Robert Eugene Brashers

Robert Eugene Brashers (March 13, 1958 – January 19, 1999) was an American serial killer and mass murderer who committed at least eight murders in Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina and Texas between 1990 and 1998. During his lifetime, Brashers was convicted of attempted murder for shooting a woman in 1985, as well as for various other offenses stemming from a 1992 case in which he stole a vehicle, but was not identified as a suspect in any of his murders and remained in relative obscurity. He died by a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1999 to avoid arrest for an unrelated crime after a standoff with police.

Decades after his death, due to advances in investigative genetic genealogy, Brashers was tied to a series of extremely violent crimes. Investigators linked him to several unsolved rapes and murders committed against women and young girls. In 2025 police in Austin, Texas, identified Brashers as the perpetrator in the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders, in which four teenaged girls were murdered.

Personal life Robert Eugene Brashers was born on March 13, 1958, in Newport News, Virginia, the youngest of four children born to Doulis and Nellie Brashers. When he was young, Brashers' family moved to Huntsville, Alabama, where he spent his childhood and youth. Reportedly, Brashers committed no offenses as a teenager and did not engage in any substance abuse. Brashers attended S. R. Butler High School in Huntsville and John Adams High School in South Bend, Indiana. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the United States Army; he served in the United States Navy for about 10 months before being discharged due to personality disorders.

In the early 1980s, Brashers moved to Louisiana, settling in New Orleans, but by the mid-1980s he moved again to Fort Myers, Florida. He has a daughter born in 1991.

Attempted murder of Michelle Wilkerson On November 22, 1985, Brashers was arrested in Port St. Lucie, Florida, on charges of assaulting a 24-year-old woman named Michelle Wilkerson. According to investigators, on November 22, Brashers met Wilkerson in Fort Pierce and convinced her to accompany him to a bar. After spending their evening there, he took Wilkerson to a dark alleyway near a citrus grove, where, after drinking six Budweisers together, he attempted to make sexual advances toward her.

Wilkerson refused and attempted to leave Brashers' vehicle, after which a fight ensued between the pair, during which Brashers shot Wilkerson twice in the neck and head.

Post-release crimes and posthumous exposures After his release, Brashers moved between the states of South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia, often changing his place of residence. In 2018, genealogist CeCe Moore from Parabon NanoLabs was able to identify Brashers through investigative genetic genealogy as a suspect in three murders and several rapes dating back to 1990. In response, prosecutors from New Madrid County and Pemiscot County, Missouri, filed a motion to exhume his remains and conducted additional testing. On September 27, 2018, the casket containing Brashers' remains was exhumed from the cemetery in Paragould, Arkansas, and DNA was extracted from the bones. On September 26, 2025, the Austin Police Department announced that it had identified Brashers as the perpetrator of the 1991 Austin yogurt shop murders.

A Y-STR DNA profile was developed from vaginal swabs from three of the victims. The profile did not match any of the previous suspects; however, Brashers' Y-STR DNA profile matched. Further DNA testing revealed Brashers matched the autosomal STR profile found under the fingernails of the youngest victim. On December 8, 1991, less than 48 hours after the Austin yogurt shop murders, Brashers was stopped by a United States Border Patrol agent at an interior checkpoint while travelling westbound on Interstate 10 between El Paso, Texas and Las Cruces, New Mexico. During the checkpoint stop, it was discovered that Brashers was driving a truck that had been reported stolen in Marietta, Georgia, on November 29. While searching the stolen vehicle, the Border Patrol agent found a .380 AMT Backup, the same make and model of firearm that had been used in the yogurt shop murders. After the discovery of the weapon, Brashers fled in the vehicle for about a mile before surrendering to law enforcement. He was charged with auto theft and felon in possession of a firearm. The gun was later released to Brashers' father after sentencing and was subsequently used by Brashers in the November 1998 murder of Linda Rutledge and in his suicide in January 1999.

On February 18, 1992, he was arrested in Cobb County, Georgia, for grand theft auto, unlawful possession of a weapon, and theft. While searching his vehicle and apartment, policemen found a radio scanner, a police jacket, lock-picking tools, and a fake Tennessee driver's license. Fearing another prison sentence, he made a plea deal with the prosecutors and pleaded guilty to the most serious of the charges, allowing for the rest to be dropped. As a result, he was sentenced to an additional five years imprisonment, which he served in full, and was released in February 1997.

Further crimes Brashers raped a 14-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee, on March 11, 1997. After entering, he tied up the occupants.

