Yogurt Shop Murders Part 1- Re-release

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2:00have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney and this is Voices for Justice.

2:17Today I am covering a case from 1991 that absolutely shook Austin, Texas to its core when Sergeant John Jones got the call that the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt Shop was on fire. and soon discovered the bodies of four teenage girls inside. Their cases were collectively coined the Yogurt Shop Murders, and it's one of the most notorious and puzzling cases from Austin to this day. These cases are complicated and tragic. There is a large list of witnesses and a large list of suspects. There's a lot of bad police work, there are multiple confessions, overturned convictions, and DNA that still needs further testing.

3:02But most importantly, there are four victims and three families that have been waiting a long time for justice. This is going to be a very detailed deep dive being told in multiple parts. So let's get into it because we have a lot to cover. The four victims in this case are 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, her 15-year-old sister Sarah Harbison, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, and the youngest, 13-year-old Amy Ayers. Let's start with some background on the victims, beginning with Sarah and Jennifer Harbison. Their parents, Mike and Barbara, were high school sweethearts, and they later married. They were originally from New Boston in East Texas near the Arkansas border, but they later settled in Austin so Mike could enroll in divinity courses to pursue his graduate degree.

3:51The deal was that Mike would go back to school while Barbara worked, and once he graduated, they would all move back to New Boston. But Barbara really liked Austin, and she thought that she and her daughters would have more opportunities and an overall better quality of life there. So, when Sarah was two and a half and Jennifer was five, she took the kids and moved back to Austin. Barbara had the girls pretty young, and she would be described as being more like a sister to them than a mother. She would later meet and marry a man named Frank Sirachi in 1980. They lived a very quiet but fulfilling life, with Frank working as a technician for Dell Computers and Barbara working as a credit officer at Team Bank.

4:34For most of their lives, Sarah and Jennifer attended a Catholic private school, but they asked to go to a public school for their high school years. In 1990, the family would move from a less desirable neighborhood in Austin to what they considered to be a better, safer neighborhood in the northwestern area of the city, and this was just a few miles from Lanier High School where the girls would go to school. Jennifer Harbison began her senior year at Lanier just months before her death and was very popular, social, and outgoing. She actually was a very tiny girl, standing at just 5 feet tall and weighing only 86 pounds.

5:13She was also very active, with her mother saying that Jennifer just hated sitting still. She was a relay runner on the varsity track team, and she was the district vice president of the Future Farmers of America and president of her school's FFA chapter. And a part of being in that program was that you actually had to raise animals, so her and her sister Sarah, who was also a part of the program, were actually raising sheep to show at the annual Austin Livestock Show and Rodeo the following spring. Here are Sarah and Jennifer's parents talking a bit more about their girls. Jennifer and Sarah shared a passion, FFA, raising sheep.

5:54And the funny thing is, they really just love those animals in the first and second place because they just love them. They just... I'm just kissing them on the face, nose to nose with these lambs. They're so funny. Gosh, they're funny.

6:11Frank and Barbara erected a shrine in their home to honor the girls. The table is littered with pictures and memories. They still do not believe their girls are gone. They know someday the killers will be caught. Do they have any qualms about the death penalty? None at all. None at all. As long as it's slow and painful and they're scared and they suffer. Yeah, because he scared my baby girls. Those people scared my baby girls, and my baby girls would not have hurt anyone, ever. I think God would give us this one. I think he would give us this one. Sarah Harbison was only a few months into her sophomore year at Lanier High School.

6:55But it seems that, like her big sister Jennifer, Sarah also enjoyed staying busy. Because in addition to her being in the FFA, she also played volleyball and basketball. Here are Sarah's parents describing a bit more about her specifically. When she played with St. Louis, her claim to fame was not her scoring, but that she fouled out every game. She was a cheerleader in the eighth grade, so she would go to a ball game and the girls would play, and then she'd run back into the locker rooms and change into a cheerleading outfit and come out and cheer for the boys' game. Which was okay, unless it was tournament time.

7:32and then she would play, cheer, play, cheer. Sarah also had a new boyfriend of just about three weeks who had given her his senior ring. It was gold with his initials on one side, a tractor on the other, and a green stone in the middle. Sarah would wear this ring on the night of her death, putting it next to her Mickey Mouse watch on a pile of clothing found near her body. But she would never take off her gold cross necklace. Sarah's best friend was Amy Ayers, the youngest of all four girls. Amy was born in Johnson County, Texas to her parents Pamela and Bob, and she had an older brother named Sean.

