Steven Avery, freed by UW Law School's Wisconsin Innocence Project in 1998 after serving 18 years for a rape he did not commit, is now being charged with the murder of a young woman.
Avery claims Manitowoc County framed him for the murder of Teresa Halbach, 25, of Hilbert, Wis., because it does not want to pay the $36 million lawsuit he filed for his wrongful conviction.
A member of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, an effort devoted to exonerating the wrongly convicted, said Avery's framing theory could be possible.
'Just having those facts out there, it's plausible that if someone else had done it, and they were looking for a place to dispose of the body and some likely person to deflect blame to, it's possible that his name would come up,' UW-Madison law student and former police officer Mark Noel said. 'It's really just a matter of what the evidence shows.'
Halbach, a photographer for Auto Trader magazine, had an appointment to photograph automobiles on the Avery family's salvage yard in Manitowoc Oct. 31. Avery was the last person to see Halbach before her family reported her missing Nov. 3.
A search of the Avery salvage yard revealed Halbach's sport utility vehicle on the premises; the SUV's key was found in Avery's bedroom.
Charred bone and teeth fragments of an adult female were found near a burnt area of grass on Avery's land.
Further DNA investigation proved Avery's blood to be inside the vehicle.
'Obviously, we were all very shocked,' UW law professor and co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project John Pray said. 'We don't represent him in this matter, so we really don't know much more than what we've seen in the media.'
Noel added that, because the Wisconsin Innocence Project focuses intensely on a case and its precise evidence, not on the convict's character, it stands by Avery's prior exoneration.
'So whatever's going on now, I don't think casts any shadow on the results of that previous case,' Noel said.
Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz said Avery is charged with first-degree intentional homicide and will also be charged for various other offenses, including concealing and mutilating a corpse.
'I've been involved in this business for 33 years and I've seen a lot of bad things in my investigations, but I think this tops the cake,' Calumet County Sheriff Jerry Pagel said in a press conference Friday. 'To know that one human being can do this to another human being is beyond belief.'
However, lab results identifying the human fragments as Halbach's are not yet available, and she is still considered a missing person.
