Yogurt shop murders: 20 years later

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Tuesday will mark a somber anniversary in Austin’s recent history. On Dec. 6, 1991, four teenage girls were murdered inside a North Austin yogurt shop. The crime remains unsolved.

It all unfolded on a balmy Friday night in a strip mall at the corner of Anderson Lane and Rockwood Lane. At the time it was home to an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! store.

It was closing time, around 11 p.m. Four girls were inside:

• Amy Ayres, 13
• Jennifer Harbison, 17
• Sarah Harbison, 15, Jennifer's sister
• Eliza Thomas, 17

Jennifer and Eliza worked at the store.

The four girls were looking forward to a sleepover after they closed the shop for the night. They never made it out.

• View a timeline of the case.
   

Shortly before midnight, a passing Austin police officer spotted smoke coming from the building. As Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle would later say, “It forever changed each of us, from the EMS person who made the call to the fireman who put out the fire.”

The fire was started to cover up what the lead investigator would call a scene of "wholesale carnage." Each girl had been sexually assaulted, bound and gagged with their own clothing and shot in the head. Firefighters discovered the four burned bodies, with three of the girls stacked on top of one another.

For days afterward, friends, family, and even strangers came to a makeshift memorial outside the yogurt shop to share their grief and to remember.

Local musicians and celebrities honored the victims with a song titled "We Shall Not Forget." Billboards went up across Austin reading, “Who Killed These Girls?”

Twenty years out, closure in this case is nowhere to be found. Water from the firefighting efforts washed away much of the evidence of the murders.

Despite arrests in the case, the crime remains unsolved.

Today a permanent memorial plaque in the parking lot of the strip mall commemorates the lives of the four girls, while the search for evidence to convict the killers enters a third decade.

The oldest of the victims would be 37 years old today.

More than 7,300 days have passed and Austin police detectives continue to pursue leads on a daily basis.

Watch KXAN News at 10 p.m. Monday for the start of a team-coverage series on the murders. Then coverage continues on Tuesday on KXAN News at 5 p.m, 6 p.m. and 10 p.m.

(Ed. note: Some of the video clips attached here are from the crime scene and the day in court when charges against the accused were dismissed.)