Viewers of “Making a Murderer” must also ignore that Avery not only called Auto Trader and specifically requested Halbach, who was a photographer with the company, to take pictures of his car the day she was murdered, but that he did so using a false name to trick her to show up. She had been there once before, and Avery had scared her. Avery called Halbach’s personal cell phone three times the day she was murdered, twice using *67 to obscure his identity, and only once using his own number — after she was already dead, in a transparent alibi attempt. (All of this was conveniently unmentioned in Season 1.)
Avery, who initially claimed that Halbach had never shown up—a weird thing to lie about for an innocent person—was the last known person to see her alive. An Avery family member, Bobby Dassey—more on him in a second— testified that he witnessed Halbach arrive on Avery’s property to take pictures of the car, and that he watched Halbach “walking over” to Avery’s trailer.
Why would Dassey lie? Well, Zellner wants us to believe that it was Dassey who murdered Halbach. You can believe that cops might be lazy and focused on the wrong man, or that prosecutors railroaded that man because they were harboring a grudge, but how would the police know to plant DNA evidence on the car, the casing from the rifle, and Halbach’s keys to help Dassey? Unless, of course, you believe Dassey could get his hands on Avery’s blood and non-blood DNA and plant it himself without leaving a single fingerprint or bit of DNA, or any other evidence, behind.
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