Making a Murderer

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WARNING: "Making A Murderer" spoilers below
1. Avery’s past incident with a cat was not “goofing around”. He soaked his cat in gasoline or oil, and put it on a fire to watch it suffer.

2. Avery targeted Teresa. On Oct 31 (8:12 am) he called AutoTrader magazine and asked them to send “that same girl who was here last time.” On Oct 10, Teresa had been to the Avery property when Steve answered the door just wearing a towel. She said she would not go back because she was scared of him (obviously). Avery used a fake name and fake # (his sister’s) giving those to the AutoTrader receptionist, to trick Teresa into coming.

3. Teresa’s phone, camera and PDA were found 20 ft from Avery’s door, burned in his barrel. Why did the documentary not tell the viewers the contents of her purse were in his burn barrel, just north of the front door of his trailer?

4. While in prison, Avery told another inmate of his intent to build a “torture chamber” so he could rape, torture and kill young women when he was released. He even drew a diagram. Another inmate was told by Avery that the way to get rid of a body is to “burn it”…heat destroys DNA.

5. The victim’s bones in the firepit were “intertwined” with the steel belts, left over from the car tires Avery threw on the fire to burn, as described by Dassey. That WAS where her bones were burned! Suggesting that some human bones found elsewhere (never identified as Teresa’s) were from this murder was NEVER established.

6. Also found in the fire pit was Teresa’s tooth (ID’d through dental records), a rivet from the “Daisy Fuentes” jeans she was wearing that day, and the tools used by Avery to chop up her bones during the fire.

7. Phone records show 3 calls from Avery to Teresa’s cell phone on Oct 31. One at 2:24, and one at 2:35–both calls Avery uses the *67 feature so Teresa doesn’t know it him…both placed before she arrives. Then one last call at 4:35 pm, without the *67 feature. Avery first believes he can simply say she never showed up (his original defense), so tries to establish the alibi call after she’s already been there, hence the 4:35 call. She will never answer of course, so he doesn’t need the *67 feature for that last call.

8. Avery’s DNA (not blood) was on the victim’s hood latch (under her hood in her hidden SUV). The SUV was at the crime lab since 11/5…how did his DNA get under the hood if Avery never touched her car? Do the cops have a vial of Avery’s sweat to “plant” under the hood?

9. Ballistics said the bullet found in the garage was fired by Avery’s rifle, which was in a police evidence locker since 11/6…if the cops planted the bullet, how did they get one fired from HIS gun? This rifle, hanging over Aver’s bed, is the source of the bullet found in the garage, with Teresa’s DNA on it. The bullet had to be fired BEFORE 11/5—did the cops borrow his gun, fire a bullet, recover the bullet before planting the SUV, then hang on to the bullet for 4 months in case they need to plant it 4 months later???

1. Clearly this is bad but it doesn't say that someone is going to rape and murder someone years later. Lets agree that Avery is somewhat a small town hick scumbag, again doesn't make him a murderer though.

2. If she had been there before and was scared to go back why did she go? Yes the false name but she must have known she was at the Avery yard where she met this scary man.

3. If other stuff had clearly been planted is it that much of a stretch that these things were planted too?

4. Wouldn't trust this sort of jailhouse confession, I've heard of this shady practise being used by corrupt small town DA before. "Jailhouse snitch" will say anything to get a better deal. Did Avery admit having said this?

5. If there were tyres used in Avery's fire isn't it possible that tyres were used in another fire, had Teresa indeed been burned elsewhere, as Avery's lawyers claim.

6. See point 3.

7. My understanding were that the first 2 calls were because Teresa was late. Not sure what to make of the third call, that could easily have been to do with their dealings that day, selling the Van or whatever. Hiding your caller ID isn't suspicious, people do it every day.

8. His DNA but not his fingertprints, again if people are conspiring to plant evidence against him would it be so hard to plant DNA on the car after 6 months sitting in the Police impound.

9. I don't think it's mentioned in the documentary that the bullet was fired from Avery's rifle, if that's true it presents a strong piece of evidence against Avery. BUT wasn't this "magic bullet" found on a 4th search of the Avery garage months after the crime.

Seems evidence keeps popping up later to help the DA case.

Also this letter is written by Kranz who is a corrupt scumbag (he tried to coerce domestic violence victims into having sex with him, and admitted a problem with drug use).

