Making up my Mind on Making a Murderer

Fun Fact: I am a libra. While I don’t really follow the signs of the Zodiac, there is one trait about me that I feel is in my Libra nature and that is an intolerance to injustice.  The sign of a libra is actually the Justice scale.  As a child, I hated seeing people unfairly picked on and would stick up for them, I would always know if someone (*cough* younger brother *cough*) was given special treatment or given more than I was and I hated to see people get away with things without punishment.  As an adult, all of these traits are satisfied in one activity: watching True Crime television shows.

I L O V E true crime.  Not Crime Shows.  There is a difference.  I don’t watch CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Law and Order (even SVU!) or any of that crap.  I have no interest in wrapping up a storyline with a nice bow in 30-60 minutes.  I like the REAL stuff.  I’m talking 48 Hours and Dateline, sometimes 20/20 when they cut back on the cheesy graphics.  These shows are what my weekends are built around.  I actually paid for the 48 Hours app on my iPad so I could have unlimited access to all of the episodes.  I’m still waiting for Dateline to have that option.  There is just something so soothing about Keith Morrison’s narration (and something so grating about Josh Mankiewicz AM I RIGHT, YOU GUYS??) My husband has grown so tolerant of this hobby and has actually stopped rolling his eyes when a double feature comes on.  “TWO STRAIGHT HOURS OF CRIME, BABY!” I’ll say, as I reach for the high five.  Sometimes, I’ll get a treat and one will be a double murder.  “Two Hours, Three Murders!  LETS DO THIS!” What can I say? I’m approaching my mid-thirties and this is how I get my kicks.

Recently, my True Crime itch has been greatly satisfied with podcasts like Serial and HBO specials like The Jinx.  As these shows became immensely popular, I didn’t feel so alone in my love of True Crime.  If you weren’t watching or listening to these shows, YOU were the outsider, not me!  As I wrapped up the Jinx and forgave Sarah Koenig for not doing another murder story for season 2 of Serial, I started to get impatient for my next fix.  Then, the Gods smiled upon me and presented one of the best docu-series I have ever seen: Making a Murderer.

First of all, if you have not watched this show, do NOT read any further.  I am going to spoil the shit out of this show.  Second, if you did watch this show and loved it as much as I did, you might want to brace yourself, because I am going to spoil this show for you in a whole different way.  I have thought about it a lot and I finally feel confident to say this:  Steven Avery is a guilty man.

Just let that sink in for a second.  

Before we get into specifics, I do want to say that I am a HUGE fan of this series.  I finished it in 2.5 days.  Not weekend days either.  Work week days.  And I have a toddler.  And I am a solo parent who is pregnant and tired all the time.  I made sacrifices to finish as soon as I could because I could not. get. enough.  I was racing toward the finish line with one eye closed because I knew in my heart that this man would be convicted and that his idiot nephew would also be convicted and that there would be no resolution, but I had to watch it.  I’ve never felt so many emotions watching a story like this.  I was yelling at the TV at points.  My heart would sink in certain moments, like seeing the tiny hole in the blood vile or seeing those god awful interrogations with Brendan Dassey.  I had dreams about it and couldn’t wait for other people to finish it so we could discuss everything and, of course, come up with a plan to save the Averys! 

That’s actually one of the stages of grief when watching this show.  Stage 1: Disbelief.  Stage 2: Anger.  Stage 3: Denial (no WAY did he do it!) Stage 4: Depression.  Stage 5: Vengeance.  I scoured the internet to see if there was something, ANYTHING, that the defense team could have missed.  I looked at updates on the trial, found reddit threads and subthreads, tried to find information on Teresa’s ex boyfriend or even brother (Does anyone else think its weird that she NEVER mentions her brother?  On that creepy video, she says “I love my life, my parents, my sisters” but never mentions a brother AND her voicemail password that her suspicious ex boyfriend magically decoded was all about her sisters birthdays.  Were her and her brother even close!?!) I looked up anything I could to try to satisfy my mind that he could not have possibly murdered her and that he was set up by the police.  After all my digging and reading counter-articles, I came to a bleak conclusion.  He did it, guys.  He really did it.

Here is how I came to this conclusion.  I try to make it a point not to always drink the Kool-aid, no matter how delicious it is, and Making a Murderer is some deeee-lish Kool-aid.  You have to remember that the POV is entirely from the defense so our Hero of this story is naturally going to be the defendant.  But there is a reason that 7 jurors changed their initial vote from Not Guilty to Guilty and thats because of the evidence that the prosecution presented; evidence that the viewing audience of MaM did not see.  

