Ending their more than three-decade-long ordeal, a court in Austin, Texas, on Thursday cleared the names of four men, who were wrongly accused of murder when they were teenagers. District Judge Dayna Blazey cleared the names of Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn, Robert Springsteen, and Maurice Pierce, saying, “You are innocent,” much to the relief of two of them who were present in the courtroom on Thursday.
Judge Blazey called her order “an obligation to the rule of law and the obligation to the dignity of the individual.”
1991 Austin yogurt shop murders
The four men were accused of the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders, where four teenage girls were shot dead inside the ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!’ outlet by an unknown gunman on the night of December 6.
Two of the victims, Eliza Thomas and Jennifer Harbison, both aged 17, were employees of the shop, while 15-year-old Sarah Harbison and 13-year-old Amy Ayers were waiting there to get a ride home with Jennifer when it closed. All the victims were said to have been shot in the head “execution style” with .22 caliber lead bullets.
Arrest and trial of suspects
Despite extensive investigations involving hundreds of suspects, the police made no headway in the case for years. This changed in 1999, when investigators arrested Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn, who were teenagers in 1991, for the murder.
While Springsteen and Scott were tried and sentenced to death, life imprisonment respectively, Welborn was charged but never tried, and Pierce spent three years in jail before the charges against him were dismissed.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the convictions of Springsteen and Scott in 2008.
Who was the real killer?
The case took a dramatic turn in September 2025, when Austin police announced that Robert Eugene Brashers, a serial killer who died in 1999, was the perpetrator of the yogurt shop murders, based on DNA evidence.
What the four men said
On Thursday, Scott and Welborn, along with family members, were present in the court to hear their names being cleared. While Springsteen did not attend, Pierce died in 2010 in a confrontation with police after a traffic stop.
“My son’s name has finally been cleared after more than 25 years of being called the monster, the murderer and everything else,” said Phil Scott, Michael Scott’s father. “Son, be proud.”
“Let us not forget that Robert Springsteen could be dead right now, executed at the hands of the state of Texas,” Springsteen’s attorney said.
Welborn, in a statement, said he lost friends, struggled to keep jobs, and was at one time homeless.
“I lost my family. I lost my youth. My daughter was 3 years old when I was arrested. We had just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. I lost the chance to build a family,” Scott said. “Every day I have carried the weight of a crime I did not commit.”
Victim’s family responded
After the four men were exonerated on Thursday, the family of Amy Ayers issued a statement thanking the investigators and said they never wanted anyone to be wrongfully convicted.
“The Ayers family never wanted anyone to be wrongfully convicted for the murder of their precious daughter. They believed the investigators when they were told the original suspects were guilty of this heinous crime,” the statement issued through their attorney said.