8:12The family has been described as quiet, reserved, and religious. Amy spent a lot of time on their family ranch and had been riding horses since she was three years old. Her father has stated that she could ride from sunup until sundown without getting tired or bored. Amy was also known to put leashes on pigs and take them for walks. When reporters asked her father if she was a cowgirl, he responded, no, she's all cowgirl. When she grew up, she wanted to be a veterinarian, and Amy's biggest crush was George Strait, whose posters were plastered all over the walls of her bedroom. Here are her parents describing a little bit more about Amy.

8:53I used to kind of bother her because she was always a country girl, and I told her, I said, you can take the girl out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the girl. What does this room reflect of her? Well, I think it shows you some of her interests. George Strait, he's on every wall here in the room. She was an animal lover. She really loved cats, and horses were probably her favorite of the animals. We've got stuffed animals of all kinds to go with that. But she spent a lot of time in here just by herself, played her stereo with all of her country-western music. She's always liked country-western.

9:30She's never been a rock and roll fan. And we'd do her homework in here, sitting at her desk with her country music going. By 1985, the family moved to Austin. In 1991, Amy was still in the eighth grade, but she planned on attending Lanier High School the next year. and after some encouragement from her older brother Sean who was already in the FFA, she was accepted into the program as a junior member. And Amy did extremely well. She was actually quickly nominated to be the vice president of the chapter. This is where Amy met her new best friend Sarah Harbison and her sister Jennifer. They just hit it off when the first time they met and then once that happened, you didn't see one without the other at the livestock show.

10:13You didn't have to worry about those two when they were together. They were going to have a good time, but you didn't have to worry about what they were going to get into. They were going to be safe in what they did. They had a ball together. Laughed and giggled. Really a good time. This small choice to join the FFA and to befriend Sarah would ultimately result in Amy's untimely death. The fourth victim was Eliza Thomas. Eliza was a beautiful brunette born to her parents James and Maria in Austin, Texas. A few years later, her sister Sonora was born, but by the time Eliza was seven, her parents divorced.

10:54Her parents shared custody of Eliza and Sonora until Eliza turned 14, when she could decide who she ultimately wanted to live with. Initially, she'd stay with her father, but in July of 1991, Eliza moved in with her mother while Sonora stayed behind with her father. but the sisters remained close. Eliza's future looked incredibly bright. She was an avid reader with a talent for language, and her parents fully believed that she would have grown up to be a poet or a writer of some kind. But her passion, like the other girls, was animals. She too was in the FFA and would be nominated for queen like her best friend Jennifer.

11:33Her project was a 254-pound pig named Stormy who needed twice daily injections. Eliza took a job at the I Can't Believe It's yogurt shop at the Hillside Strip Mall working nights and weekends making$4.35 an hour to supplement another job she had taking a 9-year-old to gym lessons twice a week. Eliza held these jobs for a few reasons, the first being that Eliza had a car that she loved. It was a bright green 1971 VW Carmen Ghia, which she picked because it matched her emerald birthstone. Truth be told, you guys, I know next to nothing about cars. So I googled a 1971 VW Carmen Ghia, and I totally get why she was obsessed.

12:19It's very rounded and vintage and just cool looking. It's a car I would have loved to have at the age of 17. And Eliza was extremely mechanically inclined. She did her own repairs, and that year she told her parents that all she wanted for Christmas was car parts. But in addition to paying to keep her car running and in gas, Eliza also worked to not put any additional financial strain on her mother. See, not too long before this, Maria had actually switched career paths and was now making much less money as an artist assistant. Although Eliza loved being in the FFA and cars, she was also kind of a girly girl.

12:59In an interview not long after her death, cameras followed her mother Maria into Eliza's untouched bedroom. And they showed her shelves filled with knick-knacks and lipsticks, and Maria would describe how Eliza washed her face three times a day. She loved artwork. Her mother Maria and Sister Sonora have left Eliza's room much the same way Eliza left it. She loved tiny little knick-knacks, and as you can see, there's lipsticks there, and she's got tons and tons more. She used to love, she had the most beautiful mouth, you know, so she would always, I would buy her lots of lipsticks and she would buy lots of lipstick.

