Making a Murderer (2015–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Eighteen Years Lost - full transcript
A man is charged for a crime he didn't commit. All the evidence points to some one else, so why don't the police investigate them? Small town, bad family name? A great miscarriage of justice is just the beginning for Steve Avery.
Here they come.
Up the road.
After 18 years.
- How you doing?
- Oh, hello.
- How are you?
- I'm pretty good.
- How's it feel?
- It feels wonderful.
Oh, God! Stevie, you're home!
I was happy when I got out.
I probably was the happiest man
on the earth.
We knew he was innocent.
We knew he was innocent.
Law enforcement
despised Steven Avery.
Steven Avery was a shining example
of their inadequacies, their misconduct.
No one ever intended
to do anybody any harm by this.
We firmly believed that we had
the guilty party at the time.
Welcome home!
This was one of the biggest
miscarriages of justice I ever saw
in 20 years in criminal defense work
and thousands of cases.
It was like
the same old Steve was back.
I missed you.
He was happy. He was smiling.
But I did tell him, "Be careful."
There was just something I felt.
I said, "Manitowoc County's
not done with you.
They are not even close
to being finished with you."
We filed Steven Avery's lawsuit
about a year after
the DNA had come through,
indicating that he
had not committed the crime.
- Good morning.
- You got a new hairdo.
- A little bit.
- I didn't recognize you.
The defendants are Manitowoc County,
Thomas Kocourek, who was the sheriff
at the time in 1985,
and Denis Vogel,
the district attorney of Manitowoc County,
again at the time in 1985.
There is a distinction in the law
between simple mistakes
for which officers like that are immune,
and purposeful conduct
that violates constitutional rights,
for which they're not immune.
Just a little bit more waiting.
I waited long enough.
A little bit more ain't gonna bother me.
We're seeking compensation
for the loss of his freedom
and punitive damages for the reckless
or indifferent behavior of the defendants.
That there's some justice around yet.
Even though there's no guarantee
that Steven Avery will win this case,
he says it's still worth
going through the trial,
just to hold somebody accountable
for taking 18 years of his life.
They had the evidence
back then that I didn't do it...
but nobody said anything.
I don't see what I really did wrong
to the sheriff
for him to pick on me like that.
The only thing I can think of is
I ran my cousin off the road.
We're on the record in the matter
of Avery v. Manitowoc County.
Would you raise your right hand,
please, to be sworn in?
Do you solemnly swear the testimony
you're about to give will be the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
Yes.
Ma'am, I'm gonna show you a report
about Steven Avery, indecent exposure.
It indicates that there was
a complaint received
September 20th, 1984.
It says that "he has been known
to masturbate on the hood of the car
as she's driving past." Do you see that?
- Yes.
- Did you tell that to the police?
Um...
I didn't put it in that many words.
I didn't...
He didn't masturbate
on the hood of my car,
but he did come out in front of my car
and he was...
doing his thing.
This is why you're driving
40 miles an hour by his house?
He did... He did run out towards the road.
He was prepared. He had it all ready.
OK. It then says
"he has had sexual relations
- with his wife out on the lawn..."
- That, I have nothing...
Let me just finish the question.
"...while all the neighbors are home
in the daytime and able to watch."
- That, I didn't say at all.
- OK.
Do you have any explanation
for why whoever is writing this
might say that you said that?
- I don't know.
- OK.
Was there a period where you
were spending time in a nearby tavern
- and talking about Steven Avery?
- I might've.
- I might've went to several taverns.
- All right...
In 1985, were you personally friendly
with Steven Avery?
No.
In fact, you actively disliked him.
- Is that right? At that time.
- Yes.
OK. And you weren't quiet about it.
The people that were close
to Steve knew he was harmless.
He was always happy, happy, happy.
Always laughing.
Always wanted to make other people laugh.
I think the people in the outside
community viewed him as an Avery.
You know, viewed him as troublemaker.
You know, "There goes another Avery.
They're all trouble."
Manitowoc County
is working-class farmers.
And the Avery family, they weren't that.
They dealt in junk.
They had a salvage yard.
They lived on Avery Road.
I mean, they had their own road and stuff.
They didn't dress like everybody else,
they didn't have education
like other people,
they weren't involved
in all the community activities.
I don't think it ever crossed their mind
that they should try
to fit into the community.
They fit into the community
they had built, and that was enough.
Growing up with all
them cars, you know, it was pretty fun.
Tearing them apart, fixing them...
running around in the trails,
in the rows of the cars.
Once, we had a car up there in the back
with the motor out and everything else
and we had a bed back there
and then we had a battery in it,
so we could listen to the radio,
talk, goof around.
You know, I had a nice childhood.
The family sticks together.
They have a very strong sense of family.
They support each other. Um...
They do a number of things
that are quite admirable.
But they have also been in trouble
from time to time.
Nothing like the problems
that Steven's been in.
I really ain't got much
on my record.
Two burglaries with my friends.
We just rode around, get something to do.
And we decided to rob a tavern and that...
was the first time that I got busted
with them friends.
Another mistake I did...
I had a bunch of friends over,
and we were fooling around
with the cat...
and, I don't know,
they were kind of negging it on and...
I tossed him over the fire...
and he lit up.
You know, it was the family cat.
I was young and stupid
and hanging around with the wrong people.
Stevie did do
a lot of stupid things.
But he always, always owned up
to everything he did wrong.
He never said, "No it wasn't me."
He said, "Yeah, it was me. I did it."
And paid his fine, sat in jail,
whatever it was and it was no big deal.
He... Let's get on with life then.
She was pretty,
beautiful, that's what I thought.
She had a good head on her shoulders.
She was making it on her own.
And she had Jason.
Jason was just a baby.
And she told me that his father
didn't want nothing to do with him.
So, I says, "I'll take over, then."
Family's partway made.
So I'm like,
"Well, I might as well give it a shot."
July 24, 1982, a judge married us.
Then after that, her ma and dad threw a
little wedding party there in the garage.
From there, the kids.
Rachel was born. I didn't see her born
because I was locked up
for that cat incident.
It kinda sucked.
You know, you're supposed to be
bringing your kid into the world...
and then you gotta miss it.
And then Jenny, I seen Jenny born.
I think I had a... a good life.
Till all the trouble started.
Sandy Morris and Bill Morris,
they were always picking on Stevie,
more or less, you know.
Saying stuff about Steve that...
that wasn't true.
And Steve didn't like that, you know.
But I told Steven, "Leave it alone."
In 1985, do you remember
the morning in January
when you were forced off the road
by Steven?
Yes.
The interview
is being conducted January 3, 1985,
by Detective Larry Conrad of the
Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department.
Steve, I'd like to ask you
if you would explain in your own words
exactly what happened.
It was 4:30, quarter to 5,
and I let the dog out
and started up the cars
to warm them up and...
I seen her come by
and then I went down the road
and I just pulled alongside of her.
And then we hit
and she went into a little skid.
Did she ever go down into the ditch?
No.
OK, once she stopped her car,
what was the next thing you did?
I got out, and I grabbed a gun
and she asked me what I was doing.
- Was your gun loaded?
- No, it was empty.
The shells were at home.
And you know Sandy Morris
personally? Is she a relative of yours?
Yeah.
Steve,
can you tell me in your own words
why you ran Sandy off the road
and pointed a gun at her?
Because she was spreading rumors
that I was on the front lawn
and on the road, bare ass,
and she was telling everybody about it
and it wasn't true.
- Was this bothering you?
- Yeah.
Did you feel by taking the type
of action you did earlier today
that this would stop the problem?
I was hoping, yeah.
Steven's actions
didn't get what he was hoping.
Sandy Morris happened to be married
to a Manitowoc County sheriff's deputy.
And she immediately went to the Sheriff's
Department and filed a complaint...
that minimized her involvement
in provoking the incident
and maximized the alleged danger.
I got his old records.
It was usually my practice
to get all the information
I could on the client.
Steven's school records showed
that he had barely functioned in school.
And one of the things I remember
was that his IQ was 70.
Which gave me an idea of his coping skills
and why that action made sense to him.
I didn't know
what to do, how to handle it.
You know, 'cause it was putting
too much pressure on me.
People would come up to me and say,
"You're doin' that? You're doin' that?"
No. Not in the middle of winter.
In the middle of the road?
It made me look like a...
like I was a no good person.
Why did she start that?
I have no idea.
But I don't think it was very nice of her.
Just 'cause you're married
to law enforcement
doesn't give you the right to...
to take somebody's name down like that.
That was just wrong.
The Sheriff's Department
responded
by really going after this case heavily.
More heavily than I think they would've
if it was somebody else.
I think Steven was a representative
in that case of the entire Avery family
and how the Sheriff's Department saw them
as kind of a problem
and definitely, uh, undesirable members
of the community,
for lack of a better term.
And the Morris case gave them a chance
to claim a violent felony
had been committed by one of the Averys.
And of course... the Sheriff's Department
and the DA took it and ran.
I don't want to be a criminal.
I want to be normal.
