"Making a Murderer" on Netflix

Question: Where was Teresa's DNA on her key?
Answer: Well, DNA doesn't always show up the way people think it does and the key was most likely a spare, meaning it probably wasn't handled a lot. Plus Avery might have wiped the key clean at some point. Furthermore, if the police would go as far as "planting" DNA on a bullet then why wouldn't they put it on the key as well?
Response: Nevertheless, the police didn't find it after 7 searches!
Answer: No, it was 7 entries, some of those entries were to retrieve one item.
Response: I don't know. The whole thing seems odd, doesn't it?
Answer: Sure. So let's just assume without any physical evidence that Avery was framed.

 

You are just assuming he's guilty. You still haven't explained where all the blood splatter is from the brutal murder. No forensic evidence. There would be blood everywhere.
And again, why would Avery load the body into her car,when he "burned her" about 50 feet away from the "murder scene". There's no need to load her up in the vehicle at all.


Spare key or not, if she owned it and handled it, it's going to have her DNA on it. Avery handles it once and it's got his DNA, but Theresa owned the key and none of her DNA? That key wasn't there before. You're telling me it fell out the back of that bookcase (which has a back to it) , bounced on the floor, and landed under a pair of slippers?

How does a bullet have someone's DNA, but no blood? That's an honest question that I'm curious about. What's the DNA if not her blood? Are they saying she handled that bullet at some point? If you are shot with a bullet, and it passes through your body, I'm pretty damn sure there's gonna be blood on it.
Lenk is a crooked cop in my opinion. Lots of unexplained issues linked to him. What about the 4+ hour discrepancy on when he arrived the day the car was found. He lied about it under oath.


The bottom line is, there is reasonable doubt.
With reasonable doubt, there should have been no conviction.

 

I'm supporting the verdict based on the sheer abundance of evidence that's currently available. Avery is actually the one person who we can say is "guilty" without looking like hypocrites because he was deemed guilty by a jury of his peers.

To your other point, based on what I've read from someone who did more research and knows more about the case than myself, the gun used to kill Teresa was a low-powered .22 rifle. If you're picturing some dramatic explosion, think again. If Teresa is on the ground and Avery shoots her at a downward angle, the blood would likewise go toward the ground, where there was evidence of a clean-up (as mentioned previously).

I think the better question is why would anyone try to discredit a murder by supposing what the killer should have done? We weren't there. It's ridiculous to assume innocence because the evidence doesn't align with some version of events that exists solely in your head, or even Ken Kratz's head for that matter (it was not his job to prove that things went down exactly as he said--just that Avery killed her). In other words, who cares why he would load her in the car when we already know for a fact that she was loaded in the car? Maybe Avery put her there so he could focus on cleaning the blood without more blood getting on the concrete. Maybe parts of Dassey's confession are true and they drove around first before deciding to burn her in the pit (IIRC he said something of that nature). You're basically playing defense attorney and trying to create misdirection and you aren't even aware of it. The evidence shows that she was in the back of the car. The notion that such a move seems "lazy" or inconsistent is not an argument--it's a tactic that a defense attorney would use to confuse a feeble-minded juror.

Is it really hard to swallow the notion that Avery might have cleaned the key? Or that just because Teresa handled it that doesn't automatically mean her DNA ended up on it? If she didn't shed skin cells, or bleed, or sweat on the key it might not have DNA on it (based on what I know about DNA).

You'd have to point me to where they say they found it under a slipper, and by "point" I mean to a source outside the documentary (the trial transcript should have it). Regardless, it's really not that hard to believe that Avery hid a key in the back compartment of a drawer and the key came loose when the drawer was shaken. It's only hard to believe once you're convinced that the cops planted it.

If you're genuinely interested I can look into it. Based on what I remember they were saying the bullet fragment passed through part of her outer skull, meaning it hit bone but didn't go deep or something like that. Not sure.

What about it? This was a huge investigation involving tons of man hours. This kind of thing probably happens all the time. You watched a documentary that for a fact cut and paste certain parts of the trial out to create an idea in your head and so now everything looks downright suspicious regardless of whether it's normal. I think the problem is that the documentary made it simply too easy for us (trust me I was in the same boat when I watched it) to picture "evil" Officer Lenk sneaking around planting evidence and now that the impression has been made there's this nagging feeling that he was up to no good regardless of how many arrows point directly toward Avery.

