On September 27, 2025, one month after the fourth episode of the HBO documentary series Yogurt Shop Murders aired, Austin police announced that they had finally solved the 1991 cold case. Robert Eugene Brashears was responsible for the brutal rape and murder of teenage sisters Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison.
On the same day, Margaret Brown, director of The Yogurt Store Murders, boarded a plane to Austin, where the murders occurred, to film the fifth episode of the series. The episode, titled “The End of Wondering,” examines how DNA evidence led to Brashears’ conviction.
The murder baffled police and haunted the victim’s family for more than 30 years.
Brown spent more than three years interviewing forensic teams and the victim’s parents and siblings for the first four episodes of the documentary series. She said she was “scared” to return to Austin to film the next episode after police discovered that serial killer Brashears, who died in 1999, was responsible for the crime.
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“I was worried that it would be even more traumatizing for the family if the police found out Brashears did it,” Brown said. However, the director soon realized that the family was more relieved than traumatized by the discovery.
For the first four episodes of “Yogurt Shop Murders,” Brown and her production team tracked interrogation room footage of the four teenagers originally accused of the crime: Forrest Welborn, Maurice Pierce, Robert Springsteen, and Michael Scott.
Scott and Springsteen were both indicted and convicted of murder in 1999, but their convictions were later overturned. The charges against Welborn were dropped in 2000. Pierce remained in custody on the charges for years before being released in 2003. Pierce was shot and killed by Austin police in 2010 after a traffic stop. All four were officially acquitted in February 2026.
On May 13, the city of Austin agreed to pay a total of $35 million in damages to the families of Welborn, Springsteen, Scott, and Pierce.
Welborn and Pearce’s widow and daughter did not agree to speak to Brown during the filming of the first four episodes, but were interviewed for the fifth episode. Brashears’ daughter Deborah Brashears also agreed to an interview.
Forest Wellborn
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The latest installment of the HBO series reveals that in addition to the deaths of four innocent girls in 1991, the Brashears murdered at least four other people.
Variety interviewed Brown about the fifth episode of “Yogurt Shop Murders” ahead of the series’ May 22 release.
Were you shocked when the Austin Police Department announced that Robert Eugene Brashears was the culprit in the murder? Did you have any inkling that they were going to solve this case?
I’m close to the cold case detective (Dan Jackson), so I just knew something was going on.
Is that after the series has finished filming?
The interview with Detective Jackson, which appears in the fourth installment of the series, was conducted about a year before Detective Jackson announced that he had located the culprit. At that point, he was no closer to solving the case.
Dan Jackson
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Do you regret not filming for another year, or do you think this series helped the police solve cases?
I never thought I should have waited another year. Because it was really, really difficult for me to be in that world with my family. I felt so deeply sorry for them. Everyone around the incident was deeply traumatized. So I was happy to move on, even if it wasn’t resolved.
I’m not that kind of filmmaker, so I’ve never gone into a show thinking, “Let’s solve this case.” I wanted them to work it out, but I wanted to make something about how you deal with the most unimaginable situations.
Do you feel like this series sparked the Austin Police Department to do more DNA investigation into this case?
The entire Cold Case team attended the SXSW screening of the first episode before the series was released. So, I wonder. I think when you’re making an HBO show about something, people pay attention.
At that time, did you have any hesitation about returning to that world and making the fifth episode?
By the end of episode 4, everyone was feeling a sense of unresolved. Because it hasn’t been resolved, and there’s been so much despair. I thought, “How can I not do something for my family and for the continuation of the story?” Everyone in my family was like, “So you’re coming back?”
So was HBO automatically on board?
At first, HBO was like, “This is a coda.” And I thought, this could be a separate series, not a coda. I really didn’t want to go back too much, but I soon found out who had done it, and I wondered what would happen to the accused boys. What is their life like now? It was something I had always wanted to tell them and I thought maybe now they would tell me about it.
How did you feel when most of the victims’ families showed no sympathy for the wrongly accused men?
I thought, “Wait, why don’t you care?” But what I think is that when you go through something like that, there’s just no room for anything else. I felt it was necessary to put their feelings into the episode and have them think about what would happen if they found themselves in the same situation. Because I don’t know if you can even imagine what it’s like to go through what they went through. Therefore, I would caution people not to judge it too much.
Deborah Brashears
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How did you convince Deborah Brashears, daughter of Robert Eugene Brashears, to be interviewed?
She wanted to apologize because she feels that someone in the family should say sorry to the family. That was the craziest interview I’ve ever had in my life. I thought I was going to throw up. That woman has been through so much.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
