It was a Friday night in 1991 Austin, Texas. Four girls are inside the local yogurt shop, two sisters and their two friends. The older girls, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, 17, were employees scheduled for a closing shift at the shop.The younger girls, Sarah Harbison, 15, and Amy Ayers, 13, were waiting for a ride home with the others.
Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Amy Ayers and Eliza Thomas
What was to happen next is described as “pure, unadulterated evil,” by a former KVUE Austin reporter who covered the case at the time.
All four young girls were forced to enter the back storage room by an unknown party. They were also forced to undress and then shot. Then, the party seemed to have poured lighter fluid all over the bodies and the store. The party set the yogurt shop ablaze.
Around 11:45 p.m., a policeman on patrol noticed the smoke and dispatched a fire squad to extinguish the fire. Because of how intense the fire was, vital evidence was unfortunately destroyed.
The bodies of the girls, however, were discovered in the back room. Sadly, they were burned beyond recognition. Money was also missing from the register and two guns were said to have been used due to the two different kinds of bullets found. Investigators were also able to figure out the perpetrator’s sex, due to the presence of Y chromosome found using a rape kit.
As a consequence of the destruction of data, no arrests could be made until 1999. It was reported the police had up to 342 suspects and six written confessions in consideration.
The prime suspects were revealed to be four young men: Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn and Maurice Pierce. Pierce was investigated because he owned a pistol of the same caliber as the one used to murder the girls. Pierce then confessed Welborn had borrowed his gun and had killed them. Welborn was then investigated, and stated the four of them, including Springsteen and Scott, had taken a stolen car to San Antonio on the night of the incident.
Scott and Springsteen were interviewed later, and ended up signing written confessions in which they both implicated each other.
In 2000, the next year, the charges against Welborn were dropped due to juries refusing to indict him. The charges against Pierce were later dropped in 2003 due to his handgun failing to be linked to the crime scene.
In 2001 and 2002, both Scott and Springsteen went on trial for capital murder. Scott was sentenced to death. Springsteen was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2009, however, their convictions were overturned. Their trials had violated both of their sixth amendments, ruling their written confessions were improperly used.
The video interrogations were also released which showed the interrogators coercing Scott and Springsteen into confessing. Also, while awaiting retrial, DNA evidence had been found on one of the girls, which did not match either suspect. The charges were then officially dropped.
One terrifying piece of evidence, which is based upon multiple eyewitness reports, recounts a pair of men seen in the shop who were in there until closing time. They were the last people in the store seen with the girls. They remain unidentified.
To this day, the case remains unsolved. The killer or killers are still unknown, with no new evidence in over a decade. A plaque where the yogurt shop once was still stands to this day, where people leave gifts and coins for the innocent girls whose lives were stolen there.
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