By JIM VERTUNO
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — DNA evidence has helped to identify a new suspect in the unsolved killing of four teenage girls at a yogurt shop in 1991, a man who died by suicide in 1999, police said Friday.
In a statement, police said they had made a “significant breakthrough” and that DNA tests have led investigators to Robert Eugene Brashers. Police said the case known as the “Yogurt Shop Murders” remains open and scheduled a Monday news conference to detail their findings.
“Our team never gave up working this case,” Austin police said in a statement.
Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 1; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, ages 17 and 15, were bound, gagged and shot in the head at the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” store where two of them worked. The building was then set on fire.
The murders stunned Texas’ capital city and became known as one of the area’s most notorious crimes. Two men who were teenagers at the time of the murders were later tried, convicted and sent to death row and life in prison before their convictions were eventually reversed on appeal.
The case was also the subject of “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” an HBO documentary series that came out last month.
Brashers died in 1999 when he shot himself during an hours-long standoff with police at a motel in Kennett, Missouri.
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