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Season Six: One Unknown Male pt. II - Resolution in a Small Town
155 Plays3 days ago
We are using this episode to talk about an unsolved 90s quadruple murder that appears to now be closed. Part II.
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Transcript
Graphic Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Introduction to the Yogurt Shop Murders Docuseries
00:00:25
Speaker
This is True Crime
00:00:59
Speaker
ah One of the things that you had mentioned to me was that this docuseries, which I guess is just called The Yogurt Shop? I think that's what it Yogurt Shop Murders.
00:01:11
Speaker
That docuseries actually shows some of the investigators arriving on scene that night, right? Correct.
Rise of Law Enforcement Reality TV in the 1980s
00:01:19
Speaker
For some random reason, there was a film crew that were they were filming for something that had absolutely nothing to do with the Yogurt Shop Murders.
00:01:28
Speaker
ah They were just getting footage. And that footage is shown. I mean, it doesn't show like, I think it does show a little bit inside, but it doesn't show anything like too graphic.
00:01:41
Speaker
um But it just so happened that. the night that this horrible crime happened, there was a film crew with the lead, who ended up being the lead detective ah at the beginning of the case.
00:01:55
Speaker
One of the interesting things that happened in the late 1980s is we started like a lot of new documentary reality series that had to do with the courts and that had to do with law enforcement. And one of those huge things that happened was the television show Cops.
00:02:15
Speaker
And so, COPS had happened, i it premiered March of 1989 and was a hit. but In fact, it still technically is going today. There's been some breaks in the timing of it, but COPS is still around today.
00:02:30
Speaker
i did look up, and they were in Texas, but they were not near this at the time, because I was curious, like, would that have been like COPS or something? Because COPS has had some really dramatic stuff happen sort of over the years.
00:02:43
Speaker
I don't actually know if they, they may say it in the docuseries, what they were filming. i don't know. i but it wasn't anything that, if they did say it, I don't remember what they said.
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, no, I just thought it was interesting that like it this is timed in 1991, so we've had a good two years for everybody to get like kind of obsessed with cops, and then America's Most Wanted is going to be coming out in there.
00:03:12
Speaker
We have a lot of people who get fascinated with the concept of this, like, cinema verite style of like documentary television. Because if I remember correctly, America's Most Wanted like precedes cops by a year, maybe. And I think it came on maybe Saturday nights.
00:03:31
Speaker
um I just thought that was interesting to mention here. Among other things, the timing of all this was kind of weird because we get this docuseries called The Yogurt Shop Murders. It comes out in August 2025 on the streaming channel service HBO.
00:03:50
Speaker
And then now it's September
Recent Developments in the Yogurt Shop Murders
00:03:53
Speaker
28th. And what's interesting about today's episode, timing-wise, is that It's just been solved or it's been put out that the yogurt shop murders in Austin, 1991, they have their primary suspect now.
00:04:14
Speaker
Now where we left off, we had these four kids, two of which are convicted of this. um And over time, we're going to find out a lot of interesting information about this case.
00:04:28
Speaker
And, That's going to be that Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Walburn ultimately have nothing to do with this. Or at least it seems that way, right?
00:04:40
Speaker
They had nothing to do with it. I was sure of that just looking at the investigation. They were completely, they weren't involved at all. And, you know, the very worst thing I could hear right now from anybody is that, like, they're still involved somehow.
00:04:56
Speaker
Yeah, it would be terrible because I had mentioned this statement ah by the Travis County District Attorney back 2009. It was the summer of 2009 that she made the statement that like she was confident they were like this trial would eventually go forward. And they were concerned about this one unknown male donor.
00:05:17
Speaker
But she was confident that somehow Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott were still involved. And I'm going to go ahead and, since we're getting through this probably in today's episode.
00:05:28
Speaker
I'm going to go ahead and put this out here. You've always thought that it was what? One person. Right. So you've always put down that this is a single perpetrator crime. Right. And the reason that a single perpetrator was able to do this, which I guess might be a question somebody would have, is because they were young girls who were scared.
00:05:49
Speaker
What's interesting about this is i had been confused somewhere along the way in what I had read about this. And the thing that had confused me was that there was evidence.
00:06:04
Speaker
And i had one picture in my head that there were multiple contributors. But I think over time, what I've come to realize is that there's really only one important piece of DNA in all of this that like was a true, like so the one unknown male like person that was likely involved in this crime. So I had been confused thinking robbery gone wrong and like maybe two people, not these people that they put up on trial for this, but like two people come in and like that's how you get control of them.
00:06:39
Speaker
But I was already coming around to the idea that you had that it's one person because a lot of these crimes, ah history is starting to show us they are like these like these unsolved pairs of murders and unsolved quadruple murders.
00:06:54
Speaker
They're frequently just one person. Right. And so let's say in this situation now, ah there were two different kinds of bullets recovered, right? Right. brush And let's say that in this situation it had been two people. The reason I was confident that it was just one is because if it yeah a crime like this were done by two people, one of them would have been the leader.
00:07:21
Speaker
And one of them would have been the follower. And the follower would have confessed long before they made a DNA match all these years later, like 35 years later or whatever.
00:07:34
Speaker
Based on just what I knew about the crime itself and the aftermath, It only makes sense that it was one guy to me.
00:07:47
Speaker
And I'm amazed that investigators or prosecutors or officials, I guess, when they say, like, we're going to get everybody that was involved with this crime, it surprises me that they have the opinion that there could be a bunch of people involved in this crime, right?
00:08:10
Speaker
right It's weird. It's a weird thing to have that opinion. And it's it's pretty clear to basically execute four young girls.
00:08:24
Speaker
I have a feeling you you might be right. it It may come out that it was a robbery that went wrong, but that's not a great ah place to rob anyway.
00:08:36
Speaker
Right. Yeah, it's not going to be a high traffic area or a place with a lot of cash. Right. And so, you know, it may be a robbery motive, but for the most part, I'm pretty sure this was just meanness. It was it was a guy who was
False Confessions and Investigation Challenges
00:08:51
Speaker
an asshole. Where we land is, on October 28th of 2009, the same district attorney, Rosemary Lamberg, from the Travis County District Attorney's Office, she is going to drop all the charges against Michael Scott.
00:09:07
Speaker
and robert spring And information is going to dribble out over the next several years that they have a lot of false confessions in this case.
00:09:19
Speaker
In fact, Austin police will eventually say, which I think it's quoted in See How Small, which New York Times ran that at some point, and Somebody Has to Die. So See How Small, i think, was written by, it's either Scott Blackwood or somebody with a last name Kirk Walsh. That's what I had scribbled in the margins here.
00:09:41
Speaker
This is ah essentially talking about these yogurt shop murders. And then there's another article, if Somebody Has to Die, by Jordan Smith, that comes out in 2001. Now, we're going to find out that like the Austin police had a hand in a lot of these false confessions.
00:10:00
Speaker
And one of the confessions comes in 1992 by two Mexican nationals who were held by Mexican authorities. And it takes some time, but we find out later on through a CBS News article that they did realize the confession made no sense and ultimately rule out these two people.
00:10:22
Speaker
But they have one interesting person. And, you know, i can never let go of a good serial killer story. The person that we come to know about in the course of all this, he actually is going to confess to the yogurt shop murders.
Kenneth McDuff's Criminal History
00:10:40
Speaker
We've mentioned him in passing on some other stuff. I have looked at a series of crimes in but in several different Texas cities in the 80s that like this guy might have been good for at one point.
00:10:53
Speaker
But we came up with this whole interesting idea from some of the summaries online where we could like go back and look at him. Now, we've talked about one of these scenarios before, so i'm not going to go crazy with it.
00:11:08
Speaker
But this guy is Kenneth Allen McDuff. Now, he's raised in a Texas town called Rosebud. He's got a stack of brothers and sisters. His father is a successful businessman in the 60s. And there's...
00:11:21
Speaker
and theirs Their mom, Addie, so dad is John Allen or J.A. Mom is Addie McDuff. she had threatened a school bus driver with a gun after the driver kicked Kenneth McDuff's twin brother, Lonnie McDuff, off of the school bus.