Ultimately, however, your opinion is the problem because you've deemed Lenk "guilty" without due process. That's exactly why this documentary did as much harm as it did good and turned its viewers into hypocrites. You should be looking for facts, not passing judgment based on what the movie told you or even on coincidences. Meanwhile, you refuse to hold the documentary itself accountable for fudging evidence and blatantly omitting counterpoints to nearly every single one of the allegations raised. And yet that doesn't bother you. Psychics and conspiracy theories work the same way--highlighting specific things to misdirect us from other things. Instead of asking yourself why Lenk was so shady, why not ask yourself why the documentary had to basically re-edit the entire case just to get its point across? Why do we have to "assume" Lenk was crooked when no hard evidence has emerged proving it? Maybe as a "crime scene guy" it's really not that big a coincidence that Lenk was around for the a lot of the discovery.

Actually, the bottom line is that the defense had a burden of proof once they introduced the framing angle and they failed to provide it. Without proving that Avery was framed there's so much evidence against him it's laughably obvious he did it. If they ever do find actual evidence that he was framed that would naturally change things. Until then, logic should be your guide, not intuition or speculation. There is no doubt the guy did it until it can be proven he was set up.

Again, ask yourself one question: did the police kill Teresa? If the answer is yes, then ask yourself how they planned her murder. Were they watching Avery's property and listening to his phone calls so that they found the perfect series of events where he already looked suspicious and they just swooped in and took out an innocent girl instead of just killing Avery? Or are you suggesting someone else killed Teresa and instead of looking for that person the police meticulously transferred bones into Avery's fire pit and all the other nonsense. How convenient for them that Avery was having a fire for hours the night Teresa died and that they found bones entwined with tires from his yard in the pit. Man those are some lucky crooked cops to pull all that off with 100s of other officers around! Not only did their execution align perfectly with Avery's lack of an alibi and the long fire he happened to be having that night, but it would end up matching details Dassey relayed to his cousin months later.

 

Dassey is 100% unreliable.
EVERYTHING he has said he has changed the story on. How can you trust a single word he says. You can't simply pick and choose what you feel is truthful and what is not.

I don't care what gun you use, blood doesn't defy physics. When there is a shot fired into someone's body, there is blood spatter. It's not a vacuum where all the blood immediately shoots towards the floor. There would be blood spattered throughout the area in the garage.


You don't find ANY of this suspicious?
I really am genuinely curious of what DNA was on the bullet, and why there was no blood/tissue/human remnants on that bullet.

I honestly can't tell you who klwd Theresa.
Could have been Bobby Dassey, her bf, etc. No matter who did it, Manitowoc was going to make sure it was Steven Avery.
Why was Steven the immediate suspect? Bobby said he was the last one to see her. He was never investigated. Theresa's bf was never investigated. Steven's brother was never investigated. The list goes on and on. The cops questioned NO ONE but Steven Avery. They didn't even explore any other direction/possibility.

Who erased the voicemail on Theresa's phone? There's at least 2 people who knew her password and accessed her voicemail. WHY would they erase any voicemail?

Steven AND his brother both saw headlight/taillights over by where the car was found, but cops never looked into it. Never took tire track samples.
What a lazy investigation, they just looked for ways to incriminate Steven, rather than solve a murder.

I hope you understand I'm not trying to start an argument, I look forward to replies in this thread as I find the story very intriguing.

Manitowoc had it out for Steven ever since his cousin files that first report. (His cousin was married to a Manitowoc officer). They knew he wasn't guilty the first time, and they let him sit for 18 years. They gave the sketch artist a picture of Avery to draw, rather than the woman's actual description. They tricked her into sending an innocent man to prison. Hahaha. If that's not fishy, I don't know what is. Someone should be responsible for Avery's 18 years.

 

So months after the crime, Dassey goes to his cousin and talks about seeing "body parts in a fire" and blood in concrete, which redirects focus onto the garage, where they find the bullet fragments (yes, yes, I know you think the police put the bullets there because they apparently would never miss an opportunity to frame Avery). Dassey testifies on the stand about using specific chemicals to clean up the blood, and bleach is found on the pants he wore that night and a 3x3 area in the garage reacts to Luminol. Right, we should just ignore everything he says. After all, he's slow and unreliable.

Thank you for your expert opinion on blood splatter. Maybe Zellner can call you in to testify if Avery gets another trial. Avery must be innocent.

I find the story very intriguing as well--otherwise I wouldn't be spending so much time on it. And I have to add that my previous assertions that Lenk was a "crime scene expert" were potentially incorrect. I've been re-reading details of the investigation recently and it looks like Lenk actually offered his services, something I'm sure doesn't help my cause (not that it changes my mind).

