Netflix
In the final episode of Making a Murderer, archival footage plays of George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America asking, “What is going on in the Wisconsin Department of Justice?!?” That’s one of many questions fans of the true crime docuseries about a Wisconsin man wrongly convicted of rape who was also eventually found guilty of murder have been asking themselves, their friends, and the internet ever since all 10 episodes dropped on Netflix on Dec. 18.
The series chronicles the life of Steven Avery, a Manitowoc, Wisconsin, man who was convicted of rape in 1985 and imprisoned for 18 years, despite never wavering in his claim of innocence. Newly tested DNA evidence exonerated him in 2003 and he became a free man. But not for long. In 2005, in the midst of a $36 million civil suit Avery filed against Manitowoc County for wrongful incarceration, he found himself charged with the murder of car photographer Teresa Halbach, who was killed after she visited the Avery family’s auto salvage yard. The blame quickly spread to Avery’s young nephew, Brendan Dassey, who was later charged in the crime as well. They are both currently serving life sentences.
Delores Avery
Netflix
The two trials contained so many insane twists and turns — from accusations of evidence tampering to sexting scandals — that it takes Making a Murderer more than 10 hours to lay them out, but the three most important claims the series, and Avery and Dassey’s respective lawyers, posited, are:
1. That Manitowoc police targeted and framed Avery for the crime as retribution for long-held grudges.
2. That police coerced Dassey’s confession in an attempt to further frame Avery.
3. That there is a fundamental inequity at work in countless branches of our legal system.
It’s a story that spans more than 30 years and one that filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi have spent the last 10 turning into Making a Murderer. Since the series was released, viewers have vocalized their frustrations over the alleged police and prosecutorial misconduct in a way that closely replicates how Serial listeners questioned the guilt of Adnan Syed. The documentary has also come under fire from key players involved in the prosecution, who say that Demos and Ricciardi omitted compelling evidence that would have made the state’s case less ambiguous.
The filmmakers recently sat down with BuzzFeed News at M Cafe in Los Angeles to discuss how they executed their documentary, to respond to their critics, and to answer these pressing questions Making a Murderer viewers want to know.
1. How did they come to make this documentary?
Ricciardi (left) and Demos (right) with a colleague.
Netflix
Demos and Ricciardi first learned of Steven Avery’s case in November 2005, when it made the front page of the New York Times while they were film students at Columbia University. “I found it riveting and kept elbowing poor Moira and saying, ‘I cannot believe this,’” Ricciardi said. “The focus of that story was the backlash the Wisconsin Innocence Project was experiencing as a result of having been instrumental in freeing Steven. Of course, as it got deeper into the article, I realized that there was an apparent conflict of interest between the county and him.”
So Ricciardi called the Manitowoc County Clerk’s Office and discovered reporters were allowed to watch, and given access to, video footage from inside the courtroom. The two headed to Wisconsin in November 2005 to attend Avery’s preliminary hearing (which is seen at the beginning of Episode 3 of Making a Murderer). In February 2006, Avery’s trial was scheduled for that September. Demos and Ricciardi were packing up to return home and await that date when they got an unexpected call saying the police were going to hold a press conference.
“We couldn’t figure out why they were holding a press conference,” Demos said. “They hadn’t held one for three and a half months.” That was when officials first named Dassey as a suspect in Halbach’s murder. “It caught everyone off guard,” Demos said. “It caught the family off guard, as you can see — they're reeling from it. At that point, we knew that this was going to be more than we had thought.”
The two decided to move to Wisconsin. “Part of that was so we could be there for every court date and every development, but also so that we could start to reach out to subjects and do interviews about the past and go through archival materials,” Ricciardi explained.
2. How did they gain such intimate access to the Avery family?
Ramos and Ricciardi in the Avery home with Delores Avery and Barb Tadych.
Danielle Ricciardi
Throughout the documentary, the Avery family — most notably Steven’s parents, Delores and Allan, and Brendan Dassey’s mother, Barb Tadych — are incredibly press averse. But Demos and Ricciardi not only secured repeated interviews with them, they also filmed them in their homes.