13:39Eliza was fanatic about her complexion. She would wash her face two or three times a day. She always put her hair way up, you know, and then she'd have clips and then wash her face real good at night. And I can just still see her doing it. I've seen that Eliza wanted to be a veterinarian and that she wanted to be a model. Honestly, she probably could have done both. She was beautiful, bright, and determined. Eliza Thomas could have been whatever she wanted had her life not been cut so short. This message is sponsored by Greenlight. Money is this invisible thread that ties us all together. It's something everyone has to deal with.

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16:05Especially to these girls. These four girls that loved country music, animals, and their community. These four good girls. See, back in 1991, Austin still very much felt like a small town. Despite having a population of about 600 ,000, violent crime was low and people still trusted each other. But all of that changed after December 6th, 1991, as countless newspapers reported on the innocence that was lost that night, the paranoia that spread through the community, and how terrified Austin should be since there was at least one brutal killer still on the loose. On the morning of Friday, December 6, 1991, Jennifer and Sarah Harbison drove in Jennifer's brand new dark blue Chevy S10 pickup to take care of their sheep that were being held in a barn on donated land about three miles from Lanier High School, just like they did every morning and every afternoon.

17:07So, after taking care of the sheep, Sarah and Jennifer returned home to shower and went to school. After school, Jennifer gives Sarah's boyfriend a ride home, and they stop back at the barn for their final visit of the day. Eliza Thomas would also visit the barn that morning, and presumably that afternoon, to give her pig Stormy one of his two required daily injections. And Amy Ayers would attend her middle school like normal that day. Jennifer then dropped Sarah off at home and drove over to her boyfriend Sammy's apartment where he lived with his mother. Sammy actually missed school that day in order to attend his grandfather's funeral, so Jennifer really wanted to see him and to make sure that he was okay.

17:48Jennifer and Sammy often talked about their dreams that Sammy would get a basketball scholarship at a college that Jennifer could also attend, and that after graduation they could get married, have a family, and spend the rest of their lives together. But in addition to seeing Sammy, Jennifer also had plans to grab her wallet that she'd left at a friend's house and go back to school to fill out an application to run for FFA Queen after being nominated. She planned to be back home around 7pm to get ready for her 8pm shift at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop at the Hillside Strip Mall. See, a part of the deal with Jennifer having a brand new truck was that she would help her father Mike Harbison make the payments.

18:27She also had to agree to take her little sister Sarah wherever she wanted to go, and her friend Eliza Thomas, who had been working at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop for months told her to come work with her. After all, it was pretty easy and fun and they would get to hang out even more than they already did. It seemed like a no-brainer, so Jennifer began working weekends at the shop. Around 4.30pm, Barbara remembers coming home from her job at team bank and seeing her daughter Sarah sitting on the couch peeling an orange. Sarah was in a very good mood because not only had her boyfriend just given her his senior ring, but she was excited for the weekend because she didn't have volleyball or basketball practice.

19:08So, she told her mom that she had plans to go out that night to North Cross Mall. See, North Cross Mall was the place to be as a teenager in Austin in the early 90s. It had all of your mall staples, including an amazing food court, a movie theater, and even the only ice skating rink within 200 miles. In the 1970s, the mall was this premier luxury shopping center in Austin, even with former first lady Lady Bird Johnson making an appearance at the mall. But by 1991, a lot of the higher-end stores closed, and the mall became a haven for teenagers, with the movie theater even catering to this new audience with midnight showings of Heavy Metal, Pink Floyd's The Wall, and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, complete with a shadow cast to perform along with the movie.

19:58One thing I want to note right here is the alternative scene in Austin, because it will become relevant further along in the case. See, around this time, there was kind of an explosion in goth culture. And Austin police would commonly call any person that fit this goth description a pib, or person in black. If you had an unnatural hair color, or black, or really anything considered alternative, you were deemed a pib. And around this time, the world was very much experiencing something that was often coined as satanic panic, where anyone who could be described as a pib or goth was instantly a terrible, scary Satan worshipper, and thus on the radar of police when terrible things happened, such as four girls being murdered.

20:45So, keep that in mind as we go further into the case. But back to Sarah and the mall. The idea was that when Jennifer came back to get ready for work, she could take Sarah to pick up Amy from her house, then drop both girls off at the mall before her shift at I Can't Believe It's Yogurt. This would actually be the first time that either Sarah or Amy would go to the mall without being accompanied by their parents. But figuring they'd only be there for about two hours, Barbara didn't see any harm in letting the girls go. Around 9, when the mall closed, Jennifer would use her break to pick them back up and bring them back to the yogurt shop.