"...a piece of bad information can be repeated so many times in so many places so quickly that it becomes accepted as true..." -Ken Kratz


INTRODUCTION


This review contains some spoilers, but probably only if you are completely new to the Avery/Dassey saga. Brief passages from Ken Kratz's book "Avery" are referenced as part of the review in accordance with fair-use and the accompanying copyright disclaimer allowing "brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews"
Kratz's book was originally promoted as 320 pages. The final release wound up being 192 pages. Subtract the forward, acknowledgments, pictures and blank pages and you're left with fewer than 160 pages of content, or half the intended amount. This total includes a 15-page chapter on "The Prize" himself, separate from the Avery/Dassey conversations.
Just like Griesbach's book, there is one chapter dedicated to "The Villains" Lenk and Colborn in an effort to repair their tarnished image. Likewise, both books devote a single chapter to Brendan's confession and purported involvement; the chapter on Brendan in Kratz's book spans all of 11 pages and starts a hundred pages in, followed by another 11-page addendum of sorts relating to the federal habeas ruling and appeals.
Kratz also devotes one chapter of six pages to describe what he dubs "The Vast, Fantastical Police Conspiracy" in which he sensationally and backhandedly presents the most extreme possible narrative in the framing conspiracy, under the pretense that Lenk and Colborn were exclusively responsible for every single act possibly including the murder itself.
Considering this was a book written by the prosecutor himself, I anticipated much more substance and previously unknown details between the pages than what was delivered. For anyone who has studied the case to any magnitude beyond watching MaM, you will not find any bombshell revelations or much in the realm of new information.
In an effort to rebut MaM as a heavily distorted propaganda piece, Kratz himself demonstrates a generous dosage of factual errors, significant omissions and pure opinionated theories devoid of any factual basis.
Below are more than three dozen points of contention I noted as I did my first read-through. Some may be insignificant (i.e., mistaking when Teresa was first reported missing), while others seem exceptionally flawed (i.e., falsely claiming that Brendan described the dark red liquid clean-up within 10 minutes of his first high school interview).


FORWARD BY NANCY GRACE


The forward by Nancy Grace essentially parrots claims made elsewhere in the book by Kratz.

He told multiple people that Teresa "never showed up,"
The only person to ever make such a claim first-hand was Robert F. In that same interview, RF erroneously claimed one of the older Dassey kids (Bryan or Bobby) was standing with Avery by Avery's truck when they returned, contrary to both Bryan and Bobby's recollection of that day.
(CASO Page 208-209.)

and later, on the day she was reported missing, he repeated this tale to Teresa's roommate
There is no record that Avery spoke to Scott on 11/3 and told him that Teresa never showed up. This currently unsubstantiated claim appears to stem from the same Auto Trader hearsay below. Teresa's cousin went to the salvage yard on 11/4 and Avery told him Teresa was there around 2 or so Halloween day and he described Avery as "being very forthright" and didn't seem to be "holding anything back."
(CASO Page 38, 57.)

--and even called Auto Trader to complain about it.
This is uncorroborated triple/quadruple hearsay. It stemmed from a Dedering report stating that according to Rachel at Auto Trader, Dawn said she overhead that Steven called Auto Trader on 11/3 to reschedule the appointment; also that Scott called Avery and Avery was mad. Such a call was never produced in any of Avery's phone records provided as exhibits. It was not mentioned by Dawn herself in any of her police interviews or court testimony. The state never brought it up during any testimony of any Auto Trader employee, even outside the presence of the jury.
(CASO Page 38.)

Teresa's foreboding about her job assignment to Avery's place—she didn't want to go and said so.
There isn't a single interview between 2005 and 2007 from any of Teresa's friends or colleagues in which it is claimed that Teresa did not want to go to the Avery lot or was fearful. All such claims (including from an anonymous friend and/or Tom P.) first transpired in 2016 following MaM publicity. No person ever testified to such a claim in court. Dawn recalled Teresa sounding fine and upbeat on the phone when she said she was going to the Avery property, no notion that she did not want to go there.
(CASO Page 20.)

Teresa's blood DNA was then found on a bullet fragment discovered inside Avery's garage, fired from a gun found in Avery's own bedroom.
The bullet was never determined to have blood DNA on it. A visual examination of the bullet (which would include micro and macro-level examination in the lab) was conducted and "there was nothing visual on the fragment. There didn't appear to be any stain."
(TT 2007-02-23 Page 163.)

