Making A Murderer

[Mendoza]

Quite a few twists and turns to come. Think there's ten years between part two and part three. West Of Memphis is good too, and has the benefit of hindsight.

[Ted]

I'll hold off on watching it until I've done the docs.

 

Tell you what, that fucking defence lawyer at the end had me fuming too. Die Hard villain looking cunt.

[Ted]

Finished part 2 of Paradise Lost last night.

 

Fucking hell.

[VladimirIlyich]

Or he was full of shit all along while playing the poor, impaired kid?

I think he had better lawyers and was coached impeccably in the interim and months before trial. I think that actually went against him.

Im not sure about the 'Kiss the Girls' story as Ive never seen the film but his drawings fitted the story he was told by the investigators and he'd seen Avery's house so knew the bedroom layout. The lawyers also didnt show how he was coerced into the story as the programme did so it sounded very plausible to a jury,no matter how biased they already were.

[Stu Monty]

I think he had better lawyers and was coached impeccably in the interim and months before trial. I think that actually went against him.

Im not sure about the 'Kiss the Girls' story as Ive never seen the film but his drawings fitted the story he was told by the investigators and he'd seen Avery's house so knew the bedroom layout. The lawyers also didnt show how he was coerced into the story as the programme did so it sounded very plausible to a jury,no matter how biased they already were.

His own defence team telling him that his statement needed changing to say he did the murder, then sitting over him and instructing him to draw pictures of people tied to beds (that was then used against him) was, shall we say...quite poor strategy.

 

The bent and paid for cunts.

[Bob]

I think he had better lawyers and was coached impeccably in the interim and months before trial. I think that actually went against him.

Im not sure about the 'Kiss the Girls' story as Ive never seen the film but his drawings fitted the story he was told by the investigators and he'd seen Avery's house so knew the bedroom layout. The lawyers also didnt show how he was coerced into the story as the programme did so it sounded very plausible to a jury,no matter how biased they already were.

I think the bigger clue that the 'kiss the girls' story was bollocks is that they'd not long before explained that he had a 4th grade reading age!

[manwiththestick]

Paradise Lost not on Netflix so I watched West of Memphis which was pretty good. That tall step dad is a beaut.

[Mendoza]

Paradise Lost not on Netflix so I watched West of Memphis which was pretty good. That tall step dad is a beaut.

 

So much more of him in Paradise Lost, particularly the second one. A truly entertaining lunatic. 

[VladimirIlyich]

His own defence team telling him that his statement needed changing to say he did the murder, then sitting over him and instructing him to draw pictures of people tied to beds (that was then used against him) was, shall we say...quite poor strategy.

 

The bent and paid for cunts.

When I said 'coached impeccably' I meant the second set of lawyers and I also dont mean they defended him impeccably,they just got him to respond to the questioning in the dock in a more plausible manner.

Bent? Most definitely!

[rubble-rouser]

I am 6 episodes in and, knowing what happens, I'm not sure I can face watching any more of this without going all kylo Ren on my furniture, TV etc.

 

It is fucking disgusting and infuriating. That fucking tinpot judge - I've come across so many intellectually dishonest peabrains like him in my time. The difference being that in the cases I was doing when I was in front of shit heads of that level we were arguing about who was going too fast and who wasn't indicating properly in a case usually worth about £2,000 in vehicle damage and a bitof whiplash.

 

What a shit, shit, shit state of affairs.  

[Anubis]

I am 6 episodes in and, knowing what happens, I'm not sure I can face watching any more of this without going all kylo Ren on my furniture, TV etc.

 

It is fucking disgusting and infuriating. That fucking tinpot judge - I've come across so many intellectually dishonest peabrains like him in my time. The difference being that in the cases I was doing when I was in front of shit heads of that level we were arguing about who was going too fast and who wasn't indicating properly in a case usually worth about £2,000 in vehicle damage and a bitof whiplash.

 

What a shit, shit, shit state of affairs.  