00:11:42
Speaker
Now, Kenneth McDuff, and we've talked about him before, he was known as a bully. He was always picking on weaker individuals. He had lost the fight to an athletic boy named Tommy Salmons.
00:11:54
Speaker
And he ends up quitting school and going to work for his father's concrete business, just doing manual labor. We picked up on him basically having a criminal career and escalating what I would call pretty quickly to murder.
00:12:09
Speaker
So in 1964, when he was 18 years old, Kenneth McDuff, he gets 12 counts of burglary and attempted burglary. And it's going to span three Texas counties. If you've never driven through Texas before, Texas is huge. Each county is huge.
00:12:23
Speaker
So this spans a pretty huge jurisdictional circle. That's Bell County, Milan County, and Falls County. He ends up being sentenced to 12 four-year prison terms, and he is supposed to be serving those concurrently.
00:12:39
Speaker
That's in 1964. He makes parole in December 1965 in spite of having all these four-year sentences. So he briefly gets put back in prison because he he gets into a fight when he gets out. He doesn't really know how to like live free, so to speak.
00:12:58
Speaker
He had not been convicted of anything at the time, but he has an accomplice that we talked about in the 1966 triple murder named Roy Dale Green. So according to royal deal Roy Dale Green, Kenneth McDuff had bragged pretty openly about having a serious criminal record and he claimed at that time to have raped and killed two young women.
00:13:21
Speaker
On August 6th of 1966, the two of them, Roydale Green and Kenneth McDuff, they had gotten together that summer through some mutual friends.
00:13:33
Speaker
They spent the day pouring concrete at Kenneth McDuff's father's company, and then they went driving around, and Kenneth McDuff tells Green they're going to go looking for a girl.
00:13:44
Speaker
At 10 Robert Brand, his girlfriend Edna Sullivan, so Robert Brand is 17, Edna Sullivan's 16, and Robert Brand's 15-year-old cousin, Mark Dunham, they were standing beside their parked car on a baseball field in Everman, Texas.
00:14:03
Speaker
So they're cruising around, and Kenneth McDuff notices Edna Sullivan. So they park about a football field length away from who are basically going to be their victims.
00:14:14
Speaker
And Kenneth McDuff threatens the trio with his.38 Colt revolver. He orders them to come over and get into the trunk of their car. And Roy Green is going to follow along in Kenneth McDuff's car.
00:14:29
Speaker
Kenneth McDuff drives the Ford along a highway off into a field. And he orders Edna Sullivan out of the trunk. He instructs Roy Green to put her into the trunk of his Dodge Coronet.
00:14:42
Speaker
And at this point, according to Roydale Green, Kenneth McDuff said he's going to have to knock him off, and he fires six shots into the trunk of the Ford, despite Robert Brand and Mark Dunham begging not to be killed.
00:14:59
Speaker
So Kenneth McDuff then instructs Roydale Green to wipe down any fingerprints that are on the Ford. They drive to another location, and Kenneth McDuff and Roy Green end up sexually assaulting Edna Sullivan.
00:15:13
Speaker
After she had been assaulted repeatedly, Macduff asks Roy Dale Green for something which he could strangle her with, and Roy Green gives him his belt.
00:15:25
Speaker
However, Macduff opts to use three-foot-long piece of broomstick that he's got in the trunk of his car. He chokes Edna Sullivan, and then ah Green and McDuff dump her body in some bushes.
00:15:42
Speaker
According to Green, they go and get some Coca-Cola from a local gas station, and they drive to Roy Green's house to spend the night. The following day, Kenneth buries that gun beside Roy Green's garage, and their mutual acquaintance, Richard Boyd, allows Kenneth McDuff to wash his car at his house.
00:16:02
Speaker
The next day, Roy Green confesses to Richard Boyd's parents that Richard Boyd's parents tell Green's mom, and Green's mom makes him turn himself at So finally, Kenneth McDuff gets arrested by Falls County Sheriff Albert Brady Pamplin and a deputy U.S. Marshal named T.P.
00:16:25
Speaker
McNamara. He ends up getting a death sentence for this crime, and he is going to be sent to the electric chair. Roy Green gets a 25-year sentence and is released in 1979.
00:16:37
Speaker
Along the way, Kenneth McDuff's death sentence gets commuted to a life sentence. He hires a lawyer. They go through and they get a massive amount of what looks like evidence together.
00:16:50
Speaker
And that lawyer claims that Roy Dale Green was the actual killer. So because they put on this fancy presentation, parole board members are impressed by the fancy presentation.
00:17:03
Speaker
And during a one-on-one interview with a board member, Kenneth McDuff offers him a bribe to secure a favorable decision on this parole application. He ends up getting two years for the bribe.
00:17:16
Speaker
But it's pointless because the board members still think that Kenneth McDuff can, quote, contribute to society again.
00:17:28
Speaker
So they decide to grant him parole. And 1989, having been after having been sentenced to death for this 1966 murder, he gets out of prison.
00:17:42
Speaker
So Kenneth McDuff was one of 20 former death row inmates and 127 murderers that would get paroled from this area of Texas.
00:17:53
Speaker
After being released, he goes and works at a gas station. He's making a couple dollars an hour. He's taking a class at Texas State Technical College in Waco. Within three days of his release, he is widely believed to have begun killing again.
00:18:08
Speaker
The body of 29-year-old Serafia Parker was discovered on October 14th of 1989 in a town called Temple, which is kind of down towards Waco. ah Kenneth McDuff doesn't get charged in this crime.
00:18:21
Speaker
However, he was soon returned to prison on a parole violation because he had made a death threat to what is described as an African-American youth over in Rosebud, Texas.
00:18:33
Speaker
So Addie McDuff, she pays $1,500 and expenses to two Huntsville lawyers in return for their evaluating Kenneth McDuff's prospect of release.
00:18:44
Speaker
And on December 18th of 1990, Kenneth McDuff is again released from prison. On the night of October 10th, 1991, he picks up a sex worker named Brenda Thompson in Waco.
00:18:59
Speaker
He ties her up, but then stops his truck about 50 feet from a police checkpoint. When a policeman walks towards Kenneth's vehicle, she repeatedly, the woman's tied up next to him, kicks at the windshield of McDuff's truck, and she cracks it.
00:19:15
Speaker
So Kenneth McDuff accelerates very quickly. He drives at the officers, and according to a statement filed by the officers later, three of them had to jump out of the way to avoid being hit. But the cops give chase,
00:19:27
Speaker
Kenneth McDuff is able to elude them by turning off his lights and riding the wrong way down one-way streets. Ultimately, he parks his truck ah in a wooded area near U.S. Route 84, and he's going to torture Brenda Thompson to death.
00:19:44
Speaker
Her body will not be discovered until 1998.
00:19:48
Speaker
Five days later, on October 15, 1991, Kenneth McDuff and a 21-year-old sex worker named Virginia Deanna-Moore were witnessed arguing at a Waco motel.
00:20:00
Speaker
Shortly thereafter, the pair drive in Kenneth McLaughlin's pickup truck to a remote area beside Texas State Highway 6, which is down by Waco. He ties her arms and legs with stockings, and he kills her.
00:20:12
Speaker
She had been missing from home for seven years by the time her body was discovered September 29th of 1998. He's also believed to have murdered Cynthia Rene Gonzalez, 23 years old,
00:20:25
Speaker
She was found dead in a creek bed near County Road 313 in a heavily wooded area one mile west of I-35 in September of 1991. She had only been missing for six days.
00:20:39
Speaker
Kenneth McDuff had an accomplice named Alva Hank Worley. They kidnapped and murdered Colleen Reed on December 29th of 1991. While Macduff and Worley were driving around Austin, they drove past an Austin car wash where Kenneth Macduff saw Colleen Reed.
00:21:01
Speaker
According to Worley, so again, the accomplice is talking, Kenneth stated he was going to kidnap her. He then pulled her into the car wash, parked behind her car wash bay, jumped out of the car, grabbed her by the throat, and pulled her into the back seat.
