Killer Bound 4 Girls in Back Room - Then Tried to Burn It All Away | Yogurt Shop Murders

It's an ordinary Friday night in December of 1991 in North Austin, Texas. Four teenagers are planning to sleep over. Two of them have to work until 11 p.m., so the younger two, only 15 and 13 years old, go to the mall for a little while to hang out, until they get picked up and taken a short distance to their friend's workplace in a strip mall. It's the last shift before the weekend, three weeks before Christmas. And the plan is simple. Wait until the cleaning and the locking up is finished and leave together for a fun night at one of their houses. But it wasn't that simple. Just before midnight, a patrol officer driving past sees flames coming from the building. He calls it in and the Austin Fire Department comes and they put the fire out. When they go inside, what they find is beyond anything they could have ever imagined. Four bodies, all beyond help. And it was clear that this wasn't an accident. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to my channel. And if you've never been here before, I am Kimberlya. It's nice to finally meet you. I am leaving for London with my family tomorrow. I can't believe it. And I'm looking forward to meeting so many of you at CrimeCon UK. Okay. Are you ready? Because this is the final episode. It's one of the most intense cases I've covered in a while. So if you just got here somehow without watching part one and part two, I would highly recommend going back. I have linked part one and two below, but as per usual, I'm going to give you a thorough but fairly quick recap of everything to catch you up to speed. If you don't need it, you can look below. There's chapter markers right here and you can click ahead. But for those of you who want to know what's going on and maybe you don't even want to watch part one and part two, here goes. Portageville, Missouri, Saturday, March 28th of 1998. Tony share in his 15-year-old son Steven come home around 10 past seven in the evening. They've been working all day. And they were out late because a truck had blocked the only road back to their farm. Steven had called back home at 6.24 pm. He talked to his mom. She said she was going to go pick up some pizza and run him into town afterward to see his girlfriend. And she sounded completely normal. About 20 minutes later, Tony called and got the answer machine. His wife wasn't answering. When they pulled in, Sherry's car was in the garage and the hood was cold. Inside, Steven found his mother and his 12-year-old sister on the living room floor. 38-year-old Sherry Sherry and Megan, who was in sixth grade. Sherry was so warm and Megan was cold. She'd been dead longer. What that implies is too much to even think about. Her poor mom locked her die. Both of them had been shot with a 22-calibre weapon. Both had socks taken from inside the house and stuffed in their mouths. Megan's hands were bound behind her back with an orange electrical cord. She had also been tilted. There was a bite mark on her breast and she had been deliberately posed. Sherry had been shot three times in the back of the head. Her hands were free when she was found, but she had ligature marks on both of her wrists and there were no restraints anywhere in that house. He brought them with him when he left or he might have actually used the electrical cord on Sherry before using it on Megan. There was no forest entry. Nothing was stolen from the home. They had a safe and it was open, but it was untouched. All that happened inside a window of about 30 to 40 minutes. That's it. A highway patrol sergeant named Don Wyndham noticed a mark on Megan's chest and he swabbed that mark. He couldn't even tell you why at the time. This swab is the reason this case ever got solved. And why I'm pointing out that he didn't know why he was swabbing it is because back then DNA is not what it is today. They didn't usually swab those kind of things. Her autopsy also turned up traces of a chemical, which was called isopropylmyrostate. This is an ingredient that's in a lot of topical medicated creams, usually for infections down there, which was weird because Megan would not have been using anything like that. Then in Dyer'sburg, Tennessee, two and a half hours later, 40 miles away. A man in a maroon van pulled up outside to 25 year old mother's home. I'm calling her Stephanie. He tried to talk his way inside and she fought him for the gun in her own front yard. And somehow she got the front door shut, but he shot through it. One of the bullets hit her, but she survived. And she gave police a description. Ballistics later proved that the bullet from her arm and the bullets from Megan and Sherry's house were the same. They came from the same gun. So here was this person traveling around and he was a stranger and he came to the door and talked his way in. Then 20 years of nothing. Investigators had his DNA from the very first night, but the profile was a partial profile. And Kodis wouldn't accept it. And Kodis was in its infancy anyway. Over a thousand leads came through. Three serial killers investigated and cleared, including Tommy Lynn's cells, who grew up 25 miles from that house. And new things he shouldn't know about what was inside during the crime. In January of 2006, Sergeant Jeff Heath sent everything back to the lab. An analyst Ruth Montgomery worked the socks, the hairs and the clothing. And that's why I told you about. In this time, they got a full profile. They entered in the Kodis and they got a hit. In part two, we covered what happened out in Greenville, South Carolina, where they connected the DNA. It was April 1990, eight years earlier. Genevieve Zitrici, everyone called her Jenny, 28 years old from Young Son Ohio, a computer programmer at Michelin who moved south in 1998 and stayed after her marriage had ended. She didn't show up for work on a Friday on April 6 and nobody had heard from her in 36 hours. Maintenance went into her apartment with a master key and they found the water running throughout the apartment. She had been attacked in her bed while she was sleeping. She was struck in the back of the head with a blunt object, fracturing her skull. She was salted as well and she was strangled with pannios and then dragged 20 feet into her own bathroom, placed in her tub, positioned and left with a faucet running on her to wash evidence away. The tub overflowed through her apartment. The killer had staged a fake robbery. He threw a purse into the sink full of water and wrote a message on her dresser mirror that said don't fuck with my family. It was designed to look like a personal grievance. Nothing was stolen from the apartment. Every surface was clean like it had been wiped and there were no usable fingerprints. The medical examiner recovered male DNA and preserved it, knowing that maybe some day, even though they couldn't do anything with it now, the science would catch up. In that case, was unsolved as well. So now we had two dead ends becoming one unsolved case, two killers that were connected. Then Memphis, Tennessee, March 11, 1997, a man knocked on a door with a story about his wife missing her purse and then he pushed his weight inside this home of five people, five women and children with a gun. He brought duct tape and rubber gloves. He cut the phone lines. He bound four of them face down on the floor and sounded a 14 year old girl and then he stole a car and left, taking his materials with him. The 14 year old bravely went to the hospital and they swobbed her for DNA as well and her swab kit sat in storage for 20 years in a backlog of over 12,000 cases. Memphis tested it finally in May of 2017 and entered the profile and it matched Greenville with Jenny's case and Portageville with Sherry and Megan. Three states but no name. 2018, Genetic genealogy had just identified the golden state killer. The Missouri and South Carolina samples were too depleted to use because they'd already tried swabbing them, testing them. So the Memphis kid that I told you about, the one that nobody tested for 20 years was the only one left and if that young woman had not come forward, they wouldn't have had it. It went to Parabond Nanolabs and a genealogist named CC Moore built out a family tree from distant matches back to an Arkansas couple who were married in the 1800s and then she worked down the branches of that tree to a man with a criminal record. His name was Robert Eugene Brashears. He was born 1958. He was a Navy discharge who had faked his death and his obituary was published in two newspapers when he was 22 years old and in 1985, he was convicted for shooting a woman twice in the head in Florida, which he served only three years of his 12-year sentence. In 1990, he was working maintenance, guess where, had Jenny's apartment complex and living less than a mile away. In 1998, he was living in Paragol, Arkansas, an hour from Portageville where Megan and Sherry were killed. he was living with his wife and three little girls. And by his daughter's own account, he was a genuinely good father. He turned 40-15 days before he killed Sherry and Megan. He watched the news coverage with his family and told them they would be safe as long as they locked their doors. Two weeks after the murders, he was arrested for an attempted burglary. He had cut a phone line and he was carrying a 22 caliber revolver in his pocket. No one else was in there. A tube of cream that he said was for treating general warts. Yeah. Just like the chemical that was found in Megan's swab, the same kind of product that contains isopropylmyrostate. On January 13th of 1999, he was cornered in a Missouri motel room. It was all about a stolen license plate and he shot himself. He died six days later at 40 years old. And nobody in that building had any idea who they had. They thought they were just there for a stolen car, but he thought that they were onto him. Later, his body was actually exhumed. On September 27th of 2018, the likelihood the DNA belonged to anyone else was one in 65 octillion. October 5th, 2018, three states announced that they had identified him. And everyone went home believing it was finished, but it wasn't. So here we are in the final part. Part three, the final installment, seven years later, a detective in Austin, Texas pulled the shell casing out of an evidence box and it unlocked two more cases. And one of them is one of the most famous unsolved cases in Texas history. And that is what I'm covering in this video. Some of you may already know the story, but you haven't realized that I've been leading here this entire time. Many people don't go all the way back. It was December of 1991. 