Who Killed |These Girls? by Beverly Lowry

Who Killed |These Girls? by Beverly Lowry

Release Date - October 11, 2016

Publisher Website - Penguin Random House 
Publisher Social Media - Twitter

Pages - 528 pages
My Rating - 3/5
**purchased**

Here is the Goodreads synopsis

On December 6, 1991, the naked, bound-and-gagged bodies of 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

Anyone who follows unsolved crimes has most likely heard about the murders that happened at the 'I Can't Believe It's Yogurt' shop. A shocking crime that changed the people of Austin, Texas. This book book focuses on what led to this horrific crime being unsolved.

The first thing that should be highlighted about this book is the care that was taken to give each of the victims a voice. Page space is spent giving the readers a chance to get to know who these young women were. We learn things about each of them and also see how much life they still had yet to live. The author hammers home the potential these girls never got to grow in to.

There are a lot of details within these pages. It is well researched and presented in an unbiased way. I appreciated the 'just the facts' approach. There are other elements sprinkled in like the obvious sympathy for the parents of the victims, frustration at some of the missteps made by police, and concern over the way the accused were treated. It is just balanced by fair and sourced information.

A majority of the book focuses on the young men who were convicted of the crime and eventually had their convictions overturned. There are many who feel these young men were wrongfully convicted and that the real murderers are still just there. There are, however, people who feel that they are guilty and that the convictions being overturned is the miscarriage of justice. It reads like all the information is being presented and it is not hard to see why the convictions were overturned. It is an all too familiar story and one especially not helped by the condition of the crime scene.

I would recommend this to anyone who knows very little about this case. Fair warning that the details of the crime are horrific. The boom does not glorify those details but does not shy away from presenting the facts either. It gives a thorough overview of all of the details including the court cases. It is a haunting case that you cannot help but desperately hope gets solved. The victims, and their families, deserve justice after all this time.