00:21:17
Speaker
And then he instructed for Alva Worley to take off. And all of this occurred in plain sight of multiple witnesses. Okay. Okay. So this guy is an honest to God, tried and true, very mean serial killer.
00:21:36
Speaker
He's going to take two more lives. We actually talked about him before. We have, yes. Which is why I was kind of like just getting to Austin and getting to 1991. Right. right So the death of Colleen Reed is it's thought to be three from the end. So essentially her death and then two more people.
00:21:55
Speaker
But her death takes place in December of 1991 in the Austin area. So the reason he's so interesting here is Kenneth McDuff has confessed to the yogurt shop murders.
Role of DNA in 2022 Investigation of Yogurt Shop Murders
00:22:11
Speaker
It's right before his execution, which to me says he's probably just making up a story to try and delay the inevitable.
00:22:22
Speaker
Would you agree? I don't know. i don't know. i mean, that's possible. um It could also be that, like, because of the infamy surrounding that crime, ah trying to make a name for himself before he or as he is being executed.
00:22:40
Speaker
Right. Because none of his crimes, like, nobody knows who he is, right? Right. Right. he's He's kind of nobody at the time. Right. And I think that, so, I'm not sure what he was doing.
00:22:54
Speaker
Ultimately, Kenneth McDuff is going to end up being executed. um he's indicted on one count of capital murder for the murder of a woman named Melissa Northrup.
00:23:06
Speaker
Her murder re occurs March 1st, 1992. She had been kidnapped from a quick pack in Waco, Texas, where she was working. She had been strangled with a rope. She was pregnant at the time of her murder, and she was found in a Dallas County gravel pit with her hands tied behind her back.
00:23:23
Speaker
So June 26th, 1992, found guilty. In Texas, juries determine whether or not and an individual convicted of capital murder will receive life imprisonment or the death penalty.
00:23:35
Speaker
According to a journalist named Gary Cartwright, Kenneth McDuff is the one guy that should be executed. He would later say, quote, if there has ever been a good argument for the death penalty, it's Kenneth McDuff.
00:23:50
Speaker
And on February 18th, 1993, the jury in a special punishment hearing opted to sentence him to death. There are several delays that are going to occur and while appeals can be heard.
00:24:01
Speaker
And the Western District Court, ah so that's the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, they're going to end up denying federal relief. And they're going to reschedule the execution date for Kenneth McDuff for November 1998.
00:24:17
Speaker
He is denied authorization for a new date, but he does give up ah Colleen Reed's burial location just a few weeks before he's executed in 1998. He's been buried in the Joe Bird Cemetery, which is Peckerwood Hill.
00:24:32
Speaker
And I know we talked about that when it came up because there's no way I would have passed up that opportunity. But ultimately, this guy in 1998 has confessed to the Yogeshop murder.
00:24:44
Speaker
Spinning back over to the Yoga Shop murders, we know that in October of 2009, they dropped the charges against Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen, part of the original four, the two men who had been convicted.
00:24:58
Speaker
Now, in December 2010, another one of those a original four suspects, a guy named Maurice Pierce, he's going to make headlines.
00:25:10
Speaker
On December 23, 2010, an Austin police officer named Frank Wilson and his partner, Bradley Smith, who's a rookie, by the way, they conduct a traffic stop on a vehicle driven by Maurice Pierce in the northern part of Austin.
00:25:26
Speaker
After a brief pursuit on foot, Maurice struggles with Frank Wilson and removes a knife from his belt and allegedly stabs Officer Wilson in the neck.
00:25:37
Speaker
Wilson pulls out his gun and he shoots and kills Pierce. Now, Officer Frank Wilson will survive here, ah but this is just kind of a moment in time with a third of four suspects kind of meeting a ah terrible end.
00:25:54
Speaker
On December 23rd, um December 8th of 2021. On December 8th of 2021, the House Judiciary Committee, so this is at the federal level, the United States House of Representatives, they patch legislation from Representative Michael McCaul, who represents Texas's 10th congressional district.
00:26:19
Speaker
And this is going to give the families of cold case victims the opportunity to petition the federal government to re-examine cases older than three years. So basically all cold cases can be handed off to a federal agency to be looked at.
00:26:35
Speaker
February 5th, 2022, was announced that advanced DNA technology had brought investigators in Austin closer than ever to solving the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders.
00:26:49
Speaker
So August 3rd, 2022, then-president Joe Biden signs into law the Homicide Victims Family Rights Act of 2021, this was actually motivated by the 1991 yogurt shop murders.
00:27:03
Speaker
The law was intended to help ensure that federal law enforcement would review cold case files and apply the latest technologies or investigative standards or both. ah The law also states that it can request but a request can be made for a cold case review by federal agencies. So families could do this and local law enforcement agencies could do this.
00:27:25
Speaker
We're now in 2025. The Yogurt Shop Murders has come out as a four-part documentary series on HBO. Multiple sources talked about these murders. these never really out eye.
00:27:39
Speaker
true prime sources have talked about these murders and these murders never really go out of the public eye But in September 2025, on the 26th, it's formally announced that they have identified a suspect through investigative genetic genealogy.
00:27:59
Speaker
CeCe Moore is going to point out that back in 2018, they had linked a suspect to the yogurt shop murders through DNA. A partial YSTR DNA profile was developed from a vaginal swab from one of the victims.
00:28:18
Speaker
The profile did not match any of the previous suspects. However, what they were able to do was they got enough of a YDNA STR profile to get a partial match to sort of push the investigation further down the road.
00:28:37
Speaker
They were able to find on a bullet casing, which was in a drain at the crime scene, so at the yogurt shop, It shared similarities with a gun that was known to have been used in a suicide that occurred during a standoff with police back in 1999.
00:28:59
Speaker
Now this is always fascinating to me. always wonder like where the details and the information comes from. Now with this particular case, uh,
00:29:13
Speaker
We get an article from 48 Hours. comes out September 26, 2025. I'm to read some of this, and then we're going to talk about this guy. It says, bullet casing and drain at Texas yogurt shop links serial killer to infamous murders, says original investigator.
00:29:29
Speaker
This is written up by Stephanie Schleifer for 48 Hours, which is a CBS News subsidiary, I guess would be the word. It says 48 Hours correspondent Aaron Moriarty has learned a suspect has been identified in the 1991 murders of four teenage girls in an Austin, Texas yogurt shop.
00:29:47
Speaker
This is according to one of the original investigators. The suspect is a serial killer and rapist who committed at least three murders between 1990 and 1998 in South Carolina and Missouri.
00:29:59
Speaker
He died in 1999 by suicide during a standoff with police. The gun he used to shoot himself is believed to be consistent with a bullet casing found in a drain inside the yogurt shop.
00:30:12
Speaker
So the connection between the suspect and this case has been made through DNA. According to this article, Aaron Moriarty has been reporting on the Yogurt shop case yogurt Chop case since the very beginning.
00:30:24
Speaker
So who we get out of this is a person that like isn't on the radar for any of this. um Very little is known about his early life.
00:30:36
Speaker
We have a date of birth for him. We know he was born March 13th of 1958 Newport News, Virginia. ah He was the youngest of two kids.
00:30:48
Speaker
And then I've seen one summary say two living children who were born to Dulles and Nancy Brashers. When he was young, the family moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he would spend his childhood and youth.
00:31:01
Speaker
The suspect reportedly had no problems with the law during his teen years. He did not use drugs or alcohol. And in gra after graduation, he enlisted in the Army and served in the Navy for several years.
00:31:15
Speaker
In the early nineteen eighty s the suspect resigns from the Army. He moves to Louisiana and sets in settles into a house down in New Orleans. But by the mid-1980s, he moves one more time over to Fort Myers, Florida.
00:31:30
Speaker
He had gotten married and he had a daughter with his wife in 1991. That suspect is a man named Robert Eugene Brashers.
Introduction to Suspect Robert Eugene Brashers
00:31:41
Speaker
Now, I've heard of him.
00:31:44
Speaker
I had never seen him linked to as much stuff as he is now being linked to. Had you heard of him before? I'd never heard of him before. So here's the story that we get about like some of his crimes.
