Judge declares 4 men wrongly accused of 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders innocent

AUSTIN, Texas — For more than three decades, the four men and their families had insisted they were innocent of one of Austin's most gruesome and notorious crimes: the 1991 rape and murder of four teenage girls at a yogurt shop that was set on fire.

No one listened. Not when Robert Springsteen was sent to death row. Not when Michael Scott was sentenced to life in prison. Or when Forrest Welborn and Maurice Pierce, though never convicted, struggled through life under dark clouds of suspicion that they were murderers.

Their pleas were finally heard Thursday. A judge formally declared the men innocent after an emotional court hearing where prosecutors apologized and admitted they were wrongly accused of a crime that haunted the city for decades. Investigators determined last year that the murders were committed by a previously unknown culprit who died in 1999.

Scott and Welborn sat in the crowded courtroom packed with family members to hear state District Judge Dayna Blazey formally tell them ''you are innocent." She called her order ''an obligation to the rule of law and the obligation to the dignity of the individual.''

The hearing included lengthy statements from the men and their families about the struggles of incarceration, broken relationships, constant harassment by investigators and homelessness.

Springsteen did not attend. Through tears, Marisa Pierce addressed her father, who died in 2010 in a confrontation with police after a traffic stop.

''Daddy, you have your name back,'' she said. ''The world knows what you were trying to say all along.''

Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; 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 set on fire.

Investigators chased thousands of leads and several false confessions before the four men, who were teenagers when the girls were killed, were arrested in late 1999.

Springsteen and Scott were convicted based largely on confessions they insisted were coerced by police. Both convictions were overturned in the mid-2000s.

Welborn was charged but never tried after two grand juries refused to indict him. Pierce spent three years in jail before the charges were dismissed and he was released.

Prosecutors wanted to try Springsteen and Scott again, but a judge ordered the charges dismissed in 2009 when new DNA tests that were unavailable in 1991 and the previous trials revealed another male suspect.

In a statement his attorney read in court, Welborn said he lost friends, struggled to keep jobs and was at one time homeless. Scott testified that his arrest, conviction and prison sentence ultimately broke up his family.

''I lost my family. I lost my youth. My daughter was 3 years old when I was arrested. We had just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. I lost the chance to build a family,'' Scott said. ''Every day I have carried the weight of a crime I did not commit.''

The formal declaration of innocence could also be a key step for the men and their families if they seek financial compensation for years they spent incarcerated or struggled to live under a cloud of suspicion.

''My son's name has finally been cleared after more than 25 years of being called the monster, the murderer and everything else,'' said Phil Scott, Michael Scott's father. ''Son, be proud.''

Connection to a new suspect revealed

Then investigators made a stunning announcement last September: New DNA science and reviews of old ballistics evidence pointed to Robert Eugene Brashers as the sole killer.

Since 2018, authorities had used advanced DNA evidence to link Brashers to the strangulation death of a South Carolina woman in 1990, the 1997 rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee and the shooting of a mother and daughter in Missouri in 1998.

The link to the Austin case came when a DNA sample taken from under Ayers' fingernail came back as a match to Brashers from the 1990 killing.

Austin investigators also found that Brashers had been arrested at a border checkpoint near El Paso two days after the yogurt shop killings. In his stolen car was a pistol that matched the caliber used to kill one of the girls in Austin.

Police also noted similarities in the yogurt shop case to Brashers' other crimes: The victims were tied up with their own clothing, sexually assaulted and some crime scenes were set on fire.