The men wrongly accused of the 1991 murder of four teenage girls at a yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, are set to receive a large payment from the city. Under a tentative settlement reached on Tuesday, three men and the family of a fourth who were wrongly accused will receive a total of $35 million in restitution once it is approved by the city council.
“This settlement closes the final chapter of a devastating story in Austin’s history,” Austin City Manager T.C. Broadnax said in a statement. “We are pleased to have reached an agreement with those who were wrongly accused and wrongly convicted in this case and hope that this settlement brings a sense of closure to everyone affected by this horrific event.”
The almost 35-year-old “Yogurt Shop Murders” were the subject of a 2025 HBO documentary. The series documented the brutal murders of Jennifer Harbison (17), her sister Sarah (15), Eliza Thomas (17), and Amy Ayers (13). The documentary also highlighted how authorities wrongfully arrested four young men for the crime, one of whom, Robert Springsteen IV, received a death sentence.
Due in large part to confessions that Springsteen and Michael Scott claimed the police forced, juries found both guilty of the murders. In the mid-2000s, an appeals court reversed both convictions.
Prosecutors also charged Forrest Welborn, but never put him on trial because two grand juries declined to indict him. Authorities imprisoned Maurice Pierce for three years before they dropped the charges. During a traffic stop in 2010, he died as a result of an officer-involved shooting after a traffic stop.
A judge finally found all of them innocent after investigators concluded that a suspect who shot himself and died in 1999 during a standoff with police in Kennett, Missouri, committed the crimes.
DNA evidence revealed the real murderer
New evidence and ballistics analyses determined that Robert Eugene Brashers was the murderer in the Austin case, connecting him to the crime using a DNA sample taken from a victim’s fingernail. Additionally, authorities have connected Brashers to the shooting of Sherri Scherer and her daughter, Megan, in Missouri in 1998, the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee in 1997, and the strangulation death of South Carolina woman, Genevieve Zitricki, in 1990.
“If the conclusions of APD’s investigation are confirmed, as it appears that they will be, I will say: I am sorry, though I know that that will never be enough,” Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza said in Sept. 2025 about the four men who had been charged with the crime.