I take injectable medications and when I withdraw some from a reusable vial, the rubber (or whatever it is) seal does “heal” completely (at least to the visible eye) when I pull the needle out of it, so it is possible for a puncture to heal. But blood vials are pushed onto a relatively (compared to a needle) large diameter tube that is blunt rather than sharp.
It was a strange call. But I can easily envision Colburn snooping around on the Avery property, seeing the car and calling it in, realizing that he didn’t have a warrant, and tipping off the search party in the morning.
All of which is certainly improper, but falls quite a bit short of actually planting evidence.
It depends on what the full scenario for the conspiracy is. Until someone puts forth a reasonable, consistent, and full explanation of how Teresa was killed and how Avery was framed we can’t discuss it.
I’m pretty sure the defense was not arguing that Steven did it and the cops planted additional evidence to ensure a conviction. That would be a pretty dumb thing to argue on behalf of your client.
That could be true, if the car had the license plate on it, which it didn’t when they “found” it. He called in a license plate number then confirmed the make and model. The license plate was found bent in another car.
My theory is she was found in the car, dead already on the 3rd. They found the car and moved it, along with her body. The car was placed on the edge of their property and the body burned elsewhere, and the bones later brought back. Their property was searched for 8 days, the key wasn’t found until the seventh, in plain sight, and not until those two Manitowoc PD’s were there, which is ludicrous.
So he took the plate off, and put it in another car, so if anyone asked, he could say “no, I was just trying to remember the plate number; the plates weren’t even on the car when they found it, couldn’t have been me!”
Even if it was found elsewhere and moved to the salvage yard, at some point they took the plate off (for some reason).
The defense said, per the documentary, that (paraphrased) “Cops don’t plant evidence to frame innocent men; which is to say, men that they think are innocent. They plant it to ensure a conviction of someone they already think is guilty.” Their defense wasn’t that Steven couldn’t have done it, but that the cops clearly targeted him from day 1 and it tainted their investigation. They didn’t investigate anyone else, and there’s lots of interesting leads that weren’t followed.
The defense was prohibited from putting forth an alternate theory for some reason, so we’ll never know exactly what they were thinking, but I don’t know that they would have even wanted to.
Let’s say that Scott Tadych and/or Bobby Dassey had some motive, opportunity, and/or history of violence that we don’t know about because the cops never investigate them. One or both of them intercept Halbach’s car some distance away from the Avery scrapyard and kill her. They throw the body in the trunk and drive her to the quarry to burn her body. They then ditch the car somewhere. That night, they realize that, much to their luck, Steven is burning some junk in his backyard, so at some point that night they shovel a bunch of the remains into a burn barrel and dump it in his fire pit, knowing full well that if the police are looking at Steven that will do wonders to take the heat off of them.
The search begins and immediately the police go after Steven, the person last known to have seen Teresa alive, and find bones in his fire pit. Frustratingly, though, they find no other evidence of foul play. No blood, none of Teresa’s belongings in or around Steven’s house. Just a coincidence and some bones. 2 days later Coburn finds the car, calls it in, and then quickly ends the call when he realizes what he’s got. He and Lenk conspire to move the car to the Avery yard, and to make damn sure it’s tied to Steven, plant some blood in it. They also take the key out of the car and plan to “conveniently” find it in Steven’s trailer. Unfortunately for them, it takes a couple days to get in there alone.
Months go by and the case appears to have stalled. There’s still nothing directly linking Steven to the murder – no murder weapon, no physical evidence in his trailer or the garage. There’s no further reason to conduct a search of the premises, so Coburn and Lenk can’t exactly plant more evidence. Fortunately, Fassbender decides to start leaning on witnesses, and Brendan’s confession gives them the excuse for a search that they need to plant more evidence, in this case the bullet that Lenk has previously acquired (based on the 22 rifle they already found in Avery’s trailer) and doctored up with Halbach’s DNA from the RAV4. Once the search begins, Lenk is on scene, and then shortly thereafter they somehow find a bullet that they missed prior, even though they had completely cleared out the garage and jackhammered up the floor the first time around. Now they have the entire crime tied to Steven.