 

 

What got me really frustrated was the interview the police conducted with Brendan Dassey and the subsequent interview with his own investigator.  I have never seen anything quite like it - the lack of safeguards, the lack of an appropriate adult, the lack of any sort of professional conduct on the part of Len Kachinskey and Michael O'Kelly.  How the fuck they haven't been professionally sanctioned is beyond me.

[VladimirIlyich]

What got me really frustrated was the interview the police conducted with Brendan Dassey and the subsequent interview with his own investigator. I have never seen anything quite like it - the lack of safeguards, the lack of an appropriate adult, the lack of any sort of professional conduct on the part of Len Kachinskey and Michael O'Kelly. How the fuck they haven't been professionally sanctioned is beyond me.

That Kachinskey was a better prosecution lawyer than the actual prosecution team!

A right smiley,politically motivated twat,

[Crazy Dave]

Really interested in what happens now - if anything.  

 

Will the state of Wisonsin let two men spend the rest of their lives in prison when there is overwhelming evidence that, at the very least, both of their convictions relied heavily upon some very dubious evidence gathering?

[manwiththestick]

Yes. Probably.

[Brownie]

The more I think about it, the more I'm totally convinced both of them are 100 per cent guilty.

Based on evidence, mate? Or just a feeling?

[VladimirIlyich]

The more I think about it, the more I'm totally convinced both of them are 100 per cent guilty.

This maybe so mate,but their convictions were a totally travesty. This is probably more important because without a less biased trial they could be freed because of the shoddy trial and evidence.

I think the young lad is innocent but Avery is a Person of Interest.

[manwiththestick]

If I'm Avery and I've killed that girl, I'm crushing her Rav4 into a small cube then placing that inside another car and then crushing that. I'm not parking it near the front of the yard with a couple of twigs thrown over it.

[VladimirIlyich]

If I'm Avery and I've killed that girl, I'm crushing her Rav4 into a small cube then placing that inside another car and then crushing that. I'm not parking it near the front of the yard with a couple of twigs thrown over it.

I agree,plus the very small amount of blood when fingerprints were totally absent from the vehicle. The school bus driver statement on the timeline was also more crucial than was mentioned as it destroyed most alibis.

I still think the other prime candidate is the ex boyfriend and the family is strange for completely ignoring his huge potential for a part in this. He readily admitted to seeing her the day before her death and Avery made no effort to deny his meeting with her. If the boyfriend is still close to the Halbech family you also drag in the brother for being close to him too.

There are many other possibilities which were never seriously explored.

[Bob]

The blood but no fingerprints bit doesn't mean much to me.

 

Fabric type or woolly gloves would stop fingerprints and let blood deep through.

[VladimirIlyich]

The blood but no fingerprints bit doesn't mean much to me.

 

Fabric type or woolly gloves would stop fingerprints and let blood deep through.

In the shape that it was on the dashboard and the amount? The whole blood on the dashboard looked totally false,like a squirt with a syringe rather than a scrape where there would have been thicker and thinner splats of blood even gaps in the blood,and a lot more I am sure.

[Longview1982]

As I've mentioned earlier, I thought it was an outstanding series and it absolutely achieved it's objective in exposing the way that access to fair process and justice in that system is entirely dependant on wealth and power and did so brilliantly. But, it has left some collateral damage in the process which I'm not entirely comfortable with. One is the Kratz "sexting" scandal expose. Another is the portrayal of the Halbach family and the brother in particular. Another is the blatant finger pointing at the ex-boyfriend and her flatmate at the time.

 

I've read an interview with the producers where they explain their rationale for the Kratz expose:

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jarettwieselman/making-a-murderer-burning-questions-answered#.uiA4N2Oov 

 

"......The case gained national attention and led to the governor of Wisconsin seeking Kratz’s removal from office in 2010 — a development the filmmakers had to figure out how to include without turning it into a “gotcha” moment. “It certainly didn’t shape how we portrayed what had already happened,” Demos said. “We made the decision that the only thing that mattered with that is the way it affected these cases. You could have had a whole 20-minute thing about it that would have just been a tangent, so we tried to include what was relevant to the story.”