In any case, most of your above questions are exactly what the documentary and the defense team were hoping to achieve and 100% Pure Grade A examples of misdirection at its finest. You're simply not looking at this from an investigator's point of view. There's such a boatload of immediate evidence pointing at Avery that to start asking questions about the ex-boyfriend is exactly what lawyers like Zellner and Strang and Buting and Cochran want you to do. It makes no sense whatsoever that Teresa's ex-boyfriend would have murdered her and then somehow enacted the most elaborate frame job in the history of crime. Literally, no sense. And to my knowledge the police DID question people Teresa was current sleeping with though I'd have to check sources on that.

Since you're so hung up on the evidence that's NOT there, let me ask you this:

1) If the police planted the bullet and were going around sprinkling DNA all over the crime scene, why not put Teresa's blood on the bullet?

2) If the police are driving cars onto Avery's property, why not put the blood in the car before putting the car on the property? Why wait until there's a massive swarm of cops around to do it? Or are you banking on the perfect alignment of two separate frame jobs? Mwahahahaha!

Regardless of the above questions, the problem remains that the documentary, which offered literally ZERO counterpoints to a slew of allegations and some fake evidence, has about 90% of its viewers thinking like the world's worst defense attorneys. So if I say that there was no EDTA in the blood (which would theoretically settle the vial issue) you say the test was faulty. If I say the bullet didn't just have Teresa's DNA on it but it also matched up with the gun hanging over Avery's bed, you say something about ballistics tests and reiterate the absence of blood on the bullet. If I say that Dassey was completely in the clear and months later on his own volition he started talking about "body parts in the fire" to a relative, you say that Dassey can't be trusted (because for some reason Dassey was just really eager to get involved in this crime I guess).

This is exactly where all the Avery supporters really get their kicks. First of all, Avery wasn't sentenced to 18 years for sexual assault. He was sentenced to 10 years for sexual assault and then 8 years for another crime (I think it was pointing the gun at his cousin) or something like that. And the documentary and the defense team alike are counting on the viewer being "lazy" him or herself, clumping a bunch of cops together when separate cops handled separate investigations. Lenk and Colborn had nothing to do with Avery's initial wrongful conviction. Furthermore, if the police department demonstrated "tunnel vision" in order to get the finger pointed at Avery it's a heck of a lot different than going around murdering people or planting evidence and again the documentary is counting on people to be too "lazy" to understand the difference. Lastly, the documentary took far more liberties than any police department and viewers won't take it to task, so ultimately everything you end up saying about the police department applies to you times a million. You are the assault victim in this scenario and the documentary played you like a fiddle. The documentary didn't just sketch Lenk and Colborn in as crooked cops, it literally planted evidence (the hole in the vial) to support its claims. So if you're ever wondering how an assault victim can end up pointing the finger in the wrong direction after being misled, just look no further than this whole phenomenon.

Calling the investigation "lazy" implies that you don't really understand how investigations work. When you find the victim's bones on the property of the guy who called Auto Trader, specifically requested Teresa, concealed his number, and has a history of assault, you focus on that guy--you don't waste your time with half-baked grassy knoll BS. When you find the guy's blood inside the car, you KNOW you have your guy.

Let's put it another way. Do you have a job? Does your job require that you spend a certain amount of time performing certain tasks? What if someone who didn't know how to do your job said you were "lazy" because while you're dedicating time to performing those tasks you should also be doing fifty other things that you know for a fact you shouldn't be doing? Your response would be: "You just don't get what it takes to do my job." That's my response to this. Again, the police found Avery's BLOOD in the victim's car and Teresa's BONES in Avery's fire pit and her KEY in his bedroom. You don't exactly need to play detective to understand why they honed in Avery. It's not laziness, it's the most basic form of common sense available to the human brain. And if you're going to spout that "framing" stuff, don't bother. I'm saying from an investigative point of view (meaning we leave the frame job off the table) it doesn't get more obvious that they found their guy.

Am I saying Lenk didn't plant evidence? No. I'm saying that without hard proof it is our duty as the (self-appointed) jury to work with facts. We've put Lenk and Colborn in the crosshairs and millions of people like yourself have judged them guilty based purely on conspiracy theories. The burden of proof is now on Zellner and company to prove Avery was framed.

In other words, yes, of course it sounds suspicious and that's why the defense played it with so much. Johnnie Cochran did the same exact thing in the OJ trial. He pounded misdirection into the jury (doesn't it seem suspicious that a racist cop found the glove?) until they were no longer able to separate fact from speculation. It's more or less the same thing going on here. You're completely confusing fact from theory. A fact is that Avery's blood is in the car. A theory is how it got there. And if you're going to say it got there because someone planted it, you need to prove that or it remains a theory. What would prove it? An EDTA test would prove it. And then when it's performed you poke holes (no pun intended) in the test.

