One of America’s most haunting cold cases has finally been solved.
More than three decades after four teenage girls were bound, shot and killed inside a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, investigators have identified the man responsible.
The case captured fresh attention when HBO Max docuseries The Yogurt Shop Murders began streaming in August 2025, revisiting the tragedy and the devastating toll it took on the victims’ families.
Then, after the series aired new evidence came to light, and Austin Police Department convened a press conference to announce a major break in the 34-year-old case.
Now, a fifth and final episode — titled “The End of Wondering” — is set to wrap the story up entirely.
What happened on the night of the Yogurt Shop Murders?
On December 6, 1991, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, both 17, were working the late shift at the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop in North Austin as closing time approached.
When firefighters arrived at what they believed was a routine shop fire, they discovered the four girls’ remains in a storage room — stacked on top of one another, all shot in the back of the head.
The fire had been deliberately lit, destroying what could have been crucial forensic evidence.
The massacre sent shockwaves through Austin and left investigators with almost nothing to work with.
For Eliza’s younger sister Sonora, who was just 13 when she lost her sibling, the years without answers were their own kind of torment.
“I don’t think the trauma ever loses its potency,” she says in the HBO series.
“There is a kind of torture that continues by the fact that it’s unsolved and it’s ongoing,” she told CBS’s 48 Hours.
“I remember fantasising for days that my sister had somehow escaped and run away… and she was going to come back. That’s what I was holding onto.”
For Jennifer and Sarah’s parents, Barbara and Mike Harbison, the loss of their only children was total.
“My life was focused around them from here to eternity,” Barbara told CBS News.
“Someone took my eternity away from me.”
Who was wrongly accused of the Yogurt Shop Murders?
Eight years after the killings, four men were arrested. Two of them — Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, both then in their twenties — confessed to the killings while in police custody.
Springsteen was placed on death row in 2001. Scott was sentenced to life in prison a year later.
However, their convictions didn’t stand.
What happened to the men accused of the Yogurt Shop Murders?
In 2009, both men were released after improved DNA technology proved neither was responsible, and the charges were dropped.
DNA from an unknown male had been found on one of the victims’ bodies — but despite investigators eyeing more than 1,200 suspects over the decades, including members of a Mexican motorcycle gang, the case remained unsolved.
Has the Yogurt Shop Murders case been solved?
Law enforcement sources confirmed the perpetrator was American serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999.
His DNA profile had previously been connected to a 1990 murder in South Carolina, the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old in Memphis, and a 1998 double murder in Missouri.
Austin Police Department confirmed the investigation remains open as they continue the process, remaining mindful of the many people whose lives have been deeply affected by the case.
For the families of Jennifer, Sarah, Eliza and Amy — after almost 35 years of waiting — there is finally an answer.
How many episodes are there of The Yogurt Shop Murders?
A fifth and final episode, “The End of Wondering,” is now set to air on HBO Max on May 23 in Australia, the same day as the US, chronicling the months after the series debuted and the extraordinary break in the case that followed — bringing the story to its long-awaited conclusion.
Where can I watch Yogurt Shop Murders?
Yogurt Shop Murders is now available to stream on HBO Max.
