The Yogurt Shop Murders

Yeah, this has really been a long-standing nightmare

for the Austin community,

especially for individuals who have lived with this

for such a very long time, and...

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you to all of you that are here with us this morning.

Over three decades

after a horrible crime took the lives of four teenage girls,

and changed Austin forever, our hearts haven't healed.

They're still broken for the precious girls we lost.

More than a quarter-century ago,

in a circumstance much like this today,

I said that Austin lost its innocence

the night those young souls became victims.

Time has passed.

We are different people and a different city.

And while there's no change to the horror,

no diminishing the grief,

we can finally express a deep sigh...

a release that comes from knowing.

Today, finally, we have an answer.

I used to babysit this family

on this street, and I've always tried to remember

which house it is.

And there's a street on the right side

called Sonora Street.

I think we might have passed it already.

I don't quite know this neighborhood

as well as I used to.

When the detective called me on Friday,

just within minutes,

I couldn't hear what he was saying.

I need to, like, hear this again ten times

before I know enough to even ask a question.

And I can just feel my mind racing.

I mean, it's only been three or four days

since I've had this new piece of information,

so I know this will settle. But right now, I just feel...

Yeah, I definitely don't feel my body.

I thought it was always farther down.

-Yeah, I'm not really sure. Yeah.

I remember there being a big tree, but...

now I'm sort of disoriented.

I thought there was a vase that was sticking up. Okay.

-(BIRDS CHIRPING) -(SONORA SIGHS)

Yeah, that'd be good.

Just a few minutes. We can leave in a minute.

They drove all the way from Austin to tell us.

I feel kind of numb in a way.

I think it's 'cause it's still so new to us.

In one sentence, it went from

thirty-something years of thinking one thing to...

"No, it's totally something else."

When they explained it to us, I just felt bad,

'cause they had already had to talk to every other parent.

It's a lot of people to have to repeat this story to.

He was looking at us and said, "I've got some good news."

And then there was a long pause.

I'll never forget that. He said...

"I know who killed your daughter."

When I took the case over in early June of 2022,

we talked about the physical evidence,

how limited it was.

One of the few things we had was

that .380 casing found in the floor drain.

It had been uploaded into the ATF's database,

and it never got any hits.

The lands and grooves told us

exactly what kind of gun it was.

We put that on the wire coast-to-coast.

We knew what we were looking for exactly.

The system's called NIBIN,

National Integrated Ballistics Information Network.

So, think of, like, the national DNA database,

but instead of DNA, it's spent shell casings.

The way the gun holds the casing,

it creates these microscopic little indentions,

and then the software can compare those

if the same gun was used in different crimes.

So, I thought, "Well, you know, it's been a long time.

I assume the data is still in the database,

but let me double check,

and maybe there's something we can do with it now."

For whatever reason, I don't know why,

something told me to go down that rabbit hole.

It had been uploaded at least twice.

'97, and then again in '07, and no matches.

If it's been that long,

the software now is light-years ahead of what it was.

It's like three-dimensional type stuff now.

So, July 2nd, they went and pulled it from evidence.

And that afternoon they called me,

and I was actually... just left town for vacation.

And I was sitting on the beach in Port Aransas,

and they were like, "Hey, are you sitting down?"

I was like, "Yeah, I'm sitting down on the beach.

What's up?" I was like, "Do I need a drink for this?"

And he's like, "Yeah, you need to pour yourself a drink.

We got a hit."

To another unsolved homicide

in 1998 in Lexington, Kentucky.

This is 43-year-old Linda Rutledge.

Police say on November 7th, 1998,

they responded to help the Lexington Fire Department

with a fire at a business.

When they got there, they found a woman dead

inside the back of the store,

later confirmed to be Linda Rutledge.

When they found Linda's body here on 121 Malabu Drive,

they found injuries unrelated to the fire.

We cover all the bases with any fire.

That's what we do anytime we find a body

where it's suspicious in nature.

Ms. Rutledge's death

had since been ruled a homicide.

No suspect or suspects

have ever been found.

This woman had been killed

in a strip mall in a retail space,

her parents' hearing aid store.

She would use the hearing aid store

after hours to go change. I think she'd been bartending,

and she was gonna go change clothes,

and go out with friends.

So, she stopped there, and never made it to the bar.

Later that night or early next morning,

somebody was driving by and saw the fire.

Just like yogurt shop,

the fire department put the fire out,

and found her body... in the back.

She had been shot in the head with a .380.

Just like yogurt shop, she had been sexually assaulted.

Front door's locked from the inside,

and so, obviously, probably went out the back door, which,

if you look at the back door of that strip mall,

it looks just like yogurt shop. It's like an alley.

Probably most strip malls look the same.

I got back from vacation, met with Lexington PD.

Tried to find any sort of common link.

Their casing had only been uploaded in 2024,

so a year ago.

At the end of the week,

we didn't really have any other connection.

You know, Lexington wasn't anything

in our radar for our case,

and they didn't have any Texas connections.

Same gun, seven years later, similar MO.

We collaborated on a testing strategy.

One of the things they had was a sexual assault kit.

So, we don't have a DNA profile

that would be good enough for CODIS.

CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System,

so it's a national database held by the FBI.

The CODIS program has had

many success stories since it began.

As the database increases,

so does the number of solved crimes.

You have to have a certain amount of DNA.

It has to be a certain quality.

You gotta have like a full...

what's called a full CODIS profile

to get it uploaded.

Partial or degraded profiles would get false positives.

I said, "Well, we don't have a CODIS profile.

All we have is our Y-STR.

Do y'all have a Y-STR?"

And said, no, they don't have one for this case.

The prosecution asked for a delay

to sift through recent DNA evidence.

A Y-STR profile,

it doesn't match any of your defendants.

There is no database