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Making A Murderer (All Episode Discussion, Spoilers)


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Judging by the comments in the Reddit discussion megathread, my opinion is very unpopular... I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

  • I think there is a possibility that there was some conspiracy. The cops had a ridiculous conflict. Stuff was handled differently as a result.
  • I am sad for the teenager that got completely dismantled by the interrogators. I understand that footage was cherry picked to make them look even worse. I don't care. That is secret police-style questioning.
  • Steve was going to prison regardless, due to the firearm charge, no?
  • To say that Steve had the means to dispose of the car, thus it is evidence that he had no knowledge of it--remember that we are not dealing with your standard family. Yes he absolutely could have been that stupid.
  • I am guessing, if you sat down with the jury and gave them some of the "gotcha" moments from the series, e.g. the cop that was confirming the license plate number for the vehicle they knew the victim was driving, they would be baffled at how significant we think those moments are.

 

The thing was entertaining but I got progressively more angry about the bias as I worked through it. SA, what are your thoughts?

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i feel like there must be something missing, some piece of evidence that the prosecution presented that was omitted from the documentary that will make this easier to understand. it's possible that it was all in the editing, but i have some questions/comments as to his guilt:

 

(1) his blood was in the car, but no fingerprints?

(2) the key had only his DNA on it, but not the victim - it was her car. and it was only found on subsequent searches by a cop who was not supposed to be there. same with the bullet. that's some horseshit.

(3) no blood in the garage where the prosecutor told the jury she was killed? no chance in hell he could have cleaned all that junk of any blood spatter.

(4) his blood sample at the police evidence locker had clearly been accessed and appeared to have been taken by syringe and the test for EBT or whatever should not have been allowed.

 

 

I could go on, like how brendan's brother lied about when he got home and then later changed his story while on the stand. someone deleted her voicemails after she died - for what purpose?

 

Now, Steve may have killed her, but i have a lot of questions, and with those questions comes my opinion that the prosecution did not prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that he was guilty. Unless I'm missing key answers to my questions and concerns, i think the jury made a mistake.

 

Beyond%2520a%2520Reasonable%2520Doubt.jpg

 

as to brendan, i don't know enough about trials and appeals but how in the hell could he not be granted a new trial? his own attorney had some PI interrogate him and make him confess and make him draw pictures and then prosecution used those drawings (at least i think that was the same drawings) against him in closing arguments. that attorney should be disbarred for his behavior. the murder absolutely, 100% did not happen the way he confessed it, by way of coercion of an obviously mentally disabled young man. brendan's conviction is a gross miscarriage of justice.

 

that being said, i think he saw something and i think he knew something and i think the guilt of whatever he saw or knew was what allowed the police to convince him he was as guilty as whoever killed her. i think he knew she was killed on the property but didn't know how and they kept telling him he knew what happened and wouldn't let him leave so they fed him enough and he made up the rest and out came that story. hell, the kid thought he was going back to turn in his homework in 6th hour. jesus the poor bastard never had a chance.

 

my theory, if you made me guess as to what happened is that someone (either steve or brendan's brother) came on to her in the yard. she wasn't interested, this person got made, tried to kiss her or grope her and she fought back. this person injured her somehow, panicked and put her in the back of her own car where she bled. this person drove her off site to the quarry, shooting her and burning her body. i believe this person left the bones at that quarry. and drove her car back to the lot and left it near the crusher to be crushed later. I personally think it was brendan's brother, but it could have been steve just as easily. the dirty cops catch wind of this and illegally search his property, finding the car. they plant the blood, and move the bones back to make sure the evidence is overwhelming. brendan must have seen something, maybe the killer talking to her and then disappearing. he was so mentally challenged that fact alone made him feel guilty, or he was just totally manipulated by the police, i don't know.

 

but i'm sure i'm missing something. but mostly, no matter who killed her, neither of them should have been convicted, in my opinion, based on the evidence shown in the documentary.

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my brother is convinced the ex-boyfriend did it. i'm not so sure on that, but the voicemail thing is very strange. but to go down that road you have to think that he followed her out there. i don't remember exactly, but i don't recall any evidence that she ever left that property alive. if the ex-boyfriend kills her back in town you would think she would have left some kind of trail. a phone call, a stop to get gas or some food, anything. and i feel like if that evidence existed, we would know.

 

but i guess its possible the ex-boyfriend was the one stalking her, calling her and hanging up. he follows her, runs her off the road near the property, kills her, burns her at the quarry, and plants the bones in the middle of the night, leaves her car near the crusher. but i find that much less likely that it was either steve or brendan's brother.

 

i would love to get the unedited tapes and transcripts. i have so many questions.