18 months after Jenny and Satrici was murdered in Greenville, South Carolina. A quadruple homicide occurred in Austin, Texas. And nobody would connect that to Robert Brashears for 34 years. And I caught some of you leaving comments on the first and on the second video about what happened, what the case was. And I was like, no, that's like telling someone the ending of a movie. I totally get it. You're shocked and you're surprised and you're connecting all the dots. And that's what I want. Just don't put it in the comments because then it ruins it for the people who don't know yet. But let me take you back to that strip mall on Wes Anderson Lane. It's just before midnight on Friday, December the 6th of 1991. An Austin patrol officer is driving past and he sees flames coming from one of the stores. The fire department gets there and they get there fast and they put out the fire and then they go inside. They're expecting that this is a structure fire and electrical fault, something that was left on. They imagined they were going to be in and out and they were going to check the building and go home. But that is not what happened because right away somebody finds a body and then three more. Four teenage girls in the back of the shop. It takes the fire department, the police department, the medical examiner and is set at dental records before anyone can say for certain who they are. But I want you to meet them in a much different way. I'm going to be talking about all four of them. Jennifer, Eliza, Sarah, and Amy. Jennifer and Eliza actually met their future farmers of America. This was a non-profit career in technical student organization and they offered middle and high school classes that support agricultural education. Jennifer sister Sarah, who was 15, was also involved and she brought along her best friend, Amy Ayers, who was the youngest of the four at only 13 years old. But let's meet each girl because they're all special and they deserve your time. I want to start with Jennifer and Harbison. She was born on May 9 of 1974 in Texas to Barbara and Michael Harbison, who everyone called Skip. Her mom described her as an easy baby. She was cheerful. She was always smiling and very affectionate. Barbara later called her the best little girl in the world. And as she got older, she turned into what they described as a tomboy. Now I don't know if we're really using that word anymore, but I also considered myself a tomboy. Kind of still a tomboy, but especially growing up, she was the kind of kid who was always outside doing something rather than being inside and sitting still. There's a story that her mom tells about her. When Jennifer was two, Barbara was pregnant with her second baby and Skip wanted Jennifer to have something of her own before the new baby arrived. So he gave her two necklaces. And Jennifer looked at them and she decided she didn't need both of them. One was hers and the other one would be for her baby sister. And that's really sweet for a two-year-old. Her sister Sarah Louise Harbison arrived on October 28th of 1976 and the two of them were close from the very beginning, but they were actually pretty different. Sarah was quieter, she was more reserved. And underneath that, she was determined, funny, and fiercely competitive. She had a dry sense of humor and her mom said she loved that about her. While Jennifer was more of the tomboy, Sarah went through a period of time as a little girl where all she wanted to wear were dresses and the color pink. She got absolutely fixated about getting this pink little cowgirl dress. And she would not stop talking about it until her stepdad finally bought it for her. And Barbara thought that combination made a lot of sense. It was a cowgirl dress, but it was a dress. And this is a girl who loved animals and the outdoors and farm life and also wanted to wear pink while she did it. Barbara and Mike divorced when the girls were still small. And in May of 1979, Barbara packed them up and she left rural Texas and she moved to Austin with them. And as they were getting ready to go, her mother told them to take care of her babies in the big city. They moved into an apartment on the south side and Barbara worked at a bank. The girls went to head start and for a while it was just the three of them. And on Friday nights, Barbara would take them grocery shopping and she would let them pick out things like soda and candy and popcorn and then they would go home throw pillows all over the living room floor. And all three of them would pile up and watch Dallas together. That sounds like so much fun and a really great bonding experience with mother and daughters. That was family. But in 1980, their family changed a little bit because Barbara met a man named Frank. Now Frank was from Virginia and he drifted into Texas traveling west in the 70s. They married the following year and Frank was an Italian Catholic. So when Barbara sat the girls down and told them that she was getting married, Jennifer and Sarah wanted to know one thing and you got to remember. These are little girls. Did marrying Frank mean that they were also going to become Italian? And I thought that was cute. Animals were a constant in his household. I'm talking about hamsters, guinea pigs, they had three dogs, two cats, Sarah, especially. She loved animals. And Barbara said she thinks Sarah might have become a veterinarian eventually. But this love for animals is what inspired them to be part of the future farmers of America program later on. Music was the other constant. Jennifer loved country music and country dancing. And according to her mother, she could sing Ruben McIntyre like a pro. She played violin. She liked performing in front of other people. She liked performing enough that Barbara was wondering whether Jennifer might end up doing something in entertainment. Sarah loved country too. And she also played the saxophone. They were both big Garth Brooks fans. And Sarah's favorite song was if tomorrow never comes. And it's kind of very to think about that knowing what's going to happen. It's the little things that stick with me. Jennifer was two years older, but Barbara was clear that just because she was a big sister that didn't mean that she was the leader all the time. They both had things that the other one didn't. Jennifer was very social and she was completely comfortable around people. She was also impatient with schoolwork and had very little interest in sitting down to study. But Sarah, she was disciplined. She was the academic one. She was also relentlessly competitive, especially with her older sister. She looked up to Jennifer and she wanted to do everything that Jennifer did, but she also wanted to prove she could do it just as well or even better. And while she was still in middle school, Jennifer found out about future farmers of America or FFA. And it became one of the biggest things in their life. Sarah got into it partially because Jennifer got into it between raising animals and working on projects and getting ready for competitions. These two sisters who are already close ended up spending even more time together. And I just have to say, maybe it was because they didn't have screens back then, but just seems like, wow, I mean, these girls were involved in everything. By the early 90s, Jennifer and Sarah were living with Barbara and Frank in a big brick house in a suburban development in northwest Austin. And it was not a quiet household. Everyone was constantly talking or arguing or arguing. getting ready for something or going somewhere. And their bedrooms told you a lot about what mattered the most to them. FFH, trophies, sports memorabilia, stuffed animals, school photos, country CDs, and Jennifer had even made a collage out of pictures of girls' barrel racing. And across it, she had written, the boots, the jeans, the dream. They were pretty much normal teenagers. Wet towels all over the floor, arguing with their parents, not wanting to finish her homework, but Barbara trusted them. And she thought they were really responsible for their ages. And by 1991, Barbara noticed that the relationship with her and her daughter started to shift. And she sometimes felt like Jennifer and Sarah were looking out for her as much as she was looking out for them. By December of 1991, Jennifer was 17, and she was a senior at Linear High School. She was tiny, about five feet tall, around 86 pounds, brown hair, big hazel eyes, but absolutely none of that matched her very big personality. She was opinionated, and she was quick with a joke, and she had been described by her friends as extremely corny. She had a corny sense of humor and I was like corny. Do we use that word anymore? I don't know. But her teacher said that she stood out as being excited about life, and she brought joy to their classrooms. Jennifer was eventually the president of the school's FFA chapter. She was also on the drill team, and she ran for a varsity track, the 400 meters, and the 1600 relay. She was small, but she was also very fast. Her sister, Sarah, was 15, and she was a freshman at the same school. She was about five foot one, 136 pounds, blonde hair, and bright blue eyes. She was a really strong student. She was competitive. She played basketball, volleyball. She did cheerleading and FFA. Her principal, Paul Turner remembered her as assertive and enthusiastic. Her friends described her as kind and funny and warm-hearted. And like Jennifer, Sarah was raising a lamb through FFA for the Austin livestock show and rodeo that was coming up that spring. Both of them had boyfriends as well. Jennifer was dating a guy named Sammy Buchanan, who lived nearby with his mom, and Sarah had recently started seeing somebody, and she was wearing his gold ring. It had a green stone and a tractor on the other side, and his initials. She was also wearing her favorite Mickey Mouse watch. Jennifer has sentimental jewelry as well, her linear class ring of 1992, also gold with a green stone, and a Timex watch with a big face and a black band. And I am not telling you this for nothing. I'm not randomly just putting in details about their taste in fashion here. Just remember that watch. There is gonna be a reason. By December, her dad had bought her a new pickup truck, and Jennifer was helping make those payments herself. She had a job as soon as she could legally get one. She was initially working at an Albertson's grocery store. She was bagging groceries, and she was pushing carts out to people's cars in the parking lot until she got a new job. It was a job that her best friend, Eliza Thomas, told her about. So let me introduce you to Eliza. She was born on May 16th of 1974 in Austin, Texas. Her parents Maria and James got divorced when she was only seven, and they shared custody of her for years. But when she was around 14, they let her decide for herself where she wanted to live. She spent the spring and early summer of 1991 with her dad, and then moved back in with her mom at July. Her little sister Sonora was four years younger. Sonora was 13 in 1991. And Eliza was the kind of kid who loved two things that don't usually go together. Animals and anything mechanical. It's an interesting combination. When she was younger, she kept crawfish and white rats. And at one point, a badly injured rat followed her home from a park. Its face was so damaged that a vet had to perform surgery on it and it wasn't cheap. But Eliza was crying so much about this little creature. There was no way that her mom could say no. Eliza's other love was cars. And that came from her dad. James taught her how to work on them. And Eliza got interested in nothing mechanics that she started asking for car parts as presents. And eventually, she did get her own car. It was a green Volkswagen. And it was her pride and joy. The green one mattered because her birthstone was emerald. She felt that was her color. So she had to have it in green. Both she and Jennifer had their own cars and payments to make and gas to buy so they could keep them running. She'd been looking for the perfect job, but she waited because she was switching high schools at the time. And it wasn't because she was moving or anything. It was because linear high school had future farmers of America. She was taking classes in agricultural mechanics. I'd never even heard of that. I believe it's to teach you how to work on things like tractors. And she did especially well in welding and small engine repair. She raised animals through FFA. And during her junior year, she raised a pig for a competition where she actually received a ribbon for it. Eliza's family said that joining FFA was one of the best things that had ever happened her. And it's through FFA that Eliza met Jennifer and Sarah. They had the same interests. They were in the same program. They lived in the same world of livestock shows and competitions and very early mornings out on the farm. Like the sisters, Eliza loved animals. She planned on building her life around animals. She told her dad she wanted to go to Texas A&M and become a veterinarian. And James believed that she would have done it. Her mother saw a little bit of a different future for her. Eliza loved to read. And she had a gift for language. And Maria thought