Speaker 1: Hello, It is Ryan and I was on a flight
Speaker 1: the other day playing one of my favorite social spin
Speaker 1: slot games on chumbacasino dot com. I looked over at
Speaker 1: the person sitting next to me, and you know what
Speaker 1: they were doing. They were also playing Chumba Casino. Coincidence,
Speaker 1: I think not everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba
Speaker 1: Casino's home to hundreds at casino style games that you
Speaker 1: can play for free, anytime, anywhere, even at thirty thousand feet.
Speaker 1: So sign up now at Chumbuckcasino dot com to claim
Speaker 1: you're free welcome bonus. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com and
Speaker 1: live the Chumba line.
Speaker 2: Nop necessary DVO wherever by lost in terms conditions eighteen plus.
Speaker 1: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 3: Lucky in line at the deli, I guess ah, in
Speaker 3: my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have
Speaker 3: to say?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: You do? In the car before my kid's pta meeting.
Speaker 2: Really yes, excuse me, what's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: I never win and tell.
Speaker 5: Well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: You could get lucky anywhere playing at Lucky landslots dot
Speaker 1: com play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 2: No, we're just necessary void were my long eighteen plus
Speaker 2: terms conditions plus you will Amy.
Speaker 1: Details Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place
Speaker 1: you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 3: Lucky?
Speaker 2: In line at the deli, I guess.
Speaker 1: Ah, in my dentist's office more than once.
Speaker 3: Actually do I have to say?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 1: You do? In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Excuse me?
Speaker 2: What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky? I never win?
Speaker 5: And tell well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: You could get lucky anywhere playing at lucky landslots dot
Speaker 1: com play for free right now? Are you feeling lucky?
Speaker 2: No, we're just necessarily for wren my long eighteen plus
Speaker 2: terms conditions plus see what's Amy details?
Speaker 1: It is Ryan here, and I have a question for you.
Speaker 1: What do you do when you win?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Are you at fist pumper, a wooo, a handclapp or
Speaker 1: a high fiver? I kind of like the high five.
Speaker 1: But if you want to hone in on those winning moves,
Speaker 1: check out Chumbuck Casino at chumbacasino dot com. Choose some
Speaker 1: hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to
Speaker 1: redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly,
Speaker 1: plus free daily bonuses, so don't wait start having the
Speaker 1: most fun ever at Chumbuck Casino dot com.
Speaker 2: It's never there, Imedi, where everybody lost the terms conditions
Speaker 2: eating pluss.
Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 6: Good evening. This is the story of one of the
Speaker 6: nation's most notorious wrongful convictions, that of Stephen Avery, a
Speaker 6: Wisconsin man who spent eighteen years in prison for a
Speaker 6: crime he did not commit. But two years after he
Speaker 6: was exonerated of that crime and poised to read millions
Speaker 6: in his wrongful conviction lawsuit, Stephen Avery was arrested for
Speaker 6: the exceptionally brutal murder of Teresa Halbach, a freelance photographer
Speaker 6: who had gone missing several days earlier. The innocent man
Speaker 6: had turned into a cold blooded killer or had he.
Speaker 6: This is narrative nonfiction at its finest and a true
Speaker 6: crime thriller. The book that we are featuring this evening
Speaker 6: is The Innocent Killer, a true crime, a true story
Speaker 6: of a wrongful conviction and its astonishing aftermath, with my
Speaker 6: special guests, journalist and author and prosecutor Michael Greesback. Pardon me,
Speaker 6: Welcome to the program, and thank you for agreeing to
Speaker 6: this interview. Michael Greesback, Hi, Dan, Thanks thanks for having
Speaker 6: me on the show. Thank you very much. I just
Speaker 6: got you late coming onto the program. So I just
Speaker 6: introduced a program and read about the synopsis of the
Speaker 6: book and what a heck of a book it is.
Speaker 6: Welcome back to the program and glad to have you
Speaker 6: back on this updated version of the book. So tell
Speaker 6: us before, without giving really anything away, the last time
Speaker 6: I interviewed you was the book was called Unreasonable Inferences.
Speaker 6: So tell us what the new title is and what
Speaker 6: has happened in your book writing career that this book
Speaker 6: has been re released and updated, and tell us about
Speaker 6: that absolutely well.
Speaker 5: The American Bar Association developed an interest in this story
Speaker 5: and in the book, and they wanted to republish.
Speaker 6: The book.
Speaker 5: Is published by the American Bar Association, and it is
Speaker 5: titled The Innocent Killer, A True Story of a wrongful
Speaker 5: conviction and its astonishing aftermath. And it has some new material,
Speaker 5: including an afterward from the Innocence Project, the Wisconsin Innocence Project,
Speaker 5: who was responsible for the exoneration of Stephen Avery, who
Speaker 5: was later arrested and convicted of a subsequent murderer. And
Speaker 5: the book also has a PostScript from the victim who
Speaker 5: survived the first crime for which mister Avery was wrongly convicted.
Speaker 5: That's Penny Bernson. So it's a complicated tale, one that
Speaker 5: has a lot of lessons for the criminal justice system,
Speaker 5: I think, and one that is just hard to make
Speaker 5: this kind of horrific story up. It really is stranger
Speaker 5: and more frightening than fiction in a lot of ways.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, well, let's get right to that, because the last time,
Speaker 6: without the additional information, we could have spent at least
Speaker 6: a couple hours. Because this is not because it's also
Speaker 6: because of the complexity of you being a prosecutor. But
Speaker 6: the story, like you said before, the story itself is
Speaker 6: so spellbinding and incredible and ironic and twists and surprises
Speaker 6: that let's get right to that now. We will concentrate
Speaker 6: a little bit more in this interview about the aftermath
Speaker 6: basically after Steven Avery is released. And I don't want
Speaker 6: to jump ahead for the audience that doesn't know anything
Speaker 6: about this case at all. So let's go back to
Speaker 6: Penny Bernston and the beach, and let's start there. Let's
Speaker 6: start with who she was and what was she doing
Speaker 6: that day, and what was her routine, and tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about the background of the community itself
Speaker 6: a little bit as an introduction, and then tell us
Speaker 6: introduced Penny and what happened that faithful day on the beach?
Speaker 5: Sure thing, Well, the date that this happened was June
Speaker 5: twenty seventh of nineteen eighty five, So we're going in, well,
Speaker 5: what twenty five plus years ago that the first crime happened.
Speaker 5: And it occurred in the city where I'm a prosecutor,
Speaker 5: in Manitowac, Wisconsin, which is between Milwaukee and Green Bay,
Speaker 5: essentially right on the shores of Wake, Michigan. Oh. It's
Speaker 5: a city of about fifty thousand, kind of a blue
Speaker 5: collar town and some tourist areas as well. But that day,
Speaker 5: back in July of nineteen eighty five, Penny Bernston, who
Speaker 5: ran with her husband a chocolatestionionary basically a candy store,
Speaker 5: a real popular spot of ice cream parlor and tourist
Speaker 5: attraction in its own right right downtown in our historic downtown,
Speaker 5: and they were start of prominent members of the community.
Speaker 5: Tom her husband his grandparents actually started the old candy
Speaker 5: store back in the I think nineteen twenties, and Penny
Speaker 5: was a YMCA fitness instructor in addition to running the
Speaker 5: day of the operations at the candy store. She was
Speaker 5: roughly thirty if memory serves years old, had a few children,
Speaker 5: a young son and a young daughter, and together the
Speaker 5: Burnston family went to the beach, the Lake Michigan Beach
Speaker 5: about ten miles north of Manitoac and a very isolated
Speaker 5: stretch of a state forest called Point Beach State Forest.
Speaker 5: Penny ran daily because she had this exercise class at
Speaker 5: the YMCA. She was very fit, very attractive, young young woman.
Speaker 5: She ran north from the beach into the isolated stretch,
Speaker 5: pine trees towering pines to the left and Lake Michigan
Speaker 5: sparkling Lake Michigan to the right. She ran barefoot in
Speaker 5: her bikini north along and passed the scraggly looking fella
Speaker 5: in street clothes. It was about eighty five degrees, but
Speaker 5: he had street as she ran up, and she was
Speaker 5: sort of taken aback, but he said nice day or something,
Speaker 5: and she said, yeah, nice day for a run. But
Speaker 5: on her way back, the scraggly looking fella in street
Speaker 5: clothes had walked about a mile further north, or a
Speaker 5: half mile further north at any rate, her run was
Speaker 5: six miles and she had made the turnaround and made
Speaker 5: it about halfway back when she saw him again, this
Speaker 5: time though hiding in the midst of a popular tree
Speaker 5: close to the shoreline, and Penny knew pretty quickly that
Speaker 5: she was in trouble. She tried to run away toward
Speaker 5: the water. She even went into the water. He followed her.
Speaker 5: She was running, got up about five deep, considered diving
Speaker 5: into the water, but then thought she drowned in a struggle,
Speaker 5: so she angled back toward the shore and the assailant
Speaker 5: grabbed her. A small person in stature, I think she
Speaker 5: was probably like one hundred five pounds, and she fought back,
Speaker 5: struggled back, kicked everything, but he man handled her over
Speaker 5: the sand dunes and tore off her clothing and tried
Speaker 5: to rape her. Penny fought back, amazing how hard she
Speaker 5: fought back with the getting what he wanted. He beat
Speaker 5: her to a bloody pulp. Inexplicably, really he ran away.