00:31:59
Speaker
In the fall of 1985, he gets arrested down in Florida. He gets arrested on charges of assaulting a 24-year-old woman named Michelle... Wilkerson.
00:32:11
Speaker
Now, we can read about this all the way back in 1985. There's an article by Roger Mullen for the Palm Beach Post, and it's simply titled, Woman Shot in Head Escapes Attacker.
00:32:23
Speaker
According to investigators, on November 22nd, Robert Brashers met Michelle Wilkerson in Fort Pierce and convinced her to accompany him to a bar.
00:32:35
Speaker
After spending their weekend there, he took Michelle Wilkerson to a dark alleyway near a citrus grove, where after they drank six Budweiser's together, he attempted to make sexual advances toward her.
00:32:47
Speaker
Michelle refused and attempted to leave. And after she tries to leave, a fight breaks out between the of them. And for some reason, during this fight, Robert Brasher shoots Michelle Wilkerson twice in the neck and the head.
00:33:05
Speaker
Despite the severity of her injuries, Michelle Wilkerson remains conscious. She manages to leave the car. She hides in a culvert under the road. And Robert Brasher, having lost track of her, he goes to the beach and he throws his gun away.
00:33:20
Speaker
He then attempts to leave, but he gets his truck stuck in the sand and he has to get out and start walking. So he's basically walking along, trying to figure out a way to get his truck out of the sand or find someone who can help him do that.
00:33:33
Speaker
But in the meantime, Michelle Wilkerson has made her way to freedom. She gets to a nearby apartment building and they give her medical attention. So she's going to end up being driven to Longwood Hospital, but she's able to describe her assailant and his car in detail.
00:33:50
Speaker
So a few minutes later, Robert Brashers is apprehended while wandering the beach, and he gets charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggravated battery, and using a firearm during the commission of a crime.
00:34:02
Speaker
He's convicted the following year, and he's sentenced to 12 years imprisonment. So at the time, he's going to get a lot of good conduct credit, or good time, and he's going to be released May 4th of 1989.
00:34:17
Speaker
eighty nine So that's not a super long time to do in prison for this level of assault um on which you basically were supposed to be doing 12 years.
00:34:29
Speaker
After he's released from prison, he bounces around. He bounces from South Carolina to Tennessee to Georgia. He frequently changes his residence. On February 18, 1992, he's arrested in Cobb County, Georgia.
00:34:43
Speaker
So that's about... two and a half months after the yogurt shop murders. Right. He's charged with grand theft auto, unlawful possession of a weapon, and theft.
00:34:55
Speaker
While police are searching his vehicle in an apartment, they find a radio scanner, a police jacket, lockpicking tools, and a fake Tennessee driver's license.
00:35:06
Speaker
So fearing another prison sentence, he makes a plea deal. The prosecutors ah set it up where he can plead guilty to the most serious of the charges, and the rest of them are going to be dropped. As a result, he gets five years imprisonment.
00:35:19
Speaker
He serves that in full. And in February of 1997, he gets he gets out So for the next few years, 1998, 1999, he moves between Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri.
00:35:32
Speaker
On April 12th of 1998, he was arrested while attempting to break into the home of a woman in Peregut, Arkansas. He had been employed by her on a previous occasion, and he cut the wires leading up to her home. So basically, he's trying to keep her from having an alarm or her phone.
00:35:52
Speaker
And he was armed at the time of his arrest. In addition, they found a video camera and locksmithing tools on his person. So he's taken into custody, but apparently released after his bail is unsecured or someone posts his bail.
00:36:09
Speaker
On January 13, 1999, police officers noticed a stolen vehicle that's been parked in the parking lot of a Super 8 hotel in Kennett, Missouri.
00:36:21
Speaker
After speaking with motel personnel, it's established that Robert Brashers, and apparently his family, had arrived in that vehicle just days earlier. So officers break down the door to the motel, and they find him hiding under a bed with a loaded gun.
00:36:39
Speaker
They try to drag him out and arrest him. He resists them, and he opens fire. So those officers end up retreating and calling for backup. Within a few minutes, the motel grounds are surrounded with police cars, and Robert Brashers takes his wife, his daughter, and his two stepdaughters hostage.
00:36:58
Speaker
After four hours of negotiation, he releases the four hostages, and then he shoots himself in the head. He's going to be alive for six days, and on January 19th, he is going to die from complications of the self-inflicted gunshot wound.
00:37:16
Speaker
This death is going to be ruled wrong. a suicide. So I have not heard that much about him. this is kind of his story where he comes into play for me is CeCe Moore, which I think everybody knows who that is, but she's a prominent American genetic genealogist and investigator who right now is working, I think, out of Parabon Nano Labs.
00:37:42
Speaker
um She does a lot of work in identifying connective DNA to crime scenes. She's going to pluck him from obscurity in 2018.
00:37:54
Speaker
She is able to identify him through working on him as a suspect in three murders and several rapes that date back to 1990.
00:38:06
Speaker
So prosecutors from New Madrid County and which is located in kind of the boot hill of the state of Missouri, and Pimpsicoke County, which is located alongside, close to Madrid.
00:38:24
Speaker
They file a motion to exhume Robert Brasser's remains and conduct additional testing.
00:38:31
Speaker
On September 27th, 2018, his casket is exhumed. They extract DNA from his bones. That DNA testing is going to reveal that he's a perfect match for unknown DNA was that was at the crime scene of a 1990 rape and murder.
Brashers' Link to Multiple Crimes
00:38:52
Speaker
This is a 28-year-old woman named Genevieve Zitricki, who went by Jenny. She had been bludgeoned, raped, and strangled with pantyhose at her apartment in Greenville, South Carolina, April 5th of 1990.
00:39:06
Speaker
At the time, it had been established that after murdering her in the bedroom, the killer had dragged her body into a bathtub and submerged it. And for some reason, on the bathroom mirror, he had written, don't fuck with my family.
00:39:22
Speaker
So they get a DNA sample from that scene, and it ends up not being isolated for five years. But they're going to upload it 1995 to CODA's.
00:39:33
Speaker
So investigators were able to kind of go backwards in time and establish that at the time of Jenny's murder, Robert Brashers had been living in Greenville, South Carolina, not very far away from her.
00:39:47
Speaker
DNA also is going to link him to the double murder of 38-year-old Sherry Shearer and her 12-year-old daughter, Megan, both of whom had been found shot to death March 28, 1998, in their home in Portisville, Missouri.
00:40:03
Speaker
Both victims had been tied up, and Megan had been raped before Brasher shot and killed both of them. And guess what kind of gun he used? A.22? Yep. A.22 caliber weapon.
00:40:14
Speaker
So two hours later, it was determined that he had then broken into another home in Dyersburg, Tennessee, where he attempted to assault a 25-year-old woman. That victim resisted in a way that he...
00:40:30
Speaker
flees. And basically, we don't know exactly what happened there, but she gets rid of him. She also gets shot. There was no useful biological evidence left behind, but ballistics were able to prove that the same gun he had been using in this attack had been used with the murders of the Shearers.
00:40:50
Speaker
She got shot in the arm, like through the door. She managed to get the door shot, but she got shot in the arm. And that's how they, that's where the bullet that links it. I think so.
00:41:02
Speaker
Okay. So he's then linked to the March 11th, 1997 rape of a 14 year old girl in Memphis, Tennessee. And in that case, the victim and four other people were inside a home.
00:41:14
Speaker
When Robert Brashers knocked on the door, forced his way inside while armed with a revolver, And after entering, he tied up the occupants. It's all sounding pretty familiar at this point, right?
00:41:25
Speaker
Yeah. So it was determined on September 26, 2025, it's released that Robert Eugene Brashers is the perpetrator of the 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop murders.
00:41:42
Speaker
So a partial YSTR DNA profile was developed from a vaginal swab from one of the victims. Now that profile did not match any other suspect.
