【新闻周刊 20160329】洗白杀人犯

满仓

【中文标题】洗白杀人犯
【原文标题】The Woman Unmaking America's Most Famous Murderer
【登载媒体】新闻周刊
【原文作者】Josh Saul
【原文链接】http://www.newsweek.com/2016/04/08/kathleen-Zellner-making-murderer-attorney-steve-avery-441470.html


2007年2月16日，史蒂芬•艾弗里（左）坐在威斯康星州奇尔顿卡柳梅特县法院受审，右边是艾弗里的律师杰罗姆•普丁。艾弗里在2005年被判谋杀罪名成立，作为纪录片《制造杀人犯》的主角，他引起了国际社会的广泛关注，片中质疑他的罪名是否成立。

在凯瑟琳•策尔纳小的时候，她有一个朋友住在街道对面，家里养了一只宠物鸭子，名叫“牙刷”。牙刷是个令人心头一暖的小东西，它喜欢吃黄蜂，经常在后院的儿童戏水池中游泳。那是50年代的奥克拉荷马州巴特而斯维尔市。策尔纳绝对不是个令人暖心的孩子，除了漫画书，她还买了一些教授武术的书籍。她把这些书藏到漫画书下面，这样她可以偷偷学习柔道而不让妈妈知道。策尔纳经常会找机会施展拳脚。有一天，一个坏小孩把牙刷丢到邻居家猎狗的笼子里，当时只有8岁的策尔纳发怒了。“凯瑟琳发狂了，她跑过去把他痛打了一顿，她的拳脚让对方无法招架。”她的哥哥、新奥尔良的辩护律师约翰•豪尔•托马斯说。他记得那个孩子的鼻子流血，大人走过来才把她拉开。“从那以后，再也没有人感惹凯瑟琳。”

策尔纳说激励她前进的依然是这种维护正义的感觉：“我前进的动力是对权力的滥用——恶人和受害者，当我看到人们无法保护自己时，我有很强烈的反应。”

这个在家里为一只鸭子伸张正义的女孩，已经成长为一名辩护律师。她成功地为17个人脱罪，赢得了9000万美元的错误判决和医疗事故赔偿。策尔纳还曾经把一只无头的羊羔丢入溪水中，调查一件强奸和谋杀案，并以此让一名连环杀手供认出21项罪行。杰西卡•贝尔即将在一部传记电影中扮演她。一位律师曾经说，在庭审现场面对她“比自己的离婚经历更加糟糕”。

策尔纳即将面对的下一个恶霸是威斯康星州警方和公诉人，这些人盯上了史蒂夫•艾弗里，去年12月Netflix发布了一个长达十集的纪录片《制造杀人犯》之后，艾弗里的故事传遍了全国。这部纪录片让很多观众相信艾弗里遭到了陷害。影片首先讲述了1985年他在梅尼托瓦克县的一个强奸案中被错误定罪，并在狱中服刑18年。之后，详细讲述了2005年这个县发生的另一件谋杀案。一位摄影师特蕾莎•哈尔巴克驱车前往艾弗里的汽车救援厂，为《汽车交易》杂志给一辆货车拍摄照片，之后被杀害。艾弗里被逮捕，并指控有罪。艾弗里患有智力障碍的外甥布兰登•达西当时只有16岁，他供认自己帮助他的舅舅强奸并杀害了哈尔巴克，但他的供认对于这起恐怖的案件似乎颇为勉强、不情愿，而且是在侦探们不断地引导和刺激下，这个弱智的孩子才不得不说出他们想要听到的故事。在另外一个审判中，达西也被判有罪。策尔纳在她3000平方英尺的家庭影院中看完了这部纪录片，她经常在这里进行面对陪审员的演练和观看科恩兄弟的影片。“当我看完艾弗里的案件，我觉得州检方和整个州的态度就是认为他是无足轻重的、可以牺牲的。好像他的家庭无关紧要，他们无权无势，”策尔纳说，“我越看越愤怒。”


6岁的策尔纳在俄克拉荷马州巴特而斯维尔市。她买了一些教授武术的书籍，把它们藏在漫画书的封面下，瞒着妈妈偷偷学习。

当被问到她和她的团队是否已经锁定了案件的嫌疑人，策尔纳说是的，这些人都认识哈尔巴克。“我们有若干嫌疑人，而嫌疑最大的人只有一个，但我不想把他吓跑。”她说，以此解释她为什么不能透露更多的信息。在谈话中，策尔纳说执法部门和辩护律师都未能充分调查哈尔巴克的个人生活，她是个友善的人，刚刚开始自己的新职业。当提到友善的人也会成为谋杀案的受害者时，策尔纳表示同意，说：“对男人缺少足够判断力的女人往往会沦为受害者。”

手臂纹身“Die Free”

