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‘Though what you see playing out in Making a Murderer was not unique to this story, these are things that happen every day in this country, there are things that are special about this case, and the fact there were people involved in the investigation that had a vested interest in the outcome of the trial is really questionable here in terms of their liability.’ – Moira Demos
Spoiler alert! If you haven’t seen Making a Murderer yet, best not read any further.
MAKING A MURDERER has been an absolute phenomenon – but when its directors first started filming the series, they had no idea it would would end up going the way it did.
The Netflix series documents 10 years in the life of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, only to end up accused of another, more serious crime just two years later.
By the end of the 10-part Netflix series Making a Murderer – which you no doubt binge-watched over two days during the Christmas holidays like the rest of us – Steven Avery is in jail, and so is his nephew Brendan Dassey.
You’re left with many questions after watching it:
Did he really murder young photographer Teresa Halbach and burn her body on his land? And did he get his nephew Brendan Dassey to help in the killing? Did Avery and Dassey get a fair trial? Were they framed? Why did some of what Manitowoc Sherriff’s Department did in relation to the case feel so, well, odd?
‘When we started this, there wasn’t an outlet for a series’
Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi are the two women behind the show. They first started filming when Steven Avery’s second trial began, and ended up moving to Manitowoc as the trial got underway.
When they began the project, there was no ground-breaking Netflix streaming service. ‘Binge-watching’, though it undoubtedly happened, did not have the cultural hold it has now. Streaming an hour-long documentary on the internet ate away at your dial-up connection.
In other words, the landscape was very, very different.
“When we started this, there really wasn’t an outlet for a series that we could see. And frankly when we started this we didn’t know it would be a series,” Moira Demos said in an interview with TheJournal.ie.
“We thought this would be a documentary feature, we thought we would compare Steven’s past experiences to his current experiences. He was supposed to go to trial within a few months, there was a sort of comforting structure to that.”
But as you know, in the middle of episode three there were major developments “that blew this case wide open”.
That was the moment they decided they were determined to tell the story “in the format the story needed to be told”.
“We were committed to doing that,” said Demos. “It was a struggle when there were no outlets that had the infrastructure to support a series, but what was important to us was to get this story out to the world. So we were going to finish it one way or another and deal with distribution after the fact.”
“We didn’t have funds – but we did have time”
The documentary was also self-financed. “We didn’t have fund, but what we did have was time, and that really allowed us to cover the story in depth and to do it as responsibly and thoroughly as possible,” said Ricciardi. They had over 1000 hours of footage.
Ricciardi described their series as “very much an exploration of the extent to which the [judicial] system had evolved from the time since Steven’s initial wrongful conviction in 1985″ to the second case.
They wanted to explore “to what extent the system would be reliable in 2005 than it had been the previous 20 years”.
What they found was that, despite some advances, there is still a “very long way to go”. “I think that even just looking at Brendan Dassey’s case illustrates how much room for improvement there is in the American justice system,” said Ricciardi.
She describes the pair as being “uniquely positioned”.
“We are able to, I think, provide a service to viewers in a sense [of] provid[ing] them with a type of storytelling they can’t find elsewhere. But the beauty of it is there is room for all types of storytelling.
The corporate media and daily news media has its place and documentarians, longer form storytelling, has its place.
“You don’t want jurors with pre-conceived notions”
For Irish viewers, the pre-trial court reporting shown on Making a Murderer is remarkable, in that it makes statements about Avery that would never be shown on Irish TV.
“My take on the pre-trial coverage was it had the potential to be incredibly prejudicial,” said Ricciardi. “The local market was saturated, there was daily coverage of Steven Avery’s case and the Halbach case.”
Ricciardi said she and Demos “value and respect the Constitution and freedom of the press” but believe the pre-trial reporting “needs to be responsible and it needs to factor in of course the extent to which pre-trial publicity can prejudice an accused’s right to a fair trial”.
She pointed out how the community had some history with Steven Avery, who was already a very high-profile man.
“I sat through jury selection in Steven’s case and it was really difficult for the parties involved to try and find anyone in that jury pool who didn’t know something about Steven Avery and the Halbach case,” added Ricciardi. “And I think that’s really troubling when an accused wants to find a jury of their peers in the county in which they live. Because you don’t want jurors coming to the trial with pre-conceived notions.”
What do his family think?
Somewhat remarkably – though perhaps understandingly, given his situation – one of the only people who hasn’t seen Making a Murderer is Steven Avery himself.
