Steven Avery’s journey continues on Netflix

Directors discuss documentary about convicted killer and the strong reactions people had to first season

NEW YORK— The Making a Murderer filmmakers, Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, were in many ways in a race against the clock to make Part 2 of their documentary series, now available on Netflix.

“We were in post-production from Day 1,” said Demos. “We were shooting and editing and shooting and editing and finding the story as we went.”

The first Making a Murderer recounted the story of Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, who were convicted in the 2005 slaying of Wisconsin photographer Teresa Halbach. Avery and Dassey are serving life sentences in the killing.

Much of what viewers will see in this new season is Steven Avery’s lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, go over the entire case with a fine tooth comb to piece together what may have happened to Halbach. She’s meticulous with details and has multiple experts test various theories.

Was it hard to cover the continuation of this story, when Making a Murderer became a part of the story?

Demos: The attention on the case didn’t really affect our process because for Part 2 in a lot of ways, it’s the inverse of Part 1. We’re in the courtroom for four solid episodes of part one and what’s going on in part two is these legal teams are fighting to just get into court. They would love to be in court to be arguing against the other side about the evidence, but that’s not a guarantee. So there’s a lot of behind the scenes, there’s a lot of preparation, there’s a lot of investigation and a lot of that is happening on private property or our filming with the family is on private property, so you know we weren’t so much in the spotlight. We weren’t out in public. Season 1 made such an impact that Ken Kratz (the former district attorney of Calumet County, Wis., who prosecuted Avery and Dassey) and others received death threats. What do you say to that?

Ricciardi: It’s obviously disappointing to hear negative or threatening or potentially violent reactions or responses that people had … Obviously we have no control over how people respond. To the extent that we hoped viewers would be engaged and perhaps have a passionate response, we were hoping that that response would be good. So there are lots of people who now recognize that there are flaws in the system. There’s room for improvement, so it would be nice if we focused on potential reforms or just keeping the dialogue going.

Some critics say that your narrative is one-sided and biased. What do you say to that?

Demos: Our point of view isn’t in the series. We have a collection of subjects and characters with all different points of view … It’s Steven Avery’s journey that we’re on. We’re documenting the subjective experience of Steven.