“如果你有罪，不要聘请我，因为我会发现的。”策尔纳在接手一个囚犯的案件之前这样对对方说。自从她成立了自己的律师事务所并接手了一个案件之后，策尔纳发誓她只为无辜的人做辩护。那个案件是这样的。一位看门人在芝加哥一个丢在垃圾箱里的一个大垃圾袋中发现了一条人腿，垃圾箱中还有另外7个垃圾袋，装着丹尼•布里格斯的其它肢体，这是一个15岁的男妓。曾经在中西部多个州被怀疑参与20项谋杀案件的拉里•艾里尔，在1986年被判定罪名成立，并等待处以死刑。一家反死刑组织把案件交给策尔纳，但是她未能让艾里尔承认他在伊利诺伊州和印第安纳州的罪行，作为交换免除死刑的条件。策尔纳与艾里尔的交往逐渐深入之后，她想尽办法免除他的死刑判决，甚至说服他去做艾滋病检测。艾里尔用“血淋淋的细节”向她交代了自己犯下的多起谋杀案，但条件是在他的有生之年策尔纳必须要保守秘密。艾里尔在1994年死于艾滋病，策尔纳召开新闻发布会，宣布艾里尔招认了21项谋杀案。策尔纳在接受《芝加哥论坛报》采访时说：“知道这些事情让我痛苦万分，受害者的家属不断请求我告诉他们究竟发生了什么。”这种压力，加上艾里尔毫无悔悟的表态，以及他对在自己手下遭受折磨的同性恋和男孩那种轻蔑的态度，让策尔纳发誓她绝不再接她已知有罪人的辩护案件。“当你面对一张恶魔的面孔，受那些令人发指的罪行拖累两三年之后，我再也不会被别人利用了。”

艾里尔的案件之后，策尔纳不再轻易接手被错误判决的案件，但是反死刑组织把约瑟夫•巴罗斯的案件交给她，说他们认为这个人是绝对清白的。策尔纳浏览了卷宗，发现了一个新的不在场证明、一项被撤回的目击者证词和一个不可靠的检察官，她同意接手。巴罗斯在1989年因伊利诺伊州农村的一项谋杀案被判处死刑。一个名叫盖尔•波特的可卡因毒贩证明，说她看到巴罗斯枪击一位退休农民的头部，因为这位88岁的老人拒绝给她一张3000美元的支票，让她可以交给毒贩上家。策尔纳在一年多的时间里到监狱访问了波特50次，最终赢得了她的信任。策尔纳向波特描述了罪案现场，包括子弹弹射的轨迹和老人碎裂的指甲，指出一个身体虚弱的老人不可能与大块头的巴罗斯发生这种搏斗。“我告诉她，我知道罪犯是个女人，而且我还告诉她我究竟是怎么知道的。”策尔纳说。之后波特莞尔一笑，终于向策尔纳坦白她独自一人杀害了那位老人。说服一个囚犯招认会增加她刑期的犯罪事实，是一个极为困难的过程，需要时间和双方的信任。策尔纳说：“我有同情心，愿意投入时间建立信任。”她知道艾里尔在小时候曾经遭到虐待和性侵犯，她也知道究竟是什么让他犯下暴力的罪行。“对于盖尔•波特，我理解她的绝望，我并不是在谴责谁。”


3月10日，策尔纳在伊利诺伊州道纳斯格罗夫的办公室与实习生一起梳理案件的证据。她把相关的照片和其它证据都放在地板上。

策尔纳说波特并不关心巴罗斯会如何，她关心的是他那三个没有父亲照看的孩子。利用波特独自一人杀死农夫的宣誓证词，策尔纳在1994年让巴罗斯被释放。巴罗斯和策尔纳并肩走出法庭，他的手臂上纹着“Die Free”。

她的下一个引人注目的案件是4个十几岁的男孩，因被指控绑架、强奸、杀害一名芝加哥医学生洛瑞•罗赛迪而被捕入狱15年。策尔纳希望检测他们的DNA，与医学生身上残留的DNA样本比对，这在2001年需要一笔昂贵的费用。她告诉库克县检方说她愿意支付一半的费用。他们本可以对她的要求置之不理，谋杀的新闻已经登上了各大媒体的头条，而且警方说已经有两个孩子对犯罪事实供认不讳。时任库克县公诉人的罗伯特•米兰说：“她说让我和你一起给他们定罪吧。对我来说，这是明摆着的事实，所以我说：‘那就做好了。’”

他们重新检查罗赛迪的衣服时，发现了一块精液残迹，策尔纳和米兰把精液样本送往加拿大的一个法医实验室。米兰回忆道：“他们说：‘这是两名男性的精液，但不属于你们抓获的四名年轻人中的任何一个。’”被错误判决的四个人在2001年走出监狱，他们与策尔纳手挽手，面带微笑。

