Netflix show Making a Murderer - Steven Avery case, etc

i found him more pathetic and sad than anything

like, his trauma was so great that he blinded himself from a broad obvious truth (that the case built against avery was at best deeply flawed and corrupted)

the narrative is that they were being dumb and throwing it around, including over the fire?

i'm #1 cat lover over here but stupid kids and small animals are not a good combination

forgot to respond to this, but it wasn't like that - he literally doused it in gasoline and threw it in the fire. and he was 20 when it happened, not just a "stupid kid". Avery's reputation was very well-earned, he'd done significant time for assault and apparently pointed his gun at family members during arguments - I have a lot of stories about that family, some of which I probably shouldn't share here. Even despite all the oddness that came about with this case (everyone here felt like the sheriff's department was taking some improper measures to make this as frictionless as possible) very few of us ever doubted it was him. For me the nail in the coffin was Avery's weird obsession with Halbach, calling her several times (and trying to mask the call) to come out to the salvage yard even though she had already told her boss that she didn't want to go back out there.

I believe Avery is guilty and it would take a LOT to convince me he wasn't (to be fair this doc seems to be converting a lot of locals who probably had the same attitude). It was pretty common knowledge around here that the police botched the investigation, but knowing some of these county employees personally I just feel there's no chance that she was killed by police - I guess I could buy that someone ELSE did it and tried to make it look like it was Avery but that seems pretty farfetched. I've only seen a couple episodes so far but it feels like a documentary in the Michael Moore sense; there's just so much footage, so many documents, so many weird statements out there, I don't think it would be particularly difficult to find this narrative.

honestly I've come away from what I've seen so far thinking it's completely possible he did it, but the police and prosecutors were so incompetent and motivated to get him to jail that they didn't bother to do anything correctly

I haven't gotten the impression that it's plausible the police killed Halbach. But their entire operation was so incredibly incompetent that there's no credibility to their investigation when they had such high stakes. Pushing Dassey into a story, to the point of his _defense investigator_ getting him to tell a narrative they had no facts to corroborate is gross. They decided to push some barely-competent kid into jail to make their job easier! That's not an improper measure, it's criminal.

That's the indictment here, for me -- the local cops have an idea of what trouble looks like in their community, people they keep an eye on due to repeat problems, but this entire idea that it's their job to pipe these people into jail as quickly as possible, regardless of evidence or investigation, is a problem that underlies a lot of the criminal justice system.

booming post mh

The one thing that seemed queasy to me was the depiction of the Halbachs and the ex-boyfriend. I mean, it's understandable why that happens, the lawyers explain that a failing of the police was to never investigate the ones closest to Theresa, but still. Perhaps it didn't need all those clips of the brother saying stupid stuff.

All in all, though, it's such a shocking story, told so incredibly well.

i guess who knows what the police told the brother and family, and obv it's a huge life trauma, but i still feel like anyone who so unswervingly backs the police, like as if all that matters is a certain conviction, of anyone, doesn't really come across very well. like there are some people who would never believe the police got anything wrong, ever. even after an exoneration. these people are a real problem in society.

basing this entirely on the staircase/making a murderer/paradise lost, ie in mostly ignorance of the us system, but do people criticise the system of having elected district attorneys? it does seem to breed some iffy characters.

Not District Attorneys, but Last Week Tonight had a segment on judicial elections:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poL7l-Uk3I8

still feel like anyone who so unswervingly backs the police, like as if all that matters is a certain conviction, of anyone, doesn't really come across very well.

agreed but this is pretty common when someone close dies - lately there's been a decent amount of 20-something OD'ing in the area and it seems every time the parents won't rest until whoever sold the so-and-so is caught and behind bars, as though that makes any difference

i interpreted the brother's blind faith in the police not as stupidity but as an example of the way you might bend your mind in order to cope with incredible grief

2005 was also a v diff time in American culture wrt attitudes towards police

forgot to respond to this, but it wasn't like that - he literally doused it in gasoline and threw it in the fire. and he was 20 when it happened, not just a "stupid kid".

is this manitowoc lore or is this actually what happened, though?

well, nobody knows for sure. I've heard the story at least a dozen times though, worth mentioning though that usually it's "him and his buddies", maybe Steve was the one that incinerated it but he was probably drunk and being egged on by whoever else was there. It's not inconsistent with the other stuff I've heard about him, not to mention some of the things I've heard or witnessed firsthand from other members of the family. Not that he's necessarily a sadist or a psychopath, just prone to making really bad decisions.

of all the bad decisions one could make, murdering a woman almost immediately after being freed from 18 years of wrongful incarceration (from which you stand to gain millions) is up there

he was out for about two years afterwards and got into plenty of other legal trouble

agree that the impending lawsuit was likely what drove the Sheriff's office into "get this guy no matter what" mode

but what other legal trouble? and whatever the legal trouble was, isn't there a big jump to murder? and wouldn't a "get this guy no matter what" mode contribute to said legal trouble?

