Austin, Texas — Austin police on Monday outlined how a new, rapidly unfolding DNA and ballistics evidence trail led them to declare a dead man as the likely perpetrator in the killing of four teenage girls at an Austin yogurt shop in 1991, a horrific crime that haunted the city for decades.

And officials noted there was no known connection between the new suspect and the two men previously convicted in the killings, one of whom was briefly sent to death row.

“At one point I had given up on God, but he never gave up on me," Shawn Ayers, brother of one of the victims, Amy Ayers, said at a news conference.

Austin police now say all evidence leads to Robert Eugene Brashers, who died by suicide in 1999 during a standoff with law enforcement. In recent years, Brashers has been linked to seve

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