Making A Murderer (Netflix)

[Shane Wahl]

It's pretty alarming that the fact that Avery is apparently a bad guy is evidence for many here to ignore the desperate attempts by cops with a vendetta to frame him and trick a kid into a ridiculous confession--a confession that served to be real reason behind the convictions.

 

Again, see "Paradise Lost."

 

[Brock Beauchamp]

I wish this article went into a bit more detail but it's interesting none-the-less. A journalist covering the case from the early days forward gives a very different view of the case (and it aligns with my thoughts the documentary left out loads of evidence that didn't fit the narrative).

 

http://www.startribune.com/making-a-murderer-is-riveting-but-not-the-whole-story/365495011/

[Vanimal46]

 

I wish this article went into a bit more detail but it's interesting none-the-less. A journalist covering the case from the early days forward gives a very different view of the case (and it aligns with my thoughts the documentary left out loads of evidence that didn't fit the narrative).

 

http://www.startribune.com/making-a-murderer-is-riveting-but-not-the-whole-story/365495011/

Wish the guy would have went into ANY detail about presenting evidence that didn't fit the narrative, but he didn't. Like he wrote, he's just one of the few voices in the audience saying "There's more to the story!" Without presenting anything to prove his point. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

It's pretty alarming that the fact that Avery is apparently a bad guy is evidence for many here to ignore the desperate attempts by cops with a vendetta to frame him and trick a kid into a ridiculous confession--a confession that served to be real reason behind the convictions.

 

Again, see "Paradise Lost."

I don't think anyone is ignoring anything, we're just viewing the documentary's narrative with suspicion.

 

The cops may have framed Avery but man, that's a pretty far-fetched thing to believe, especially in regards to the car, the key, the bones, and everything else surrounding Avery and the girl.

 

What do the cops gain by this? Locking away a guy who is suing them? Why would they care that much? Anyone with a brain would realize the ****storm that would arise from a high profile case of this kind and the scrutiny it would bring to the department. Someone would have to be certifiably insane to even attempt a frame job.

 

I don't like the police in Manitowoc. I think some of them come across as pretty sleazy and possibly corrupt. But it's a long way from "sleazy" to "framing a guy who was falsely convicted of another crime because you don't like him."

 

It's possible, but... Occam's Razor applies here. There's so much downside for the police and so little upside I struggle to believe anyone would be that reckless with their career, freedom, and life.

 

I'll buy into intellectual laziness and institutional incompetence as real things displayed in the documentary but you're going to have a hell of a time convincing me the cops set up Avery from the get-go. It doesn't pass the smell test.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

Wish the guy would have went into ANY detail about presenting evidence that didn't fit the narrative, but he didn't. Like he wrote, he's just one of the few voices in the audience saying "There's more to the story!" Without presenting anything to prove his point. 

The guy probably didn't feel like writing a 10,000 word manifesto about the case when it's no longer his job to cover such things.

[Vanimal46]

I'm just getting caught back up on this thread, and all I've got to say is Woah. Did I miss new evidence that incriminates Avery more of this crime? Or are we saying he's guilty from the same story line presented in the case? 

That story line being that Avery shot Teresa Halbach in the garage? or was it the bedroom? Without any blood, and only Steven Avery's DNA present in both locations?

I think this documentary went 1 sided because the media only presented the other side in the case; that Avery is an absolute monster who won't stop killing unless he's put behind bars. 

And at the end of the day, this documentary shouldn't have you asking is Avery guilty or innocent. It should bring up the point that injustice is real, and rich vs. poor, power vs. the weak is a very real problem. 

Could Avery be guilty? It is possible he could be. He's not a Saint in his past. But the story line that was presented in the case, I don't believe is true. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

And at the end of the day, this documentary shouldn't have you asking is Avery guilty or innocent. It should bring up the point that injustice is real, and rich vs. poor, power vs. the weak is a very real problem.

