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Nearly 34 years after his 13-year-old sister died during the 1991 Austin, Texas, yogurt shop massacre, Shawn Ayers and his wife, Angie, have launched a national cold case effort while still seeking answers about the attack and whether an accomplice is out there.
Angie, along with Shawn, whose sister Amy was among four girls killed in the attack, have joined former prosecutors Mindy Montford and Anne Marie Schubert to establish the National Cold Case Center.
The decades-long search for answers in Amy’s case inspired the couple to help establish the nonprofit, which helps to fund unsolved homicide investigations, train investigators and support victims’ families.
Angie and Shawn Ayers have launched a national cold case effort while still seeking answers about the yogurt shop murders in Austin, Texas, where Shawn’s sister was one of four victims. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
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“Due to what we’ve gone through and seen, not only from our own experience, but from listening to other families struggle throughout this process,” Angie told Digital. “Years ago, we had wanted to start a nonprofit.”
Amy Ayers was one of four victims of the yogurt shop murders in Austin, Texas. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
The Austin yogurt shop murders
Amy, Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas, both 17, and Jennifer’s sister, Sarah Harbison, 15, died in the attack at the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop on West Anderson Lane on Dec. 6, 1991.
Photos of the “Yogurt Shop Murders” victims. (FOX 7 Austin)
On the night of the killings, Jennifer and Eliza were working the closing shift, while Sarah and Amy waited for them to finish so the four could head to a sleepover.
Shortly before midnight, authorities received a report of a fire at the shop. The blaze and water from the sprinklers altered the crime scene and diluted evidence, according to FBI files.
Inside, police discovered Sarah, Eliza and Jennifer stacked together in the shop’s storage room. They were stripped, gagged and bound with their own undergarments, and then shot in the back of the head with .22-caliber bullets.
Investigators found Amy in a separate area with a ligature around her neck and burns covering up to 30% of her body, according to court documents.
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Tributes lay on a memorial Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, for four teenage girls who were killed in a yogurt shop in 1991 in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Paul J. Weber)
FBI records described two gunshot wounds: an initial .22-caliber shot that missed Amy’s brain and a second shot from a .380-caliber pistol through her cheek and jawline.
Investigators recovered a .380 cartridge casing in a floor drain. During the autopsy, officials recovered four .22-caliber bullets from the bodies.
Killer identified
The search for answers stretched across decades, combined with false confessions, arrests, convictions and appeals before DNA and ballistics evidence identified serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers in September 2025.
Brashers fatally shot himself during a January 1999 police standoff in Missouri, leaving the families no chance to confront him at a murder trial.
Robert Eugene Brashers was identified in September 2025 as the killer in the yogurt shop murders. (Bryan Preston/ Digital)
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Authorities had previously connected him to other violent crimes, including killings in South Carolina and Missouri.
According to Austin police, Brashers used the same .380-caliber handgun in the yogurt shop murders to kill himself during the Missouri standoff.
For the Ayers family, identifying Brashers didn’t answer whether someone else participated in the yogurt shop killings. Angie questioned whether another perpetrator may have been involved, since two weapons were used during the attacks.
“I may be incorrect, but I don’t think that I am,” Angie told Digital. “There’s never been an instance where he [Brashers] used both of those guns in his other cases.”
Robert Brashers’ mugshot. (Missouri State Highway Patrol)
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“There has been absolutely no definite answer on whether or not he was by himself, or had an accomplice.
“So, to us, we still don’t have all the answers, and knowing that this case is still ongoing, I don’t think anyone can say that they know exactly what happened because we can’t ask.”
Wrongful convictions
Years before identifying Brashers, Austin investigators focused on four local teens: Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce and Forrest Welborn.
Austin police arrested all four in 1999. Springsteen and Scott confessed during police questioning but recanted before trial, saying investigators pressured them into giving false statements.