“Steven wanted his voice to be heard and he was sort of a gatekeeper in terms of our access to the family,” Ricciardi said of their unique access. “As with most of the subjects who became sit-down subjects, we would reach out with a letter. We wrote to Steven while he was in the county jail — this was after his preliminary hearing and he had just learned in December of 2005 that there was enough evidence to hold him for trial. He knew he was facing mandatory life should he be convicted, so things were pretty bleak for him and the stakes were very high. I would say he was immediately open to us and made it possible for us to meet his mother and his brother. We drove out to the yard and visited with them in the shop and basically, through that, we were able to find a way in.
“I think what they seemed to respond well to was that it was so clear we were not there to judge. There was no sense of urgency on our part — we could take our time. We were there to listen, we were as respectful as we could be, we would make appointments with them, and it wasn't as if we would drive up and start filming the second we got out of the car. We just started to build a rapport with the family and it was incredible. They were incredibly gracious to us. They had this 40-acre lot, which was not only their business, but also their home. They opened all of it up to us.”
11. Do they hope citizens will investigate the case as well?
The Making a Murderer subreddit.
The series goes to great lengths to demonstrate how the trials affected not only the defendants, but their families as well. “They were in such a unique position because they had already lived through a wrongful imprisonment for 18 years. And one of the things we both learned was when someone with such a support system goes to prison in a situation like that, it's not as if that person alone is suffering — the whole family is suffering,” Ricciardi added. “It affected the family's reputation, how they felt when they went out into the community; it affected their business. So for them to find themselves back in that position again, it was very tragic. Steven was our protagonist, but in a way, we had a group protagonist because Steven was actually incarcerated the whole time we were filming. We spent some of our most intimate time with his family. We felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to tell their story as accurately as possible and to just be fair to them and not caricature them in any way or judge them in any way.”
When asked about the claim Michael O’Kelly — an investigator hired by Dassey’s original lawyer, Len Kachinsky — read in an email during the 10th episode that the Averys are “criminals” and “engaged in sexual activities with nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws,” the otherwise even-keeled Demos grew immediately angry. “That statement is incredibly offensive,” she said. “This family has deep bonds, an incredibly sound moral system, and has been vilified by people who don't know them.”
3. Did they intentionally tone down Steven Avery's past crimes?
Avery
Netflix
One of the chief critiques of the series from those with intimate knowledge of the case is that the filmmakers gloss over some of the less savory aspects of Avery’s criminal past in order to make him a more sympathetic figure. For example, the first episode briefly discusses an incident where 20-year-old Avery pleaded guilty to harming an animal. In the series, Avery is heard saying, “We were fooling around with the cat and I don’t know, they were kind of negging it on and I tossed him over the fire and he lit up. I was young and stupid.” In reality, Avery and another man pleaded guilty to pouring gasoline and oil on Avery's cat and throwing it into a fire.
“His priors, the thing that happened at the bonfire with the cat, running his cousin off the road... not smart things to do,” Demos said. "It was really important to us to make sure we didn't leave those things out. I don't think you necessarily have to dive in on his side, but at the same time, you show all his flaws and then you show what others are doing to him and how they're spinning what he's doing and I think that's where people get sucked in.”
Demos said she and Ricciardi thought Avery was a compelling protagonist because of — not in spite of — his past misdeeds. “I would add that in some ways that's part of the point,” she continued. “If you want to push him away at the start and by Episode 10, you care about him, you've grown as a person and that's really important.”
4. How did they obtain audio of all the phone calls?
Netflix
The filmmakers faced a huge problem right off the bat in making a documentary about Steven Avery: They had almost no access to him as they were repeatedly denied visitations. One way they got around that problem was through the use of audio interviews that make Avery’s point of view — captured throughout the trial — front and center in the documentary.