Meanwhile, Scott Tadych and/or Bobby Dassey are breathing a huge sigh of relief.
That’s it, just 2 people and a desire to put Avery away because they’d already made up their minds.
I don’t know, I’m not an expert on blood vials. As I said, it’s not strong exculpatory evidence. Without more proof of that specific tampering it’s not a good thing to bring to trial. There was some reason to be suspicious, but the film makers may have over-emphasized the possibility of tampering based on the evidence available.
As I said before, the key is clear and convincing evidence of tampering. There cannot be a fair trial when the state has not undertaken a proper investigation of that crime related to the murder case. Every bit of state’s evidence becomes suspect at that point and remains so until objective evidence can prove otherwise.
I’m not disagreeing with you about the key (and some other things). I think there’s easily reasonable doubt regardless of the hole in that tube. I’m just not sure what to make of the defense putting that forth as evidence of tampering.
I can’t say for sure what happened with the key and the car, but I know for sure that that woman didn’t happen to find it on that entire estate of broken down cars because she was led by the holy spirit, which was what the prosecution claimed.
And I would believe it is more likely than not that the key was planted. C’mon. It happens to get found by people who are specifically banned from being on site due to conflict of interest after the room had been thoroughly searched multiple times?
Not to say that Avery didn’t kill her, but the evidence seems to indicate, at the very least, that the cops framed the evidence to try to ensure a conviction. And, if that’s the case, I still vote not guilty as a juror and try to sleep at night afterwards.
He didn’t get a great defense. I didn’t get that they had a good story to tell the jury. That may all have been a result of the limitations placed on him by the judge. So it looked to me like they trotted out all the evidence the judge allowed, whether it was a useful tactic or not, but they were denied the opportunity, or didn’t get job done in providing the evidence to tie everything together.
Also, introducing the evidence even though it’s not convincing may have been necessary to bring it up if there is a re-trial or appeal.
This is a pretty big hole in your theory. The car was found less than 36 hours after Halbach was reported missing. Beyond the simple short amount of time to find the car, get the blood, and plant the evidence, they would have no reason at this point to be concerned about a lack of evidence.
I also don’t think they had any bone evidence at this point either.
It also requires the other investigators to ignore the other suspects. Besides, I’m pretty sure they had reasonably good alibis.
On the contrary. Coercing Brendan in the way they did destroyed him as a witness. The documentary paints Brendan admitting to the rape as a boon for the prosecution, but it’s not. In a statement a few days before that admission, Brendan says Steven admitted to the crime and that he saw body parts in Steven’s burn pit:
Once they bullied him into admitting to a crime that clearly didn’t happen, they could no longer use Brendan’s damning testimony.
So again we come to another problem with conspiracy theories. They require the participants to be incredibly stupid sometimes and incredibly smart other times.
This is factually incorrect. Halbach disappeared on the 31st of Oct, the Coburn call about the plate was on 3 Nov, and the car was found on 5 Nov. The crime scene was well established by the 3rd.
Steven Tadych and Bobby Dassey used each other as an alibi, but the whole point of the defense was that yes, the cops ignored all other suspects. Scott Tadych may have had Halbach’s DNA in his car, but we’ll never know because nobody ever checked.
But they DID use it, just as a pretext to search Avery’s house and garage again. They just didn’t use it at trial because they didn’t find any evidence to support it.
eta: I’m not sure what you’re suggesting here. The case wasn’t as strong as they’d want it to be, so they leaned hard on some potential witnesses to see what they’d get. That isn’t smart or dumb, it’s standard practice. The fact that it gave them a reason to search the garage again worked out well for them; the fact that it was total bullshit did not. But the outcome doesn’t change their motivation, which was simply to lean on witnesses to get something. I don’t know what you find remarkable about that.
Also, I’m not suggesting that Fassbender was involved in the conspiracy. He didn’t have to be, there is no evidence of it, and it wouldn’t really make sense if he was. He was just doing his job at that point – interviewing witnesses – and something fortuitous came out of it for Coburn and Lenk, who were the only 2 conspirators.