I don't know for sure. My mother worked in the courthouse during those years and said that he was a frequent visitor, mostly incidents related to his girlfriend, at least one involving a firearm.

This is a good article if you're looking for some specific things that the doc left out. No hard evidence linking him to it but I think the truth is a far cry from the "there was no evidence whatsoever/all the evidence was planted" POV that seems to be going around a lot lately

I mean some of it is totally irrelevant (who cares if he had porn), but if the detail about his apparent obsession with Halbach was glossed over, that's a pretty big omission

Also if I remember correctly the "robbery" conviction was just him stealing a case of beer or something from a bar.

yeah, I agree that some of this was glossed over. And the porn thing is stupid, as you said. It's weird that the list includes the key, which was discussed pretty clearly in the doc. Doc spins the absence of Teresa's DNA on the key as odd, though it seems to me that avery could have washed the key before contaminating it himself.

6. The previous animal cruelty case involved a bonfire

this point is also a bit ridiculous

yeah - like if he had been accused of burying her they could say "as a child he loved digging sandcastles at the beach"

Is this "obsession" you've mentioned also largely anecdotal, local lore? The few *67 calls (2 or 3?) don't seem that damning to me. Or is there more to that?

And whether or not they played a role in Teresa's death, the police's behavior during the investigation was almost definitely criminal.

yeah that article was interesting but besides maybe the key it still leaves huge holes. like basically how did the murder happen? the prosecution based their case on the jury's memory of inadmissible evidence from dassey's coached confession.

Is this "obsession" you've mentioned also largely anecdotal, local lore? The few *67 calls (2 or 3?) don't seem that damning to me. Or is there more to that?

the question is why request a specific photographer, particularly one you'd successfully managed to creep out a few weeks prior? to the point of masking the call and requesting her under a different name? hard to believe that evidence was "planted" in any way and if he's being framed that seems like a really lucky break for whoever the real murderer was

he called two times using *67 to get her to come out, then once without, the prosecution's theory being that he didn't dial *67 because he knew she'd been murdered at that point and wanted to establish some sort of evidence that he didn't know at that point.

barf, that was a clunky sentence. but you know what I mean. I thought the idea that he'd randomly murdered some photographer was very strange but considering that 1) he knew who she was and 2) he specifically wanted her on the property makes it a little more beliveable

forgot to respond to this, but it wasn't like that - he literally doused it in gasoline and threw it in the fire. and he was 20 when it happened, not just a "stupid kid".
is this manitowoc lore or is this actually what happened, though?

― Sufjan Grafton, Thursday, December 31, 2015 12:09 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I read a facebook post this week by a woman who claims to have worked for the Manitowoc sheriff's dept from 1980-82. She says she actually took the cat call?

I don't know who killed Teresa but I cant shake the feeling her brother knows *something* about it. Some shaky reasoning:
1. Before the car is even found he says he's in 'the grieving process'
2. That whole "We LOVE cops!" was kind of weird.
3. His unwavering devotion to Steven's conviction as opposed to the truth.
4. He and the ex-boyfriend giving the camera to the woman who found the car.
5. Way too much denial about being on the property.
6. He deleted voicemail!!

oh and this:

http://www.tvguide.com/news/anonymous-to-help-exonerate-making-a-murderer-steven-avery/

I think my takeaway from this series isn't a lingering sense of wonder about whether Avery is guilty more than it is a lot of questions about how the court and justice systems work in practice. The three branches of government -- legislative, judicial, and executive each had a role to play (although the legislative part in the series is mostly related to reform of his previous mistreatment) and the courts and police were both rolling in the mud by the end.

Dassey's initial lawyer never really cared whether he was guilty, his entire job was to get the kid to stick to the story the police prodded him into creating, and plead guilty to get a timeline cemented so they could throw the book at Avery. I mean, without any story to tie the limited evidence together, they just picked the most pliable person who could have possibly seen the crime and threw him into an interview room (without a parent or lawyer) until they got what they wanted. I'm not sure who disgusts me more -- his first lawyer or the defense investigator who had the kid write out what happened that day and then threw it away and prodded him until he regurgitated something close to the prosecution's case.

