Editor’s Note: Listen to the full interview in the video player above from KXAN’s Midday newscast.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Thirty-four years later, the Austin Police Department’s breakthrough in the “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt!” cold case gave the victims’ families a sense of closure and a chance to reflect on those who helped them over the years.
Last Friday, police identified Robert Eugene Brashers as the suspect connected to the infamous Yogurt Shop Murder of four teenage girls in north Austin.
KXAN’s Will DuPree and Avery Travis spoke with Austin nonprofit Christi Center’s Executive Director, Jocelyn Chamra Barrera and Cathy Collins, a crime victim advocate for the organization Tuesday.
“It was good to hear that Sonora found so much comfort with our staff and our agency…” Barrera said. “It’s really important to continue having that support for people, especially in this time after losses like this.”
During APD’s press conference on Monday, Sonora Thomas, sister of Eliza Thomas, thanked the nonprofit for helping her family.
“Don and Suzan Cox from the Christi Center let my mom sleep on the couch when she was to scared to go home,” Sonora said. “The million kindnesses that have been extended to me and my family have gotten us to this moment.”
Barrera said the Coxs established the Christi Center after their daughter was killed by a drunk driver at the University of Texas campus in 1985.
Collins, who is the victim advocate at the support center, explained to KXAN about her personal ties to the families.
“I came to the Christi Center in 1990 and it was a time when there were a number of high profile cases going on in Austin… and then my parents and I joined the Christi Center,” said Collins. “We were referred [to] by APD.”
Collins recalled the yogurt shop murders happening later that year and said the families came to the center to receive help. And throughout the years of being there, Collins said that her and Maria Thomas, mother of Eliza Thomas, became very close.
“Sonora had become very close to me also because she was a teen. I had teens that were going through grief,” Collins said.
Collins’ brother was murdered in 1990 and she said that some of the detectives were the same ones on the yogurt shop murder case.
“I had an invested relationship going on in this case, and it was horrendous that I just felt like, as a crime victim, know what that was going to be like,” Collins recounted.
The Christi Center provides free, ongoing grief support to families of victims and anyone grieving, according to its website.
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