His mother and father have seen it, and Ricciardi reports “they were moved by it and they thought it was a fair portrayal of the family, what their experience was like”.
Avery did ask permission from his prison warden and social worker at the maximum security prison he’s in to watch the series, but they denied him the request.
Were the family surprised at the response from across the world to their story? ”I’m not sure, they didn’t say they were surprised,” said Demos. “I think they were touched and impressed by an outpouring of support because that is not something they felt through the last eight years.”
“I think they’re getting used to that and trying to figure out how to navigate that, but the main thing for them was ‘we can have a voice’, to have people hear from them directly.”
The family, said Ricciardi, had felt very embraced by the public for the two years following the overturning of Avery’s wrongful conviction.
But with the dawn of the second trial, they have “been ostracised, vilified and been hurt, essentially, by the public response and media coverage”.
Ricciardi and Demos were given incredible access to the Avery family, and it’s that which helps bring the documentary from a courtroom drama to a domestic one.
Seeing the sadness, hurt and confusion in his parents’ eyes – and the changing minds of other family members – brings another human level to the series.
“I think that’s one of the reasons they were open to having us enter their lives, essentially. We made it clear to them we were not there to judge them, we were there to listen and to give them a voice and I think they saw the value in that, we established a rapport with them and we built trust with them and wanted to treat their entire story as responsibly as possible,” said Demos.
Accusations of misinformation
One of the main figures in Making a Murderer is the soft-voiced prosecutor Ken Kratz, who at one critical point is seen relishing the announcement of Brendan Dassey’s detailed statement to investigators on Teresa Halbach’s murder.
He recently alleged that viewers of the series didn’t get to see important evidence shown to the jury. In an interview, Kratz stated that the series “really presents misinformation”, the New York Times reported.
The directors refute his claims.
“I’m not surprised he is coming out swinging now,” said Demos. “What is more disappointing, frankly, is, at least in the States, the corporate media is giving this man a platform.”
He is going on television and lodging accusations against us. Much of what he says, simply his facts are not true. It’s not about ‘do we include it, do we not include it’, they simply are not facts. So as far as whatever evidence he’s pointing to, we followed this case for two years. What he is talking about now are never pieces of evidence he hung his case on. These were circumstantial pieces, some of which didn’t even come into the trial, when they did come into the trial the prosecution would exclude them on a particular point. These were contested facts.
Both women feel that Kratz is trying to hijack the conversation about Avery’s conviction.
“[He is doing that] by focusing on evidence, by focusing on innocence or guilt, making that the national debate or the international debate,” said Demos.
“We really are only talking about three episodes, and it’s a 10-episode series and there’s a lots of stuff that Kratz and others don’t want people talking about from those other episodes. So we sort of have to look at people’s motivations here.”
Inside the courtroom
The courtroom and interview room footage is key in how Making a Murderer is able to grab viewers. We are pulled into the court, we get to hear the words as they were said, and get to see the reactions of those present. As we watch, the whole case – troubling as it is in points – unfolds before us.
For those who thought it might be difficult to get hold of such footage, it transpires that Ricciardi and Demos were very lucky that it was in Manitowoc where all of this occurred.
“We were pretty fortunate this playing out in Wisconsin, as Wisconsin has very advanced public records law,” said Ricciardi. “So we didn’t really find challenges in terms of acquiring footage, the challenges we faced were with respect to preserving our own footage.”
That challenge came from one Ken Kratz. They wrote to Kratz in 2006, inviting him to participate in the documentary while being mindful of the process. They never received a response.
“Instead, two months later he tried to subpoena our footage,” recalled Ricciardi.
“We had to face this new unexpected challenge of trying to preserve our own footage. We actually had to hire an attorney and essentially get back into litigation.”
Demos described Kratz as “very conveniently but not very wisely strategically recycling a losing argument he made in 2006 in connection with his subpoena”.
At that time he argued to Steven’s judge in the Halbach case that we and our company were an investigative arm of the defence and the judge actually ruled in our favour and said we were entitled to the same privilege as journalists, so we were protected by the first amendment and the State could not take our footage away from us or demand copies of our footage. He lost that argument then but for whatever reason he thinks it’s appropriate to reuse it now.
Future trials
What about the future? Avery now has new lawyers, and there is a push to get him a re-trial.
“We are prepared to follow the story developments,” said Demos.
“If either Stephen or Brendan got a new trial I think we would want to document it and document the process. But when you’re following real life you don’t know what is going to happen. You are prepared but you can’t really plan.”
