The sensation surrounding Netflix’s Making A Murderer might have faded from the public eye ever so slightly in advance of a potential Season 2, but that doesn’t mean Steven Avery’s case is over or isn’t still being litigated every day. The latest development in the investigation into the murder of Teresa Halbach and the pursuit of who might have killed her if it wasn’t Steven Avery or his nephew Brendan Dassey is the formal introduction of a new suspect into the proceedings. The person in question was Halbach’s former boyfriend Ryan Hillegas whom she had recently ended things with, moving on from the relationship with one of his close friends.
Avery’s lawyer Kathleen Zellner submitted a nearly 2,000-page motion to the state of Wisconsin positing that Avery deserves a new trial in large part because Hillegas was not investigated deeply enough at the time of the original investigation and didn’t have an airtight alibi for the day of Halbach’s death on top of that. Throw in the fact that when a post-conviction investigator originally attempted to approach Hillegas’ best friend at the time Scott Bloedorn for further interviews he was reticent to participate, until the investigator let him know that another suspect was on the way to being introduced into the case and he almost immediately guessed it was Hillegas. The evidence is thin (in a case with more than enough thin evidence already), but something at least seems fishy.
About 200 pages of Zellner’s motion is available to read on her website, if anyone is so inclined. It also names Avery’s original lawyers (Dean Strang and Jerry Buting) and his post-conviction counsel (Suzanne Hagopian and Martha Asksins) as complicit because they “were ineffective in failing to hire the experts needed to establish that all of the evidence used by the state to convict Mr. Avery was planted or fabricated.”
After the motion was filed, the Wisconsin Department of Justice responded accordingly:
“We are confident that as with Mr. Avery’s prior motions, this one also is without merit and will be rejected once it is considered by the court.”
Whatever the effect of this latest motion, if any, this case continues to take twists and turns every few weeks that would make for an intriguing drama if it weren’t real people’s lives.
(Via WBAY)
