Margaret Brown spent more than three years making a documentary about the brutal murders of four teenage girls — a case that haunted Austin for 34 years before a shocking twist upended what everyone thought they knew. The girls were killed at a yogurt shop in December 1991, and the building was set on fire behind them. When The Yogurt Shop Murders aired on HBO last August, all four episodes ended where the case had always been, without an answer.
A month later, there was one. Austin police announced that Robert Eugene Brashers, a serial killer who died in 1999, had committed the murders — a name that had never surfaced in the case or in the series. The girls he killed were Amy Ayers, 13; Eliza Thomas, 17; and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison, 17 and 15. Brown flew back to Austin and was shooting a fifth episode within two days.
The victims’ families, three days into learning the four exonerated men had lost decades of their lives to a case built on nothing, told her on camera that they didn’t have room to feel for them yet. Viewers noticed. Some of them were not kind about it.
“I had a very different reaction with the families when it was happening than I do now,” Brown says. “At the time it was happening, I was like, ‘Wait, what? You don’t have compassion for them?'”
Then there’s Paul Johnson. He was one of the investigators on the case, and four teenagers — Robert Springsteen, Michael Scott, Maurice Pierce, and Forrest Welborn — spent decades under suspicion for it. Springsteen and Scott were convicted on coerced, false confessions, one sentenced to death and the other to life, before both convictions were overturned in 2009 and the charges dropped. Pierce spent three years in jail before prosecutors dismissed his case. Welborn was never indicted at all. In February, a Travis County judge declared all four men innocent, and in May, Austin agreed to pay them $35 million. Pierce wasn’t there for any of it — he was killed by a police officer in 2010.
Johnson still won’t say they had nothing to do with it. He argues in the fifth episode that Brashers being the killer doesn’t prove the four weren’t there. Three days after the announcement, he called Brown asking to sit for another interview — because he thought Dan Jackson, the cold case detective who cracked it, had it wrong.
That fifth episode, “The End of Wondering,” aired in May. The series is now Emmy-nominated for Best Documentary or Nonfiction Series, where Brown is among the nominated producers, and Justin Zweifach shares a nomination with Christopher LaMarca for Best Cinematography for a Nonfiction Program, submitted on the finale. The two spoke to Gold Derby about all of it.
Gold Derby: The families are candid in the final episode that they don’t have room to feel for the wrongly accused men yet. What was your reaction to those interviews as they were happening?
Margaret Brown: That’s a really good question, because I had a very different reaction with the families when it was happening than I do now. At the time it was happening, I was like, “Wait, what? You don’t have compassion for them?” But now I think back on how much shock they were in, and how the families thought these boys did it for years because they trusted the police. John Jones never believed it was those boys, but so many cops came after until Dan and just hammered it home.
Sonora Thomas (the surviving younger sister of Eliza Thomas) said something to me in the car three days after they all found out. I felt her profound discomfort in the car — she’s a good friend of mine at this point. And I just felt guilty that we were interviewing them then. I was like, “Is it bad that I’m interviewing you right now?” And she’s a trauma therapist, and she said, “Yes.” She said, “When something like this happens, you should give people a year for friends to bring them casseroles and for them to really absorb this.”
So we’re asking these people who trust me, who’ve been on this journey with me. They saw the effect the series had, so they’re going to want to talk to me. And this is when I’m showing up. I’m showing up three days later and a month later. So I think they probably felt pressure to talk to me. And then they say what’s true, because they trust me, which is that I don’t have room for that yet. And then people watch it on TV and judge them. I think it’s pretty unfair. If we interviewed them in a year, I know these people, I don’t think they would say that. And I feel kind of bad that I put them in that position.
On the other hand, it’s truthful. What Shawn Ayers says is, “I don’t have space for that yet.” He says yet. He knows it’s coming. And Sonora watched it, and she said to me, “I felt so relieved when they said that they didn’t have room for it yet, because I thought I was a monster for feeling that way.” I just think it’s human nature. Their family members were murdered by a serial killer. The first thing they’re going to think of is their loved one they lost.
I do think it’s sad that they don’t have room for the boys yet. Barbara Ayres-Wilson says, “That’s cold, isn’t it?” She knows. But they trust me. They trust Justin. We’ve been in the room with them for almost four years at that point. I think it’s amazing that they didn’t lie and that they actually said what was on their mind. I think that’s the space we should hold. I recognize it’s probably hard for people to do that, because they’re like, “Whoa, that’s dark.” But put yourself in someone else’s shoes before you say anything. I feel that way really strongly.