In fact, Dassey's IQ falls within a normal range...
Dassey's IQ even at 81, as evaluated in 2006, was said to fall within "borderline" to "low-average" range (his previous IQ test from the 1990s put him in the low-70s). 87 out of 100 17-year-old males would perform better at the KBIT-2 test than Brendan did. Brendan was also found to have significantly elevated Yield and Shift scores, indicating that he is "significantly suggestible when presented with a situation that is comparable to a police interview regarding a crime scene."
(Dassey Psych Evaluation 2006-11-10.)

and his mom knew he was speaking to police and chose not to sit in.
Brendan's mom was not aware of the first 2/27 interview at all until it was over. According to Barb, she tried to join them for the second 2/27 interview at the police department but was told "it was in my best interest to go wait in the waiting room because...Brendan was going to give them a gruesome story." On March 1, Barb had her own court hearing relating to a divorce and said she would had told them she wanted to be there if she had any belief they were going to accuse him of murder.
(PC 2010-01-22 Page. 154-158.)


CHAPTER 1 - TRUE CRIME TODAY


This chapter is less than five pages long and does not delve into any specific allegations against MaM or Avery but instead acts as an introduction to the rest of the book and the public outlash Kratz faced following MaM.

On talk shows and in newspapers I've been called corrupt, incompetent, and narcissistic.
Although attributed to the backlash from MaM here, Kratz himself acknowledged years prior that he does have narcissistic personality disorder. He was publicly condemned at a national level by Associated Press and other outlets long before MaM came into the picture as a result of his texting scandal. The Office of Lawyer Regulation also made a complaint, originally charging Kratz with 11 counts of violating ethics and professional conduct from five different people he had interacted with (later re-opened and reduced).


CHAPTER 2 - THE DISAPPEARANCE


On November 3rd, 2005, Mark Wiegert, one of four full-time Calumet County sheriff's investigators, knocked on my door... A young woman named Teresa Halbach had been reported missing that morning.
The first dispatch log of Teresa being reported missing came in the afternoon on 11/3 at 2:52 p.m. (after Tom P. had spoken with Teresa's mother around 1 p.m. or later). Efforts first began around 5 p.m. to investigate the report. The first contact between Wiegert and Kratz mentioned in Wiegert's report appears to be from 11/5 when Wiegert was seeking a search warrant to Avery's property immediately prior to Kratz being appointed special prosecutor.
(MTSO Dispatch; CASO Page 72)

When Scott B. called Steven Avery on Thursday, November 3rd to ask about his appointment with Teresa, Avery said she'd never shown up.
Scott B. was interviewed on the phone and in person at Teresa's residence on 11/3 by both Wiegert and Lemieux. Scott gave no indication in any of these interviews that he had called Avery's, if he were even aware of Teresa's routes. There is no testimony from Ryan H., Mike H. Scott or any other parties that Avery told Scott that Teresa never showed up. That same evening, Colborn told Wiegert that Avery said "Teresa had shown up Monday afternoon and took some pictures of his van that was for sale." This appears to be a spin-off from the rumored Auto Trader hearsay report on 11/3.
(CASO Page 1-8, 38)


CHAPTER 3 - THE VICTIM


But Teresa was soon getting out of that. The photo shoot at the Avery salvage yard on October 31st, 2005, was the last she planned to do for Auto Trader magazine.
Teresa did have other Auto Trader photo shoots scheduled several days later that week. Teresa's contact at Auto Trader (Angela) indicated that "there were two appointments set up for TERESA on 11/03/05 and TERESA did not show up for either of those appointments."
(CASO Page 15.)