This is what defense teams do, period. They count on confusing the jury until the jury doesn't realize a theory is just a theory. I'm not saying Avery wasn't framed, I'm saying that the defense never proved it and in order for them to inject reasonable doubt they had to come up with at least one piece of hard evidence proving Avery was framed. A lack of blood on a bullet or a lack of DNA on a key is not evidence of anything except that we don't know exactly what happened. This is why the judge didn't allow for the introduction of more suspects. Once the defense gets into your head there's no getting them out. In a crime with no witnesses anything is possible. You can point to patterns and discrepancies and call that suspicious and it becomes suspicious. That's how high powered defense attorneys do their jobs and the reaction to this documentary is the perfect example of how well it works. In a case of this magnitude it's the juror's responsibility to stick with the facts until hard physical evidence points elsewhere.

 

As a quick follow up, allow me to direct you to this guy's reddit account: overview for super_pickle »

If you read through his comments, you'll see he's been tirelessly answering questions like yours for months.

 

I can't view it, asks me to sign up.
What guy are you referring to?

 

Using the "comments section" of any online article or YouTube, etc. is not really going to yield much of any substance. It's the worst of the worst, the most anonymous of the anonymous, full of trolls, etc.

It's ridiculous to use *that* group as the example of those who proclaim Avery's innocence, or rather believe that he shouldn't have been convicted (which *isn't* the same thing as believing in his innocence).

Additionally, sometimes people can be right for the wrong reasons. It's a logical fallacy to assume that someone's conclusion is incorrect because they arrived at it ill-informed.

*Of course* a bunch of people weighed in on this case without knowing enough to really have anything even approaching sufficient familiarity with and knowledge of the case. That pretty much describes, in my experience, MOST people about EVERYTHING EVER. Everybody has an opinion and thinks someone else wants to hear it, even if they are speaking from utter ignorance on the subject.

But that goes for *both* sides. I've seen plenty of people, including some of the very people interviewed in Avery's area, who proclaimed him guilty before the trial even occurred. There are tons of people who say Avery and Dassey's cases were 100% squeaky clean and the outcomes justified who don't know squat about the intricacies of the case either.

It's just disrespectful and condescending to lump everyone together who believes in one side of a debate.

Saying those who believe these two guys shouldn't have been convicted are all ill-informed, irrational, and lack intelligence is no different than assuming that anyone who believes in their guilt and believes that the investigation and prosecution were fair and untainted are all of the hawkish, execute-them-and-ask-questions-later sort.

I'm also seeing a whole lot about the detail-by-detail bits and pieces of this case, all of which *are* important to be sure. But I'm not seeing a lot of discussion of the concept of reasonable doubt, which again is one of the main cruxes of the documentary and those who disagree with the outcome of the cases.

There is a pretty substantial number of people who think Avery more likely did it than not who believe he shouldn't have been convicted based on the concept of reasonable doubt. You can try to shoot down everything in the "Making a Murderer" documentary with 87 paragraphs of counterarguments and insult everyone who might actually have found something of substance in it, but there was sufficient compelling information that can't be firmly refuted such that it creates *reasonable doubt* in the minds of many.

In addition to the concept of reasonable doubt, there is a whole slew of issues regarding the investigation where some of the evidence to prove the case beyond that reasonable doubt is tainted by laughable conflicts of interest.

I've talked to people who wouldn't flinch for a moment to flip the switch on Avery who still believe the police investigating this case were utterly unprofessional and laughably incompetent, and made police everywhere look bad. Again, a number of people who firmly believe in Avery's guilt are among the harshest critics of the police in this case for their ineptitude.

 

Period

 

At absolute minimum, an accused individual should have legal representation that actively pursues the best interests of their client. Even the worst of the worst are accorded that. Dassey didn't get that, or even benign or absent representation. His legal representation actively worked against him. I'm not sure how anyone could make a rational case that those actions don't destroy the validity of his trial.

 

super_pickle

 

Except no one is making that case.

 

I'm talking about literally every single article I've read and forums including this one. These aren't trolls, these are people who watched the documentary and made a judgment and it's far more prolific than you're suggesting.

What group? The hundreds of thousands of people who signed the petition? That's not exactly a small number. Based on what I've seen, I'd say a good 80% of people who watched the documentary think Avery is innocent, and that 80% of those people didn't really do much extra research.

Except most of those people aren't right and they consistently use inaccurate information to get their points across. It's kind of a double standard. If you're supposed to represent justice in the face of injustice then you need to know the facts and present them fairly--otherwise you're just as bad if not worse than those you're criticizing.