Speaker 5: I don't know if he thought somebody saw him or what.
Speaker 5: Penny was dazed, totally naked, just tried crawling if he
Speaker 5: can imagine that, to the water, but gave up halfway
Speaker 5: and basically passed out for a while, just staring off
Speaker 5: into the into the sparkling Lake Michigan waters, and then
Speaker 5: finally made it down a half hour later to the beach.
Speaker 5: After she came to that was time a couple in
Speaker 5: a sailboat saw her, and you know, she was rescued. Basically,
Speaker 5: her husband and the e MTS rushed her to the
Speaker 5: hospital then, and she had she had received numerous various
Speaker 5: severe injuries. So that's how all this started.
Speaker 6: Now, maybe I'm mistaken. Wasn't there, and this is important
Speaker 6: because of the at the trial, But wasn't there something
Speaker 6: about the husband carrying her from from the beach to
Speaker 6: the parking lot after the ambulance had or the empty
Speaker 6: had been called.
Speaker 5: You're you're right, the husband sent a jet ski rider
Speaker 5: up looking for her. I mean he himself started running
Speaker 5: north and saw her on the beach, or actually she
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, she had already started walking back with the
Speaker 5: help of these two people in the sailboat who saw her.
Speaker 5: They gave her a blanket and she was in between them,
Speaker 5: you know, with her arms wrapped around him. Her husband
Speaker 5: Tom saw them as he's running north and ran up,
Speaker 5: of course, and ended up carrying Penny part way back
Speaker 5: to the to this park where they were, and then
Speaker 5: the ambulance rushed her, rushed her to the to the
Speaker 5: hospital in Mantuat.
Speaker 6: Okay. Now, how serious were her injuries?
Speaker 5: Yeah, Penny suffered a fractured nose, bruises all over, I
Speaker 5: believe in eye socket fracture as well. She was admitted
Speaker 5: to the hospital that night. Uh, the you know, a
Speaker 5: long period of recovery here. The assailant or who the
Speaker 5: police at that time believed or charged with the crime,
Speaker 5: was charged with attempted first degree intentional homicide as well
Speaker 5: as sexual assault because there was contact despite Pennies Penny's
Speaker 5: efforts to prevent that, and for imprisonment as well. She
Speaker 5: thought he had a knife, or at least he talked
Speaker 5: about a knife. He had banged her head up and
Speaker 5: down on the sand, the hard sand over these dunes,
Speaker 5: and just bloodied, badly bloodied and badly bruised in some fractures,
Speaker 5: but alive.
Speaker 6: Now this is very important, and she says that she
Speaker 6: can readily identify this guy, or she thinks she can
Speaker 6: possibly identify him. She got a pretty good look at him.
Speaker 6: Tell us what her description was like and how police,
Speaker 6: how seriously police took that description.
Speaker 5: Right, well, you know how things work in a smaller town.
Speaker 5: It turns out the sheriff was new of the burn Sense.
Speaker 5: Tom Bergson came to the hospital and met the sheriff,
Speaker 5: who personally took an interest in this case and basically
Speaker 5: told the Burnstons, no matter what, you know, this kind
Speaker 5: of thing doesn't happen in this city. We're not going
Speaker 5: to allow this person, whoever it is, to go free.
Speaker 5: We'll catch him. So right off the bat, the police
Speaker 5: are desperate to get a person charged with this crime.
Speaker 5: Penny very intelligent woman, very intelligent person, and took pains
Speaker 5: during the assault to try to get a good look person,
Speaker 5: knowing that if she survived, you know, she'd like to
Speaker 5: obviously have the person arrested and convicted. He had a beard, though,
Speaker 5: and anytime in police work and investigations there's facial area,
Speaker 5: it's more difficult to really get a real good description.
Speaker 5: But she had his eye color as hair color. She said.
Speaker 5: He had what we here in Wisconsin referred to as
Speaker 5: a beer belly. It's kind of a punchy kind of guy.
Speaker 5: She had a height of rough height, I think it
Speaker 5: was five five six seven, and brown or sandy hair
Speaker 5: and brown eyes. The police, irrationally, in my view, came
Speaker 5: up with a name almost right off the bat, a
Speaker 5: person by the name of Stephen Avery, who's the main
Speaker 5: character in this book, both a villain and well first
Speaker 5: a hero sort of him in a villain. But they
Speaker 5: had their eyes on Stephen Avery. He was out on
Speaker 5: bail for actually assaulting or attempting to assault the deputy
Speaker 5: sheriff's wife, and the Avery clan was known to the
Speaker 5: sheriff's department. He lived about ten miles from the beach.
Speaker 5: But for whatever reason, they thought it sounds like Stephen Avery.
Speaker 5: He has appeared. Although never mind that his hair or
Speaker 5: his eyes are blue, they're not brown, and he's short.
Speaker 5: He's he's about five foot two versus five foot seven
Speaker 5: or so that Penny thought her assailant was. But at
Speaker 5: any rate, so the sheriff had a mug shot brought
Speaker 5: down of mister Avery from his prior arrest a few
Speaker 5: months earlier, and numerous other photos, and they conducted a
Speaker 5: photo array. Now, Dan, this was nineteen eighty five before.
Speaker 5: Photo arrays are now done much better in the United States,
Speaker 5: partially because of this case in terms of how things
Speaker 5: are presented to a witness or a victim. But they
Speaker 5: did show Penny the photos. Excuse me. First, they actually
Speaker 5: did a composite sketch, and this is important. The composite
Speaker 5: sketch artists from the Sheriff's department. First composite sketch he's
Speaker 5: ever done. He received some training at Quantico FBI in Washington,
Speaker 5: d C. But it's the first composite sketch he ever
Speaker 5: did on a case. He met Penny, and many people
Speaker 5: believe that he actually looked at the mugshot of mister
Speaker 5: Avery before he met Penny being told that he's a suspect,
Speaker 5: which is a big no no. And he started drawing
Speaker 5: this artist sketch of an assailant with Penny chiming in
Speaker 5: you know, giving him a brief description, and they ended
Speaker 5: up with a composite sketch of someone who the picture
Speaker 5: was later commented to be an uncanny resemblance was the
Speaker 5: word the child judge used to mister Avery's mugshot. And
Speaker 5: once that image was in Penny's mind, its thought, and
Speaker 5: there was psychological testimonies from a UW University of Wisconsin
Speaker 5: and Harvard Law and psychiatrists. Psychologist, excuse me. Once a
Speaker 5: person has an image in their mind of the assailant,
Speaker 5: that becomes their assailant from that point forward, and it
Speaker 5: might not be the right person. But if there's a
Speaker 5: photo array or a composite sketch like this, everything after that,
Speaker 5: that is the assailant in that person's mind. So when
Speaker 5: they brought the photo array, including Avery's mud shot, up
Speaker 5: the penny after she did the composite sketch, she picked
Speaker 5: out mister Avery as her assailant.
Speaker 6: Now, you say they've made changes in part because of
Speaker 6: a case like this, What did they do with that
Speaker 6: photo array at that time? How would they have conducted
Speaker 6: themselves with the photo array at that time as opposed
Speaker 6: to now according to the new rule.
Speaker 5: Right, that's a good question. At that time, they put
Speaker 5: all the photos on one sheet basicly and had the
Speaker 5: person look at all of them together. And oftentimes the
Speaker 5: police would even tell the witness or the victim in
Speaker 5: this case, that the suspect is in there, and they
Speaker 5: would even have the same investigating officer, like in this
Speaker 5: case the sheriff through the photo array, and it was
Speaker 5: basically the person's job would be to sort of confirm
Speaker 5: for the police that there is first of all a suspect,
Speaker 5: that one of these people is the suspect. That's the
Speaker 5: first thing, and then you know, just pick out the
Speaker 5: one that's sort of in their mind. Now, partially because
Speaker 5: of the Avery Task Force, which we'll get to later,
Speaker 5: and other cases throughout the United States too, there are
Speaker 5: new policies and procedures where they sequentially show the suspects
Speaker 5: to the victim or to the witness. So it's one
Speaker 5: at a time. It's not here six or seven people.
Speaker 5: Can you pick up one and then it's not so
Speaker 5: much a comparison between six or seven to see who
Speaker 5: looks most like this aspect, but now it's is this
Speaker 5: the person? Also, the best practice is not to have
Speaker 5: the investigating officer but a different officer who doesn't even
Speaker 5: know about the case of the suspect conductive photo array.
Speaker 5: So those are two big changes. And you never ever
Speaker 5: tell a witness or a victim that the suspect is
Speaker 5: in this lineup, that they have a suspect in mine,
Speaker 5: because then the victim's job is sorted to confirm for
Speaker 5: the police and the victim. You know, let's face it,
Speaker 5: we all think, oh, the police know what they're doing,
Speaker 5: they care, they want to get this guy. And I'm
Speaker 5: sure they got it right. They know so much more
Speaker 5: and I just want to make sure I help out.
Speaker 5: So things have improved quite a bit on photo or rays,
Speaker 5: Thank goodness.