策尔纳在这起案件中花费了6万美元聘请各类专家，她说：“我决不是信口开河，我坚信他们是清白的。”在重新调查案件的过程中，警方找到了一些杀害罗赛迪真凶的线索。策尔纳和米兰从加拿大获得的DNA检测结果指向两个男人，他们在1986年用刀强迫这名医学生登上他们的汽车，并用混凝土砖块击打她的头部。而且，DNA检测结果的影响范围超出了这起谋杀案。米兰说，罗赛迪案嫌疑人的罪名被洗脱，对库克县检方办公室造成了“巨大的影响”。他们专门成立了一个DNA检查部门，每年两次培训所有的公诉人有关虚假招供和错误判决的案例。还推出“门户开放政策”，鼓励公诉人提出任何他们认为值得怀疑的问题。

策尔纳愿意投入自己的金钱，也愿意不眠不休地帮助她认为清白的人脱罪，但是当有人想陷害她的时候，她会毫不犹豫地让他们自食其果。罗赛迪案中被定罪，随后又被释放的四个人之一马塞琉斯•布拉德福德偷偷录下了一段对话，策尔纳对他说，放弃她去找别的律师为他争取因错误判决而申请数百万美元的赔偿官司，是个愚蠢的举动。布拉德福德试图用这个录音向她索取3000美元，策尔纳不予理会。她先打电话通知检方，然后戴上一个隐藏的麦克风与布拉德福德见面，把钱交给他，让他当场被捕。策尔纳在接受《芝加哥论坛报》的采访时说：“让他们走出监狱，他们又想勒索我，这简直骇人听闻。我不在乎他是否更换律师，但是绝不容忍有人敢勒索我。”


史蒂夫•艾弗里谋杀案的资料箱堆在策尔纳的办公室里。依照法律，重启艾弗里案的唯一条件是有新证据浮出水面。

残忍的审讯

一只无头的羊羔落入水中，激起一片水花。策尔纳站在桥上，看着动物的尸体顺流而下，观察它会在哪片水滩搁浅。她正在试图说服一名陪审员凯文•福克斯被强行定罪杀害他的女儿。

3岁的瑞丽•福克斯喜欢跳到父亲的怀抱中，骑在父亲的肩头。2004年的一天，福克斯把她放在位于伊利诺伊州威明顿的家中床上之后，孩子失踪了。第二天下午，调查人员在附近森林中的一个小溪中发现了她的尸体。她穿着一件火烈鸟的T恤衫，被防水胶布困住手脚，并且曾经遭到性侵犯。大约5个月之后，当地的探员把她的父亲找来，进行了一次极为残忍的审讯。

首先，探员对福克斯说谎，说他没有通过有关女儿谋杀案的测谎仪测试。当福克斯的妻子说她相信他的清白时，探员爱德华•海耶斯冲她咆哮：“你的丈夫是他妈的骗子，他是个混蛋凶手。他从不爱你，也不爱你那该死的女儿！他杀了她！你他妈的需要认清这一点！”海耶斯和其他探员把福克斯单独监禁，说他们认识狱中的囚犯，只要他被判有罪，肯定会让那些人强奸他。他们叫嚣说，他死去的女儿正跪在他面前，乞求他承认犯下的罪行，让自己的灵魂得以安息。他们把瑞丽尸体的照片给他看，他是第一次得知她被胶带绑住手脚。心灵受到巨大创伤的福克斯终于简短供述出，他不小心用浴室的门撞倒了瑞丽的头，他摔倒在浴缸中死亡。

策尔纳的律师事务所从福克斯的哥哥查德那里得到了相关的信息，在福克斯“招认”之后，查德给她打电话。她立即开始调查，发现海耶斯在逮捕福克斯之后给FBI打电话，说不要进行DNA检测。策尔纳花了8个月的时间找到瑞丽尸体上的DNA残留并交给一家私人实验室。法院的一份文件中写到：“在遇害者阴道和嘴部胶带上用棉签收集到的DNA检测结果显示，与凯文的DNA百分之百不吻合。”福克斯在第二天被释放。


策尔纳相信她已经收集到足够的证据来重启案件的审判，但是她还在强化这些证据，因为不会有第二次机会。

在案件调查重启之后，调查员终于开始检查另一项证物，是在距离瑞丽尸体被发现地点100英尺处的一双白色运动鞋。鞋内侧写着“艾迪”。斯科特•韦恩•艾迪住在一英里之外，正处于盗窃犯罪的保释期。探员们曾经把这双鞋当作证物收集，但从未发现内侧的字有任何意义。艾迪最终供认了杀害瑞丽•福克斯的罪行。