It's kind of taken for granted that public defenders will end up with a rapport with the prosecutors they sit across from all the time, but where that could be a bridge to better negotiation, this case started with two prosecutions and no defense.

that doesn't even get into the news media churn and public response to their perfect "this guy spent time in jail for murder, but now he's committed murder, so maybe we should let the police decide who stays in jail" angle that is the unspoken undercurrent to the whole thing

it just comes down to giving people due process. regardless of anything, that must happen. regardless of avery's guilt or otherwise, it didn't happen. you can't run a legal system in that way. nobody can trust the police or the state that much - whether you're cynical about police or just accepting of human fallibility.

Looking at the list of things the docuseries left out, a lot of it is either from the prosecution, or from media where it could well have been planted by the prosecution. I'd be wary of it being called 'facts', and I think the article is pretty misleading.

One thing I've thought about: Does the doc explain where the police is supposed to have gotten the key from? That is the one thing where the prosecution is sorta right, I think: If you believe the evidence to have been planted, you have to believe the police were involved in something way more shady. Not killing her, but finding the scene of the crime, and changing it completely, with all that that entails.

Before the car is even found he says he's in 'the grieving process'

my wife's started watching this and she nearly fell out of her chair when teresa's brother said that. she's looking at him with extreme suspicion every time he appears on screen

Easiest way to square that circle is that the family and/or police could've found the vehicle on the Avery property as part of an illegal search (when Colbourne called in the plate and asked "99 Toyota?", IIRC that was the day before the RAV4 was officially found).

Not wanting to have it excluded as evidence, they could've arranged a legal search (IIRC, Steven was away at the cabin and they got permission from someone else in the family) and then staged "discovering" it there -- the one searcher gets a camera, a direct phone line to the sheriff, etc. By that point, the family would've known the bad news that they couldn't reveal directly.

The defense mentions at one point that Steven could've crushed the vehicle instead of hiding it on the property, but I don't think that's quite as easy as it sounds -- likely need to remove parts of it (engine, wheels) before crushing, and then still hide/dispose them, and a crushed car isn't exactly invisible or untraceable anyway.

The key is still fishy, in part because (I've read elsewhere, don't think this is mentioned in the doc) it was a spare ("valet") key. Seems really unlikely that Teresa would be carrying her extra key on the day she got killed. More likely to me that the killer (Steven or whoever) hid (buried?) her usual set of keys, and the family/friends supplied the spare key for the police, who planted it as evidence. All in the service of framing a guy they believed was guilty.

And who may well be, anyway.

lots of points leading to them wanting to make an airtight case without being competent enough to know how to do so

yeah it starts from the view of "we need to get this guy" and seems like anything goes after that.

and the civil suit means that for some, the need is exacerbated beyond simply a belief in his guilt, as genuine as that belief may have been.

It was a SPARE key?? Hell

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CXal-oPUEAARZZn.png

I read somewhere it was the valet key, and it looks like it. Would a young woman carry a car key around on that kind of strap/clip? Where are the rest of her keys? If Steven or (if not him) the murderer hid/disposed of them, why leave the car key anywhere it could be found, let alone in his bedroom? Meanwhile the family and friends might well have had access to the spare car key (I know where my wife keeps hers). If the police told them they needed it to make sure her killer was brought to justice, I could see them handing it over, and keeping quiet about it, just as easily as they could have played along with a "search" where they always knew what they were going to find.

The appearance of that key, on that strap, on Steven's bedroom floor all by itself is almost as incongruous as the spots of blood on the car interior, which look very much like they dripped from a syringe, trickled down a little and dried, unlike any bleeding I've ever seen from a hand wound (which is always going to smear).

It being the valet key would also explain the lack of Teresa's DNA on it. Most people hardly touch the spare key. So the police (or whoever) wouldn't have to clean it, just put it in contact with something of Steven's where they could get sweat (really skin cells, I think) DNA before planting it. Rubbing some dirty laundry on it might do it.

http://www.people.com/article/steven-avery-juror-believes-he-deserves-a-new-trial

Yeah now I look at it there are no buttons.

Omg from CAs post:

"We were contacted by one of the jurors who sat through Steven Avery's trial and shared what us their thoughts and they told us that they believe Steven Avery was not proven guilty, they believe that Steven was framed by law enforcement,"

did they think that at the time, though, or after watching the show?

i read last night they said this before the show.

Strang interview video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9h5C901lGE

The interviewer brings up the *67 calls to Strang and he moreorless swats away the question, claiming that Avery was very careful about his privacy, which kinda makes sense.

My partner, who's from a very Maintowoc-ish town, says most small town men are ornery loners and *67-ing calls isn't that unusual.

This was really engrossing and compelling but I can't handle the general internet response to it. People can't seem to step back and realize that their exposure to the case has been through a heavily mediated narrative and that these are real people and it's not some shitty Whodunnit for you and your Sherlock Reddit buddies to solve.