Steven Avery Case: DNA Exoneration, Murder Trial, and Appeals

The Steven Avery case is the two-conviction Wisconsin saga of a man freed by DNA in 2003 after serving 18 years for a rape he did not commit, then convicted in 2007 of murdering freelance photographer Teresa Halbach and sentenced to life without release. Avery is still in prison. In May 2025 the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to review his third post-conviction motion, and his attorney Kathleen Zellner has said the next step is a habeas corpus petition in federal court.¹²

The 1985 Sexual Assault Conviction

On July 29, 1985, Penny Beerntsen was sexually assaulted near Two Rivers in Manitowoc County. Avery was arrested after Beerntsen picked him out of a photo array. Sixteen alibi witnesses testified for him. A jury convicted him in December 1985 of first-degree sexual assault, and he was sentenced to 32 years.³

The actual attacker was Gregory Allen, a man who physically resembled Avery and had been under police surveillance for sex-related crimes in the days before the assault. Manitowoc police never put Allen in the lineup shown to Beerntsen and never investigated him for the 1985 attack.⁴ In 1995, detectives in Brown County learned Allen had confessed to a Manitowoc County assault someone else was serving time for. Nothing was done with the information.³ Allen went on to commit another violent sexual assault in Green Bay in 1995 and received a 60-year sentence.⁵

Exoneration by DNA in 2003

The Wisconsin Innocence Project took Avery’s case in 2001 and won a court order for DNA testing on a pubic hair recovered from Beerntsen. In September 2003, a state crime lab matched the hair to Gregory Allen through the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System. All charges were dropped and Avery walked out after 18 years.⁴³

The $36 Million Lawsuit Against Manitowoc County

In 2004, Avery sued Manitowoc County, its district attorney, and its sheriff for $36 million over the wrongful imprisonment. The complaint alleged the sheriff’s department had used Avery’s booking photo to build a forensic composite while leaving Allen’s photo out, and that detectives had pulled surveillance off Allen.⁶

The suit was still pending when Avery was arrested for Teresa Halbach’s murder in late 2005. From jail, he settled it for $400,000. Manitowoc County accepted no fault or liability.⁶ The pending lawsuit would become the backbone of Avery’s later defense theory: that officers facing personal financial exposure had a motive to frame him.

The Murder of Teresa Halbach

On October 31, 2005, freelance photographer Teresa Halbach went to Avery’s Auto Salvage in Manitowoc County to photograph a van for Auto Trader magazine. She was never seen alive again. A missing persons report was filed on November 3.³

Investigators recovered a heavy body of physical evidence tying Avery to the killing:

Halbach’s Toyota RAV4 was found at the Avery salvage yard on November 5. Blood identified as Avery’s was recovered from several spots inside, including near the ignition and on a CD case, and his DNA was on the hood latch. Large bloodstains with hair matching Halbach were in the cargo area.⁷
A Toyota key was found in Avery’s bedroom. It carried his DNA but not Halbach’s.³
Burnt human remains identified as Halbach’s were recovered from a burn pit near Avery’s home, with fragments at other spots on the property.³
A flattened bullet found in Avery’s garage in March 2006 contained Halbach’s DNA and was linked by forensic testing to a rifle hanging on his wall.⁷

Prosecutors said Avery lured Halbach to the property under false pretenses, using his sister’s name to book the appointment and calling Halbach’s phone three times that afternoon, twice with *67 masking his number.⁷ Their theory was that Avery and his 16-year-old nephew, Brendan Dassey, raped and murdered Halbach and then burned her body.³

The 2007 Trial and the Framing Defense

Avery’s trial lasted 27 days before Judge Patrick Willis.⁸ Special prosecutor Kenneth Kratz and Thomas Fallon led the state’s case. Defense attorneys Dean Strang and Jerry Buting argued that a sheriff’s department facing a $36 million lawsuit had planted evidence to convict him.

The defense hit specific pieces of that evidence. The car key, they pointed out, was found by two Manitowoc County officers named in the civil suit, after earlier searches of the same room had turned up nothing. Avery’s blood in the RAV4, they argued, could have come from a sample stored at the Manitowoc County Courthouse; they pointed to a broken seal and what looked like a needle puncture in the cap of the stored vial.³

To answer the planted-blood theory, the FBI developed a test specifically for this trial to detect EDTA, a preservative in stored blood samples. An FBI chemist tested three of the six stains in the vehicle, reported no EDTA, and then concluded none of the six contained it. Forensic researchers later criticized the test as hastily developed and questioned the conclusion about stains that were never analyzed.⁹

In March 2007 the jury convicted Avery of first-degree intentional homicide and possession of a firearm by a felon. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of extended supervision.¹⁰

Brendan Dassey’s Confession and Separate Case

Brendan Dassey was 16 when investigators interviewed him repeatedly in early 2006. In a March 1 interview, he told them he and Avery had raped and killed Halbach. He later recanted and said the confession was coerced.³ His first lawyer, Len Kachinsky, was later decertified by the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s office after publicly stating his client bore “moral and legal responsibility” and cooperating with prosecutors against his own client’s interests.¹¹ Dassey was convicted in 2007 and sentenced to life with no possibility of parole for 41 years.

