Is Steven Avery Innocent? Evidence, Frame-Up, and Dassey

Whether Steven Avery is innocent of murdering Teresa Halbach has no settled answer: a Wisconsin jury convicted him in 2007, every court to review the case since has upheld that conviction, and as of late 2025 his attorney Kathleen Zellner is preparing his first federal habeas petition. The reason the question refuses to die is that the same man had already spent 18 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, was in the middle of a $36 million lawsuit against the county whose officers found the evidence against him, and several of the most important pieces of that evidence turned up only on repeat searches of places that had already been searched. What follows walks through what the state proved, what the defense contested, and what has happened in court since.

What the State’s Evidence Actually Showed

Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old freelance photographer, drove to Avery’s Auto Salvage near Two Rivers, Wisconsin on October 31, 2005 to photograph a van for Auto Trader magazine. She was never seen alive again. Her Toyota RAV4 was found on the Avery property on November 5, hidden under branches with the battery disconnected. Remnants of her camera and cellphone were in a burn barrel. Bone fragments later identified by DNA as Halbach’s were recovered in and around a burn pit near Avery’s home.¹

Prosecutors pointed out that Avery had specifically requested Halbach for the shoot and had called her phone three times that day, twice using a feature to block his number.² The forensic case rested on five pieces of physical evidence: Avery’s blood inside Halbach’s RAV4, a key to the RAV4 found in his bedroom, a .22 bullet fragment bearing her DNA found in his garage, bone fragments at the burn pit, and Avery’s DNA on the RAV4’s hood release latch.³ A jury heard 27 days of testimony before convicting him of first-degree intentional homicide and firearm possession by a felon in March 2007. He was acquitted of mutilating a corpse. The sentence was life without parole.⁴

Why the Frame-Up Argument Has Weight

Avery had been exonerated two years before Halbach’s death. In 1985, he was convicted of a brutal sexual assault on a Lake Michigan beach despite 16 alibi witnesses and store receipts placing him elsewhere. In 2003, the Wisconsin Innocence Project secured DNA testing that matched the actual perpetrator, Gregory Allen, who was already in prison for a different sexual assault. Avery walked out after 18 years. It later emerged that Manitowoc County detectives had learned as early as 1995 that a man already in custody may have committed the crime, but filed no written report and took no action.⁵¹

After his release, Avery sued Manitowoc County, former sheriff Tom Kocourek, and former district attorney Denis Vogel for $36 million. By the fall of 2005, roughly 35 pretrial depositions had been taken and the discovery was producing testimony damaging to the county.⁶ Avery was arrested for Halbach’s murder in November 2005. The following month, he settled the civil suit for $400,000 with no admission of fault, and used the money to pay for his criminal defense.⁷

At trial, attorneys Dean Strang and Jerry Buting argued that a small number of Manitowoc County officers, specifically Sergeant Andrew Colborn and Lieutenant James Lenk, both named in the civil suit, had planted evidence to protect themselves and their county. Both officers denied this under oath. Strang acknowledged there was no “hard evidence” of a conspiracy and asked the jury to rely on “inference and common sense.”⁸ The jury convicted anyway.

The Disputed Evidence, Item by Item

The pattern that drives the planting theory is simple: several of the most incriminating items were not found on the first search of the location where they turned up. They surfaced days, months, or in one case half a year later.⁹

Blood in the RAV4

Eight bloodstains matching Avery’s DNA were inside the vehicle. A vial of his blood collected during the 1985 case was found in the Manitowoc County Courthouse with what appeared to be a needle puncture in the stopper. The FBI tested three stains for EDTA, a preservative found in stored blood, and all three came back negative, which the state argued proved the blood was fresh. The defense responded that the FBI had not established a reliable detection limit, so EDTA could have been present at levels the test could not pick up.¹⁰

The Car Key

A key to Halbach’s RAV4 was found in Avery’s bedroom on the sixth search of the trailer. Earlier, more thorough searches had turned up nothing. Only Avery’s DNA was on the key, with none from Halbach, who had used it daily. Forensic analysts noted the top of the key was never tested and that the DNA appeared to come from a smear on the blue lanyard rather than a biological fluid.³

The Bullet Fragment

A .22 caliber bullet fragment carrying Halbach’s DNA was recovered from Avery’s garage in March 2006, four months after the initial search. Ballistics linked it to a rifle taken from his residence. The defense flagged that the lab analyst’s own DNA appeared in the extraction control, though the sample itself showed a single-source female profile.³