00:41:53
Speaker
However, Brasher's YSTR DNA profile was enough of a partial match that that's how we start tracking him. And testing of a bullet casing found in a drain at that crime scene is going to be consistent with patterns produced by the gun that Robert Brasher had used to commit suicide in the standoff with police in 1999.
00:42:14
Speaker
So he kept this little.22 caliber weapon this whole time. That's crazy, right? Yeah. It is. um There's not a lot about him other than what i just kind of ran through there.
00:42:25
Speaker
His daughter gives an interview in February of 2019 when she's recounting details of her father's life. She says that she first saw him in early 1997 after he had just been released from prison.
00:42:39
Speaker
According to her, the next two years he lived with her, her mom, and her two half-sisters. During this time, she claimed he was sometimes aggressive towards them. He fought ah the stepfather once and caused a head injury with a drill.
00:42:52
Speaker
Most disturbingly, he had made a tape recording of himself making small cuts on his neck and arm with a saw to see if he could withstand the pain. ah She was inclined to believe that her mother, Dorothy, who died in December 2018 at the age of 53, so that's going to be Dorothy Brasher's, Robert Brasher's wife,
00:43:13
Speaker
that she knew about her father's past activities and she had told them to start calling him by a different name and to keep him inside the house. In addition, she claimed that Robert Brasher's mental health sharply deteriorated at sometime in April of 1998 and that his job at a construction firm led to him being absent from the house for a few weeks at a time.
00:43:36
Speaker
During these periods, it is possible he may have committed additional rapes and murders. Okay. Okay. So that's a lot of information about a guy that we really didn't know anything about, right? He is a true serial killer. Yeah, he is a serial killer. And, like, he does the thing at the end that you kind of expect from a decompensating serial killer, and that is he kills himself.
00:44:01
Speaker
Right. And I just want to point out, I thought of it while you were talking, I wonder if...
00:44:11
Speaker
Did you say that he was put in jail in February of like? 1992, right after. He was put in jail then? Right after it happened, yeah. And how long was he in jail at that point? Do you remember?
00:44:25
Speaker
Well, so February of 1992 is the stuff down in Georgia. um He gets ah the five-year sentence and he gets out February 1997. So by the time he gets out on that crime, so it's like when he gets arrested, it's right after the Yogurt Shop murders? Like it's February eighteenth like two and a half months later. Well, the reason I wanted, the reason I was asking is because he was in jail on September 1992, right?
00:44:53
Speaker
Yes. Okay, because that's when Dale Denwiddle went missing in South Carolina. oh yes. And so I was thinking about that situation, um but he was in jail. So ah because this is where...
00:45:10
Speaker
um Like we've talked about, ah you know, this guy comes out of nowhere. There's DNA evidence linking him to all these sort of random unsolved crimes. Right. Right. And that is what happens, you know, over time, like the only thing that's going to show up over time.
00:45:29
Speaker
ah Because without DNA, he's just getting away with all this, right? Yeah. um But I thought of that, but then I i thought I remembered he went to jail. um But I would not be surprised um if there are more cases.
00:45:47
Speaker
I don't know if he didn't ah murder them. i'm not I don't know how many sexual assaults might have gone unreported. So they upload his DNA.
00:46:01
Speaker
And the DNA that he hits on is the, in the first case that I saw was Ginny Zatrici. That's the April 5th, 1990 case. Um, there's a DNA, an unknown male DNA that is uploaded in 1995.
00:46:17
Speaker
And that is going to end up linking him, Robert Brashers to her murder among the other murders that we were talking about. Right. And so the yogurt shop DNA must not have been, uh,
00:46:32
Speaker
put into CODIS until later. I don't think they could because it was a partial profile. I think they ended up having to work that one backwards. And they were talking about how they um as the technology advanced, they were finally able to get,
00:46:51
Speaker
ah like, they were able to exclude and they were able to do more things. I'm not entirely sure. i'd like I'm going to see if I can follow it and figure out The exact um order. Match that they made?
00:47:07
Speaker
Well, the exact order that it occurred in because it kind of gets all jumbled, right? It does. It's kind of confusing. It almost sounds to me, I could be totally wrong on this speculation. i'm about to expound on you here. But I think they were experimenting with partial profiles, and his was more than the like average partial.
Advancements in DNA Profiling
00:47:27
Speaker
So they put it in, and it led them to... either the yogurt shop or vice versa. Right, but like his, okay, so in 1998 from the Sherry and Megan Scherer home murders, a partial DNA profile was developed at that time, but it lacked the markers ah to enter into CODIS. So right i don't know at that point in time
00:48:02
Speaker
what was required probably like, I don't know, 12 or something. I'm not really sure, but it didn't come up enough to put it in there. And the reason for that is um the less markers you're comparing, the more people it's going to match.
00:48:23
Speaker
Right. bro Okay. And so there's some markers that, you know, The whole point is that, like, over time, ah people who specialize in this have been able to say, like, okay, these are, like, always different in people. And, you know, they point to certain markers.
00:48:43
Speaker
And um that's how you can be certain of a DNA match, right? As opposed to the markers where, like, you're going to be matching half of CODIS. That doesn't – it's not helpful, right?
00:48:55
Speaker
Right. um But –
00:49:00
Speaker
So that couldn't be in. let's see. And then
00:49:08
Speaker
from that same case, because of significant and advances in DNA ah from Megan and Sherry, that the mom and daughter that were sexually assaulted and murdered, um it was re-entered.
00:49:23
Speaker
ah Right. And That was when they were able to get a full suspect DNA profile. um And that was, so that's when that, so that is him. We know that now, right?
00:49:37
Speaker
Right. It goes in and it matches um the murder of Genevieve, right? Correct. Okay. And that's in Greenville, South Carolina in april on April 6, 1990. So they immediately know that the same person is responsible for the murder ah in 1990 and two murders in 1998 in Missouri, I think, port Portageville, Missouri. Yeah.
00:50:09
Speaker
All right. And so... ah So we know that in 2006, his full DNA profile is in CODIS. And it's the, I'm i'm saying his full DNA as a perpetrator, but unknown. Okay.
00:50:27
Speaker
So it's there. And it matches between two different crimes. Right. So at that point in time, if the yogurt shop DNA had been in CODIS, it would have shown up.
00:50:48
Speaker
Right. But it didn't. Right. Okay. I find that odd. It is odd. um I pulled an article that does not describe the yogurt shop murders. It describes these other connections that were being made.
00:51:01
Speaker
ah This is a quote from the Greenville News News. It looks like it originally popped out on October 5th, 2018.
00:51:12
Speaker
The headline was Greenville cold case solved. Jenny's a tricky killed by serial killer, Robert Brashers in 1990. So again, this is 2018. It had some like interesting details in it that I wanted to include in this episode.
00:51:26
Speaker
i don't know how helpful they'll be to what you're talking about, but they talk about the 28 years it took to solve this. And then it says, uh, the, Trying to see if this is... Yeah, okay. So according to Ginny Zitricki's brother, who lives in New York, he attends this announcement. He said, we remember her in life. She was a force of nature, ah bundle of energy, an intelligent, vibrant, and caring human being.
00:51:56
Speaker
This guy, Phillip, is her brother. He says, 28 years, 28 years, it's been a long time. it's been long enough for trails to go cold. ah This is according to Phillip, addressing members of the media and state and local law enforcement leaders who are filling up this room for this press conference.
00:52:12
Speaker
He says, we thank you for your persistence, your teamwork, and your zeal to proceed. Phillip said he was always kept informed of the police department's progress through the years, but began to grow weary. Over the course of 28 years, there's some false starts. You start making things taking things with a little bit of a grain of salt.
00:52:29
Speaker
The police chief says some investigators who had already been retired were brought back in to work on this case. He said that the local police department were tirelessly to find a suspect. ah One of the retired detectives, Banton, described the news of Robert Brasher's identity as a relief.
00:52:44
Speaker
He says, we never gave up. Everybody kept trying and trying to solve this. It's one of those cases you never let go. But then it says... With new DNA technology in the hands of law enforcement, investigators in Greenville are reviewing other cold cases to determine if evidence can be put through the same test.
