Naman Shrestha
HBO’s ‘The Yogurt Shop Murders,’ CBS’ ’48 Hours: The Yogurt Shop Murders,’ and ABC’s ’20/20: The Yogurt Shop Murders’ delve deep into the details of a tragic case. Four teenage girls — Jennifer Harbison, Eliza Thomas, Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers — were killed inside the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! store in Austin, Texas, in December 1991. For several years, 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 1980s and 1990s
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, he reportedly joined the US Navy in 1979 and served for numerous months before being dismissed for theft in 1980. 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 had already become serious by this point. He was arrested for theft from a business and simple battery in May 1981, for which he received 3 years of probation. Then, in October 1994, he was arrested for carrying a concealed weapon during an alleged assault on a young woman. 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, he 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 by a felon, 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 5 years in federal 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, after which he went back to his family and gained access to the gun he had used in several crimes.
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After His Death, Robert Was Identified as the Perpetrator Behind 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 named Genevieve Zitricki in 1990 and the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee in 1997 while he held her family hostage. He was even confirmed to be behind the rape as well as the murder of 12-year-old Megan Scherer and the homicide of her 38-year-old mother, Sherri Scherer, in Missouri in 1998. Then, he attempted to assault another woman before killing 43-year-old Linda Marie Rutledge in Lexington, Kentucky, on November 7, 1998. Linda was attacked in her parents’ shop in a strip mall, sexually assaulted, and shot to death before the place was set on fire.
Linda’s case was thus eerily similar to the December 6, 1991, yogurt shop murders in Austin, Texas. However, the connection wasn’t made until years later. It was in September 2025 that Robert was named as the individual responsible for the 1991 quadruple homicide of Jennifer Harbison, Eliza Thomas, Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers through DNA testing. His DNA was found underneath Amy’s fingernails and in the vaginal swabs collected from the victims 34 years prior. 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. The case was thus finally closed.