that she might have ended up being a writer or even a poet. Outside of school, Eliza was very social. She had a bigger be friends. She liked clothes and makeup and going dancing on Friday nights. And here's a little extra detail that I just found to be sweet. Maria named her after watching My Fair Lady. Now, Eliza Doolittle was the main character and the entire story centers around her personal transformation, her emotional journey and her struggle for independence. And when Maria described her daughter, she used almost the same words she would use for Eliza Doolittle, vivacious, beautiful, passionate. She had deep brown eyes. And she could be shy when you first met her. The people that knew her said she was funny and loyal and kind. There's a story that a coworker told about Eliza. The registrar had came up short one night. And rather than let someone working that shift get in trouble for it, Eliza put her own money in it to cover it. By December of 1991, 17-year-old Eliza was a senior at Linear Duggling School, FFA, babysitting, and working with her best friend, Jennifer. Once they met at FFA, they were inseparable, along with Sarah and Amy, who I have yet to tell you about. People who knew them said you couldn't see one of them without seeing the rest of them. They loved each other. They hung out all the time. They did everything together. And for Jennifer and Eliza, that meant getting a job together, too. A fun job at a soft serve frozen yogurt shop called I Can't Believe It's Yogurt. It was located in a strip mall on West Anderson Avenue. Now to be clear, this is not yogurt. It's not a yogurt shop. As in, it's not the kind that you might have in your fridge right now, like Chamani. It's not that kind of yogurt. I just want to make that distinction. And I think I'll get to why it kind of mugs me so much. This is frozen yogurt. It's like ice cream. So if I were going to categorize this establishment, I would call it an ice cream shop or frozen yogurt or a soft serve shop, not a yogurt shop. It's the equivalent of pinkberry if you've ever been to one of those and they loved working at that shop together. Now Eliza's dad only lived a few blocks from the shop and her little sister, Sonora, sometimes stayed with him. And because the two sisters were so close, sometimes Eliza would call her and ask her to ride over something she'd forgotten or just to come over and say hi. And back then, Austin felt like a small city, especially compared to somewhere like Dallas or even Houston. And everyone just remembered feeling so safe there. And then there's Amy, Amy Ayers. She was born on January 31st of 1978 in Johnson County, Texas with her parents and older brother, Sean. One of Sean's most vivid memories of his sister is holding her in a rocking chair when she was a baby. He wanted a little sister so badly. He said that when Amy was born, he got exactly what he always hoped for. Their dad Bob was a rancher and Amy's childhood was spent around animals. Bob believed that ranch life was one of the best ways to raise kids. They milked cows, they had beef cattle and a big garden. Sometimes Bob would ride up on a horse just to go get his male. And Amy and Sean grew up watching animals be born, watching them grow. And unfortunately, sometimes watching them die. And to Bob, that was just real life. And he thought that his children were better knowing the truth about it. Of every animal on that ranch, Amy loved horses the most. Her father said that when he thought about Amy, he thought about horses. She could ride all day and never get tired or bored with it. She wore a cowboy hat to school. And when she was 12, she got her very own cutting horse. His name was copy. Now I had no idea what a cutting horse was. So I looked it up. Cutting is a western style. question competition where a horse and a rider go after a single cow during a 2.5 minute run and they try to separate from the herd. But what's interesting is in this sport the horse is trained to do this completely on its own. So the rider actually drops their hands to the horse's neck and the horse relies entirely on its own instinct agility and its training to read an outmaneuver the cow. So this isn't a little pony that her dad gifted her. This was serious and Amy was learning the same skills that adults used and her dad trusted her instincts. He knew that she was good with animals and he knew that if he had a young horse giving him any trouble and he put Amy on it within just a few days that horse would settle down. She was only 12 and she was doing all that which I found very impressive. By December of 1991, Amy was 13. She was in eighth grade at Burnett Middle School and she had just gotten into the junior future farmers of America program even though she wasn't in high school yet which is how a 13-year-old girl ended up friends with a bunch of high schoolers. Through FFA she met Jennifer and Sarah Harbison and Sarah became her closest friend in the world. So that is how all four of them became inseparable. Amy was raising a lamb named Tutti. She also wanted to be veterinarian and she and Sarah had the same taste in everything including country music. She loved being outside so much that she would sometimes get to school half an hour early just so that she could sit in the courtyard with her friends before the day started. Somebody once asked Bob whether his daughter Amy was something of a cowgirl and he corrected them and said Amy wasn't something of a cowgirl. She was a cowgirl. Every single connection in this story runs through that FFA program. The job came second. Eliza had been working at the yogurt shop for about six months and in July of 1991 she's the one who got Jennifer hired. They usually worked weekends together. They made four dollars and 35 cents an hour. It was minimum wage back then and sometimes they would work the closing shifts. Now their parents were fine with that because they trusted their daughters. I mean you can get a tell that they're very responsible. They didn't think a late shift at a frozen yogurt shop was anything to worry about because why would they? But then Friday December 6th happened. It was a normal day. The girls all went to school and they made a plan for that night. Sarah and Amy who again are 15 and 13 years old would spend the evening at North Cross Mall which was just a few box from the shop where Jennifer and Eliza were working that night. Jennifer would drive Sarah and Amy to the mall. Then she would go to the shop to work with Eliza. When the mall closed she would leave work for just a few minutes to go pick the younger girls up and take them all back over to the shop while she and Eliza finished closing and then they'd all go back to Jennifer and Sarah's house to spend the night. Totally normal. Amy's parents were going Christmas shopping the nights and before they went out they hugged her and kissed her and told her that they loved her. Jennifer then pulled up and her pickup truck outside with Sarah already in it and they picked up Amy. She dropped Amy and her sister off and went to work around 5 p.m. Now the I can't believe the yogurt shop on Anderson. It is a neighborhood place. This chain started in Dallas in 1977. It was founded by your brother and sister and by 1991 this location was just a place where people would stop in. They would have their frozen yogurt. They would talk. They would hang out. They would go on dates. Now the uniform was a white polo with pink and green trim and a logo on it. It was tucked into dark colored pants or jeans with black or white sneakers. Now for me I really like to understand things like that. I also like to understand what a place looked like especially when a crime takes place inside of a home or a restaurant or a place like this. So I want to give you that image. It consisted of tile flooring. They were sort of a dark brown or an orange type of color. I think of them as Spanish tile. That's kind of what they look like to me. There were dark forest green vinyl boots along the walls and in the middle light wood colored tables and chairs. And then there was this wood panel counter that had all the frozen yogurt machines and the register to the far left as well as the refrigerator with cakes so you could buy that were pre-made. And behind that counter was an entryway to where the employees only area was in the back of the shop. And I want to walk you through the closing routine because it's going to matter at around 10 50 10 minutes before the 11 o'clock closed time. Employees were supposed to lock the front door from the inside with a key and flip the sign from open to closed. They would leave that key in the inside lock for just a bit in case anyone came to the door at the last minute and they needed to allow them to come inside. Then the day's money went into a floor safe in the office while they finished cleaning. When everything was done, they would take that key out of the lock, go out the front door, lock the door behind them from the outside with that same key, put the key inside an envelope, and slide it underneath the door for their manager to pick up in the morning. The register used that old-style paper transaction tape that recorded everything that happened at the register all shift long. Just make a mental note of that. Now for how the night actually unfolded. Eliza and Jennifer were working. Sarah and Amy were at the mall and it's decorated for Christmas. There's the music, the holiday spirit. It's the 90s. No one was buying things online. That wasn't a thing. So everyone was piling into the malls and it was full of people of all ages doing their holiday shopping or hanging out. Now when the mall closed at 10 pm, Jennifer left the shop, drove over, picked up the two girls, and brought them back to the shop. Sarah and Amy had ordered pizza while they were waiting and they brought it back to the shop for all four girls to eat and close up the store at 11 pm, which I did personally think was a little bit late, but I'm going to tell you that was really beside the point. At approximately 1147 pm is when an Austin police officer was driving past and he saw a fire at the shirt mall and he calls it in. The firefighters were dispatched and they could see the heavy smoke that appeared to be coming from the back of the building. Firefighters forced the front door open with a crowbar. The smoke had collected up under the ceiling and when that door came open, it all just poured out. Inside, they could barely see anything. So they got down on their hands and knees underneath the worst the smoke and they started crawling toward the back where the fire seemed to be concentrated. Austin Firefighter David DeVay was one of the first men through that door. The fire itself really didn't take that long to put out. Maybe just a matter of minutes, but as the smoke started to clear enough for him to see the floor around him, that's when he realized this was not an ordinary fire because he saw the body of a young girl and as he kept walking towards the back, he saw another one with a third nearby partially covered because material had actually come down from the ceiling and fallen on top of her. These men had gone into that building with no idea that anyone was still inside and then having to find several young people, he was shocking enough on its own. But then they realized the girls were not wearing anything. They didn't have clothes on and they had gunshot wounds to their heads. David DeVay had encountered death many times. It was part of his job, but he said he had never ever seen anything remotely like what was in that room. The heat damage made it hard to even process visually what he was looking at. The victims looked like dolls to him even though he knew exactly what he was looking at. And I really think that your brain tries to protect you from the truth. I've heard that in other cases. Austin Homicide Detective John Jones was called out to the scene, and there's going to be a coincidence