That day, Avery took steps to conceal himself. Unwilling to give his name or phone number to Auto Trader when booking the shoot, he provided "B. Janda" as a contact name and a telephone number belonging to his sister, Barb Janda.
Dawn clarified that the call was difficult to make out and therefore she only wrote down what she was able to get, "B. Janda." Dawn also said there was nothing unusual about the call. During the same call where Avery is purportedly "taking steps to conceal himself," he provides Barb's street address and last name--the same address that Teresa was at on September 19th and which Teresa knew was the Avery property (as she confirmed to Dawn before heading there). Dawn acknowledged that the existing record for the Janda property should had come up when searching by last name in the database, or by address (which she didn't search). In a similar fashion, Craig S. had called Auto Trader and provided them the address and contact name of a third party who had the vehicle, Steve S. for another 10/31 shoot.
(TT 2007-02-13 Page 82+)

That fifth time, after phoning Teresa directly to set up the appointment on a forty-six-degree October 10th, Steven Avery answered his door clad in only a small white towel. Creepy, thought Teresa. She told friends and coworkers she didn't want to return.
At no point in Dawn's testimony about the "towel incident" nor in the police reports did she ever indicate it was a "small white" towel, just that "she had stated to me that he had come out in a towel." Dawn indicated that Teresa "laughed and just said kind of, ewww, you know." There is no record or testimony from anyone in 2005-2007, including Dawn, that Teresa ever said she didn't want to return to Avery's property. Teresa also never said what specific date that incident occurred on.
(TT 2007-02-13 Page 60-63)

That same afternoon, witnesses smelled burning plastic and saw fire coming from the burn barrel in front of Avery's house.
Again, the only witness to the burning plastic smell at Avery's is Robert F., the same lone witness who said Avery claimed Teresa never showed up and that Bobby or Bryan were standing with Avery that day--but who admittedly may have not been there at all on 10/31.
(CASO Page 320.)

CHAPTER 4 - THE PERPETRATOR

Steven doused the cat in gas and oil before the stricken animal was thrown onto the fire. It jumped off and ran around the yard, still ablaze, until Avery caught the cat, applied additional fuel, and threw it back on.
The criminal complaint states that Jerry Y., along with Steven Avery, were both complicit in this crime. JY's written statement says that "I [JY] then threw it into the fire. the cat then jumped out of the fire and ran around until it ran out of power and died." Peter D., the other witness to the crime, wrote a statement that "They got the cat. Steve pored[sic] gas and oil on it. Jerry threw the cat into the fire. It burned up." There is no documented reference in the criminal complaint or written statements by either parties to substantiate the claim that the cat was chased down and doused again after jumping from the fire, then thrown back into it.
(Animal Cruelty Judgement of Conviction, Motion to Allow the Introdcuction of Other Acts Evidence Pages 3-4.)

In September of 2004, after a 911 call, officers made contact with a very frightened Jodi Stachowski... In interviews with officers during the time Making a Murderer was being filmed, in 2005 and 2006, Jodi detailed other incidents—once, Avery choked her until she blacked out, and when she came to she was on the floor, Avery trying to drag her out the front door of the trailer.
Kratz describes the same choking/dragging incident as if two separate occasions in his book, but both clauses above are in reference to the same 2004 incident. This is the only domestic dispute with Jodi that involved police intervention. What isn't noted in Kratz's book about this specific allegation (not to downplay or dismiss other allegations, but we have no formal reports for those to go by) is the officers' remarks: "It should be noted that there was no physical evidence to support JODI'S claim that she was physically assaulted by AVERY. There were no marks around her neck which would have supported the choking claim. There also was no type of redness or markings where JODI claims she was struck by AVERY. JODI showed these areas to myself and Chief Gilbert; however, nothing was observed. JODI also was not willing to complete any type of paperwork associated with the DV incident. It should be noted that JODI did admit that she had been consuming alcohol this evening. A distinct odor of intoxicants was detected on her breath."
(MTSO 2004 Domestic Violence Report Page 4.)

At about 9 pm, Jodi calls again. Steven, by that time, is preoccupied. In the background, a police scanner chirps, undoubtedly to warn Avery in case Teresa is reported missing and police begin a search for the photographer.
Note that the Avery family also used police scanners as part of their job to listen for wrecks for towing.

In fact, Avery not only doesn't mention the fire, he denies even having a "burn pit," and then eventually allows that he has one, but that nothing had been burned in it for two weeks.
Avery never denied having a burn pit. While this is erroneously written in the supplemental summary, in the actual interview Avery and O'Neill are conversing about the junkyard pit where garbage gets dumped. Avery says they don't burn anything down there and had no burning pit "in the pit." When asked immediately afterward if they have any in the residential area Steven says "yeah, we got ours, burning barrels and that."
(Marinette County Interview with Steven Avery 2005-11-06)

The rape was initially reported to authorities by the girl's mother; the girl herself only agreed to cooperate with prosecutors after Avery was safely locked up for the Halbach murder the following fall.
To clarify, Calumet County investigators had interviewed both the accuser and her family in 2004 and subsequently declared the allegation "unfounded." Zakowski (the presiding lawyer in 2006) said that these allegations were handled appropriately in 2004.