Yep.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I'm just getting caught back up on this thread, and all I've got to say is Woah. Did I miss new evidence that incriminates Avery more of this crime? Or are we saying he's guilty from the same story line presented in the case? 

I can't speak for anyone else but I suspected Avery was guilty from early on in the documentary. Would I have convicted him? I have no idea because the documentary's presentation of the case is incomplete. Would I have let him walk? I have no idea for the same reason.

 

My point isn't that Avery is guilty or innocent, my point is that it's reckless to state with any kind of certainty we know what happened based on a documentary that obviously pushed an agenda on its audience. By my estimation, the trial was approximately 200 hours of in-court time (six hours a day, five days a week, seven weeks long). The documentary spent less than three hours showing us only one side of the Avery case.

 

To be completely frank, I'm disappointed that so many buy into the documentary without questioning its own motives. By the third or fourth episode, it was obvious to me the documentary was telling me only what it wanted me to see and hear and wasn't making even a nominal attempt to frame the situation in a balanced manner.

 

Still, the documentary does a good job of highlighting some of the issue of our justice system, which is what I prefer to focus on because those mis-steps are plain to see.

[TheLeviathan]

 

It's pretty alarming that the fact that Avery is apparently a bad guy is evidence for many here to ignore the desperate attempts by cops with a vendetta to frame him and trick a kid into a ridiculous confession--a confession that served to be real reason behind the convictions.

 

Again, see "Paradise Lost."

 

 

I don't know if he was a "bad guy" but he was certainly doing things to Theresa Halbach that made her think he was.  It could be that he's just too dumb to know how he came across to her, but the truth is that she was actively avoiding him and he was actively pursuing more encounters with her.  

 

It's also not mutually exclusive to think that Avery is both guilty and the cops are a bunch of s***-heads who belong in jail too.  Clearly the group from his original prosecution should've had much tougher consequences.  These couple of cops that continued to be involved are also very fishy and may well have set up some evidence to put him away.

 

But again, none of that rules out the possibility that he actually is guilty.  As Brock said, the case for him being the murder at least makes some sense.  The case against him sounds like a fantasy.  A giant police coverup carried out by dozens of complicit people is a pretty hard pill to swallow.  Alternative theories are based on wild speculation on snippets of video rather than anything meaningful.  

 

As for the confession, I again point you to the first interview (the one that happened four days prior to the short snippet they showed in the documentary) - in that interview Dassey is very clearly forthcoming.  He should've always had counsel with him, that's a fair criticism, but the police didn't lead him along at all in that interview.  And he knew a lot of details from the crime scene that were not public.  He was clearly involved, whether he lied at some point or not is hard to say.  But it wasn't through police pressure in that interview.

 

I agree with Brock, people are taking this way too seriously as an unbiased documentary.  The very title suggests it's anything but that.  And that's fine, what they are actually getting at (police corruption and the rigged nature of the system) is super important stuff.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

It's also not mutually exclusive to think that Avery is both guilty and the cops are a bunch of s***-heads who belong in jail too.  Clearly the group from his original prosecution should've had much tougher consequences.  These couple of cops that continued to be involved are also very fishy and may well have set up some evidence to put him away.

Yes, all of this. The idea that Avery may be guilty and the police/prosecution are also shady are not at opposite sides of the spectrum. Both are possible, maybe even likely.

[Shane Wahl]

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/making-a-memory-of-murder/

 

 

On false confessions. It's way more common than you might think.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/making-a-memory-of-murder/

 

 

On false confessions. It's way more common than you might think.

Absolutely. My wife quoted me exact numbers but I can't recall them offhand. Confessions are more reliable than eyewitness testimony (which is crazy inaccurate, so much that it's more often inaccurate than it is accurate) but they're still relatively unreliable.

 

As I've mentioned earlier, everything about the Dassey case seems nonsensical. Using the information presented to us, the physical evidence doesn't match up with his testimony even a little bit.

