The Austin Yogurt Shop Murders

[raisedbywolves]

https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/sou...d-to-cold-case

The man who last year was identified as the suspect in the 1991 killings of four teenage girls in an Austin yogurt shop could now be linked to another murder case in Kentucky from 28 years ago.

Back in September, Robert Eugene Brashers—a serial killer who died by suicide back in 1999 after a standoff with police in Missouri—was identified as the suspect in the “yogurt shop murders” through DNA testing after over 30 years since the tragedy in the Texas capital.

On Wednesday, police in Lexington, Kentucky, said Brashers was the person responsible for the death of 43-year-old Linda Marie Rutledge in November 1998. Rutledge was shot and killed at the Nixon Hearing Aid Center, which was then set on fire—similar to what happened in Austin.

The Lexington Police Department said the case has been “officially solved,” and it was due in part to a ballistic match Austin detectives alerted them to back in July 2025. The Austin Police Department reached out to Lexington police after they received a match from the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN), which said a shell casing from the hearing aid center matched one at “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt,” the store where the Austin teens were killed.

The Kentucky State Police Forensics Lab then examined both shell casings and found that they came from the same firearm. DNA evidence from both the Austin and Kentucky cases was then tested and found to be a match.

[Bewitchingstorm]

I hope her family members who are still alive have some sort of closure. I bet he was involved in more murders.

[raisedbywolves]

I hope her family members who are still alive have some sort of closure. I bet he was involved in more murders.

I agree. I am perturbed though because I feel like we've had the DNA and ballistics technology that could have solved these two for a long time. I still have doubts.

[raisedbywolves]

https://www.kut.org/crime-justice/20...innocent-texas

Four men who had been accused, two of them convicted, in one of Austin's most infamous murders have been declared officially innocent.

Maurice Pierce, Robert Springsteen, Mike Scott and Forrest Welborn were the key suspects in the 1991 murder of four teen girls at a yogurt shop.

Now, more than 34 years later, Travis County Judge Dayna Blazey has stated all are innocent, clearing their records and formally exonerating them after they were wrongfully accused in 1999.

Travis County District Attorney José Garza filed a motion to revisit the case and formally clear their names late last year.

All four suspects were implicated, investigated and later arrested in the aftermath of the murders that drew national attention and haunted Austin for decades.

Springsteen, who was sentenced to death and spent 10 years in prison, said in a written statement read by his attorney, Amber Farrelly, that his wrongful arrest turned his life into a cycle of “chaos and uncertainty."

“I have been persecuted every day,” Springsteen said. “I have lived every single day …being seen as a monster for something I did not do.”

“Simply said, both the science and the confessions can’t be true,” Strassburger said. “The truth is that Robert Eugene Brashers is guilty, and he alone committed the yogurt shop murders.”

Farrelly said the lives of “the boys” were cratered by their arrests and imprisonment. That impact is still there for three, but not for Maurice Pierce, who had a mental health episode in 2010 and was shot by an Austin police officer he attempted to stab.

“This case needs to change Austin. It needs to change Texas,” she said. “It is truly a miracle that we are here. A miracle that has come too late for Maurice Pierce — and has been denied for too long for Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott and Forrest Welborn.”

[Bewitchingstorm]

Good. I hope three still alive now receive some sort of compensation for what they were put through.