Billboards depicting Eliza Thomas, Sarah Harbison, Amy Ayers and Jennifer Harbison were placed all over Austin in the months after the girls’s murders.Photo:David Kennedy/Austin American-Statesman-USA TODAY NETWORK
David Kennedy/Austin American-Statesman-USA TODAY NETWORK
Firefighters thought they were responding to a fire at a frozen yogurt shop that December night in 1991. But then they saw the bodies: Four young girls, charred beyond recognition in a fire meant to cover up evidence in a quadruple homicide that has haunted Austin, Texas, ever since.
More than 30 years later,People Magazine Investigatesdives into the still-unsolved case in its upcoming episode titled “Who Killed Our Girls?” airing on ID and streaming on Max today, Aug. 21, 9/8c. (An exclusive clip is shown below.)
Dozens of people have falsely confessed to the murders of 17-year-olds Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, who worked at the “I Can’t Believe it’s Yogurt” shop, along with Jennifer’s younger sister, Sarah, 15, and her best friend, Amy Ayers, 13.
Eliza Thomas, Sarah Harbison, Amy Ayers and Jennifer Harbison (from left to right, top to bottom).
By 1999, three of the boys – now men – had confessed to the murders over the years. Scott was placed on death row in 2001 and Springsteen sentenced to life behind bars a year later. But the convictions didn’t hold. The Texas Court of Appeals ruled that the men should have been given the chance to cross-examine each other.
There were other problems with the case: A detective hadheld a gun to Scott’s headduring his pivotal multi-day interrogation, and another detective admitted to withholding key information for more than a year that all but ruled out Pierce’s gun as the murder weapon. Investigators dredged the Colorado River looking for another gun supposedly dumped there almost a decade earlier but didn’t find it. Later, new and improved DNA tests came back without any matches. Scott and Springsteen were released on bond in June 2009 andtheir charges were dismissed.
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With the case remaining unsolved, last year, Republic Representative Michael McCaul of Texas cited the Yogurt Shop Murders as he helped push into legislationThe Homicide Victims' Families Rights Act, allowing for a federal review and complete reinvestigation of a case that has gone cold for at least three years. As part of that process, case files are updated with new technologies available to reassess evidence.
And Amy’s own family have worked to give her memory a life of its own. Amy’s older brother, Shawn Ayers, and his wife, Angie, helped start theTexas Attorney General’s Cold Case and Missing Persons Advisory Committeeto push forward a growing percentage of cold case murders across the country that might otherwise fall through the cracks. “They’re not forgotten,” Angie said of the girls. “They’re not given up on.”
People Magazine Investigates: Who Killed Our Girls?airs on ID and streams on Max today, Aug. 21, at 9/8c.
source: people.com
