In 1991, four teenage girls, Eliza Thomas, 17, Amy Ayers, 13, and sisters Jennifer Harbison, 17, and Sarah Harbison, 15, were brutally murdered at an I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas.
The girls were shot and their bodies were set on fire; it was a horrific crime that stunned the then-smaller city community and remains unsolved almost 34 years later.
What is ‘The Yogurt Shop Murders’ about?
HBO’s new four-part docuseries, The Yogurt Shop Murders, which premiered on Aug. 3, revisits the cold case, spotlighting the emotional toll on the victims’ families, the decades-long search for the killers, and the ongoing pursuit of justice. Directed by Margaret Brown and executive produced by award-winning actor Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCary, the series features exclusive interviews and previously unseen details, USA Today reported.
Reese Price, who managed the shop and was 24 at the time, recounted the trauma of having to identify the victims, noting the devastating impact of the fire.
“There wasn’t anything there to identify,” she describes in the docuseries. “Fire is very destructive. It’s not forgiving.”
Brown, who moved to Austin in the late ’90s, recalled the case dominating local headlines and billboards. She said the series offers new insights and exclusive interviews not shared in other reporting or documentaries about the case. She also described it as the “mothership” of unsolved crimes because of its complexity and the obsessive interest it continues to generate from viewers, per USA Today.
Two men convicted in the case were later released over DNA evidence
Despite two men, Robert Springsteen and Michael Scott, being convicted in the early 2000s, their convictions were overturned after DNA evidence excluded them. The series includes past footage of Springsteen, but neither man agreed to be interviewed.
Detective Dan Jackson, 45, now leading the cold case unit, has been working on the case since 2022. A Texas native, Jackson grew up hearing about the murders and is determined to solve them. He emphasized advances in forensic science as a potential game-changer, stating that less DNA is needed to extract viable evidence than in previous years.
Jackson is hopeful he will solve the case and believes someone will eventually present the information he needs to move it forward.
‘Who knows? It could be the break we need’
“Somebody out there knows something,” he said, according to USA Today. “That’s one of the things with cold cases, is that you do get people over time that, for whatever reason, may not have been willing to come forward years ago that now feel more comfortable. Or they thought it was something small and didn’t ever say anything and they’re like, ‘Well, maybe I should call in this time and mention it.’ Who knows? It could be the break we need.”
Meanwhile, Brown said that while the project’s origins are painful to watch for the victims’ families, she believes viewers will connect with it because of the pain they have experienced in their own lives.
“These people went through something so specifically awful, but I do think there’s something in that for everyone. We’re all going to experience pain, and I felt like, for me, this was a way to look at this fascinating case, at the same time an exploration of how do people deal with something this hard (and) what can we learn from that?” Brown said.