The Hood Latch DNA

In April 2006, roughly six months after the RAV4 was impounded, a swab of the hood release latch produced a full DNA profile matching Avery. The prosecution described it as “sweat DNA.” The defense pointed out that sweat itself contains no DNA, and raised two alternative sources: contamination from an investigator who had not changed gloves between evidence items, or deliberate transfer using the buccal swabs taken from Avery in November 2005.¹¹ Strang later said inadvertent transfer was at least as plausible as planting.¹²

The Bone Fragments

Bone fragments were recovered from three separate burn sites, including a skull fragment showing a gunshot injury. The multiple locations complicate the state’s narrative that Halbach was killed and burned entirely on Avery’s property. Years later, in 2019, Zellner revealed that bone fragments collected from a Manitowoc County gravel pit had been returned to the Halbach family while Avery’s direct appeal was still pending, without notice to the defense. She argued the state had effectively conceded the gravel-pit bones belonged to Halbach, which would mean her remains were not all in one place.¹³

The Brendan Dassey Problem

Avery’s then-16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey, who had a tested IQ of 73, was convicted as an accomplice based largely on a three-hour interrogation conducted without a parent or attorney present. Investigators used leading questions, misstated what they already had, and implied leniency. Dassey eventually described a rape, murder, and mutilation in which he and Avery had both participated.¹⁴

That confession is a problem for the state’s own theory of the Avery case. Dassey described Halbach being stabbed and having her throat cut in Avery’s bedroom. No trace of her blood was ever found in that room. The physical evidence prosecutors used against Avery pointed to a shooting in the garage, not a stabbing in the bedroom.³

A federal judge overturned Dassey’s conviction in 2016, finding the confession involuntary, and a three-judge Seventh Circuit panel agreed in 2017. In December 2017 the full Seventh Circuit reinstated the conviction 4-3, holding that even if the confession’s validity was debatable, the state court’s finding was not “unreasonable” under federal habeas standards. The Supreme Court declined review in June 2018. Governor Tony Evers’s pardon board denied Dassey clemency in December 2019, ruling him ineligible because he had not completed his sentence, despite a petition supported by nearly 250 legal experts and retired officials.¹⁵¹⁶

What the Juries and Courts Have Decided

Twelve jurors convicted Avery in 2007 after hearing the full planting defense. Accounts that surfaced later muddied the picture. Juror Richard Mahler, excused for a family emergency before deliberations concluded, said he would have voted not guilty and claimed the first vote among the remaining jurors was seven not guilty, three guilty, and two undecided. He also alleged that one juror, the father of a Manitowoc County sheriff’s deputy, declared Avery was “guilty as all hell.”¹⁷¹⁸ A second, anonymous juror told the Making a Murderer filmmakers that jurors engaged in “vote trading,” exchanging guilty votes on one count for not guilty votes on another.¹⁹ No court has ever considered these accounts as a basis for relief.

Kathleen Zellner joined the defense in December 2015 and has filed a series of post-conviction motions. A 2017 motion exceeding 1,200 pages alleged planted evidence and false testimony. It was denied, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined review in 2021.²⁰

In 2022, Zellner filed a third motion naming an alternative suspect: Bobby Dassey, Brendan’s older brother. The 483-page filing argued Bobby committed the murder, planted the car key in Avery’s bedroom, and then testified for the prosecution. Supporting material included violent pornographic images and search terms like “blood,” “body,” “stab,” and “throat” found on the Dassey family computer, plus an affidavit from newspaper carrier Thomas Sowinski who claimed to have seen Bobby and an older man pushing a dark blue RAV4 toward the junkyard before sunrise on November 5, 2005.²¹

In January 2025, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals rejected it. The computer was communal, there was no proof Bobby accessed the images, the search terms were “generic and broad,” and the Sowinski affidavit did not show Bobby had the means to carry out the framing the defense described. The court called the motion “insufficiently pled” and based on speculation. The Wisconsin Supreme Court declined review in May 2025.²²

Avery’s state options are now exhausted. Zellner plans to file a federal habeas petition, which would be the first time his case reaches the federal system. No filing date is set as of December 2025. She has said she is evaluating new DNA testing using equipment improvements since 2005. Federal habeas review operates under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, with a one-year filing deadline and a requirement to show that the state court’s ruling was not merely wrong but unreasonable. Legal observers have described winning such a petition as extraordinarily difficult.²³