here that made this case go even more viral if you want to call it that at that time for 1991. A channel seven reporter happened to be riding along with Jones that night. They were working on a series about murder in Texas. It's ironic, but it's sad because this case would be memorialized in video form. No one would need to just imagine what the scene looked like and that wasn't even planned. So we have all the footage we do because of that coincidence. Jones was out there finishing up another call when the word came over the radio. The police were dealing with what they thought looked like a possible robbery homicide at a yogurt shop and three people had been found dead. Now by the time he reached the hillside center and he pulled up into that parking lot, he got another message. He was informed that firefighters had found a fourth victim, a quadruple homicide. It was unbelievable. He saw all the commotion as he was driving up and it was captured on video. It was still full of firefighters dealing with the areas that were smoldering and Jones walked inside and it looked nothing like it had just an hour before. There was dark soot and there was water covering everything. There were no lights on because all the electric wiring have been scorched. Parts of the ceiling had fallen. fallen down, and three of the girls were all close together in the back portion of the shop, with the fourth girl about 10 feet away in the preparation area. Right away, due to the fact they were not wearing anything, Jones initially thought that this was a sexually motivated crime, and that some form of salt had taken place. So he did something that will become very important later on. He contacted what's known as the Texas Department of Public Safety for Assistance. He wanted swabs taken, even though DNA testing was still new, but somehow he knew the biological evidence was going to be important, especially if there was male DNA that had been left behind. Now this was the same instinct that I told you that the medical examiner in Greenville, the year before had in Jenny's case, and the same instinct that a sergeant had in a Missouri farmhouse seven years later, and Sherry in Megan's case as well. But remember, fire, it's not forgiving. They didn't know how much evidence would really survive this place. One of the first people investigators needed to speak with was the store manager. Her name was resprice, and it happened to be the very first day of her vacation, but she was woken up and told the police run the phone. An officer informed her about the fire at the store, and she looked at the clock and she's like, oh, I mean, nobody should even be in there. Just let it burn. She was saying that because she didn't know that anyone had been killed at the time. When the officer told her that she was probably going to need to sit down, he broke the news that there was actually four victims that had been found inside. And there were not words to describe that moment. Who were they? Considering they appeared small, the investigators believed that they were not adults. So she was thinking who were the other two because she knew that Eliza and Jennifer would have been working that shift that night. And at that point, the officer to come down there because they wanted to see if she could actually identify her two employees. She had no idea what she was walking into. And I felt sad for her. We watched True Crime, but back then there were not many shows like that, like there is today. People did not see things like some of us have seen. And when they asked her to identify these individuals, she thought she would be able to just look at them and look at what they were wearing, and recognize our faces. And she also thought that she should probably do it instead of their family members in case it was the two teenage girls. But when she actually got to the scene, it was just unbearable going in there. She couldn't even believe this was real. All the lights and the commotion and the police vehicles, it was like a movie. And she was only 24 years old. She had never experienced this kind of destruction that a fire can do. And she explicitly said as that she couldn't identify them because they did not have faces. She walked into that building believing that she was going to actually spare their families, but there was nothing she can do. They didn't have clothes. They didn't have any personal items nearby. All she could do was provide two names. Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harvison. So they started going to the girls' houses. Now I told you that Eliza's dad's house was close by. He was the closest. And Eliza's 13-year-old sister Sonora found out first. They said there's been a fire and something happened to Eliza. They believe she may have been a victim. But because of the condition of the bodies, they told her father they couldn't say first certain that that was true. Formal identification was going to have to wait. When Sonora heard this about her own sister, she said that she had a physical reaction. She just couldn't believe it was true. She didn't want it to be true. She ran all kinds of scenarios that maybe her sister got out before the fire, or maybe she was never even there. Her mom found out next. And she couldn't even speak with the officers because there was nothing to say. The saddest thing that I heard Eliza's sister say is that later she had been watching TV and she saw her sister's face on the news related to this case. And not only did she find out that her sister had been shot, but it was the first time she realized she had never in her life woken up without her sister. And that really made me sad. Earlier that evening, Eliza had actually called and asked Sonora to come over to the shop. Their father was really strict about Sonora leaving the house without getting permission. So she wasn't allowed to go because he wasn't home. So she stayed where she was. She has never been able to stop thinking about how easily she could have been there too. And that is frightening to think about. But speaking of strict parents, I just want to get this out of the way because I know there always is. There are going to be some viewers that are going to place blame on the parents because they might say something like, how could you just let your young daughters be out there at 11 o'clock or even, you know, after 11 o'clock or whatever. And I get it. I even said I thought that 10 o'clock was kind of late. We are not them. This was not now. And in the end, it is the killer whose choices made this tragedy happen. Not the parents and not these poor girls. As a parent, you shouldn't have to guard against something like this. But Jennifer and Sarah's mom, she did have regrets. She admits that she ran the blame game in her head, all the what ifs, but she can't live like that. There is only one evil person to blame and we're going to get there. But Barbara was confronted by police tonight as well. She had no idea that the girls hadn't made it back because she wasn't the type of mom who would stay up late waiting for her daughters to get home. The family actually joked about how rarely she would wait up because she trusted them and that night Frank had gone to bed early before Barbara. And she was up watching TV until she fell asleep sometime around midnight. When the police came to her door and asked about her daughters, Barbara's first thought was they're here, they're home. She thought they had already come back and were just to sleep upstairs. But they weren't. And now the cops had more information, more names, not just Jennifer and Sarah, but also Amy. So they went to the airs house to find out whether Amy had somehow made it back home. Her parents, Bob and Pam were awoken by those officers asking if they were her parents and telling them that there had been a fire at a yogurt shop. She wasn't home either. And the next day, the investigators collected dental records and anything else that could be compared against the victims. And that is how these four girls that were found inside that shop were formally identified. Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers, best friends, inseparable in life and then in death. Not that it makes any of this any easier to imagine because these poor girls and everything they went through. I know I haven't even gone there yet, but just all of this up into this point is terrible. It's unfair. It should not have happened. Before I get into what actually was done to them, I want to go over exactly where they were found and how they were positioned because it's believed that they were moved after death. Now in the storage area, Eliza was lying on top of Sarah and Jennifer was beside them. Investigators believe that Jennifer may have originally been positioned with the other two almost stacked on top of one another and that Jennifer had shifted during the fire. And of course, the effort to put it out. And Amy was alone in the preparation area separate from the three other girls about 10 feet away. Now this is significant. It was the single most important physical fact at that scene, besides her being shot twice instead of once with the other girls. And she was shot with two different weapons. She also had a ligature mark around her neck and had been strangled. Now that did not happen with the other three girls. Dr. Thomas J. Brown performed the autopsies. In Amy's case, although the ligature marks were evidence of strangulation, this strangulation wasn't would kill her. She also had a bruise on her lower lip. And the shots came from very close range. The shot from a 22 caliber weapon struck the upper left side of her head and did not penetrate her skull. It was actually not fatal. There was a second shot and that one was from a 380 and that one was behind her left ear. It passed through her skull and into her brain and exited through her right cheek. And that one killed her. Now theories exist that perhaps the killer ran at a bullets in the 22 after shooting the three other girls. And he realized that Amy was still alive. So he used the other weapon that he brought with him. It also seemed as though she might have gotten away like she ran. Her injuries looked like a struggle. And maybe he had to subdue her to keep her from escaping, hence why she was in another area. All three of them were most likely demanded to undress because the bindings were actually articles of their own clothing. And they were instructed to bind the other girls. So someone would take a bra, and then have to use that to bind another girl's arms now to Eliza. Her hands had been tied behind her back with a bra. And similar to Sherry and Megan's case, the killer had used whatever there was to put down her throat. She was killed by a single contact gunshot wound from a 22 caliber weapon to the back of her head. Sarah's hands were also tied behind her back, and that was with underwear. She had something stuffed in her throat as well. The documents don't indicate exactly what article of clothing was used down their throats. But with Megan and Sherry, it was their own socks, so it might have been the same in this case. Now her autopsy documented injuries consistent with salt and it involved an object that was already inside that shop. When she had been found, the handle of a metal scoop was found between her legs. The kind that's used behind the counter for toppings. Now I'm not mentioning this for some kind of dramatic effect. I'm doing so because it does suggest a pattern using items that already exist at the scene, the same way that a user clothing to tie them up. She was killed by a single contact gunshot wound from a 22 to the back of her head as well. Jennifer's body had the most severe fire damage of the four of them. And there was also an interesting piece of evidence. It was her timex watch that she was wearing. The one I mentioned with a big face and a sturdy black band, it had stopped at exactly 11.48 pm. Most likely