00:53:00
Speaker
The cost of the Parabon service was about $4,500. So that's going to be paid by law enforcement over in Memphis. The Greenville Police Department paid to exhume Robert Brasher's remains from his gravesite.
00:53:13
Speaker
That cost about $1,300. And it describes Parabon in this 2018 article as combining comparative DNA analysis with traditional genealogy research known as snapshot DNA analysis.
00:53:27
Speaker
The type of genetic genealogy focuses on autosomal DNA single nucleotide polymorphisms, or DNA SNPs, that determine how closely how closely two individuals might be related.
00:53:43
Speaker
Cases that were once believed to have grown to have grown cold may have new life. This is according to the police chief. He says authorities across state lines are taking a closer look at Robert Brasher's.
00:53:54
Speaker
Some of his potential crimes may still be unsolved. It's extremely possible there could be other cold cases or other sexual assaults. The police chief said that Robert Brasher's identity highlights the importance for police agencies to expedite testing of sexual assault evidence kits in the event their DNA matches that can link suspects to victims.
00:54:15
Speaker
And exact motives for Ginny Zatricki's killing is still undetermined, but Sergeant Tim Conroy said he believes Robert Brashers may have preyed upon her as a target because he was outgoing. Because she was outgoing.
00:54:27
Speaker
He said she would host pool parties at her apartment complex and often would allow party goers to use her unit to use the bathroom. While Robert Bradshaw's suicide means he won't be held accountable for his actions through the criminal justice system, Sergeant Tim Conroy said investigators are still relieved to know he hasn't harmed anyone else since his death.
00:54:47
Speaker
None of these efforts can bring Jenny back. We can only hope that this day brings peace to her soul and peace to her family. And that's from Miller, the police chief out there. But I want to go over this list really quick.
00:54:58
Speaker
I wanted to go over this list just so we... like kind of knew it had been said, according to what we know of Robert Brasher's, he attempted to murder Michelle Wilkerson in November 1985 down in Florida.
00:55:16
Speaker
This is going to be ah Jenny's, a tricky murder we've just been talking about. And that's April, 1990 in Greenville, South Carolina. He is now up for the four Austin yogurt shop murders.
00:55:28
Speaker
He has a Rape of a 14-year-old, March 11, 1997. And then March 28, 1998, he has an attempted assault.
00:55:40
Speaker
And then the homicide of Megan and Sherry, the mother and daughter. I'm bringing all that up to say, if you guys want a rabbit hole going towards Halloween this year, This guy's the rabbit hole.
00:55:52
Speaker
Newspapers.com has all of these unsolved murders in there. ah In fact, one of the articles had like some pretty interesting interesting stuff about ah the murder of Ginny Zatrici.
00:56:04
Speaker
It had the sketches, and they they've like really specifically described what the police were looking for back then. ah They have sketches of the the purported...
00:56:15
Speaker
ah suspect in multiple different cases. He kind of looks like his monk shot, ultimately, or like his driver's license picture. Not exactly. i just didn't think we could really skip and not talk about this guy, though he's true crime news.
00:56:32
Speaker
He had been on my list of serial killers to get into, and now that he is known to have committed the Austin yogurt shop murders, I'm like you. like I want a timeline, and I want to see when he was incarcerated and where he was when.
00:56:46
Speaker
Right, because, ah so over time ah it's interesting because all the cases, you know, you comes up that he committed a murder in South Carolina 1990.
00:57:01
Speaker
And I'm able to recall a very specific case, right? Yeah. Because it's gotten down to that point, right, where,
00:57:13
Speaker
There's only so many cases that have no leads at all, right? um Or they're long, cold, and you know obviously he was in jail, so he didn't he couldn't have abducted Dale Denwood.
00:57:27
Speaker
But it is interesting how this pieces itself together. And ah use information like this that comes up to check and see if I can figure out any of the gaps in the... Where he's unaccounted for? and No, the gaps in CODIS.
00:57:49
Speaker
Oh, I got you. Because essentially, you initially have
00:57:58
Speaker
evidence matching, right? So it's linking crimes. Right. And um eventually... now granted, I don't know...
00:58:13
Speaker
how apparent it is, but without DNA, Genevieve's case was never going to be solved. Right. It was going to be a complete unknown whodunit.
00:58:25
Speaker
Forever. Right. In fact, most of the time, like when you're looking this far later, and unfortunately, i have to say, i don't think we're going to have very many crimes that occurred like before the mid-90s where the perp is still going to be alive and I don't know why I think that but I've thought that all along like along with the avalanche of DNA it's been disappointing
00:58:58
Speaker
and how many are dead and they're not going to face justice. Right. Well, yeah, I, I'm not even on the face justice crowd as much as the, I hate lingering questions like these guys kind of create.
00:59:13
Speaker
And there's so many lingering questions that come from ah deceased perpetrator who has committed this many crimes that we're aware of. Well, right. And see, the interesting thing is with the yogurt shop murders, and I'm not sure because of the nature of the crime, not sure that they're going like, they're not going to be able to say that, like, oh, it was just a casual encounter.
00:59:38
Speaker
Right. I mean, these were would have been underage girls working. Right. as far as the DNA being found in the sexual assault kit. And so he was there to, you know, commit a terrible crime.
00:59:53
Speaker
And the mental health part that's been brought up, like, obviously, yes, this dude had issues, right? There's no question to do these kinds of crimes, but he seems to be Maybe an, um I don't know, opportunistic serial killer?
01:00:14
Speaker
Well, he's certainly a thing for teenage girls. Oh, yeah. Because that seems to be, i mean, just skimming through the list of seven victims that are known, plus the attempted assaults, like, it seems to me, once you look at the yogurt shop murderers,
01:00:33
Speaker
You can also see he has the attempted Memphis, Tennessee rape. That's a 14 year old. Megan Shearer 12 years old. He has a type here.
01:00:44
Speaker
Like he is going after young vulnerable girls. ah So there probably wasn't a different motive. I do think that, um I think the four girls um being in the yoga shop, I don't think he was planning on four girls being there.
01:01:04
Speaker
And I think ah because, you know, two were working and two were there waiting for a ride home from the sister who was working. Right. And so I think that that it that threw him off.
01:01:18
Speaker
And I think that's why he started the fire. That one, he gets away with it for eight years, basically. And then he gets away with it in death until 2025. Apparently they've just put it all together.
01:01:31
Speaker
Well, right. And yeah, no, he, he totally got away with it. Um, in fact, I wasn't after, especially after the docuseries came out, um, that crime was so horrific. It left almost like this indelible impression on that area. And honestly, a lot of like, it's one of the worst cases ever, right?
01:01:56
Speaker
like Because there's four victims involved and, After the docuseries came out, I was thinking, because they've they've wobbled on quality
01:02:13
Speaker
the... quality or the ah how much of a DNA profile they had, right? They've wobbled over the whole time. I know that, you know, even during our two episodes of this, it's come up in various sources that like there were more than one unknown DNA profiles, right?
01:02:32
Speaker
And so they've wobbled on it. And so until this happened, I was fairly certain that in the event they didn't get a full DNA profile, this case was never going to be solved.
01:02:45
Speaker
Right. which was tragic because it left, you know, the in-between perpetrators who were innocent and eventually their sentences were overturned, but they've never been exonerated.
01:03:00
Speaker
Like it left them in sort of like this limbo ultimately. and I do think that ultimately it it's just the right people getting their hands on it.
01:03:11
Speaker
Right. It's weird. I'm thinking to myself,
01:03:17
Speaker
that He brings up like a really weird rabbit hole about CODIS. but Because he should be in there for all these crimes he's committed. Well, but timing but he died in 1999.
01:03:31
Speaker
Correct. And so the I don't know that, i don't know when they started requiring a DNA sample.
01:03:42
Speaker
But...
01:03:44
Speaker
in two that The yogurt shop murders should have been linked by 2006. At least to these other unsolved things. That's what I'm saying.