 

Add in the fact counsel was not present and... *head explodes*

 

The police questioning a minor about a murder without counsel present was possibly my wife's biggest "WAIT, WHAT" moment of the documentary.

[TheLeviathan]

Look, if you want to argue that Dassey has a barely functioning human brain and may have admitted to things he didn't do...sure, that's possible.  But his initial confession - the first one - had way too many intimate details about the crime to be fantasy.  

 

I think what appeared to be coercion in the other videos (which is what I thought on first viewing) was really just trying to figure out why he was changing his story and the kid is too slow to keep up with what they are asking without them being explicit.  At least that's my sense of it after watching the whole thing.

[Brock Beauchamp]

One thing to remember is that statistics revolving around the accuracy/inaccuracy of confessions, eyewitnesses, etc. cannot be presented to the jury in a court of law due to complex legal mumbo-jumbo that was mostly lost on me when it was explained (but I was assured there is a legitimate reason for this policy to exist).

 

So while it's interesting to speculate on the accuracy of the confession, the jury is not able to view Dassey's testimony through the same lens. Lawyers must argue the veracity of the confession using only the confession itself.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

I don't think anyone is ignoring anything, we're just viewing the documentary's narrative with suspicion.

 

The cops may have framed Avery but man, that's a pretty far-fetched thing to believe, especially in regards to the car, the key, the bones, and everything else surrounding Avery and the girl.

 

What do the cops gain by this? Locking away a guy who is suing them? Why would they care that much? Anyone with a brain would realize the ****storm that would arise from a high profile case of this kind and the scrutiny it would bring to the department. Someone would have to be certifiably insane to even attempt a frame job.

 

I don't like the police in Manitowoc. I think some of them come across as pretty sleazy and possibly corrupt. But it's a long way from "sleazy" to "framing a guy who was falsely convicted of another crime because you don't like him."

 

It's possible, but... Occam's Razor applies here. There's so much downside for the police and so little upside I struggle to believe anyone would be that reckless with their career, freedom, and life.

 

I'll buy into intellectual laziness and institutional incompetence as real things displayed in the documentary but you're going to have a hell of a time convincing me the cops set up Avery from the get-go. It doesn't pass the smell test.

 

I take issue with a few things here. Several cops (who were involved in the investigation) were being deposed. That killed their deposition (motive) not to mention Avery ended up settling his civil suit unfavorably to him in order to raise money to pay for his new defense (more motive).  So, sorry, but I have to disagree with your conclusion.  There is upside, quite a bit of it actually.  And they didn't need a dozen conspirators. Lenk (who had both access to the property and pretty much all of the key evidence) as well as possibly one other person is all that was needed. It's quite possible that the fame job was Lenk simply acting alone.  And when you take into account the complete inability for police to follow proper protocol, questionable circumstances around all of the key evidence, you have either incompetence or a frame job. 

 

I don't know who did it. It may very well have been Avery, but I have no doubt that SOMEONE decided to help out the case as there was blood in the police storage obviously tampered with. Again, documentary motives aside, that blood had been accessed.  There's no reason for anyone to have accessed that blood except for that purpose.

 

At that point, it really doesn't matter what I think about who did or didn't do it, how solid the remaining case is, the confession, etc.. Avery has reasonable doubt. That is the standard, and nothing else matters.

 

I'm perfectly fine with anyone here thinking he did it, but I'm really trying to figure out exactly what 'reasonable doubt' means to people if flat out incompetence and/or subterfuge on behalf of the investigators doesn't account for it.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

Look, if you want to argue that Dassey has a barely functioning human brain and may have admitted to things he didn't do...sure, that's possible.  But his initial confession - the first one - had way too many intimate details about the crime to be fantasy.  

 

 

I haven't seen the full video of his confession, to be fair, but the details he provided weren't backed up by the evidence found. If she was murdered in the garage or the bedroom as Dassey said, there would be traces of her blood all over the place. That type of evidence doesn't just disappear. 