Exactly! I'm not saying those who proclaimed Avery guilty without knowing the facts are any better, but I also don't see how the two wrongs somehow cancel each other out. However, I will say that most people I've encountered online (and in the real world) who now think he's guilty are by and large the ones who did LOTS of extra research, thereby realizing how horrendously skewed the documentary was. After that they realized how implausible it was that anyone else committed the crime. The ones with extra helpings of logic also realized that even if Avery was framed there's to this day nothing that proves it so they'll at the very least reserve judging police officers or the investigation itself until such evidence arises.

Look, I was personally affected by the documentary. Like you, I thought the investigation was poorly handled and that Avery might be innocent. Then I read A LOT about the case. I read all the counterpoints the documentary left out. I separated fact from speculation. And I realized how the documentary made me feel like Avery got set up but never actually proved it. I also realized the documentary used some insanely manipulative tactics to try and get its point across. To this day I'm shocked more people don't feel like they've been had. I will reiterate, however, that if a documentary can come along and get Dassey's conviction overturned and even get people to think about changing laws as far as investigations go, I can't really knock it. But ultimately it employed some blatant trickery to get millions of people to take Avery's side and that I cannot forgive--it's just too hypocritical if nothing else.

I was condescending toward you specifically because you used condescending language in describing what so many of us "didn't get" about the documentary. Of course we "got" it. But you can't just watch a 10 hour show about something that was years in the making and then think you know what's what at all. If anything, it's the people chiming in after seeing a documentary without doing any extra reading that don't "get" it. Trials and investigations are incredibly complex things. The documentary might have been about the imbalanced scales of justice but it really didn't provide a balanced perspective at all.

If/when I'm condescending toward others it's because they keep spouting misinformation that's directly correlated to the documentary and that misinformation is having very real consequences. This is the age of the Internet and virtually every aspect of the case is public record. Is it really asking so much that people do a little follow up before hurling accusations and confusing fact with theory? I guess it is.

"Reasonable doubt" has to be "reasonable" and that's where you and I part ways. Too many people are running with the "conflict of interest" as being enough when it's not, at least not enough to refute all that evidence. If it was enough then Avery's expensive lawyers would have had the case dismissed in the first place. Now maybe after this whole thing goes away a law will come out declaring that police departments cannot investigate suspects who are suing them, but until then the "conflict of interest" is a sore spot for the prosecution but not to the point of dismissal or even doubt. And I want to reiterate I'm not saying Avery is definitely guilty or that he wasn't framed, I'm saying there's a burden of proof on the defense to prove it because introducing unsubstantiated theory in order to induce "doubt" is basically what expensive defense teams do for a living--again it's not enough.

There's a guy on Reddit who spent a lot of time looking into this case. He paid for transcripts, created a website, and has been answering questions about Avery for months (and he's far, far less condescending than I am). He recently posted what the "frame job" would have had to look like in order to work (in his opinion). I am going to copy/paste it below. In order for there to be "reasonable doubt" then the following events would at least need to be plausible (since they were never proven). Everything from this point on is the Redditor's words not mine just FYI:

"The sheer magnitude of what would need to be done to frame him. Not one single Avery supporter has been able to offer a theory on how it was all done.

Teresa was reported missing on 11/3 around 4pm. The car was found around 10:30am on 11/5. So in less than 48 hours, they would need to:

• Discover Teresa had last been seen alive by Avery (simple enough, they looked at her phone records)
  
  
• Quickly find Teresa's car and body before anyone else stumbled across the crime scene- meaning it would have to be hidden out of the way but still easily findable if you were looking
  
  
• Burn her body and break up the bones to destroy evidence of who really killed her
  
  
• Go to the Clerk of Court's office and remove some blood, then plant it in six different spots in the car, including under the back seats where Avery would've touched to move them forward if putting a body in the back and to the right of the ignition. Because of the placement of the blood we have to assume they already noticed Avery had a fresh cut on his right hand, so they planted it to match.
  
  
• Move the car to the junkyard and cover it up without being noticed
  
  
• Remove the plates from the car, sneak to the other side of the property, and hide the plates in a station wagon (why they'd bother with this step is beyond me, if you want the car to be found why remove the plates and take the risk of running all the way across the property near the residences and being caught?)
  
  
• Take those burned bones of Teresa's and put them in Avery's fire pit, in clear view of multiple residences and guarded by an aggressive dog, without getting caught. Then, for some reason, run to a burn barrel near another residence and put some more bones there.
  
  
• Take Teresa's camera, phone, and PDA, which you also burned, and put those in another burn barrel in front of Avery's house. At this point they've taken the risk of running to three different spots on the property where they could be seen to plant evidence. We also have to assume they've already discovered Avery had a bonfire on Halloween and used the burn barrel in front of his house that day, so they knew this would match Avery's actions.
  