Flowers and candles mark the site where Eliza Thomas, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers lost their lives. (Bryan Preston/ Digital)
Travis County juries convicted Springsteen of capital murder in 2001 and Scott in 2002. Springsteen received a death sentence, while Scott received life in prison.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Springsteen’s conviction in 2006 and Scott’s in 2007.
DNA testing failed to match any of the men to the crime scene. A judge released Springsteen and Scott in June 2009, and prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges that October.
Pierce proclaimed innocence but implicated Welborn. In 1991, he wore a police wire and tried to coax Welborn into confessing. An Austin police officer reported that Welborn denied any involvement. Welborn later passed a polygraph test.
Welborn never went to trial. When two grand juries failed to indict him, authorities dropped the case against him in 2000.
Decades later, the victims’ names remain etched in memory. (Bryan Preston/ Digital)
By then, he had spent months behind bars.
“I’m still really upset and mad at them. If they didn’t confess to something they didn’t do, we wouldn’t be here right now doing this today,” Welborn told Texas Monthly.
Austin police officers arrested Pierce in 1999 on capital murder charges. Prosecutors dismissed Pierce’s charges in 2003, citing insufficient evidence, after he spent more than three years in jail.
In 2010, an Austin police officer fatally shot Pierce in 2010 following a traffic stop. Pierce fled the scene on foot and stabbed an officer in the neck with a knife, prompting authorities to open fire.
Settlement
After investigators linked Brashers to the killings, Travis County Judge Dayna Blazey declared the four men innocent on Feb. 19, 2026. Months later, the Austin City Council approved a $35 million settlement covering the three surviving men and Pierce’s family.
Welborn initially rejected the city’s apology, saying that he lost an auto-repair business while incarcerated and endured years of public ostracism.
“Their apology is not accepted,” he told Texas Monthly. “Their apology means nothing to me.”
Forrest Welborn, left, and his attorney Steve Goodson listen to the news conference after Welborn was exonerated at a hearing for four men wrongfully accused in the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center in Austin on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. Welborn, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen and Maurice Pierce, who is deceased, were declared actually innocent during the hearing. (Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
Welborn later said “it felt good” to have closure, although he wanted some of the detectives who worked the case “to go do some prison time.”
None of the detectives have faced criminal charges in the case, Texas Monthly reported.
The Ayers couple said neither they nor the men or their relatives have contacted the other side.
“We haven’t reached out and they have not reached out,” Angie said.
Welborn could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Austin Police Department and Travis County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment by publication.
Helping other families
Their experience seeking answers in Amy’s case, and hearing other families describe similar struggles, prompted Shawn and Angie to consider starting a nonprofit years ago.
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“The frustrating part is being told no, but yet someone somewhere leaks the information and you’re the last one to know when you should have been first and that is still happening today,” Shawn told Digital, recalling his sister’s case.
Shawn and Angie Ayers are pictured with his parents, Bob and Pam. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
Their partnership with Montford began in 2017, when they met with prosecutors about the yogurt shop killings. Montford, a Travis County assistant district attorney at the time, promised to stay with them.
“She made it a point to tell us that she was going to stick with us no matter what until the end,” Angie said.
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Montford then connected with Schubert, a former California prosecutor who helped bring the Golden State Killer to justice. The Ayers couple met Schubert at a 2023 cold case conference in Marble Falls, Texas, where the idea for the nonprofit took shape.
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Now, they want to help other families find that kind of support.
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“It is up and running now… to provide funding and training for law enforcement, to have tools that they need to investigate cold cases, to be able to collect and report accurate data on unsolved cases, and connect law enforcement agencies around the world, and to have peer to peer family support and communication,” Angie added.
Amy Ayers is pictured in an undated photograph. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
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“Right now, funding is a, for us is a big thing, so we can get the first cases up and running.”
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Shawn said they have spread awareness by attending cold case conferences in several states, including California, Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina.
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For the couple, the work extends beyond families still waiting for answers. Solving those cases could also identify killers who remain free.
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“There could be a killer living, right next to somebody,” Shawn said. “You can walk right past them and never know.”