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Finished this on Xmas. Have already talked it to death and couldn't possibly write anything better than essay did.

 

Not sure how to explain Avery's DNA on the hood latch, but all the gotcha stuff in the doc really raises reasonable doubt. Did Avery do it? Probably. Could they have investigated a single other person? Definitely.

 

Coburn and Lenk were more likely than not, dirty cops that planted evidence

 

 

Len is a scumbag and should be disbarred.

 

Kratz giving that press conference and detailing a rape and murder that there was no physical evidence of, was appalling.

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i mean clearly ken kratz is the typical DA douche. all the guys in my class who wanted to be prosecutors were douchebags of the highest degree. one of them, who is an ADA right now, got drunk and kicked his girlfriend in the stomach very hard during our first semester. she was my friend and called me and i went over to their house. he was passed out, and like most times, she said he didn't know what he was doing and didn't mean it. he lated cheated on her at a bar with a girl in the class below us and got into a fight with another guy in our class who saw him. i'd throw him a brick if he was drowning. ken kratz is that kind of guy.

 

the police were obviously dirty too. we haven't even touched on what they did to him in 1985 and all that went that. the defense pretty clearly stated that they did it because they thought he was guilty this time and wanted to ruin him, not to mention the reputation and financial reasons.

 

all that said, its probably over 50% he killed her.

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it's just so far-fetched to think an ex-boyfriend or a roommate would be able to set Steve up so convincingly. I think it probably happened on or near the property, and it was probably one of the younger males in the family. the animosity the police had for that family was not unfounded--the series was pretty open about the fact that Steve was a POS as a younger guy.

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i would agree. i don't think she left that property alive. so it was someone in the family. the police planting evidence can fit in with that. no fingerprints in the car, but his blood is right there next to the ignition. i know he's dumb, but if he's bleeding from his finger then he wasn't wearing gloves and he would have left a useable print. something aint right in all of this.

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I am leaning toward believing the blood was indeed planted, but I just don't know enough about how the system is supposed to work. I feel confident that I can trust what is said in the court footage, but that whole scene, it rests on whether the lawyer is being honest about being told that vials aren't handled that way.

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not that I can remember, just that it couldn't have been done in a sanctioned/official capacity by the people who handle the samples, according to the lawyer.

 

do you think it could have been considered unconscionable for them to take that case to begin with (you know, half a mil apiece, or whatever was left net of taxes)? are there instances of that with defense attorneys, where the client is so behind in a case that clarence darrow couldn't dig them out?

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i believed the defense when they said there is no sanctioned reason for that hole to be in the cap of the blood vial. and considering the prosecution rushed an FBI test that hadn't been used in 10 years, because it was obsolete, to rebut the idea that the blood was planted, in my mind is them admitting that there was no reason for that hole to be there, nor for the seal to be broken.

 

i don't think so no. i think when they took the case it was unclear as to the merits of the case, and then once they reviewed everything i think the firmly believed they could raise doubt and get a not guilty verdict.

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Kratz giving that press conference and detailing a rape and murder that there was no physical evidence of, was appalling.

 

i think this probably rustled my jimmies as much as anything. how the hell can he say that when he knows it couldn't have happened? no chance the jurors didn't know that before the trial started. that shit was beyond inflammatory.

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I mostly agree with SA, only I'm more like 30-45% on Steve Avery having actually done it. I'm more inclined to think it was another family member, and that Brendan probably had some kind of likely-accidental involvement.

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i think the percentages are mostly irrelevant. it had to have been one of the four people admitted to be there at that time. steve, brendan, his brother, the step-father. i don't see how it could have been anyone else, not with the evidence presented in the doc.

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I agree completely. the fact that the filmmakers offered up people outside of that family as suspects really annoyed me. I get that it is much harder to buy into the anti-cop narrative if you have nobody else to blame for the murder, but jesus christ, someone did it, and the odds are overwhelmingly against it being an outsider. both things--shitbag cops and shitbag averys--can coexist.

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Just finished. Agree with most of what Essay has written.

 

 

I think Steven is fairly convincing as an innocent person. I also suspect it was either Steven or another family

Member, though I lean more to it being another family member.

 

 

A few notes:

- Steven's defense lawyers were pretty awesome IMO.

- Really close between Kratz and Len Kachinsky on who I wanted to punch in the face more. OH, also the judge in Steven's case

- I think Brendan is the real tragedy. It boggles my mind that Kratz even continued to prosecute him after basically dismissing his story in closing arguments of Stevens case. He may have known something (or not), but he should not be serving a life sentence

- the female lawyer from the innocence project working for Brendan in eps 9/10 is sexy as hell.

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