{"id":302749,"date":"2026-05-21T09:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/302749\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T09:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T09:58:10","slug":"a-resolution-but-no-closure-to-the-yogurt-shop-murders-the-austin-chronicle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/302749\/","title":{"rendered":"A Resolution but No Closure to the Yogurt Shop Murders \u2022 The Austin Chronicle"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last place on Earth that Austin filmmaker Margaret Brown expected to be on Sept. 29 of last year was in the city of Austin Council chambers. She was supposed to be heading to the set of her next project, having recently wrapped the press cycle for her four-part true-crime HBO documentary series, The Yogurt Shop Murders. Like everyone else, she thought it was a story without resolution: that the December 6, 1991, murder of four teenagers \u2013 Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison, and Sarah Harbison \u2013 at the I Can\u2019t Believe It\u2019s Yogurt store on Anderson Lane would never be solved. Then the city announced<\/a> that Robert Eugene Brashers, a suspected serial killer, had been proven responsible through a combination of new DNA evidence and a bullet casing.<\/p>\n

Brown recalled the day of the announcement as \u201cvery surreal, but I was so focused on getting the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result of that new finding, Brown\u2019s original four episodes will be joined by a fifth, debuting on HBO on May 22, focusing on the new finding and how it affects those who lived in the shadow of the crime for decades.<\/p>\n

While it only made sense for HBO to bring back Brown to give the show its new ending, she was an unexpected choice to make the original series. Her films are about communities, like her birthplace of Mobile, Alabama (The Order of Myths<\/a> and Descendant<\/a>) or the Gulf of Mexico (The Great Invisible<\/a>). \u201cI\u2019m interested in people and the way they think,\u201d she said, and that applied to The Yogurt Shop Murders. Eschewing true crime tropes, it explores how an unsolved crime affected the family members; the four men \u2013 Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn \u2013 who spent decades under suspicion; the cops; and even the late Brashers\u2019 daughter, Deborah. While Brown understood why some people didn\u2019t want her to be included, she explained, \u201cI wanted a chance for her to say her thing because what she had to say was so interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Filming the original episodes was a three-and-a-half-year process, and now Brown was back in the story, questioning people she had come to know intimately while retaining her own filmmaking distance. \u201cIt\u2019s the hardest thing,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not just difficult for me. It\u2019s difficult for the whole crew. I\u2019m the face of it but the sound guy has to listen to it, and he\u2019s taking the mics off the characters. The DP has it. We all have these relationships that you don\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Credit: HBO<\/p>\n

Even though Brown had forged deep connections with members of the cold-case unit investigating the murders, she had no idea the announcement was coming. She was originally heading out of town for her next project, with her dog waiting in the car, when she happened to go for coffee with Det. Daniel Jackson. \u201cHe was being really fidgety, and I was like, \u2018What\u2019s going on?\u2019 He\u2019s like, \u2018Nothing,\u2019 and I go, \u2018Yes, there is.\u2019 There\u2019s been all these things where he\u2019s gone, \u2018We have something.\u2019 So you don\u2019t trust it because there\u2019s been so many \u2018We have somethings.\u2019 But there was something different.\u201d Four days later, she got word there had been a breakthrough. \u201cI left my dog at the parents\u2019 house in Alabama, flew back to Austin, and three days later we\u2019re shooting with three camera crews at the press conference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Episode one of Brown\u2019s series debuted at South by Southwest on March 10, 2025<\/a>, before launching on HBO on August 3 of that year. Then, barely a month after the fourth episode dropped, the city made its announcement. It\u2019s hard not to see that the series had become part of the renewed momentum behind solving the crimes: Indeed, at one point in episode five, Jackson states that he mentioned to an out-of-state detective that he was working on the case from that TV show he may have seen. Brown said she found the reference funny. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t ignore it, but there\u2019s more of it that we couldn\u2019t put in, because everyone was referencing the series because that\u2019s where people get a lot of their information. \u2026 But you\u2019re right, the series is part of the story now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many have said that, beyond finally proving who committed these horrific murders and giving definitive exoneration to the four men wrongfully accused, the announcement gives the families and the broader community a sense of closure.<\/p>\n

Brown disagrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t use the C-word,\u201d she said. Instead, she quoted what Amy Ayers\u2019 brother, Shawn, told her about processing this new situation. \u201c\u2018I haven\u2019t gotten to that yet.\u2019 \u2026 The crime happened; it was solved 34 years later. What they have been through has been extraordinary, and I don\u2019t think anyone should have any judgment about what stage of grief they are in.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article appears in May 22 \u2022\u00a02026<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A note to readers:\u00a0Bold and uncensored,\u00a0The Austin Chronicle\u00a0has been Austin\u2019s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community\u2019s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last place on Earth that Austin filmmaker Margaret Brown expected to be on Sept. 29 of last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302750,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,1551,109873,69028],"class_list":["post-302749","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-feature","tag-margaret-brown","tag-yogurt-shop-murders"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302749"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302749\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302750"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}