How HBO’s The Yogurt Shop Murders left its crew shaken and in therapy

When filmmaker Margaret Brown decided to direct The Yogurt Shop Murders, she initially worried that making a film about it would cause her to confront an open wound.

The story was familiar to her: four teenagers murdered in 1991 inside an Austin frozen yogurt shop. But nothing could prepare her for the emotional intensity of sitting face‑to‑face with the victims’ grieving family members for hours on end.

Brown revealed to Variety that while shooting The Yogurt Shop Murders, she had truly never, ever been as terrified, despite having tackled film projects about trauma in the past.

By the time production for The Yogurt Shop Murders was over, everyone working on it realised that the darkness of this case had impacted them much more than they had anticipated. Many crew members still had visions and memories of their own.

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The Yogurt Shop Murders: Why A24 paid for therapy for some of the crew

One of the few but necessary gestures was that A24 covered therapy for the documentary's creative team.

The studios knew that the story of The Yogurt Shop Murders was not only disturbing but very difficult to shake off. The emotional toll of their daily work was so heavy that A24 paid for therapy for the team, realizing they could not keep functioning in this darkness day after day without damaging their mental health. The pictures of the crime scene were so graphic that few in the crew could bring themselves to look at them.

As Brown told Variety:

"Those photos are so bad. My editorial team was like, “You can never look at them.” They were all so traumatized by the photos. I’ve seen some of them, but not all of them, because (the editorial team) said, “They will haunt you for the rest of your life.” A24 paid for some of (the film team’s) therapy because it is really hard on the system if you take it in, and it’s really hard not to take it in. It was hard to live in that darkness for such a long time."

A24’s intervention helped ensure the mental and emotional well‑being of the people telling this tragic story.

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The Yogurt Shop Murders: How the documentary shook the filmmakers

For director Margaret Brown and her production team, immersing themselves in the 1991 murders transformed into a harrowing experience. Brown shared with Variety:

"One thousand percent yes. I was terrified. I didn’t really know what I was getting into, to be honest. I thought, “Oh, I’ve made films about deep trauma before.” I mean, a lot of my films are about horrible things that happen to people, but I wasn’t really prepared for the unresolved rape and murder of teenage girls, and the effect it continues to have on (the victim’s) families."

"I wasn’t aware of the emotional weight of sitting in the rooms with (the family members) for hours at a time would have on me. Then I thought, if I’m having a hard time, just imagine what they are going through. It was just like a loop in my head."

She spoke of the emotional weight of sitting with family members “for hours at a time” and how the darkness of the story seeped into their own lives. Over three years, she interviewed investigators, family members, and worked with archival material that never seemed to end in its emotional rawness. The director and crew knew that telling this story required deep sensitivity, but they paid a psychological price for it.

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What is The Yogurt Shop Murders documentary about?

The Yogurt Shop Murders is a four-part HBO true-crime docuseries directed by Margaret Brown and produced with A24 and Fruit Tree. It debuted on August 3 on HBO and Max, following the film's premiere at SXSW on March 10, 2025. New episodes are slated to release each week through August 24.

The series combines haunting archival footage, interrogation tapes from teenage suspects, and Claire Huie’s abandoned documentary footage from 2009.

Interviews with family members, investigative teams including John Jones and Paul Johnson, and journalists like Erin Moriarty help frame a multidimensional exploration of a crime that remains unsolved. Critics have praised the series for its emotional depth and refusal to use the tragedy as mere entertainment.

Talking about the challenges of living in the darkness while making the documentary, Brown revealed:

"It was just really hard for us to make it because it was just so dark, but we thought that the right way to make the series was to look at that. Because everyone has darkness in their life, and everyone deals with trauma. This case is a pretty extreme case of people dealing with trauma, but I felt like there was something instructive about it. Each family dealt with the trauma in really different ways, and I found that fascinating."

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What was The Yogurt Shop Murders case?

Four teenage girls, Amy Ayers, Jennifer Harbison, Sarah Harbison, and Eliza Thomas, were found, bound, shot in the head, and burned in the back of a frozen yogurt shop in Austin, Texas, on the night of December 6, 1991.

The case, which had arrests and coerced confessions from Michael Scott and Robert Springsteen (who spent years behind bars before DNA evidence saw their convictions overturned in 2009), remains unsolved more than three decades later.

The investigation faltered as the evidence was burned, the confessions were forced, and then the case went cold. Brown's documentary also illustrates how the crime "became ingrained into the city," she observes, with recurring conversations in Austin about these murders.

For the victims’ families, the pain remains raw. Sonora Thomas, Eliza’s sister, reflects on the grief that persists every day. Shawn Ayers, brother of Amy, says he thinks of her without fail. Their stories underscore a truth at the heart of the series: this horror did not fade with time, and for many, justice and closure are still elusive.

But what is achieved with The Yogurt Shop Murders goes far beyond the recounting of a crime: it becomes an exploration of lies, denial, and conspiracy theory, which ultimately exhausts both the citizens and officials seeking answers.