With the update that an appeal from wrongful convictions lawyer Kathleen Zellner in the case of Steven Avery would be delayed until the end of August, it seems like we’re going to have a quiet summer on the Making A Murderer news front. But Zellner would like to remind everyone that big things are coming with this new tweet:
https://twitter.com/ZellnerLaw/status/750302985859792897
Zellner has already revealed one part of that ‘tsunami’ of evidence: cell phone tower triangulation that seems to prove Avery’s victim Teresa Halbach left his salvage yard and was 12 miles away when her cell phone stopped transmitting. While some have noted this only indicates her cell phone moved, the established timeline from the day of the murder has Avery on his property during the same period.
Another current point of contention currently being debated by Making A Murderer fans is the lack of photo evidence of Teresa Halbach’s remains. Bone fragments were allegedly found in a fire pit and burn barrels next to Steven Avery’s property, but none of these were photographed before before being collected and moved to a forensics lab. While some point to this as just more evidence of shoddy police work, others have gone so far as to question whether the bone fragments found were animal remains that forensics falsely identified as Halbach’s.
Earlier in the year, an autopsy document related to the remains raised many eyebrows when it was noted that it took 10 weeks from the date the bone fragments were collected before they were positively identified as belonging to Teresa Halbach. Six weeks before they had been matched to Halbach, the autopsy document listed the remains as belonging to her, and the discovery of remains obviously played a huge part in the police charging Steven Avery for murder.
If you don’t think forensic evidence could be twisted or manipulated to put a person the police believe is guilty in jail, you need to pay more attention to some of Kathleen Zellner’s other cases. Just last month she managed to secure a new hearing for Melissa Calusinski, a daycare worker accused of killing a 1-year-old child in her care.
An anonymous tip to Zellner’s law firm resulted in the discovery that an undisclosed set of X-rays that seemed to show a fracture pushed by prosecutors as evidence Calusinski had thrown the baby was actually an accessory suture found in all children that age. Not only did the forensic scientists in this case misrepresent that fact, they originally provided a much darker copy of the X-ray in question to defense attorneys.
Forensic evidence can and has been twisted or outright faked to present whatever the prosecution wants it to, and that opens up all sorts of new avenues for a lawyer like Kathleen Zellner to explore. Who knows whether questions regarding the remains will be a part of her ‘tsunami of evidence,’ but Zellner clearly isn’t going to accept any claim the police and prosecutors make regarding evidence without independently verifying for herself what’s true.
