing the death penalty.
However, freedom came too late for Danziger, suffering severe brain damage in a prison assault and being housed in a mental institution. Three of the four Austin yogurt shop suspects were initially sent to trial, Scott, Pierce and Springsteen.
Not long after prosecutors, cold case investigators and the new district attorney met with the families of the yogurt shop victims in 2017, Austin police detective Jay Swann learned about an array of online databases containing DNA profiles.
Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas were working at the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt store off Anderson Lane on Dec. 6, 1991. Jennifer’s sister, Sarah, had been shopping nearby with Amy Ayers and came to the store to get a ride home. They were last seen alive shortly before the store closed at 11 p.m.
Prosecutors relied heavily upon the statements Springsteen and Scott made to police and used each‘s alleged confessions to help convict the other.
De La Fuente, who has worked on the case longer than any other prosecutor, listened as newly elected Travis County District Attorney Margaret Moore promised to take a new deep dive into the 26-year-old unsolved murders of four teenage girls at an Austin yogurt shop.
De La Fuente joined the prosecution team in 2000.
In the spring of 2017, veteran Travis County prosecutor Efrain De La Fuente called Bob Ayers, the father of one of four girls brutally murdered at an Austin yogurt shop in 1991. He had exciting new information to share, a DNA discovery that he hoped could bring resolution to the nearly 30-year-old case.
Barbara Ayres-Wilson, whose two daughters, Sarah and Jennifer Harbison, were killed in Austin’s infamous yogurt shop murders, says she prays that whatever is holding back the flow of information between the FBI and local investigators is soon resolved. [Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman]
• The Yogurt Shop Murders by Former Texas Assistant Attorney General Erik Moebius
• National Organization of Parents Of Murdered Children
Shortly before midnight on Friday, December 6, 1991, a patrolman from the Austin Police Department noticed a fire coming from an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop and reported it to his dispatcher. After the fire was extinguished, firefighters discovered four nude bodies. Each had been shot in the head execution style with a .22 caliber lead bullet. Sarah's hands had been bound behind her with a pair of panties and she had also been gagged and raped. Jennifer was not bou…
At the time of the killings, a known serial killer, Kenneth Allen McDuff, was in the area. He had a history of multiple murders involving teenagers, but was soon ruled out. He was executed on November 17, 1998.
Austin police admit that over 50 people, including McDuff on the day of his execution, had confessed to the yogurt shop murders. A confession in 1992 by two Mexican nationals, held by …
The murders were the subject of Beverly Lowry's 2016 nonfiction book Who Killed These Girls? Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders, Corey Mitchell's 2016 nonfiction book Murdered Innocents and the novel See How Small by Scott Blackwood.
• Las Cruces bowling alley massacre - Similar unsolved crime in 1990
• Brown's Chicken massacre
• West Memphis Three
Murders in the Austin area: