Oct. 4, 2025
The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders: How DNA Finally Solved a 34-Year-Old Cold Case
The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders: How DNA Finally Solved a 34-Year-Old Cold Case In December 1991, four teenage girls were murdered inside an Austin yogurt shop. The crime scene was burned. The evidence was destroyed. Two innocent men went to prison...
The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders: How DNA Finally Solved a 34-Year-Old Cold Case
In December 1991, four teenage girls were murdered inside an Austin yogurt shop. The crime scene was burned. The evidence was destroyed. Two innocent men went to prison for nearly a decade. And the real killer? He was already dead by the time they were arrested. This is the story of how genetic genealogy finally solved one of Texas's most brutal cold cases 34 years later, and why the truth took so long to surface. We're talking about coerced confessions, a serial killer who should have never been free, and a justice system that failed at every possible turn.
#YogurtShopMurders #AustinTrueCrime #ColdCaseSolved #GeneticGenealogy #WrongfulConviction #DNAEvidence #TexasCrimeHistory
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1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,000
December 1991, four teenage girls, an Austin yogurt shop. By the time firefighters put out the flames, three bodies were burned beyond recognition.
2
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:18,000
The evidence was destroyed, two innocent men went to prison, and the real killer was dead before anyone knew his name.
3
00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:23,000
This is the story of how science finally caught up to the truth.
4
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:47,000
[Music]
5
00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:57,000
So here's what happened on December 6, 1991 in North Austin. Four teenage girls were working and hanging out at a place called "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt."
6
00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:07,000
Two of them, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, were employees. Jennifer's younger sister Sarah and her best friend, Amy Ayers, had stopped by to catch a ride home.
7
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:11,000
These were normal kids doing normal kid things on a Friday night.
8
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:22,000
Someone came in through the back door right before closing time. What happened next was so violent, so methodical that it would haunt investigators for more than three decades.
9
00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:32,000
The girls were bound with their own underwear. They were gacked. Each one was shot in the head. Amy Ayers, who was only 13, was shot twice.
10
00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:46,000
Then the killer set the building on fire. When the firefighters arrived, the yogurt shop was engulfed in flames. They poured thousands of gallons of water onto the scene, which saved the building, but destroyed almost everything inside.
11
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:55,000
Three of the four bodies were burned so badly that investigators couldn't immediately identify them. The jewelry, Jennifer Harbison, was wearing had melted.
12
00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:08,000
The crime scene was compromised in every way you can think of. Water, fire, smoke, contamination. If you wanted to design a scenario where forensic evidence gets obliterated, this would be it.
13
00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:18,000
The initial theory was that it was a robbery gone wrong. $50 was missing from the cash register, but $50 doesn't explain why four teenagers were bound, shot, and burned.
14
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:30,000
Investigators suspected sexual assault early on, and that theory would turn out to be crucial decades later. But in 1991, they didn't have the tools to prove it.
15
00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:42,000
For eight years, this case went cold. Then in 1999, a new team of detectives decided to take another look at it. They focused on a group of young men who had been questioned right after the murders.
16
00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:50,000
Four guys, all teenagers at the time of the crime. Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forest Wellburn.
17
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:56,000
Maurice Pierce had been arrested a few days after the murders while carrying a 22 caliber gun near the yogurt shop.
18
00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:05,000
That was one of the weapon types believed to have been used in the killings, so naturally he became a person of interest. But the real pressure fell on Springsteen and Scott.
19
00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:16,000
Here's where things get messy. Both men eventually confessed. Springsteen was sentenced to death in 2001. Scott got life in prison in 2002.
20
00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:25,000
Charges against Pierce and Wellburn were dropped because there wasn't enough evidence. But here's the thing about those confessions. Both men later said they were coerced.
21
00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:33,000
They said police put so much pressure on them during interrogations that they just broke down and said what the detectives wanted to hear.
22
00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:48,000
And guess who was involved in these interrogations? A detective named Hector Polanco. Polanco had a history. He had previously been accused of coercing false confessions in another case involving two men named Christopher Ochoa and Robert Danziger.
23
00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:55,000
Those guys served 13 years in prison before they were exonerated. Danziger was assaulted in prison and suffered permanent brain damage.
24
00:03:55,000 --> 00:04:06,000
When Polanco's track record came to light, it raised serious questions about whether Springsteen and Scott had actually done anything wrong. Or they were just two more victims of bad police work.
25
00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:14,000
Seven jurors from the original trials later said that they wouldn't have convicted Springsteen and Scott if they had known about Polanco's history.
26
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:22,000
Think about that. Seven people who voted to send these men to prison said they made a mistake based on incomplete information.
27
00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:36,000
In 2006, Springsteen's conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The court ruled that using Michael Scott's confession against Springsteen violated his constitutional right to confront his accuser.
28
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:40,000
Scott's conviction was thrown out a year later for the same reason.
29
00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:47,000
Prosecutors wanted to retry both men, but first they needed to figure out who the mystery DNA belonged to.
30
00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:55,000
Back in 1991, investigators had recovered a small sample of male DNA from vaginal swabs taken from one of the victims.
31
00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:58,000
It wasn't much, but it was enough to run tests.
32
00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:05,000
When they finally analyzed it using advanced techniques, the results were clear. The DNA did not match Springsteen.
33
00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:12,000
It didn't match Scott, either. It didn't match Pierce or Wellburn. It didn't match anyone in the national database.
34
00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:22,000
In October 2009, all charges were dropped. Springsteen and Scott walked out of prison after spending nearly 10 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit.
35
00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:29,000
You would think that after being wrongfully in prison for a decade, these men would be entitled to compensation.
36
00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:36,000
Texas has a wrongful imprisonment act that's supposed to provide financial restitution for people who are exonerated.
37
00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:45,000
But here's the catch. To get that money, you need either a full pardon based on innocence or a finding of actual innocence made during a habeas corpus proceeding.
38
00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:55,000
Prosecutors never officially declared Springsteen innocent, and because the finding wasn't made in the right legal venue, the Texas Supreme Court rejected his petition.
39
00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:02,000
He was denied nearly $720,000 in compensation. So let's get this straight.
40
00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:14,000
The state put him on death row based on a coerce confession. DNA proved he did not do it. He spent 10 years in prison, and then the state said, "Sorry, we can't pay you because of a technicality."
41
00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:24,000
Meanwhile, the real killer was still out there, apparently never caught. Investigators knew the DNA sample was crucial, but it was so limited that they couldn't afford to waste it on tests
42
00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:34,000
that might not work. A representative named McCall said publicly that they were waiting for DNA science to improve before they used up with little evidence they had left.
43
00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:47,000
It was a gamble, but it was the right call. For 16 years after Springsteen and Scott were released, that DNA sample just sat there, preserved, protected, waiting for technology to evolve.
44
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:56,000
And in September 2025, it finally did. Genetic genealogy changed everything. This is the same technique that caught the Golden State Killer.
45
00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:09,000
Investigators took the partial Y-strand DNA profile from the crime scene, and ran it through genealogy databases. They built family trees. They traced lineages, and eventually they landed on a name.
46
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:18,000
Robert Eugene Braschers Braschers was a serial killer and rapist who had been terrorizing people across multiple states for years.
47
00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:31,000
In 1988, he was convicted of attempted first degree murder, aggravated battery, and using a firearm in Florida. He was sentenced to 12 years but got out early in 1989 because of lenient laws at the time.
48
00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:38,000
Two years later, he murdered those four girls in Austin. After the yogurt-shop murders, braschers kept going.
49
00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:46,000
DNA linked him to a murder in Greenville, South Carolina in 1990. He raped a 14-year-old girl in Memphis in 1997.
50
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:54,000
In March 1998, he killed Sherry and Megan Sherer, a mother and daughter, and Missouri. Both were sexually assaulted.
51
00:07:54,000 --> 00:08:04,000
In January 1999, braschers died by suicide during a police standoff. He was 40 years old, and here's the thing that makes this whole story even more infuriating.
52
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:13,000
Braschers killed himself months before spring-sting Scott, Pearson, Wilburn, were arrested. The real killer was already dead when the wrong people went to prison.
53
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:26,000
DNA alone was enough to identify braschers, but there was also physical evidence that backed it up. A retired detective named John Jones confirmed that the gun braschers used to kill himself in 1999,
54
00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:31,000
matched a bullet casing found in a drain inside the yogurt shop back in 1991.
55
00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:41,000
So now you've got DNA and ballistics both pointing to the same person. There's no question, Robert Eugene Braschers murdered those four girls.
56
00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:47,000
The Austin Police Department announced the breakthrough in September 2025. They called it a "significant development."
57
00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:57,000
But here's what's interesting. They also said the case is still open and ongoing. Even though braschers is dead, even though the DNA matches, they're keeping it open.
58
00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:08,000
That tells you something. It suggests they think braschers might have had accomplices. Early on, investigators theorized that one more person was involved because of different types of guns used.
59
00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:16,000
So even though they knew who the primary killer was, they're not ready to close the book completely. They're still looking for answers in this case.
60
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:32,000
In this case is a perfect example of how the justice system can fail in multiple directions at once. It failed the victims by letting a serial killer walk free after only serving part of his sentence. It failed Springsteen and Scott by putting them in prison based on coer's confessions.
61
00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:37,000
And it failed them again by refusing to compensate them after their exoneration.
62
00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:48,000
But it also shows how science can eventually get it right. Genetic genealogy didn't exist in 1991. It barely existed in 2009 when Springsteen and Scott were released.
63
00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:58,000
But by 2025, it was advanced enough to solve a 34-year-old cold case with a tiny DNA sample that investigators had been protecting for decades.
64
00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:01,000
That's the power of patience and progress.
65
00:10:01,000 --> 00:10:11,000
The families of Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas and Amy Ayers finally have an answer. It took 34 years, but they know who killed their daughters.
66
00:10:11,000 --> 00:10:22,000
And Springsteen and Scott finally have proof that they were telling the truth all along. Their confessions were lies. The DNA doesn't lie. And now everyone knows it.
67
00:10:22,000 --> 00:10:46,000
Thanks for listening to 10-minute murder, bingeable true crime stories. I'm Joe, I'm your host, and if I'm being honest, I was about to watch the yogurt shop documentary.
68
00:10:46,000 --> 00:10:55,000
The true crime documentary that's out, I was going to watch it and then this breaking news came out about this that they had solved the case finally with DNA evidence.
69
00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:10,000
And I'd already planned to do an episode on this after I watched the documentary and did more research, but I paused right there. I was like, you know what? I'm not going to watch the documentary now because there's updated information and you know how documentaries can be.
70
00:11:10,000 --> 00:11:21,000
They can lean one way or the other, make you think one way or the other through the power of storytelling. Two good examples of that are the staircase murders with Michael Peterson.
71
00:11:21,000 --> 00:11:28,000
I've watched that documentary a couple of times. I'm going to do a story on that coming up very, very soon. So be looking for that one.
72
00:11:28,000 --> 00:11:43,000
And also Paradise Lost with a West Memphis 3. I think both of those documentaries in different ways try to make you feel one way or another about the potential victims and the potential murderer or murderers in the case.
73
00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:54,000
So I didn't want to watch the one about the yogurt shop murders. If the case had already been solved, I just wanted to rely strictly on what the available information out there is. So that's what I did. Now I can go back and watch it after I've done this story.
74
00:11:54,000 --> 00:12:08,000
Alright, if you're a brand new listener to the podcast, welcome in. Make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening right now. You can go to the website 10minuteMurder.com. You'll find all kinds of things there, including a way to contact me like Jared and Phoenix.
75
00:12:08,000 --> 00:12:20,000
Subject, if you weren't doing true crime. Hey Joe, if you weren't doing a true crime podcast, what other type of podcast do you think you'd make? Comedy, sports, history or something else entirely?
76
00:12:20,000 --> 00:12:33,000
And Jared, let me tell you, you don't have to wonder because I've already made a podcast. It's called 10 Minute Mystery and I released an episode a week and it's weird. I really do love comedy. I've talked about that a million times.
77
00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:44,000
Sports, I also love history right up my alley. All of those things that you mentioned, I would love to do podcasts about all those things, but there's only so much time in the day. So I chose Mystery.
78
00:12:44,000 --> 00:12:57,000
Which can sometimes overlap with this podcast and the things we talk about here on this podcast, but it's a cool podcast I think. Obviously I'm biased, but you can check it out yourself 10 Minute Mystery, available wherever this one is available.
79
00:12:57,000 --> 00:13:01,000
Alright, that's going to do it. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder. I'll see you next time.
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:11,000
December 1991, four teenage girls, an Austin yogurt shop. By the time firefighters put out the flames, three bodies were burned beyond recognition.
2
00:00:11,000 --> 00:00:18,000
The evidence was destroyed, two innocent men went to prison, and the real killer was dead before anyone knew his name.
3
00:00:18,000 --> 00:00:23,000
This is the story of how science finally caught up to the truth.
4
00:00:23,000 --> 00:00:47,000
[Music]
5
00:00:47,000 --> 00:00:57,000
So here's what happened on December 6, 1991 in North Austin. Four teenage girls were working and hanging out at a place called "I Can't Believe It's Yogurt."
6
00:00:57,000 --> 00:01:07,000
Two of them, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, were employees. Jennifer's younger sister Sarah and her best friend, Amy Ayers, had stopped by to catch a ride home.
7
00:01:07,000 --> 00:01:11,000
These were normal kids doing normal kid things on a Friday night.
8
00:01:11,000 --> 00:01:22,000
Someone came in through the back door right before closing time. What happened next was so violent, so methodical that it would haunt investigators for more than three decades.
9
00:01:22,000 --> 00:01:32,000
The girls were bound with their own underwear. They were gacked. Each one was shot in the head. Amy Ayers, who was only 13, was shot twice.
10
00:01:32,000 --> 00:01:46,000
Then the killer set the building on fire. When the firefighters arrived, the yogurt shop was engulfed in flames. They poured thousands of gallons of water onto the scene, which saved the building, but destroyed almost everything inside.
11
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:55,000
Three of the four bodies were burned so badly that investigators couldn't immediately identify them. The jewelry, Jennifer Harbison, was wearing had melted.
12
00:01:55,000 --> 00:02:08,000
The crime scene was compromised in every way you can think of. Water, fire, smoke, contamination. If you wanted to design a scenario where forensic evidence gets obliterated, this would be it.
13
00:02:08,000 --> 00:02:18,000
The initial theory was that it was a robbery gone wrong. $50 was missing from the cash register, but $50 doesn't explain why four teenagers were bound, shot, and burned.
14
00:02:18,000 --> 00:02:30,000
Investigators suspected sexual assault early on, and that theory would turn out to be crucial decades later. But in 1991, they didn't have the tools to prove it.
15
00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:42,000
For eight years, this case went cold. Then in 1999, a new team of detectives decided to take another look at it. They focused on a group of young men who had been questioned right after the murders.
16
00:02:42,000 --> 00:02:50,000
Four guys, all teenagers at the time of the crime. Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forest Wellburn.
17
00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:56,000
Maurice Pierce had been arrested a few days after the murders while carrying a 22 caliber gun near the yogurt shop.
18
00:02:56,000 --> 00:03:05,000
That was one of the weapon types believed to have been used in the killings, so naturally he became a person of interest. But the real pressure fell on Springsteen and Scott.
19
00:03:05,000 --> 00:03:16,000
Here's where things get messy. Both men eventually confessed. Springsteen was sentenced to death in 2001. Scott got life in prison in 2002.
20
00:03:16,000 --> 00:03:25,000
Charges against Pierce and Wellburn were dropped because there wasn't enough evidence. But here's the thing about those confessions. Both men later said they were coerced.
21
00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:33,000
They said police put so much pressure on them during interrogations that they just broke down and said what the detectives wanted to hear.
22
00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:48,000
And guess who was involved in these interrogations? A detective named Hector Polanco. Polanco had a history. He had previously been accused of coercing false confessions in another case involving two men named Christopher Ochoa and Robert Danziger.
23
00:03:48,000 --> 00:03:55,000
Those guys served 13 years in prison before they were exonerated. Danziger was assaulted in prison and suffered permanent brain damage.
24
00:03:55,000 --> 00:04:06,000
When Polanco's track record came to light, it raised serious questions about whether Springsteen and Scott had actually done anything wrong. Or they were just two more victims of bad police work.
25
00:04:06,000 --> 00:04:14,000
Seven jurors from the original trials later said that they wouldn't have convicted Springsteen and Scott if they had known about Polanco's history.
26
00:04:14,000 --> 00:04:22,000
Think about that. Seven people who voted to send these men to prison said they made a mistake based on incomplete information.
27
00:04:22,000 --> 00:04:36,000
In 2006, Springsteen's conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The court ruled that using Michael Scott's confession against Springsteen violated his constitutional right to confront his accuser.
28
00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:40,000
Scott's conviction was thrown out a year later for the same reason.
29
00:04:40,000 --> 00:04:47,000
Prosecutors wanted to retry both men, but first they needed to figure out who the mystery DNA belonged to.
30
00:04:47,000 --> 00:04:55,000
Back in 1991, investigators had recovered a small sample of male DNA from vaginal swabs taken from one of the victims.
31
00:04:55,000 --> 00:04:58,000
It wasn't much, but it was enough to run tests.
32
00:04:58,000 --> 00:05:05,000
When they finally analyzed it using advanced techniques, the results were clear. The DNA did not match Springsteen.
33
00:05:05,000 --> 00:05:12,000
It didn't match Scott, either. It didn't match Pierce or Wellburn. It didn't match anyone in the national database.
34
00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:22,000
In October 2009, all charges were dropped. Springsteen and Scott walked out of prison after spending nearly 10 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit.
35
00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:29,000
You would think that after being wrongfully in prison for a decade, these men would be entitled to compensation.
36
00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:36,000
Texas has a wrongful imprisonment act that's supposed to provide financial restitution for people who are exonerated.
37
00:05:36,000 --> 00:05:45,000
But here's the catch. To get that money, you need either a full pardon based on innocence or a finding of actual innocence made during a habeas corpus proceeding.
38
00:05:45,000 --> 00:05:55,000
Prosecutors never officially declared Springsteen innocent, and because the finding wasn't made in the right legal venue, the Texas Supreme Court rejected his petition.
39
00:05:55,000 --> 00:06:02,000
He was denied nearly $720,000 in compensation. So let's get this straight.
40
00:06:02,000 --> 00:06:14,000
The state put him on death row based on a coerce confession. DNA proved he did not do it. He spent 10 years in prison, and then the state said, "Sorry, we can't pay you because of a technicality."
41
00:06:14,000 --> 00:06:24,000
Meanwhile, the real killer was still out there, apparently never caught. Investigators knew the DNA sample was crucial, but it was so limited that they couldn't afford to waste it on tests
42
00:06:24,000 --> 00:06:34,000
that might not work. A representative named McCall said publicly that they were waiting for DNA science to improve before they used up with little evidence they had left.
43
00:06:34,000 --> 00:06:47,000
It was a gamble, but it was the right call. For 16 years after Springsteen and Scott were released, that DNA sample just sat there, preserved, protected, waiting for technology to evolve.
44
00:06:47,000 --> 00:06:56,000
And in September 2025, it finally did. Genetic genealogy changed everything. This is the same technique that caught the Golden State Killer.
45
00:06:56,000 --> 00:07:09,000
Investigators took the partial Y-strand DNA profile from the crime scene, and ran it through genealogy databases. They built family trees. They traced lineages, and eventually they landed on a name.
46
00:07:09,000 --> 00:07:18,000
Robert Eugene Braschers Braschers was a serial killer and rapist who had been terrorizing people across multiple states for years.
47
00:07:18,000 --> 00:07:31,000
In 1988, he was convicted of attempted first degree murder, aggravated battery, and using a firearm in Florida. He was sentenced to 12 years but got out early in 1989 because of lenient laws at the time.
48
00:07:31,000 --> 00:07:38,000
Two years later, he murdered those four girls in Austin. After the yogurt-shop murders, braschers kept going.
49
00:07:38,000 --> 00:07:46,000
DNA linked him to a murder in Greenville, South Carolina in 1990. He raped a 14-year-old girl in Memphis in 1997.
50
00:07:46,000 --> 00:07:54,000
In March 1998, he killed Sherry and Megan Sherer, a mother and daughter, and Missouri. Both were sexually assaulted.
51
00:07:54,000 --> 00:08:04,000
In January 1999, braschers died by suicide during a police standoff. He was 40 years old, and here's the thing that makes this whole story even more infuriating.
52
00:08:04,000 --> 00:08:13,000
Braschers killed himself months before spring-sting Scott, Pearson, Wilburn, were arrested. The real killer was already dead when the wrong people went to prison.
53
00:08:13,000 --> 00:08:26,000
DNA alone was enough to identify braschers, but there was also physical evidence that backed it up. A retired detective named John Jones confirmed that the gun braschers used to kill himself in 1999,
54
00:08:26,000 --> 00:08:31,000
matched a bullet casing found in a drain inside the yogurt shop back in 1991.
55
00:08:31,000 --> 00:08:41,000
So now you've got DNA and ballistics both pointing to the same person. There's no question, Robert Eugene Braschers murdered those four girls.
56
00:08:41,000 --> 00:08:47,000
The Austin Police Department announced the breakthrough in September 2025. They called it a "significant development."
57
00:08:47,000 --> 00:08:57,000
But here's what's interesting. They also said the case is still open and ongoing. Even though braschers is dead, even though the DNA matches, they're keeping it open.
58
00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:08,000
That tells you something. It suggests they think braschers might have had accomplices. Early on, investigators theorized that one more person was involved because of different types of guns used.
59
00:09:08,000 --> 00:09:16,000
So even though they knew who the primary killer was, they're not ready to close the book completely. They're still looking for answers in this case.
60
00:09:16,000 --> 00:09:32,000
In this case is a perfect example of how the justice system can fail in multiple directions at once. It failed the victims by letting a serial killer walk free after only serving part of his sentence. It failed Springsteen and Scott by putting them in prison based on coer's confessions.
61
00:09:32,000 --> 00:09:37,000
And it failed them again by refusing to compensate them after their exoneration.
62
00:09:37,000 --> 00:09:48,000
But it also shows how science can eventually get it right. Genetic genealogy didn't exist in 1991. It barely existed in 2009 when Springsteen and Scott were released.
63
00:09:48,000 --> 00:09:58,000
But by 2025, it was advanced enough to solve a 34-year-old cold case with a tiny DNA sample that investigators had been protecting for decades.
64
00:09:58,000 --> 00:10:01,000
That's the power of patience and progress.
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The families of Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas and Amy Ayers finally have an answer. It took 34 years, but they know who killed their daughters.
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And Springsteen and Scott finally have proof that they were telling the truth all along. Their confessions were lies. The DNA doesn't lie. And now everyone knows it.
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Thanks for listening to 10-minute murder, bingeable true crime stories. I'm Joe, I'm your host, and if I'm being honest, I was about to watch the yogurt shop documentary.
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The true crime documentary that's out, I was going to watch it and then this breaking news came out about this that they had solved the case finally with DNA evidence.
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And I'd already planned to do an episode on this after I watched the documentary and did more research, but I paused right there. I was like, you know what? I'm not going to watch the documentary now because there's updated information and you know how documentaries can be.
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They can lean one way or the other, make you think one way or the other through the power of storytelling. Two good examples of that are the staircase murders with Michael Peterson.
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I've watched that documentary a couple of times. I'm going to do a story on that coming up very, very soon. So be looking for that one.
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And also Paradise Lost with a West Memphis 3. I think both of those documentaries in different ways try to make you feel one way or another about the potential victims and the potential murderer or murderers in the case.
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So I didn't want to watch the one about the yogurt shop murders. If the case had already been solved, I just wanted to rely strictly on what the available information out there is. So that's what I did. Now I can go back and watch it after I've done this story.
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Alright, if you're a brand new listener to the podcast, welcome in. Make sure you hit subscribe wherever you're listening right now. You can go to the website 10minuteMurder.com. You'll find all kinds of things there, including a way to contact me like Jared and Phoenix.
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Subject, if you weren't doing true crime. Hey Joe, if you weren't doing a true crime podcast, what other type of podcast do you think you'd make? Comedy, sports, history or something else entirely?
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And Jared, let me tell you, you don't have to wonder because I've already made a podcast. It's called 10 Minute Mystery and I released an episode a week and it's weird. I really do love comedy. I've talked about that a million times.
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Sports, I also love history right up my alley. All of those things that you mentioned, I would love to do podcasts about all those things, but there's only so much time in the day. So I chose Mystery.
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Which can sometimes overlap with this podcast and the things we talk about here on this podcast, but it's a cool podcast I think. Obviously I'm biased, but you can check it out yourself 10 Minute Mystery, available wherever this one is available.
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Alright, that's going to do it. Thank you again for listening to 10 Minute Murder. I'll see you next time.