What Making a Murderer Left Out

Anyone forming an opinion from the 2015 Netflix series should know what was not in it. The documentary minimized or omitted Avery’s use of a blocked number to call Halbach the day she disappeared, his specific request for her as the photographer, the hood latch DNA, and details of what was found in the burn pit. It also gave little attention to his prior record, which includes a 1982 conviction for dousing the family cat in gasoline and throwing it into a fire, and a 1985 incident in which he forced a female relative’s car off the road and pointed a gun at her.¹ Penny Beerntsen, the victim of the 1985 assault for which Avery was wrongfully convicted, said the filmmakers appeared to have “a foregone conclusion” of his innocence.²⁴

Filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos said the omissions were “not significant” and that they presented “as many sides as we could.”² Original defense attorney Dean Strang said he did not consider the omitted evidence crucial.²⁵ Sergeant Colborn sued Netflix for defamation. A federal judge dismissed the suit in 2023, finding no evidence of actual malice; the judge acknowledged the series may have “nudged viewers toward the conclusion” that Colborn planted evidence but ruled this was protected by the First Amendment.²⁶

Notably, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which helped free Avery in 2003, declined to take his post-conviction murder case, without publicly explaining why. The national Innocence Project has said it takes no position on the merits of his innocence claim but considers the case “a troubling one” that “deserves serious scrutiny.”²⁷

Where Things Stand

Steven Avery is 63 and incarcerated at Fox Lake Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.²⁸ A jury found him guilty of killing Teresa Halbach. Every Wisconsin court has upheld that verdict, and the most recent alternative-suspect theory was rejected as speculation. The frame-up argument has never been proved, but neither have its underlying facts been explained away: the officers at the center of the search had been named in Avery’s $36 million lawsuit, the most incriminating items appeared on repeat searches, and the confession of his young co-defendant did not match the physical evidence against either of them. A federal habeas petition is the only legal avenue left, and the odds against it are long. For now, the question of whether Avery is innocent remains, in the formal legal sense, answered, and in the public sense, open.

1
Britannica. Steven Avery
2
ABC News. Making a Murderer Prosecutor Says Netflix Series Wasn’t Documentary
3
Science and Film. Investigating the DNA Science in Making a Murderer
4
Post-Crescent. Steven Avery Continues Appeal Efforts
5
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Law School Innocence Project Helps Exonerate Inmate
6
Boston College Law Magazine. The Two Sides of the Truth
7
Post-Crescent. Avery Stood to Become Millionaire
8
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. No Avery Evidence Planted, Officers Say
9
Post-Crescent. Was Steven Avery Framed? Debate Rages
10
Business Insider. What Is the EDTA Test in Making a Murderer
11
Post-Crescent. Defense Targets Key Evidence in Halbach Case
12
CBS News. Dean Strang on Making a Murderer Sweat DNA
13
Fox 17. Circuit Court to Hear New Evidence in Steven Avery Murder Case
14
American Psychological Association. Brendan Dassey and Coerced Confessions
15
NPR. Brendan Dassey of Making a Murderer Won’t Get Heard by Supreme Court
16
CNN. Brendan Dassey Pardon Request Denied
17
CBS News. Making a Murderer Juror Stands by Steven Avery Verdict
18
News 5 Cleveland. Steven Avery Juror: I Would Have Voted Not Guilty
19
NBC 26. Second Juror Speaks Out in Avery Murder Case
20
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Steven Avery Continues to Pursue Appeal but Routes Narrow
21
Wisconsin Court of Appeals. State v. Steven A. Avery, No. 2023AP1556
22
Post-Crescent. Wisconsin Supreme Court Won’t Review Steven Avery’s Latest Appeal
23
Minnesota Lawyer. Steven Avery Federal Habeas Appeal
24
Post-Crescent. Animal Abuse Tipping Point for Steven Avery
25
The Justice Gap. One Sided Conversation With Making a Murderer Lawyers
26
Variety. Making a Murderer Netflix Defamation Lawsuit Thrown Out
27
Innocence Project. FAQ: Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey Cases
28
Post-Crescent. Wisconsin Supreme Court Dismisses Letter From Steven Avery