福克斯后来控告威明顿县和强迫他招认的警员，策尔纳代表他提起诉讼。她在2007年准备庭审期间，来到河上的一座桥上，把一只与瑞丽体重相当的羊羔丢入河中。当她把装有羊羔的袋子在桥下放到水中——福克斯在被逼迫时如此招认，袋子被河中的杂物缠绕住了。但是当她把羊羔从桥上丢入水中，它漂到了瑞丽尸体被发现的地点。策尔纳还在陪审员面前重现了审讯的场景，她让福克斯扮演自己，找来几位演员扮演警员。

在法庭上面对策尔纳的辩护律师是罗伯特•史密斯，他回忆起策尔纳在庭审前做了如何缜密的准备。“我不知道她是否会承认这是她一手策划的，但是当我让凯文•福克斯站到证人席上，用他以前的证词与他对证时，我说：‘福克斯先生，你是否做出了这些供述？’他说：‘呃，鲍勃，你知道，我只是一个画家，不是律师。’我在想，混蛋，她竟然让他直呼我的名字，把自己装扮成一个乡巴佬。我知道他们肯定做过预演，他们有过专门的讨论，模拟庭审现场……想到这里，天啊，她不是律师，简直是个导演。”

经过6个星期听取策尔纳详细展示警员的行为之后，陪审团给予福克斯和他的妻子155万美元的赔偿。

犯罪者与栽赃者

策尔纳的职业发展代表了法律技术、思想，尤其是DNA技术的进步过程，也包括接受错误判决以及频繁推翻错误判决的事实。第一次以DNA为证据推翻原判决的案件出现在1989年，新技术为芝加哥高中辍学生加里•多特森洗清了他从未犯下的强奸罪。策尔纳在一年之后开办了自己的律师事务所。米兰说：“DNA技术出现之前，我们就好像是在黑暗中摸索，我们不知道自己不知道什么。DNA就像是一盏明灯，照亮了我们曾经犯下的所有错误。”他说，当他成为一个年轻的检察长时，他和同事们都不相信会有错误判决。“最早利用这项技术，让她成为一个非常成功、富有的律师。”

如果策尔纳想让艾弗里重获自由，她需要法医专业知识。这起案件已经终审判决，艾弗里用光了所有上诉的机会。只有新证据的出现——就像策尔纳在以前案件中所发掘出的新证据——才能让案件重启。策尔纳说：“我们需要的新证据必须是以前没有出现过的，而且可以让陪审团相信艾弗里是无罪的。这是最低标准，但这个标准似乎无法达到，我们必须凭借新的技术。只要坚信某人是无辜的，你一定可以越过这个障碍。”


2007年2月2日，威斯康星州梅尼托瓦克县，艾弗里被从监狱押送往梅尼托瓦克县法庭出席听证会。

策尔纳在发掘有关哈尔巴克谋杀案及后续调查的所有细节，她与专家沟通，着手进行新的法医检测。她已经发现了一些线索，说地方警员应当追踪这些线索，而不是仅仅关注艾弗里，包括哈尔巴克遇害两天前的两通电话，与她通话的男人最近因性犯罪被捕。她还说她会以律师无能为理由推翻原判决，她认为律师迪恩•斯特朗和杰罗姆•普丁搞砸了艾弗里的辩护，因为他们没有提出哈尔巴克的手机通话记录显示她离开艾弗里家中的时候依然活着。“很难理解辩护律师为什么没有抓住这一点，”策尔纳说，“这足够形成合理怀疑。”

艾弗里对她表示出完全的信任。他在2月19日寄给《新闻周刊》的一张便签中写到：“我第一次在电视上看到策尔纳是在另一个案件中，我告诉我的朋友仙蒂去看电视。仙蒂说：‘她肯定能把你救出来。’于是我开始给她写信。自从她在1月8日正式接手我的案件以来，她发现的线索比我以前所有的律师发现的数量都多。我完全相信她能洗脱我的罪名。史蒂夫•艾弗里。”


策尔纳在2月份到威斯康星州监狱探望艾弗里时，他交给她一张便签，上面写到：“我完全相信她能洗脱我的罪名。”

为艾弗里的案件上诉所面临的风险大于策尔纳以前经手的所有案件。在纪录片《制造杀人犯》发布之后，威斯康星州的调查和判决在全世界引起了热论，所有人都认为有腐败的警官和检方。但坚信艾弗里有罪的不仅仅是梅尼托瓦克和卡柳梅特执法机构，ABC新闻法律分析师丹•亚伯拉姆斯在一篇评论员文章《艾弗里绝对有罪，达西无罪》中，详细列举了对艾弗里不利的证据，包括：

－ 哈尔巴克当时在艾弗里的房产范围内给一辆褐色面包车拍照；
－ 他被确定是最后一个见到哈尔巴克的人；
－ 她被烧毁的残迹在他的房产范围内被发现；
－ 她的车钥匙在他家中被找到；
－ 他的车库中找到了带有她的DNA的子弹


