🔗 Share this article

Back on a Friday in December 1991, seventeen-year-old Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas, each aged 17, were closing up at the dessert shop where they worked. Remaining for a pickup were Jennifer’s younger sister, 15-year-old Sarah Harbison, and her friend, 13-year-old Amy Ayers.

Just before midnight, a blaze at the business drew first responders, who found a horrific scene: the young victims had been tied up, murdered, and showed indicators of assault. The blaze wiped out nearly all evidence, except for a bullet casing that had rolled into a drain and trace amounts of biological evidence, notably material found in her nail scrapings.

The Crime That Stunned Texas

The frozen yogurt shop case deeply affected the city of Austin and evolved into one of the most infamous long-lingering investigations in the United States. Following decades of dead ends and mistaken arrests, the murders in time led to a federal law enacted in recent years that permits families of the deceased to ask for dormant cases to be reinvestigated.

However the murders stayed unresolved for nearly 34 years – before this development.

A Major Breakthrough

Police authorities revealed on recently a "major development" driven by new technology in ballistics and DNA analysis, said the Austin mayor at a media event.

Genetic matches point to Robert Brashers, who was confirmed posthumously as a serial killer. Further crimes could be linked to him as forensic technology continue to improve and more commonly used.

"The single piece of proof recovered from the crime scene has been linked to him," said the head of police.

This investigation remains open, but this represents a "major step", and Brashers is believed to be the only attacker, authorities said.

Healing Begins

The sister of Eliza Thomas, Sonora, expressed that her mind was split following her sister was murdered.

"One part of my brain has been screaming, 'What occurred to my sister?', and the remaining part kept repeating, 'I will never know. I will die not knowing, and I need to make peace with it,'" she stated.

When she learned of this development in the investigation, "those two parts of my brain started coming together," she noted.

"Now I understand the truth, and that relieves my suffering."

Mistaken Arrests Corrected

The news not simply bring closure to the victims' families; it also fully exonerates two individuals, minors when arrested, who maintained they were coerced into confessing.

Springsteen, who was 17 at the time of the killings, was given a death sentence, and Michael Scott, who was 15, was sentenced to life. Both men stated they only confessed following hours-long interrogations in the late 1990s. In 2009, they were released after their guilty findings were reversed due to new precedents on admissions lacking physical evidence.

The district attorney's office withdrew the charges against the two men in that year after a DNA analysis, known as Y-STR, revealed neither man matched against the DNA samples recovered from the crime scene.

Scientific Breakthrough

The DNA signature – indicating an unknown man – would eventually be the decisive factor in solving this case. In 2018, the profile was reexamined because of scientific progress – but a national search to other police departments found no matches.

This past June, an investigator assigned to the case in 2022, had an idea. Time had gone by since the bullet casings from the spent round had been uploaded to the NIBIN database – and in that time, the database had undergone major upgrades.

"The software has improved dramatically. In fact, we're talking like advanced modeling now," Jackson said at the press conference.

There was a hit. An unresolved killing in another state, with a similar modus operandi, had the matching variety of cartridge. Jackson and another official met with the local investigators, who are continuing to investigate their open file – which involves testing materials from a sexual assault kit.

Building a Case

The apparent breakthrough made the detective wonder. Could there be further clues that might correspond to cases in other states? He thought immediately of the genetic testing – but there was a obstacle. The Codis database is the national DNA database for law enforcement, but the yogurt shop DNA was insufficiently intact and minimal to enter.

"I said, well, several years have gone by. Additional facilities are performing these tests. Databases are getting bigger. I proposed a countrywide check again," he stated.

He circulated the years-old genetic findings to police departments nationwide, instructing them to review individually it to their local systems.

There was another hit. The genetic signature matched perfectly with a sample from a city in South Carolina – a homicide from 1990 that was resolved with help from a DNA firm and a celebrated genealogist in 2018.

Identifying the Killer

The genealogist developed a family tree for the South Carolina killer and found a kinship connection whose genetic material indicated a close tie – almost certainly a brother or sister. A judge approved that the deceased individual be dug up, and his DNA corresponded against the evidence from the yogurt shop.

Usually, she is puts behind her closed investigations in order to work on the next one.

"However I have {not been