The Wrap reached out to Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, the filmmakers behind Netflix’s Making A Murderer, hoping to gain a little insight into the claims made by former prosecutor Ken Kratz in an interview with People Magazine. In the interview, Kratz criticized the docuseries and said that the filmmakers left out “key evidence” that caused the jury to come to their final decision regarding the fates of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey.
Demos and Ricciardi stand by their work and defended the evidence that the series used from the Avery trial:
Moira Demos: I guess I would ask Kratz what he would trade it for. We tried to choose what we thought was Kratz’s strongest evidence pointing toward Steven’s guilt, the things he talked about at his press conferences, the things that were really damning toward Steven. That’s what we put in. The things I’ve heard listed as things we’ve left out seem much less convincing of guilt than Teresa’s DNA on a bullet or her remains in his backyard.
Laura Ricciardi: To state this another way, I’d say that all of the most significant evidence of the state is in the series. It was a nearly six-week-long trial, and it would just be impossible for us to include all of the less significant evidence.
The pair also hit back at Kratz’s comments about not wanting to “muddy up a perfectly good conspiracy movie with what actually happened,” calling back to Kratz’s own words from the trial:
Ricciardi: This is coming from a man who argued in closing arguments that reasonable doubts are for innocent people. This is coming from a man who said, “So what if the key was planted?” This is coming from a man who was forced out of office for admittedly sending sexually suggestive text messages to a domestic-violence victim whose case he was prosecuting. We are confident. We stand by the project we did. It is thorough. It is accurate. It is fair. That is why it took us 10 years to produce it.
As I’ve said before, Ken Kratz is entitled to his own opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own facts.
The Wrap interview provides a better look at how much Demos and Ricciardi attempted to bring the other side of the case into the documentary, including how many times Kratz was contacted to sit down for an interview. There’s also some more about their feelings towards people who have watched the series and are now calling for Steven Avery’s case to be re-examined.
Meanwhile, over at Mashable, the pair note that there is a possibility for a sequel and that Steven Avery’s story isn’t finished yet:
“The original footage is still growing,” Demos told Mashable in a phone interview Tuesday. “We are continuing to document the story. We still speak to Steven, we’re still recording calls with him. In a way, we’re still in production.”
Given that the initial series took ten years, it is unlikely that we could see a sequel blossom any time soon. But with the series appearing on Netflix and the open nature of streaming, an update or two isn’t out of the question. Comparing it to something like Paradise Lost, which followed nearly 20 years of the legal battle for the West Memphis Three, there could be numerous updates for the Avery case.