You keep using the term “conspiracy theories” conflating this with nonsense like moon hoaxers and 9/11 truthers. The idea that police may try to frame someone isn’t on the same level as those. It’s just not.
Are you claiming that police conspiracies can never happen, that any police conspiracy would require them to be both stupid and smart at the same time? That makes no sense.
We know that they’ve occurred in the past and we know that police have framed people in the past. It happens. It’s not crazy to suspect it.
And it may not have even been a conspiracy. It could have been just one policeman.
She wasn’t reported missing until the afternoon of the 3rd. Without that report, the police have no indication of a potential crime.
Your statement is contradictory. How does determining an alibi equate to ignoring other suspects?
My point is that there’s no evidence for this competent wide ranging conspiracy to put the blame on Steven Avery. In fact, it’s the opposite. They botched it badly by coercing Brendan into admitting to an impossible crime.
But the point is that Fassbender’s interviewing witnesses did not bring out something fortuitous for Coburn and Lenk. Them pushing on Brendan nearly ruined their case.
Not really. At this point, the cops had more than enough evidence to convict Avery. Finding the bullet in the way they did makes the crime harder to explain, not easier. It’s obvious that she wasn’t shot inside the garage due to the physical evidence. Nor does her being shot in the garage match up with either of Brendan’s stories.
In general, I agree. In this specific case it’s just not even a remote possibility that the cops framed an innocent man.
(1) The blood wasn’t found in an evidence locker. It was found in an unsecured area of the county clerk’s office. (The documentary proves, if nothing else, that the county had shitty evidence handling.) As for “remembering” - half the state could have told you that the police had Avery’s blood. That’s how he was cleared after spending 18 years in prison. He was on TV with the governor! There’s nothing to “remember”. It had happened just a couple years prior and was a giant embarrassment for the department, to the point where they were investigated by the state for incompetence and / or corruption.
(2) Cops are often the first people to find evidence of missing persons. It’s literally part of their job.
(3) We probably disagree on the prior probability of a cop being willing to plant evidence to ensure the conviction of someone they believe to be guilty. I think the majority of cops wouldn’t do it, but nevertheless there are clearly many, many cases where it has happened. Granted, most of them are probably on the “plant a small bag of weed” end of the spectrum rather than the “move cremains and paint some blood” end. So I think you’re right that this one would require a bit of a coincidence, but I don’t think it’s terribly implausible.
(4) Given the layout of the salvage yard and the location where the car was found, this is actually the easiest part for me to believe. What do you believe makes this one improbable?
As for the rest, you’re reaching when you say Avery was attempting to conceal that he was the one requesting her. She knew she was going to the Avery property, on Avery road, which she had been to previously when taking photographs for Steven Avery. He had obviously spoken to someone at AutoTrader by phone, so they were aware that it was a man who was calling and making the request. He had presumably given them the name of his relative because it was her car that was going to be photographed.
And I’m honestly not sure what you mean by the rest. Do you think bonfires on a rural property - on Halloween - are unusual? Or that someone who works in a salvage yard would have a cut on his hand is odd? I’m not sure what this has to do with the possibility that he was framed.
Mea culpa, it looks like I buggered up the timeline. I thought she was reported missing on the 1st and Steven had allowed his house to be searched that day. Ends up they didn’t find the bones until the 8th, which completely invalidates my proposed motive for the frame-up. It would have had to be completely pre-meditated, which I’ll admit seems much less likely.
They were interviewed as witnesses and both said they were hunting (technically an alibi), but they were never considered as suspects.
I think that’s a fair point. However, the key was so badly planted that it also hurts the case, and yet I can’t help but feel that it was almost certainly planted. But now you’re going to say that I’m accusing the cops of being both nefarious and yet completely inept at the same time, and I see that.
Well, I still contend that the conspiracy need not involve more than 2 people, but I’ve got some reflecting to do. If anyone’s interested, this timeline on reddit seems pretty useful.
This was my take… I believed he was guilty of murder or manslaughter (not sure what transpired) but the manner in which the key and car were “found” suggested to me evidence of reasonable doubt with respect to validity of evidence…