“All calls they made from the county jail or the juvenile detention center are recorded, so we have thousands of hours of phone calls,” Demos said. “Basically interviews that Laura was doing — we do take out Laura's questions. Some of what Steven is saying, he's saying to reporters — he did do a few calls with local reporters over the course of a year and a half. When it's a conversation between Barb and Brendan, that's just a recorded call between Barb and Brendan. We didn't hear it until a year later.”
12. Do they plan to keep documenting Avery's story?
Netflix
Getting such a huge piece of the puzzle more than a year after the fact was incredibly illuminating for the filmmakers: It not only gave them insight into Avery and Dassey’s emotional state from outside the walls, but it also revealed that many members of the Avery family were ill-equipped to be dealing with such life-or-death stakes. “I remember the first time we listened to some of the calls where she's confronting him over the phone, like, ‘Did you do this?’ As somebody with a legal background, I'm thinking, Don't ask your son that over the phone!” Ricciardi recalled.
“It was amazing that this family was even remotely trusting of law enforcement when this had all happened to them,” Demos said. “I think class and education are just two ways one can be vulnerable.”
“We would be shocked sometimes,” Ricciard added. “It would be one thing to hear Brendan ask Barb, when he'd have an upcoming court date, if he would get out as a result of his pretrial court date. But to then hear the adults talk about that... There were times when Mrs. Avery would bring clothes to court for Steven because she thought he might get out that day. You would think that because this is a family that has been through it once before, they've been educated by the system, and in fact, they still didn't know any better.”
5. Did they ever feel unsafe while making the documentary?
Netflix
“I don't think I do ever feel physically unsafe, but I think part of it was we were very public,” Demos said. “We were there all the time filming. Everybody knew we were there. We were collaborating with the media. There was a certain sense of what it would look like if I suddenly wasn't there. And that was really the only source of safety, to just be out there.”
But the government did certainly go out of their way to try and quash their documentary. In the fall of 2006, the state essentially tried to subpoena the footage. So Demos and Ricciardi hired a lawyer. “The state wanted any statement Steven made ... and statements by others who might have knowledge or claim to have knowledge about who was responsible for the death of Teresa Halbach,” Ricciardi said. “Our argument in trying to get the court to throw out the subpoena is that the state has access to all of this material. Steven is currently incarcerated. All of his calls, all of his visits are being recorded, so they don't need to get that from us. It was a fishing expedition, and we really think it was an effort by the state to shut down our production. There was a way in which, on the one hand, Wisconsin is a very media-friendly state. It was great for us that cameras were allowed in the courtroom, it was great for us that they had a very expansive public records law so we could get the types of materials [we did]. On the other hand, the people on the ground, the people in power, weren't always happy we were there.”
6. Did they consciously omit evidence that was used to convict Avery?
Ken Kratz
Netflix
To the layperson, it appears that most of the physical evidence — Halbach’s mysteriously appearing car key, Avery’s blood in her car, the lack of Halbach’s blood in Avery’s garage — that led to Avery’s murder conviction is questionable. Ken Kratz, the former Calumet County district attorney who prosecuted this case, said in an interview following the documentary’s release that the filmmakers ignored almost 90% of the physical evidence that he used to convict Avery of the homicide.
“I would say that Ken Kratz is entitled to his opinion, but he's not entitled to his own facts,” Ricciardi said in response to Kratz’s interview. Another point of contention is that Kratz said he was never asked to participate in the documentary, though he repeatedly appeared in archival and courtroom footage. Ricciardi refuted that allegation — and said they have proof. In gathering court documents, the filmmakers had to file dozens of motions, which became part of the trial's permanent record, and in one of those is “our letter to Ken Kratz from September 2006 inviting him to participate,” Ricciardi said. “We wanted to speak to lawyers, we wanted to speak to judges, we wanted to speak to law enforcement, we invited the Halbachs to sit down with us, we had coffee with Mike [Halbach, Teresa’s brother], and ultimately, people could decide for themselves whether they wanted to participate. But how would you feel if you invited someone to participate, they declined, and later said, ‘I'm not in it?’”
Branden Dassey in his 2006 interrogation.
Netflix
No comments:
Post a Comment