2007年2月19日，威斯康星州奇尔顿卡柳梅特法院庭审现场，艾弗里谋杀案审理的第六天，卡柳梅特县警署比尔•泰森手持一张作为证物的告示牌。25岁的哈尔巴克到艾弗里家中的汽车救援厂去拍摄一张待出售的汽车照片。

策尔纳并未因此而退缩，他相信所有不利于艾弗里的证据都是栽赃。当被问到她是否打算申请再次审理案件时，她说：“不，这不是我的风格。我告诉艾弗里：‘我是个短跑运动员，跑不了马拉松。’”她的目标是撤销判决，让艾弗里出狱。

策尔纳还充分利用推特开展她的工作，她在推特上公布艾弗里遭陷害的证据，贴出艾弗里手写的便签，还嘲弄那些调查案件、判决艾弗里有罪的警察和检方。策尔纳在2月1日发布推文，说：“犯罪者与栽赃者的一个共同点是他们都会在犯罪现场留下痕迹，而科学会记录下一切。#MakingAMurderer”她暗示有人制造证据，并且留下了痕迹。不到一个星期之后，她贴出了艾弗里手写的一张便条：“我家庭中的所有人都没有参与特蕾莎•哈尔巴克的谋杀案。案件的凶手显而易见，但是梅尼托瓦克警方选择无视，而是栽赃于我。就像我第一次被诬陷那样。”



她甚至买来一辆丰田RAV4越野车，贴出她站在车旁边的一张巨幅照片，因为哈尔巴克驾驶的是同样一辆车。购买一台车看起来像是刻意为之的表演手法，但是策尔纳的哥哥托马斯说，这仅仅是一个例子，证明她是如何一丝不苟地准备自己的案件。她说妹妹的成功来源于她把有条不紊的准备工作——当然民事诉讼律师都会这么做——与法庭上面对陪审团时卓越的技巧有效地结合起来，这才是成功的刑事律师的特质。“如果她要质询一位枪械专家，她的知识储备肯定要高于对方，”托马斯说，“在案件结束之后，她肯定能把RAV4拆解成零件，再组装起来。”


策尔纳和她购买的汽车。这辆车与艾弗里被判决杀害的女人驾驶的汽车一样，说明了她的表演欲和精心的准备程度。

参与案件的警方和检方不接受策尔纳关于艾弗里被陷害的说法。梅尼托瓦克县警员罗伯特•赫尔曼说：“根本不是这么回事，我不知道她怎么得出这样的结论，或许她仅仅是以此来炒作这个事件。”卡柳梅特县中尉警官马克•维格特拒绝对策尔纳的具体辩词发表评论，他说：“我认为这是一个完美的审判。如果不是因为1985年的事，这根本算不上一件大新闻。我们在调查中奉行诚实的原则，判决他有罪的是那些和他生活在一起的陪审员。”

策尔纳与《新闻周刊》分享了她开始阶段工作的成果，包括哈尔巴克被害前一个星期接到的神秘电话、调查中少之又少的DNA检测结果，以及从哈尔巴克手机给一个男人拨出的两通电话，而这个男人在12月因性侵犯行为被捕。策尔纳说：“我们拿到了很多公众无法看到的资料，包括所有的警方报告。我们可以明确判断他们做了什么、没做什么，我可以告诉你，他们没做的事情很多很多。”

策尔纳说她发现的最重要的证据是，手机通话记录显示哈尔巴克在被害之前离开了艾弗里的住所，斯特朗和普丁在审判中没有提起这件事。证词说艾弗里在他的车库中枪击哈尔巴克，然后在汽车救援厂中焚毁了她的尸体。“所以发现足以推翻指控……记录她的行动路线的电话记录，是多么令人震惊的事啊。她按来时的原路离开，在最后一次通话结束时，离案发现场有12英里。一切都不对了。”策尔纳还告诉《新闻周刊》，辩护律师明显没有意识到夏令时在2005年10月30日结束，但并非所有的手机都自动调整时间。也就是说，两名独立证人看到哈尔巴克离开艾弗里住所的时间可能相差了一个小时。


与哈尔巴克案件有关的证物照片，其中有一辆哈尔巴克的蓝色汽车。

艾弗里的前辩护律师斯特朗在电子邮件中说，策尔纳是“一个能力出众、咄咄逼人的律师”，还说“她对于我在审判过程中工作的批评，是她的本职工作。”他拒绝发表进一步评论。另一位律师普丁简单地说：“我依然希望对史蒂夫•艾弗里重新进行一次审判。”