Speaker 6: Now I want to know and you don't really you know,
Speaker 6: really pointed out in the book too much, but I mean,
Speaker 6: I think it's important when you talk about, you know,
Speaker 6: that they didn't grab this suspect out of thin air,
Speaker 6: even though we will see that they have had no
Speaker 6: real evidence, but that the idea that he was and
Speaker 6: tell us about the actual charges that.
Speaker 1: He Hello, it is Ryan and we could all use
Speaker 1: an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we just
Speaker 1: to make up for things like sitting in traffic doing
Speaker 1: the dishes, counting or steps, you know, all the mundane stuff.
Speaker 1: That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino.
Speaker 1: Chumbuck Casino has all your favorite social casino style games
Speaker 1: you can play for free anytime anywhere with daily bonuses.
Speaker 1: That's your brighten your day, Lowe actually a lot, so
Speaker 1: sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's Chumbuck
Speaker 1: Casino dot com.
Speaker 2: No, we're necessary daily where everybody lost in terms of
Speaker 2: conditions eight plus.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make sense to break up with your one
Speaker 3: and only unless you fall in for something saucy air,
Speaker 3: something with a crispy Southern bready in one extra ingredient,
Speaker 3: something that makes you taste funs tingle. Yeah, it's time
Speaker 3: to dump your old wings and get a new honey
Speaker 3: London type of wing from Bubbaus. And if that's not
Speaker 3: your type, don't worry. We've got five other flavors. So
Speaker 3: sauntered down to Popa's and get a six piece, which
Speaker 3: is five ninety nine. We don't make sense. We make
Speaker 3: chicken chicken and participating in US restaurants. Price may vary.
Speaker 6: He was on bail four at this time, involving the
Speaker 6: deputy's wife. Tell Us exactly the kind of crimes it
Speaker 6: might just might affect the sheriff enough to frame an
Speaker 6: innocent man.
Speaker 5: You bet well. Mister Avery was one messed up individual.
Speaker 5: The crime for which he was on bail was basically
Speaker 5: getting into his pickup truck rushing down the street the
Speaker 5: country road he lived on after his neighbor, who's the
Speaker 5: sheriff's deputy's wife, guide in her car to go to
Speaker 5: work at six in the morning, and he would do
Speaker 5: this repeatedly. He would watch her as she got out
Speaker 5: morning after morning. He knew when she'd leave he would
Speaker 5: be naked. One time even ran into the road naked
Speaker 5: in front of her. He on this particular occasion, got
Speaker 5: in his truck, got up to highway speeds behind her,
Speaker 5: rammed into her car. His pickup truck into her car.
Speaker 5: She lost control for momentarily, but was able to regain
Speaker 5: control pulled the car over. He approached her Stephen Avery,
Speaker 5: the suspect in the other case, with a rifle excuse me,
Speaker 5: a shotgun. He approached her with a shotgun, held it
Speaker 5: to her head. He wanted her to get into his car.
Speaker 5: He was clearly going to assault her. She pointed to
Speaker 5: the back seat and said, my one year old babies back.
Speaker 5: So I'm dropping my daughter us at my grandmother or
Speaker 5: my mother's for babysitting before I get to work. And
Speaker 5: if you take me, this baby will freeze. And this
Speaker 5: was January in Wisconsin. Maybe not quite as bad as Winnipeg,
Speaker 5: but close and and avery. You know, let's give a
Speaker 5: little credit where credit is due. Even he had some
Speaker 5: some standard below which he wouldn't go. He let her go,
Speaker 5: but the police, you know, she knew exactly who he was.
Speaker 5: He was arrested, charged with all kinds of curious crimes
Speaker 5: and was on bail somehow posted well, bail was only
Speaker 5: set at five thousand cash, and he came up or
Speaker 5: his parents came up with the five thousand cash bail,
Speaker 5: so he was free this next summer, at the time
Speaker 5: that Penny burns and was was assaulted.
Speaker 6: In terms of crimes because what you say in the book,
Speaker 6: and again I got to asked a question why, because
Speaker 6: it doesn't seem to be completely explained to me that
Speaker 6: there seemed to be some evidence that he was likely
Speaker 6: to even to rape this woman. Did he have a
Speaker 6: background of other sexual offenses other than again, I mean
Speaker 6: not to downplay exposing yourself to people intentionally either. But
Speaker 6: was there a psychological element to this? Tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit more about mister Stephen Avery and his criminal background,
Speaker 6: and if there is any psychological background.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, one of the things police and prosecutors too,
Speaker 5: we notice, and crime psychologists I think too too, that
Speaker 5: there are certain offenses that catch people's attention, and one
Speaker 5: of them is cruelty day animals and Steven Avery had
Speaker 5: lit a cat on fire when he was in his
Speaker 5: mid teens, and another is fire. He talked off and
Speaker 5: about lighting his girlfriend's on fire. He poured sand down
Speaker 5: or gas tank and kind of a fascination with fire. Really,
Speaker 5: no particular sex offenses that he was convicted of, at
Speaker 5: least he had a burglary conviction prior to that and
Speaker 5: this most serious, obviously sex motivated, alcoholic crime when he
Speaker 5: rammed into this woman's pickup truck.
Speaker 6: Mister A.
Speaker 5: The Avery clan.
Speaker 2: Is what.
Speaker 5: People in this area calm. They live on a salvage yard,
Speaker 5: a rural salvageyard. His dad started the business probably ten
Speaker 5: years before this crime, the nineteen eighty five crime, or
Speaker 5: even more actually a successful salvage yard. It's in a
Speaker 5: rural area, hilly area in Wisconsin. Uh, kind of a
Speaker 5: creepy place, but apparently a very successful salvage ard. And
Speaker 5: uh he and his brothers all had criminal pass and uh,
Speaker 5: you know, it's understandable how the police uh sort of
Speaker 5: zeroed in to some extent. It's understandable how they zeroed
Speaker 5: in and mister Avery after all, uh you know it
Speaker 5: was his Uh it was a sheriff deputy's wife. And police, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, they protect their own. Uh, they were aware
Speaker 5: that he was out on bail for that. And another
Speaker 5: interesting twist here is Stephen Avery's uncle, Ireland Avery, was
Speaker 5: a deputy himself at that time, one of the few
Speaker 5: Avery's who is kind of on the right side of
Speaker 5: the Uh. I know, Ireland neat guy. Actually he's retired now.
Speaker 5: But so the Avery clan was certainly within the consciousness
Speaker 5: of the of the police. And uh, I guess a
Speaker 5: bearded person. You know, that's about as close as the
Speaker 5: description came, frankly, and then they just right off the
Speaker 5: bat pinned him to it in their mind, with very little,
Speaker 5: andsumed very much evidence to suggest that he didn't do it,
Speaker 5: but they went ahead anyhow.
Speaker 6: Well, let's first talk about evidence gathering at that time,
Speaker 6: because we're talking about nineteen eighty five and so DNA
Speaker 6: it's still I can't say exactly, but I know it's
Speaker 6: maybe not completely vetted in court yet, I know it's
Speaker 6: in infancy in terms of the science itself. So tell
Speaker 6: us what the evidence they did get they did gather,
Speaker 6: and tell us how they proceeded with that evidence. What
Speaker 6: evidence did they have before we start talking about what
Speaker 6: evidence they didn't have, for example, alibi.
Speaker 5: You bet well, the one thing they had, you know,
Speaker 5: so far was Pennies identifyfication. Although the identification, as we've
Speaker 5: suggested is was very suggestive. Actually is the word. So
Speaker 5: they had that, and that's always there, especially if it's
Speaker 5: a real credible victim who is articulate and comes out
Speaker 5: very well in court. They had in terms of physical evidence,
Speaker 5: they searched, they did a search for it. They looked
Speaker 5: all through Avery's house. Of course, they did what we
Speaker 5: now call a forensic sex assault examination of Penny. After
Speaker 5: the assault, they did a pubic hair combing and they
Speaker 5: found one hair that there was testimony a trial serology
Speaker 5: was the science back then, You're right, DNA evidence hair
Speaker 5: or otherwise did not make it into the court system
Speaker 5: until about five years later, the late the late eighties
Speaker 5: and early nineties really, so it was seven or so
Speaker 5: years before that's started. But they had this other hair
Speaker 5: examination science called zerology, and a crime lab analyst did
Speaker 5: testify that a hair found on Tenney did not match.
Speaker 5: They can never say match, but they could say basically
Speaker 5: as consistent with the type of hair of Stephen Avery,
Speaker 5: not March. You know, it doesn't really say March. It
Speaker 5: could be just as easily many many more people. But
Speaker 5: at least Avery couldn't be ruled out by the hair.