Asked about the flaws in the judiciary which making the documentary highlighted for them, Demos said “that’s the question we want our viewers to be asking – it’s a complicated question and there are many avenues to take it.”
“One thing I would definitely say is pervasive is what appears to be a lack of accountability in our justice system,” she continued.
On a State level “things are just going along”, added Demos, outlining some stark facts in relation to Avery’s case:
We see that in the series, we see the Wisconsin attorney general issue a report that nobody did anything wrong in 1985. When you see evidence of what happened in 1985, that’s a terrifying fact, that the State’s top law enforcement issues that ruling.
We see that with the Department of Justice and how they handled things with Ken Kratz in episode 10. If there isn’t accountability, it’s not that surprising that things go a little bit off the rails and there’s room for perversion of the system at that point.
Added Ricciardi: “I think there were a range of problems that are illustrated in Stephen’s wrong conviction.”
She points to how the Penny Beersten case was handled, and how quickly Steven Avery was brought into it.
“It seems that there was an incredible rush to judgement when Penny Beernsten first gave her description of the assailant, to the extent it’s true that law enforcement official mentioned Steven Avery’s name to a victim eye witness,” said Ricciardi.
“That’s very troubling and that really set in motion actions that very quickly would lead to Steven Avery’s arrest, he was arrested the very same day Penny Beernsten was attacked.”
In Steven’s federal civil rights lawsuit, law enforcement were accused of failure to turn over potential exculpatory evidence. “That really begs the question of why prosecutors are actually seeking justice, and [if] they come across evidence that would tend to point away from the accused, why would they not voluntarily share that with the defence?” asked Ricciardi.
“To us, that gets to one of the underlying problems with the American criminal justice system,” she said. “As Dean Strang says, there’s a false sense of certitude in the key players in the system and just an indignance that they are getting it right.”
She and Demos argue that much of this pressure comes from the American public itself, with elected officials taking their cues from constituents. “If their constituents are allowing them to run on platforms that are tough on crime as opposed to the administration of justice, that is problematic,” said Ricciardi.
“So if we American people own that responsibility and signal to elected officials that we value justice over winning at all costs, I think that can ignite a change.”
Though it is unclear at this point whether Steven Avery will get a new trial, it is clear that this series has created a push to have his situation looked at.
With new lawyers, and an international conversation taking place around his and Brendan Dassey’s convictions, we can expect that Making a Murderer won’t be the last we’ll see of Steven Avery.
What do you think of the series? Tell us in the comments.
Making a Murderer is available to watch on Netflix now.
Whether they’re guilty or not, they didn’t get a fair trial.
To me everybody in hickville Manitowoc could be guoty of this one, I never seen a more shady amnd inbred town of people
To me everybody in hickville Manitowoc could be guilty of this one, I never seen a more shady amnd inbred town of people
The man is not guilty. It’s very clear the cops are as bent as an S hook. Lenk and colburn are disgusting examples of humanity.
You’re basing this on a one sided Netflix documentary putting the case for Steven Avery.
shackled to the bed hahaha not one atom of dna found in the trailer it was a fantasy made up after watching Tv news of the case the boy was clearly a few sandwiches short of a picnic
Not shown in the documentary is the fact that Avery bought some shackles and leg irons a couple of weeks before the murder, supposedly for some kinky sex with his girlfriend. The defense kept mentioning that Brendan had a low IQ and the reading level of a 4th grader (7 yr old). Yet he claimed in his own trial that he made the whole story up based on a 468 page Frank Patterson novel called “Kissed the Girls” Is that really believable? He was manipulated by his uncle Steven during the crime, whom he was also sexually abusing and molesting along with a female cousin. Avery and Dassey burned the body and effects, Dassey had bleach on his jeans handed in my his mother. They had 3 days to clean, how much time is needed? Avery strangled Haibach on the bed, how much blood comes from a stab wound and slit throat? How come the Defense DID NOT call a blood spatter expert witness? The shooting was done in the garage..which Dassey testified that they just happened to be cleaning on Oct31..