And Paul Johnson, who still won’t say those men had nothing to do with it?
Brown: My best friend works a lot in the true crime space, and she says it’s really common for people who are so dug into something like that to not be able to let go. The Innocence Project lawyer also talks about that in the episode. Because if he lets go of that, his whole life is gone. His career is based on this and some other cases he solved.
He called us three days later to talk to us about it. He was like, “I think that Dan has it wrong.” He wanted to do another interview. I wasn’t pulling his arm. He was on the fence about it, but I think he wanted his viewpoint to be heard. I think he believes it.
How did you get the wrongly accused men to sit down for this episode after they’d said no for the first four?
Brown: This all happened so fast. We made the series over a span of three years and you have time to develop relationships with people. We had tried to get them for the first episodes and they didn’t want to talk. Robert Springsteen didn’t even come. I just think he’s so traumatized by this that I don’t think me having a few months to convince him is going to work.
I think with Forrest, honestly, because the Innocence Project got involved and they had seen that a certain kind of filmmaking sometimes helps, they were able to convince the people they were representing. Also, we had friends in common who were able to vouch for me. It wasn’t easy. It took a long time with Forrest. That interview wasn’t like we dropped in. We went to his bar, we hung out, we chatted with his mother, who was so wonderful. And he was so closed off. He’s so untrusting.
Justin Zweifach: It’s a sensitive thing. His life was completely upended by what happened, and he’ll never get those years back. And everyone has tried to exploit that, and cops stop him, arrest him — just his whole life.
Brown: And he’s the one who was affected by it the least. He was only in jail for four months, and that’s what happens. Imagine the other two, because Maurice was killed by a cop.
Justin, when you went back for this episode, did you want it to look like the rest of the series?
Zweifach: We had three days to decide what we were going to do because it was happening so fast. It became very instinctual as to what direction we wanted to go. A lot of the series we used 4:3 framing for the interviews and these colored lights that were supposed to externalize the participant’s emotion in this somewhat garish way. And for this, we decided let’s just strip it all away. Let’s get rid of the artifice, or any artifice that we had constructed, and just find out what’s left.
There was a mixture between that and the necessity of just keeping up with the moment. We weren’t like, oh, we’re going to shoot this or we’re going to shoot that. Here’s a press conference — go and fly and see what happens, and see who wants to talk, and see who feels ready to talk, see who doesn’t. So we wanted to be nimble in a practical sense, but also aesthetically just curious. When the truth unfolds, how do we reflect that? Our instinct was to simplify. The risk was, is this going to rhyme with the rest of the series or is it going to feel too far away from it?
Brown: We’ve worked together so much. There were a few things we tried with that mini Steadicam thing where we were like, oh no, we tried it and it felt wrong, and we quickly pivoted. There’s this thing where you don’t know, you don’t know, you don’t know, and we’re sort of in the past — and then we had to pivot to this is the present, present, present. This is unfolding in front of us really fast and there’s so many emotions, and how do we honor that visually?
Zweifach: Available light and no colored lighting and 16:9 framing instead of 4:3 for interviews, and less crew. In some ways it was like the universe was presenting this wild question, which is, what does the truth mean? In the rest of the series, there was a lot of work to figure out how do we look at this thing that’s unsolved, this unanswerable thing.
Brown: How does memory work, and how do you deal with trauma?
Zweifach: And so we sort of just wanted to let it tell itself. Obviously there’s so much work that goes into constructing a final piece, but from a photography perspective, just see what happens.
Is there a shot or a moment from that episode you’re most proud of?
Zweifach: This is going to sound really funny because it’s not the most visually stunning. After the initial press conference in which they announced the findings, we met up with John Jones and went to the memorial site at the site of the murder. And Sonora showed up, and we hadn’t planned that at all. And we were not using the right tools for that kind of moment. We were on a wider lens than I might’ve been on, and we happened to be using the gimbal in the car. Sonora wasn’t mic’d. It was the first time they had seen each other and they were meeting at the site.
