Austin Tentative $35M Settlement with Yogurt Shop Exonerees

Austin, Texas, has reached a tentative $35 million settlement with three men and the family of a fourth who spent years wrongly accused of the 1991 murders of four teenage girls at a local yogurt shop, officials announced Tuesday. The agreement, which requires city council approval, comes months after a judge formally exonerated Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Forrest Welborn, and the late Maurice Pierce.

The victims, employees and customers at the I Can't Believe It's Yogurt shop on West Anderson Lane, were Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer Harbison, 17, and Sarah Harbison, 15. On December 6, 1991, shortly before midnight, firefighters responding to a blaze discovered the girls bound with their clothing, gagged, sexually assaulted, and shot in the head with .22- and .380-caliber pistols. The shop had been set on fire in an apparent attempt to destroy evidence.

Investigators pursued thousands of leads and confessions over the years. In late 1999, police arrested the four men, all teenagers at the time of the crime. Springsteen and Scott gave confessions they later said were coerced; Springsteen received a death sentence and Scott life without parole. Both...