Unless you’ve been living under a rock this holiday season, you have probably watched (or know someone who has recently watched) Netflix’s newest documentary on Steven Avery, Making a Murderer. I can’t recall a time when a true crime documentary has ignited the country this quickly and so furiously. If you don’t already know, Making a Murderer is documentary created by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, filmmakers following the case of Steven Avery, a man who was wrongly convicted of beating and raping a woman in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, in 1985. He served 18 years in prison before new DNA evidence tested by the Wisconsin Innocence Project exonerated him, proving the assailant was another man already in prison for similar crimes, Gregory Allen. Easy, right? Well, that’s just the first episode. Things begin to get complicated after that. Of course, Steven Avery filed a $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County and several officials that had a hand in convicting him, as any man who’d just spent 18 years of his adult life wasting away in prison for a brutal crime he did not commit. Just as depositions were getting underway for that civil suit, a local photographer by the name of Teresa Halbach was reported missing on November 3, 2005. She was last seen on Steven Avery’s property on October 31, where he had arranged for her to take photographs of a van the family was putting up for sale. A full investigation began to unfold, and when search parties located Teresa’s green RAV 4 on the Avery property, all hell breaks loose. If you haven’t watched the series, I will warn you to stop reading here. Really, I think it’s much better to watch it with a fresh perspective and allow the creators of the documentary to lead you though the case piece by piece. So if you haven’t watched, stop reading now and go watch! Then come back here and leave me a comment below this post. I want to know what you think! If you have finished the series and are looking for more information, as well as what I think about the case, keep reading.
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