when the fire was so intense that it burned it. Recall how the cop called the fire in just one minute before that. So we know by then the fire was at the point of being seen from the road. Jennifer's hands were behind her back in a position consistent with having been bound. Although in her case, no bindings were actually recovered. There was a liquor remark around her neck. The no evidence that she had actually been strangled. Investigators considered that it might have actually been used in her mouth to stop her from screaming and that it slipped down and was loosely around her neck. Like Eliza and Sarah, she was killed by a single contact gunshot wound from a 22 caliber to the back of her head. From the evidence, it appeared that Sarah was the target. But of course, we have no way to know. But the killer seems to be motivated by the intent to raise victims, considering that he left some victims alive after doing that in other cases. They took the swabs, but investigators could not develop a useful individual profile from them. So they preserved them on the hope that someday somebody could. Now, back inside that shop, Jones and his team were trying to work out what exactly happened in roughly 40 minutes. And that time frame was significant. Sherry and Megan's murder happened in about the same amount of time. Rovery was one of the first things that they considered because about $540 from the night's business was missing. The manager walked Jones through the closing routine step by step. And I told you about that because the shop itself told them just how far the girls had gotten into closing. The toppings had already been put away. The frozen yogurt machines were being cleaned and taken apart. But the gaskets hadn't been put back on yet. A bucket had been left on a ladder. And there was still water in the sink where the topping ladles would have been washed. And they usually did that in the same order every single night. They would put the radio on and they would dance while they were cleaning up. And if the familiar regular was finishing up inside and still eating their frozen yogurt, they wouldn't necessarily have felt uncomfortable working while that person was still there. And they would have just let them out later. However, the front door was locked from the inside. The key was still inside that lock exactly where it would have been during the first part of their closing routine. And then there was the register tape. At 11.03 p.m., somebody pressed no sale. Now that opens up the cash drawer, 13 minutes. After that front door would have normally been locked for the night. So did Jones. It looked like the girls were close to being done. They were almost finished. And then something or someone interrupted them. It was assumed from the evidence that all Ford had been forced into that back portion of the shop, most likely at gunpoint. Investigators recovered a 380 round near a floor drain. That's the same caliber as the other weapon that was used to kill Amy. But the 22 caliber shell casings were not there, which makes sense if you tie all of these cases together because they believe it's a revolver. It doesn't leave shell casings behind. Don't forget about that drain. I have to tell you about the state of that crime scene because it explains a great deal about why it was so hard to pin this killer down. There was no scene. It was already gone before anyone knew it was a homicide. When the fire was put out, they forced open the door. They crawled all over the floor and the fire destroyed portions of the roof. And then there was all that water, that high-pressured water. It washed so much away. The Jones even said they had trouble finding any fingerprints or even doing fingerprinting because they knew it would be pointless. But they did it because they were determined to try anyway. There was no indication that a liquid accelerant had been poured throughout the store. They actually believe the fire started using just the material that was already in that shop, including paper products, cups, and those things were found right near the victims. It's heartbreaking. They were so young. Barbara lost both of her daughters that night. Jennifer and Sarah, a reporter who interviewed her at her house just a few weeks later, described the girl's bedrooms. They were still exactly the way they left them. Trophies and ribbons and posters, books, stuff animals, rooms just frozen in time. When it went out to the news that four young teenagers were killed a few weeks before Christmas in a frozen yogurt job in Austin, everyone lost their minds. And I mean, with sympathy, this wasn't with criticism, there was enormous pressure to solve this case. Thousands of tips were coming in. I need to tell you what this case became because if you're from Texas or even if you're not, even if you just follow true crime at all, you already know the name, the yogurt shop murders. It's one of the most infamous unsolved cases in American history. And the name just gets to me. I said that it did. Frozen yogurt shop murders probably didn't fit on a newspaper title as good as just yogurt shop. And strip mall murders may sound even worse because the word strip people don't slow down to read sometimes and things could get misconstrued pretty quickly. Within hours, that sidewalk outside the yogurt shop started filling up with flowers and someone even spray painted love you with a heart in the door. It became a memorial for these girls. The high school student who painted that, they didn't want to be identified. All he said was that he was one of their friends and he wanted to somehow show how much those girls meant to everyone. The high school had lost three students in one night. A lot of girls cried, they were holding onto one another, but some of the boys reacted completely differently. The Austin-American Statesman reported seeing students walking around with bandaged hands because these young men had punched walls when they heard what happened. There was a lot of emotion. It was anger, shock, sadness and grief among them. On December 9th, more than 1,000 people gathered at St. Louis Catholic Church for a rosary individual. The next day, more than 1,500 people came to the joint funeral for Jennifer, Sarah, Eliza and Amy. Their blue denim FFA jackets were laid on top of their white caskets. Friends left flowers and pictures with cowboy hats, other graves. One of the firefighters who had responded that night left his own hat there. And Jennifer and Sarah's friends brought a boom box and they played Garth Brooks. The songs that those sisters loved, a family friend of the Harveston's John Bay said this about those four girls. You couldn't see one of them without seeing the rest. They loved working at that shop together. They played together. And in the end, they died together. I started tearing up when I thought about a mother losing not one but both of her children like that. But it's sad for all of these families. It's just something about that moment when I saw both of their pictures up on that mantle in their home. And thinking about just one night, their family was gone. Austin itself changed. This neighborhood, these people, they thought it was safe. It was a brightly lit yogurt shop where teenage girls worked after school, where families would bring their children. And then the search for these four girls killer became something the whole city participated in. In late February of 1992, a local sign company donated 12 billboards for three months. So that people driving around Austin would see those four school photographs above one. question. Who killed these girls? Underneath was information about a reward, which by then had reached at least $25,000. Their pictures also went on to the backs of Austin taxi cabs with a phrase, "We will not forget." That became something close to a citywide promise. They weren't going to let it go. Local musicians recorded a song with that title. There were buttons and t-shirts and mugs and banners made with those words, and they showed up all over this town. In June, six months after the quadruple homicide, that promise actually became a march. People carrying candles, and we will not forget banners, as they walked across Congress Avenue towards the Texas Capitol. They left flowers and letters in memory of the four girls. And that same month, Jennifer Analyza should have graduated from high school. And when their class walked across that stage on June six, seats were left empty for them. At Bernat Middle School, the yearbook was dedicated to Amy, with an entire memorial page of photographs and memories. The Ethathy project of those girls had spent months preparing. Didn't just tie with them. In April of 1992, at the Austin Travis County livestock show, Alisa's 254-pound pig, yes, was entered. He won the Grand Championship. At auction, he brought $6,000 in. Amy's hog placed fourth at its class. Sarah's lamb came sixth, and Jennifer's placed ninth. Alisa's pig was spared from the slaughter. It was actually given to the Thomas family. They eventually sent him to crow's nest farm, where he lived out his life around children who came through on schoolfield trips. So crayon champion for a girl who could never see that happen. I don't know why that's making me tear up. I just had a cry. When I do these cases, I usually have my editor take out any parts of me getting emotional because I know it makes some people feel uncomfortable, but they just didn't deserve any of this. And they just wanted the simple things. Barbara spent a lot of time in her daughter, Jennifer and Sarah's bedrooms, and she said one of the hardest things about it was suddenly just having so much emptiness in a house that had never been quiet. A few weeks after this, a reporter came to the house and they commented that Barbara wasn't crying. And she explained that she had reached a point where she didn't have any more tears left. I've never experienced anything so heartbreaking. I hope I never do. And I don't know if any of you have personally felt anything close to this. But if you have, I'm sorry. If you've gone through anything like this, but I think all of us can say that we've cried so much over something in our lives that we've just been cried out. So I understand where she meant. She also decided that she wasn't going to stay quiet. Instead, she was going to be vocal. She was going to be loud. She was going to be a consistent voice for her girls and no longer had one. She did TV interviews, news articles, anything that she could. And the other parents did the same. All that publicity got the attention of 48 hours. The TV show. And they devoted an entire episode of the case in March of 1992. They put it in front of a national audience. And the families also appeared on a show called Jeraldo. If you know, in the 90s, it was a very big. They took nearly every opportunity that anyone offered them. For Maria Thomas, the grief came what things people say when they don't know what to say. And there was one that really hurt her. And I feel bad that I kind of just said something similar. Because people would sometimes remind her that she was lucky to still have another daughter alive. Maria said that didn't make any sense. Having her younger daughter alive did not make losing her other daughter, losing Eliza feel any better. And she said you could not ask a parent which of their children they would be willing to lose. None. Eliza was still dead. They were all changed. These families' lives were changed forever. The family dynamic was changed. I really want to pull you back into this investigation. One that started two episodes ago in part one. Because I am victim focused. And in talking about all that I just did, I don't want you to forget the reason why we're even talking about these victims and what they went through. It's all because of one evil man. I don't even want to call them a man, a monster, the destruction, the sadness, the grief, and everything