21:22That way, they could help Jennifer and Eliza close up the shop around 11, and then Jennifer would take both Sarah and Amy back to her house so Amy could spend the night. At this point, we're about 7 hours away from the fire. So, let's break down the timeline. Around 6.30pm, Eliza Thomas got home, changed into her I Can't Believe It's Yogurt uniform of a white branded polo, dark jeans, and white Reeboks. She put her hair in a scrunchie, and she was out the door. Like Sarah Harbison, Eliza was also in a good mood that day, because her and Jennifer had both been nominated for FFA Queen. But she was a little nervous about her shift.

22:03See, the night before, she'd actually covered another girl's shift at the yogurt shop. And she got a prank call from her ex-boyfriend Roger Kuduka's friend who thought it would be clever to call the shop and ask about all the yogurt flavors, while Roger laughed hysterically in the background. But Eliza got to the yogurt shop on time at 7pm to start her shift and just had to hope that it didn't happen again. Following the very strict policies and procedures set by Bryce Foods, the parent company of I Can't Believe It's Yogurt, when Eliza entered the shop, she grabbed the keys from the top of the cash register and headed to the back of the shop to unlock the office door to put down her personal items.

22:43Then she locked the office door and put the keys back on top of the cash register. Soon after, the girl Eliza was working with finished her shift and left Eliza alone to run the store by herself until Jennifer got there at 8. As Eliza is starting her shift around 7, this is when Jennifer gets home and learns about this plan that Sarah and her mother put together for Jennifer to get her sister and Amy to and from the mall. So Jennifer agrees, not really having any other choice since she made that agreement with her father, and she quickly changes into her uniform of dark jeans, a white I-can't-believe-its-yogurt polo, and her chosen athletic shoes, black high-top Reeboks.

23:21She also had on her black Timex watch that she always wore to make sure that she stayed on schedule. And Sarah wears a black denim jacket with a lightning bolt on the front. So Jennifer and Sarah go grab Amy who is wearing her brother's leather bomber jacket, turquoise jeans, string friendship bracelets that never left her wrist, and a belt with a heart-shaped buckle on it. Amy also brings her Jiminy Cricket overnight bag and leaves it in the truck when Jennifer drops them off at the mall. From the North Cross Mall, Jennifer then heads to the Hillside Strip Mall to the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt Shop to begin her shift at 8pm.

23:58Eliza would work the cash register and Jennifer would handle the counter. Like the North Cross Mall, the Hillside Strip Mall was also a pretty popular destination. But by this time, only three businesses were open. Mr. Gotti's Pizza, the Sun Harvest grocery store, and the yogurt shop. But they still received a decent amount of traffic. Between 8.15 and 8.30, 51-year-old Lucela Jones came into the shop noticing only two other cars in the parking lot, Jennifer and Eliza's. She also noticed two teenage boys sitting at the booth closest to the door. She said that they were possibly Hispanic, possibly white, and between 14 and 17 years old.

24:38And she described them as kind of looking like hippies. But she admits that she didn't really get a good look at their faces because they were kind of facing away from her. And they were apparently fixated on something she described as a small sack on the table that sounded like there were keys or marbles or something inside of it when they moved it. Lucilla would later tell investigators that she wanted to ask the girls if they were okay working alone that late at night. But she saw that Eliza and Jennifer were talking and laughing, so she ignored that instinct and figured that they were probably fine.

25:11So she ordered a strawberry sundae to go for her husband, and she left. Around 9, Jennifer used her break to pick up Sarah and Amy from the mall. When they got back, Jennifer went back to work, and Sarah and Amy went to Mr. Gotti's to grab a pizza before they closed at 10. At about 9.30, Eliza's mother stopped by the shop to check on Eliza like she often did. But when she got there, Eliza was on the phone with her younger sister Sonora, trying to convince her to ride her bike up to the shop to hang out. But Sonora was home alone and didn't want to leave without her father's permission, so she just stayed home.

25:45Eliza then hands the phone to her mom and gets back to work. Maria would later tell investigators that it was shortly after this that she saw two girls, that were most likely Sarah and Amy, come in the door with a pizza and sit down at a booth to eat. Other customers would also vaguely remember seeing two girls eating pizza in the shop that night as well. After Maria gets off the phone, the shop gets a call from Jennifer's boyfriend Sammy, confirming their breakfast plans for the next morning. Between 9.30 and 10, 52-year-old Daryl Croft entered the yogurt shop. Daryl was an ex-military police officer, and he owned his own security company.