After Lori had the twins,
he came over to my parents' house
instead of taking poor Lori home.
You know, with them twin boys
and the girls.
He had to come over to my parents'
and show us, you know,
his happy, healthy baby boys.
Grin on his face from ear to ear,
I think, forever.
He probably still has a grin
when you talk about the boys.
He was over the moon.
He was just so proud.
And he was proud of Lori.
He was proud that she wanted him
and married him
and all those kinds of things.
He just thought his life was set.
Really, he did.
And that makes
what happened all the worse.
July 29th, 1985.
It was a warm, sunny day,
and Penny Beerntsen and her husband
went to the beach on Lake Michigan.
About 3:00 that afternoon,
Penny started jogging north
along Lake Michigan.
She passed a person who was wearing
a black leather jacket.
Now, it was summer
and it was 85 degrees probably.
So it was an odd thing.
And he said something to the effect of,
"It's a nice day for a jog, isn't it?"
Penny was on her way back,
and she could see ahead of her
that same man that she had passed earlier.
And he was directly in her path.
To get away from him,
she ran into the water.
But he grabbed her
and dragged her off into the woods.
He knocked her down.
She was clawing at him,
and he attempted to rape her,
but he didn't succeed in penetrating her.
He ripped her clothes off,
he sexually assaulted her,
he beat her up
and basically left her for dead.
It was just real horrific.
The kind of injuries she had
to her upper body
could only be done
if someone's basically in your face.
So it was very personal.
After Mrs. Beerntsen
was taken to the hospital,
it turned out that
Sandra Morris' friend, Judy Dvorak,
was the deputy sheriff
who was assigned to go to the hospital,
and this is where the Sandra Morris matter
makes a difference,
because when Penny Beerntsen
describes her assailant,
Judy Dvorak says,
"That sounds like Steven Avery."
Judy Dvorak lived across the road
from him at that time.
And she definitely did not like Steven.
She had no use for him at all.
And I think that boils down to the fact
that her and Sandy Morris were close,
very close friends.
You're the one
who prepared the incident report
and asked Mrs. Beerntsen
to read it and sign it.
- Yes, sir.
- All right.
"Beerntsen told Deputy Dvorak
and the sheriff
that she was unable to read the
statement because of her blurred vision.
Beerntsen was told
to sign the document anyhow."
Did you tell Mrs. Beerntsen
to sign the document anyhow?
I do not remember ever saying that.
Did Sheriff Kocourek tell Mrs. Beerntsen
to sign the document anyhow?
I have no recollection
of ever hearing that.
I was told by other detectives
that, at that point,
they've got a photograph of Stevie
from the old jail records.
They brought it down,
and the chief deputy,
Eugene Kusche that time, made
a composite drawing of that photograph,
rather than doing it from her memory.
And then they showed that
to Mrs. Beerntsen...
who said, "Yeah, that's him."
Then they took that jail photograph
and did a photo lineup.
And Mrs. Beerntsen
picked out that photograph.
I mean, if you look
at Penny Beerntsen's original description,
as far as height, weight, eye color,
all kinds of stuff,
Steven did not fit that description.
Steven's hair didn't fit,
the build, everything.
He didn't fit that description.
But Judy Dvorak said he did. I mean, wow.
So they show Penny Beerntsen
Steven's picture,
and then she sees a lineup later
and Steven is the only person
she's seen before.
Plus, she had the sheriff's deputy saying,
"Gee, I think it sounds like this guy."
That's pretty suggestive.
Mr. Kusche, I have one large
framed composite drawing,
if we could bring that up on the table
and put it in camera range.
Yes, sir.
- Did you cause this to be framed?
- Yes, sir.
OK. Why'd you do that?
It was my first composite.
It was the only one I ever did
that was used in a court case.
And I thought it'd make
a interesting, uh...
display in my office.
Would you agree with me
that it's pretty remarkably coincidental
that that would depict Steven Avery's
January 1985 mug photo,
which was available to you that evening?
One, the photo wasn't available to me.
- No?
- No.
It wasn't in the array?
- After I drew the sketch, I saw it.
- OK, so it was available to you.
- No.
- It was around that evening,
it had been brought over from the jail
to the hospital, right?
- I don't know when it arrived.
- You're just saying...
You're telling us under oath
you didn't look at it.
I'm telling you I didn't see it
and I didn't know if it was there
before I started the sketch either.
My sketch is what
the victim had me draw...
- Right.
- ...as what she saw.
We were able to present embarrassingly,
the difference between an older photograph
and what we then had,
which was the photograph from that night
as to how Steven Avery actually looked.
That opened the door
to us being able to argue
that Kusche drew the composite
from the photograph of Steven Avery
that was already in their files.
And to argue that...
that never would've happened without
the sheriff's participation as well.
In other words, they made the case against
Steven Avery that night themselves.
The sheriff told me
"I got you now" when I got to jail.
And the other cops couldn't do nothing.
Nobody could do nothing.
He had all the power.
The public defender's office
got a list every day
of who had been arrested the night before.
And that was so the public defender could
go in and make sure they had an attorney
for their first appearance.
But Steven's name wasn't on the list.
And the only reason
I knew he was in jail...
and they knew I was his lawyer,
because Manitowoc was a small town...
Lori called me and told me he was in jail.
So I went over and asked to see him.
And the deputy told me that the sheriff
had ordered that Steven's name
not be on the jail list, that he
not be allowed any access to the phone,
which is illegal,
that he not be allowed any visitors,
and that he be held
in a cell block all by himself
so he could have no contact with anybody.
The sheriff didn't want him to be able
to talk to anybody, including a lawyer.
And I never ever saw that before or since.
I mean, he had a right to have a phone
call, he had a right to have an attorney.
He had a right to be treated
just like anybody else.
That Penny Beerntsen case was
just treated so differently from day one,
and it had already started
with the whole Morris case.
Morning news.
A Maribel area man remains
in the Manitowoc County jail
without bail today
in connection with the brutal beating
and the sexual assault
of a Manitowoc woman yesterday afternoon.
23-year-old Steven Avery
was denied bail
on a motion of Manitowoc County
District Attorney Denis Vogel,
who cited Avery's past record.
This is not only
a violent sexual assault,
it's a violent sexual assault of someone
who is a leader of the community.
I mean, a shining example of what
Manitowoc would like its citizens to be.
The Beerntsens owned commercial
enterprises that were popular
and occupied a central place in the town.
Tom Beerntsen was described
as being one of the best things
to happen to Manitowoc in the last decade.
The Beerntsens were clearly people
of substance in that community.
When this happened, I think the sheriff
just wanted to get quick results
and get a suspect behind bars.
It was the only time in 20 years
of criminal defense practice
that I ever saw a sheriff
that involved in a case from day one.
I was absolutely devastated.
It's like,
why would they arrest Steve for that?
That was so out of his character.
People believed he did it, though,
because he was an Avery.
Whatever I learned about the case,
any of the notions
that I had personally, uh...
came from the police and the courts.
Each morning you see if there's anything
going on in the Sheriff's Department.
I knew Tom Kocourek well.
I knew District Attorney Denis Vogel
quite well because we visited with him
on cases all the time.
He was kind of a part of our newsbeat.
So Steven Avery was on that beat.
We get acquainted with all
the regular names and he was one of them.
When his name came up as the guy
that they were holding, it was...
Oh, that would be within, you know,
that's in character.
The event involving the deputy
sheriff's wife was still pending.
And I think that was on everybody's mind.
The case really turned on the fact
that violence was a real, recurring,
regular part of his life,
that women seemed to be the victims.
There isn't one iota
of physical evidence in this case
that connects Steven Avery to it.
The sheriff was told by the police,
"You have the wrong guy.
You need to be aware
about this Gregory Allen."
Gregory Allen, who had a long
criminal history for sexual crimes,
for the use of violence,
was operating on an escalating basis
in the Manitowoc area.
So much so that the city
of Manitowoc Police Department
was actually surveilling Gregory Allen
on a daily continuing basis.
However, as fate would have it,
on the afternoon of July 29th,
the officers assigned
to do the surveillance
were called to investigate other crimes.
So at the very time
that Mrs. Beerntsen was assaulted,
Gregory Allen was not under surveillance.
Needless to say, when the story
surfaced amongst the police communities,
detective Thomas Bergner
from the Manitowoc City Police Department
went to see the sheriff
and disclosed to him
this information respecting Gregory Allen.
Essentially,
the sheriff told him not to bother,
that they had their man, Steven Avery.
Now, in our opinion,
that fact alone is bad enough.
But more than that fact alone,
three women
in the district attorney's office,
based on their knowledge
of Gregory Allen,
they thought that the police
had the wrong person,
and they told their boss,
District Attorney Denis Vogel,
"You've got the wrong guy. It's not
Steven Avery, it's Gregory Allen."
Tom Kocourek told Stevie,
"I don't care if you did this
or if you didn't do it.
I'm gonna get you for it."
Now, is that anything to say to anybody?
And what did he do?