Speaker 5: So the DA used the crime lab analysts to examine
Speaker 5: the hair, and then the only other bit of evidence,
Speaker 5: physical evidence are otherwise there were no other witnesses was
Speaker 5: the leather jacket that popped up just before trial. The
Speaker 5: DA sent a letter to the Defense Council saying, oh,
Speaker 5: by the way, there's going to be evidence from three
Speaker 5: of our officers that they have often seen Steven Avery
Speaker 5: wear a leather jacket that matches the description of the
Speaker 5: leather jacket that Penny said the assailant had on. I
Speaker 5: forgot to mention, in addition of street clothes on this
Speaker 5: eighty five degree day, whoever the assailant was, they had
Speaker 5: a leather jacket on with the pretty specific description It
Speaker 5: was waste length, it was I don't know button then
Speaker 5: it was just a pretty clear cut specific leather jacket
Speaker 5: and lo and behold. Right before trial, three cops end
Speaker 5: up saying that, yeah, in the earlier context, we saw
Speaker 5: mister Avery with a similar leather jacket. That's about all
Speaker 5: the evidence there was.
Speaker 6: So now what was Avery's What did Avery say to
Speaker 6: where he was at the time that this could have occurred? Right?
Speaker 5: Well, the police went barging into Avery's house. They actually
Speaker 5: were going to get the swat team, but Arlyn Davers,
Speaker 5: Steve Avery's uncle, who was on a deputy, slowed them
Speaker 5: down and said, no, I'll go and act as go between.
Speaker 5: Please don't bring the swat team then, because Avery had
Speaker 5: five little kids at the time. But they barged barge
Speaker 5: excuse me, the fireworks here late, I guess. They barged
Speaker 5: into his residence at about midnight, and Avery said right
Speaker 5: away he didn't do it. His alibi was unbelievable. About
Speaker 5: twelve relatives and friends were together with him at his
Speaker 5: father's salvage art pouring cement that day for some foundations,
Speaker 5: for some sheds or something like that, and most important
Speaker 5: for the defense, Avery had a receipt from a shot
Speaker 5: ghost store at department store up in Green Bay that
Speaker 5: showed that he and his wife were it the checkout
Speaker 5: Rhine because the clerk remembered them with the little kids
Speaker 5: at exactly I believe it was five seventeen pm on
Speaker 5: the day this happened. And Green Bay is about thirty
Speaker 5: miles north of where the assault occurred. And the assault
Speaker 5: occurred at I think four or five it was four
Speaker 5: or five pm it was over. That's when the assailant
Speaker 5: and it lasted about fifteen minutes and for him for
Speaker 5: Avery to get from the location of the assault on
Speaker 5: the beach back to his residence to pick up wife
Speaker 5: and five children and get them in caire seats, et cetera,
Speaker 5: and then drive up to Green Bay and be in
Speaker 5: the shot go check out Rhine at that time was
Speaker 5: next to impossible. The police ran a dry run and
Speaker 5: said that they made it if but they had to speed,
Speaker 5: as the officer said, no more than ten miles per
Speaker 5: hour over the limit, So we got sixty five miles
Speaker 5: per zone and the freeway, so the caps that going
Speaker 5: seventy five, claimed that they could make it, but they
Speaker 5: didn't do the trip back to his residence to pick
Speaker 5: up the kids like he did. So really, the evidence
Speaker 5: that he did not do it, I thought would overwhelmed
Speaker 5: me when I read the transcript.
Speaker 6: Now, without giving too much away for what happens later on,
Speaker 6: what you learn a little bit later. Who is the
Speaker 6: prosecutor that has to be in on this in terms
Speaker 6: of they are the people that finally lay charges. They're
Speaker 6: part of the investigation with the police. Of course, the
Speaker 6: police can hold back information. The police are obviously involved
Speaker 6: in this. But tell us about the prosecutor that must
Speaker 6: be on board and why he might be on board.
Speaker 6: We can see why the police might be by looking
Speaker 6: at this suspect. But now how to get a DA
Speaker 6: on board?
Speaker 5: Sort of motivated the DA. Yeah, his name was Dennis Vogel.
Speaker 5: Mister Vogel left town shortly after the case, after mister
Speaker 5: Avery's conviction while it was still up an appeal. He's
Speaker 5: in private practice in Madison right now, Madison, Wisconsin. But yeah,
Speaker 5: he you know, when he charged it, this little doubt
Speaker 5: he thought that Avery was the person. The victim did
Speaker 5: identify Avery after all, although he could have backed off
Speaker 5: and saw what else there was perhaps, but you know,
Speaker 5: within a few days he had all the alibi information.
Speaker 5: And I let the reader decide for themselves in the
Speaker 5: book as to whether mister Vogel knew that Avery was innocent.
Speaker 5: But there's certain things there that I actually say that,
Speaker 5: you know, I certainly think he knew. Many people thought
Speaker 5: they knew who the real person was, and the staff
Speaker 5: in the DA's office at the time and different police
Speaker 5: agencies even thought that. And the staff actually went up
Speaker 5: to Vogel and said, look, I think he got the
Speaker 5: wrong guy. We think it's this person he manches the description,
Speaker 5: not Avery, and he's been involved in more serious stuff
Speaker 5: this summer leading up to this sort of thing, that
Speaker 5: police were even trailing him. But Vogel in response told
Speaker 5: them the staff that now it can't be this other guy.
Speaker 5: His name is Gregory Allen. Can't be Gregory Allen. I checked,
Speaker 5: or we checked me and the sheriff, and he's on
Speaker 5: probation for a different crime. And I checked with his
Speaker 5: probation agent and he's got an air tied out by
Speaker 5: that day. So the DA is telling all these people, Nope,
Speaker 5: it's impossible. It's him. He's got an alibi. I checked,
Speaker 5: he's on probation. Well years later when I get into
Speaker 5: the picture, we had to have an independent investigation by
Speaker 5: the Wisconsin Attorney General review all this turns out that uh,
Speaker 5: mister Allen, Gregory Allen wasn't out on approbation at all.
Speaker 5: So it's pretty clear mister Vogel was was either making
Speaker 5: that up or wrong. There was some other evidence to
Speaker 5: Dan Kenny Burnson received telephone calls a couple of nights
Speaker 5: after the bald many calls late at night, uh, asking
Speaker 5: you know where's Tom or husband? And I know where
Speaker 5: you live? That sort of thing. Typical behavior by assailants
Speaker 5: on these type of cases to sort of threaten and
Speaker 5: intimidate their their their victim.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: Well, Avery was locked up and with orders by the
Speaker 5: sheriff not to have any access to telephones. So and
Speaker 5: Vogel knew that, and the sheriff knew that. So you know,
Speaker 5: it couldn't have been Avery because he he he couldn't
Speaker 5: make phone calls. And there's other there's other evidence to
Speaker 5: exculpatory evidence that was withheld and all kinds of nasty
Speaker 5: stuff that as a prosecutor, you kind of you don't
Speaker 5: like to see, as anybody you don't like to see,
Speaker 5: but it doesn't make you proud of your profession as
Speaker 5: a prosecutor.
Speaker 6: What did Penny Burston and her husband Tom think about
Speaker 6: this though while this was going on. These are intelligent people,
Speaker 6: and so what did they think when they get a
Speaker 6: call a couple of days later? Obviously they would call police.
Speaker 6: What was the police response to their call? And could
Speaker 6: they at that time did they put two and two
Speaker 6: together in terms of how could it be Avery if
Speaker 6: he's locked up?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well they did call the police after they got
Speaker 5: these and they even went in. Penny went in and
Speaker 5: talked to the sheriff said, look, I'm getting these phone
Speaker 5: calls and you know what's going on here? Are we
Speaker 5: sure it's mister Avery? And then in fact a detective
Speaker 5: from the Manitoc Police Department, which is different than the
Speaker 5: Manitac Sheriff's department, came and told I really think it
Speaker 5: might be this other guy. And Penny's a very conscientious
Speaker 5: and all these things bothered her. So she went in
Speaker 5: and talked to the sheriff, and the sheriff's response was,
Speaker 5: don't listen to anybody else. This is our investigation, it's
Speaker 5: not the City Police Department's investigation. And once a prosecutor
Speaker 5: and a sheriff sit you down and say, look, you
Speaker 5: know you did this compositive sketch. You picked him out Kenny,
Speaker 5: not only on a photo ray, but on a live
Speaker 5: lineup too, because they did one of those, you know.
Speaker 5: And in Penny's mind, that's why that psychological testimony is
Speaker 5: so important. That became mister Avery's face for years. She
Speaker 5: told me that was her imagination of her assailant. He
Speaker 5: was her assailant in her mind, and the picture of
Speaker 5: Avery was in her mind, even though he wasn't her assailant.
Speaker 5: So Penny did what she could, but she was manipulated.
Speaker 6: Now there's an interesting story too. He has a defense
Speaker 6: lawyer that seems to be really I mean the state
Speaker 6: appointed lawyers or court appointed lawyers to defend these people
Speaker 6: because they don't have the money to defend themselves. If
Speaker 6: that's the case, And he had two lawyers, and tell
Speaker 6: us what happened with the first lawyer and what kind
Speaker 6: of lawyer did did they have nothing completely fault them
Speaker 6: or anything when you're getting exculpatory evidence withheld but tell
Speaker 6: us about the tale of the two defense attorneys.