In August 2016, federal Judge William Duffin granted Dassey habeas corpus relief, ruling the confession involuntary and citing Dassey’s “age, intellectual deficits, and the absence of a supportive adult” along with “false promises” by investigators. A divided Seventh Circuit panel upheld the ruling in June 2017. Then the full Seventh Circuit reheard the case and, in a 4-3 en banc decision on December 8, 2017, reversed. The majority found the state court’s voluntariness determination reasonable, noting the absence of physical coercion, the Miranda warnings, and his mother’s consent to questioning. Chief Judge Diane Wood dissented, calling the interrogation psychological coercion and “ghoulish games of ’20 Questions.'”¹² The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case. A 2019 clemency petition to Governor Tony Evers, backed by 250 experts, was rejected.¹³ Dassey remains incarcerated.

Making a Murderer and the Global Attention

Making a Murderer, a 10-episode Netflix documentary series, premiered on December 18, 2015, and drew 19 million U.S. viewers in its first 35 days.¹⁴ It laid out the defense theory that Manitowoc County had framed Avery to defeat his civil lawsuit and put the case in front of a worldwide audience. Manitowoc officials said they were flooded with angry messages and accused the filmmakers of telling one side of the story.

Kathleen Zellner’s Appeals and Where the Case Stands

Attorney Kathleen Zellner took over Avery’s representation after Making a Murderer aired. Every post-conviction motion she has filed has been denied at every level of the Wisconsin court system.¹

Her 2017 filing ran more than 1,200 pages and alleged planted evidence and false trial testimony. A 2022 motion took a different tack, arguing that another person killed Halbach and framed Avery, and sought to introduce third-party suspect evidence under Wisconsin’s Denny standard. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals rejected those claims as “speculative” and “insufficiently pled.”¹⁵

A separate fight has centered on bone evidence. In 2011, bone fragments collected from a gravel pit near the Avery property were transferred from the Calumet County Sheriff’s Department to a funeral home and released to the Halbach family, with no notice to Avery’s defense. Zellner argued the release violated Wisconsin’s requirement that biological evidence be preserved for the length of a life sentence and amounted to “bad faith” destruction of potentially exculpatory material. If those gravel-pit bones had been identified as Halbach’s, it would have undercut the prosecution’s theory that she was killed and burned on Avery’s property.¹⁶ In February 2019, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals paused the appeal and sent the bone-evidence issue back to circuit court for a hearing.¹⁷

On May 21, 2025, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to review the denial of Avery’s third post-conviction motion, issuing a one-sentence order that denied the petition “without costs.”¹ Zellner has said the next move is a habeas corpus petition in federal court, which would be the first time Avery’s murder case has reached the federal level. As of late 2025, no filing timeline had been set. In a November 2025 email, Zellner said she is “evaluating all of our options including new DNA testing utilizing the substantial improvements made in DNA testing equipment since 2005,” and that Avery “has multiple options and no time bar to presenting new exculpatory evidence.”²

1
Post-Crescent. Wisconsin Supreme Court Won’t Review Steven Avery’s Latest Appeal
2
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Steven Avery Continues to Pursue Appeal but Routes Narrow
3
Britannica. Steven Avery
4
Innocence Project. Steven Avery
5
Green Bay Press-Gazette. Rapist Linked to Avery Case to Get Parole Hearing
6
Boston College Law Magazine. The Two Sides of the Truth
7
OnMilwaukee. Evidence Against Avery
8
Forbes. Making a Murderer Attorney Dean Strang Explains the Real Cost of Defending Steven Avery
9
Innocence Project. Four Forensic Science Experts Found Problematic Methods Used to Convict Steven Avery
10
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. What to Know About Steven Avery’s Ongoing Appeal Efforts
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Northwestern Law. Brendan Dassey Case Update
12
The Arc. The Arc Responds to Supreme Court Decision to Decline Review of Brendan Dassey Case
13
WISN. Governor Rejects Pardon Request for Brendan Dassey
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Making a Murderer: Avery, Dassey Cases Captivated World 10 Years Ago
15
WEAU. Steven Avery’s Appeal Turned Down by Wisconsin Supreme Court
16
Rolling Stone. Steven Avery’s Lawyer Accuses Prosecution of Destroying Evidence
17
WBAY. Steven Avery to Get Circuit Court Hearing on Evidence of Lost Bones