How Police Finally Cracked The Austin Yogurt Shop Murder Case After Three Decades With Incredible DNA Link

For more than three decades, the Austin yogurt shop murders haunted both investigatorsand the community, as no conclusive suspect was ever identified and the case remained unsolved.

That long-standing uncertainty recently came to an end when authorities linked the crime scene to Robert Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999 as Missouri police attempted to arrest him for other offenses.

Authorities have also revealed how they finally brought closure to the infamous case, citing how their most compelling evidence was DNA found under one of the victim's fingers that matched the suspect.

In December 1991, the city of Austin was shocked by the quadruple homicide of four young victims.

Their killer had seemingly tried to cover his tracks by setting the yogurt shop ablaze, where their bodies were left.

While four men were later accused of the murders and some even convicted, all four were eventually exonerated within a decade of the incident, leaving the killer's identity a lingering mystery.

However, when police cold case investigators recently resubmitted ballistics evidence from the crime scene into a federal database, they received a match to a 1998 cold case in Kentucky within 24 hours, which mirrored the incident in Austin.

The investigators' curiosity was further piqued when they realized that the Kentucky crime scene mirrored what had happened to the Austin victims.

Viewing this as a breakthrough after years of dead ends, they reached out to crime labs across the country for help.

One of them, using a single strand of DNA found under one of the victims, Amy Ayers, was able to identify a match.

The individual turned out to be a man named Robert Eugene Brashers, who had had several run-ins with the police.

With the DNA match confirmed, it remained to be proven that Brashers could have committed the crime at the time it occurred.

At first, authorities discovered that he neither lived nor appeared to have ever worked in Austin. However, by tracing his previous encounters with law enforcement, they uncovered that he had been linked to a stolen car just weeks before the yogurt shop murders.

Investigators later determined that Brashers may have been traveling through Texas on his way to Arizona and had briefly stopped in Austin, during which time he committed the murders.

Despite these revelations, there will be no apprehension of Brashers, as he died by suicide in 1999. He reportedly shot himself as police closed in on him for other crimes he had committed.

In the wake of the breakthrough, Amy's father expressed his gratitude that his daughter's DNA helped bring closure to the case, according to the American Statesman.

"I have never been so proud of my daughter in all of my life," said Bob Ayers, who also noted that he was told Amy might have gotten the DNA under her fingernails while tussling with her killer.

"Our whole family knew there was something about Amy that would help solve this," he added.

Meanwhile, Amy's mother, Pam, expressed mixed emotions about the revelations, adding that she never imagined her daughter and the other victims would be killed by a serial killer.

"I can't say I am happy," she revealed. "I'm not there. I am kind of numb. Knowing it is a serial killer. That is hard for me to process."

In a press conference on Monday, Mayor Kirk Watson reflected on the findings and their impact on the city.

"This day has been a long time coming," he said during the start of the conference, per NewsNation. "Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I said this city lost its innocence. Now, we have some closure."

In his final remarks, Watson expressed gratitude to the victims' parents for their patience throughout the years despite the many false hopes. He went on to thank the investigative team for their persistence in ensuring the city and the victims' families get closure.

"I hope we can turn a page, a final page, on a dark chapter in Austin's history," Watson concluded. "The Yogurt Shop Murders will always be a part of Austin's history."