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Arts Intel Report

The Yogurt Shop Murders

A still from The Yogurt Shop Murders on HBO Max.

Streaming on HBO

On the night of December 6, 1991, in Austin, Texas, four teenage girls were murdered in a yogurt shop after closing up for the day. The person (or persons) who committed the crime had still not been caught when HBO released The Yogurt Shop Murder last August, a four-part documentary that centers on the grief of the victims’ families. “We don’t hear those stories because those people are so traumatized,” explains Barbara Ayres-Wilson, the mother of the two sisters who were killed. The documentary examines the history of the cold case: a defendant put on death row on the basis of a false confession, the attempted murder of a police officer by one of the original defendants, and the relapse of the case into mystery. Since The Yogurt Shop Murders came out, renewed testing of DNA samples and a bullet casing led to the identification of the killer, announced on September 26, 2025. It was Robert Eugene Brashers, a serial rapist and murderer who committed suicide in 1999. —Jimmy Lux Fox

Photo: Courtesy of HBO