was it also not possible that a tarp was used on the bed, she was still partially clothed according to Dassey, her clothes could have soaked a lot, She was shot by Avery’s gun at or in the garage. It would have been up to the defense to prove how much blood or DNA “should be present” if it was all that inconsistent.. .body, clothes and effects were all burned, a metal stud or rivet from her jeans was found in the pit with the cremains, tie wire was intertwined with bone fragments in the pit, they used tires to start the fire..consistent with Brendan Dassey’s story , her mobile phone and PDA discovered in a burn barrel also
Can you explain how there was deer blood found in the garage where she was meant to have been shot? If he’d cleaned everywhere to the point where her blood traces cudnt be found, deer blood wouldn’t be traceable. The most accomplished experienced serial killer couldn’t clean any area( with so much trash in it) without leaving some trace, why is her blood or dna not anywhere?? His dna & an unknown dna were found on the shackles. Low IQ brain is well capable of reading a book and more capable of carrying out a story they read in innocence than somebody of higher IQ?! That’s only a fraction of the inconsistencies of the entire trial. Maybe read up on it a bit more!
Adele look at the pictures online of the garage. It’s cluttered with stuff, tools, compressors, junk . no one is claiming that the entire garage was scrubbed clean. According to Brendan Dassey’s version of events the RAV4 was backed into the garage when they loaded the body into the trunk. he also pointed out where blood spilled on the floor but said they had cleaned it up. Other parts of the garage need not have been cleaned to cover their tracks. The deer blood and actual bullet fragment with Teresa’s DNA on it were discovered later. If you look at how cluttered the garage is you will understand why it took so long to process it as a crime scene
The other point is that the Defense never called for an Expert Witness on blood spatter, In Brendan Dassey’s interview the detectives weren’t able to pin Brendan down on exactly where all the shots were fired near or in the garage. Most Auto garages in the States have a protective floor sealant to protect a floor from oil seeping into the concrete. So not surprising they couldn’t find seepage of blood when the forensic dug into the floor. Brendan Dassey said were was some blood on the floor but they had cleaned it.
Eh I’m sorry but I specifically remember the defence having a blood splatter analyst on the stand. I remember because I turned to my girlfriend and made a bad joke about Dexter. You say you lived in Milwaukee and remember the case, it sounds like you made up your mind then like the rest of the 1-sided media gobbling public at the time.
According to Brendan Dassey?! Are you joking?! The same guy was looking to getting back to class after being coerced into saying what the police wanted him to say, you cannot deny that they put words into his mouth, it’s on video. He said what they wanted him to say so he could go back to school, they want somebody, anybody to confess, they don’t want the truth?!! A ‘confession’ from a lad that bases his trust in his lawyer because his lawyer also liked cats?!! Come on…. There was 1000 hours of footage, it had to be reduced to 10 hours, not every single thing could be shown, but what I did see cannot be a fair trial. The reason the halbachs aren’t in it is because they chose not to. Why don’t you visit Steven Avery?
Surely the biggest shock of all was ken kratz sex texting………a woman
Very interesting documentry. Personally I think they’re innocent,crazy world we live in.this type of corruption happens all around the world..
Guilty or innocent, there was not enough to convict and a tonne of reasonable doubt. His rights were walked all over
I think he is a stupid but honorable man. If guilty he def would have downed some hemlock by now.
Sorry.
He has a car crusher, presumably if he’s smart enough to know to burn the body then her car and the cars license plates would also be high on the dispose of list. Him being the last person to see her alive he would of had to know that they’d come for him , a tragedy none the less, must be awful for the family to have to deal with the uproar over her convicted killers conviction . But unless someone comes forward and admits that they did it, then the only way he’s getting out is on some legal technicality
Only 7/10 the way through. Don’t see why he would have shot her in his garage and put her into his jeep to burn her outside the same garage. I’d say bobby dassy did it….
10/10 he did it
For me one of the most shocking facts to be uncovered is was when they played the recording of the trooper checking the licence plate a day or so before the vehicle was found on Avery’s property.
For me this feeling occurred throughout the show, but I’m not surprised as power corrupts but absolute power corrupts absolutely, in the US the police have absolute power
James, the recording is from the afternoon of Nov3, the day Teresa Haibach was declared as a missing person. The State Police issue description, license plate, make of car to all the county Police departments. Halbach was already missing. How do you know that he wasnt calling his dispatch in Manitowoc to confirm license plate and make of car to make sure he heard on police radio. The car was discovered Nov5 at the Avery’s Salvage Yard..No law enforcement DNA or forensic were discovered on either the Rav$ nor the Key. It was dramatic stuff for a Netflix documentary but didn’t stand up in court
None of her DNA or any of the evidence was found by somebody that didn’t have a conflict of interest….
