This is the best theory I have seen yet. The gist of it is that Scott Tadych and Bobby Dassey murdered Halbach and planted her car and the bones and burnt items on the Avery property to frame Steven to deflect attention away from themselves. Then the MCSD basically ran their investigation under the certainty that Steven did it but dealing with very weak evidence that they decide to bolster given their financial exposure of Avery’s lawsuit.
The fact is that a lot of people had access to that property before and after Halbach’s disappearance and some of those people have pasts that should have warranted a more thorough investigation of others by a law enforcement department that did not have an obvious motive to see Steven Avery convicted of murder.
I’m still waiting to see a cogent theory of how Steven Avery did it that actually explains the evidence that exists as well as the expected evidence that is missing under the Brendan Dassey version.
I’m still waiting to see a cogent theory of how Steven Avery did it that actually explains the evidence that exists as well as the expected evidence that is missing under the Brendan Dassey version.[/QUOTE]
Brendan’s version was fiction. Avery did it but the evidence found was at least in part planted. That’s it right there. Far more credible than a conspiracy theory that starts with murdering an innocent woman.
How did Avery do it? Where did he do it? Why did he do it? What happened to the evidence of him doing it? Where is Halbach’s blood, other than the miniscule amount found in her car? Why was evidence planted and by whom? Why did Scott Tadych and Bobby Dassey lie in their testimony?
Is there a theory of Steven Avery’s guilt that better fits the facts of the case given the obvious fiction of Brendan Dassey’s account?
What conspiracy theory? That Scott Tadych and Bobby Dassey conspired to murder and cover up their acts? That’s hardly novel? Or that at least two deputies of Manitowoc county, who were previously involved in Steven Avery’s rape conviction/exoneration, acted to ensure a conviction of the guy they were convinced was guilty of both the rape he served 18 years in prison for and of the Halbach murder.
It’s extraordinarily weak on motive and ability. It requires Scott and Bobby to be super criminals. There is also the problem of how Coburn is going to find the car, get the blood, and plant it. And how Scott/Bobby are going to rely on the cops framing Avery and not leaving behind evidence that points to them. It just doesn’t make sense as a narrative.
Which Brendan Dassey version?
But anyways, a plausible scenario. Steven attacks Teresa outside and kills her. He drives the car to where it was found and drags Teresa’s body back to his house. Then he burns her in the barrel and fire pit. It’s short on details because the body is destroyed and there’s no witness to the crime.
There’s two things that are problematic:
(1) The bones in the quarry
The documentary doesn’t go into detail here and I haven’t been able to find much detail anywhere else. It seems like this was a burn area with a bunch of animal bones and a couple fragments that may have been from a human pelvis. The most logical explanation is that those fragments weren’t human and the burn pit has nothing to do with the crime.
(2) The bullet fragment in the garage.
Theres a couple possibilities I see:
[ul]
[li]Teresa was shot outside and the bullet traveled through her head and into the garage. Or perhaps a ricochet[/li]
[li]It was actually a contaminated test and the bullet is not related to the crime[/li][/ul]
My greatest problem with the entire case and sham of a trial was the composition of the jury:
Here is one article written recently which focuses on one of the jurors having been a volunteer for the Sheriff’s department. I found another article accidentally last night written in 2007 right after the jury selection (I can’t find it right now as Google searches are being overwhelmed with the keywords now.) talking about the jury composition. They highlight that the jury has the father of a Sheriff’s department employee and the spouse of an employee for the county clerk’s office. Found it! It is great because it showed the happy-go-lucky nature of the initial media response to the trial. They believed that there was nothing wrong with this jury- I’m curious how/why the defense team allowed such conflicts into the box.
My opinion starts below:
Remember how the defense attorney said that the first vote was only 3 for guilty, I think we found the 3. Three people with direct ties to the side with the most to gain from a guilty verdict.
That’s interesting. Add to that the anonymous juror who’s now claiming that the jurors feared for their safety if they hung the jury.