 

That garage in particular would have been impossible to sanitize, even for those who know what needed to be done, and to claim that Avery was capable of doing that part to an expert level (while simultaneously screwing so many other things up such as not using the incinerator or compactor on site) is borderline laughable.  Avery and Dassey both are clearly on the low end of the bell curve. If one or both were involved in a crime as bloody as what Dassey claimed, they would have had no problems finding Halbach's blood everywhere. The fact that they didn't tells me she died elsewhere.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I take issue with a few things here. Several cops (who were involved in the investigation) were being deposed. That killed their deposition (motive) not to mention Avery ended up settling his civil suit unfavorably to him in order to raise money to pay for his new defense (more motive).  So, sorry, but I have to disagree with your conclusion.  There is upside, quite a bit of it actually. 

Sorry, I don't buy it. You're equating department liability with personal liability. While the department was certainly liable for wrong-doing, the police officers themselves were free and clear of punishment.

 

So why would they risk actual life and liberty when it was obvious a ****storm of monumental proportions was coming their way? That's the time people remove themselves from the situation and run for the hills, they don't double-down and involve themselves when they've already been absolved of previous "crimes".

 

If your CEO kills someone in the office, do you go through elaborate lengths to implicate yourself in the crime by helping him/her out or do you run like hell in the other direction?

 

I'm not saying the Manitowoc sheriffs are fine, upstanding citizens but man, suggesting they framed an innocent man out of malice seems really far-fetched. At the end of the day, most people look out for themselves first and foremost and none of the people being deposed had any real skin in the game. The people who were being hung out to dry left the department years before and it would have been easy to build a set of "fall guys" out of the people no longer actively involved with the department.

[nicksaviking]

 

I'm not saying the Manitowoc sheriffs are fine, upstanding citizens but man, suggesting they framed an innocent man out of malice seems really far-fetched. At the end of the day, most people look out for themselves first and foremost and none of the people being deposed had any real skin in the game. The people who were being hung out to dry left the department years before and it would have been easy to build a set of "fall guys" out of the people no longer actively involved with the department.

 

I'm not sure if you are questioning the fact that they may have framed an innocent man, or the fact that they framed anyone at all.

 

Because if they had nothing to do with it, wouldn't you want to stay a million miles away from this case simply to so everyone can see you're not involved?

 

This sheriffs department seems like a small outfit likely not used to high profile or complicated cases, and neither Lenk, Colburn nor the original officers from the original arrest struck me as very bright individuals. At least not what we would expect from police officers. The fact that the two guys who should never have been at the crime scene in the first place kept finding the key evidence long after it should have been found is very hard to buy. They should have known better, the fact that they didn't kind of implies that these guys aren't very smart and were way over their heads and had no clue that they'd be facing this kind of scrutiny.

 

I think it was highly likely that at least some of the evidence was planted by some not very bright officers because even if 95% of the documentary was BS there's just no justifiable explanation for these guys continuing to show up. If someone trying to be objective thinks this, I also think that almost certainly means the jury also believed there was a strong possibility evidence was planted, but recognized that idiot cops doesn't automatically mean a guy is innocent and came to the same conclusion the cops did, that Avery did it, even if the cops were dirty and stupid.

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

I'm not sure if you are questioning the fact that they may have framed an innocent man, or the fact that they framed anyone at all.

 

Because if they had nothing to do with it, wouldn't you want to stay a million miles away from this case simply to so everyone can see you're not involved?

 

This sheriffs department seems like a small outfit likely not used to high profile or complicated cases, and neither Lenk, Colburn nor the original officers from the original arrest struck me as very bright individuals. At least not what we would expect from police officers. The fact that the two guys who should never have been at the crime scene in the first place kept finding the key evidence long after it should have been found is very hard to buy. They should have known better, the fact that they didn't kind of implies that these guys aren't very smart and were way over their heads and had no clue that they'd be facing this kind of scrutiny.

