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Texas Matters: Yogurt Shop Murders Still Unsolved

The night of December 6th 1991 – Four girls – ages 17, 17, 15 and 13 were working and hanging out at a “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” store in Austin.

Eliza Thomas, Amy Ayers and sister Jennifer and Sarah Harbison were forced to strip, they were tied up, they were murdered – the shop was set on fire and the case is unsolved.

25 years after that night – it’s still a deep dark mystery.

“Who Killed These Girls? Cold Case: The Yogurt Shop Murders” explores in rich detail the kills and the flawed prosecutions of four suspects.

The author is crime writer Beverly Lowry.

From the author of Crossed Over, another masterful account of a horrible crime: the murder of four girls, countless other ruined lives, and the evolving complications of the justice system that frustrated the massive attempts--for twenty-five years now--to find and punish those who committed it.

The facts are brutally straightforward. On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound-and-gagged bodies of the four girls--each one shot in the head--were found in an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas. Grief, shock, and horror spread out from their families and friends to overtake the city itself. Though all branches of law enforcement were brought to bear, the investigation was often misdirected and after eight years only two men (then teenagers) were tried; moreover, their subsequent convictions were eventually overturned, and Austin PD detectives are still working on what is now a very cold case. Over the decades, the story has grown to include DNA technology, false confessions, and other developments facing crime and punishment in contemporary life. But this story belongs to the scores of people involved, and from them Lowry has fashioned a riveting saga that reads like a Russian novel, comprehensive and thoroughly engrossing.

David Martin Davies can be reached at dmdavies@tpr.org and on Twitter at @DavidMartinDavi