surrounding these poor families has been because of Robert Brashears. Now I know you haven't heard his name in a little while, but he did this. He is the common thread and his reign of terror is not over. Trust me, I want him to be a footnote. I want him to be forgotten. But when this crime occurred, just like with Megan and Sherry and Jenny, no one knew with him. No one knew about him. The timeline is all over the place. Because of the way these cases were solved, they were not in order in which he offended. There's one more victim that I haven't even told you about yet. His last victim. And we will get there. But the yogurt shop murders, there were years of investigation. And in 1999, four men confessed. Two of them had been teenagers at the time. But you already know, Robert did this. I could sit here with you for another two hours. I could go through all of the convoluted and chaotic and ultimately incorrect and untrue confessions and the way that the law went about it, it wasn't good. Not only about the way they went about suspecting these other men, but convicting two of them. Yes, false confessions. And I have spent more than enough talking about why it happens, how prevalent it is. I've done that in other videos. But just know it does happen. It happens a lot. And it has to do with coercion and with fear. And I'll tell you this. Here's where it started going wrong. And it started almost immediately. The FBI helped Austin investigators build a behavioral profile. And that profile said that the crime was likely committed by more than one offender. And it said that one of them took a dominant role. And it said investigators should be looking primarily at a white male in their late teens or early 20s. And it described the dominant offender as somebody who may not have even finished high school, who likely had discipline problems, poor grades, trouble with authority. Somebody who was angered easily and acted impulsively and possibly abused substances. Somebody whose work history was unstable, who probably had prior trouble with the law, and who had a history of terrible treatment of women. And police were clear at this time that this behavioral assessment was not a description of a known suspect. But look at what it told them to go looking for at least two boys in their teens or early 20s. And the man who actually did it was 33 years old. And he was acting all by himself. He had no connection to Austin. He had no connection to any of the four girls. And he had driven into that city in a car that he had stolen back in Georgia the week before. And less than 48 hours after the murders, he was 400 miles away. West, on the interstate, still driving. He was outside that behavioral profile altogether in every single direction. So Austin police went looking for a group of teenage boys. And that is exactly what they found. Because if you go looking for something hard enough and long enough, you're going to find it. Four teenage boys who happened to be at the same wall as the younger girls were the same day. 15-year-old Maurice Pierce, 17-year-old Forest Walburn, 16-year-old Michael Scott, and 17-year-old Robert Springsteen. Well that day, the 15-year-old Maurice Pierce, he had a revolver on him. But here's the thing. They found out it wasn't the murder weapon. It didn't match. The four boys who were under 18 of the time were questioned just days after the killings. And at first, they were let go. And nothing happened. But without any leads, all that time, a detective pulled their names out of a file seven years later. And just so you know, at that time, 50 people admitted to killing these girls. And the city just wanted answers. They were willing to just take someone's word, I guess. The file with the four boys was pulled. And they weren't boys anymore. They were now men in their 20s, being asked to account for a Friday night when they were just 15, 16, and 17 years old. What happened in those interview rooms and during those interrogations is why this case is talked about in the false confession world. The Innocence Project of Texas took it on. The American Bar Association has written about it. And it gets cited and coverage about coercive interrogation in the '90s. Things like keeping a teenager. in a small room for 18 hours. And in the most notorious moment of that interrogation, a detective named Robert Merrill brought a revolver into the room. The stated purpose was he was role-playing. He was trying to help the suspect remember what he might have done at night, E.I.X. They ignored requests for lawyers, they lied about evidence, they put the suspects against one another, they contaminated confessions, which is just a way of saying they were telling the suspects what they knew, which were things that only the killer would know. Some of them weren't even true. They even had incomplete recordings of those interviews. So some of this wasn't even on record, isn't that convenient? And the death penalty, they used it as leverage. And they targeted young and vulnerable suspects. Now, not all of these tactics are against the law, but used together they could be coercive. Maurice, who spent three years in jail, never confessed, and neither did forest. Never, but Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott did. And they were tried. And they were actually convicted. Think about that. Robert Springsteen was sentenced to death, but both men were innocent. And they recanted their confession, saying that they had been pressured by law enforcement into making them. There was actually no physical evidence linking any of those four men to the crime scene. None. They were actually convicted on their confessions. And nothing else. So two men went to prison for the murders of Jennifer, Sarah Eliza and Amy, and one of them onto death row. And the man who had actually done this was in Arkansas. He was taking his daughter camping. And these two innocent men were going to be sitting in jail for a long time, about 10 years actually. And stay with me. Please. Because I almost made this into a four-part series in order to get all the details out, but I have condensed them. I'm giving you the most important parts. By 2008, DNA technology had moved on significantly from where it had been in 1991, and where it was during the trials. Something that existed now called YSTR testing, which looks specifically for male DNA. And the most important part is that it can find it, even when it's mixed with a large amount of female DNA. And that matters when you have a case with four female victims. DNA evidence from the crime scene and the autopsy was retested. And they got a male DNA profile. One unknown male profile at the scene. Just one. And it was not Robert Springsteen or Michael Scott. So both of those convictions were overturned. Both men were eventually released. The following year in 2009, but can you even imagine? The charges were dropped, but for years afterward, those men lived as people who were just let out on a technicality. In the minds of everyone who didn't follow this case closely, they still thought they had done it. But now, Austin had male DNA, a profile belonging to a man that they just could not name. Just like back in Megan and Sherry's case in Jenny's cases. And these 14 families had watched those two men be convicted and what happened to their daughters. And then they watched those convictions fall apart. And they were now back to not knowing who had done this. And that's where the case sat. For another 17 years, it's unbelievable. And just to quickly refresh your memory on Sherry, Megan, and Jenny from parts one and two, Jenny Zitricki was found in her bathtub. And that was a year before the yogurt shop murders in 1990. And Megan and Sherry were killed in 1998. It wasn't until 2006 that Missouri retested and got a full profile from Megan Swabs. They entered it into Cotis. And that is when they hit Jenny Swabs from her unsolved case in Greenville, South Carolina. Two unsolved cases became one big unsolved case. But there was still no name. It wasn't until May of 2017, when Memphis detectives tested that 21-year-old kid from 1997 and that attack on that survivor that I called Laura. It matched both of the other cases. So now there were three states and still no name. One year later in 2018, C.C. Moore, from Parabond Nanolabs, builds out a genetic genealogy tree and Robert Prashier's is finally named. His body is exhumed because he took his own life. And it's taken out of the grave on September 27th and announced as Jenny, Sherry, and Megan's killer on October 5th of 2018. I just wanted you to remember that whole thing, but that whole time that the yogurt shop murders was being investigated, there was no connection made to Robert or to the other cases. And that is why the story is so captivating and frustrating. And ultimately a story of perseverance and dedication to everyone that was involved. Austin had no idea that any of those other investigations were happening, why would they? Nothing about a farmhouse in Missouri or a random apartment complex in South Carolina looked anything like four teenage girls in a frozen yogurt shop. The name was sitting in a South Carolina database seven years before anyone in Texas asked the right question. But we're closing in, so keep watching. In 2022, the yogurt shop case landed on the desk of a detective named Dan Jackson in the Austin Police Department's cold case unit, 31 years old at that point, and 33 boxes of evidence, 14-age girls, four men whose lives had been wrecked by false confessions and convictions that were completely unfair and a city that had still never been told what the killer was. And Jackson did something at the start of his review of the case that is the single most important decision anyone has made. He decided not to begin with the confessions. He said he never even listened to them, never read the transcripts. The very first time he actually heard them was watching an HBO documentary about the case. Think about what that means. The confessions had dominated this specific part of the case for over 20 years. They were the reason that those two men went to prison. They were the thing that everyone kept arguing about. And there was finally a detective that was going to solve this case by simply setting them aside and actually working what mattered, the physical evidence. So he went back through things that had already been examined many times over, looking for what could still be tested and tested differently now. And one of those things was a 380 shell casing recovered from that floor drain. Remember that that casing had been run through ballistic databases before more than once actually. And it never produced a match. But by 2025, yes, just last year, the technology had improved considerably. Let me briefly explain something to you. There is something called niben. This is the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. And so we have comparing shell casings from different crimes. It's kind of like when you compare fingerprints or DNA from different crimes. When a semi-automatic gun is fired, different parts inside the firearm leave tiny marks on the spent casings as it cycles through. Those microscopic impressions can be photographed and compared against casings recovered in other cases, anywhere in the country. A hit doesn't tell you who pulled the trigger, but it tells you when two crimes involved the same firearm. So in June of 2025, Jackson had that casing resubmitted. And one month later, he got a phone call while he was on vacation. And Jackson asked him whether this was the kind of news where he needed to sit down and also have a drink. And it was more than 30 years. And that 380 casing from the frozen yogurt shop finally had a hit. They found a connected case. And that case was more than 900 miles away in Lexington, Kentucky. And we have not talked about Kentucky yet. And that's because I told you, there was one more victim. One more