 

I think it was highly likely that at least some of the evidence was planted by some not very bright officers because even if 95% of the documentary was BS there's just no justifiable explanation for these guys continuing to show up. If someone trying to be objective thinks this, I also think that almost certainly means the jury also believed there was a strong possibility evidence was planted, but recognized that idiot cops doesn't automatically mean a guy is innocent and came to the same conclusion the cops did, that Avery did it, even if the cops were dirty and stupid.

I wouldn't rule out that they manipulated evidence but I believe they'd do such a thing because they believed Avery to be guilty, not because they were trying to prevent his civil case from going to trial.

 

And I agree they don't seem very bright but being a bit dim reinforces the idea they're incapable of orchestrating a masterful frame job, not confirmation they did it.

 

Getting a half dozen people on board with a huge cover-up is hard to pull off. Being bad at your job and doing stupid **** you shouldn't be doing is easy. Hell, given the way the sheriff's department acted, it's almost expected.

 

And the "we're not supposed to be a part of the investigation" bit is more convoluted than it seems at first sight. It's likely the department "in charge" of the investigation simply didn't have the manpower and needed Manitowoc to supply warm bodies. The investigation covered 40+ acres of land full of old junked-up crap. A handful of people from a neighboring department can't staff an investigation of that magnitude.

 

Does that mean what Manitowoc did is okay? No, it doesn't. They shouldn't have been on-site... But, again, it's likely many of these foul-ups are due to incompetence, not malevolence.

[Vanimal46]

 

I haven't seen the full video of his confession, to be fair, but the details he provided weren't backed up by the evidence found. If she was murdered in the garage or the bedroom as Dassey said, there would be traces of her blood all over the place. That type of evidence doesn't just disappear. 

 

That garage in particular would have been impossible to sanitize, even for those who know what needed to be done, and to claim that Avery was capable of doing that part to an expert level (while simultaneously screwing so many other things up such as not using the incinerator or compactor on site) is borderline laughable.  Avery and Dassey both are clearly on the low end of the bell curve. If one or both were involved in a crime as bloody as what Dassey claimed, they would have had no problems finding Halbach's blood everywhere. The fact that they didn't tells me she died elsewhere.

Yes. This. All of this. The way that garage looked with boat loads of junk laying all over the place, I just can't imagine 1) He took all of that junk out of the garage just to shoot Teresa 2) He took the time to sanitize the entire garage completely. Both scenarios would take countless hours to complete, and Avery, nor Dassey, had that kind of time to do that.

Same thing can be said for the bedrooom. It was a carpeted area, with no signs of bleach on the carpet, bedding, anything. 

Like I've said before, is it possible that they both are guilty of the crime? With this much circumstantial evidence, they could have gotten it right. But I don't believe the story that Dassey said is true.   

[Brock Beauchamp]

IMO, the garage and bedroom are the most damning evidence that something with the investigation smells bad.

 

Those two pieces make no sense, at least the way the documentary presented it.

 

The bedroom? Maybe. Swap out the mattress, burn it in the fire, toss the burnt metal somewhere in the 40 acres of junk.

 

The garage? No fuggin' way he cleaned that big ol' mess.

[TheLeviathan]

I agree about the garage, but if your contention is that Dasseys confession was nothing but the cops leading him on.....then you are putting WAY too much stock into the documentary's version without taking in the whole picture.

[Vanimal46]

This is just me typing out loud here.... But let's think about Dassey's confession. He was 16 years old at the time; if he was there while the murder was taking place, I don't care who you are, IQ level, whatever. That's a traumatizing experience. Especially as a minor. Is it possible that Brendan subconsciously blocked the memories? Could he have created this fantasy in his mind of shooting her in the bedroom, garage, wherever, and also doing terrible things to Teresa's body, because he doesn't want to remember the truth? 

[ALessKosherScott]

 

I can't speak for anyone else but I suspected Avery was guilty from early on in the documentary. Would I have convicted him? I have no idea because the documentary's presentation of the case is incomplete. Would I have let him walk? I have no idea for the same reason.