正如斯特朗和普丁在审判中提出的观点，策尔纳说，调查人员忽略了很多极为重要的证据，那些证据都指向其他嫌疑人。例如，在她被害前两天，午夜前15分钟，哈尔巴克向一个男人的电话号码拨出了两通电话，而这个男人刚刚在亚利桑那州被控性侵犯。策尔纳说：“一个受过良好训练的调查员应该熟知调查的方向。他们应该把那个男人找来谈一谈，把她生前接触过的所有人都找来谈一谈。她就像一个被盯上的猎物，那个男人就是最可能的捕猎者。”

根据卡柳梅特县警署的报告，哈尔巴克的一位同事托马斯•皮尔斯说，哈尔巴克有很多她不愿意接听的电话。这些电话出现在夏季初到盛夏的时候，后来有一段时间停止了，在她被害前三个星期左右电话又来了。策尔纳的观点是，针对这些神秘的电话根本没有进行调查。“你不能获得了这些信息就把它束之高阁，你做过什么调查？什么都没有，根本没有跟踪这些电话。”

策尔纳说，另外一个调查极不充分的例子是只对极为有限的人进行了DNA检测，只有12个人，包括艾弗里、达西和哈尔巴克的家人。策尔纳说在瑞恩•弗格森的案件中——一个密苏里州人，因被判谋杀一名报纸编辑罪名成立而入狱，十年后死在狱中，策尔纳后来为其洗脱罪名——警方检测了40个人的DNA。“每个被警方面谈的人都要提供DNA样本，每个人。我从未见过把嫌疑人群体如此集中在艾弗里和他的家人周围的案件。”


艾弗里的铁皮屋和一只铁桶在警方调查哈尔巴克的案件时被围起来。哈尔巴克本打算拍摄艾弗里妹妹的一辆待出售的面包车，但在当天失踪。她被烧焦的遗骨在附近被发现，导致艾弗里被捕。

相信艾弗里遭到陷害的人说，艾弗里的血液样本在1985年被保存在梅尼托瓦克县警察办公室中，警方从保存血液的小瓶中取来血液样本，涂抹在哈尔巴克的RAV4中。但是小瓶中保存的血液样本中应当含有乙二胺四乙酸，目的是防止血液腐坏，一位在艾弗里庭审时作证的FBI探员说，他的检测结果显示没有乙二胺四乙酸。艾弗里的一位辩护律师说，FBI的检测相当匆忙，对血液的独立第三方检测结果如果显示出乙二胺四乙酸存在的迹象，必然会重新审理这个案件。策尔纳说，她认真检查人们发给她的数百条线索，从科学家到普通平民，都在《制造杀人犯》中发现了诸多疑点——典型的“草根案件调查”。

策尔纳把她的策略比作小时候在俄克拉荷马州读到的武术书籍中的指引。“如果你知道以其人之道还治其人之身的道理，我现在基本上就是在这么做。”她说，梅尼托瓦克警方栽赃陷害艾弗里，她希望能找到这些人留下的线索：“他们利用科学证据给艾弗里定罪，我也要用同样的手段证明他们栽赃陷害。”

一些与策尔纳交过手的律师提醒威斯康星州检方，不要低估这个女人，不要糊弄她，她对于案件的了解程度你们无法想想。策尔纳代表凯文•福克斯起诉威明顿县时，对方的代理律师是罗伯特•史密斯，他说：“她实在是聪明，而且极为专业。在法庭上，52张牌连同大小鬼都在她的手上。”

2月份一个凉爽多风的星期五，策尔纳自己驾车3个小时来到沃潘惩教所，这是1851年一批罪犯修建起来的建筑物。在探望过艾弗里驾车回程的路上，策尔纳发布了一条新推文：“第五次探访艾弗里，收集到新的检测样本。该来的一定会来——我们笑了。”

－ 哈尔巴克当时在艾弗里的房产范围内给一辆褐色面包车拍照；
－ 他被确定是最后一个见到哈尔巴克的人；
－ 她被烧毁的残迹在他的房产范围内被发现；
－ 她的车钥匙在他家中被找到；
－ 他的车库中找到了带有她的DNA的子弹。




原文：

Steven Avery, left, sits in court during his trial at the Calumet County Courthouse in Chilton, Wisconsin on February 16, 2007. At right is Avery's attorney Jerome Buting. Avery was convicted for murder in 2005—a case which drew international attention as the subject of the documentary "Making a Murderer," which casts doubts on his guilt.