That goddamn Denis Vogel,
and that son of a bitchin' Hazlewood,
the judge...
Steve had 22 witnesses at least.
And there was one of them right there.
And every one of us
were called fabricators, liars.
If the alibi witnesses
were believed,
there would be no way to find him guilty.
Steve Avery was accounted for
every minute,
from about 1:30 that afternoon until,
um...
you know, at least 5:00.
The victim was sexually assaulted
at approximately 3:50.
All of these alibi witnesses testified
that on the day of the assault,
Steve Avery was helping his parents
and other family members
pour concrete at the salvage yard.
The cement truck arrived sometime
between 1:00 and 2:00.
Witnesses testified either
that they were out working with him,
pouring the concrete,
or they were in the house
watching Divorce Court
from 3:00 to 3:30
and saw Steve Avery
immediately afterwards.
Steve Avery then took his sister
in his four-by-four car
out to a local gravel pit.
They got stuck out there,
they had to dig it out.
They got back right around 4:00.
At that point, Steve Avery
picked up his wife and his children.
He had two very young babies that
had just been born a few days earlier.
And then they went to Green Bay.
It was about a 35 minute drive
to Green Bay.
They washed the car, they got something
to eat, they went to the Shopko store.
Evidence was presented
of a receipt giving the time at 5:13,
and when he came back
from Green Bay with his wife,
he called his brother Earl
to have him come over
and help do some drywall in his house.
And that they did that in the evening,
finally going to bed,
which is about the time
that the police then arrive.
When I kicked him, he said,
"Now you're gonna die,
now I'm gonna kill you."
And what did he do then?
Then he put his hands on my
neck, and he started choking me very hard.
Penny Beerntsen
was everything that Steven wasn't.
Smart, educated, well-to-do,
church-going lady,
a business owner,
involved in community affairs.
So just think of the two of them,
side by side.
Mrs. Beerntsen,
she's a very good witness.
She was very positive.
She stated that she'd made a point
when the crime was being committed
of remembering who it was
who was doing this to her.
And, uh, that... that carried the day.
Were you able to pick out anyone
in that live line-up?
Yes, I was.
And do you have an opinion as to
whether or not the person you picked out
in the live line-up is the same
as the person you picked out today?
- Yes, it is the same person.
- And are you positive of that?
I am absolutely positive.
The whole thing was a nightmare.
How do you think a man feels?
You see your son sitting right there,
and he's... and he's saying,
the tears are coming out of his eyes...
"I didn't do it." He said...
"I'm innocent. I didn't do it."
And you know he didn't do it.
You were with him, you know.
It's hard to take.
In Wisconsin,
the way the parole system was set up
is if you didn't admit your guilt,
you did not get paroled.
And of course Steven didn't admit
his guilt because he wasn't guilty.
So that meant he wasn't gonna get paroled.
He watched people who actually
had murdered somebody walk out.
And he sat there.
If I did it,
I'll admit right away.
I'll take the punishment,
I'll do the time.
But I don't break
for something I didn't do.
I'll stay strong.
I'll never fail.
Dolores would take the kids to see Stevie
about sometimes two or three times a week.
To Green Bay and that,
you know, to see Steve.
A lot of times I was by myself,
but I'd still go.
Just to go see him.
It was Fox Lake,
Green Bay,
- Tennessee and Stanley.
- At the end there...
I used to go to all of them,
even if it was icy.
I drove on clear ice.
With Lori, I suppose it was
hard for her to watch the kids.
That was a bunch of kids to watch.
And she was alone.
I don't know if she thought
he would ever get out or not.
With me and my wife,
it was tough.
We was fighting.
She'd tell me she can't take it no more.
And she started with
she was gonna kill the kids,
then commit suicide and everything else.
A lot of back and forth,
a lot of hate and...
I wrote some bad letters.
It lasted about three years...
and then I told her to go for the divorce.
You know, we just got where...
we didn't care about each other
or nothing.
He loved Lori and he loved the kids.
But he ended up with nothing.
When she took the kids
away from me then... I tried to stay busy,
I kept my mind occupied.
Like when I was in Green Bay,
I did auto body for nine years.
All day, I got my mind working on cars
and paint and everything else.
But then when that's all done,
come back and take a shower
and then you sit in a room
and listen to the bars.
His mother
and dad stuck by him the most.
Mainly his mother. Mainly his mother.
She stuck by him all those years
he was in prison.
So did my brother. All the money they had,
it went towards getting him out of prison,
saying he was innocent.
Steven and his parents came to us,
I think at the stage that,
you know, they decided
this was kind of their one last gasp.
The problem was that virtually
all the issues that would arise
from the conviction itself
had already been litigated
and had already been decided
adversely to Steven.
It essentially came down
to a requirement
that we come up with
some newly discovered evidence.
Rob Henak had to root around
in the Manitowoc courthouse,
eventually having the clerks
help find boxes.
And then going through the boxes
and finding samples of things.
We noted that the sex crimes kit
had been completed
and that there were
the fingernail scrapings
that had been collected at the time.
The science of DNA at that stage
hadn't developed sufficiently.
So nobody had really
ever done anything with them.
We had the fingernail scrapings
tested by Lab Corporation of America,
and in 1995,
with the testing they're able to do,
they're able to limit
all the population of the world
into particular groups,
based on what are called alleles.
Each of us has two alleles.
Steve Avery and the victim
have the same alleles.
However, they found three alleles
in the fingernail scrapings.
Two of them that matched Steve Avery's
and the victim's,
and one that didn't match either of them.
Meaning there had to be DNA from a person
not Steve Avery under her fingernails.
Our argument was that a jury
could look at this evidence
and decide that it was most likely
the perpetrator.
And when you look at all
the other evidence tied together,
the alibi evidence, the fact that
the victim was wrong about the eye color,
the fact that the victim identified the
perpetrator as wearing white underwear
when Steve Avery
didn't even own underwear,
that those kind of things would create
a reasonable probability
of a different result.
In this instance, the DNA evidence...
requires that the court speculate.
Regardless of which side I look at
and which argument I hear.
The court accepted the state's argument
that since we couldn't
prove whose DNA it was,
we couldn't discount the fact
that this could've been her husband's DNA,
one of the medical personnel's DNA,
the couple that found Penny Beerntsen
on the beach
and comforted her and clothed her
while they were waiting
for, uh, medical assistance. Um...
And, I mean, in my mind,
and certainly in Rob's mind,
all of that was preposterous
because Penny Beerntsen had never said
that she scraped any of those people
or had any reason to claw at them.
Nonetheless, the court ruled against us.
The court of appeals ruled against us.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court
ruled against us.
And if you ever want to read an opinion,
by the way,
that will show you how strongly
this system is designed
to perpetuate a conviction,
as opposed to examine whether or not
somebody could in fact be innocent,
read the court of appeals decision
in Steven Avery's case.
You would think that this
was the guiltiest person
that had ever been uncovered
in a criminal case in Wisconsin.
It's now '96 or '97.
You have exhausted
every legal proceeding that is...
remotely available to you.
You've now been in this system
for 12 years.
You are a son who cares deeply
about his parents.
And his parents are getting older and
older while he's sitting in this joint,
who cares about his kids
who are getting older and older.
The pressure of that on a person to...
wrongfully confess, if you will,
and to say, "OK, look, um...
I've... I've fought the good fight,
I've gone through all my appellate stuff,
I'm not getting anywhere with it,
it's time to level with you guys.
I really did this crime."
I mean, those pressures have gotta be
more intense than we can imagine.
They always told me,
"If you admit to it, we'll let you out.
Otherwise, you'll be here until your MR."
You know?
So I guess I'll be in here 'til my MR,
'cause I ain't gonna admit to it.
I'm not gonna lie.
Here's the court of appeals.
Sentencing papers.
This one must've been in... '98.
I sent transcripts out.
A whole bunch of them.
I made ten copies.
Sit in the living room
and done it on the copy machine.
Then I put the pieces, each on the table
to make ten, you know, ten of them.
It was nerve-racking.
I think there's about
a thousand pages in 'em.
This one went to New York.
They went all over.
Wherever 60 Minutes is or 20/20 or...
I can't remember
the other ones all.
All them things that's on TV always.
I thought they'd help Steven to get out
if they read all this here script stuff.
Then all of a sudden
we got a lot of 'em back, though.
They couldn't do it, they said,
or something like that.
Yeah, I put a lot of hours in these boxes.
You learn to take
patience, because everything...
it takes time.
In prison, you gotta wait.
Nothing happens just like that.
Anyway, they couldn't take away
my love for my family and that.
I never had bad hopes.
It was always good hopes.
Both his trial lawyer
and his appellate lawyer said,
"Could you look at this guy's case,
at Steven Avery's case?
We've been losing sleep
over this case for 15 years."
We knew the technology had advanced,
so we asked for the testing again.
The material was sent down
to the crime laboratory again,
and what they found
was that there were 13 pubic hairs
that had been collected during
the pubic hair combings of the victim.
Eleven of those hairs had no root.