  
• Now they contact Teresa's mom's cousin because for some reason they know she'll keep their secret, and tell her where to find the car. So Pam goes to the salvage yard and finds it.
  
  
• Now the search starts. They kept Teresa's key, and rub it against something of Avery's to plant his DNA. Then Lenk walks into a room in front of a Calumet County officer, throws it on the floor, and says "Look, a key!" This expert planter who managed to plant a car, license plates, bones, and personal effects can't think of any better way to plant it, like pretending to find it in a drawer or something.
  
  
• Now they can arrest Avery, but still don't think they have enough. They secretly approach his niece Kayla, and tell her to go talk to her school counselors and say Steven asked her cousin for help moving a body and ask about blood coming up through concrete. They also tell her to say Brendan's acting weird. (At this point they've decided to frame Brendan as well.) She agrees for some reason. Then they formerly interview her in front of her parents, and she goes with their plan and tells them how weird Brendan has been acting.
  
  
• That gave them an excuse to talk to Brendan, so now they get him to say he helped his uncle clean dark liquid off the garage floor with bleach. Luckily there is a recorded phone call from 10/31 of Avery telling Jodi that Brendan is over and they're cleaning, and Brendan has a pair of bleach-stained jeans his mother remembers him wearing that night, so this all checks out. Now they have an excuse to search the garage. (Btw I completely agree the interrogation methods used with Brendan weren't right, and he made a lot up, but it's REALLY hard to believe he wasn't involved when you know all the facts of the case.)
  
  
• Now they can search the garage, but they need a bullet. They might sneak over to the State Crime Lab and fire Avery's gun to get a bullet from it without anyone noticing. While they're there, they grab Teresa's DNA sample that Culhane keeps on her desk and rub some of it on the bullet. Or maybe they search the property for bullets as everyone hunts on it, grab one, and hope beyond hope it's one that will match Steven's gun. (They get lucky, it does.) And of course they kept some of Teresa's DNA before they burned her in case this came up, so they rub that on the bullet. (They don't bother planting her DNA they have access to on his bedding, or garage floor, or in Avery's leg cuffs and handcuffs. They just intentionally made Brendan admit to those things, then collected them for testing, with no intention of planting evidence on them. No need for overkill, the bullet is enough.)
  
  
• They're thinking this might be too obvious. They should expend some energy to make it look like a real search. They know they didn't plant any DNA on the floor, but jackhammer it up and test the concrete just for appearances.
  
  
• ****, the defense is now claiming Avery's blood was planted in the car. Kratz is asking to get it tested for EDTA to prove it wasn't planted. They're going to send the blood to the FBI. No problem, luckily a quick call from a random rural sheriff's department explaining they planted evidence and could really use a solid here convinces the Chief of the Chemistry Unit at the FBI to falsify the test and perjure himself in a case receiving national media attention.

And that's it, that's how easy it is to Make a Murderer!

Luckily while they were doing all that Steve was helping them out by acting suspicious as ****. He didn't go back to work after meeting with Teresa, which he explains is very rare. He says it was because he had phone calls to make, but phone records show he didn't make any. He was hiding his number when calling Teresa early in the day, but stops hiding it after her phone is disabled. Barb didn't even want to sell the van through AT, but he insisted and called asking for Teresa to come. He lies in his early interviews- the bones haven't even been found yet, but he still lies about having a fire that night despite an innocent man having no reason to lie. He lies about using the burn barrel. He lies about seeing Brendan. He was seen acting strangely that day. If Steve had done what he normally did and gone back to work that afternoon, it would've been really hard to frame him, so thank god he didn't! And all that lying certainly helped them cast a suspicious light on him. Couldn't have done it without Steven's help! Oh and thank God Teresa didn't call anyone or get seen by anyone after leaving Avery's- that would've thrown a wrench in their plans as well.

(Sorry for the sarcastic tone, I'm not mocking you- just the claims the show makes.)"

 

I don't feel that anything I've said is particularly condescending. I haven't been implying that everyone who feels a certain way about this case are all idiots.

One of my main points wasn't that people "don't get" the documentary. Rather, by strenuously arguing every point concerning his guilt, it's "missing the point" of the doc.

Maybe I'm in the vast minority in that I didn't watch the series and then think, "Wow, Avery is innocent." I think the film left that very ambiguous. What I came away with was awe regarding the jaw-droppingly missteps by the investigators. What makes the whole thing intriguing is precisely that I very much think Avery may be guilty.

In particular, the handling of Dassey was inappropriate on just about every level, and the doc bringing *that* to light alone makes it a worthwhile venture. The courts evidently agreed with some of the points raised about Dassey's case in the doc.

