Austin, Texas (AP) – Austin police outlined on Monday in general terms, as a new, rapidly unfolding DNA and ballistic evidence prompted them to declare a dead man with a probable crime in the murder of four teenage girls in Austin Yogurt in 1991, a terrible crime that pursued the city for decades.
And the officials noted that there was no well -known connection between the new suspect and two men.
“At some moment I abandoned God, but he never refused me,” said Sean Ayers, a brother of one of the victims, Amy Ayers at the press conference.
Austin police now report that all evidence leads to Robert Yujin Brachers, who died as a result of suicide in 1999 during the confrontation in law enforcement agencies. In recent years, BraShers have been associated with several murders and rape in other states.
The announcement that Brachers was a suspect against the background of updated attention in the case with the release of the Murder in the Yogurt store, the HBO documentary.
Sonora Thomas, sister of Elisa Thomas, said that, in her opinion, she would die, not knowing what happened, and should be in order.
“Now I know what happened, and it makes my suffering easier,” she said.
The crime was shocked by the city
The murders stunned the capital of Texas and became known as one of the most famous crimes of the district.
Amy Ayers, 13 years old; Eliza Thomas, 17 years old; And the sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, 17 and 15 years old, were connected, shut up and shot in the head in the store “I cannot believe that this is yogurt”, where two of them worked. The building was then set on fire.
Investigators said that when closing, someone entered the store through the back door, attacked the girls and took fire. The bodies were found when the firefighters still fought with the flame.
“Austin lost his innocence that night when these young souls became victims,” said the mayor of Austin Kirk Watson.
DNA under the nails of Amy Ayers provided key evidence, said Daniel Jackson police detective in the cold affair. “The last moments of Amy on this earth were to solve this case for us,” Jackson said. “This is from her resistance.”
For many years, police officers and prosecutors stumbled upon this case for many years when they made their way through thousands of leaders, several false confessions and severely damaged evidence from the contaminated crime scene.
In 1999, the authorities arrested four people on charges of murder. Two of them, Robert Springstin and Michael Scott, were teenagers during murders. They initially admitted and involved each other. But both men quickly renounce and said that their statements were made under pressure from the police.
Both were convicted and convicted. Springstin was originally sent to the frame of suicide bombers, but his sentence was then reduced to prison. Their beliefs were canceled, and they were appointed to a second trial after a decade.
The judge ordered both to be released in 2009, when the prosecutors stated that the new DNA tests that were not available in 1991 revealed another suspect man. According to the authorities, BraShers did not have a well -known connection with men.
Barbara Wilson, mother Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, said that the whole family was looking for, was true.
“We never wanted anyone to get into prison or be accused of everything that they did not do,” Wilson said. “There has never been revenge. It was always true. “
The prosecutor says that the evidence indicates 1 killer
District Prosecutor of the District Travis Jose Garza said that his office continues to update evidence, but “the overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates the guilt of one person and the innocence of four.”
“If the conclusions of the APD investigation are confirmed, as they seem to be, I will say: I apologize, although I know that this will never be enough,” Garza said.
He said that his office would do everything possible so that the convicts move forward with his life.
In 2018, Missouri authorities said that DNA evidence associates the rods with strangling a woman from South Carolina in 1990 and the shooting of her mother and daughter in Missouri in 1998. The evidence also connected him with the rape in 1997 of a 14-year-old girl in Tennessee.
Brachers died in 1999, when he shot himself during the rejection of the police in a motel in Kennett, Missouri.
The police noted the similarity in many crimes, including that the victims were associated with their own clothes, sexually violence, and some scenes of the crime were set on fire. According to the authorities, in other cases other cases are considered, noting that BraShers, as you know, carries several weapons and acts alone.
“At the moment, there is no evidence that he had an accomplice,” Jackson said, in murders in the yogurt store.
Angie Ayers, the daughter -in -law Amy Ayers, called on the victims of other crimes not to give up.
“Do not accept no when your intuition tells you to insist,” she said. “Never let them insert your business back into the box.”
