I am a staunch supporter of Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery and have been almost from the very minute that Teresa Halbach was reported missing.
For ten years I floundered. I knew nothing, but what I believed in my heart: that Steven Avery and his nephew had been framed. The documentary Making A Murderer premiered in December of 2015. The clips of Brendan Dassey’s interviews were like a punch in the gut. The documentary confirmed my intuition all along.
Shortly after I discovered an Internet message board and found that there were others as troubled as I was by the “evidence”, by Brendan Dassey’s horrific interviews, by the behavior of the prosecution.
I devoured every document available to the public. I was overwhelmed by the shoddy investigation of the case, by the lack of real evidence and by the questionable testimony of so many.
I moved far beyond the documentary. For those seeking the truth, the documentary is irrelevant.
Except …
This past week, on the coattails of the recent sexual allegations against many public figures, a group of people who’ve attached themselves to the case have started a petition at Change.org. They are trying to shame Netflix into removing the original “Making A Murderer” from their line-up and halting production on the expected “Making A Murderer 2” on a morals basis.
These people claim that Avery has a long history of abusing women (never charged), was accused of raping his niece (never charged) and Brendan’s “confession” (deemed coerced by three out of seven Federal judges). They go on to throw in various convictions of Avery’s brothers (irrelevant).
Where were the people that started the petition when “Making A Murderer” premiered? Where was their outrage for Teresa Halbach and her family then?
Never mind any of that, NONE of that is their real reason.
The people who started this petition will try to convince you that you were fooled by “Making A Murderer” and you should be angry. They are creating their OWN emotionally driven narrative in order to draw the public’s eye from the facts. The claim that “Making A Murderer” was edited to show Avery as innocent is bullshit. The prosecution chose not to co-operate and went as far as accusing the filmmakers of working for Avery’s defense and tried to have all of their footage seized. There was no deceitful editing in the documentary, only editing to cut what they had into a sellable product.
Avery and Dassey’s convictions were based on a mountain of circumstantial evidence and the coerced confession of a 16 year old kid. Every bit of alleged evidence that the State of Wisconsin has released is surrounded by suspicion. The State refuses to release key pieces of evidence that could prove Avery and Dassey’s guilt. Or innocence.
Steven Avery’s lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, one of the top ten trial attorneys in the United States, has sworn to free Steven Avery and the people who put him and Brendan Dassey in jail are scared.
And they should be. They should also be ashamed for the piss-poor investigation into Teresa Halbach’s death and the wrongful conviction of two men.
Go ahead and sign that petition. The petition that never refers to the victim and only mentions Teresa Halbach’s name ONCE at the very end.
Go on and sign it if you believe in their guilt. But don’t sign it because someone you don’t even know told you it would be the right thing to do. As an aside, having that documentary banned from the air will open the door to having a lot of movies and television shows for their subject manner. I’m also against censorship.