It's been one hell of a week for Steven Avery, the subject of Netflix's docu-series Making a Murderer. Since the show dropped on Dec. 18 it's stirred up a firestorm of Internet backlash and multiple petitions to free Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, who are currently serving life in prison for the murder of Teresa Halbach. In just the last few days petitions for pardon have cropped up with signatures that number in the hundreds of thousands, a juror who claims that Avery was framed by police for the crime has come forward, and now Avery's own theory of the details surrounding the murder has been released. In legal files submitted by Avery in 2009 he reveals that it may be his own brothers who are responsible.
According to TMZ, which acquired the documents, Avery believes that either or both of his brothers Earl and Charles could have committed the crime. Both have a disturbing history of sexual and physical violence against women. Earl reportedly once pled no contest to sexually assaulting his daughters, and Charles was reportedly charged with "sexually assaulting his wife by holding her down and trying to strangle her with a phone cord before having intercourse with her," TMZ reports. But that's not where it stops, according to the files.
The docs say Charles also had a history of aggression toward women who visited the family's junkyard. One woman, who was there to retrieve her car that had been towed, complained to cops she was afraid of Charles because he was aggressively pursuing her ... sending flowers and money to her home, calling her incessantly and showing up at her doorstep.
This is disturbing information, to say the least. But what doesn't add up is that Steven was currently awaiting a $36 million settlement from Manitowoc County, part of which Avery's brothers would have likely seen a cut. So what's the end game here, if true? If nothing else, this serves to further muddy the details around an already complicated investigation. It'll be interesting to see whether this information could help Dassey, who's currently awaiting a decision to move his case to federal court on the grounds that he was "illegally arrested and imprisoned."