Calumet County Police department took the forensics not Manitowoc. Unless you want to say that the entire State’s Police departments, forensic department, FBI, (and the supposed killer who killed and burned the body) were all acting in cahoots and therefor had a conflict of interest. It would of had to have been the frame up of frames..no way thats too far fetched
@stephenosullivan i think youre Ken Kratz in disguise
Thanks Bill, No I have lived in Milwaukee for 17 years and remember the murder, it’s background and the trial when it happened.
I heard from a local that Bobby Dassy was involved if not the killer
Assel, mere conjecture.. probably based on the fact that in 2009 2 years after his conviction Steven Avery filed a motion with the court claiming that Steve Tadych, Bobby Dassey and his own brother Chuck Avery were the killers’ This is conveniently not mentioned in the documentary. because it interferes with the documentary makers story that Avery is convinced that the Police were the ones that framed him.
The ex bf of Theresa looked mighty suspicious too I must say as did Bobby during the search and trial
“I’m just going to hide this key off her truck in the most discrete location imaginable. On the floor of my bedroom should do it” didn’t happen. Cops are bent.
uh, can’t it be both? can’t they be the murderers AND the cops framed steven?
Take a drink every time Steven says “yeah”
You could also say Take a drink every time thejournal.ie posts a story about Making a Murderer
Nah it would only be like 3 drinks
I wouldn’t drink EDTA
Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey are completely innocent of Teresa Halbachs murder and were so obviously set up by bent cops,. The same cops who set him up for the rape which he was cleared of. Averys sealed blood vile was tampered with and the cops cleaned Teresa’s car keys and then put his blood on them and on the Inside of her car. No fingerprints or blood or any other evidence were found! The keys did not even have Teresas fingerprints on them. I hope that Steven and Brendan are released from prison and that the bent cops are jailed for as long as Stephen has spent there. American justice! Shameful! The person who killed Teresa Halbach is still walking free and the bent cops probably know who it is.
There is no evidence that blood was removed from the purple top vial. There was pinhole from when the sample was filled in first place and blood drawn from it to conduct test. Tests by FBS proved there was difference between blood in the vial and blood stains in RAV4
As far as the key is concerned how do you know that Avery did not wipe it clean himself and then inadvertently put sweat DNA on it when he was hiding it in his room?
He and Brendan Dassey had nearly 3 days to scrub the place clean before Cop arrived to search, Brendan said he and Steven had been cleaning the garage and his jean were covered in bleach
Not one shred of evidence or proof to claim that the cops are “bent”
It was a one sided documentary making the case for Steven Avery but none of the innuendo and insinuations stand up..
Why would he ‘stash’ the car behind three or four branches when he could’ve crushed it? Why would he put her body in the car when he wasn’t going to drive her anywhere? As for the pinhole in the sample bottle – labs don’t take blood from a sample bottle through a pinhole. That’s ridiculous! And newly created blood tests have to go through procedures to ensure these tests actually work. You can’t simply make a new test and present the results as evidence. The tests themselves have to be independently tested before they can be used. I can’t believe that Avery would be capable of a professional murder scene clean up job.
BloodyNine, He and Dassey had over 3 days to clean up, Brendan Dassey’s jeans had bleach on them his mother gave them to the Police. Dash in the interview stated that he helped Avery load the body into the back of the RAV4 in the garage. Halbach’s blood stains in the trunk were consistent with being smeared by hair this was testified by an expert witness (not shown in Documentary like lots of other stuff) Dassey told detectives that they were going to drive the body in the RAV4 to a nearby pond to dump the body but decided against it because the level in the pond was too low, They burned the body, clothes and effects in the fire pit. The bone fragments were found intertwined with charred thread wire from tires that Dassey said were used to light and keep the fire going.
The RAV4 was hidden by them in the yard, remember its a 40acre site, he removed the plates and put them in another junked car and he removed the battery cable from under the hood a where sweat DNA was discovered all consistent with the detailed description Brendan Dassey gave to detectives during the interview. He hid the RAV4 with branches and an old car hood, hew may have thought that was enough based on how big his yard and how many other cars there…if it was planted by the Police why would they have taken the plates off and if it was another killer, was he a forensic genius or something?
Waaaaaiiiiiittttt.
You’re from Milwaukee, Stephen? Your opinion isn’t based on the 10 hours…….Is it?
Avery did such a wonderful clean-up of evidence all over his trailer but didn’t bother cleaning up evidence in the car that he could have crushed. Instead, he left blood and DNA all over it. That’s remarkably inconsistent from Avery or from the police’s point of view, unbelievably convenient.
