New HBO docuseries delves into Austin’s unsolved yogurt shop murders

A lot has been written and said about a horrific crime in Austin in the early 1990s. Four teenage girls were violently killed. It became known for the place where it happened: the yogurt shop murders.

Though there were arrests, confessions, and even convictions, the crimes remain officially unsolved.

What happened back in 1991, and since, is the focus of a four-part documentary series now on HBO and HBO Max. “The Yogurt Shop Murders” is directed by Austin-based filmmaker Margaret Brown.

Brown spoke with Texas Standard freelancer Karen Bernstein when the series had its Texas premiere at South by Southwest. Brown told us she got involved in making “The Yogurt Shop Murders” after hearing about the project from her manager.

“So they told me the story, which of course I already knew about because I was here [in Austin] in the late ’90s and I remember seeing the billboards. And it was also something you just heard about. People talked about it all the time. And so it was almost just like part of the fabric of living in Austin,” Brown said.

“I thought about it in sort of an abstract way when I took the job. I saw the archival footage. I thought, ‘oh my gosh, this is incredible.’ Like, there’s so much amazing archival footage. And then… the way that journalists I really admire and love talked about it. I thought, ‘oh, this will be really interesting.’”

Brown said her perspective began to shift when she met the families of the victims.

“I’ve never done anything in the true crime world before, and I feel like I’ve done things that are about trauma, but really different than this kind of trauma. So I was just like, ‘oh, I really can’t mess this up.’ Like, I could feel their pain. It was so, so anguished,” Brown said.

So why, so many decades later, does Brown think the yogurt shop murders continue to hang so heavy over Texas?

“I think it’s the horrific nature of the crime, first of all,” Brown said. “I think also it’s because there were people who were convicted who then got let off in kind of a complicated way and there’s still questions about that.”

» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters

Brown said the murders looms large over Austin as a whole.

“I think it’s a part of the fabric of Austin,” Brown said. “I think it’s something that changed how people thought about where they lived. The way the media characterized it, it’s like ‘the day Austin lost its innocence.’ And I do think there’s truth there.

But I also think, one thing Barbara Ayres says, one of the mothers, is that she met other crime victims in Austin afterward who were African American. And their children did not get near as much attention. She goes, ‘four white girls, big news, big news, four white girls got murdered.’ That’s how she says it.”

Brown said she wasn’t the first local director on the project. Much of the footage in the documentary series was collected earlier by Austin filmmaker Claire Huie. But the task of working around such a tragedy took a toll on Huie, who stepped away from the project, leaving Brown with the hundreds of hours of footage she had collected.

“I think she really wanted someone to use it because I think she felt horrible not finishing for the families and for other people involved in the case. But she just couldn’t do it. So she gave us the footage,” Brown said.

As she sorted through the footage, Brown said the task of the filmmaker began to weigh even heavier upon her.

“I really just resonated so strongly with so many things she said about the filmmaking process and how you feel so crass so often,” Brown said. “Like asking people these really hard questions that you feel like you have to ask to get at some emotional truth, or just even a fact, and to put people through pain to get to something that you hope is worth it. And is it worth it to ask someone to sort of retraumatize themselves, to go over the crime again, or to go over aspects of it? Is it worth it?

And I think, as filmmakers, we ask ourselves those kind of questions all the time, like, ‘what if this film doesn’t change, move the needle, make people feel more empathy in their lives?’ Is it worth it that I just retraumatized this individual who has just gone through unimaginable things?”

“But also like, there’s some really funny moments,” Brown said. “You know, I don’t think you can live in trauma forever. And a lot of the characters, one of the things that was really uplifting to me is like some of them are really funny, like they’ve gone through this incredible trauma, but they sort of see the absurdity of certain things and they talk about it.

But amid the tragedy, Brown found touches of light with some characters in the story providing an uplifting example through still finding humor amid trauma.

“I feel like I learned a lot from them about how to laugh through the tears.,” Brown said. “And what’s so great about being a documentary filmmaker, in a way, is you get to, like, ask people questions who’ve gone through something you could never imagine yourself. And if you’re, like, sitting in the right chair and can really pay attention, you can maybe get something incredible. And I feel like they trusted me to give me that stuff.”

Brown said how the families would perceive the project is something she took very seriously.

“I would wager to guess that it’s a real mixed bag for them,” Brown said. “I think they’re hoping when this comes out… I think, I’m trying to remember what Pam Ayers said to me when we showed her the episode. She goes, ‘I hope you don’t use the word ‘closure’ ever in the series, because there never is any closure. You learn to live with it.’”

The first episode of “The Yogurt Shop Murders” was released Sunday, Aug. 3 on HBO and HBO Max. Three more episodes are coming the next three Sundays.

If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it here. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on texasstandard.org and KUT.org. Thanks for donating today.