Travis County Criminal District Judge Dana Blazey declared the four men, wrongfully convicted of perpetrating Austin’s Yogurt Shop Murders in 1991, as actually innocent.
The declaration came on Feb. 19, 2026.
In late 1999, Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn, and Maurice Pierce were arrested on suspicion of murdering Amy Ayers, 13, Eliza Thomas, 17, and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, ages 17 and 15. The victims were bound, gagged, and shot in the head at the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Yogurt Store, where two of them worked. The building was subsequently set on fire.
Springsteen and Scott said the confessions they gave investigators were the product of coercion. Springsteen was sentenced to death. Scott was sentenced to life.
Both of their convictions were overturned in the mid-2000s.
Forrest Welborn and Maurice Pierce were never convicted, though long suspected. Pierce spent three years in jail before the charges were dismissed, and he was released. Welborn was charged but never tried after two grand juries refused to indict him.
Prosecutors wanted to try Springsteen and Scott again, but a judge denied it in 2009 when new DNA tests, previously unavailable in 1991 and the prior trials, revealed the DNA of a new male suspect.
Interest in the case was renewed in 2025 with the release of a critically acclaimed HBO documentary series.
Austin Police Department cold case Detective Dan Jackson and the Texas Attorney General’s Office’s Cold Case and Missing Persons Unit identified Robert Eugene Brashers, who killed himself in 1999, as the primary suspect.
In 2018, Brashers’ DNA—obtained after he was arrested at a border checkpoint near El Paso two days after the yogurt shop murders—was connected to three disparate crime scenes: one, the murder of a South Carolina woman in 1990; the second, the rape of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee in 1997; and lastly, the shooting of a mother and daughter in Missouri in 1998.
Finally, a tissue sample taken from under the fingernail of 13-year-old Amy Ayers was linked to Brashers’ DNA.
Amy’s parents, Bob and Amy, did not attend the exoneration hearing but issued a statement through their attorney, thanking Det. Jackson, the Austin Police Department, and the Texas Attorney General’s Office for solving the case.
The hearing began with a statement from Travis County First Assistant District Attorney Trudy Strassburger.
“It goes without saying that harm was caused to the four wrongly accused,” she said. “Today we are going to take the first step in righting that harm by shining a light on the truth.”
This was followed by Det. Jackson detailing how the investigation eventually linked Brashers to the crime.
“Michael Scott, Robert Springsteen, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn did not commit these murders,” he said.
Austin Police Chief Lisa Davis affirmed Det. Jackson’s findings in her statement.
“I support these exonerations,” she said.
Robert Springsteen did not attend the hearing. Maurice Pierce died in 2010. After impact statements from Welborn and Scott and their families, Judge Blazey exonerated the four men.
“The record before this court establishes what the law now formally recognizes,” Judge Blazey said during the hearing. “That you are now innocent. No ruling can restore the time taken from you. No judgment can fully remedy the burden that you have carried. But the court can, and does, state, without qualification or hesitation, that you are cleared and that your innocence is affirmed.”