Nearly 34 years after his 13-year-old sister, Amy, was killed in the 1991 Austin, Texas, yogurt shop massacre, Shawn Ayers and his wife, Angie, are helping lead a nationwide cold case initiative. At the same time, they continue searching for answers about the crime and whether someone else may have been involved.
The couple has joined former prosecutors Mindy Montford and Anne Marie Schubert to create the National Cold Case Center. Shawn’s sister was among the four teenagers killed in the attack.
Their long and painful pursuit of answers in Amy’s case motivated the Ayers family to help launch the nonprofit. The organization provides funding for unsolved homicide investigations, offers training to investigators and assists families affected by violent crime.
Angie and Shawn Ayers have launched a national cold case effort while still seeking answers about the yogurt shop murders in Austin, Texas, where Shawn’s sister was one of four victims. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
“After everything we’ve experienced and witnessed—not only in our own case, but also while hearing other families describe what they’ve endured—we felt compelled to act,” Angie told News Outlet. “Starting a nonprofit had been something we talked about for years.”
Amy Ayers was one of four victims of the yogurt shop murders in Austin, Texas. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
The Austin yogurt shop murders
Amy, 17-year-olds Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas, and Jennifer’s 15-year-old sister, Sarah Harbison, were killed Dec. 6, 1991, at the I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop on West Anderson Lane.
Photos of the “Yogurt Shop Murders” victims. (FOX 7 Austin)
Jennifer and Eliza were working the store’s closing shift that evening. Sarah and Amy had been waiting for them, planning to leave together for a sleepover.
Just before midnight, authorities were called to the yogurt shop after a fire was reported. FBI records later noted that the flames, along with water released by the sprinkler system, disturbed the scene and compromised evidence.
Police found Sarah, Eliza and Jennifer together in a storage room. The girls had been undressed, gagged and restrained with their own underwear before being shot in the back of the head with .22-caliber ammunition.
Amy was discovered in another part of the building. Court documents state that she had a ligature around her neck and burns over as much as 30% of her body.
Tributes lay on a memorial Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, for four teenage girls who were killed in a yogurt shop in 1991 in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Paul J. Weber)
FBI files documented two gunshot wounds to Amy. One .22-caliber bullet initially missed her brain, while a second round, fired from a .380-caliber pistol, entered through her cheek and jaw area.
A .380 cartridge casing was found in a floor drain, while an autopsy recovered four .22-caliber bullets from the victims’ bodies.
Killer identified
The investigation remained unresolved for decades, amid false confessions, arrests, convictions and appeals. In September 2025, DNA and ballistic evidence ultimately pointed to serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers.
Brashers died by suicide during a police standoff in Missouri in January 1999, meaning the victims’ families never had the opportunity to face him in court or hear him answer for the killings at trial.
Robert Eugene Brashers was identified in September 2025 as the killer in the yogurt shop murders. (Bryan Preston/News Outlet)
Investigators had already linked Brashers to other violent crimes, including murders in South Carolina and Missouri.
Austin police said the .380-caliber handgun used in the yogurt shop killings was the same weapon Brashers used to shoot himself during the Missouri standoff.
For the Ayers family, identifying Brashers didn’t answer whether someone else participated in the yogurt shop killings. Angie questioned whether another perpetrator may have been involved, since two weapons were used during the attacks.
“I may be incorrect, but I don’t think that I am,” Angie told News Outlet. “There’s never been an instance where he [Brashers] used both of those guns in his other cases.”
Robert Brashers’ mugshot. (Missouri State Highway Patrol)
“There has been absolutely no definite answer on whether or not he was by himself, or had an accomplice.
“So, to us, we still don’t have all the answers, and knowing that this case is still ongoing, I don’t think anyone can say that they know exactly what happened because we can’t ask.”
Wrongful convictions
Years before identifying Brashers, Austin investigators focused on four local teens: Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce and Forrest Welborn.
Austin police arrested all four in 1999. Springsteen and Scott confessed during police questioning but recanted before trial, saying investigators pressured them into giving false statements.