The Reddit guy is interesting, but it kind of reminds me of the guy recently who thought he had cracked the DB Cooper case. Once someone burns a bunch of time and money to prove something, their objectivity sometimes takes a dive.

 

Right, but I'm saying we didn't miss the point and the inference that we did is condescending. Furthermore, by constantly excusing the liberties the documentary took suggests that maybe people like yourself aren't willing to concede that the filmmakers had an agenda that went a little further than what they admit in public. Whatever the case, the documentary at least in part missed its own point by not showing a remotely balanced portrayal of the case, thereby undermining its own message.

But no one is really arguing that. Not me. Not the guy on Reddit. Not most people who think Avery is guilty. It's clear as day that Dassey is a prime example of the pitfalls of everything from over-confident investigators to ill-equipped public defenders. It's a shame that it took all this hubbub to rightly expose something everyone more or less knows anyway and we'll see where it leads as far as enacting change outside this case. What happened to Dassey happens to underprivileged people all the time.

 

According to news sources, Avery's new attorney is going to point to the "real killer" tomorrow. I'm definitely intrigued. My guess is she'll point toward one of the Zipperers but we'll see. I'll remain highly skeptical if she doesn't provide some hard evidence.

 

Is there any truth to one of the jurors getting excused due to a car accident?

 

Objectivity is really an important word here. Objectively speaking, there is evidence and only evidence. Not inference. Not speculation. Not theory. People like the guy on Reddit and myself are 100% open to a search for evidence proving Avery's innocence. But until then the evidence simply isn't there. We'll see what Zellner brings to the table--so far she's big on showboating and there is kind of a "too big too fail" quality about her so it will be interesting regardless. However, if she doesn't present some solid evidence I think she'll basically be using the same ploys as all the top-shelf defense attorneys, preying on minds through the power of suggestion over hard logic.

 

I suppose it makes sense then that we apparently disagree on what constitutes condescension! I'll stipulate that saying someone "missed the point" can be read as condescending, but I truly mean that because the point of the documentary was NOT to come to a conclusion as to the guilt or innocence of Avery, fixating and arguing strenuously and at such length pretty much *exclusively* on the minutiae of evidence of his guilt or innocence seemingly for the purpose of *proving* his guilt is at least partially *missing the point* of the documentary.

Since this thread is about the *film series* and not the case itself, that's why I made this specific point.

A thread about Avery's guilt or innocence with evidence from amateur sleuths and whatnot is a different animal from this thread, which is a discussion of the documentary series. Certainly, there's plenty of overlap in the two topics. But I do think that people on *both* sides of the "guilt" question have sometimes missed the main purpose of the documentary, and are ignoring what the filmmakers have said about the purpose of the documentary. I *don't* mean that in a condescending way. I'm not saying people who are missing the point are incapable of understanding anything, but rather that for whatever reason (zeal for proving Avery's guilt for one) they are choosing to bypass what is essentially or at least arguably the thesis statement for the documentary and turn every discussion of the film into a discussion solely of Avery's guilt.

I think we're pretty much in agreement on the Dassey issue then. I would only add that I've read plenty of folks who advocate Avery's guilt who equally advocate for Dassey's guilt and against his receiving a new trial or any other form of remedy for what happened to him.

I also think the Dassey situation has the potential to speak to the Avery case as well. It's not as if the entire cast of characters on the law enforcement and prosecution side were 100% different characters. I don't know how much, if at all, Avery can introduce the inappropriate nature of Dassey's entire case. But a lot of the advocating for Avery's guilt, and in particular the assertion that Avery's investigators and prosecutors were 100% on the up and up and that we should trust that they did everything appropriately, seems to completely ignore the Dassey side of the equation.

To be clear, Dassey getting screwed in his case doesn't mean Avery is innocent. Further, Avery likely can't raise much of anything about Dassey's case during his appeals (I guess we'll see), since the whole idea would be to prove something was in error in Avery's case. But the Dassey issue casts a HUGE shadow over any law enforcement agency and prosecution team that shares any members with the teams who worked that Dassey case.

 

I guess my point concerning a guy who has invested a lot of time and money into something and is advocating for Avery's guilt is that he has the potential to *lose* objectivity and could potentially become less and less likely to every acknowledge that all the time and money he put in might be for naught. Again, it's far from a perfect analogy, but it brings to mind the DB Cooper guy in that recent History Channel documentary. It was patently obvious that he was too far "down the rabbit hole" and had too much invested in his theory. I'm not saying the Reddit guy *is* in this same boat, and the DB Cooper case is not particularly analogous otherwise to the Avery case. But anyone, especially private citizens who aren't actually a party to a case, who spent tons of their own time (and especially money) investing in a particular point of view don't tend to be truly 100% objective.