01:03:56
Speaker
That's the rabbit hole I'm going down is like, okay, say it's not in there with his name on it. No, it should have met the evidence. her second One of the victim's sexual assault kits that yielded the ah the full unknown DNA profile, male DNA profile, it should have ah been flagged in 2006 as a match to the other two, Jenny's murder and Sherry and Megan's murders, right?
01:04:26
Speaker
Right. Okay, it didn't, which tells me that...
01:04:32
Speaker
We're lucky that that profile got got at all. Like it almost slipped through the cracks. I think you're right. One of the things that comes out of this all for me and and makes it so interesting is that fact that you just described, like there should have been cross-referencing done so that some of these unknown profiles scenes when they're entered into CODIS they should have at least been linked to each other even if they're not linked directly to Brashers till all this work gets done they should have at least been linked to each other right and yeah because once you start linking crimes together
01:05:19
Speaker
it you know, it doesn't identify the perpetrator. However, it does start establishing, you know, parameters you can look for and other situations that may not have DNA.
01:05:31
Speaker
But I'm still not entirely certain ah because
01:05:39
Speaker
it was my, it's my understanding that
01:05:45
Speaker
Brasher was ultimately identified through investigative genetic genealogy. Correct. Okay, well so that means he wasn't in CODIS, right? Because if right it would have been just a match if he was in CODIS.
01:06:00
Speaker
Right. i think i think it's I think it's a couple things. One, I think it's jurisdictional because this is all over the place. like We have so many states being linked together here. To link it back to Texas is weird because they didn't even say that they were looking at him for anything in Texas until much, much later.
01:06:17
Speaker
And what they end up getting down to is there has to be that break in the yogurt shop murders where they pull that dna apart and that's when they get the partial that they end up matching to him which i think is ultimately done and and it doesn't say it in all of these like summaries and write-ups that are going on i think it's ultimately done and because someone either cc moore or someone else at paraben They have basically decided to figure out how to test partial matches.
01:06:48
Speaker
They end up getting his full DNA profile because of his link to the other crime seven years before we're talking about this. So they he gets on the radar, but then you have like this weird timeline that you have to develop that crosses many state lines and you have to track what's his actual prison time versus his community corrections time.
01:07:09
Speaker
And you have to figure out when he's like actually in an area. So I think a case like this is complicated by a person like him. um this is a This is a straight up predator, which you and I have talked about being the rarest of a rare type of serial killer.
01:07:24
Speaker
This guy is it because he is ah a disorganized opportunity killer with some organized features. And he has a type that he's not linking from the perspective of like, it's not all happening in a nearby area.
01:07:40
Speaker
Like a lot of times people freak out and go, there's a serial killer in Austin. That pops up recently for us where men were being found in the same body of water. Yeah, because they were drunk and they were walking into it.
01:07:52
Speaker
Right. we We don't really. what But then at the same time, we've covered Jay Pohlhill's case. So we know that predators do operate like that. They just don't come back to the same location.
01:08:04
Speaker
Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I think that's what makes them, in many instances, ah the hardest type of predator to track is these serial killers that are geographically and jurisdictionally jumping around.
01:08:17
Speaker
And they're jumping around because they've been caught in one area and documented to a degree. And that would be something that now, in addition to like these victims and like me looking at the gaps that, like for instance, the gap between 1991 in December and February of 1992.
01:08:38
Speaker
He's out. He's about, what did he do in there? Did the yogurt shop killings like scare him in a way that like he slowed down? Obviously he kills again in February. Like, so like, how do we link those things together?
01:08:50
Speaker
But also like, how do you get it to the point without like invading privacy where people like Robert Brasher, Kenneth McDuff, whoever, like where we are sure were able to put their DNA into CODIS.
01:09:07
Speaker
They're known serial killers. They have multiple victims. um But also, how do we make sure that CODIS is cross-checking unknown DNA from unidentified perpetrators at unsolved crime scenes?
01:09:22
Speaker
I also think that it's a little outrageous that... I don't think that officials put the DNA profile...
01:09:36
Speaker
in CODIS from the yogurt shop murder until like way, way later. No, I think, no, I think they're describing that to us. I think they're basically stating that Parabon getting involved is what allows them to sort out what eventually matches Robert Brashers. Now that's not even what they're saying is the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of declaring him here. It's the matching of the tool marks between the weapon at the yogurt shop scene and the scene of his eight years later, 1999 suicide, which I think is another weird thing.
01:10:12
Speaker
He held on to this revolver for some reason. And it was, and they were able to link it. Right. So I'm thinking that I don't need, I have no idea how ballistic matches work.
Why Wasn't the DNA in CODIS Sooner?
01:10:24
Speaker
I don't think there's, I know they're not as reliable as DNA, but I was wondering after I saw that, Like, is that the only thing that made them go, hey, could it be this dude?
01:10:37
Speaker
I don't know. I don't know how they get there. I assume, like, that's that's part of the special sauce that we have to figure out what they did and how to duplicate it. Yeah, I am surprised and astounded, but also not that part of the reason that this quadruple Hamzaid took so long to solve was like because they didn't put the DNA in CODIS.
01:11:04
Speaker
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. And it it was also difficult to solve because, know, they had in their mind ah set of suspects that didn't make a lot of sense, but they had decided that they did make sense.
01:11:15
Speaker
i it Don't you think that that's part of the reason why they wouldn't have put it in CODIS? Could be. This has been nothing. The yogurt shop murders for, first of all, four young girls were heinously murdered, right? Correct.
01:11:33
Speaker
It was awful. And then there has been nothing but like this crazy squandering of resources to go after the complete wrong parties, right?
01:11:47
Speaker
And it's a little bit, unbelievable I think probably more so than anything like the time that's passed is what shows it. But it's like they could have done nothing at all that whole time and still ended up in the same position now.
01:12:08
Speaker
Yeah. Instead of convicting two people who they then had to release because it was overturned on constitutional technicality grounds. I mean, not really a technicality, but sort of.
01:12:21
Speaker
But like there was nothing coming up that it was that they were actually innocent. They were saying that because they didn't get to confront their accuser, it wasn't fair that the jury convicted them, right?
01:12:33
Speaker
And that they had to have a new trial because of that. But they could have done absolutely nothing at all. And eventually, the DNA, once it was entered, um it would have matched.
01:12:49
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, it would have. I just... Look, this is a story I would rather had over five or six episodes and gone deeper into it. But then it was on my list, and I turned around, and they made this announcement, and I was like, okay, well, we at least have to do part of that. I have another serial killer I was researching.
01:13:09
Speaker
I don't need to focus on this one. What do you think the chances are of a case that 34 years almost four years old almer Having, I believe, the only docuseries that's ever been released about it coming out in August of 2025.
01:13:36
Speaker
And the results of the DNA match coming out in September of 2025 when there's been 34 whole years for something to happen.
01:13:47
Speaker
I mean, it's astronomical. Yeah. um The timing of the release. So there, look, if they're announcing now that it's him, they've known for a year. So it could be inside baseball that did it.
01:14:01
Speaker
Like somebody that had talked to CC Moore and Paramon for the docuseries knew that this was going to happen. And it's good timing for them in terms of popularity of their, you know, like well-crafted and, uh,
01:14:18
Speaker
it's a very difficult process to get something on streaming to begin with. So, you know, the, the release itself could be timed ahead of this announcement. I just find it like crazy odd.
01:14:32
Speaker
Yeah, it is odd. And like, it's, it is like, in some ways I want to say it's kind of proof that like putting money into something is, that's why I mentioned like the specific amounts they talk about seven years ago, where like the cost of,
01:14:47
Speaker
Parabon to analyze this one case is five grand and like to exhume a body is this much and to do this
Emphasizing DNA's Role in Exonerating Original Suspects
01:14:54
Speaker
is this much. And it's all these different agencies also having to spend the officer and administrator's time talking and putting this information together.
01:15:02
Speaker
Right. But it's so much more effective than just traditional investigative work that has like really taken cases off-roading. Right.
01:15:14
Speaker
Right. ah Because they, weren't ever following the evidence. It doesn't seem like. Yeah. Yeah. So we know who committed the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders, and that's Robert Eugene Brashers.
