Retired Austin Police Det. John Jones finally got to wear a shirt he’d been saving for 34 years.
The night of the 1991 murders at Austin’s I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop, Jones, one of two detectives on the case, was wearing an obnoxiously bright shirt for a homicide detective — a kelly green-and-white-striped button-down that his colleagues ridiculed. He still had it on when he met with the families of the victims: Jennifer Harbison, 17; Sarah Harbison, 15; Eliza Thomas, 17; and Amy Ayers, 13. He promised them, “When you see me in this shirt again, it’s gonna be because the case is solved.”
Retired Austin Police Det. John Jones. (Eva Ruth Moravec/City Cast Austin)
Jones wore his bright shirt at Austin City Hall on Monday morning, where he sat in the crowd at a news conference announcing the case was solved, after years of twists and turns in the crime that shook Austin’s innocence. Using DNA technology and a shell casing, investigators were able to link Robert Eugene Brashers to the crime, said Det. Dan Jackson, who took over the case in 2022. Brashers died by suicide in 1999 after a police chase.
Jones, now retired and living in Denver, didn’t want to miss the press conference.
“Amazingly enough, it still kinda fits,” Jones, in his bright green shirt, told City Cast Austin.
Brashers had no connection to Austin, police said, and left town within 48 hours of the killings. Austin police had other suspects at the time — there were dozens of false confessions, including one from Maurice Pierce, which was discredited at the time but then dug back up in 1999 by a task force that interrogated him and three suspected accomplices, two of whom confessed. Two suspects went to trial and were convicted, but after a United States Supreme Court ruling called their confessions into question, DNA that was collected at the scene was tested, and the men were released.
Armed with a DNA profile of an unknown male in 2009, APD tested hundreds of DNA samples searching for a match, to no avail. The case went cold again.
In 2022, when Jackson got the case, he met with DNA experts to find out what could be tested, how technology might have changed, and determine if more could be done. In late June, Jackson resubmitted a .380-caliber shell casing that had been found in the drain at the scene into a national database. It matched an unsolved murder from Kentucky.
In August, the unknown DNA profile was found to match Brashers’ DNA collected from a sexual assault in South Carolina. The victim there was bound with their own clothing, much like the Yogurt Shop murder victims, Jackson said. That detail made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, he said.
In a last-ditch effort, Jackson submitted the remaining evidence from the crime scene — including Amy Ayers’ fingernail clippings — to see if it matched Brashers’ DNA. It did.
“Amy’s final moments were to solve this case for us by fighting back,” Jackson said. The City Hall crowd whistled and cheered.
Jones was relieved. The fingernail clippings he and another detective pushed to collect from Amy Amyers’ body proved essential in finding the killer, and he was happy that previous suspects could now be cleared of any wrongdoing.
Amy’s father, Bob, stood up in a black, felt cowboy hat and pinned a black button onto Jackson’s lapel that read, in white letters, “WE WILL NOT FORGET.”
With Brashers now identified as the sole suspect, Austin police are wrapping up the case. Law enforcement officials will continue to look for other possible victims of Brashers, as he’s been connected to cases in Kentucky, South Carolina, Missouri, and Tennessee. Meanwhile, Travis County District Attorney José Garza said once the case is closed, he’ll get to work on making things right with the former suspects whose names have been cleared.
“The evidence is pointing to the guilt of one man,” Garza said, “and the innocence of four.”
