Chasing a Ghost: Robert Brashers

Episode 11: “Never Again.” Kathy Sweeney examines the growing network of investigators and families working to uncover more crimes tied to Robert Brashers. Austin detective Dan Jackson takes Brashers’ timeline, DNA, and ballistics details on the road to help ...

Episode 10: “No Set Path.” Kathy Sweeney explores how Robert Brashers’ constant movement—and lack of a consistent “hunting area”—may have helped him evade detection for decades. Investigators discuss key time windows they’re now rechecking, what genetic genealogy makes possible today, and what newly shared Navy records reveal about a younger Brashers before the cr...

Episode 9: “He Can’t Be That Lucky.” Kathy Sweeney digs into the string of breaks that helped Robert Brashers evade detection for decades—from an early release after attempted murder to missing firearms investigators believe are tied to multiple cases. The episode traces the .380 linked to the Yogurt Shop murders and Lexington, the missing .22 connected to the Scherer murders, and why ag...

After 20 years, investigators exhume Robert Brashers’ body to confirm—by DNA—that he killed Sherri and Megan Scherer. But Brashers’ death doesn’t bring closure. In Hide and Seek, detectives in Texas, Missouri, and beyond trace how he stayed hidden while alive—using aliases, false documents, and stolen vehicles—and why the search now focuses on where he traveled and...

Deborah Brashers grew up loving her dad...until she learned he was a serial killer. In Chapter 7, “A Daughter’s Reckoning,” Deborah tells Kathy Sweeney what it’s like to lose your childhood memories to a brutal timeline of crimes, and why she only speaks about her father when she’s asked. The conversation returns to the spotlight as authorities and media revisit Robert Brashers&rsq...

A breakthrough in the Austin Yogurt Shop Murders case collides with a devastating media leak. In Chapter 6 of Chasing a Ghost, Kathy Sweeney traces the hours when families learned that serial killer Robert Brashers is the new prime suspect and then watched the news spread before all loved ones were notified. Featuring Shawn and Angie Ayers, Det. Dan Jackson, and Mindy Montford, th...

A major breakthrough in the 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop Murders identified Robert Eugene Brashers as the prime suspect... linking the brutal killings of Amy Ayers, Sarah Harbison, Eliza Thomas, and Jennifer Harbison to a transient serial killer whose crimes stretched across multiple states.

In Episode Five of Chasing a Ghost (“The Yogurt Shop Suspect”), veteran reporter Ka...

In Chapter Four of Chasing a Ghost, Kathy Sweeney reveals how the 1998 murders of Sherri and Megan Scherer were linked to a 1997 Memphis home-invasion sexual assault... after an untested rape kit sat for years before finally generating a CODIS hit. As investigators race to identify the unknown suspect, the case becomes one of the early multi-state breakthroughs powered by investigative genetic genealogy. G...

A double homicide in 1998 could have gone cold—but investigators in southeast Missouri refused to let the Scherer case fade. This episode follows the exhaustive, multi-state search for a suspect, the early warning signs of a traveling predator, and the breakthrough that finally came with new DNA testing and a CODIS match linking Missouri to a 1990 murder in South Carolina. The tr...

It was a warm Saturday afternoon in Portageville, Missouri. A mother and her 12-year-old daughter were working in the yard. By nightfall, they were gone, and nothing in this small, tight-knit community would ever be the same.

On March 28, 1998, Sherri Scherer, 38, and her daughter Megan, 12, were found murdered inside their home. The crime scene was unlike anything local law enforcement had ever encountered. Wi...