Speaker 5: Sure, the first one's name was Evans Mer I believe
Speaker 5: it's her name. Staff public defender. And Reesa was convinced
Speaker 5: that Avery's innocence. Most attorney's defense attorneys kind of you know,
Speaker 5: they think their clients are probably guilty, most of them,
Speaker 5: you know, they are hopefully the judge you and they
Speaker 5: know that. But every now and then they get somebody
Speaker 5: they believe. And Reesa firmly believed that Avery was innocent,
Speaker 5: actually told him stigators later that she would never go
Speaker 5: to the crime seem to check it out, because she
Speaker 5: was afraid the assailant was still out there somewhere. And
Speaker 5: Resa filed I think eighteen motions to suppress all sorts
Speaker 5: of things and to move the trial and et cetera,
Speaker 5: including of course, suppressing the photo identification. She got ill
Speaker 5: before the motion hearing and has since moved on or
Speaker 5: long ago moved on. So successor counsel was appointed a
Speaker 5: fellow by the name of Jim Bolgert, who now is
Speaker 5: actually a judge one county south of here. You know,
Speaker 5: I thought Jim did a good job with what he had,
Speaker 5: and like you say, if you don't have all the evidence.
Speaker 5: If exculpatory evidence is withheld, you had a disadvantage. He
Speaker 5: firmly believed also in his client's innocence, fought like crazy,
Speaker 5: you know, bothered him so much for years after this conviction.
Speaker 5: This case will never go away in mind, because there's
Speaker 5: a lot of pressure on a defense lawyer, more pressure
Speaker 5: when the person they believe is innocent, because they look
Speaker 5: at it as their job and if they fail, an
Speaker 5: innocent person is going to prism. And that's what happened
Speaker 5: here to the tune of eighteen years in prison.
Speaker 6: Why did they both believe despite you know, because the
Speaker 6: exaltatory evidence is not minor at whatsoever. It's a very
Speaker 6: major and very confirming of innocence obviously, But why were
Speaker 6: they so convinced?
Speaker 5: I think it was the alibi. I think the fact
Speaker 5: that they had a receipt was huge, and that these
Speaker 5: eighteen or well twelve or eighteen whatever it was witnesses
Speaker 5: thought or were credible in saying that they were with
Speaker 5: Avery all day, and the fact that these telephone calls
Speaker 5: went to pay me. If that got through to the defense,
Speaker 5: I don't recall. But there was other evidence. Avery's description
Speaker 5: did not match the initial description that Penny gave to
Speaker 5: the police, so they were able to point out to
Speaker 5: the jury or Jim Bolger was look, Penny, you know
Speaker 5: you said your assailant had brown had brown eyes, but
Speaker 5: my clients are blue. Avery's eyes were real blue. And
Speaker 5: you said he was five foot seven, but he's only
Speaker 5: five foot two. There was another topic of greasy hands.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you remember that when you read it,
Speaker 5: but okay, the Avery clan they all work on cars
Speaker 5: as a selogyard, so their hands are perpetually greasy, like
Speaker 5: never clean, and they smell greasy, and they are greasy.
Speaker 5: Penny was asked several times by the police at the time,
Speaker 5: you know, were your assailant's hands. Did they smell like
Speaker 5: any thing you know where they dirty? And Penny repeatedly
Speaker 5: said no, they in fact, they smelled very clean. So
Speaker 5: they saw that the defense layers got at least that
Speaker 5: kind of evidence from the state. They the state hid
Speaker 5: some things or didn't turn over some things, right, but
Speaker 5: those kinds of things whenever, So at a defense layer
Speaker 5: you get those kinds of things, and the phone calls
Speaker 5: and the alibi the time slipped, the receipt from the
Speaker 5: shot coat store in Green Bay, and you have a
Speaker 5: client who's adamant that he's innocent. I can see how
Speaker 5: they were certain that their client was innocent, and I
Speaker 5: can see why Jim Boger felt horrible when the jury
Speaker 5: two weeks before Christmas in nineteen eighty five found Mystery
Speaker 5: guilty of this crime he did not commit.
Speaker 6: Now, Okay, so he's sentenced eighteen years, and we don't
Speaker 6: have enough time to go into the trial on how
Speaker 6: the process conducted themselves, but we'll say that what we
Speaker 6: did talk about last time was something like the judge
Speaker 6: allowing evidence while recreation of events where the husband carries
Speaker 6: discovers his wife raped and beaten and carries her so
Speaker 6: very much, conducted sort of an emotional basis, circumstantial evident
Speaker 6: against avery. He's a bad guy anyway, and so they
Speaker 6: put him away eighteen years. Now, how do you how
Speaker 6: do you get involved, when do you get involved? And
Speaker 6: what was your take on this case previous to you
Speaker 6: being involved?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 5: We moved up here in nineteen ninety one. I grew
Speaker 5: up in Milwaukee, and I was a prosecuter down there.
Speaker 5: I started as a prosecuter up here in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 5: So this is six years after Avery was convicted. He
Speaker 5: already had six years in a prison. And I was
Speaker 5: an assistant Hea met DA, so I was vaguely familiar
Speaker 5: with the Avery case because I knew it was up
Speaker 5: on appeal, but I only knew that this guy was
Speaker 5: claiming he was innocent. Long story. But I ran for
Speaker 5: election against the DA and I became. I won the election,
Speaker 5: but actually did not take office, but stayed here to
Speaker 5: help the DA as a prosecutor. Shortly after that, this
Speaker 5: new DA took over. He was actually my campaign manager
Speaker 5: at the time. In the election, we got a call
Speaker 5: from the Wisconsin Crime Lab and now this is what
Speaker 5: is this two thousand and two? They'll pardon me. The
Speaker 5: election was two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
Speaker 5: and the crime lab called and said, hey, this old
Speaker 5: case that your former DA there convicted this person of
Speaker 5: and it's actually two DA's earlier. Ay, we've got the
Speaker 5: innocence Project has been filing motions and the former DA
Speaker 5: had fought tooth and nail retesting of any of the evidence.
Speaker 5: But anyhow, the crime Labs on the phone and they
Speaker 5: tell us that this hair the same hair that was
Speaker 5: used against mister Avery under the old science of hair examination,
Speaker 5: was retested and using DNA technology, and that hair matched
Speaker 5: not to mister Avery, but to a known sex offender
Speaker 5: by the name of Gregory Allen. And remember this hair
Speaker 5: was a hair found on the victim on the night
Speaker 5: of the assault at the hospital and in the sex
Speaker 5: assault investigation. So now we have a hair of this
Speaker 5: knownender by the name of Gregory Allen, who is the
Speaker 5: one that everyone else in MANITOAC, the staff of the
Speaker 5: DEA and the other police agency were saying they thought
Speaker 5: was the assailant his hair DNA evidence one in thirty
Speaker 5: billion or whatever. The chance is that it's wrong was
Speaker 5: I'm Penny Burnson. So what do you do as a
Speaker 5: prosecutor when you get that news. You know, this person
Speaker 5: who spent eighteen years in prison, but who had a
Speaker 5: jury convicted, who the Court of Appeals twice affirmed. You know,
Speaker 5: we wanted to make sure before we agreed to release
Speaker 5: mister Avery. So the two of us split the file
Speaker 5: and spent the whole night. Essentially, I brought it home.
Speaker 5: I'm sick of working in the office. Brought it home
Speaker 5: and went through the entire transcript of the first trial
Speaker 5: and became convinced very early on that there's no way
Speaker 5: Avery did this. It's obviously this other person, mister Gregory Allen,
Speaker 5: and Avid I even became convinced matches that they probably
Speaker 5: knew that the sheriff and the DA probably knew that
Speaker 5: mister didn't do it. But when the head and convicted
Speaker 5: him anyhow, so we quickly agreed and signed the stipulation
Speaker 5: to release mister Avery from prison.
Speaker 6: Now, we just skipped over one thing that was important,
Speaker 6: and I think I called it a turning point, and
Speaker 6: I think it really was in terms of You're getting
Speaker 6: some information during that conference call with the state Attorney
Speaker 6: General regarding Gregory Gregory Allen, and you find a criminal
Speaker 6: complaint in Avery's file about Alan, so tell us about that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right. While we're still on the phone with
Speaker 5: the crime lab, the analyst in Madison gives us the
Speaker 5: name of this known sex offender that the DNA database
Speaker 5: came out. It's Gregory A. Allen, and she gave the
Speaker 5: date of birth. And almost exactly the time she gave that,
Speaker 5: I was looking through the Avery file. It's a box actually,
Speaker 5: and I pulled what I thought were sort of the
Speaker 5: paging through it, and I see this criminal complaint against
Speaker 5: the person by the name of Gregory Allen. You know
Speaker 5: what is this doing in the Avery file? And I
Speaker 5: asked the crime live analyst on the phone store, what's
Speaker 5: his date of birth? And she gave me the date
Speaker 5: of birth and it matched this well. That was a
Speaker 5: criminal complaint signed by Dennis Vogel, who was the DA
Speaker 5: who wrongly convicted Avery of an offense, charging Allen with
Speaker 5: a very similar attempt anyhow, on the same beach a
Speaker 5: summer or two earlier. So Gregory Allen had lunged at
Speaker 5: a different woman on the same Lake Michigan beach, the
Speaker 5: same stretch of beach, had dropped his shorts and lunged
Speaker 5: at this woman who was walking her dog. Two years four,
Speaker 5: he assaulted Penny Burnson. And it was signed by the
Speaker 5: district attorney himself, vogo who went ahead and convicted Avery.