Think about it. If they believed that local law enforcement may have framed Avery, and there were people connected to local law enforcement sitting on the jury, then it’s easy to see why they would be afraid.
Two other details that just absolutely made me rage and just demonstrate that the prosecution, county, law enforcement, and the courts just didn’t get how far they were overstepping their bounds of decency/humility/law:
The judge during sentencing railing on about Steven’s crimes “escalation” and if we don’t lock you up now, they are just going to get worse. - His crimes were: 1. flaming a cat in 1981, 2. domestic altercation with Jody (which clearly had solved itself and Jody’s probation offense for smiling was further proof of what tremendous a$$holes the court and the law enforcement were), and 3. this murder. What escalation is he citing? Or is he actually citing the 18 years in prison for the non-assault and now the murder? The judge should have just restricted the sentencing and his words to the case at hand.
Given the extreme suspicion that Colburn has by the Averys, he is allowed to escort Brendan out of the courthouse and into the car for transport immediately after Brendan is found guilty. The same Colburn who waited 8 years to write a memo and then after 4+ months of investigation wrote only 1/2 page total in reports. He clearly didn’t want any trace of where he was or when (same with Lenk). But the insult to decency/humanity in allowing him to escort Brendan publicly to prison was just over the top for me.
I have zero qualms about stating my belief that the two cops were capable of the murder. They know full well that no one is this town is going to even bother to question them. Now do I think they did it? I am more doubtful only because of the coinicidences and advanced knowledge that would be required. But the phone call about the license plate number, the fact that “we knew that the key was evidence so we didn’t ‘tamper’ with it”, the lack of a coherent timeline for either’s activities, the entering the crime scenes always together and so many times, the immediate focus on Avery, the crime scene takeover for so many days. I think there is a much better evidence and case that Lenk and Colburn murdered her than Steven Avery.
He also burgled a bar. The “flaming” of a cat was pouring gasoline on cat, and throwing it (alive) in a fire. You’ve also conveniently left out the incident where he ran his cousin off the road and pointed a gun at her, for which he was, in fact, sentenced to six years in prison. Those six years were served concurrently with the 18 years he was in for the rape conviction (which means he really only served 12 years unjustly (not that that is still not terrible)).
Planted by the sheriff’s department to frame Avery.
To frame Avery.
Your theory is highly implausible involving many people in a conspiracy and requiring at least one person to commit murder simply to frame Avery. The most plausible explanation is that at least one person planted and otherwise tampered with evidence after the victim’s car was found. There was not enough evidence presented in the documentary, or elsewhere that I’ve seen, to determine exactly who killed that woman.
I’m extremely skeptical that the police murdered her. If the police were willing to commit murder in order to end the lawsuit, why not just murder Steven Avery rather than some innocent woman?
Either Avery did it and then the cops planted evidence to help the case along, or someone else did it, the cops thought it was Avery, and planted evidence (or the evidence was real, but that seems to be very questionable).
If you knew for a fact that any single piece of evidence in this trial was planted by police, but knew nothing else more than you know now, would you vote guilty or not guilty? (Not a gotcha, generally interested).
For me, if I know that the key, for example, is planted, and it seems very possible that it is based on the circumstances, I vote not guilty because it puts all other evidence into reasonable doubt.
I’m highly skeptical as well and don’t really think they did it; however, I do think that the cops have far more evidence against them than does Steven. The fact that the sheriff’s defense was that “it would have been easier to kill Steven Avery” shows that he considered that option.
Also ** fachverwirrt**, thank you for the clarification on that point about the threatening with the gun. It obviously wasn’t highlighted by the flimmakers and as such I didn’t even understand that the police had gotten involved.
It was a major plot point in the first episode. His cousin, who was married to a deputy, complained that Avery was exposing himself whenever he drove by. He got mad, and chased her down one day, ran her off the road, and pointed a gun at her head. It was given as a primary reason that the sheriff’s department honed in on him so singlemindedly during the rape investigation.