BloodyNine The Salvage yard is huge, 40 acres, thousands of cars there, thinking it wasn’t going to be found for a while he didn’t take care to clean it or crush it ,maybe he was going to do it later. he removed the plates and pulled the battery cable from under the hood..all this was remarkably consistent with the interview Dassey gave to police, loading the body in the back to take it to dump in the pond before deciding to burn it with all the effects. If it was planted by a different killer how did they get the key to the Police. How did the police get sweat DNA and skinny cells from Avery and plant it on the car hood or on the key..not very east to do and all too far fetched to be believable. The court of public opinion who watched a one sided documentary is not the same as a court of law that had to make a decision beyond “all reasonable” doubt not beyond “any” doubt
His sweat or touch DNA was on the key. If the police planted it wouldn’t it have been easier to put the supposed stolen sample blood on it instead? Is it not plausible that Avery himself cleaned it and then inadvertently touched it or dropped sweat on it when he wss hiding it
Aye that garage looked like it was scrubbed clean they also had 3 days to get rid of all evidence if they are clever enough to hide all trace of dna evidence in trailer and garage don’t you think they could also get rid of the bones and car come on now Stephen get a grip.
Just to clarify Stephen; you *genuinely* believe that Brendan had acceptable representation by an attorney and received a fair trial?
Brendan definitely incriminated himself, no question of that. His attorney should have been present when he was interviewed, he was read his Miranda rights and his mother gave permission for the interview. However the first Attorney was removed and he was afforded a different defense team well before the trial. The incriminating interview was allowed as evidence and thats what the Jury had to watch from start to finish and make up their own minds. If you want to ge an unbiased view the please read the interview transcript that only snippets of were shown on the Documentary. Be warned it is graphic and harrowing but you will get a clear picture..here is the link..
http://convolutedbrian.com.s3.amazonaws.com/dassey/01Mar2006/01Mar2006Transcript.pdf
3 days to clean up the mess of which no doubt would have been a very messy murder scene but he wasn’t clever enough to clean the car where the blood was very visible ha your having a laugh the man was set up by the corrupt prosecution team
Thanks for that link Stephen, I’ll read it tomorrow.
Mick. Tell us how much blood would be present? If she was partially clothed, a tarp was used and bedsheets and clothes were all burned..Do you know? Neither did the defence and Why didn’t the defense call an expert witness on blood spatter during the trial?
How do you know he wasn’t planning on crushing the car later and was busy cleaning the room and the part of the garage where they loaded and unloaded to body in the RAV4?
Another thing..why did Avery not testify at his own trial if during the documentary he was so adamant and vociferous about how innocent he was? He probably knew he would catch himself out in a court of law. I am sure his decision not to testify in his own case was taken into consideration by the jury.
Stephen, if you cut somebody’s throat an awful lot of blood comes out, much more than would be absorbed by clothes. If you shoot somebody it the head it would splatter small amounts of blood everywhere. To suggest that she could have her throat cut in the bedroom and shit in the garage without a shred of DNA is Ludacris
Touch DNA? Seriously do you even know what your talking about?
Ruairi …. “Touch DNA”
http://www.bodetech.com/forensic-solutions/dna-technologies/touch-dna/
Humans shed tens of thousands of skin cells each day, and these cells are transferred to every surface our skin contacts. When a crime is committed, if the perpetrator deposits a sufficient number of skin cells on an item at the scene, and that item is collected as possible evidence, touch DNA analysis may be able to link the perpetrator to the crime scene. Touch DNA has been successfully sampled from countless items including gun grips, steering wheels, eating utensils, and luggage handles, just to name a few.
Your either cracked or paid to post that bull sh€t!!!
Stu pid. I’m not paid to post.. If you have your mind made up already by a Netflix series then that’s fine.. But if you want to have a factual dialog about the case and events then please go ahead and let’s determine what/who is cracked or bullsh**
Ok then, FACT! You and I will never know whether or not he committed the crime, however, based on the trial he received which was an absolute joke. Eg Lt Renk blatantly lying about his whereabouts, evidence clearly planted such as the keys found clear as day on the floor which was only spotted on the 8th search. All the “evidence” found was collected by the department that was not meant to be even there! And so on and so on. As I said the trial alone was a farce whether he’s guilty or not. If u can’t see that your deluded!
If you actually read it, Brendan never volunteers any info that incriminates him. The detectives spoon feed him what they want him to hear. Also his mom never gave permission for him to be questioned alone.