So they were down to two pubic hairs.
One of those hairs was from a female,
probably Penny Beerntsen's own hair.
The truth in this matter came down
to that one remaining pubic hair.
They got a full profile. That profile
conclusively excluded Steven Avery.
It could not have come from him.
Now we know that with certainty.
Whether that alone would've been enough
to grant him a new trial, I don't know.
But even more dramatically, they took
that profile from that pubic hair
and they ran it through
the state crime laboratory data bank
and they got a cold hit.
That is to say, they matched it
to somebody in the data bank
who they didn't know was in there.
And that somebody was Gregory Allen.
I feel free.
When I left the prison, the anger left.
It was gone.
It stayed there, behind them gates.
It didn't come out with me.
I was happy when I got out.
I probably was the happiest
man on the Earth.
- How you doing?
- Oh, hello.
- How are you?
- I'm pretty good.
- How's it feel?
- It feels wonderful.
Oh, God! Oh, Stevie!
Let's get rid of this thing.
I'm just glad they got the guy who did it.
Do you forgive the victim?
It ain't at all her fault, you know.
Honest mistake, you know.
I mean, most the time,
I think the cops put it in her head more.
Who's this?
I don't know.
The revelation hit the DA's office
and the sheriff's office like a bomb.
And as it began to unfold
what had happened,
there was then a huge set
of repercussions
on a whole series of people
in those offices.
The day of
or the day after Steven's release,
law enforcement officers in Manitowoc
are writing memos to describe activity
that had occurred
almost ten years earlier.
They don't do that
unless they feel threatened.
When I called Denis Vogel
to tell him the news
that Steven Avery wasn't guilty
of assaulting Penny Beerntsen,
I was expecting to hear some shock
or some surprise, like,
"Oh, my goodness. How did this happen?"
or "I feel terrible about it" or...
"Thank goodness the DNA proved it."
But I didn't hear any of that
from Mr. Vogel.
What I heard instead was a question,
whether or not there was anything
on Gregory Allen in his file.
I couldn't believe it.
I mean, it showed me two things.
It showed me that he suspected
that Gregory Allen was the assailant.
But it also showed me...
I didn't know how else to take it,
other than that he was worried
about his exposure.
That something about Gregory Allen
was in his file.
I started leafing through Denis Vogel's
file on Avery and I come across
a criminal complaint.
"State of Wisconsin v. Gregory Allen"
in the Avery file,
which didn't make a lot of sense.
It was a charge of lewd
and lascivious behavior.
He had dropped his shorts, he exposed
himself and he lunged at this woman.
And it was the same basic section
of the beach
where Penny Beerntsen
was assaulted two... two years later.
Um, and I looked at which prosecutor
had prosecuted Gregory Allen earlier,
and it was Denis Vogel.
That was evidence
that at least made it possible
that the DA and the sheriff
either knew or should have known
that Steven Avery was not the assailant.
And not only that,
we believe there was the potential
that they knew, in fact,
who the assailant was,
but continued with the prosecution.
We needed for somebody else to look at it
and the logical office would
be the Attorney General's office.
It's extraordinarily significant
that a prosecutor
asks the Attorney General,
the chief prosecutor of the state,
to investigate his own department
and law enforcement in that community.
That doesn't happen.
Would you tell us
what your occupation is, please?
I am a special agent with
the Wisconsin Department of Justice
Division of Criminal Investigation.
What are your duties as a special agent?
To investigate crimes
relating to misconduct in office.
And you were one of two DCI agents
to work on an investigation
involving the prosecution in 1985
- of Steven Avery, is that right?
- Yes.
We wanted to interview everybody
we could identify as being involved
in the investigation
or in the prosecution.
Understand,
this is all happening in public view.
The public knew an Attorney General's
investigation was underway.
And there was a sense
that law enforcement
may be vulnerable here,
and probably feeling it, uh...
because God knows there
were numerous editorials, articles,
all of which had the theme
of "How could this happen?"
The stories of mine that broke some new
ground were the ones that documented
how quickly Steven Avery was a suspect
and then how Gregory Allen
was not considered.
I went through a lot of police records
about Gregory Allen
and kind of built a chronology
of his contacts with law enforcement.
Police in Manitowoc had followed him
for 13 straight days
where they were making multiple checks
on him, as many as 14 times a day,
because he had been implicated
in several sex-related crimes.
After Steven Avery was already arrested,
had already been identified twice,
the police department
contacted Penny Beerntsen.
She was shocked and confused and contacted
the Sheriff's Department herself to ask,
"What about this Gregory Allen?"
This isn't just about
an innocent guy being locked up.
It's about a dangerous rapist being out
on the streets doing what he wanted to do.
It was a hot end-of-June day in 1995,
and I was laying on the couch
after I put my daughter to bed
and had fallen asleep.
It was roughly 4:00 in the morning.
Gregory Allen broke into my home.
He had taken the towel, apparently,
I guess, off the clothesline,
threw it over my head
and then dragged me
from the living room to the bedroom.
He pretty much forced himself
as far as oral sex.
It felt like an eternity at the moment.
I was afraid my daughter, the next
morning, would find me in a pool of blood.
But... thank God it didn't...
It... We're OK.
The judge that I had
during sentencing said,
"If I could put you away for life,
I would,
but unfortunately I can only give you
the maximum," which was 60 years.
And he was around 47 at the time
that this happened, so...
I don't think he'll...
be able to harm anyone ever again.
Bergner went and talked
to Kocourek about Gregory Allen, right?
Correct.
No report was prepared by Kocourek
about the information
that was brought to him
by Bergner, is that right?
That's correct.
Kocourek tells you
that he did not think
that the Sheriff's Department knew
who Gregory Allen was in 1985.
Correct.
That was inconsistent with Allen
having been booked into the jail
- and photographed in 1984.
- Correct.
So if the sheriff had wanted
to see a photo of Allen in 1985,
all he had to do was go
to his own jail and find it?
Correct.
You and Deb tell the lawyers
that it appears
that there was "no real investigation
done" by the Sheriff's Department,
and "they had a suspect
and they were gonna make it work."
And that what's a little troubling to you
is the lack of paperwork that's done
- and so forth.
- Deb would've wrote that.
OK, but she's speaking for the two of you.
Yes, I believe she was speaking
for the two of us.
And was that your opinion at the time?
Yeah, I think that
was our opinion at the time.
In fact, it turned out
from all of your investigation
that this one was handled differently.
It appeared from this investigation
that the sheriff was really involved
in this one, which wasn't the norm.
"The sheriff told the DA
not to screw this case up
because the sheriff
wanted Avery convicted of this crime."
The tables were turning entirely,
and the changes
were all in Steven's favor.
We thought
what had happened to Steven Avery
would have justified
the Attorney General's Office
into... uh, frankly,
into bringing criminal charges,
but certainly warranted
a pretty strong condemnation.
State Attorney
General Peg Lautenschlager
says her department conducted
an exhaustive review
of police and trial records
and had interviews with the victim,
police, prosecutors, and defenders.
Her conclusion?
We don't see that there
are any criminal actions
against somebody or criminal missteps.
There don't seem
to be any ethical violations.
They said there
was no wrongdoing with them.
Then I wouldn't have did 18 years
if they didn't do nothing wrong.
They did everything wrong.
The state's
15-page review concludes that, at worst,
the Sheriff's Department
failed to investigate Allen,
all little consolation to Avery.
I was hoping they were gonna do something
to Manitowoc County...
and set them straight
so they don't do it again.
When I saw the Justice Department report,
it was like,
they kind of said, "Well, yeah,
they did these things that were wrong.
Oh, you know, but they kind of
had good intentions,"
or some crap like that.
"So we don't really think
anything further is justified."
It's like, what a crock of shit.
People did a lot of wrong things,
and a man's life suffered.
How can that not be... worth anything?
I don't think Steven had any alternative
but to bring the lawsuit.
There was never going to be
law enforcement recognition
and acceptance of responsibility.
There was never going to be
law enforcement held accountable.
I just didn't think
that was going to happen,
and it sure as hell wasn't gonna happen
after the AG's report.
I mean, I'm... I'm amazed
that sitting in Milwaukee
we couldn't hear the sigh of relief
coming out of Manitowoc
as soon as that AG's report came out.
Sometimes it just makes me sick, just
hearing about it and what they all did.
Everything they did wrong
should come back at 'em.
They weren't just gonna let Stevie out.
They weren't gonna
hand that man $36 million.
They weren't gonna be made
a laughingstock, that's for sure.
They just weren't gonna do all that.
And something in my gut
said they're not done with him.
Something's gonna happen.
They're not handing that kind of money
over to Steve Avery.
We told him he could expect
people would say
that this was just a get-rich effort.
That family private matters
would now be public,
and, you know, don't be too surprised
if people say some things about you
that you've never even heard before,
that are just plain false.
The one thing we didn't tell him
is that you have to be careful
when you bring a lawsuit
against a Sheriff's Department
in a community where you still live,
because you could end up
getting charged with murder.