CHAPTER 6 - THE KEY


In truth, the key was found during the first complete and thorough search of Avery's bedroom.
Kratz considers the four person November 5th search of the trailer to be incomplete due to officer fatigue. He goes further to indicate that wasn't a search at all (despite the nature of the search warrant executed and items seized). The trailer search lasted from 7:30-10:05 p.m. Not mentioned in Kratz's book is that it was also during this search that Colborn did first go through the bookshelf in the bedroom, whereby he located and seized the handcuffs and leg irons among other items from it.
(CASO Page 95-98)

"CULLHANE:...If you have someone who's a good shedder, and sheds a lot of DNA, when they touch something, a lot of studies show that--the last person is going to be the DNA you pick up."
This didn't stop Making a Murderer from showcasing the defense theory—that only Steve's DNA appearing on the key was suspicious—without including the explanation from Ms. Culhane.
Immediately following the excerpted portion in Kratz's book, Culhane agrees there was "not a lot of DNA" on the key (clashing with the theory that Avery may've shed 'a lot of DNA' to mask all others) and she previously agreed the amount is consistent with what could be transferred by rubbing personal items like a toothbrush onto it.
Culhane then also agrees with a research paper's passage: "Although case experience has found that the handled object bears the profile of the most recent handler, many more mixed profiles will be recovered if commonly handled objects are examined, doorknobs, handles, light switches, ignition switches, and doorbells have all yielded DNA profiles," and acknowledges this to be true in many of the cases, though not all.
(TT 2007-02-26 Page 102+)

Chapter 7 - The Bones

Of course, if you've ever spoken to a scientist, you know they aren't in the habit of making definite pronouncements, but Dr. Eisenberg regarded it as "extremely unlikely" that the primary burn site had been anywhere but the burn pit behind Avery's garage.
Immediately following Eisenberg's claim of it being "highly unlikely" that the burn pit was not the primary burn location, she does acknowledge that "I really don't know [one way or the other]," contingent on whether or not the transport mechanism would've done more damage to the bone fragments than the shoveling, sifting and transporting to Madison. Eisenberg later confirms that she "cannot reasonably rule out another possible burn site...based on the information I have at hand." Eisenberg had never been on site to exam the bones in situ.
(TT 2007-03-01 Page 35+)


Chapter 8 - The Bullet


...officers jackhammered chunks of concrete out of its floor, looking for blood that might have soaked through the cracks... Analysts did follow-up tests to more precisely identify the substance as human blood, but in this case those tests came back inconclusive. No expert would be willing to testify that blood was present in Avery's garage in great quantities.
There is nothing "inconclusive" about the lack of Teresa's blood or non-blood DNA on any of the tested substances, which included many fragmented pieces of concrete broken up and other stains/swabs taken from the garage. Culhane testified that of the nearly three pages of swabs relating to the garage floor stains including areas discovered from luminol/phenylthalein, she was unable to find Teresa's DNA on any of them but did find Avery's.
(TT 2007-02-26 Page 111+)


Chapter 9 - The Accomplice


She'd also asked the counselor whether blood could "come up through concrete." Crucially, Kayla made these statements before investigators regarded the garage as a crime scene.
The statement of blood coming up through concrete was never attributed to Brendan. Even when Kayla is interviewed on 3/7 and gives her statement of what Brendan allegedly said to her about Teresa for the very first time, she attributes the concrete blood story to her father, not to Brendan. "We questioned Kayla as to her statements to the counselors about blood coming out of the garage floor. Kayla stated she had heard this from her dad, that her dad had possibly seen blood coming out of the floor. Kayla also stated her dad had mentioned seeing blood on the [emergency release] for the garage door."
At no point up until March 7 (five days after Kratz's press conference and widespread media coverage of Brendan's confession) did Kayla ever mention to investigators or counselors any specific claims Brendan allegedly made to her about Teresa, including when she previously spoke to them on 2/20.
(CASO Page 435, 693)

