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For more than three decades, authorities have been troubled by the infamous 1991 case of the yogurt shop murders. When four teenage girls were found brutally murdered inside an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! store in Austin, Texas, investigators knew that they were about to discover a world of crime that was far worse than small-scale burglaries and was inhuman to its core.
The unsolved case haunts the city to date as families of the victims and investigators cling on to mere strands of hope, stemming from the only piece of evidence acquired from the crime scene at the time - a DNA sample. With advancements in DNA technology, the hope is that some time in the near future, those responsible will be brought to justice.
On Saturday, August 27, 2022, CBS 48 Hours is scheduled to revisit and cross examine the gory details of the Austin yogurt shop murders. Now, more than 30 years later, with multiple individuals acquitted and numerous revelations disclosed, here are five key facts to learn about the decades-old case and the events that followed thereafter.
Trigger warning: This article contains information about graphic violence.
Five crucial facts about the Austin yogurt shop murders
1) Two men were arrested in Mexico in connection to the case a year later
The two men, who were wanted in Austin, Texas, for an unrelated kidnapping and s*xual assault, were apprehended in Mexico in the fall of 1992. There was a strong resemblance between one of these men and a person who was spotted by witnesses outside the yogurt shop the night the four girls were murdered.
They initially denied being involved in the yogurt shop murders when asked by Austin police, but when confronted by Mexican authorities, they admitted to killing the girls. However, the information they provided didn't line up with the evidence discovered at the crime scene, and when Austin detectives re-interviewed the men, they changed their stories.
2) In 1999, four suspects were arrested in connection to the yogurt shop murders
Austin police reported the detention of four suspects in the case in October 1999, almost eight years after the yogurt shop murders. The suspects, namely Maurice Pierce, Forrest Welborn, Robert Springsteen, and Michael Scott, were allegedly interrogated shortly after the incident in 1991, but none of them were charged because there was no concrete evidence linking them to the crime.
After a long wait of eight years, the authorities were successful in obtaining confessions from two of the four: Springsteen and Scott. Although Welborn and Pierce were initially prosecuted, those charges were ultimately withdrawn due to a lack of evidence, but Springsteen and Scott both faced trial and were found guilty and sentenced to prison.
3) The two accused were eventually released and the charges were dropped
In 1999, Michael Scott sat through a four-day long interrogation process for 20 hours of questioning wherein he admitted to his involvement in the yogurt shop murders. Robert Springsteen also admitted to it while being questioned a few days later. The two were found guilty despite later claims that they were pressured into confessing.
At their respective trials, both of their confessions were used against one another, but they were not permitted to cross-examine each another. Five years after each of the men was found guilty, their convictions were reversed on the grounds that they were denied their constitutional right to question their accusers.
When a more precise form of DNA testing known as Y-STR was used to examine the sample found at the crime scene, it was established that none of the four individuals who had been initially arrested for the crime matched the DNA. Following these findings, the Austin district attorney acquitted Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott of all charges.
4) In 2014, a DNA match was found in the Y-STR database
The most promising lead in the 1991 case came when authorities discovered a "match" between the DNA sample acquired from the crime scene at the time of the yogurt shop murders and a DNA sample uploaded to a specialized Y-STR (male only) database by the FBI in 2014.
Unfortunately, additional testing that was carried out at the beginning of 2020 revealed that the DNA sample that had been submitted by the Austin Police Department was not a match after all.
5) December 6, 2021, marked the 30th anniversary of the Austin yogurt shop murders
People from the city of Austin decorated the memorial plaque, which is located right opposite the spot where once stood the yogurt store where the four teenagers were murdered, with flowers in December 2021. The year marked the 30th anniversary of the unsolved killings of Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer, and Sarah Harbison.
Catch more on the cold case on CBS 48 Hours this Saturday, August 27, 2022, at 9 pm ET.