Speaker 5: And I did some further investigation. My heart just at
Speaker 5: that point I thought, this is this really smells bad.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is worse than smelling bad. This is just,
Speaker 5: you know, beyond pale.
Speaker 6: So you are emboldened, and so you're armed with this
Speaker 6: new evidence. The DNA itself is very strong and compelling
Speaker 6: when it's a guy sitting in prison with this again,
Speaker 6: this track record of this sort of thing already, and
Speaker 6: again all the other smelly aspects of it. So how
Speaker 6: long does it take to get mister Avery. I'll tell
Speaker 6: us a little bit about that little fight to get
Speaker 6: him out, how it was really done and based on
Speaker 6: what primarily released him.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 5: Well, the Innocence Project in Madison was very good and said, look,
Speaker 5: we really need to confirm before we do anything. They
Speaker 5: understood totally. We got a confirmation DNA swab from Steven
Speaker 5: Avery just to double check, and we checked to see
Speaker 5: if Alan Gregory Allen the real assailant to make sure
Speaker 5: he wasn't in prison somewhere at the time Penny was
Speaker 5: assaulted and he wasn't. So it took about a week
Speaker 5: and basically we just we had a stipulation signed by
Speaker 5: the Wisconsin Innocence Project attorney and myself and the other
Speaker 5: prosecutor here, one of the other prosecutors here, and Avery
Speaker 5: was released under great fanfare. The TV stations flacked up
Speaker 5: to this northern Wisconsin community where he was in a
Speaker 5: prison and had pictures of him with his daughters, at
Speaker 5: around his arms, leaving with a big smile. It was
Speaker 5: a huge story in Wisconsin, really the first exageration of
Speaker 5: a Wisconsin person. And he there's something about Steven Avery.
Speaker 5: He became kind of a quick folk hero and uh,
Speaker 5: you know, a person who withstood a great injustice and
Speaker 5: people just liked him. He's kind of a character. I
Speaker 5: meant to correct one thing Dan real quick. The Gregory
Speaker 5: Allen on the case where I saw the complaint in
Speaker 5: Vogel's file. He just got a fine for that. Vogel
Speaker 5: amended the disoria conduct and gave him a fine. But
Speaker 5: Alan Gregory Allen was in prison though when I came
Speaker 5: into the picture, when when Avery was exonerated because after
Speaker 5: uh this after he assaulted Penny Burns and then got
Speaker 5: away with it, because they went after Avery, uh, seven
Speaker 5: or eight years later, left free to you know, roam
Speaker 5: the streets and repeat his crime. He broke into an
Speaker 5: apartment in Green Bay and viciously raped the woman inside.
Speaker 5: He was charged with, among other offenses, wearing a bullet
Speaker 5: proof garment, which I had never seen before, but I
Speaker 5: think it in case the police came after him or something.
Speaker 5: We also found out he was wanted suspect on a
Speaker 5: murder in North Carolina. So when we got his DNA,
Speaker 5: we checked him out too, and he was in prison.
Speaker 5: I think he's serving still. It's a forty five year
Speaker 5: prison sentence based upon the crime he committed after he
Speaker 5: was not prosecutor for Avery. So you know, for every
Speaker 5: wrongful conviction, the real assailant is left free, and sometimes
Speaker 5: that results and new victims, and that's what happened in
Speaker 5: this case.
Speaker 6: Talk about an aftermath. So Avery now is a a
Speaker 6: cult hero of sorts. People really don't talk about his
Speaker 6: sort of notorious past himself. He has an attorney and
Speaker 6: in there looks like a million or more dollars is
Speaker 6: going to come his way in terms of a settlement
Speaker 6: for this wrongful conviction. So things are looking pretty good.
Speaker 6: How does he conduct himself and what happens a couple
Speaker 6: of years later.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he does a lot of TV interviews. He's back
Speaker 5: at the salvage yard. He's got a beer in one hand.
Speaker 5: During one interview, he's got a long beard, shaved his head.
Speaker 5: He talks about wanting to move into an ice shanty,
Speaker 5: and in fact, he does move into an ice shanty
Speaker 5: that first winter. The small confines of a shanty made
Speaker 5: it feel like home. Like prison. People get out of
Speaker 5: prison and there, you know, it's a totally different day.
Speaker 5: They don't know what to order at a restaurant, they
Speaker 5: don't know how to live. And Avery, because he was exonerated,
Speaker 5: wasn't done parole, didn't receive any services, so his life
Speaker 5: went quickly downhill. The public didn't know that, they did
Speaker 5: not know that they had you know, he was still
Speaker 5: a folk hero and it was a charity put up
Speaker 5: for him so he wouldn't have to live in a
Speaker 5: nice anybody wanted to anyhow. But he started to commit
Speaker 5: some minor offenses and then on September excuse me, October thirty,
Speaker 5: first Halloween Day, October thirty, first of two thousand and five,
Speaker 5: just over two years after Stephen Avery was exigerated and
Speaker 5: released from prison, a freelance photographer by the name of
Speaker 5: Teresa Halbach from this part of Wisconsin went missing. Her
Speaker 5: mother reported to the police about three days after she
Speaker 5: had seen her last that she was gone. She was missing.
Speaker 5: She's never gone that long. Teresa lived in a different
Speaker 5: place but kept in close to contact with her mother.
Speaker 5: She's at least she was twenty three years old. The
Speaker 5: last person or the last assignment Theresa had with her
Speaker 5: photography business was to take a photo of a vehicle,
Speaker 5: a buick. I believe that Stephen Avery was putting up
Speaker 5: for sale at the car at the salvage yard for
Speaker 5: Auto Trader magazine, and the police traced down that she
Speaker 5: indeed did go that day to the salvage yard and
Speaker 5: took and that's the last anybody knew of her. They
Speaker 5: searched Avery's the salvage yard and did not on the
Speaker 5: initial search she find her car I have for suv.
Speaker 5: It wasn't there or they missed it at the time
Speaker 5: they searched it. But a few days later, a volunteer
Speaker 5: search party that was organized by Teresa's family and her friends.
Speaker 5: And by the way, she's just a wonderful young lady.
Speaker 5: Was a wonderful young lady, just an amazing person in
Speaker 5: so many ways. But this volunteer search party found her
Speaker 5: vehicle in the corner of this vast rural salvage yard,
Speaker 5: covered in branches, partially concealed. And then I was on call,
Speaker 5: actually the police called me and we all went to
Speaker 5: the salvage yard and a massive search. One hundred more
Speaker 5: than one hundred cops from different jurisdictions in this area
Speaker 5: conducted a search. News media helicopters were circling overhead because
Speaker 5: you have to remember Avery was already this well known
Speaker 5: figure in Wisconsin, and then this story of this young
Speaker 5: lady missing was already out on the news a few
Speaker 5: days and then the two came together on this day
Speaker 5: this I think it was October October fifth or so,
Speaker 5: about five days after Teresa went missing, excuse me, that
Speaker 5: would be November fifth or so, about five days after
Speaker 5: Teresa went missing, that her car was found. That we
Speaker 5: were out at this salvage verge, and I remember it
Speaker 5: being a beautiful sunny day to start with. When we
Speaker 5: got out there, it was a Saturday, and the search
Speaker 5: police thought. We all kind of thought, we're going to
Speaker 5: find Teresa's remains. You think the worst because we knew
Speaker 5: what Avery was about, and it just the whole thing.
Speaker 5: There was a feeling that this wasn't going to be good.
Speaker 5: And the day turned into a cold front went through
Speaker 5: and driving wet, driving rain, windy, colder temperatures. We had
Speaker 5: a crime lab unit, a mobile crime lab unit from
Speaker 5: the state crime Lab in Madison set up at sort
Speaker 5: of the headquarters with all these police going out from there,
Speaker 5: big lights, floodlights, and the canopy. I'll never forget that
Speaker 5: flapping in the wind. Late at night, you know, still nobody,
Speaker 5: no nothing, until about midnight or so one of the
Speaker 5: police dogs hit on a burn barrel and then a
Speaker 5: fire pit a little bit later, and soon charred bones
Speaker 5: of a young adult female were located, as well as
Speaker 5: pieces of a cellphone and a camera and later determined
Speaker 5: to be Teresa's bones.
Speaker 6: Now, if police and you, being the prosecutor, knew what
Speaker 6: avery was all about or his potential, you knew that
Speaker 6: he had well I don't know when you knew, but
Speaker 6: that he had been in decline since he had been
Speaker 6: out of prison. Did the police believe that he was
Speaker 6: their likely suspect and just didn't search the property adequately?
Speaker 6: And was part of their part of their approach a
Speaker 6: little bit tentative because what they had had the police
Speaker 6: wrongdoing in the wrongful conviction. Was there a little bit
Speaker 6: of that involved.
Speaker 5: I think the police were very skittish. It was another
Speaker 5: police agency that did the first search that did not
Speaker 5: see the vehicle's vehicle. She's from Calumet County one County
Speaker 5: to the west of here, so they had the initial investigation,
Speaker 5: the missing person thing came up there, they wouldn't have
Speaker 5: been so skittish, but they also knew of Avery's past.
