How authorities solved the cold case

The search for the killer of four teenage girls in the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” case spanned 34 years, but in the end, it was built on a series of rapid breakthroughs in the past four months.

Using a combination of new DNA testing, ballistics examinations and old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground police work, authorities say they are convinced they have linked the crime scene to the killer, who they identify as Robert Eugene Brashers. Authorities across Texas and in multiple other states have now mobilized to see if Brashers, who already has been deemed responsible for three other murders in the 1990s, may have killed others.

Brashers died by suicide in 1999 as Missouri police closed in to arrest him for other crimes.

To build their case, Austin police and the Texas Attorney General’s cold case unit traced his travels using police reports from Georgia, beginning in November 1991, westward to Texas, where officers arrested him outside El Paso in a stolen car two days after the yogurt shop murders. Brashers had a .380 pistol that was the same make and model used to kill one of the teens.

However, investigators believe the most compelling evidence came in the past few weeks when new testing indicated that DNA under the fingernails of 13-year-old Amy Ayers matched Brashers, who has been linked to murders in Missouri and South Carolina.

“I have never been so proud of my daughter in all of my life,” her father, Bob Ayers, told the American-Statesman. He said police believe Amy likely collected the DNA in a fight for her life with the killer. 

“Our whole family knew there was something about Amy that would help solve this,” Ayers said. 

He added, “This is over.” 

Three law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation revealed to the Statesman in a series of interviews about how they believe detectives solved the crime that haunted Austin for more than three decades. The officials did not want to speak publicly until a news conference scheduled for Monday at Austin City Hall, where they are expected to release a trove of evidence to the media. 

Investigators have already shared the same information with the families of the victims who also include Jennifer Harbison, 17, her sister Sarah, 15, and Eliza Thomas, 17. They also presented the findings to John Jones, the former lead investigator in the case, who was briefed Friday by his former colleagues. 

Jones said he is convinced that Brashers is the killer based on the newest details. “Hell yes,” he told the Statesman. 

After years of false starts and what investigators now think was the wrongful arrest of four men, one of whom was sentenced to Texas’ Death Row before courts overturned his decision, the investigation gained new momentum in June. 

Austin police cold case investigators decided to resubmit ballistics evidence from the crime scene into a federal ballistics database, a step they had taken in previous years, after learning that it was possible for information to drop out of the network.

They were shocked to get a match to a crime in Kentucky within 24 hours.

Authorities realized the crime scene involving had striking similarities to what happened to the four girls in Austin: The victim was found dead in the back of a family-run store, where she had been shot. Just as with the Austin yogurt shop, the store had been set on fire.

But the Kentucky case also remained unsolved, and Brashers had not been identified as a suspect. Authorities have not yet publicly identified Brashers as the suspect in that case.

With the strongest new lead in years, Austin investigators ramped up their efforts. They asked the Texas Department of Public Safety to issue an unusual special request to crime labs across the nation.

Years earlier, scientists had extracted a so-called YSTR male-only strand of DNA that can indicate male family members. A standard database upload typically does not result in matches.

However, if a crime lab is willing, they can manually upload that YSTR strand of DNA into its database to identify potential matches. An analyst in South Carolina got a hit on Brashers in what officials said was that state’s first-ever YSTR-only search of its kind.

Several years earlier, South Carolina investigators had used genetic genealogy to name Brashers as the suspect in the 1990 rape and murder of a woman.

The South Carolina connection marked an extraordinary turning point: Backed with forensic evidence, Austin police finally had a name to link to the murders.

At that point, investigators began trying to place Brashers in Texas. They confirmed he had no ties to Austin – he did not live nor did not appear to ever work in Austin.

But they traced his other interactions with police, including a report from Georgia that linked him to a stolen car a couple of weeks before the yogurt shop murders.

Authorities believe Brashers may have been driving through Texas to Arizona, where his father lived at the time.

Federal authorities confiscated Brasher’s .380 pistol at a checkpoint near Las Cruces, N.M., and Brashers, apparently fearing police would realize he was in a stolen car, took off, leading to a short pursuit. Authorities think it is possible that Brasher got rid of evidence from the yogurt shop during that chase.

Authorities returned the gun to Brashers’ father, who police believe later gave it to his son. According to published reports, Brashers died when he shot himself, using what Austin officials have concluded was the same weapon, during an hourslong standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Mo.

Pam Ayers, Amy Ayers’ mother, told the Statesman she is still grappling with the revelations that police believe her daughter and the other girls died at the hands of someone like Brashers.

“I can’t say I am happy,” she said. “I’m not there. I am kind of numb. Knowing it is a serial killer, I am not sure that makes it worse, but I would have never thought it would be a serial killer. That is hard for me to process.”