01:15:32
Speaker
Did you have anything else elses on this one right now? This is one that's going to come up again for me because I'm going to go digging through him and Kenneth McDuff again because I remember like having some thoughts on Kenneth McDuff, not related to this, but he came up in the middle of it.
01:15:46
Speaker
um Right, because he had tried to confess to it, right? But right Robert Eugene Brassers had never come up. He was completely off the map ah with regard to the yogurt shop murders.
01:15:59
Speaker
He came to light because he is a, true this guy was ah a true loser predator, right? Correct. He um committed a lot of different types of crimes um that are catching up with him now, essentially.
01:16:17
Speaker
Or within the past, I don't know, 10 years or something. But it's a little alarming. But he is one of those. He's a true boogeyman. Yeah, he's a boogeyman. He was born in 1958.
01:16:34
Speaker
By the time the yogurt shop murders came along in 1991, he would have been early So kind of peak. so kind of peak ah serial killer.
01:16:45
Speaker
Well, right. yeah He committed suicide in 99 though. So he was what, 41 years old when he died? ah he was 40. He would have been 41 in March and he killed himself in January. Yeah. Okay.
01:17:00
Speaker
Right. And so that's also um sometimes the trend, right? Yeah. Yeah. We've seen more and more of that over the years. There are a handful of serial killers that have been killed by Victims or police or by or by suicide. And um he is a true serial killer.
01:17:22
Speaker
Right. And he never, um so he never even realized that he had left anything behind to identify with him. Right. So what made this interesting to me and what made it rarer, and then this is really all I have on this, is it is so unusual to see a case like this Where someone has been convicted and then not only have they been convicted, their conviction is overturned.
01:17:48
Speaker
They are denied compensation because the impression that's left is they did it. We just can't prove it well enough to like take it back to court. And there is some of this other evidence that makes it murky.
01:18:01
Speaker
They're denied compensation because they did not prove they didn't do it. And that all wraps up by 2010. Because like there're essentially the charges are dropped in 2010.
01:18:12
Speaker
And 15 years after that, we find out that not only did these four kids have nothing to do with it, including the two that were convicted, it was really a serial killer all along.
01:18:24
Speaker
That is astronomically rare. It really is. ah Yeah, it really is. Because I don't know that I ever would have discounted it as a... you're Actually, and knew it was going to be a stranger or like not an acquaintance ah and acquaintance. I couldn't say like they had never crossed paths before. He may have been in the yogurt shop at some point, right?
01:18:54
Speaker
But I don't know that I would have thought this was a serial killer. But I don't know that I would have discounted it either. But it really does show a lot... that all of that occurred, right?
01:19:08
Speaker
Yeah, I had trouble with it from the perspective of it being for, like, 15-, 16-year-old kids. that's Like, it's not unheard of for, like, teenagers to commit really brutal crimes, but some of the things that happened here in terms of the fire being set and the way the gunshots were done and them being tied up,
01:19:28
Speaker
um It's another one of those things that like it really is astronomically rare to see that type of disorganized organization in teenagers.
01:19:39
Speaker
Well, not to mention like part of the docu series I watched revealed how far fetched it was to because they were young and because of just I don't know their personalities or something.
01:19:58
Speaker
Like, it was such a stretch to think that these, like, four kids could have done this. Because, like, I don't even know that they could have, like, organized their way out of a brown bag. Yeah, yeah. I'm with you.
01:20:17
Speaker
And, you know, you've got this pretty – now, granted, from what I see about Robert Eugene Brashers, he doesn't seem to be too far off.
01:20:28
Speaker
from not being able to organize his way out of a brown bag. But he was older and... He's on the other side of the spectrum though. because like So no matter how you look at teenagers committing crimes like this, they have to be at the beginning of their criminal career to some degree. Right, because they're only teenagers.
01:20:49
Speaker
Right, but he's ultimately at the end of his like his. His criminal career may go on for a few more years... And like I totally understand that he has the double homicide in 1998, which is going to be seven years after this. um Well, so it's almost like peak, right?
01:21:09
Speaker
Yeah, he peaked and now like he's unraveling and he's making mistakes and it's getting messier. um But ultimately, when he committed... Now, granted, I think it's interesting that he committed suicide when he came into contact with law enforcement about a stolen plate, right?
01:21:29
Speaker
Yeah. He thought the jig was up. He did. Yeah. And he lived for six days. Yeah. And it's, I would like to know if anybody thought, Hey, why did this dude do that?
01:21:47
Speaker
We should probably. Yeah. Like why did he kill himself? Like, because we were asking about a stolen vehicle plate. that's That's a good question. I don't have an answer. Well, what I was going to say is I'd be interested to know if they thought that, right? Because there's no reason to get all bent out of shape in that particular situation.
01:22:10
Speaker
Grand Theft Auto is a whole thing, but it's not like multiple murders, right? Right. And so to me, I think that he over he was overreacting. Right.
01:22:22
Speaker
Oh, he was definitely overreacting. I mean, he so he's got a number of things going on here that are interesting to me. He throws the gun away ah in the Wilkerson case, but he still has this little.22 revolver, which makes me wonder what that was to him. It's got to be something in the family for him to still have that weapon from the night of the Yogurt Shop murders, which makes me think that whatever the.38 or.380 was at the scene at the Yogurt Shop, that must be the first weapon gunshot and then the 22 is his backup because something happened with the 38 or he didn't have an enough ammo or something jammed on it or something and we end up using that 22 but my guess is the overreaction is now i'm caught i've got this 22 on me and this 22 links to these other crimes that i think would make me more paranoid if i were him was it so in 1999 like
01:23:20
Speaker
like Would that have gone through his head? Like, oh, my. Maybe. Ballistics was a huge thing. Yeah. Like, ballistics was on every episode of Law and Order at the time. They were always checking ballistics and matching things.
01:23:35
Speaker
Way more, it was a, like, modern media concept than it was a reality. Particularly with the difference in jurisdictions.
01:23:45
Speaker
Unless he had committed some other crime nearby the location he was at, it was unlikely at the state level, he would have had maybe one or two things that would have popped.
01:23:57
Speaker
ah But really and truly, I think I'm calling him out for overreacting on things that were probably more media inventions than reality of law enforcement.
01:24:10
Speaker
Right. ah But I have a feeling that, I mean, I feel like he would have had a guilty conscience no matter how much. Yeah.
01:24:21
Speaker
of a Yeah. You know, because he was clearly cold-blooded murderer. um he went on and on and on. and it's interesting that I just wonder if the people who showed up to ask about the tag were like, okay, let's see what this dude has done.
01:24:41
Speaker
it turned into like a hostage situation. Also, the reason he lives for six days is tied to that.22 caliber revolver as well. Because... That is a terrible john gun to try and kill yourself with. you can't do the damage You cannot do the damage needed to do to commit suicide with most.22 caliber revolvers without a very particular type of ammunition that it does not appear this gentleman was carrying.
01:25:05
Speaker
Right, and you also have to keep in mind that that's how the girls were shot. Correct. And it makes me hope they didn't suffer. yeah I think a lot of serial killers...
01:25:17
Speaker
end up going out the way, you know, cause that's the weapon they have on hand, you know, whatever they have right there, whether they strangle themselves or exanguinate themselves or like shoot themselves, like it's what they had right there.
01:25:29
Speaker
That is not exactly true with how they like carry out their crimes if they're more organized, but a lot of them like, you know, they go out the way that they've been sending people out.
01:25:41
Speaker
This is a, this is a terrible dude. ah Robert Brashers is, i I hope those people had an inkling that he was more than he seemed to be that day. i don't know the answer to that.
01:25:53
Speaker
um I just know that it is fascinating to me that this is now solved. This is like one of the, you know, big ah murders that I've wondered about through the years. has a lot of twists and turns to it.
01:26:05
Speaker
And by all accounts, he is, he's the one. And um I think they've matched his dna They have his bullet at the scene. from the same gun, and i I just find it fascinating. Yep, and Sarah, that has been solved after all these years.
01:26:25
Speaker
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01:26:58
Speaker
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Speaker
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Speaker
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