Speaker 5: You know, the police said, of course they you know,
Speaker 5: they kept an open mind. Nobody's a suspect at this point,
Speaker 5: blah blah blah. But I'm sure I know that, you know,
Speaker 5: they they didn't suspect him specifically, but they knew he
Speaker 5: was beloved this and after he was the person that
Speaker 5: had called Teresa to take the photo shot. But as
Speaker 5: soon as they found her car, then it became likely that,
Speaker 5: you know, possibly the murder happened here in Manitoa County,
Speaker 5: where the every salvage yard is located. Then the Manitoa County,
Speaker 5: our county police and sheriffs and state patrol and our
Speaker 5: office got involved. And yeah, there was right from the
Speaker 5: start a skittishness. I'll admit that I and the other
Speaker 5: prescutor we both instructed the police. Look, you know, we
Speaker 5: need to always a Calliumett County officer with a Manitoa
Speaker 5: County officer as we search this because no matter what happens,
Speaker 5: the claim is going to be made that we did
Speaker 5: it again that we set up mister Avery, and sure
Speaker 5: enough that was exactly the claim after Avery was was
Speaker 5: arrested in the claim a trial.
Speaker 6: Now with this, you mentioned it was well, we talked
Speaker 6: about that it was likely that he was going to
Speaker 6: get this big settlement. Did that play into not to
Speaker 6: be cynical of a lawyers at all, but did that
Speaker 6: play into the kind of attorney that he could secure,
Speaker 6: along with the high profile nature of the case and
Speaker 6: his wrongful conviction sort of good for business and maybe
Speaker 6: he's going to get some money ultimately anyway, did that
Speaker 6: play into the kind of real aggressive defense that he
Speaker 6: did have. Finally, in the murder case, Yes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think so. His lawsuit was for thirty six
Speaker 5: million dollars and he wouldn't make that, but you know,
Speaker 5: he had stood the county and the DA and the
Speaker 5: sheriff both personally and in their official capacities, and he
Speaker 5: stood to make a very you know, and probably double
Speaker 5: digit millions. And as soon as the murder happened, that
Speaker 5: runfel conviction lawsuit, the value of it of course went
Speaker 5: way down as soon as Avery was arrested, and he
Speaker 5: ended up settling for four hundred thousand and all of that,
Speaker 5: all of that went to pay for his legal defense team.
Speaker 5: So you're right. In the American system of justice, if
Speaker 5: you have money, you get a better lawyer. And these
Speaker 5: two that represented him really are very excellent attorneys and
Speaker 5: excellent people. They believed strongly in, you know, putting the
Speaker 5: state to its proof and making sure the justice system
Speaker 5: works right. But they sure did mount and aggressive defense
Speaker 5: and avery before he was arrested because he was hold
Speaker 5: up in his cabin up North after Teresa's car and
Speaker 5: the body parts were found. Police Bill didn't feel they
Speaker 5: had enough, so they didn't arrest him for about a
Speaker 5: week and n one of those nights, he called in
Speaker 5: to the Nancy Show of All Things Wow and proclaimed
Speaker 5: proclaimed is innocent Live out of the Blue. He just
Speaker 5: calls Nancy Grace and she had a guest host on
Speaker 5: at the time, and he was talking about the police
Speaker 5: starts setting them up again and he doesn't know what
Speaker 5: they're doing on his salvage air. They've got the whole
Speaker 5: thing cordoned off. They could be planting evidence and unbelievable,
Speaker 5: how interesting all that was to watch it happen.
Speaker 6: Oh, that's wild. What I want to want to ask
Speaker 6: was what evidence because this is important because we talk
Speaker 6: about the vile of blood a little bit later, what
Speaker 6: evidence was found in that vehicle, and then we'll talk
Speaker 6: about the aggressive defense in terms of trying to get
Speaker 6: that evidence suppressed.
Speaker 5: You bet, first of all, in the vehicle itself, there
Speaker 5: were two or three spots of blood in the interior
Speaker 5: portion of the vehicle, the rav four of Teresa's and
Speaker 5: there was evidence a trial that that was mister Avery's blood.
Speaker 5: There was other evidence that he had cut himself during
Speaker 5: this time at some point, and that he moved her
Speaker 5: vehicle and then was concealing it and the next day
Speaker 5: probably would have put it into this huge car crusher
Speaker 5: it's called. And who knows if any of this evidence
Speaker 5: ever would have been found, and maybe mister Avery wouldn't
Speaker 5: be in prison now. But anyhow so there's these spots
Speaker 5: of blood that no question were Avery's, although where it
Speaker 5: came from we'll get to later in terms of the
Speaker 5: blood vile defense. But the other physical evidence was Teresa
Speaker 5: Hawbucks keys the keys to the raft four after five
Speaker 5: or six searches of his bedroom by Calumet County officers,
Speaker 5: two Manitoa County officers, did a final search of the
Speaker 5: bedroom and in kind of shaking or the dresser, they
Speaker 5: some keys popped out or a key popped out and
Speaker 5: landed on the floor and they picked it up and
Speaker 5: that key was Teresa Hobbock's key ignition key to the
Speaker 5: raft four. So now you have Avery's blood in her
Speaker 5: car and you have her car key in his bedroom.
Speaker 5: You can see where this is going. I mean, either
Speaker 5: you know the defense they planted at all, yep, and
Speaker 5: that it's enough. Yeah, that that with him thing her
Speaker 5: in the first place to take this photo and specifical
Speaker 5: way asking for her because in addition to the freelance
Speaker 5: photography business she had, she worked for this this Car
Speaker 5: Trader magazine or this photography company that took pictures for
Speaker 5: Car Trader, and Steven had had her there before and
Speaker 5: specific way asked that Teresa come out to take the
Speaker 5: shot at the vehicle, the picture of the car.
Speaker 6: What was his demeanor like when police asked him where
Speaker 6: is this miss hallback? What was there? Did they get
Speaker 6: any indication of his guilt from that altercation?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 5: No, he he said she was here, she took the photos,
Speaker 5: and she left and he hadn't seen her since he
Speaker 5: later said that he saw a car kind of fouling
Speaker 5: her shortly after she left, that he had never seen
Speaker 5: around there, But yeah, he didn't. He didn't seem nervous
Speaker 5: the way I understand it, and denied it.
Speaker 6: What were the body parts that you referred to that
Speaker 6: they said you found and that was that in the
Speaker 6: burn can itself? Was their bones?
Speaker 5: Tell us about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, they were crushed and charred. Pieces of bone that
Speaker 5: anthropologists later testified were were those of Teresa Habbach. They
Speaker 5: must have got the DNA from earlier. There were the
Speaker 5: other ones spread around the premises in different areas actually,
Speaker 5: and there were bits of her camera charred, and I
Speaker 5: think a cell phone and of her Daisy Fuente's genes
Speaker 5: as well, little buckles or something like that, or rivets,
Speaker 5: I believe you know. There was other evidence too that
Speaker 5: was mad admitted in the trial. But that is really
Speaker 5: the evidence that convinced most people that mister Avery was innocent.
Speaker 5: It was guilty, excuse me of the murder. His seventeen
Speaker 5: year old nephew, Brendan Dacy, was repeatedly contacted by the
Speaker 5: police because the police thought he knew more about it
Speaker 5: than he was telling them. And he denied knowing anything
Speaker 5: about it many times, but the police would bring him
Speaker 5: in in three hours of questioning and another instance more questioning,
Speaker 5: and eventually he told them. He confessed essentially that he,
Speaker 5: along with his uncle Stephen, both raped and killed Teresa Holbach.
Speaker 5: And in an incredibly vivid press conference that was live
Speaker 5: all over the major TV stations here in Wisconsin some
Speaker 5: beyond that, DA prosecuted Avery for the murder. We had
Speaker 5: to fire him the case out, we had a conflict
Speaker 5: of interest, so the calliu Met County District Attorney ended
Speaker 5: up prosecuting. This went through and vivid detail, this confession
Speaker 5: and this lengthy statement that Avery's nephew, Brendan Darcy gave,
Speaker 5: and he was sixteen years old by the way, about
Speaker 5: how he came home from school and heard this woman
Speaker 5: crying in his uncle Steve's trailer, and how both of them.
Speaker 5: I really don't even want to go into detail. It's
Speaker 5: as bad of a rape, of a death, a knifing
Speaker 5: and a shooting and the torturing as you can think
Speaker 5: of it.
Speaker 6: It's just it's just it's just what was the motive
Speaker 6: he came out? What was the motive he gave for
Speaker 6: this all to happen, Well.
Speaker 5: It was pretty clearly his uncle wanted to rape this woman,
Speaker 5: and you know, if she was handcuffed to the bed
Speaker 5: and screaming and it was pure I don't think Avery
Speaker 5: cared if he went back to prison. In fact, he
Speaker 5: told the reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who interviewed
Speaker 5: him about a year after he was out, which would
Speaker 5: be about a year before the murder, that he just
Speaker 5: having such a hard time, can't handle it. He goes
Speaker 5: for long drive sometimes. He was sort of reminiscing about
Speaker 5: the days in prison, out in the prison yard looking
Speaker 5: at the jets to gole by, and said, sometimes just
Speaker 5: you know, put me back in there. I just can't
Speaker 5: handle it. So I think, you know, Avery's proclivities, his
Speaker 5: sexual deviance, mixed with his not being able to handle
Speaker 5: being out after eighteen years of being in when he
Speaker 5: shouldn't have been in, all came together and obviously wax
Speaker 5: any kind of human conscious to be able to do
Speaker 5: what he did here, because you know, you know how
Speaker 5: she ended up, how trees ended up in a burn barrew,
Speaker 5: charred bone fragments, so you know, the nephew went into
Speaker 5: great detail about how they disposed of the body. It
Speaker 5: wasn't it was almost dimarresque, which, by the way, as
Speaker 5: another Wisconsin the product.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, that's incredible.