Sounds like to me that you done it Stephen!
Big difference between innocent and guilty beyond reasonable doubt, this guy and his nephew were not proved to be either. Bent cops (definitely) only polluted the truth. Biased show towards avery. He called the girl out and specifically asked for her on the phone more than once. His defence lawyers appeared to be as good as money can buy. As far as I an see if those two couldn’t prove his innocence. He was guilty. But that still shouldn’t have seen them get a guilty verdict. Great show 10/10
He bleedin did it surely. They left out some key evidence, such as his dna from saliva found on the latch to her car bonnet. Plenty of corruption from the cops who planted evidence to secure a conviction but he did it alright.
You sir are tribing
Think he did it as well and thought they’d be too afraid to go after him
They found DNA under the hood. The prosecution made the unsubstantiated claim it was from salvia. The analysts say it could be from anything that had his DNA on it.
Teresa Halbach’s DNA on bullet, fired from Steven Avery’s gun. DNA evidence in car, blood stains and sweat on hood latch. DNA on key from his room, lots of circumstantial evidence and testimony too. They have the right guys in jail beyond reasonable doubt
His ex girlfriend said he was a very violent man who thought he was owed by women because of the false imprisonment for the rape
Actually the first wrongful conviction for raping Beernstein was probably bad karma for what he did before, anyone who douses a pet cat in gasoline and throws it on a bonfire deserves 18years
But Stephen the EDTA test likely flawed,bullet evidence was contaminated. Key was planted , dassy testimony was forced and all we are then left with is circumstancial,according the the film makers :)
Josephine. The DNA sample from the bullet itself was not flawed it had her DNA, the control sample or blank had the DNA of the lab technician, the actual sample was not contaminated with the lab tech’s DNA and had Teresa Haibach”s DNA. the bullet fragment was tiny and another test could not be done
The EDTA tests were carried out on the purple top sample in the Court clerk’s locker and the blood staines in the RAV4 The FBI tests on the purple top vial blood showed EDTA and the tests carried out on the 3 blood stains came out negative for EDTA.
The FBI guy ddn’t say in the film about any tests on the purple top vial
It was never confirmed that they conducted a positive test on the purple vial, an important test i would have thought really. There’s other people way more qualified to talk about this but from a logical standpoint there’s no reason this shouldn’t have been a blind test all the blood for the scene and the vial
@ Stephen O’Sullivan
“anyone who douses a pet cat in gasoline and throws it on a bonfire deserves 18years”
Apart from NOPE! in terms of the proposed conviction didn’t he just throw it across a fire rather than prep it for ignition?
Josephine the purple top vial was tested along with 3 blood samples from RAV4, it was crucial to the Defence’s case for it being a conspiracy to frame Avery, Did you notice at the end of the documentary that the former defense layers were pinning Avery’s hopes not on the conspiracy but on some other vague case based on Juror misconduct. 2 years after the conviction Avery filed a motion that his family, Scott Tadych, Chuck Avery, Bobby Dassey were the actual killers..he was already dropping the whole conspiracy argument. Simply put this Netflix series was a one sided case for Steven Avery
At the end the group of lawyers siad his only chance was that the science for testing for EDTa will improve enough for the tests to find the EDTA in the blood from the scene, the juror misconduct would never be the new evidence required for Avery to get a new trial
The point about the FBi tests is they were not blind tests
Josephine, Not everything was in the Documentary. The onus is on the defense to prove the conspiracy. Tests were conducted on the vial in addition to 3 of the RAV4 blood stains. EDTA was detected in the purple top and not detected in the stains. The defense called an expert witness who said that the threshold or sensitivity of detection of EDTA in the RAV4 stains may not have picked up lower levels of EDTA. Again the onus is on the defense to prove a conspiracy, and a sweat and touch DNA couldn’t be explained by the Defense
Actual interview transcript from Brendan Dassey All of this was not shown in the Documentary just snippets to make the viewer think that detectives were getting Brendan to make up stuff, The documentary did not mention that Brendan helped load the body in the RAV4 and that Brendan remembered Steven getting the phonecalls from Jodi Stachowski while they had Teresa shackled to the bed
http://convolutedbrian.com.s3.amazonaws.com/dassey/01Mar2006/01Mar2006Transcript.pdf
Here’s another case with rock solid evidence collecting that was later deemed wrong, too bad it was after this poor man was executed. Look at the facts of this story and tell me it doesn’t feel eerily similar to stevens. Theres also, the paradise lost trilogy, the thing blue line, the staircase, central park 5…etc docs that show police corruption and very similar to MaM
Really thought the brother and ex were guilty as. That was before i found out there was no resolution to it! I know it fuels the chat in the canteen with theories and conspiracies but FFS…
Fell for the same s*** with Serial.