That’s exactly my feeling. I suppose if they also had something like video of Avery committing the murder then I’d find him guilty regardless of the attempt to frame, but other than something like that, one piece of planted evidence taints everything.
One thing to consider, if you believe that certain evidence was planted by the police, but that the defendant is guilty anyway, you may want to acquit him because of the bigger picture. That bigger picture being that we shouldn’t reward law enforcement when they plant evidence but instead should tell them that planted evidence may result in an acquittal when there may otherwise have been a conviction. That’s a controversial idea and I’m not sure whether or not I’d consider it if I was on a jury, but it’s something to think about.
To be fair, the gun was unloaded, (at least according to the documentary) so his intent was only to scare her. That doesn’t excuse his behavior but it does put it in perspective.
What about the phone calls serving as partial “alibis” ? These were barely mentioned in the film and not at all in the thread, but are a reason I think Avery was probably innocent.
(The calls seemed to get more attention in the Dassey trial than in the Avery trial.)
Those who think Avery was the murderer need to pick a single story. Was he a master criminal who knew how to clean up blood spatter? (None of the criminals on CSI have ever been able to.) Or was he a moron? Either way you have to admire his cool: During these phone conversations with Halbach waiting his attention in the next room mightn’t he have been tempted to say “Let’s talk tomorrow, honey, I’m frying an egg or something.”
And the “confession” by the nephew is very nearly enough for me to know that these officers were not interested in finding out what actually happened, and just interested in getting Avery by any means necessary. It’s a shame if he did, in fact, do it that they tainted the entire thing.
Still assault with a deadly weapon. As is running her car off the road with his.
The point is that his four convictions are: 1) Burglary; 2) Animal cruelty (setting a cat on fire; 3) “Endagering the safety of another person” (running her off the road and pointing a gun at her; and 4) Murder. In no world are those not “escalating in severity”.
Really? How so? Is the motive (jealousy) any weaker than Stevens motive (which is what? )
Also how is the narrative of this theory super impossible for Scott and Bobby to pull off given their access to the property, guns and lacking an alibi for the time period that anyone else, other than the two of them, can verify?
Colburn, knowing that Steven is the last person who attests to seeing her, does an illegal search of the property verifying the plates and description days before it is found by the searcher. Who says Colburn planted the blood? There is ample time for Lenk to do so after is found but before the investigators collect the evidence. Note his odd testimony that he first arrived at the salvage yard after he signed out without signing in. Also, law enforcement had that property secured for days after the vehicle was found in which MCSD personnel were all over it often without supervision.
It’s no secret that the MCSD were as single-minded in investigating and prosecuting Steven Avery–to the exclusion of all other evidence–for the Beersten rape. Further, it’s also no secret–it came out in depositions just before the murder-- that the MCSD still believed that Steven Avery was guilty of that rape. Is it really much of a stretch to expect the same when you’ve ensured that initial evidence you’ve placed points to the same guy?
Take your pick.
where andwhy? can you elaborate on this? What evidence supports this assumption?
Why would he put her in the car only to drag her all the way back to the burn pit and why burn her in the barrel? Why not just the pit?
What’s the likelihood of finding burnt bones in a place not all that far from two other piles of someone’s burnt bones that aren’t at all related. It’s odd and incredibly coincidental, i think.
[Quote]
(2) The bullet fragment in the garage.
Theres a couple possibilities I see:
[ul]
[li]Teresa was shot outside and the bullet traveled through her head and into the garage. Or perhaps a ricochet[/li][/Quote]
And yet there was no evidence of blood on the bullet–just a miniscule amount of DNA–nor evidence of damage to the garage from a bullet, no blood or DNA of Halbach anywhere around or in the garage, and it managed to land in a place that was overlooked by numerous investigators despite the presence of a number of shell casings in the garage area.
given sherry culhane’s testimony, I’d say this is likelier.