Austin approves $35 million settlement in yogurt shop murder case

Kim Pierce and her daughter Marisa Pierce called Austin’s $35 million yogurt shop settlement “blood money” after the city agreed to compensate the widow and daughter of Maurice Pierce and the three other men once accused in the case.

The payout will be split among Maurice Pierce’s family and the other exonerees, Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott and Forrest Welborn. Maurice Pierce died in 2010, so his $10 million share will go to Kim Pierce and Marisa Pierce, after a Texas judge formally declared the four men innocent on Feb. 19, 2026.

The case dates to Dec. 6, 1991, when Eliza Thomas, Amy Ayers, Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison were tied up, shot and left inside an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop in Austin that was then set on fire. The investigation spiraled for decades, sending one of the accused men to death row and another to life in prison before the convictions collapsed.

Austin police identified Robert Eugene Brashers as the suspect in September 2025, using DNA and ballistics evidence to point to a different man. Brashers had already died by suicide in 1999 during a police standoff in Missouri, leaving the murders unsolved even as the forensic trail shifted away from the four men who had carried the case for more than 30 years.

Austin City Council unanimously approved the settlement in May 2026, and Mayor Kirk Watson apologized to the men and their families, calling it “an awful mistake.”