About ten minutes in, Brendan surprised Fassbender and Wiegert. He told them he'd seen a "dark reddish liquid" on his uncle's garage floor, as well as a bag of what he thought were Teresa's clothes. Steven Avery, Brendan said, had asked him to help clean the garage floor with bleach and paint thinner.
Here, Ken Kratz falsely attributes the claim of the dark red clean-up job as being surprisingly revealed right away during the very first 2/27 interview at the high school. In reality, the first mention of any dark red area being cleaned up was in the unrecorded Fox Hills interrogation at 10:50 p.m. that evening, the third such interview of the day. Fassbender acknowledges on the stand that Brendan thought it was motor oil until Fassbender himself suggested it may have been blood.
(TT 2007-04-16 Page 194)

And when he admitted seeing "toes" and "other body parts" in the fire on October 31st, Brendan Dassey morphed from just another wayward young person on the property to the most critical witness against Steven Avery.
Brendan only claims to have seen toes after being pressed with prompting such as "You know we found some flesh in that fire too. We know you saw some flesh... I know you saw it... You saw some body parts..." The "other body parts" Kratz referenced actually evolved from just toes, all the way up to seeing her forehead, stomach and beyond.
(2006-02-27 Mishicot High School Interview Page 451+)

To shield Barb and her children from intimidation, officers invited the Janda family to stay at a local resort, Fox Hills, many miles away from the Avery compound in Mishicot.
Kratz makes no mention here of the unrecorded interview sessions that took place at Fox Hills that evening including by Fassbender and Tyson. The family was also released back into the wild and to the Avery compound the very next morning, without any further concern over protecting them. Wiegert acknowledged that a key reason they put them there was to protect the integrity of the investigation from any tainting, and Tyson added that they were secured there "until interviews could be completed by the investigators."
(TT 2007-04-20 Page 9-10; CASO Page 513.)

On May 13th, 2006, in a videotaped interview lasting about two hours, Brendan told a slightly different story than he provided on March 1st, one I believe corresponds more closely to the architecture of what happened on the Avery property that fateful Halloween.
This is the same May 13th interrogation that Kratz had previously called a "fiasco." It was an interrogation led by O'Kelly after convincing Brendan to re-confess on May 12th. Kratz, Fassbender, Wiegert and O'Kelly had hoped to get a pristine narrative start-to-finish to use against Avery as well, unlike the sporadic 3/1 confession, but that did not happen.
(PCH 2010-01-15 Page 97)

He describes the horrible smell of a burning body—a smell that those unfortunate enough to experience can tell you they will never forget.
Brendan's entirely vivid description of this unforgettable stench actually amounts to simply saying it smelled "real bad." When Brendan as asked if he smelled anything unusual in the fire on 2/27, he said twice that he had not.
(2006-02-27 Mishocot High School Interview Page 444, 452)

Without Brendan's statement as to where the murder occurred, the police would never have gotten a search warrant and found that bullet.
Brendan did nothing to lead them to where the murder occurred until they led him themselves. Brendan first claimed they took her outside of the garage and shot her on the side of it. More suggestive remarks from Fassbender follow including "We need to get the accuracy about the garage and stuff like that and the car... we know that some things happened in that garage, and in that car, we know that" whereby Brendan then says she was shot inside of her car in the garage. "Ah huh, come on, now where was she shot? Be honest here. The truth..." Only finally after they discuss finding a number of shell casings in the garage and he says she was on the floor when shot, do they say they believe him.
(2006-03-01 Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department Interview)

Brendan provided an explanation for how the victim's blood got into the rear cargo area of her Toyota RAV4. After Steven Avery shot Teresa Halbach in the garage, he and Brendan wrapped her in bedding and tossed her in the back of her own SUV while they thought about how to dispose of Teresa's body.
At no point in any one of Brendan's interrogations does he ever suggest they wrapped her in bedding after shooting her on the garage floor. The closest to this would be on 3/1 when Brendan said he had just gotten to Avery's and saw Teresa's RAV4 backed into the garage with her already in the back of it "with like a small blanket over her" after Avery had stabbed her to death.
Even that claim by Brendan rescinded almost immediately as Brendan also claimed to have seen her head, her body, her feet, clothing, rope around body etc. Wiegert says "So she was not covered up? (Brendan shakes head 'no') No. I didn't think so. We already knew that. (Brendan nods 'yes')."
(2006-03-01 Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department Interview)