Do we have a body or anything yet?
I don't believe so.
Do we have Steven Avery
in custody though?
Up the road.
After 18 years.
- How you doing?
- Oh, hello.
- How are you?
- I'm pretty good.
- How's it feel?
- It feels wonderful.
Oh, God! Stevie, you're home!
I was happy when I got out.
I probably was the happiest man
on the earth.
We knew he was innocent.
We knew he was innocent.
Law enforcement
despised Steven Avery.
Steven Avery was a shining example
of their inadequacies, their misconduct.
No one ever intended
to do anybody any harm by this.
We firmly believed that we had
the guilty party at the time.
Welcome home!
This was one of the biggest
miscarriages of justice I ever saw
in 20 years in criminal defense work
and thousands of cases.
It was like
the same old Steve was back.
I missed you.
He was happy. He was smiling.
But I did tell him, "Be careful."
There was just something I felt.
I said, "Manitowoc County's
not done with you.
They are not even close
to being finished with you."
We filed Steven Avery's lawsuit
about a year after
the DNA had come through,
indicating that he
had not committed the crime.
- Good morning.
- You got a new hairdo.
- A little bit.
- I didn't recognize you.
The defendants are Manitowoc County,
Thomas Kocourek, who was the sheriff
at the time in 1985,
and Denis Vogel,
the district attorney of Manitowoc County,
again at the time in 1985.
There is a distinction in the law
between simple mistakes
for which officers like that are immune,
and purposeful conduct
that violates constitutional rights,
for which they're not immune.
Just a little bit more waiting.
I waited long enough.
A little bit more ain't gonna bother me.
We're seeking compensation
for the loss of his freedom
and punitive damages for the reckless
or indifferent behavior of the defendants.
That there's some justice around yet.
Even though there's no guarantee
that Steven Avery will win this case,
he says it's still worth
going through the trial,
just to hold somebody accountable
for taking 18 years of his life.
They had the evidence
back then that I didn't do it...
but nobody said anything.
I don't see what I really did wrong
to the sheriff
for him to pick on me like that.
The only thing I can think of is
I ran my cousin off the road.
We're on the record in the matter
of Avery v. Manitowoc County.
Would you raise your right hand,
please, to be sworn in?
Do you solemnly swear the testimony
you're about to give will be the truth,
the whole truth and nothing but the truth,
so help you God?
Yes.
Ma'am, I'm gonna show you a report
about Steven Avery, indecent exposure.
It indicates that there was
a complaint received
September 20th, 1984.
It says that "he has been known
to masturbate on the hood of the car
as she's driving past." Do you see that?
- Yes.
- Did you tell that to the police?
Um...
I didn't put it in that many words.
I didn't...
He didn't masturbate
on the hood of my car,
but he did come out in front of my car
and he was...
doing his thing.
This is why you're driving
40 miles an hour by his house?
He did... He did run out towards the road.
He was prepared. He had it all ready.
OK. It then says
"he has had sexual relations
- with his wife out on the lawn..."
- That, I have nothing...
Let me just finish the question.
"...while all the neighbors are home
in the daytime and able to watch."
- That, I didn't say at all.
- OK.
Do you have any explanation
for why whoever is writing this
might say that you said that?
- I don't know.
- OK.
Was there a period where you
were spending time in a nearby tavern
- and talking about Steven Avery?
- I might've.
- I might've went to several taverns.
- All right...
In 1985, were you personally friendly
with Steven Avery?
No.
In fact, you actively disliked him.
- Is that right? At that time.
- Yes.
OK. And you weren't quiet about it.
The people that were close
to Steve knew he was harmless.
He was always happy, happy, happy.
Always laughing.
Always wanted to make other people laugh.
I think the people in the outside
community viewed him as an Avery.
You know, viewed him as troublemaker.
You know, "There goes another Avery.
They're all trouble."
Manitowoc County
is working-class farmers.
And the Avery family, they weren't that.
They dealt in junk.
They had a salvage yard.
They lived on Avery Road.
I mean, they had their own road and stuff.
They didn't dress like everybody else,
they didn't have education
like other people,
they weren't involved
in all the community activities.
I don't think it ever crossed their mind
that they should try
to fit into the community.
They fit into the community
they had built, and that was enough.
Growing up with all
them cars, you know, it was pretty fun.
Tearing them apart, fixing them...
running around in the trails,
in the rows of the cars.
Once, we had a car up there in the back
with the motor out and everything else
and we had a bed back there
and then we had a battery in it,
so we could listen to the radio,
talk, goof around.
You know, I had a nice childhood.
The family sticks together.
They have a very strong sense of family.
They support each other. Um...
They do a number of things
that are quite admirable.
But they have also been in trouble
from time to time.
Nothing like the problems
that Steven's been in.
I really ain't got much
on my record.
Two burglaries with my friends.
We just rode around, get something to do.
And we decided to rob a tavern and that...
was the first time that I got busted
with them friends.
Another mistake I did...
I had a bunch of friends over,
and we were fooling around
with the cat...
and, I don't know,
they were kind of negging it on and...
I tossed him over the fire...
and he lit up.
You know, it was the family cat.
I was young and stupid
and hanging around with the wrong people.
Stevie did do
a lot of stupid things.
But he always, always owned up
to everything he did wrong.
He never said, "No it wasn't me."
He said, "Yeah, it was me. I did it."
And paid his fine, sat in jail,
whatever it was and it was no big deal.
He... Let's get on with life then.
She was pretty,
beautiful, that's what I thought.
She had a good head on her shoulders.
She was making it on her own.
And she had Jason.
Jason was just a baby.
And she told me that his father
didn't want nothing to do with him.
So, I says, "I'll take over, then."
Family's partway made.
So I'm like,
"Well, I might as well give it a shot."
July 24, 1982, a judge married us.
Then after that, her ma and dad threw a
little wedding party there in the garage.
From there, the kids.
Rachel was born. I didn't see her born
because I was locked up
for that cat incident.
It kinda sucked.
You know, you're supposed to be
bringing your kid into the world...
and then you gotta miss it.
And then Jenny, I seen Jenny born.
I think I had a... a good life.
Till all the trouble started.
Sandy Morris and Bill Morris,
they were always picking on Stevie,
more or less, you know.
Saying stuff about Steve that...
that wasn't true.
And Steve didn't like that, you know.
But I told Steven, "Leave it alone."
In 1985, do you remember
the morning in January
when you were forced off the road
by Steven?
Yes.
The interview
is being conducted January 3, 1985,
by Detective Larry Conrad of the
Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department.
Steve, I'd like to ask you
if you would explain in your own words
exactly what happened.
It was 4:30, quarter to 5,
and I let the dog out
and started up the cars
to warm them up and...
I seen her come by
and then I went down the road
and I just pulled alongside of her.
And then we hit
and she went into a little skid.
Did she ever go down into the ditch?
No.
OK, once she stopped her car,
what was the next thing you did?
I got out, and I grabbed a gun
and she asked me what I was doing.
- Was your gun loaded?
- No, it was empty.
The shells were at home.
And you know Sandy Morris
personally? Is she a relative of yours?
Yeah.
Steve,
can you tell me in your own words
why you ran Sandy off the road
and pointed a gun at her?
Because she was spreading rumors
that I was on the front lawn
and on the road, bare ass,
and she was telling everybody about it
and it wasn't true.
- Was this bothering you?
- Yeah.
Did you feel by taking the type
of action you did earlier today
that this would stop the problem?
I was hoping, yeah.
Steven's actions
didn't get what he was hoping.
Sandy Morris happened to be married
to a Manitowoc County sheriff's deputy.
And she immediately went to the Sheriff's
Department and filed a complaint...
that minimized her involvement
in provoking the incident
and maximized the alleged danger.
I got his old records.
It was usually my practice
to get all the information
I could on the client.
Steven's school records showed
that he had barely functioned in school.
And one of the things I remember
was that his IQ was 70.
Which gave me an idea of his coping skills
and why that action made sense to him.
I didn't know
what to do, how to handle it.
You know, 'cause it was putting
too much pressure on me.
People would come up to me and say,
"You're doin' that? You're doin' that?"
No. Not in the middle of winter.
In the middle of the road?
It made me look like a...
like I was a no good person.
Why did she start that?
I have no idea.
But I don't think it was very nice of her.
Just 'cause you're married
to law enforcement
doesn't give you the right to...
to take somebody's name down like that.
That was just wrong.
The Sheriff's Department
responded
by really going after this case heavily.
More heavily than I think they would've
if it was somebody else.
I think Steven was a representative
in that case of the entire Avery family
and how the Sheriff's Department saw them
as kind of a problem
and definitely, uh, undesirable members
of the community,
for lack of a better term.
And the Morris case gave them a chance
to claim a violent felony
had been committed by one of the Averys.
And of course... the Sheriff's Department
and the DA took it and ran.
I don't want to be a criminal.
I want to be normal.
After Lori had the twins,
he came over to my parents' house
instead of taking poor Lori home.
