Ken Kratz, the prosecutor who rose to infamy when he appeared on the Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer in 2015, is once again speaking out against the filmmakers who he maintains presented a flawed, biased and one-sided account of Steven Avery’s murder trial and conviction.
Avery was found guilty of the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach in 2007, and sentenced to life in prison. Making a Murder detailed the extraordinary circumstances of Avery’s criminal history: He was wrongly convicted of raping a woman in 1985, and served 18 years of his sentence before DNA cleared him. Avery was preparing a lawsuit against Manitowoc County at the time he was arrested for murder.
Making a Murder strongly suggests that Avery was targeted by authorities in order to halt the lawsuit, and because the police had a vendetta against Avery and his large family, who were considered outsiders.
But Kratz, whose interview with the Daily Mail comes ahead of the release of his book on the case, Avery: The Case Against Steven Avery, insists that the documentary series left out key evidence and interviews that would have made a much for compelling case for why Avery was convicted.
‘Making A Murderer is a very good piece of entertainment but it’s not really what happened – it’s simply not how the case happened in real life,’ Kratz told the Daily Mail, claiming that the filmmakers distorted some facts, omitted key others, and misrepresented Avery’s murder trial to make the defense’s case appear stronger than it actually was.
‘[It] isn’t what the jury got to see or hear when they decided Mr. Avery was guilty,” Kratz said.
Among the ways that Kratz alleged the filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demo, distorted the case was through a deceptive editing technique called “splicing,” which is cutting together two unrelated instances of dialogue to make it appear as the same conversation. Even more seriously, Kratz alleges that a central, explosive claim made in Making a Murderer — that a vial of Avery’s blood stored from his earlier rape conviction was tampered with, suggesting it may have been planted at the scene of the murder — was fabricated.
Kratz tells the Daily Mail that the theory was not even used by the defense in the trial, as it was discredited early on by a nurse who provided written testimony that she had punctured the vial when Avery’s blood was first taken.
“They are fooling people and shame on them,” Kratz told the newspaper, and said he wants more accountability for Ricciardi and Demo, who have stood by their work.
‘I think everyone who watched that show has an entitlement to be angry that this happened,” Kratz said, “that they were fooled, that they were convinced to act and sign petitions for Avery’s release when it turns out he’s exactly where he belongs.”
Kratz’s book will be published on February 21.
Photo: Associated Press