Flowers and candles mark the site where Eliza Thomas, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, and Amy Ayers lost their lives. (Bryan Preston/News Outlet)
Travis County juries convicted Springsteen of capital murder in 2001 and Scott in 2002. Springsteen received a death sentence, while Scott received life in prison.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Springsteen’s conviction in 2006 and Scott’s in 2007.
DNA testing failed to match any of the men to the crime scene. A judge released Springsteen and Scott in June 2009, and prosecutors moved to dismiss the charges that October.
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Pierce proclaimed innocence but implicated Welborn. In 1991, he wore a police wire and tried to coax Welborn into confessing. An Austin police officer reported that Welborn denied any involvement. Welborn later passed a polygraph test.
Welborn never went to trial. When two grand juries failed to indict him, authorities dropped the case against him in 2000.
Decades later, the victims’ names remain etched in memory. (Bryan Preston/News Outlet)
By then, he had spent months behind bars.
“I’m still really upset and mad at them. If they didn’t confess to something they didn’t do, we wouldn’t be here right now doing this today,” Welborn told Texas Monthly.
Austin police officers arrested Pierce in 1999 on capital murder charges. Prosecutors dismissed Pierce’s charges in 2003, citing insufficient evidence, after he spent more than three years in jail.
In 2010, an Austin police officer fatally shot Pierce in 2010 following a traffic stop. Pierce fled the scene on foot and stabbed an officer in the neck with a knife, prompting authorities to open fire.
Settlement
After investigators linked Brashers to the killings, Travis County Judge Dayna Blazey declared the four men innocent on Feb. 19, 2026. Months later, the Austin City Council approved a $35 million settlement covering the three surviving men and Pierce’s family.
Welborn initially rejected the city’s apology, saying that he lost an auto-repair business while incarcerated and endured years of public ostracism.
“Their apology is not accepted,” he told Texas Monthly. “Their apology means nothing to me.”
Forrest Welborn, left, and his attorney Steve Goodson listen to the news conference after Welborn was exonerated at a hearing for four men wrongfully accused in the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders at the Blackwell-Thurman Criminal Justice Center in Austin on Thursday, Feb. 19, 2026. Welborn, Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen and Maurice Pierce, who is deceased, were declared actually innocent during the hearing. (Jay Janner/The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images)
Welborn later said “it felt good” to have closure, although he wanted some of the detectives who worked the case “to go do some prison time.”
None of the detectives have faced criminal charges in the case, Texas Monthly reported.
The Ayers couple said neither they nor the men or their relatives have contacted the other side.
“We haven’t reached out and they have not reached out,” Angie said.
Welborn could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Austin Police Department and Travis County District Attorney’s Office did not respond to requests for comment by publication.
Helping other families
Their experience seeking answers in Amy’s case, and hearing other families describe similar struggles, prompted Shawn and Angie to consider starting a nonprofit years ago.
“The frustrating part is being told no, but yet someone somewhere leaks the information and you’re the last one to know when you should have been first and that is still happening today,” Shawn told News Outlet, recalling his sister’s case.
Shawn and Angie Ayers are pictured with his parents, Bob and Pam. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
Their partnership with Montford began in 2017, when they met with prosecutors about the yogurt shop killings. Montford, a Travis County assistant district attorney at the time, promised to stay with them.
“She made it a point to tell us that she was going to stick with us no matter what until the end,” Angie said.
Montford then connected with Schubert, a former California prosecutor who helped bring the Golden State Killer to justice. The Ayers couple met Schubert at a 2023 cold case conference in Marble Falls, Texas, where the idea for the nonprofit took shape.
Now, they want to help other families find that kind of support.
“It is up and running now… to provide funding and training for law enforcement, to have tools that they need to investigate cold cases, to be able to collect and report accurate data on unsolved cases, and connect law enforcement agencies around the world, and to have peer to peer family support and communication,” Angie added.
Amy Ayers is pictured in an undated photograph. (Courtesy of Angie and Shawn Ayers)
“Right now, funding is a, for us is a big thing, so we can get the first cases up and running.”
Shawn said they have spread awareness by attending cold case conferences in several states, including California, Florida, Missouri, and North Carolina.
For the couple, the work extends beyond families still waiting for answers. Solving those cases could also identify killers who remain free.
“There could be a killer living, right next to somebody,” Shawn said. “You can walk right past them and never know.”