You know, with them twin boys
and the girls.
He had to come over to my parents'
and show us, you know,
his happy, healthy baby boys.
Grin on his face from ear to ear,
I think, forever.
He probably still has a grin
when you talk about the boys.
He was over the moon.
He was just so proud.
And he was proud of Lori.
He was proud that she wanted him
and married him
and all those kinds of things.
He just thought his life was set.
Really, he did.
And that makes
what happened all the worse.
July 29th, 1985.
It was a warm, sunny day,
and Penny Beerntsen and her husband
went to the beach on Lake Michigan.
About 3:00 that afternoon,
Penny started jogging north
along Lake Michigan.
She passed a person who was wearing
a black leather jacket.
Now, it was summer
and it was 85 degrees probably.
So it was an odd thing.
And he said something to the effect of,
"It's a nice day for a jog, isn't it?"
Penny was on her way back,
and she could see ahead of her
that same man that she had passed earlier.
And he was directly in her path.
To get away from him,
she ran into the water.
But he grabbed her
and dragged her off into the woods.
He knocked her down.
She was clawing at him,
and he attempted to rape her,
but he didn't succeed in penetrating her.
He ripped her clothes off,
he sexually assaulted her,
he beat her up
and basically left her for dead.
It was just real horrific.
The kind of injuries she had
to her upper body
could only be done
if someone's basically in your face.
So it was very personal.
After Mrs. Beerntsen
was taken to the hospital,
it turned out that
Sandra Morris' friend, Judy Dvorak,
was the deputy sheriff
who was assigned to go to the hospital,
and this is where the Sandra Morris matter
makes a difference,
because when Penny Beerntsen
describes her assailant,
Judy Dvorak says,
"That sounds like Steven Avery."
Judy Dvorak lived across the road
from him at that time.
And she definitely did not like Steven.
She had no use for him at all.
And I think that boils down to the fact
that her and Sandy Morris were close,
very close friends.
You're the one
who prepared the incident report
and asked Mrs. Beerntsen
to read it and sign it.
- Yes, sir.
- All right.
"Beerntsen told Deputy Dvorak
and the sheriff
that she was unable to read the
statement because of her blurred vision.
Beerntsen was told
to sign the document anyhow."
Did you tell Mrs. Beerntsen
to sign the document anyhow?
I do not remember ever saying that.
Did Sheriff Kocourek tell Mrs. Beerntsen
to sign the document anyhow?
I have no recollection
of ever hearing that.
I was told by other detectives
that, at that point,
they've got a photograph of Stevie
from the old jail records.
They brought it down,
and the chief deputy,
Eugene Kusche that time, made
a composite drawing of that photograph,
rather than doing it from her memory.
And then they showed that
to Mrs. Beerntsen...
who said, "Yeah, that's him."
Then they took that jail photograph
and did a photo lineup.
And Mrs. Beerntsen
picked out that photograph.
I mean, if you look
at Penny Beerntsen's original description,
as far as height, weight, eye color,
all kinds of stuff,
Steven did not fit that description.
Steven's hair didn't fit,
the build, everything.
He didn't fit that description.
But Judy Dvorak said he did. I mean, wow.
So they show Penny Beerntsen
Steven's picture,
and then she sees a lineup later
and Steven is the only person
she's seen before.
Plus, she had the sheriff's deputy saying,
"Gee, I think it sounds like this guy."
That's pretty suggestive.
Mr. Kusche, I have one large
framed composite drawing,
if we could bring that up on the table
and put it in camera range.
Yes, sir.
- Did you cause this to be framed?
- Yes, sir.
OK. Why'd you do that?
It was my first composite.
It was the only one I ever did
that was used in a court case.
And I thought it'd make
a interesting, uh...
display in my office.
Would you agree with me
that it's pretty remarkably coincidental
that that would depict Steven Avery's
January 1985 mug photo,
which was available to you that evening?
One, the photo wasn't available to me.
- No?
- No.
It wasn't in the array?
- After I drew the sketch, I saw it.
- OK, so it was available to you.
- No.
- It was around that evening,
it had been brought over from the jail
to the hospital, right?
- I don't know when it arrived.
- You're just saying...
You're telling us under oath
you didn't look at it.
I'm telling you I didn't see it
and I didn't know if it was there
before I started the sketch either.
My sketch is what
the victim had me draw...
- Right.
- ...as what she saw.
We were able to present embarrassingly,
the difference between an older photograph
and what we then had,
which was the photograph from that night
as to how Steven Avery actually looked.
That opened the door
to us being able to argue
that Kusche drew the composite
from the photograph of Steven Avery
that was already in their files.
And to argue that...
that never would've happened without
the sheriff's participation as well.
In other words, they made the case against
Steven Avery that night themselves.
The sheriff told me
"I got you now" when I got to jail.
And the other cops couldn't do nothing.
Nobody could do nothing.
He had all the power.
The public defender's office
got a list every day
of who had been arrested the night before.
And that was so the public defender could
go in and make sure they had an attorney
for their first appearance.
But Steven's name wasn't on the list.
And the only reason
I knew he was in jail...
and they knew I was his lawyer,
because Manitowoc was a small town...
Lori called me and told me he was in jail.
So I went over and asked to see him.
And the deputy told me that the sheriff
had ordered that Steven's name
not be on the jail list, that he
not be allowed any access to the phone,
which is illegal,
that he not be allowed any visitors,
and that he be held
in a cell block all by himself
so he could have no contact with anybody.
The sheriff didn't want him to be able
to talk to anybody, including a lawyer.
And I never ever saw that before or since.
I mean, he had a right to have a phone
call, he had a right to have an attorney.
He had a right to be treated
just like anybody else.
That Penny Beerntsen case was
just treated so differently from day one,
and it had already started
with the whole Morris case.
Morning news.
A Maribel area man remains
in the Manitowoc County jail
without bail today
in connection with the brutal beating
and the sexual assault
of a Manitowoc woman yesterday afternoon.
23-year-old Steven Avery
was denied bail
on a motion of Manitowoc County
District Attorney Denis Vogel,
who cited Avery's past record.
This is not only
a violent sexual assault,
it's a violent sexual assault of someone
who is a leader of the community.
I mean, a shining example of what
Manitowoc would like its citizens to be.
The Beerntsens owned commercial
enterprises that were popular
and occupied a central place in the town.
Tom Beerntsen was described
as being one of the best things
to happen to Manitowoc in the last decade.
The Beerntsens were clearly people
of substance in that community.
When this happened, I think the sheriff
just wanted to get quick results
and get a suspect behind bars.
It was the only time in 20 years
of criminal defense practice
that I ever saw a sheriff
that involved in a case from day one.
I was absolutely devastated.
It's like,
why would they arrest Steve for that?
That was so out of his character.
People believed he did it, though,
because he was an Avery.
Whatever I learned about the case,
any of the notions
that I had personally, uh...
came from the police and the courts.
Each morning you see if there's anything
going on in the Sheriff's Department.
I knew Tom Kocourek well.
I knew District Attorney Denis Vogel
quite well because we visited with him
on cases all the time.
He was kind of a part of our newsbeat.
So Steven Avery was on that beat.
We get acquainted with all
the regular names and he was one of them.
When his name came up as the guy
that they were holding, it was...
Oh, that would be within, you know,
that's in character.
The event involving the deputy
sheriff's wife was still pending.
And I think that was on everybody's mind.
The case really turned on the fact
that violence was a real, recurring,
regular part of his life,
that women seemed to be the victims.
There isn't one iota
of physical evidence in this case
that connects Steven Avery to it.
The sheriff was told by the police,
"You have the wrong guy.
You need to be aware
about this Gregory Allen."
Gregory Allen, who had a long
criminal history for sexual crimes,
for the use of violence,
was operating on an escalating basis
in the Manitowoc area.
So much so that the city
of Manitowoc Police Department
was actually surveilling Gregory Allen
on a daily continuing basis.
However, as fate would have it,
on the afternoon of July 29th,
the officers assigned
to do the surveillance
were called to investigate other crimes.
So at the very time
that Mrs. Beerntsen was assaulted,
Gregory Allen was not under surveillance.
Needless to say, when the story
surfaced amongst the police communities,
detective Thomas Bergner
from the Manitowoc City Police Department
went to see the sheriff
and disclosed to him
this information respecting Gregory Allen.
Essentially,
the sheriff told him not to bother,
that they had their man, Steven Avery.
Now, in our opinion,
that fact alone is bad enough.
But more than that fact alone,
three women
in the district attorney's office,
based on their knowledge
of Gregory Allen,
they thought that the police
had the wrong person,
and they told their boss,
District Attorney Denis Vogel,
"You've got the wrong guy. It's not
Steven Avery, it's Gregory Allen."
Tom Kocourek told Stevie,
"I don't care if you did this
or if you didn't do it.
I'm gonna get you for it."
Now, is that anything to say to anybody?
And what did he do?
That goddamn Denis Vogel,
and that son of a bitchin' Hazlewood,
the judge...
Steve had 22 witnesses at least.