When Kathleen Zellner was little she had a friend across the street who kept a pet duck. Toothbrush was a peaceful soul who liked to eat wasps and paddle around a backyard kiddie pool in their neighborhood in small-town Bartlesville, Oklahoma, in the late 1950s. Zellner was definitely not a peaceful soul—she ordered martial arts guides out of comic books, then hid them behind the covers off her doll books so she could study judo and jujitsu moves without her mother noticing. Zellner regularly put those punches and kicks to practical use. One day, a mean teenage boy grabbed Toothbrush and threw him to hunting dogs penned in a neighbor’s yard. Zellner, about 8 at the time, was furious. “Kathleen was so mad she went over and beat him up. She was fierce,” says her brother, John Hall Thomas, a defense attorney in New Orleans, who remembers the boy’s nose bleeding as an adult pulled his sister off the boy. “Nobody messed with Kathleen after that, I’m telling you.”

Zellner says that same feeling of righteous protection still motivates her: “What drives me is the abuse of power—the bullying and the victim. I have such a strong reaction when I see people who can’t defend themselves.”

The wiry girl who meted out street justice over a dead duck grew up to become a defense attorney who has secured the exoneration of 17 men and won almost $90 million from wrongful conviction and medical malpractice lawsuits. Zellner has also dropped a headless lamb into a creek to investigate the rape and murder of a child, coaxed 21 confessions from a serial killer and seen it reported that Jessica Biel would play her in a movie. An attorney said facing her at trial was “worse than my divorce.”

The bullies Zellner will face next, she says, are the Wisconsin police and prosecutors who locked up Steve Avery, who became a national phenomenon with the December release of the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer. The doc, which led a lot of viewers to believe Avery was framed, opens with his wrongful conviction and then 18 years in prison for a 1985 rape in Manitowoc County; it then digs deep into his arrest and conviction for the 2005 murder in the same county of Teresa Halbach, a photographer killed after driving to the Avery family’s auto salvage yard on Halloween to take a picture of a van for Auto Trader magazine. Avery’s low-IQ nephew Brendan Dassey, 16 at the time, confessed he helped his uncle rape and kill Halbach in what is either the reluctant admission of a horrific crime or an example of persistent detectives leading and prodding a dimwitted teen to agree with the story they want. Dassey was found guilty in a separate trial. Zellner watched the series in her 3,000-square-foot home theater, where she does jury prep and screens her favorite Coen brothers movies. “When I watched the Avery case, I felt that the attitude toward him by the prosecutors and the state was that he was disposable. It was almost like a class thing. [His family] didn’t matter, they had no power,” Zellner says. “The longer I watched it, the more angry I got.”

Zellner at 6 years old in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. She studied martial arts guides she ordered from comic books, hiding them behind the covers of doll books so her mother wouldn't notice.

Asked whether she and her team have identified suspects in the case, Zellner says yes—and that they are all men who knew Halbach. “We have a couple. I’d say there’s one, leading the pack by a lot. But I don’t want to scare him off, I don’t want him to run,” she says, explaining why she won’t say more. In that same conversation, Zellner said both law enforcement and defense attorneys failed to investigate Halbach’s life, noting that the victim was a very nice person just starting her career. When told that sometimes people who are very nice can still be murder victims, Zellner agrees, adding, “And women who have bad judgment about men are murdered.”

Tattooed on His Arm: ‘Die Free’

“Don’t hire me if you’re guilty, because I will find out,” Zellner tells an inmate before taking his case. Zellner vowed she would only defend innocent people as a result of the first case she handled after starting her own law firm, which began when a janitor found a human leg inside a Hefty garbage bag tossed into a Chicago dumpster. Inside the dumpster were another seven garbage bags that held the rest of the dismembered body of Danny Bridges, a 15-year-old prostitute. Larry Eyler, a house painter suspected in over 20 murders across the Midwest, was convicted in 1986 of killing the boy and sent to death row. An anti-death-penalty organization brought the case to Zellner, who tried and failed to broker a deal that would take Eyler off death row in exchange for him admitting to all his killings in Illinois and Indiana. After Zellner built a relationship with Eyler, trying to get him off death row and even convincing him to get an HIV test, Eyler admitted his many murders to her in “excruciating detail” but said she had to keep them secret as long as he lived. When he died of AIDS in 1994, Zellner held a press conference to announce Eyler’s confessions to 21 murders. “It's been really hard on me knowing all this stuff,” Zellner told the Chicago Tribune. “I had these victims’ families pleading with me during his life to tell them what happened.” That stress, coupled with Eyler’s lack of remorse and his contempt for the mostly gay men and boys he tortured, made Zellner promise herself she would never knowingly represent another guilty man. “After looking into the face of evil and being exposed to that for those two to three years, I never wanted to be in a position where I could be used by someone like that.”