person you have not heard about yet. And her name is Linda. So let me tell you better. It was seven months after Sherry and Megan were killed. And six years after the yogurt shop murders. Linda Rutledge was 43 years old. The Nixon Hearing Aid Center on Malibu Drive in Lexington belonged to her parents. And sometimes Linda would use it after it was closed after hours to just quickly change from her work clothes to her going out clothes when she went to meet friends. On the night of November 6 of 1998, that's what she was doing. Simply getting ready for a night out. Something that she had done many other times. But this time, she never made it to her friends. Early the following morning, firefighters were called to a fire at that business. When they put it out, they found Linda dead towards the back of the building. She had been slowly assaulted and shot multiple times with a 380. And a spent 380 casing was recovered from that scene. her mother could not believe it was true because everyone loved her. Linda. Her mom was actually quoted saying she hoped it wasn't someone that she knew because she couldn't even fathom. Someone that knew her daughter would ever want to hurt her. She spent 27 years hoping that her daughter had been killed by a stranger and she was right. When examiners compared the Austin casing and the one from Kentucky, they determined they've been fired from the same firearm. And for Jackson, the parallels were impossible to ignore. In both of these cases, the victims were found towards the back of the business. In both cases, the killer set a fire before he left and both of them involved as sexually motivated crime. And now ballistics said the same 380 caliber weapon had been used in Austin in 1991 and in Lexington in 1998. But that created a brand new mystery because there was no connection between Austin and Lexington that anyone could find. No linked person in the two cities. Nothing in Linda's life that connected her in any way to Jennifer Sarah Eliza or Amy. And it was seven years apart, 900 miles apart with one gun. Now the Kentucky case said something else or served biological evidence from Linda's swabs. But the DNA and these old cases came with the problem. And this is a thing that explains why Austin sat for 17 years while these other states were solving their cases. Austin did not have a full DNA profile in their case. What Austin had was a Y-S-T-R. Now that's useful when you're trying to pull male DNA out of evidence that contains a much larger amount of female DNA, which was exactly the situation in the case with four female victims. But it has a limitation. The Y chromosome passes down from father to son essentially unchanged. So a man, his father, his brothers and his sons can all share the same Y-S-T-R profile, which means a Y-S-T-R match can point you at a male family line. But it cannot tell you that this specific DNA came from one specific man. And there was a second problem on top of that. There was no national code style system that Jackson could search that could compare his Y-S-T-R profile against every other Y-S-T-R profile the labs had across the country. So Austin had a family line, not a person, and they had nowhere to look it up. So in August of 2025, Dan Jackson did something that I think is genuinely very clever and also sort of astonishing and how basic it is. Since there was no national database that he could search, he asked the laboratories themselves. He actually sent out a request to crime labs around the United States that actually maintained Y-S-T-R profiles. And he asked them to manually compare the unknown male profile from the yogurt shop murders against whatever they had in their own records by hand. Lab by lab and several labs actually came back with partial similarities, 16 of the 27 markers being compared, 17 of the 27. But one state was different. Jenny Swab and South Carolina came back with all 27. It was a perfect match. And there was a moment in Jackson's first conversation with South Carolina investigators that was just chilling. Before that detective knew anything about the Austin crime scene, before Jackson had described it to him, he asked him one question. He asked whether the girls had been bound with their own clothing. And they had. Jackson said it was at that point that he started to believe they might be finally looking at the right man. On August 22nd, the formal report came through and South Carolina had a name attached to it. Robert Eugen brochures, nobody in Austin had known that 600 miles away. Four other agencies had spent the same decades chasing the same man that they knew was dead. They had exhumed him all of that in Austin never had a connection. So they went back to the evidence one more time. And among the items they retested were Amy's fingernail clippings, which had been preserved since her autopsy back in 1991. Modern testing recovered enough DNA from underneath Amy's fingernails to compare directly against Robert Rashier's known DNA sample, not a family line, his DNA. And it was a perfect match. The youngest girl in that shop fought hard enough to take part of him with her. And 34 years later, that's what named him. And her mother Pam has said from the very beginning that she told investigators to check Amy's fingernails because she knew her daughter and she knew she would fight. And she was right. And because she did fight, I'm able to sit here right now and tell you for a fact, Robert Rashier's killed those innocent girls and those other innocent victims. Here's where things you heard in part two kind of connect to what was happening elsewhere. Once Robert Rashier's emerged as her suspect, Jackson went back through his history looking for where he had been in December of 1991. And what he found was startling. On December 8th of 1991, less than 48 hours after Jennifer Sarah Eliza and Amy were murdered, Robert Rashier's was stopped. While he was traveling west on Interstate 10 in Texas, an agent was suspicious during a traffic stop and he checked the vehicle. And I told you about this in the last episode. It had been reported stolen in Georgia on November 29th. And Rashier's was carrying a 380 caliber AMT backup semi-automatic pistol. I know that's a long name, but put it together. He stole a car in Georgia at the end of November. He was in Texas immediately afterward murdering four girls in Austin and he was driving west away. And on him, he had the same model of weapon that investigators believed had been used inside that yogurt shop. United States border patrol had Robert Rashier's in custody with that gun, two days after he used it and absolutely no one had any reason to know what they were holding on to. He was released on bond five days later. You also heard about this in part two, but I'm just connecting it. But at the time, no connection between him and any of the four girls was made. He was just passing through and four teenagers happened to be at a shop, which brings me to a tip that came in on that same day, December 8th, 1991. A man named Mr. Croft called Austin investigators. Croft worked for long horn security and he had been inside the I can't believe it's yogurt shop on the night of the murders. He estimated that it was probably some time around quarter past 10, so this would have been when Jennifer brought the two younger girls back into the shop from the mall. Croft remembered a man, a white man in his 20s, roughly five foot nine, medium build, behaving kind of strangely when Croft came in. He said there was a couple sitting in one of the booths and another customer ordering from the girls. Eliza was at the register and then he said this man came out of nowhere and noticed Croft's vehicle outside and asked him whether he was a police officer. It's kind of interesting, right? Croft told him that he worked in security. When one of the girls asked the man what he wanted, he hesitated. He was just standing there and then finally he ordered just a cold drink and a yogurt shop, a frozen yogurt shop, he just all had a drink and after he paid, he then asked Eliza where the restroom was. He took his drink, he walked towards the back of that store and Croft said he never saw him come back out. But the thing is, something about that whole exchange was bother some to him and it bothered him enough that he stayed there about another 15 minutes after he was done, just talking to Eliza because he wanted to see whether that man was going to come out of that bathroom. But eventually his frozen yogurt started melting and he left. Robert was potentially and probably hiding in that bathroom. Croft drove to Houston for football game that night and when he got back to Austin and he heard what happened he called the police. Investigators cannot say for sure that the man Croft saw was Robert for years. Jackson has been very clear about that. The description doesn't fit perfectly. Croft described a man in his 20s and for sure was 33. But I'm going to tell you, I mean people get ages wrong all the time and Robert wore disguises. We also know that Robert used different stories and different rules to get access to people over and over state after state. A missing purse, a friend he was looking for, asking for directions, but that tip raised the possibility that no one could do anything with for 34 years. That's somebody walked towards that restroom that night and never came back out. That's somebody stayed in the back and found a way to leave through the rear entrance because remember there was a key that was still in that front door and it was locked. Exactly how it should have been at that stage of closing. Backdoor was open. There was no forced entry anywhere in that building. He hadn't broken in. He was already inside at closing, and that to me is eerie, 'cause I believe it was him. I know that investigators have to say what they need to say. But after following everything in this case, I think you will agree that sounds exactly like something this monster would do. Only a few months later, in February of 1992, Grishiers was arrested again in Georgia, another stolen vehicle. And this one taken from Tyler Texas. Police found him with a scanner, a false police badge, a wig, and all kinds of burglary tools and other firearm. He got a five-year federal sentence. So if you're wondering why his crime sprees stopped from 1991 to 1997, that's why. And the 380 AMT backup pistol that he'd been carrying when he left Texas, it was actually turned over to his father. And right when Grishiers got out of prison in 1997, he got that gun back and he kept it. And he had that weapon until he took his own life in that motel room when he thought the cops were on him for the murders, when really they had no idea. They were only there for a stolen car. Robert Grishiers used that 380 caliber on himself. And when investigators working the yogurt shop case trace that weapon decades later, they found that its serial number matched. Jackson had always wondered whether that gun carried some kind of significance for him, whether it was like a trophy or something. But I want to put all of this in one place now because it is getting everywhere. There's all kinds of pieces of investigation. And I don't think you can really feel the size of everything until you see all of it at once. 14 years, five states, and a man whose name was in none of it. Let me give you the actual timeline of the crimes that we know this month are committed. November 1985, Fort Pierce, Florida, Michelle Wilkerson, 25 years old, gets into a brown pickup truck with a man who says his name is Gary. He drives her to a citrus grove, pulls out a gun, and when she refuses his advances, he shoots her twice at close range in the head and the neck. She gets out and she runs. He comes after her and she pulls herself into a colvert that's only 18 inches wide, full of mud and water and crawls through it until he's not able to find her. And she survives. She gives police a detailed description of