But that wasn't all. Brendan also told investigators that Uncle Steven reached under the Toyota RAV4 hood, which officers believed was to unhook the battery.
Brendan merely replied "yeah" after Fassbender asked "Did he go and look at the engine, did he raise the hood at all or anything like that?" This prompting came after Brendan instead suggested that Avery *left the gun in the car when they asked what else he did with the car, followed by "I don't know." At other points in other interviews he claimed Avery left the knife in the car.
(2006-03-01 Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department Interview Page 78)

Sergeant Bill Tyson, making damn sure to first put on fresh latex gloves, swabbed the hood latch of the SUV after it was returned to Calumet County from the crime lab in April 2006.
The controversy and theory of latent print transfer comes not from Tyson, but rather from Stahlke who is the one who first opened the hood and admitted he hadn't changed his gloves immediately prior to that.
(TT 2007-02-27 Page 31+)


Chapter 10 - The Decision


As an example [of resisting suggestions], when Wiegert wondered if Brendan fired the gun at Teresa, he replied, "No—I could never shoot her,"
Not only does Brendan change up how many times Teresa was shot and where (ranging from two to 10 after they reminded him of all the shell casings they found), but at different points Brendan also seems to directly convey that he shot her as well. "How many times do you shoot her Brendan? (Twice.)" ... "Cuz I couldn't shoot no more." Fassbender even acknowledges this during the 5/13 interview: "The first time you told us ah 10 times, about 10 times, that you shot her. And you told us where he shot her. Were you lying then or are you lying now? (I was lying then.)"

And Fassbender was honestly indicating that from what he had seen and heard up to that point, he thought Dassey would be "OK," that he'd never graduate from witness to suspect.
While the actual arguments of voluntariness and promises of leniency are obviously much more complex (both in Duffin's ruling and in the State's Appeal), Fassbender and Wiegert do use the specific passage "it's OK" no less than 16 times in the 3/1 interrogation. They use it at all different times through the confession, well after he transgressed from witness to suspect. He is being told it's OK all the way through them placing Teresa onto the creeper and tossing her into the fire.
(2006-03-01 Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department Interview)

I often wonder how Brendan feels now about the advice furnished by his loved ones...he will have lost many years of his young adult life as a result of being talked, by members of his own family, into decisions that were not in his best interest.
Contrary to popular belief that Barb demanded Brendan not accept any plea deal in the interest of protecting Steven Avery, Barb's stance to Brendan in spring of 2006 was more-so that "if you did it, take the plea bargain. If not, don't."
(PCH 2010-01-22 Page 168.)


Chapter 14 - The Aftermath


Avery said as much to fellow inmate Jessey W., and even showed JW drawings of the "torture chamber" he intended to construct—his prison sidekick assisted with the artwork.
Just want to note that JW clinically suffers from "an organic brain dysfunction, an antisocial personality disorder, and delusions" among other serious mental disorders. (Wisconsin Court of Appeals)

Avery has given at least nine different stories of his contact with Teresa on that day, not counting conflicting versions he's given to reporters.
Here, Kratz presents a table of dates and times and what Avery says about his contact with Teresa as "inconsistent accounts."
The first is the claim made only by Robert F. that Avery said she hadn't shown up yet. This is the same interview that RF erroneously claims an older Dassey boy (Bobby or Bryan) was by Avery's truck after 5 and where Earl's wife states it was on a different day entirely.
The second so-called inconsistency is merely that Kratz believes Avery should had mentioned to Jodi on the phone that evening that Teresa was over that day, but he didn't.
The next two relate to the uncorroborated hearsay claims that Avery called Auto Trader on 11/3 to claim Teresa never showed up and that Scott had called him and he was mad. No phone record from Avery was presented in court to corroborate either of these claims. Scott B. never testified to this in court. Dawn never mentioned it in any interview or testimony.
The final five are the only documented first-hand accounts of what Avery claimed happened, starting with Colborn's visit in the evening of 11/3. Each of these accounts seems quite consistent to me, even in Kratz's provided summaries. Teresa arrived at 2-2:30, took photographs, gave him an Auto Trader magazine and left in about five minutes.
Kratz alludes to more inconsistencies by Avery when he spoke to the media, but does not include any examples. The media interviews I recall listening to were not notably inconsistent from what he told authorities.


"I'm the person who probably knows more about [Steven Avery's] case than anyone else." -Ken Kratz