And there was one of them right there.
And every one of us
were called fabricators, liars.
If the alibi witnesses
were believed,
there would be no way to find him guilty.
Steve Avery was accounted for
every minute,
from about 1:30 that afternoon until,
um...
you know, at least 5:00.
The victim was sexually assaulted
at approximately 3:50.
All of these alibi witnesses testified
that on the day of the assault,
Steve Avery was helping his parents
and other family members
pour concrete at the salvage yard.
The cement truck arrived sometime
between 1:00 and 2:00.
Witnesses testified either
that they were out working with him,
pouring the concrete,
or they were in the house
watching Divorce Court
from 3:00 to 3:30
and saw Steve Avery
immediately afterwards.
Steve Avery then took his sister
in his four-by-four car
out to a local gravel pit.
They got stuck out there,
they had to dig it out.
They got back right around 4:00.
At that point, Steve Avery
picked up his wife and his children.
He had two very young babies that
had just been born a few days earlier.
And then they went to Green Bay.
It was about a 35 minute drive
to Green Bay.
They washed the car, they got something
to eat, they went to the Shopko store.
Evidence was presented
of a receipt giving the time at 5:13,
and when he came back
from Green Bay with his wife,
he called his brother Earl
to have him come over
and help do some drywall in his house.
And that they did that in the evening,
finally going to bed,
which is about the time
that the police then arrive.
When I kicked him, he said,
"Now you're gonna die,
now I'm gonna kill you."
And what did he do then?
Then he put his hands on my
neck, and he started choking me very hard.
Penny Beerntsen
was everything that Steven wasn't.
Smart, educated, well-to-do,
church-going lady,
a business owner,
involved in community affairs.
So just think of the two of them,
side by side.
Mrs. Beerntsen,
she's a very good witness.
She was very positive.
She stated that she'd made a point
when the crime was being committed
of remembering who it was
who was doing this to her.
And, uh, that... that carried the day.
Were you able to pick out anyone
in that live line-up?
Yes, I was.
And do you have an opinion as to
whether or not the person you picked out
in the live line-up is the same
as the person you picked out today?
- Yes, it is the same person.
- And are you positive of that?
I am absolutely positive.
The whole thing was a nightmare.
How do you think a man feels?
You see your son sitting right there,
and he's... and he's saying,
the tears are coming out of his eyes...
"I didn't do it." He said...
"I'm innocent. I didn't do it."
And you know he didn't do it.
You were with him, you know.
It's hard to take.
In Wisconsin,
the way the parole system was set up
is if you didn't admit your guilt,
you did not get paroled.
And of course Steven didn't admit
his guilt because he wasn't guilty.
So that meant he wasn't gonna get paroled.
He watched people who actually
had murdered somebody walk out.
And he sat there.
If I did it,
I'll admit right away.
I'll take the punishment,
I'll do the time.
But I don't break
for something I didn't do.
I'll stay strong.
I'll never fail.
Dolores would take the kids to see Stevie
about sometimes two or three times a week.
To Green Bay and that,
you know, to see Steve.
A lot of times I was by myself,
but I'd still go.
Just to go see him.
It was Fox Lake,
Green Bay,
- Tennessee and Stanley.
- At the end there...
I used to go to all of them,
even if it was icy.
I drove on clear ice.
With Lori, I suppose it was
hard for her to watch the kids.
That was a bunch of kids to watch.
And she was alone.
I don't know if she thought
he would ever get out or not.
With me and my wife,
it was tough.
We was fighting.
She'd tell me she can't take it no more.
And she started with
she was gonna kill the kids,
then commit suicide and everything else.
A lot of back and forth,
a lot of hate and...
I wrote some bad letters.
It lasted about three years...
and then I told her to go for the divorce.
You know, we just got where...
we didn't care about each other
or nothing.
He loved Lori and he loved the kids.
But he ended up with nothing.
When she took the kids
away from me then... I tried to stay busy,
I kept my mind occupied.
Like when I was in Green Bay,
I did auto body for nine years.
All day, I got my mind working on cars
and paint and everything else.
But then when that's all done,
come back and take a shower
and then you sit in a room
and listen to the bars.
His mother
and dad stuck by him the most.
Mainly his mother. Mainly his mother.
She stuck by him all those years
he was in prison.
So did my brother. All the money they had,
it went towards getting him out of prison,
saying he was innocent.
Steven and his parents came to us,
I think at the stage that,
you know, they decided
this was kind of their one last gasp.
The problem was that virtually
all the issues that would arise
from the conviction itself
had already been litigated
and had already been decided
adversely to Steven.
It essentially came down
to a requirement
that we come up with
some newly discovered evidence.
Rob Henak had to root around
in the Manitowoc courthouse,
eventually having the clerks
help find boxes.
And then going through the boxes
and finding samples of things.
We noted that the sex crimes kit
had been completed
and that there were
the fingernail scrapings
that had been collected at the time.
The science of DNA at that stage
hadn't developed sufficiently.
So nobody had really
ever done anything with them.
We had the fingernail scrapings
tested by Lab Corporation of America,
and in 1995,
with the testing they're able to do,
they're able to limit
all the population of the world
into particular groups,
based on what are called alleles.
Each of us has two alleles.
Steve Avery and the victim
have the same alleles.
However, they found three alleles
in the fingernail scrapings.
Two of them that matched Steve Avery's
and the victim's,
and one that didn't match either of them.
Meaning there had to be DNA from a person
not Steve Avery under her fingernails.
Our argument was that a jury
could look at this evidence
and decide that it was most likely
the perpetrator.
And when you look at all
the other evidence tied together,
the alibi evidence, the fact that
the victim was wrong about the eye color,
the fact that the victim identified the
perpetrator as wearing white underwear
when Steve Avery
didn't even own underwear,
that those kind of things would create
a reasonable probability
of a different result.
In this instance, the DNA evidence...
requires that the court speculate.
Regardless of which side I look at
and which argument I hear.
The court accepted the state's argument
that since we couldn't
prove whose DNA it was,
we couldn't discount the fact
that this could've been her husband's DNA,
one of the medical personnel's DNA,
the couple that found Penny Beerntsen
on the beach
and comforted her and clothed her
while they were waiting
for, uh, medical assistance. Um...
And, I mean, in my mind,
and certainly in Rob's mind,
all of that was preposterous
because Penny Beerntsen had never said
that she scraped any of those people
or had any reason to claw at them.
Nonetheless, the court ruled against us.
The court of appeals ruled against us.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court
ruled against us.
And if you ever want to read an opinion,
by the way,
that will show you how strongly
this system is designed
to perpetuate a conviction,
as opposed to examine whether or not
somebody could in fact be innocent,
read the court of appeals decision
in Steven Avery's case.
You would think that this
was the guiltiest person
that had ever been uncovered
in a criminal case in Wisconsin.
It's now '96 or '97.
You have exhausted
every legal proceeding that is...
remotely available to you.
You've now been in this system
for 12 years.
You are a son who cares deeply
about his parents.
And his parents are getting older and
older while he's sitting in this joint,
who cares about his kids
who are getting older and older.
The pressure of that on a person to...
wrongfully confess, if you will,
and to say, "OK, look, um...
I've... I've fought the good fight,
I've gone through all my appellate stuff,
I'm not getting anywhere with it,
it's time to level with you guys.
I really did this crime."
I mean, those pressures have gotta be
more intense than we can imagine.
They always told me,
"If you admit to it, we'll let you out.
Otherwise, you'll be here until your MR."
You know?
So I guess I'll be in here 'til my MR,
'cause I ain't gonna admit to it.
I'm not gonna lie.
Here's the court of appeals.
Sentencing papers.
This one must've been in... '98.
I sent transcripts out.
A whole bunch of them.
I made ten copies.
Sit in the living room
and done it on the copy machine.
Then I put the pieces, each on the table
to make ten, you know, ten of them.
It was nerve-racking.
I think there's about
a thousand pages in 'em.
This one went to New York.
They went all over.
Wherever 60 Minutes is or 20/20 or...
I can't remember
the other ones all.
All them things that's on TV always.
I thought they'd help Steven to get out
if they read all this here script stuff.
Then all of a sudden
we got a lot of 'em back, though.
They couldn't do it, they said,
or something like that.
Yeah, I put a lot of hours in these boxes.
You learn to take
patience, because everything...
it takes time.
In prison, you gotta wait.
Nothing happens just like that.
Anyway, they couldn't take away
my love for my family and that.
I never had bad hopes.
It was always good hopes.
Both his trial lawyer
and his appellate lawyer said,
"Could you look at this guy's case,
at Steven Avery's case?
We've been losing sleep
over this case for 15 years."
We knew the technology had advanced,
so we asked for the testing again.
The material was sent down
to the crime laboratory again,
and what they found
was that there were 13 pubic hairs
that had been collected during
the pubic hair combings of the victim.
Eleven of those hairs had no root.
So they were down to two pubic hairs.
One of those hairs was from a female,
probably Penny Beerntsen's own hair.