Mr. "Super Pickle" on Reddit doesn't sound objective to me. He raises plenty of points to chew on. But he reads precisely like a guy who firmly 100% believes in Avery's guilt (and he even says so), but keeps *saying* he's open to being completely wrong. Nothing other than his saying that he's "open" actually reads like he really is.

Also, while I'm well aware that Reddit has weirdly been the source of a lot of accurate inside information about a plethora of topics, the guy does himself no favors in the credibility department by posting as "Super Pickle" on Reddit. If he wants to be taken seriously, posting under his real name might be a good place to start.

 

Seriously. What's the deal with "Super Pickle"?

 

Haha. You guys don't seem too familiar with Reddit. If the dude posted under his "real name" he would potentially be the first person to do so on that site. Here's a link to his website: Source Documents »

As for his objectivity (and mine) or lack thereof, I think it's a little unfair to say our point of view is overly biased. We're both honestly trying to stick to the facts (he's way better at retaining the facts of the case than I am) and the physical evidence, and we're both more open to having our minds changed than you suggest. What we're rallying against for the time being are essentially three things: 1) The "assumption" of guilt toward Officers Lenk and Colborn based on speculation over proof and no due process. 2) The proliferation of blatant misinformation on the heels of a documentary that took some extreme liberties. 3) The harassment of police and pointing of fingers at random people (some within the victim's own family) based again on nothing but speculation or (the worst kind of) "instinct".

If you read through Mr. Super Pickle's posts (not sure if you have to be a Reddit member or not to do so) you'll see he encounters tons more subjectively than he doles out. Sure, he might interpret certain people and events in a manner that supports his claims, but for the most part he sticks to the facts and that's about as close as objectivity as I've seen in regards to the general reaction toward the documentary.

 

While I do agree that Dassey got completely screwed for a number of reasons and his conviction being overturned was just, I'm not as critical of the way his investigation was handled from the DOJ perspective, nor do I think that it somehow compromises the case against Avery. Investigators have an almost impossible job that few people can relate to when it comes to people like Dassey (since no physical evidence actually connected him to the crime). They basically deal with uneducated liars for a living and have to resort to every possible method and exploit every possible opportunity to get a confession, not to mention a confession that aligns with the evidence (hence all the talk about shooting Teresa). This notion from outsiders that there are set "rules" that the investigators need to play by is kind of silly--their entire job is to handle people who break the rules. Coerced or not, Dassey was quite explicit about certain things and pretty consistent about other things, and I personally find it easier than others to understand why the investigators probably believed him and kept pushing him in spite of his obvious ignorance or the parts of his story that simply didn't make sense. So yes, the DOJ's handling of Dassey was definitely inappropriate but not entirely without cause in my opinion, and while there's no evidence to support the "stabbing" angle Dassey offered up, the DOJ and prosecution had plenty of reason to think Teresa was sexually assaulted so Dassey didn't help matters by saying he partook. I know, I know. If one thing doesn't add up then nothing adds up is what you want to say, or Dassey should have had a lawyer present, but that's rarely how it works--you see an advantage you take it. You push for confessions when the subject is being resistant. Does it lead to bad confessions? All the time, probably. But in cases without evidence you only have so many choices. The investigators aren't just going to let Dassey go because he's being wishy-washy--the reason he was there in the first place is because he talked to a relative about seeing body parts in a fire.

 

One of the many problems I had with the DA investigators was that when he said he couldn't remember what Avery did to Ms. Hallbach's head, he came up with everything from cutting her hair to cutting her. That wasn't good enough. The investigator had to say, "Did Steven Avery shoot Theresa Hallbach in the head?" Only then did Dassey say "Yes." You just can lead a low functioning kid to answers that he didn't think of, only because he wanted to please them. It's morally outrageous. Why it wasn't brought up sooner is beyond me. I hope they try him again, with cameras in the courtroom so we can see how they handle him the next time.

 

Based on what I've read it will be up to the Halbachs whether he's tried again but I could be wrong. We'll see what happens.

In my opinion the tactics you're describing are far from "morally outrageous"--if anything they're just sloppy and narrow-minded. What is "morally outrageous" is the way Dassey was handled by his initial defense team. What's just plain "outrageous" is that Dassey's second defense team wasn't able to use the clearly inconsistent and coerced confession to get the whole thing tossed or at the very least used to bargain for a lesser charge. Really goes to show that when you're facing a murder charge an expensive lawyer can go a long way. No way in hell that Buting or Strang (or Zellner) would have ever let Dassey get convicted.