Austin Yogurt Shop Victims

On the night of December 6, 1991, the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop at a strip mall on West Anderson Lane in Austin, Texas was set on fire. When firefighters extinguished the blaze, they discovered the bodies of four teenage girls: employees Eliza Thomas (17) and Jennifer Harbison (17), along with Jennifer's sister Sarah Harbison (15) and their friend Amy Ayers (13). All four had been shot in the head; two had also been sexually assaulted.

The crime shocked Austin and became the city's most notorious unsolved case. The Austin Police Department mounted a massive investigation, eventually interviewing thousands of potential suspects and chasing hundreds of leads. The case became one of the most investigated in Texas history.

In 1999, eight years after the murders, four young men—Robert Burns, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn—were arrested based on confessions that two of them made during interrogation. Burns and Scott were convicted and sentenced to death and life in prison, respectively. However, in 2009, DNA evidence from the scene was found not to match any of the four suspects, and their convictions were overturned. The charges against all four were eventually dropped.

With the original suspects cleared by DNA evidence, the investigation returned to square one. The DNA profiles obtained from the scene have been run through national databases without a match. The Austin Police Department and the Texas Attorney General's office have periodically revisited the case. The yogurt shop murders remain Austin's most haunting unsolved crime.