More than 30 years after the Austin police brutally murdered four girls in teenage in a local yogurt shop, HBO examined the case again in his upcoming documentary series The yogurt shop murders.
The tragic murders of 1991, which Austin had innocently innocently, landed as the case that the tragic murders of 1991 sent shock waves through the community for years when the investigation joined. To date, the families concerned are looking for answers to what Amy Ayers, the sisters Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison and Eliza Thomas really happened.
“I was in Austin at the end of the 1990s and the advertising boards were everywhere and they went to parties, and people talked about their theories about what happened,” says director Margaret Brown, an Alabama from Alabama.
Through a combination of archive material and recent interviews with the investigation teams, the parents and siblings of the victims and the two men, who served time for the crime, the series raises important questions about law enforcement agencies and the power of public perception and offers a moving observation of the endurance of the grief.
In the following interview, Brown speaks more about the project.
Deadline: I understand that you live in Austin. How do you understand this case before you have adopted this documentary?
Margaret Brown: I was in Austin at the end of the 1990s and the advertising boards were everywhere and they went to parties, and people talked about their theories about what happened. I have a lot of friends who are reporters and they would all talk about it. My best friend is a reporter, and when I told her that I was thinking about this project, she said: “Oh my god, this is the craziest unresolved crime in Texas, and there are so many twists …” In Austin, people talk about it for years. I only have this memory of seeing these advertising boards everywhere and only making them really urgent.
Deadline: When you were on board, how did you start to tell this story best, which, as you already mentioned, is already very notorious?
BROWN: I didn't want to do the project until I saw the archive material because it was so much for me at this time. Austin was really different. I mean, I wasn't there in the early 90s. I was there at the end of the 90s [and] Then it was different enough. So I really wanted to make sure that I had the material to catch this feeling. They sent me what they had and it was pretty impressive. I immediately felt a transporting feeling for the past. I could hear the music that would match these pictures and even how I would light them. It was such a specific mood. It was something scary about it. Then I met the families and it really shifted and I realized that I didn't stylize as I wanted because I didn't want to take away the emotional connection. I thought that if I went too far in this direction, it roamed some feelings that I got when I was only sitting with them. So I still designed it, but I definitely switched it back.
Deadline: The documentary tells two stories because they explain the years of examination and at the same time underlined the entire trauma that the families have undergone in the past three decades. How do you find the right balance there?
BROWN: I mean, I only tried to react as much as possible without judgment and to react emotionally what the person said before me. I was really convinced of how affected people were of this special event. Claire Huey, who made the film that was never ended, was one of the first people I met. She gave us all of this. It gave the production of all this film material and it completely changed her life. She was a filmmaker like me and then stopped making films, and so the story influenced her. She just couldn't bring her head to it. I think the power of what happened really hit people. I just tried to go and listen and not judge.
Term: Speaking of Claire, we hear from her in the documentation. What do you think, add this story to your perspective?
BROWN: I mean, I think it's a parallel to my experience. I would often observe their footage and say: 'Oh my god, that's exactly how I feel. This is so overwhelming. 'It was a really heavy series to make and it was just such a world of darkness. I think I knew someone else knew how it was – I often just called her to talk about it because she lived around the corner. Now she is like a meditation teacher. I try to encourage her to make films because I think she is incredible and that she is such a empathy, and she takes care of people so much. It made it difficult for her because she took care of it so much. I also think that she managed to be just a young filmmaker so many years ago and to have the confidence that you can put everything together, because it is an overwhelming story, there are so many twists and turns, and they land somehow when you have started to pack it together. I have an entire team that helps me. She was a former student. I just can't even imagine. It would be so difficult.
Deadline: You deal very deeply into the way this case traumatized the families and other participants, and mostly avoid conspiracy theories about what may have happened. What made you take this route? And how did the work with these families shape their perception of true crimes in general?
BROWN: To be honest, I don't look at much true crimes … I didn't really want to cloud my head through a formula. I heard a few podcasts and so tightened the tone of the most true crime. Not all of them, but most of the true criminal podcasts seemed to forget that they were humans.
When they meet the families, I don't understand how they could. It is just so painful to sit with people who went through it. It really requires a tribute from them. Perhaps it is because you don't have to meet people if you do it, you can just listen. People would like to find out things. I mean too, me. I don't try to say that this is not interesting for me, because of course it is interesting to try to find out a mystery, but I didn't feel that way in this special series. It is impossible if you meet these people to do it. You feel so much for you.
Deadline: In the last episode there is a very influenced moment when you dig out the time capsule for Amy Ayers. How was that to be observed for you?
BROWN: It was probably to be seen for them. I just felt like that for the Ayers family and I mean we really strengthened this scene. They tried so much to find it. We knew it was there. It became like this day like this kind of attachment experience because so many people appeared to help. It was really moving how many people simply took care of the Ayers family and they took care of this ode to their daughter to the surface.
Deadline: When you put together this story, was what is the most frustrating part of the case for you?
BROWN: What interests me is researching what it means to be a person and go through grief and how different people mourn. Then there is this crazy story about all these twists and rabbits in which the true audience of crime is interested. I'm not so interested, but I'm interested in it. You need a story to hang up your hat, right? So this film would not exist without this crazy story. There are several topics on my phone with the producers and the editorial department and everyone who is talking about theories. We all tried to crack it in any way or to follow another theory or to follow another rabbit hole, but it balanced this search to solve the crime – what to believe for me that I can solve the crime when hundreds of police stations and DNA specialists and all these people try to solve this crime, for myself that I can do what is a little treasure. But of course we still wanted. I think how I did it was what I was about to only sit with people through the three and a half years of the producing with people that I think that they had a lot of wisdom about pain and life with pain that we all have to do. We all suffer. These people have gone through a really subject extreme suffering, and I felt that I found a lot from hearing these families and listening to Claire Talk and listening to some investigators who gave their lives and ruined their marriages.
Term: Since the case remains unsolved, the story still takes. How do you find a natural conclusion for the story you want to tell?
BROWN: Well, because I was interested in memory and grief … I mean without giving a spoiler again, there are some things that happen in the fourth episode. I would never call it a closure because the families will never have a closure. But there are things that approach.