Recent weeks have seen developments to the case of Steven Avery, the subject of Netflix’s Making A Murderer.
The show investigated the conviction of the relatives in relation to the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach.
As Rolling Stone report, Avery’s attorney Kathleen Zellner recently filed documents that implicated Bobby Dassey – older brother to Brendan Dassey. The 54-page supplement focused on evidence that Bobby gave a false testimony – his testimony was the case’s key to suggesting that Halbach never left the Avery property despite a signed affidavit from Bryan Dassey that stated that he saw Halbach leaving the property.
Zellner’s new documentation, however, also alleges to the Dassey family’s computer hard drive which contained images of Halbach as well as “many images of violent pornography involving young females being raped and tortured” – which were reportedly accessed when Brendan Dassey was at school and Bobby Dassey was residing at home – Zellner believes this illustrates a gap in the case for Avery’s conviction.
“There is a paragraph in a police report from 2006 describing what we were able to find with more clarity,” Zellner says: “[Avery trial attorneys Dean] Strang and [Jerry] Buting received the reports on this violent porn about 7-10 days before trial.”
“Clearly, they should have investigated, gotten a forensic expert and pinned it to when only Bobby was home. But the State had no real interest in outing Bobby’s perversions and obsession with dead female bodies – after all, they didn’t want the jury to see their star witness was a developing sexual psychopath.”
Brad Dassey (Brendan and Bobby’s half-brother) revealed in a new affidavit that Barbara (Steven Avery’s sister) had attempted to wipe the hard-drive of the computer to remove this violent content. Barbara Avery (now Tadych) and Bobby Dassey are each other’s alibis which makes the the documented audio file and transcript in Zellner’s latest filing implicating.
The phone call transcription, according to Zellner, proves that Barbara and her husband Scott Tadych admitted that Halbach did leave the property, that Bobby was the only one home when the violent material was accessed and that the call demonstrates that Tadych “has violent, homicidal propensities manifested by his uncontrollable temper.”
Zellner told Rolling Stone: “The phone call captures the great tragedy of Steven’s life. The people who should be helping him want him to shut up and quietly accept that he will die in prison.”
“I ask myself what would motivate Tadych and Bobby to be such obstructionists and I have reached the inevitable conclusion, as our court filings state, that they were involved in the crime and Barb, was and is involved, even unwittingly, in its coverup”.
Late last year, following controversy surrounding the nature of Dassey’s confession being coerced, Brendan Dassey has had his conviction for murder upheld by a federal appeals court in Chicago. the court ruled by four to three that Dassey’s confession was not coerced, as Rolling Stone reports. “The state courts’ finding that Dassey’s confession was voluntary was not beyond fair debate, but we conclude it was reasonable,” read the court’s decision.
The ruling means Dassey will continue to serve the life sentence originally handed to him. However, his attorneys Laura Nirider and Robert Drizin have vowed to take his case to the US Supreme Court.
A second series of Making A Murderer has been confirmed by Netflix. However, no release date for the new episodes, which will follow Dassey and Avery’s fight to have their convictions overturned, has been confirmed at present.