DNA also linked him to the double murder of 38-year-old Sherri Scherer and her 12-year-old daughter Megan, both of whom were found shot to death at their home in Portageville, Missouri, on March 28, 1998. Approximately two hours later, he broke into another home in Dyersburg, Tennessee, where he attempted to assault a 25-year-old woman. That victim fiercely resisted, however, causing her assailant to flee the crime scene. There was no useful biological evidence left behind, but forensic ballistics were able to prove that the same gun had been used in this attack as with the murders of the Scherers.

On April 12, 1998, Brashers was arrested while attempting to break into the home of a woman in Paragould, Arkansas. Having been employed by her on a previous occasion, he had cut the phone line leading to her home and was armed at the time of his arrest. A video camera and locksmithing tools were seized from him as well.

On August 16, 1998, Brashers was arrested and charged with residential burglary, leaving the scene of an accident with property damage, public intoxication, and second-degree criminal impersonation in Greene County, Arkansas. The charges stemmed from Brashers driving erratically on U.S. Highway 412 when he crashed his van through a fence, hit a parked vehicle, and fled the scene. A motorist subsequently contacted law enforcement after he had given an injured Brashers a ride to U.S. Highway 412. When Brashers was located in the area by police officers, he provided a false identity and a fictitious story. During the investigation, it was discovered that Brashers had also burglarized his neighbor's home and stolen cash and jewelry. The following October, Arkansas authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, as the new charges caused the bond in his April case to be revoked. Two additional arrest warrants were issued in November, the latter of which was due to failure to appear in court on November 12. In September 2025, Brashers was announced to have been the perpetrator of a murder in Kentucky in which a woman was raped and fatally shot. On January 7, 2026, the victim was publicly identified as 43-year-old Linda Rutledge.

In July 2025, detectives were contacted by the Austin, TX Police Department after they received a match from the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) regarding the .380 shell casing that was recovered from the Nixon Hearing Aid Center. The .380 shell casing was a match to one that was located in Austin in December 1991 after the "Yogurt Shop Murders". In addition to the ballistic evidence, DNA evidence from both cases was also a match. In September 2025, a sexual assault kit from Rutledge was sent to DNA Labs International for testing and matched the profile from Austin, further implicating Brashers as the perpetrator.

In February 2019, Brashers' 27-year-old daughter Deborah was interviewed by reporters to recount some details of her father's biography. She said that she first saw her father in early 1997, after he had just been released from prison. According to her, for the next two years he lived with her, her mother, and her half-sisters. During this time, she claimed that he was sometimes aggressive towards them; he once fought her stepfather and caused him a head injury with a drill; he had also 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. Deborah was inclined to believe that her mother Dorothy, who died in December 2018 at the age of 53, knew about her father's past activities, telling them to call him by a different name and to keep him inside the house.

In addition, she stated that his mental health sharply deteriorated circa April 1998 and that his job at a construction firm led him to be absent from the house for weeks at a time.

Death On January 13, 1999, police officers noticed that a stolen vehicle had been parked in the parking lot of the Super 8 hotel in Kennett, Missouri. After speaking with motel personnel, it was established that Brashers and his family had arrived in that vehicle just days earlier. Officers then broke down the door and found him hiding under a bed with a loaded gun, but when they attempted to arrest him, he put the gun to his head and threatened to kill himself. The officers were forced to retreat and called for backup. Genevieve Zitricki 28 April 5, 1990 Greenville, South Carolina Murder, rape Amy Ayers 13

Eliza Thomas 17 Jennifer Harbison 17 Sarah Harbison 15 Unnamed female and four family members 14 (female victim), various ages (family) March 11, 1997 Memphis, Tennessee Rape (female), hostage-taking (family) Megan Scherer 12

Murder, rape Sherri Scherer 38 Murder In June 2020, CeCe Moore recounted Brashers' identification through investigative genetic genealogy on the ABC series The Genetic Detective, which featured Brashers' daughter Deborah. In September 2021, Brashers' daughter Deborah was interviewed about her father on an episode of Evil Lives Here.

Austin yogurt shop murders Who Killed These Girls? Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders, a 2016 nonfiction book by Beverly Lowry Murdered Innocents, a 2016 nonfiction book by Corey Mitchell See How Small, a 2015 novel by Scott Blackwood People Magazine Investigates, Season 7, Episode 7, "Who Killed Our Girls?" (2023) The Yogurt Shop Murders, a five-part documentary released by HBO in August 2025