Ricciardi added, “We did not want it to be perceived as a low blow for Ken Kratz. It really needed to be relevant to the story and we hope this story works on multiple levels: There’s Steven’s whole throughline, but then there’s also the opportunity to look at the system itself and the question was, How is this particular community going to respond when news like this breaks? What we thought was so interesting is after the AP reporter, Ryan Foley, broke the story, it became public soon thereafter that the Department of Justice knew for a year and covered it up.”

“That felt like, ‘Oh, here we go again,’” Demos said....."

 

That explanation is a bit thin to me. Okay, you can say the attempts to cover up Kratz's sexting scandal continue the theme of misconduct and abuse of power within those offices, but by episode 10 nobody needed convincing of that, so this was only adding about 0.1% more weight to the State corruption argument and definitely smelled of them taking an opportunity to land some blows on Kratz. I have no sympathy for Kratz - he's a cunt - and the irony of him now complaining about them using the media to frame a negative view of him when he can't defend himself is rib-bustingly hilarious given his own press conferences before the trial, but it definitely does detract from the overall objective of the film.

 

The Halbach's, and the brother in particular, seemed to simply do what any other family would do in those circumstances and go along with the police and the prosecutors and hope that there is a conviction and a sentence that is suitable. There's no doubt that the producers intended to portray the brother as a wholly unsympathetic character - almost to the point of inviting a level of culpability in the "framing" of Avery. These are professional film-makers and that simply doesn't happen by accident. They wanted viewers to view him in that manner.

 

Finally, I understand the need to establish one strand of the "framing" and misconduct theory as being the lack of investigation of other potential leads. However, it was surely possible to do that without blatantly shepherding viewers in the direction of the ex-boyfriend and her flatmate. Showing them so fleetingly and only within that specific context basically screamed out "Look how dodgy these ****ers are!" and urged us to immediately cast them as murder suspects with no attempt to offer any breadth of detail or any alternative viewpoint. 

 

I mean, fuck Kratz, Lenk and Colburn - they can have all the fucking mud getting slung their way - but those are serious aspersions being cast at the brother, the ex and the flatmate with almost casual disregard for the lack of fair treatment they are attempting to highlight from Avery's point of view. That's pretty shoddy film making.

 

Overall, it's a superb series but it's not without some significant flaws.

[Longview1982]

The blood but no fingerprints bit doesn't mean much to me.

 

Fabric type or woolly gloves would stop fingerprints and let blood deep through.

 

 

In the shape that it was on the dashboard and the amount? The whole blood on the dashboard looked totally false,like a squirt with a syringe rather than a scrape where there would have been thicker and thinner splats of blood even gaps in the blood,and a lot more I am sure.

 

As I recall, the prosecution case, supported by their own "Expert" witness, was that those blood smears in the back of the RAV4 were caused by a sweep of the victims bloodied hair as her body was placed in the back of the vehicle, but don't recall any suggestion of how the dashboard blood would have got there.

[Dr Nowt]

The blood but no fingerprints bit doesn't mean much to me.

 

Fabric type or woolly gloves would stop fingerprints and let blood deep through.

Knew all that stuff in the Date Thread about secluded country lanes and making women bleed was dodgy.

[Bob]

In the shape that it was on the dashboard and the amount? The whole blood on the dashboard looked totally false,like a squirt with a syringe rather than a scrape where there would have been thicker and thinner splats of blood even gaps in the blood,and a lot more I am sure.

I totally agree, it was planted, but the lack of fingerprints means fuck all

[Bob]

As I recall, the prosecution case, supported by their own "Expert" witness, was that those blood smears in the back of the RAV4 were caused by a sweep of the victims bloodied hair as her body was placed in the back of the vehicle, but don't recall any suggestion of how the dashboard blood would have got there.

In the back, it was her blood. The blood in the front was his, and probably came from the vial from his 1985 evidence file.