the man and his truck, and they ultimately find his truck stuck in the mud at the beach a couple hours later, and they arrest him. He's convicted, and he sentenced to 12 years in prison, and he serves about three and a half, and he walks out in May of 1989. Next, April, 1990, Greenville, South Carolina, 11 months later, Genevieve Citrici, Jenny, 28 years old, attacked in her bed while she sleeps, assaulted and strangled with her own pantyhose. She was dragged 20 feet into her bathroom, arranged in the tub with the water running right between her legs. Then he staged robbery, had a fake motive that he wrote on the mirror, wiped down every surface, not apartment and left. He worked maintenance at her complex. He lived less than a mile away. Then December 6th of 1991, Austin, Texas, 18 months after that, Jennifer, Eliza, Sarah, and Amy, bound with her own clothing, shot in the head, the shop set on fire. Two days later, Border Patrol stops him on the interstate with a stolen car and a gun, and he'll let him go on bond. But in February of 1992, he's arrested in Georgia with another stolen truck, a police scanner, fake ID, a wig, and burglary jewels. He gets a five year federal sentence. And that sentence is the only reason that there is a five year gap in this list. He would have gone on to hurt or kill so many more women if he had not been locked up. February of 1997, he gets out and within just a month on March 11th, Memphis, Tennessee, he knocked on that door with a story about his wife's missing purse, and he pushes them inside with a gun. Five people, he binds four of them with duct tape that he brought with him, and he uses the gloves that he brought, he cuts the phone lines, and he sold it the 14 year old that I was calling Laura. Nobody dies, all five of them survive. And that girl agrees to have an examination done and a swab taken after the worst night of her life, because someone tells her it might help. And that is going to matter more than anyone in that room could have imagined. A year later, March 28th of 1998, Portageville, Missouri, Sherry, Sherry, 38 years old, and her 12 year old daughter, Megan, her outside their house, when he sees them, he targeted Megan, works his way into the house, uses socks in their own home to put down their throat, bound Megan with a cord that he brought with him, shot her and her mother with a 22 caliber weapon, about 30 minutes start to finish, and he was gone. The same night, two and a half hours later, in Dyerisburg, Tennessee, 40 miles away, he pulls up outside a 25 year old mother's house, who I have called Stephanie in part one. And he has a story about looking for a friend, and she sees his gun. She grabs the barrel, she fights him in her own front yard, while her kids are there. She tells him to go inside, she shoves him down, gets into the house, slams the door, shut, and he shoots her through the door. But she survives, and she gives not only description, but it produces a composite sketch that's used for the next 20 years, I mean, her memory, for what he looked like was immaculate. Then on November 6th of 1998, Lexington, Kentucky, Linda Rutledge, 43 years old, is killed in her family's business. The night before, she was due to open it. She was assaulted, shot multiple times in the head, and the building was set on fire. Two months later, on January 13th of 1999, in Kennet, Missouri, a police officer notices a car parked outside of a Super 8 motel, and he runs the plate. Robert Prashiers is under the bed with a gun. Four hours later, he ends his own life. He dies six days after that, at 40 years old, over a stolen car. That's eight people murdered, Jenny, Jennifer, Sarah, Eliza, Amy, Sherry, Megan, and Linda, and three women who lived. Michelle, the girl in Memphis, and the mother in Dyersburg, Tennessee. The guns, two weapons, they run through 14 years, a 22 and a 380 AMT backup. Austin in 1991, Portageville in Dyersburg in 1998, and finally, when he used it on himself in 1999, he kept it. He kept that 38 through a five-year prison term, left it with his father, and collected it right when he got out. The gaps are gaps. Look at where the empty years are. 1986 to 1989, he's in a Florida prison. 1992 to 1997, he's in a Georgia prison. Every single time this man was locked up, the killings stopped. Every single time he was released, they started within a year, 11 months after Florida, one month after Georgia, and the reason nobody could see it, is that there was no pattern to see. A woman asleep in her bed at two o'clock in the morning, four girls at a frozen yogurt shop at closing time, a house full of women and children, one random afternoon, a mother and a daughter in a farmhouse at tenor time, a woman alone in her family's business after hours, different states, different decades, different times of the day, different weapons used, different types of victims in different ways inside. He adapted to whatever was in front of him. He used what was in the room. He used their own clothing, socks from a drawer, paper products off of a shelf, a scoop from behind a counter, which is exactly why 30 years of comparing crimes to crimes never worked. It was nothing to really compare. Only the science caught him. DNA, rifling marks, and the microscopic impressions of firing pin leaves on a shell casing, and the near misses will keep you up at night, because three separate agencies had Robert Prasheer's in their hands. They had his DNA. None of them had any idea. Robert Prasheer's spent 14 years being invisible, and every time he was finally seen, it was a woman or a girl who unveiled him. Let me bring you to the present and to Amy's fingernails. Once the DNA confirmed it, investigators still had the hardest part of everything in front of them. Somebody had to tell the families of those four girls, those teenage girls, that it lost their lives so long ago, that they found their killer. Dan Jackson drove from Austin, and he started with Amy's parents, Bob and Pam. And Pam remembers feeling numb while she listened to what she was finally learning. And Jackson looked at Bob and said, "I have good news. I know who killed your daughter." Each family had a different reaction. Bob had always believed it had been a robbery that spiraled out of control. Teenagers that panicked, a situation that just got away from them, and for years, that is what he was able to imagine. Learning that investigators believed grow. own man walked into that shop, intending to do exactly what he did, was so much harder for that father to sit with. Pam was like, well, at least to kill her is already dead. But it's hard to imagine the why. Eliza, sister Sonora, described not wanting to spend too much time trying to understand evil. It doesn't change what happened. And Jennifer and Sarah's mom, Barbara, she reacted differently after the initial shock wore off. She was just grateful to have an answer. Because she knows there are so many families out there, families of murdered loved ones that never get that. Now she does sometimes wonder what happened in Robert Bashar's life that made him capable of these things, whether something was done to him or whether at some point he simply stopped caring about other people at all. But we know he did care about some people. And I think that's the hardest part for me personally. You can give me your thoughts below as well. How does he separate that? His own daughter Deborah said it to, how could this man who has a wife and child go around killing other people's wives and children? It doesn't make sense. On February 19th of 2026, the four teenagers who are now grown men, Michael Scott, Robert Springfield, Forest, Melbourne, and Maurice Pierce, they were declared innocent by a Texas court. Dan Jackson testified at that hearing with the evidence that showed Robert Bashar's committed the crime alone. And in May of 2026, a few months ago, the city of Austin agreed to pay $35 million to the three surviving men and to Maurice Pierce's family since he had already unfortunately and sadly died. That is the largest payout in that city's history. The city manager called it the closing of a final chapter of a devastating story. There were so many victims beyond those who Robert killed the families who suffered the loss and even his own daughter Deborah who had to reconsider her entire childhood. She still loved her father, not the killer, the father that she knew, but how real was the face he put on for her? How do you reconcile it all? As an adult, Deborah has reached out to the families affected by her father's crimes. Families in South Carolina and Austin, and she knows she isn't responsible for anything he did. She wanted them to know somebody connected him understood what he caused. But here's another question. How many more are there? Nobody can answer that yet. Today, the confirmed number is eight. But investigators have openly said they don't believe it stopped there and I don't either. There are years in this man's life that no one can account for. He was discharged from the Navy in December of 1976 at 18. The first crime anyone can attach him to was what I told you November of 1985 when he shot Michelle in Florida. That's nine years. Nine years of bar tending in Alabama, oil, rigs, and Louisiana, time in Arkansas, in Texas, in New Orleans, a daughter born that he walked away from that I told you about once because she never became significant because he didn't think she was. She wasn't in his life. In November of 1980, 22 years old, he published his own death and obituary in two different newspapers in two different states. He announced his own death in print 19 years before he actually died. Why? Seems kind of sketchy, doesn't it? Plenty of people in law enforcement do not believe that Michelle was first. Look at what he did to her. He picked up a stranger. He drove her to somewhere isolated, shot her twice in the head in the neck, a close range, and then went to get rid of the weapon. That does not seem like a man doing something for the very first time. That's already escalation. There's another gap to he walked out of a Florida prison in May of 1989 and Jenny was murdered in April of 1990. That's 11 months during which he moved from Alabama to Georgia to South Carolina and got himself a job at Hidden Lake apartment complex. Jenny is his first known murder victim. And there's every possibility that there was somebody before her. Investigators are actually looking at that right now. They're reviewing unsolved cases in the places that he was known to travel as far north as Virginia where he was born. C.C. Moore, the genetic genealogist who put his name on that DNA in the first place, has worked on an enormous number of serial offender cases. And she said that Robert Prashiers is the one that stayed with her. The level of violence made her believe that his story probably wasn't finished. So she keeps looking in the places that she knows he lived and he traveled. And she said she wants to hear from people who knew him because it's just a small piece of information about where he was in a particular month, could hand another police department the answer to a case that they haven't even opened for 30 years. Nearly 34 years later, Jennifer Sarah, Eliza and Amy are still memorialized together in Austin. There's a plaque with all four of their names on it standing in a parking lot near where that yogurt shop used to be. In September of 2025, when police finally said outlawed the name of the man who killed them, fresh flowers appeared around it again. And their families have their own ways of keeping them close. And I would ask you to keep all of their names in your mind. Sherry and Megan Sherer, Jenny Zatriski, Jennifer and Sarah Arbisid, Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, and Linda Rullich. I want to thank you so much for being here for this series and for their stories. And I'm so sorry to all of their families. I will see you in my very next video. Bye.