🔗 Share this article

Back on a Friday in December 1991, seventeen-year-old Jennifer Harbison and Eliza Thomas, each aged 17, were closing up at the dessert shop where they were employed. Staying behind for a lift were Jennifer's sister, 15-year-old Sarah Harbison, and Sarah’s friend, 13-year-old Amy Ayers.

Shortly before the clock struck twelve, a blaze at the business summoned emergency crews, who uncovered the tragedy: the young victims had been bound, murdered, and showed evidence of sexual violence. The blaze destroyed most of the forensic clues, aside from a cartridge that had fallen into a gutter and tiny traces of biological evidence, notably evidence found in her nail scrapings.

The Murders That Rocked Austin

These horrific killings profoundly shook the Texas capital and were branded as one of the most infamous cold cases in the nation. Following decades of dead ends and wrongful convictions, the killings ultimately contributed to national legislation signed in 2022 that allows families of the deceased to ask for cold cases to be reinvestigated.

Yet the killings continued to baffle investigators for almost thirty-four years – before this development.

A Major Breakthrough

Investigators announced on this past Monday a "important advance" made possible by new technology in ballistics and genetic testing, said the local leader at a media event.

The evidence indicate Robert Brashers, who was identified posthumously as a repeat offender. Further crimes could be added to his record as DNA analyses evolve further and more commonly used.

"The only physical evidence found at that scene has been linked to him," explained the top law enforcement officer.

This investigation hasn't reached conclusion, but this marks a "significant advance", and the suspect is considered the lone killer, authorities confirmed.

Healing Begins

Eliza's sister, Sonora, expressed that her thoughts were divided when Eliza was killed.

"One portion of my mind has been yelling, 'What occurred to my sister?', and the other part kept repeating, 'I will never know. I will die not knowing, and I have to be OK with that,'" she stated.

When she learned of this progress in the case, "those two parts of my mind began merging," she said.

"Finally I comprehend what happened, and that relieves my pain."

Mistaken Arrests Corrected

The breakthrough not simply bring resolution to the victims' families; it also definitively absolves two individuals, minors when arrested, who claimed they were coerced into giving false statements.

Robert Springsteen, a teenager at the time when the murders occurred, was sentenced to death, and Michael Scott, a 15-year-old then, was sentenced to life. The two stated they gave confessions following hours-long interrogations in 1999. In the following decade, the two were freed after their convictions were overturned due to new precedents on admissions absent physical evidence.

The district attorney's office abandoned the case against Springsteen and Scott in that year after a genetic test, called Y-STR, revealed neither man aligned against the samples found at the yogurt shop.

Scientific Breakthrough

The DNA signature – indicating an mystery suspect – would ultimately be the key in resolving the murders. In 2018, the DNA profile was reexamined because of improved methods – but a national search to other police departments returned no genetic matches.

This past June, Daniel Jackson working on the investigation in 2022, had an idea. Several years had passed since the ballistics from the spent round had been submitted to the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network – and in the years since, the system had been significantly improved.

"The software has gotten so much better. I mean, we're talking like advanced modeling now," the detective commented at the media briefing.

They got a match. An unsolved murder in another state, with a similar modus operandi, had the same type of shell casing. Investigators and a cold case expert met with the Kentucky detectives, who are continuing to investigate their unidentified investigation – and are analyzing evidence from a sexual assault kit.

Linking Multiple Crimes

The apparent breakthrough made the detective wonder. Could there be further clues that might correspond to cases in other states? He recalled instantly of the genetic testing – but there was a challenge. The national DNA registry is the federal genetic registry for police, but the evidence from Austin was not complete enough and scarce to enter.

"I said, well, it's been a few years. More labs are performing these tests. Systems are expanding. Let's do a national inquiry again," the detective stated.

He sent out the years-old genetic findings to police departments nationwide, asking them to review individually it to their local systems.

They found another match. The genetic signature matched perfectly with a genetic evidence from another state – a homicide from 1990 that was solved with assistance from a DNA firm and an expert in genetic genealogy in 2018.

Identifying the Killer

The researcher built a ancestry profile for the South Carolina killer and identified a relative whose genetic material indicated a immediate family link – almost certainly a close relative. A court official authorized that the deceased individual be exhumed, and his genetic material matched against the crime scene sample.

Usually, the genealogist is able to set aside resolved crimes in order to focus on the next one.

"However I have {not been