 

My point isn't that Avery is guilty or innocent, my point is that it's reckless to state with any kind of certainty we know what happened based on a documentary that obviously pushed an agenda on its audience. By my estimation, the trial was approximately 200 hours of in-court time (six hours a day, five days a week, seven weeks long). The documentary spent less than three hours showing us only one side of the Avery case.

 

To be completely frank, I'm disappointed that so many buy into the documentary without questioning its own motives. By the third or fourth episode, it was obvious to me the documentary was telling me only what it wanted me to see and hear and wasn't making even a nominal attempt to frame the situation in a balanced manner.

 

Still, the documentary does a good job of highlighting some of the issue of our justice system, which is what I prefer to focus on because those mis-steps are plain to see.

 

The problem with any form of film piece is that you have many hours of footage that have to hit the floor out of the fact that no one is going to invest the time to watch it. The footage that makes the cut has to support your thesis, in this case the thesis being that cops are judged by closing cases, and it doesn't matter if they do it correctly or how they put their evidence together to do it. And there are next to no ramifications if they do their job poorly (see Ferguson, Cleveland, Baltimore, New York City). The Kratz sexting case at the end puts a nice frosting on the cake, showing how something that would've gotten a normal attorney disbarred got a DA a mere slap on the wrist after resigning his position. 

 

With that said, having gone back to read the press Ken Kratz and people like Nancy Grace kind of make themselves out to be fools when they mention the evidence that wasn't shown, because it tends to go back to hearsay (*67 calls, Avery specifically requesting Halbeck), Dassey's confession (Dr. Phil's comment that he could've got Dassey to confess to the Irish Potato Famine is pretty on point), or faulty DNA evidence (there's no such thing as sweat DNA and the bullet with Halbeck's DNA on it that was shown in the documentary because the tester screwed up the test on it and it probably shouldn't have been admitted). 

[Craig Arko]

You have collectively convinced me to not watch this program. I just gotta say thanks.

 

I'll go watch River with Stellan Skarsgard instead.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

Sorry, I don't buy it. You're equating department liability with personal liability. While the department was certainly liable for wrong-doing, the police officers themselves were free and clear of punishment.

 

So why would they risk actual life and liberty when it was obvious a ****storm of monumental proportions was coming their way? That's the time people remove themselves from the situation and run for the hills, they don't double-down and involve themselves when they've already been absolved of previous "crimes".

 

If your CEO kills someone in the office, do you go through elaborate lengths to implicate yourself in the crime by helping him/her out or do you run like hell in the other direction?

 

I'm not saying the Manitowoc sheriffs are fine, upstanding citizens but man, suggesting they framed an innocent man out of malice seems really far-fetched. At the end of the day, most people look out for themselves first and foremost and none of the people being deposed had any real skin in the game. The people who were being hung out to dry left the department years before and it would have been easy to build a set of "fall guys" out of the people no longer actively involved with the department.

 

These guys were deposed about a week prior to the murder investigation.  There's nothing free and clear about them at that time.  Lest we forget, Lenk was being deposed at the time of this investigation... There's no run like hell in the other way for him.

 

I find the explanation that they framed him or were just flat out incompetent to be far more realistic than the one that says he actually did it.  When you toss the questionable evidence, there's nothing linking Avery to the crime other than the fact that he was dumb and creepy, and I'd add, there's plenty of room for reasonable doubt.

 

It's up to the prosecution to explain how and why it is that Avery's blood sample that they had in storage was tampered with.  It's up to them to explain why it is a person with a clear conflict of interest who was not supposed to be a part of the investigation was repeatedly on the site.  It's up to them to explain how it is that this same person managed to find nearly all of the key evidence in plain view after repeated searches of the same area (up to as many as 7 searches I might add) turned up nothing. It's up to them to explain why it is that they could not follow simple protocols for recovering bones, testing DNA, procuring evidence, etc.

