'Justice is far gone': Can the Austin yogurt shop murders ever be solved?

Everyone who enters the cold case unit at the Austin Police Department is faced with photos of the four victims of a brutal, infamous Austin killing, as well as a diorama of the frozen yogurt shop where they were slain 30 years ago. "This is an instant reminder of how important this case is to APD, and we will never stop seeking justice in this case," Chief Joseph Chacon said. The killings of the four teenage girls, as well as an investigation that has so far only resulted in two overturned convictions, has plagued Austin since it happened in 1991. The girls were bound, gagged and shot in the head before the shop was set on fire, investigators say.

"Everybody that's been touched by that case never forgets, and I don't think anybody ever will forget," said retired police investigator Rick Shirley, who served on the Police Department's task force for the case in 1997. "You always have the families in the back of your mind." Investigators face steep hurdles to prove who killed the four teenage girls in 1991, experts said. In recent years, new teams of investigators and prosecutors have worked on the case, trying to identify any new information that may lead to the killers. Detectives thought they had received a significant lead in 2017 through DNA advances. They fought to obtain information from the FBI, but the agency has stood by its position that the information is protected by federal law. Scientists also have cast doubt on whether it would help lead to a suspect. Investigators were able to extract male-only DNA called Y-STR from a forensic sample. Unlike traditional DNA that confirms a person’s identity, thousands of men could have the same male profile as the one in evidence, and it would be nearly impossible to use the information to identify a single individual, according to FBI scientists.