There are a lot of sites that are now up that go over this evidence, but this one is pretty detailed (http://onmilwaukee.com/movies/articles/evidenceagainstavery.html)

The big take-aways for me are in the fact that he not only requested Teresa to come to his house that day, but he had called her multiple times before she arrived using *67 to conceal his phone number.  She had also reported to her boss that he made her uncomfortable and that once, he answered the door wearing just a towel.  This was not just a chance meeting of 2 people.  He made sure that she would be the one that took the photographs and that he was at home to help her do it.  Secondly, although the DNA evidence in her car is questionable, they didn’t just find his blood.  They also found his sweat DNA in the car and under the hood.  Now, I was all about the idea that the police planted his blood (which they had access too) but his sweat? That’s harder to do.  Finally, there is the idea of the police moving the remains onto the Avery property.  Wouldn’t have it been easier to discover the body in the original burn pit and THEN plant Steven’s evidence around it?  Think about the logistics behind moving a pit of ashes from one location to another.  Little drops of blood would be easy to do discretely, but transferring an entire burn pit of stuff?  Then just hoping there would be a fresh burn pit at the Averys residence? Not to mention, if you were going to transfer it, wouldn’t it be easy to just put it in a barrel and move the barrel?  How would no one else see an officer bring a trash bag full of ashes to the site and pour it into a pit.  

In order to accept that Steven actually did kill her, I had to accept 3 things.  1) He obviously did not slash her throat or stab her.  The blood evidence is just not there to support that theory and there would have been a lot more to clean up in his room if he did that.   Even if he killed her in the garage, they couldn’t even find have one drop of blood.  2) Brendan had nothing to do with this crime.  The police definitely used his low IQ and lack of reasoning skills against him in order to strengthen their case against Steven.  They were able to not only get a confession from him, but one that was so horrific that it added kidnapping and sexual assault to the crime, which would only improve their odds of winning at trial.  Which leads me to  3) The police definitely planted some evidence to strengthen their case and seal the deal.  It’s obvious how much distain they have toward the Avery family and they certainly had access to do it.  But, even though they planted evidence to insure a conviction, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t do it.  Maybe it was an accident.  Maybe he did sexually assault her and accidentally killed her.  Who knows.  But he did it.  Because who else did?  Is he really that unlucky?  He has as bon fire the same night as a woman goes missing and her remains are found to be burned?  And maybe you concede that she was killed and burned elsewhere, but what a lucky break is that for the cops.  Oh, we found a body and it was burned AND Steven can’t refute that he had a bonfire that same night.  Score!  Let’s just move it to his house!  C’mon.  These are small time cops.  Sure, they have a proven history of concealing evidence to get a conviction, but finding out that someone is going to be at Steven’s house, killing her and planting evidence at his house is another level of conspiracy.  

In the end, I have to take the same standpoint as Sarah Koenig did at the end of Serial.  Did he do it?  Probably.  But if I’m on the jury, I have to acquit.  The evidence that the state presented did not match up to their own timeline of events and I feel the defense did a good job at creating reasonable doubt.  So why did they convict him?  Because the defense did TOO good of a job creating reasonable doubt.  If you can believe that the police officers, the same ones who wrongfully convicted and imprisoned a man for 18 years when they KNEW he didn’t do it, set him up again to be framed for murder, how are you going to feel acquitting him?  Would you be a little afraid of being a citizen in that town where everyone knows your name?  Would you want to be pulled over by those police officers a few months later after you essentially said that they were corrupt?  Look at the jurors from Casey Anthonys trial.  They are STILL hated by people who think she did it.  The nation thought they got it wrong and were out for blood, which is why most of them have still concealed their identities.  But the jurors in this case?  The police officers know exactly who they are!  There is no escaping them once the trial is over.  So, the 3 hold outs probably used that logic to sway the rest of the jury.  

At the end of the day, Making a Murderer is about the injustices in the justice system.  His lawyer summed it up perfectly: The Accused Lose.  It’s so hard to overcome an indictment, let alone a conviction.  Which is why I want to state publicly, for the record, if I EVER become a person of interest for a crime, I am not talking to the police without a lawyer because THOSE ARE MY RIGHTS!  It’s not because I refuse to cooperate or because I am hiding something, but for me, this is where innocent people take the fall.  AND I’M NOT GOING DOWN FOR THIS! 

Whatever THIS is, they better make a Dateline episode about it.  Call me, Keith Morrison!