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Copyright © 1992, The Austin American-Statesman

Also reported by Starita Smith, Kerry Haglund and Mike Todd.

Tim Lott, Starita Smith, Kerry Haglund, Mike Todd, City breathes heavy sigh with arrests in slayings., 10-23-1992.

City breathes heavy sigh with arrests in slayings

The yogurt shop murders touched Austin at its very core.

Residents of a city that always had seemed more like a town - at least compared to Dallas and Houston - began asking themselves troubling questions.

What kind of cold-blooded person could kill four teen-age girls? Is my neighborhood safe? Should I buy a gun? Can I walk to my car alone? Will it ever be the same?

Though laced with hope, that raw emotion was evident again Thursday as word spread that Mexican authorities had made arrests in the Dec. 6, 1991, slayings of 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison; her 15-year-old sister, Sarah; 17-year-old Eliza Thomas; and 13-year-old Amy Ayers.

Although they were arrests, not convictions, it was as if the city took a deep, hopeful breath. And then cried.

"People were happy. People were crying," said Lindsey Carey, a 14- year-old freshman at Lanier High School, where three of the girls attended school and the fourth would have been a freshman this year. "It was pretty emotional."

Students at Lanier learned the news over the public address system at the end of the school day.

There were vivid accounts of when and how the news came.

"Erik was watching TV and ran into my room saying, `They caught them! ' `They caught them!' and we both started crying," Kat Eichhorn recalled as she and Erik, her son, visited the site where the yogurt store once stood. The space is now occupied by a copying store.

The Eichhorns made a trip to the site as soon as they heard the news. They placed four white candles - one for each of the girls' souls - along a window ledge.

"I wanted to light the candles to show my support of the girls," Eichhorn said. "My daughter is 16. She's been here many times. It could have been her. I'm glad someone was caught and I hope the families find peace."

That urge to go - as if maybe the trip would mend something - was not uncommon.

"It doesn't matter if you knew them or not," said Brandy Arlitt, 15, a student at Anderson High School, as she cried outside the shop Thursday night. She knew all four of the girls, she said.

"Everyone in Austin knows them now. It's not the fact that it was Sarah, Amy, Jennifer and Eliza. It was four young girls. It could have been anybody. I think mothers, sisters, brothers, family members, friends, everyone is going to sleep better tonight." Other reaction was similar.

"We are very happy that the police, after working so long and so hard, have been successful in making arrests," said Jo Ann Kelly, director of human resources for Brice Foods Inc. and I Can't Believe It's Yogurt!

"I'm hopeful this will provide some relief for the victims' families. Our thoughts and prayers are with them."

Mayor Bruce Todd was in Japan on city business Thursday. Dr. Charles Urdy, the mayor pro tem, said the arrests spoke well for the Austin Police Department.

"They've been on the case for some time, and it's a testimony to me, of the good investigative work the police department has done in this case," Urdy said.

Back at Lanier, students reacted in their own ways.

Tony Funderburke, 18, a senior on the football team, said he knew Jennifer from when they were on Lanier track teams and Sarah from his days in junior varsity football.

"I thought it was great," he said. "I was kind of happy, but still sad because I can't get the death of Jennifer out of my mind."

For some students, the confession by one of the suspects, who said he shot all four girls, made their struggle to understand even more difficult.

Samantha Tomaszewski, an 18-year-old who knew Sarah Harbison, burst into tears when she heard about it.

"They've hurt hundreds of people," she said. "They don't know how many people they hurt doing this. Either they should be put in jail for 190 years or given the death penalty."

Paul Turner, the Lanier principal, said he hopes this is a turning point in the recovery of his school from the tragedy. But Turner, like others, will not let his guard down unless there is a conviction.

"I personally would rather there be some kind of closure to it than for us to be left hanging," Turner said. "I don't know whether this will bring closure or not."

The family of Colleen Reed, the victim of another unsolved Austin crime, knows what it's like to wait for resolution. Reed was abducted from a West Fifth Street carwash by two men just three weeks after the yogurt shop murders.

Last April, Belton resident Alva Hank Worley said he and a paroled killer, Kenneth Allen McDuff, kidnapped and sexually assaulted Reed. Authorities arrested McDuff in Kansas City, Mo., in early May. McDuff hasn't been charged in the Reed case. Reed has never been found.

"I'm ready for some closure," said Reed's sister, Lori Bible. "How much can you accept it when you don't have a body to bury or a grave to go to? That's the part that gets me."

Also reported by Starita Smith, Kerry Haglund and Mike Todd.

Copyright © 1992, The Austin American-Statesman

Tim Lott, Starita Smith, Kerry Haglund, Mike Todd, City breathes heavy sigh with arrests in slayings., 10-23-1992.