“Oh listen to it it’s brilliant!!”.
Listened to it…
“So they still don’t know if he did it?”
“NO!! but there are 3 other podcasts too lis…”
“OH F*** OFF!!!”
Stephen O’Sullivan, are you or have you ever been employed by the Manitowoc County Sherriff’s Department…?!?
….Just curious!
No.. I”m from Dublin and have been living in Milwaukee for the last 17 years during which I followed at the time what happened while the Teresa Halbach murder case was going on. The Netflix production in my opinion is really one sided and doesn’t reflect the whole story, it’s riddled with unsupported accusations that are just left dramatically hanging out there with no actual evidence that in a court of law convinced the jury nor was it taken to any higher court by the defense lawyers. It was easy pickings for the documentary makers to pick a rural midwestern town and present a one sided case for Steven Avery and then for a mob of viewers to be totally convinced that that County must be corrupt. Don’t worry, The truth will come out.. and it is, as more of the dramatic innuendo in the documentary is being exposed.
But the music is so intense and tells you exactly when to pay attention! How could it be bad??
Police never carried out a proper & full investigation. Who killed her & HOW! So many unanswered questions! As for Brendan Dassey, disgraceful – interrogators must know in their hearts he didn’t do it. How can they sleep at night? As for Kachinsky I don’t know why no action was taken against him?
Great documentary defo innocent cops are corrupt and a word to the journal they are not cousins they are uncle and nephew
1 word…. GUILTY!
I just want to know if Brendan seen wrestle mania or not…
NETFLIX IS RUBBISH – ITS MOVIES ARE AULD HAT
STOP SHOUTING
Take a drink every time they post a poorly written story. I have done that. I am very drunk. I will give you one obvious correction….Dassey is his nephew.
We in Ireland know only to well how the police and state can frame people just look at the Maguire 7, Birmingham 6 and Guildford 4. Today we have two innocent men know as the Craigavon 2 in prison wrongly convicted of murder yet the majority of people in ~Ireland either dont know or dont care so will it take a documentary like making a murderer for people to tke notice of their plight?
I have never watch this documentary but I believe he is guilty and I would have to agree with Stephen…This is Hollywood for crying out loud…They want people talking about the documentary.They don’t care about this man’s life..They want money and fame.the people love a fairly tale and that’s all there creating here…don’t be easily fooled by this amazing story, I’m pretty sure there leaving out alot of other truths
This was a Netflix documentary ..It was a presentation as a case for Steven Avery. Viewers who are swayed by this one sided presentation are acting like a court of public opinion. Netflix was not interested in a search for the truth of what really happened to Teresa Halbach just to make the documentary as shocking as possible and they did that by insinuating and leaving as much unsupported conclusions as possible just hanging there with no actual evidence. The cases were not decided by a court of public opinion but by real courts of law and two separate juries who heard the actual evidence. To this day there is still not one piece of real admissible “evidence” to support a cover up or frame-up
Can you be pretty sure if you’ve never watched it??
Maj.. You definitely can’t be sure or informed about this case if all you base your opinion on is what you saw in that Netflix documentary.
That comment wasn’t intended for you Stephen, it was meant for noel- who made a statement about it even though he said he has never watched it.
Think that would be much the same as basing an opinion on just a netflix documentary!
I am not surprised by the behaviour of the police and the other agencies involved in this case.If you think this case is bad check out the documentary made several years ago about the Waco incident.It is stomach churning in the extreme.It is a sad fact to have to take on board but the fact of the matter is the law enforcement agencies are systemically corrupt,which is hardly surprising given the country involved. Guantanamo an example of the sheer crass hypocrisy of the american legal system.
Shud of just hung himself wen he said he wud waste of time watchin dem hillbillies .
Pity he ain’t edumacated like you .You be readin all books plenty.
Hahaha good man James. In knots.
Sekonda
Definetly innocent both of them definite corruption in police and prosecution no real evidence brilliant documentary
The police put it into the nephew head that she was shot.. but it you listen first she had her throat slit then she was suffocated.. The police had it in for steven from the last trial.. They all stick together.. yet there are murderers walking free.. #MaM #Freesteven
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