Speaker 6: Well, as I say it to me, though, it seems
Speaker 6: again not that these killers make sense at all. But
Speaker 6: there seems to be that he had this overall, despite
Speaker 6: the optimism that some people thought that geez, you know,
Speaker 6: he's going to get this money and his life is
Speaker 6: going to be turned around. And you say, he had this.
Speaker 6: It was not healthy for him, and he really probably
Speaker 6: was institutionalized. But there seems to be with this crime
Speaker 6: some kind of animosity towards or some payback that was
Speaker 6: represented through this woman. Is there no that I mean, yeah,
Speaker 6: but that's a.
Speaker 5: Really yeah, that's a really interesting point. Dan. There is
Speaker 5: a feeling on his part of entitlement too. Ticket you know,
Speaker 5: going like ninety five miles an hour or something, and
Speaker 5: he kind of came in and said, well, big deal,
Speaker 5: you know, I was I was in prison for eighteen years.
Speaker 5: Who cares about this? And he also testified at a
Speaker 5: drunk driving trial that I did his girlfriend he had
Speaker 5: Sorry Dan, yes, oh sorry about that. I think I
Speaker 5: had some interference on this end. But Anyhow, he after
Speaker 5: he was out, I had charged his girlfriend, who he
Speaker 5: just met this one night at a gas station and
Speaker 5: they were both kind of lonely folks, and he ended
Speaker 5: up dating her after that. But she was charged with
Speaker 5: drunk driving sixth offense, and it went to trial, and
Speaker 5: Steven Avery actually testified at the trial and perjured himself.
Speaker 5: I believe this is after he was this folk hero,
Speaker 5: but before the murder and basically said, no, she wasn't driving.
Speaker 5: I was driving, and I put the car in the
Speaker 5: ditch accidentally, and et cetera. They didn't believe him. It
Speaker 5: wasn't a credible story. But what I'm trying to say is, yeah,
Speaker 5: I think he did think that the system owes him.
Speaker 5: He understandably had no respect for the system. I think
Speaker 5: he had respect for you know, judges more or less
Speaker 5: because because they didn't do this to him, but prosecutors
Speaker 5: and police who could blame him for having no respect
Speaker 5: and the anger that built up in him during those
Speaker 5: eighteen years in prison. He got divorced, he got so
Speaker 5: angry at his wife for not staying with him, and
Speaker 5: the entire time in prison, you could only imagine how
Speaker 5: prison itself affects someone for eighteen years, but knowing that
Speaker 5: you didn't do it, and you're sitting there for all
Speaker 5: that time. So yeah, whether it's a reaction out against
Speaker 5: the system or I tend to think it's more not
Speaker 5: caring if he went back to prison with that secondary
Speaker 5: to his main problem since birth, probably psychological difficulties or
Speaker 5: not since birth, but since five or six years old.
Speaker 5: Probably There's another side to this that I've learned since
Speaker 5: writing this book, to running into people who knew the
Speaker 5: he's his mother used to tie him to a leash
Speaker 5: as a form of punishment outside to a tree naked
Speaker 5: when he was five or six. You know, if you're
Speaker 5: going to act like an animal, I'm going to treat
Speaker 5: you like an animal. That's what was reported to me anyhow,
Speaker 5: as to what she told him and what she did,
Speaker 5: And you know, you can't it's hard to imagine much
Speaker 5: of a worse childhood in terms of, if this is true,
Speaker 5: a mother and who should be nurturing instead doing things
Speaker 5: like that, tying a young child naked to a tree
Speaker 5: in the front yard like a dog on a leash.
Speaker 5: You know, So who knows what drives this, but you
Speaker 5: know there has to be something doesn't there no matter
Speaker 5: how your childhood was, that should go off in your
Speaker 5: mind that what he did, what he was doing. I don't,
Speaker 5: you know, want to go into the detail on the radio,
Speaker 5: frankly about how bad this was in that bedroom and
Speaker 5: how they killed her and how they disposed of her body.
Speaker 5: But some has to go off in one's mind, I
Speaker 5: would think, even though they're messed up, to say this
Speaker 5: is just wrong. You have this woman pleading for her
Speaker 5: life and you're treating her like a piece of meat
Speaker 5: or worse. It just it's as bad as it gets.
Speaker 6: But you know, I think this thing, we look at
Speaker 6: the aftermath, we look at the devastation, and what is
Speaker 6: it caused from. Of course, principally these heinous, psychopathic without
Speaker 6: a conscience, without a soul, killer, rapists, rapists, killers, violent
Speaker 6: people with no concern for anyone, despite what they say
Speaker 6: about all family, close family, close knit family. But it
Speaker 6: started with the deputy and the sheriff in the district
Speaker 6: attorney Vogel not doing their job, not doing what they
Speaker 6: were entrusted to do of a system that they believe in,
Speaker 6: that they work in, that they that we pay honor to.
Speaker 6: They didn't do what they were supposed to do, which
Speaker 6: led to Gregory Allen continuing his reign of terror. And
Speaker 6: we could have had ten murders, we could have ten
Speaker 6: more rapes, we could have had all kinds of things
Speaker 6: that he could have done because he wasn't stopped. And
Speaker 6: then we have an innocent man, pardon me. And then
Speaker 6: we have an innocent man, yes, And then we have
Speaker 6: an innocent man railroaded and that damage. And we talked
Speaker 6: about his wife leaving him, but this is a guy
Speaker 6: that did seem to have, you know, some semblance of
Speaker 6: a family life. I mean, he had friends and relatives,
Speaker 6: and he had family, and he had five children, and
Speaker 6: his life was ruined with those children.
Speaker 5: So and his wife actually thought he was getting things together,
Speaker 5: and there's evidence he was that he was least trying
Speaker 5: to get on the right track before he was arrested
Speaker 5: that last time. And you're absolutely right. If it weren't
Speaker 5: for what the sheriff and the DA did, the woman
Speaker 5: in Green Bay would not have been assaulted, brutally assaulted.
Speaker 5: Perhaps other victims that we don't know about. They don't
Speaker 5: get caught for everything. And Teresa Halbach, the way life works,
Speaker 5: I mean, only Stephen Avery and Brenda Dacy's nephew are
Speaker 5: responsible for her death. But had the sheriff and the
Speaker 5: DA not did what they did, Teresa Holbock would be
Speaker 5: alive today. Avery could have ended up in prison for
Speaker 5: something else, or he could have had his life gotten straight,
Speaker 5: you know, together, if he wasn't ruefully convicted, who knows
Speaker 5: what would have happened. But one thing always leads to another,
Speaker 5: doesn't it. What I had for breakfast is more affected
Speaker 5: what I had for lunch, and Avery would not have
Speaker 5: been in a position to murder Teresa Halbach. So yeah,
Speaker 5: it's an amazing story about consequences and what happens. One
Speaker 5: thing leads to another, to another or to another, and
Speaker 5: it all kind of comes around, good and bad.
Speaker 6: It's amazing story of justice that is served, though that
Speaker 6: in the injustice is recognized by a prosecutor, because the
Speaker 6: innocent project is are not the only people that know.
Speaker 6: It seems incredible that prosecutors, even given the kind of
Speaker 6: evidence that you saw DNA evidence of another perpetrator, we're
Speaker 6: not gonna We're either not going to release this guy.
Speaker 6: We're not going to release this guy easily. We're not
Speaker 6: going to exonerate this guy, and we're not going to
Speaker 6: clear this guy completely or we're just not going to
Speaker 6: pursue it, or you know. So I was surprised that
Speaker 6: and probably the way of having somebody like you involved
Speaker 6: that he was really at least quickly, which probably didn't
Speaker 6: do them any good either. But that still that I
Speaker 6: think that this is a story of injustice, but justice served.
Speaker 6: But in the end, the damage had already been done
Speaker 6: and regardless, Avery still is a guilty man. Teresa Hallback
Speaker 6: is an innocent victim along with her family, and Penny
Speaker 6: Burnson and her husband were also manipulated and used and
Speaker 6: traumatized by this entire system. So again, it's an incredible story.
Speaker 6: And I congratulate you on a spellbinding book about a
Speaker 6: spellbinding case. And I want to thank you very much
Speaker 6: Michael for coming on talking about the Innocent Killer. Very
Speaker 6: engaging book. Thank you very much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, I sure appreciate you having me Dan, and
Speaker 5: it's always good to talk to you.
Speaker 6: Well, I want to thank you very much Michael and
Speaker 6: hope to talk to you again soon. And you have
Speaker 6: yourself a good night. Thank you you two.
Speaker 5: Thanks take care, good night,