{"id":83007,"date":"2015-12-22T20:57:23","date_gmt":"2015-12-23T04:57:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83007"},"modified":"2015-12-22T20:57:23","modified_gmt":"2015-12-23T04:57:23","slug":"making-a-murderer-netflix-outshines-the-jinx-with-stunning-true-crime-saga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83007","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Making a Murderer\u2019: Netflix Outshines \u2018The Jinx\u2019 With Stunning True-Crime Saga"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Daily Beast<\/a>: Miscarriages of justice don\u2019t come much more outrageous than the case of Steven Avery, a resident of Wisconsin\u2019s rural Manitowoc County, who in 1985, at the age of 22 was arrested, tried, and convicted of raping Penny Ann Beernsten along the shores of Lake Michigan. Though no direct evidence tied him to the crime, Avery was found guilty thanks in large part to a series of unfavorable dynamics: He was uneducated and working-class while Beernsten was well-to-do. A disgruntled relative\u2019s relationship with law enforcement officers furthered the idea that he was an ideal suspect; and a police sketch of Beernsten\u2019s attacker was created based on a prior mug shot of Avery\u2014which, naturally, helped compel Beernsten to finger Avery as her assailant.<\/p>\n

With the help of Wisconsin\u2019s Innocence Project, and on the basis of new DNA tests that definitively proved another man\u2019s guilt, Avery was freed after serving 18 years in prison. And yet that amazing story of misconduct, incompetence, and coercion is merely the first-episode prologue to Netflix\u2019s Making a Murderer, which spends its remaining nine hour-long installments digging into the true tragedy that would subsequently befall its subject.<\/p>\n

Though providing a superb true-crime bookend to a year that began with HBO\u2019s stunning The Jinx, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos\u2019s decade-in-the-making documentary series is more akin to the Sarah Koenig-hosted podcast Serial, in that it\u2019s concerned with a real-life conviction that raises far more questions than it answers. Or rather, convictions, as Beernsten\u2019s rape is the focus of only Making a Murderer\u2019s first jaw-dropping trial. In that instance, Avery had 16 alibis, none of which were enough to sway a jury that believed Beernsten\u2019s (erroneous) eyewitness account. Not helping matters was the fact that the jury ignored evidence that exonerated Avery, and was also denied access to other key details\u2014such as a local Manitowoc officer receiving a phone call from a nearby district which alleged that another convict in custody (the real rapist, as it turned out) had stated that the Manitowoc sheriff\u2019s department had an innocent man locked up.<\/p>\n

Such ineptitude is merely the appetizer for the real meat-and-potatoes indignation elicited by Avery\u2019s saga, which takes a horrible turn after he\u2019s finally released from prison and files a $36 million civil lawsuit against Manitowoc County. That complaint seems primed to cost the area an enormous sum. However, before depositions can be finished, a young Auto Trader photographer named Teresa Halbach visits the Avery family\u2019s 40-acre auto salvage yard on Oct. 31, 2005 to snap pictures of a van, and promptly disappears, with Steven as the last person to have seen her alive. Within days, he\u2019s fingered for her murder by Manitowoc County officers\u2014including the very ones implicated in his civil-lawsuit depositions weeks earlier\u2014who have taken control of Halbach\u2019s murder investigation, even though they have a blatant conflict of interest with regards to Avery, and are supposed to be ceding the inquiry\u2019s lead to neighboring Calumet County officials.<\/p>\n

Making a Murderer
\nSteven Avery from the Netflix original documentary series “Making A Murderer”. (Netflix)
\nShortly thereafter, Halbach\u2019s missing SUV is found in the Avery salvage yard (with Avery\u2019s blood in it), the vehicle\u2019s key is located in Avery\u2019s bedroom, and her charred bones are discovered in a fire pit behind Avery\u2019s house. And if that weren\u2019t enough, Avery\u2019s 16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey, who has an IQ of 70 and reads at a 4th-grade level, tells police he helped Avery rape, stab, shoot, and dismember Halbach. It seems like an open-and-shut case, except that by thoroughly examining this story\u2019s every element, Making a Murderer makes plain that Avery has no motive and is far from the monster he\u2019s depicted as by Calumet County district attorney Ken Kratz. Rather, with a meticulousness that\u2019s exhaustive to the point of exhausting, it contends that Avery\u2014as he argued in his eventual courtroom defense\u2014was the victim of an evidence-planting, witness-tampering frame job perpetrated by a police force, and local government, eager to prevent him from censuring them through wrongful-imprisonment litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Daily Beast: Miscarriages of justice don\u2019t come much more outrageous than the case of Steven Avery, a resident of Wisconsin\u2019s rural Manitowoc County, who in 1985, at the age of 22 was arrested, tried, and convicted of raping Penny … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t