 

I might buy issues with protocol on incompetence of the investigators, but that alone is reasonable doubt, and that's before you get into the problems with James Lenk or the fact that someone accessed Avery's blood.

 

 

[nicksaviking]

 

I wouldn't rule out that they manipulated evidence but I believe they'd do such a thing because they believed Avery to be guilty, not because they were trying to prevent his civil case from going to trial.

 

And I agree they don't seem very bright but being a bit dim reinforces the idea they're incapable of orchestrating a masterful frame job, not confirmation they did it.

 

Getting a half dozen people on board with a huge cover-up is hard to pull off. Being bad at your job and doing stupid **** you shouldn't be doing is easy. Hell, given the way the sheriff's department acted, it's almost expected.

 

 

I agree, if the cops did this, they did it because they thought he was guilty, not because they did the murdering.

 

I would also argue that the frame job, if there was one, was not masterful, but very poorly done with huge holes and leaps of logic. In fact, with the bones found in the quarry and the car found poorly hidden on his property, if the cops DIDN'T plant evidence, to me the most likely scenario is that Avery framed himself to frame the cops. And that just sounds crazy.

 

I also don't think it would take more than two cops to do the dirty work. The other non-felonious cops may strongly suspect those two of being dirty, but they'd likely have little to no proof and suggesting such publicly would put a guy they probably think is guilty back on the street.

 

And to be fair, if we had a guy who the majority of the community strongly believed to be a murdering rapist, there would be a fairly large contingent of the population that would be A OK with the cops breaking the rules to put him away. I can't imagine the pressure to do so in a small town.

[diehardtwinsfan]

 

I wouldn't rule out that they manipulated evidence but I believe they'd do such a thing because they believed Avery to be guilty, not because they were trying to prevent his civil case from going to trial.

 

And I agree they don't seem very bright but being a bit dim reinforces the idea they're incapable of orchestrating a masterful frame job, not confirmation they did it.

 

Getting a half dozen people on board with a huge cover-up is hard to pull off. Being bad at your job and doing stupid **** you shouldn't be doing is easy. Hell, given the way the sheriff's department acted, it's almost expected.

 

And the "we're not supposed to be a part of the investigation" bit is more convoluted than it seems at first sight. It's likely the department "in charge" of the investigation simply didn't have the manpower and needed Manitowoc to supply warm bodies. The investigation covered 40+ acres of land full of old junked-up crap. A handful of people from a neighboring department can't staff an investigation of that magnitude.

 

Does that mean what Manitowoc did is okay? No, it doesn't. They shouldn't have been on-site... But, again, it's likely many of these foul-ups are due to incompetence, not malevolence.

 

First off, you don't need a half dozen people. You need one, maybe two.  That's problem number 1...

 

But honestly, based on what you said here, if you're on the jury, do you give a not guilty verdict?  I ask, because whether they were understaffed, incompetent, or both, what you just said doesn't get you around the reasonable doubt criteria to put him in jail.

 

If you're explanation is that the investigators were incompetent, then quite frankly, "not guilty" is the only verdict, whether or not you think he's actually guilty. 

 

All those protocols that they bypassed were there to prevent this type of thing from happening.

[Vanimal46]

 

You have collectively convinced me to not watch this program. I just gotta say thanks.

I'll go watch River with Stellan Skarsgard instead.

I don't blame you. I miss the simpler times watching Fargo on FX..... 

[Brock Beauchamp]

 

These guys were deposed about a week prior to the murder investigation.  There's nothing free and clear about them at that time.  Lest we forget, Lenk was being deposed at the time of this investigation... There's no run like hell in the other way for him.

For all intents and purposes, they were free and clear. They were being deposed for a civil suit against the department. The police and prosecution had already been cleared by internal investigation. The officers, even Lenk, had no real skin in the game at that point.

 

Worst case scenario, the county is forced to hand a bunch of money to Steve Avery. There's little to no motive for officers to completely fabricate a crime just to make sure somebody else higher up the chain keeps their fat wallet (in this case, the government itself).