On September 27, 2025, the Austin police announced they had finally solved a cold case from 1991, a month after the fourth episode of HBO’s docuseries “The Yogurt Shop Murders” aired. Robert Eugene Brashers was identified as the perpetrator responsible for the horrific rape and murders of teenagers Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison.
On the same day, Margaret Brown, the director of “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” traveled to Austin, the scene of the crime, to shoot the series’ fifth episode. This episode, titled “The End of Wondering,” delves into how DNA evidence led to Brashers’ conviction.
For over 30 years, the case had puzzled authorities and haunted the victims’ families.
Brown spent more than three years interviewing investigative teams and the victims’ families for the first four episodes of the docuseries. She admitted feeling “scared” about returning to Austin to film another episode after it was revealed that Brashers, who died in 1999, was the serial killer behind the crime.
“I was worried that the families were going to be more traumatized about police figuring out that Brashers did it,” Brown said. However, she soon realized that the families were more relieved than traumatized by the revelation.
In the initial four episodes of “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” Brown and her team unearthed footage from interrogation rooms featuring four teenage boys, Forrest Welborn, Maurice Pierce, Robert Springsteen, and Michael Scott, who were initially accused of the crime.
In 1999, Scott and Springsteen were charged and convicted of murder, but their convictions were later overturned. Welborn’s charges were dismissed in 2000. Pierce, who was detained for years, was released in 2003 but was shot and killed by Austin police during a traffic stop in 2010. All four men were officially exonerated in February 2026.
On May 13, the city of Austin agreed to pay a total of $35 million in restitution to Welborn, Springsteen, Scott, and Pierce’s family.
Welborn and Pierce’s widow and daughter, who had declined interviews for the previous episodes, agreed to participate in the fifth episode. Additionally, Brashers’ daughter, Deborah Brashers, also agreed to be interviewed.
Courtesy of HBO
The latest episode of the HBO series uncovers that, apart from the four innocent girls murdered in 1991, Brashers was responsible for the killings of at least four other individuals.
Variety spoke with Brown regarding the fifth episode of “The Yogurt Shop Murders” prior to its May 22 release.
Were you shocked when the Austin Police Department announced that Robert Eugene Brashers was responsible for the murders? Did you have any inkling that they were on the verge of solving this case?
I had an inkling, because I am close with the cold case detective [Dan Jackson], and I could just tell something was going on.
Was that after you had finished filming the series?
I did the interview with Detective Jackson, which you see in the fourth installment of the series, about a year before they announced that they had figured out who did it. At that point, he wasn’t close to solving the case.
Courtesy of HBO
Do you regret not filming for another year, or did you think that the series helped the police solve the case?
I was definitely not thinking that I should have waited another year, because it was really, really hard to be in that world with those families for me, for that long. I felt for them so deeply. Everyone around the case just had so much trauma. So I was happy to move on, even though it hadn’t been solved.
I never went into the show thinking, “I’m going to solve this case,” because I’m not that kind of filmmaker I am. I hoped they would solve it, but I wanted to make something that was about how you deal with the most unimaginable thing.
Do you feel like the series lit a fire under the Austin Police Department to do more DNA work on this case?
The whole cold case unit came to the SXSW screening of the first episode, which was before the series came out. So, I wonder. I think when you are making an HBO show about something, people pay attention.
Was there any hesitation then about going back into that world and making a fifth episode?
At the end of the fourth episode, everyone felt like there was a sense of not completion, because it wasn’t solved, and there was so much despair. I just thought, “How can I not do it for the families and for the continuation of the story?” The families were all like, “You are coming back, right?”
So, HBO was automatically on board?
HBO, at first, was like, “It’s a coda.” And I was like, it’s not a coda — it could be another series. I didn’t really want to go back into it that much, but I immediately was like, now that we know who did it, what about those boys who were accused? What are their lives like now? It was something I always wanted to talk to them about, and I thought, maybe now they will talk to me about it.
How did you feel when most of the victims’ families didn’t express any sympathy for the wrongly accused men?
I was like, “Wait. Why don’t you care?” But all I can think of is, when you go through something like that, there is just no room for anything else. I felt I had to put their feelings about that into the episode to make people think about what they would be like if they were in the same situation. Because I don’t even know if you can imagine what it’s like to go through what they went through. So I would caution people against judging that too much.
Courtesy of HBO
How did you convince Deborah Brashers, the daughter of Robert Eugene Brashers, to sit down for an interview?
She wanted to apologize, because she feels like someone in her family should say sorry to the families. It was the craziest interview I’ve ever done in my entire life. I thought I was going to throw up. That woman has been through so much.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