The truth in this matter came down
to that one remaining pubic hair.
They got a full profile. That profile
conclusively excluded Steven Avery.
It could not have come from him.
Now we know that with certainty.
Whether that alone would've been enough
to grant him a new trial, I don't know.
But even more dramatically, they took
that profile from that pubic hair
and they ran it through
the state crime laboratory data bank
and they got a cold hit.
That is to say, they matched it
to somebody in the data bank
who they didn't know was in there.
And that somebody was Gregory Allen.
I feel free.
When I left the prison, the anger left.
It was gone.
It stayed there, behind them gates.
It didn't come out with me.
I was happy when I got out.
I probably was the happiest
man on the Earth.
- How you doing?
- Oh, hello.
- How are you?
- I'm pretty good.
- How's it feel?
- It feels wonderful.
Oh, God! Oh, Stevie!
Let's get rid of this thing.
I'm just glad they got the guy who did it.
Do you forgive the victim?
It ain't at all her fault, you know.
Honest mistake, you know.
I mean, most the time,
I think the cops put it in her head more.
Who's this?
I don't know.
The revelation hit the DA's office
and the sheriff's office like a bomb.
And as it began to unfold
what had happened,
there was then a huge set
of repercussions
on a whole series of people
in those offices.
The day of
or the day after Steven's release,
law enforcement officers in Manitowoc
are writing memos to describe activity
that had occurred
almost ten years earlier.
They don't do that
unless they feel threatened.
When I called Denis Vogel
to tell him the news
that Steven Avery wasn't guilty
of assaulting Penny Beerntsen,
I was expecting to hear some shock
or some surprise, like,
"Oh, my goodness. How did this happen?"
or "I feel terrible about it" or...
"Thank goodness the DNA proved it."
But I didn't hear any of that
from Mr. Vogel.
What I heard instead was a question,
whether or not there was anything
on Gregory Allen in his file.
I couldn't believe it.
I mean, it showed me two things.
It showed me that he suspected
that Gregory Allen was the assailant.
But it also showed me...
I didn't know how else to take it,
other than that he was worried
about his exposure.
That something about Gregory Allen
was in his file.
I started leafing through Denis Vogel's
file on Avery and I come across
a criminal complaint.
"State of Wisconsin v. Gregory Allen"
in the Avery file,
which didn't make a lot of sense.
It was a charge of lewd
and lascivious behavior.
He had dropped his shorts, he exposed
himself and he lunged at this woman.
And it was the same basic section
of the beach
where Penny Beerntsen
was assaulted two... two years later.
Um, and I looked at which prosecutor
had prosecuted Gregory Allen earlier,
and it was Denis Vogel.
That was evidence
that at least made it possible
that the DA and the sheriff
either knew or should have known
that Steven Avery was not the assailant.
And not only that,
we believe there was the potential
that they knew, in fact,
who the assailant was,
but continued with the prosecution.
We needed for somebody else to look at it
and the logical office would
be the Attorney General's office.
It's extraordinarily significant
that a prosecutor
asks the Attorney General,
the chief prosecutor of the state,
to investigate his own department
and law enforcement in that community.
That doesn't happen.
Would you tell us
what your occupation is, please?
I am a special agent with
the Wisconsin Department of Justice
Division of Criminal Investigation.
What are your duties as a special agent?
To investigate crimes
relating to misconduct in office.
And you were one of two DCI agents
to work on an investigation
involving the prosecution in 1985
- of Steven Avery, is that right?
- Yes.
We wanted to interview everybody
we could identify as being involved
in the investigation
or in the prosecution.
Understand,
this is all happening in public view.
The public knew an Attorney General's
investigation was underway.
And there was a sense
that law enforcement
may be vulnerable here,
and probably feeling it, uh...
because God knows there
were numerous editorials, articles,
all of which had the theme
of "How could this happen?"
The stories of mine that broke some new
ground were the ones that documented
how quickly Steven Avery was a suspect
and then how Gregory Allen
was not considered.
I went through a lot of police records
about Gregory Allen
and kind of built a chronology
of his contacts with law enforcement.
Police in Manitowoc had followed him
for 13 straight days
where they were making multiple checks
on him, as many as 14 times a day,
because he had been implicated
in several sex-related crimes.
After Steven Avery was already arrested,
had already been identified twice,
the police department
contacted Penny Beerntsen.
She was shocked and confused and contacted
the Sheriff's Department herself to ask,
"What about this Gregory Allen?"
This isn't just about
an innocent guy being locked up.
It's about a dangerous rapist being out
on the streets doing what he wanted to do.
It was a hot end-of-June day in 1995,
and I was laying on the couch
after I put my daughter to bed
and had fallen asleep.
It was roughly 4:00 in the morning.
Gregory Allen broke into my home.
He had taken the towel, apparently,
I guess, off the clothesline,
threw it over my head
and then dragged me
from the living room to the bedroom.
He pretty much forced himself
as far as oral sex.
It felt like an eternity at the moment.
I was afraid my daughter, the next
morning, would find me in a pool of blood.
But... thank God it didn't...
It... We're OK.
The judge that I had
during sentencing said,
"If I could put you away for life,
I would,
but unfortunately I can only give you
the maximum," which was 60 years.
And he was around 47 at the time
that this happened, so...
I don't think he'll...
be able to harm anyone ever again.
Bergner went and talked
to Kocourek about Gregory Allen, right?
Correct.
No report was prepared by Kocourek
about the information
that was brought to him
by Bergner, is that right?
That's correct.
Kocourek tells you
that he did not think
that the Sheriff's Department knew
who Gregory Allen was in 1985.
Correct.
That was inconsistent with Allen
having been booked into the jail
- and photographed in 1984.
- Correct.
So if the sheriff had wanted
to see a photo of Allen in 1985,
all he had to do was go
to his own jail and find it?
Correct.
You and Deb tell the lawyers
that it appears
that there was "no real investigation
done" by the Sheriff's Department,
and "they had a suspect
and they were gonna make it work."
And that what's a little troubling to you
is the lack of paperwork that's done
- and so forth.
- Deb would've wrote that.
OK, but she's speaking for the two of you.
Yes, I believe she was speaking
for the two of us.
And was that your opinion at the time?
Yeah, I think that
was our opinion at the time.
In fact, it turned out
from all of your investigation
that this one was handled differently.
It appeared from this investigation
that the sheriff was really involved
in this one, which wasn't the norm.
"The sheriff told the DA
not to screw this case up
because the sheriff
wanted Avery convicted of this crime."
The tables were turning entirely,
and the changes
were all in Steven's favor.
We thought
what had happened to Steven Avery
would have justified
the Attorney General's Office
into... uh, frankly,
into bringing criminal charges,
but certainly warranted
a pretty strong condemnation.
State Attorney
General Peg Lautenschlager
says her department conducted
an exhaustive review
of police and trial records
and had interviews with the victim,
police, prosecutors, and defenders.
Her conclusion?
We don't see that there
are any criminal actions
against somebody or criminal missteps.
There don't seem
to be any ethical violations.
They said there
was no wrongdoing with them.
Then I wouldn't have did 18 years
if they didn't do nothing wrong.
They did everything wrong.
The state's
15-page review concludes that, at worst,
the Sheriff's Department
failed to investigate Allen,
all little consolation to Avery.
I was hoping they were gonna do something
to Manitowoc County...
and set them straight
so they don't do it again.
When I saw the Justice Department report,
it was like,
they kind of said, "Well, yeah,
they did these things that were wrong.
Oh, you know, but they kind of
had good intentions,"
or some crap like that.
"So we don't really think
anything further is justified."
It's like, what a crock of shit.
People did a lot of wrong things,
and a man's life suffered.
How can that not be... worth anything?
I don't think Steven had any alternative
but to bring the lawsuit.
There was never going to be
law enforcement recognition
and acceptance of responsibility.
There was never going to be
law enforcement held accountable.
I just didn't think
that was going to happen,
and it sure as hell wasn't gonna happen
after the AG's report.
I mean, I'm... I'm amazed
that sitting in Milwaukee
we couldn't hear the sigh of relief
coming out of Manitowoc
as soon as that AG's report came out.
Sometimes it just makes me sick, just
hearing about it and what they all did.
Everything they did wrong
should come back at 'em.
They weren't just gonna let Stevie out.
They weren't gonna
hand that man $36 million.
They weren't gonna be made
a laughingstock, that's for sure.
They just weren't gonna do all that.
And something in my gut
said they're not done with him.
Something's gonna happen.
They're not handing that kind of money
over to Steve Avery.
We told him he could expect
people would say
that this was just a get-rich effort.
That family private matters
would now be public,
and, you know, don't be too surprised
if people say some things about you
that you've never even heard before,
that are just plain false.
The one thing we didn't tell him
is that you have to be careful
when you bring a lawsuit
against a Sheriff's Department
in a community where you still live,
because you could end up
getting charged with murder.
Do we have a body or anything yet?
I don't believe so.
Do we have Steven Avery
in custody though?