Daily Mail - Daily Mail Weekend Magazine
YOU be the judge
Making A Murderer, a chilling tale of a potential miscarriage of justice, lets viewers decide whether this man is guilty.
Truth is stranger than fiction... and true crime is more fascinating than any police drama. Fans of groundbreaking Netflix documentary Making A Murderer – the account of a killing in the US and the subsequent possible miscarriage of justice – have a new ten-part series to relish. The film-makers, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, have been investigating this crime since 2005. Series two follows what happened after the first aired, and it’s a legal labyrinth...
WHO WAS MURDERED?
Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer, drove to a scrapyard in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, on 31 October, 2005. She was meeting Steven Avery, then 43, to photograph a van. Avery says she stayed a few minutes and left. But she wasn’t seen alive again, and five days later police found her car on the 40-acre site. Her charred remains were found in a waste-burning pit at the yard. Her car key was in Avery’s bedroom and his blood was in her car, so Avery was soon arrested.
THAT SOUNDS SIMPLE...
There are suspicions Avery was framed. He’d already spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. His lawyers filed a $36m compensation lawsuit, saying police had locked away evidence that could have exonerated him. Avery was a symbol of lazy justice, and Wisconsin was due to pass justice reforms known as the Avery Bill. It was deeply embarrassing for the police... and it looked like their insurance wouldn’t cover a payout, so Avery’s arrest was convenient.
WHAT WAS THE EARLIER CRIME?
Rape and attempted murder. Penny Beerntsen was attacked in a sickening ordeal while on a beach in 1985. Police immediately pulled in Avery: a petty criminal who’d served two years for burglary and been found guilty of animal cruelty for dousing a cat in petrol and throwing it on a bonfire. He was facing charges for intimidating a woman, the wife of a deputy sheriff, with a gun and running her car off the road.
SO HE COULD BE THE RAPIST...
The jury thought so: Avery got 32 years. His wife Lori, the mother of his four children, filed for divorce. In 1996 he applied for a retrial, but DNA evidence supported his conviction. In 2001 justice campaigners looked at the evidence, such as the 16 witnesses who gave him an alibi. More DNA tests revealed Avery’s innocence and he was freed.
WHY BLAME THE POLICE?
A man in jail for similar rapes confessed to the crime in 1995. He was a prime suspect at the time. But when Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Depart- ment was told this, they did nothing. The attorney general ordered an investigation that looked like a cover-up.
WHAT ABOUT THE 2005 CASE?
There is evidence against Avery in the murder of Teresa Halbach, but his lawyers, Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, think it was planted. A vial of Avery’s blood, taken in the 1985 investigation, had apparently been tampered with. The officer in charge of the police evidence archive, Lt James Lenk, had also taken the phone call in 1995 about the Beerntsen rape confession. Lenk found Teresa’s car key in Avery’s bedroom in
2005 – though five previous searches found nothing. On the day Teresa’s car was found,
Lenk had been at the site for hours... which he didn’t disclose. Teresa’s DNA was on a bullet fragment at the scrapyard – and guess what? Lenk was there when it turned up, when he shouldn’t have been. There’s no suggestion police hurt Teresa, but they didn’t look at other suspects. Were they pinning this on the man who could destroy them?
SO THE CASE WAS SHAKY?
Police were worried, then Avery’s nephew, 16-year-old Brendan Dassey, confessed they killed her. He found her naked and tied up in Avery’s bedroom, Avery told him to cut her throat before he shot her. They hid the corpse in her car, then Avery later cremated it.
THAT’S HORRIBLE. IS IT TRUE?
It got Dassey sentenced to life in pris-
IS THERE MORE EVIDENCE?
Not against Dassey, and he tried to take back his confession. Holes were torn in the evidence against Avery. Teresa’s car key had none of her DNA on it, but a lot of Avery’s – was it wiped clean before incriminating smears were added? Bizarrely, more of her bones were found in another pit: why would Avery move some but not all of the remains? And some of Teresa’s voicemails were wiped from her phone after her death. Avery’s lawyers argued this could have been done only by someone who had her passcode – not Avery or Dassey.
DID THE SERIES HELP?
It was an international sensation. A petition demanding a pardon gained so much attention that President Obama had to issue a statement: only a Wisconsin judge could release them. The Manitowoc police were bombarded with hate mail and protestors demonstrated widely.
WHAT’S IN SERIES TWO?
Meet Kathleen Zellner – America’s most successful specialist in overturning wrongful convictions. She has taken the Avery case. She tested the blood spatter analysis: Teresa’s blood was sprayed across the back of her car. Experiments show it was impossible for this pattern to be made by moving a corpse. More tests show Avery’s blood traces could’ve been planted, and droplets of his sweat found under the bonnet turn out to be saliva, which is odd. Police refused to countenance these claims, but as Zellner cynically comments, ‘You don’t want to muddy up a perfectly good conspiracy movie with what actually happened.’ The new series introduces other suspects.
WHAT DO THE CREATORS SAY?
Laura and Moira say it’s not their job to deliver a verdict. ‘We document people’s experiences,’ Laura says. ‘It’s about whether justice is served,’ adds Moira. It’s up to you to decide.
Making A Murderer is on Netflix now.