Naman Shrestha
CBS’ ’48 Hours: The Yogurt Shop Murders’ and ABC’s ’20/20: Yogurt Shop Murders’ delve deep into the details of the tragic killings of four teenage girls — Jennifer Harbison, Eliza Thomas, Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers — inside the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! store in Austin, Texas, in December 1991. For several years, the authorities believed that four men — Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Forrest Welborn, and Maurice Pierce — were responsible for the incident. However, more than three decades later, DNA evidence led them to another suspect — Robert Eugene Brashers.
Robert Eugene Brashers Landed in Jail For Several Crimes in the 80s and 90s
Robert Eugene Brashers was born to Doulis and Nancy Brashers on March 13, 1958, in Newport News, Virginia. As a child, he moved with his family to Huntsville, Alabama. After graduating from high school, Robert reportedly served in the US Navy for numerous years before resigning in the 1980s. Not long after, he relocated to New Orleans, Louisiana, but later settled in Fort Myers, Florida, by the mid-1980s. Robert’s run-ins with the law began around the same time. On November 22, 1985, he met a woman named Michelle Wilkerson in Fort Pierce and went to a bar with her, after which he made sexual advances towards her. When she refused to reciprocate, the two got into a physical altercation.
Robert pulled out a gun and shot her twice in the neck and head. However, Michelle managed to escape the situation and receive the necessary medical attention at Lawnwood Hospital. Meanwhile, her lost track of her and disposed of his gun in the sea on the nearby beach. After failing to flee from the scene in his truck, he was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery, and using a firearm during the commission of a crime. He was later found guilty of the crime and received a 12-year prison sentence. However, he got released from prison after serving about 4 years on good behavior on May 4, 1989. A couple of years later, in 1991, he fathered a daughter, Deborah, with his partner, Dorothy.
Around that time, Robert kept moving between several states, including Tennessee, South Carolina, and Georgia. His next arrest came in Cobb County, Georgia, on February 12, 1992, when he was charged with unlawful possession of a weapon, grand theft auto, and theft, as the authorities found various stolen items in his vehicle, including a police jacket, a fake Tennessee driver’s license, a radio scanner, and more. Since he pleaded guilty, he was sentenced to five years in prison. After his release in February 1997, Robert reportedly moved between Arkansas, Missouri, and Tennessee. In the following year, he was arrested on April 12 for attempting to break into a residence in Paragould, Arkansas. However, he was later released on bond.
Related
After His Death, Robert Was Identified as a Suspect in Several Killings, Including the Yogurt Shop Murders
Robert Eugene Brashers checked into the Super 8 hotel in Kennett, Missouri, with his family, including his wife, daughter, and two stepdaughters, in January 1999. Since he had arrived at the hotel in an allegedly stolen vehicle, the police barged into his room, confronting him about the same on January 13. When he threatened to kill himself, the authorities retreated. Soon, he took his family members hostage as the police backup arrived and surrounded the hotel. Although he released his family, he shot himself in the head after several hours of negotiations. Robert was rushed into the hospital, where he eventually succumbed to his injuries on January 19. Several years later, advances in investigative genetic genealogy led authorities to identify him as a suspect in eight murders believed to have transpired between 1990 and 1998.
Per reports, Robert was linked to the murder of a South Carolina woman in 1990, the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee in 1997, the double homicide of a mother and her daughter in Missouri in 1998, and the murder of 43-year-old Linda Marie Rutledge in Lexington, Kentucky, on November 7, 1998. In September 2025, Robert was named a suspect in the 1991 yogurt shop murders of Jennifer Harbison, Eliza Thomas, Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers through DNA testing. The detectives also learned that about two days after the killings, he was taken into custody near El Paso, driving a stolen car and in possession of a handgun that matched the caliber of the gun used to kill one of the four teenage girls in the yogurt shop.
