Yogurt shop detective keeps promise to wear shirt when murderer ID’d

On Monday, former detective John Jones wore a green and white shirt for just the second time in 34 years — signaling long-awaited closure to the families of the four teenage girls killed in the infamous I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt case.

Jones had been the first investigator on the case, he explained to “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty in 2017.

“I can see them, I can still see the inside of that place,” Jones said on the investigation show. “That stuff’s … indelibly burned in my mind.”

Even after retiring from the Austin Police Department and moving out of Texas, Jones kept copies of some of the case files. But those weren’t the only items he’s held onto.

On the night of the 1991 murders, Jones had been wearing a new green-and-white-striped shirt. As the detective assured the victims’ families the killer would be found, he vowed to keep them informed.

“I kind of made a promise to them,” Jones told Moriarty. “The next time they saw me with that green and white shirt on that that was a signal to them that, you know, we know who did it.”

Jones kept the promise he made over three decades ago, appearing at Monday’s press conference in the shirt he’s longed to wear again.

“I told the families, ‘Well, when you see me in this shirt again, it’ll be because the case is solved,'” Jones told Statesman reporter Austin Sanders. “I made a pact with my kids: If it doesn’t get solved before I pass myself — because I’m an old man — if it doesn’t get solved before I ‘check out,’ then you guys are in charge of finding the families.”

Thanks to new DNA testing, Jones was able to wear the shirt himself, when he attended the news conference where the victims’ family members spoke.

“I dug it out, and I wore it,” Jones said of the shirt.

The retired detective explained he had flown into Austin Monday morning. Unable to secure a 5 a.m. United Airlines flight “on a day’s notice,” Jones opted to use Southwest.

“I wanted to be here because — actually, because of the four boys,” he said, referring to the former suspects in the case, two of whom served prison time before their convictions were overturned. “I wanted to hear someone take responsibility for that.”

Exclusive: ‘This is over:’ How authorities say they finally solved the Austin yogurt shop murders

Around midnight on Dec. 6, 1991, Austin firefighters responded to a blaze at the yogurt shop on West Anderson Lane and made a horrific discovery: the bound, gagged and burned bodies of Jennifer Harbison, 17; Eliza Thomas, 17; Sarah Harbison, 15; and Amy Ayers, 13. Officials say the shop had been doused with accelerants and set on fire to destroy evidence. Autopsies later show all four girls had been shot in the head, and at least one was sexually assaulted.

Over the next several years, investigators pursued dozens of leads and questioned multiple suspects. Several false confessions were recorded. While some physical evidence was collected, fire and water damage severely limit its forensic value. In 2017, however, new DNA-testing technology identified a single male profile. The profile didn’t match any of the previously convicted men, but it matched a sample the FBI uploaded to a database. That person, however, was not named.

One month after HBO Max released “The Yogurt Shop Murders” docuseries in August, police announced a DNA match in the case.

— Andy Sevilla, Staff Writer

Austin yogurt shop murders: A timeline of the long road from cold case to a DNA match

Newly analyzed DNA evidence has linked the crime to a man already suspected of being a serial predator across the south: Robert Eugene Brashers.

Brashers, who died 26 years ago, left behind a violent trail that stretched from Florida to Missouri:

• 1985: attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery and firearm charges for shooting Michelle Wilkerson in Port St. Lucie, Florida
• 1990: rape and murder of Genevieve Zitricki in Greenville, South Carolina
• 1997: rape of a 14-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee
• 1998: rape and murder of Sherri Scherer, 38, and her daughter Megan, 12, in Portageville, Missouri

Brashers was in a standoff with police on Jan. 13, 1999 after hiding in a Missouri motel with his wife, daughter and two stepdaughters. After releasing his family, he shot himself in the head and died six days later.

— Julianna Duennes Russ, Staff Writer

Who is Robert Eugene Brashers, the serial killer linked to Austin’s yogurt shop murders?