The brutal rape and murder of 4 teenage girls at an Austin, Texas frozen yogurt shop is the topic of Margaret Brown’s HBO docuseries “The Yogurt Shop Murders.”
The 1991 slayings of Amy Ayers, sisters Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison, and Eliza Thomas mystified police, haunted the victim’s families, and eventually became “a part of the material of Austin,” based on Brown.
“It’s something you possibly can’t really get away from in Austin,” said Brown.
Although Brown (“Descendant”) knew concerning the crime, the concept for a four-part docuseries got here from Emma Stone and her husband Dave McCary, who used to live in Austin. The couple brought the docuseries to A24 to supply.
Brown spent over three years interviewing the crime’s investigative teams and the victims’ parents and siblings. The director and her producing team also tracked down interrogation room footage of 4 teenaged boys who served time for the crime. As well as, Brown interviewed “48 Hours” correspondent Erin Moriarty, who covered the case, and documentary filmmaker Claire Huie, who attempted to make a movie concerning the murders. Huie’s abandoned footage, which is featured throughout “The Yogurt Shop Murders,” included Interviews with the victim’s members of the family, detectives and Robert Springsteen, one in all the lads who sat on death row for the crime after falsely confessing to participating within the widely publicized killings.
Variety spoke with Brown about “The Yogurt Shop Murders” ahead of the series’ Aug. 3 release on HBO.
The murders happened over 30 years ago, however the pain that the victim’s members of the family still bear was evident within the interviews you conducted with them. Were those interviews difficult to do, and were you concerned in any respect about possibly exploiting them?
One thousand percent yes. I used to be terrified. I didn’t really know what I used to be entering into, to be honest. I assumed, “Oh, I’ve made movies about deep trauma before.” I mean, a variety of my movies are about horrible things that occur 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 within the rooms with (the members of the family) for hours at a time would have on me. Then I assumed, if I’m having a tough time, just imagine what they’re going through. It was similar to a loop in my head.
Did you could have any hesitation about making a four-part series about an unresolved crime?
No. I knew from living in Austin and having a variety of friends who’re reporters who were utterly obsessive about this case and its twists and turns that it might work.
Claire Huie’s interview with Robert Springsteen back in 2009 could be very revealing. Do you’re thinking that you can have made this series without Huie’s footage?
That footage was a present. It could have been a distinct film without it. Claire is an incredible filmmaker, but making the film she was attempting to make made her stop being a filmmaker. It consumed her, and he or she needed to quit. Now she’s a meditation teacher.
Did you are attempting to interview Robert Springsteen?
Oh yeah, but he declined.
Was it difficult to search out the entire archival footage you used throughout the series?
When the project got here to me, I asked what the (archival) footage they’d, and so that they sent me all this footage. It was like a David Lynch movie as a documentary. It was like “Twin Peaks.” There was a sort of eeriness to it. I could hear the soundtrack in my head, and I had this whole idea of how I might make the series. Then I met the families, and it was like, “Oh. I can’t make it like that. I can still employ a few of it, but it could actually’t be that stylized.” It could have been a disservice to make it overly stylized.
You used some crime scene photos, but not any that showed the victims. Why?
Those photos are so bad. My editorial team was like, “You possibly can never have a look at them.” They were all so traumatized by the photos. I’ve seen a few of them, but not all of them, because (the editorial team) said, “They are going to haunt you for the remainder of your life.” A24 paid for a few of (the film team’s) therapy since it is actually hard on the system in case you take it in, and it’s really hard to not take it in. It was hard to live in that darkness for such a protracted time.
Would you say that living in that darkness was essentially the most difficult part of creating the series?
It was just really hard for us to make it since it was just so dark, but we thought that the precise technique to make the series was to have a look at that. Because everyone has darkness of their life, and everybody deals with trauma. This case is a reasonably extreme case of individuals coping with trauma, but I felt like there was something instructive about it. Each family handled the trauma in really alternative ways, and I discovered that fascinating.