So it was this profoundly intimate moment, which we were totally unprepared for and just not set up for. And there was no time to be like, “Oh, can you guys give us a sec?” The real thing was happening. I’m really proud of the way we captured that moment, because to get good sound in those moments and good image, and not get in between what’s really happening and allow the moment to play out — that’s really challenging. Margaret’s worked with the same sound person, another Justin, for 20 years now, and him and I have learned each other very well. It’s a profoundly simple but real and important moment that we just quietly got despite being totally unprepared for.
Brown: Everyone thinks we scripted that moment, but no, it just happened. And it was also crazy because all these people were coming up to the site and we had to figure out how to film that too. And people were coming up to me sobbing. Some of that isn’t in there. It just sort of looks like it happened. It’s sort of invisible.
You’d finished the story and then it got solved. How much did the resolution change how you feel about the whole thing?
Zweifach: This was a really hard series to make. It obviously doesn’t compare remotely to what anyone in it has gone through, but to be that close to this for three years, it was hard. Everyone who has touched this has been profoundly affected. I didn’t feel it right away with the information, but having completed it, there is for me a certain sense of healing.
Releases are kind of funny, at least as a cinematographer, because you know it’s out there but you’re not directly in contact with it. So it’s like you’ve come really close to this thing and then let it go into the world and then you’re processing it. It was something I had to move through for a while, and I was kind of like, okay, I’m moving forward, ready to move. And then it was like — and it’s solved. And I was like, “Oh God, we’re going back in. I don’t know if I can do that.” But looking back on the experience as a whole, there was something healing about getting to make the fifth episode and just seeing a resolution to some questions.
Brown: When I got the news, I was kind of mad. I felt like I had an obligation to the families to do it. I remember Sonora being like, “Well, you’re coming back.” And I was like, “Yeah, I am.” We had to convince HBO. They thought it was going to be a coda, and then it’s an hour and a half. But I knew how much story was there, because I knew I would want to talk to the boys who were accused. I knew I’d want to know how Dan solved it, because it was so out of the box.
Justin and I made this film called Descendant, and in it there’s a whole community that thinks there was this ship that brought them from Africa to the United States — the only slave ship that’s ever been discovered off the coast of America. And they found the ship while we were making the film. This community went from saying it doesn’t matter that you don’t know, to the whole film being about what happens when you know. And then this happened again, and we were in the same position. So I was really curious about how the families would feel, because Justin and I had gone through the same thing documenting this. There is something healing that happens when you know. For those boys, the world knowing that they’re innocent is a big deal.
Justin, this is your first Emmy nomination. How did you find out?
Zweifach: I was really hoping the series would get nominated. If I’m totally honest, I was so surprised to receive my own nomination. I found out on our group thread when they all congratulated me, and I thought they were messing with me. And Mike, our editor, sent a screenshot and I was like, “Oh my God.” And then, “Gotcha, it’s ChatGPT.” And so I really was like, “Oh, you guys are so mean.” And then it wasn’t. It’s really cool to be recognized.
Margaret, your first was in 2015 for The Great Invisible. Does this one feel different?
Brown: That was a juried award that felt like sort of a beginner filmmaker award or something. And this feels like, “Oh, I’ve arrived. I’m actually real.”
You’ve worked together a long time now. What keeps you coming back to the same group?
Zweifach: Eight years. The answer to that question is very long, but Margaret’s family to me, and there’s a tremendous amount of trust as a human, not just as a talent, which she explodes with. When you make these things, you’re baring a piece of yourself, and for me to have Margaret at the helm, there’s a safety there. But also, we really like to explore the unknown together. We go into things not knowing what we’re doing, but having instincts about where it is. And then we just really like to explore it together, react and be present and listen and just build things that way.
Brown: And also danger, maybe. Not physical danger, but this might not work. And I trust Justin with this might not work. It feels like I can be in the space of the unknown with him, because funders want you to know and everyone wants you to know in advance. But it’s not going to be good if you know in advance. So we can create this world, and it’s a bigger world — it’s with our producers and editors, and Justin Hennard, the sound person who’s a huge part of our crew. It’s such a gift to my life.
When I work with Justin, I trust him so much to know what I like and to get it better than I could ever get it. I came up shooting, so with other people I’m a bit of a hoverer. We talk so much in advance about the emotional. Less about what is the frame, but what are the emotional stakes? He’s not someone who just comes in and shoots. We craft the world together, and it’s so much fun. This was a really hard one because it’s so dark, but the crafting of it is always so much fun, even in the darkness.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Yogurt Shop Murders is streaming on HBO Max.