After Eyler, Zellner wasn’t eager to take another wrongful conviction case, but the anti-death-penalty group brought her the case of Joseph Burrows and said it believed he was actually innocent of any crime. When Zellner reviewed the case—and found a new alibi, a recanting witness and a shady prosecutor—she agreed. Burrows had been sentenced to death in 1989 for a murder in rural Illinois. A cocaine dealer named Gayle Potter testified she saw Burrows shoot a retired farmer in the head because the 88-year-old man refused to write her a $3,000 check so she could pay her drug supplier. Zellner visited Potter in prison 50 times over more than a year, eventually gaining her trust. Zellner described to Potter how the crime scene, with the ricocheting bullets and the old man’s broken fingernails, suggested a struggle that a big man like Burrows wouldn’t have had against a frail old man. “I told her I knew it was a woman. I told her that was how I knew she had done it,” Zellner says, explaining that Potter smiled and later confessed to Zellner that she alone killed the old man. Convincing an inmate to reveal information that could increase her sentence is a complicated procedure that requires time and trust. “I was empathetic. I understood both of them,” Zellner says. She knew Eyler had been horribly abused and sexually assaulted as a boy, and she understood what led him to his violent rages. “With Gayle Potter, I understood her desperation. I wasn’t condemning.”

Zellner combs over evidence with an intern at her law office in Downers Grove, Illinois, March 10. She keeps photos and other evidence related to the case on the floor of her office.

Zellner says Potter didn’t care about Burrows, but she did care about his three children being left without a father. Armed with Potter’s sworn deposition that she alone killed the farmer, Zellner got Burrows released from prison in 1994. He walked out of court beside Zellner, “Die Free” tattooed on his arm.

Her next high-profile case involved four men arrested as teenagers who’d been imprisoned for almost 15 years at that point for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Lori Roscetti, a Chicago medical student. Zellner wanted their DNA tested against samples left on the student—an expensive undertaking in 2001. She told Cook County prosecutors she’d pay half. They could have ignored her—the murder had been front-page news, and police said two of the teens had confessed. “She goes, I want to work it with you,” said Robert Milan, then a Cook County prosecutor. “To me, it was a no-brainer. I said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

A fresh examination of Roscetti’s clothes revealed semen stains that had never been tested, so Zellner and Milan sent samples to a forensics lab in Canada. “They say, ‘It’s two males,’” Milan recalls. “‘None of them are the four young men you convicted.’” The wrongfully convicted men walked out of prison in 2001, smiling and holding hands with Zellner.

“Talk about putting money where your mouth is,” says Zellner, who spent almost $60,000 on experts in that case. “I was so sure they were innocent.” With the investigation reopened, police got a tip about the two men who killed Roscetti. The DNA evidence Zellner and Milan ordered from Canada confirmed that those were the two men who forced the medical student into their car at knifepoint in 1986 and then smashed her head with a concrete block. And the effects of those DNA results rippled out beyond that murder. Milan says the Roscetti exonerations had a “huge impact” on the Cook County prosecutor’s office, including the creation of a DNA review unit, twice yearly training for all prosecutors on false confessions and wrongful convictions, and an “open-door policy” that encouraged prosecutors to flag questionable cases.

Zellner puts up her own money and will work all night for men she believes were wrongly convicted, but when one turned on her she didn’t hesitate to put him back behind bars. Marcellius Bradford, one of the four men convicted and then exonerated of killing Roscetti, secretly recorded Zellner telling him he would be stupid to drop her and hire a new lawyer to handle his multimillion-dollar civil case over his wrongful conviction. Bradford then tried to use the tape to blackmail her for $3,000. Zellner didn’t play. She called prosecutors and then wore a hidden microphone to a meeting with Bradford in which she handed over the money, leading to his arrest. “It’s appalling to have gotten them out of prison and then have [Bradford] try to extort money out of me,” Zellner told the Chicago Tribune. “I don't care if they switch attorneys. But I am not going to put up with someone trying to blackmail me.”

Boxes of files relating to the murder case of Steven Avery, stacked in the law offices of Zellner. Under the law, the only way to reopen Avery's case is if new evidence is brought to light.

A Singularly Cruel Interrogation

The headless lamb hit the creek with a splash. Zellner watched from the bridge as the dead animal floated downstream to see where it would come ashore—another piece of the puzzle in her drive to convince a jury that Kevin Fox had been railroaded for the murder of his young daughter.

Riley Fox, a 3-year-old who loved to jump into her father’s arms or sit on his shoulders, disappeared after Fox put her to bed in the family’s Wilmington, Illinois, home in 2004. Searchers found her body the next afternoon, floating in a creek in a nearby forest preserve. She was wearing a pink flamingo T-shirt and had been tied up with duct tape and sexually assaulted. Almost five months later, local detectives summoned her father to the station and began a singularly cruel interrogation.

First, detectives lied to Fox, telling him he had failed a polygraph test about his daughter’s murder. When his wife told Fox she believed his claims of innocence, detective Edward Hayes screamed in her face, “Your husband’s a fucking liar, and he’s a fucking murderer. He never loved you or your fucking daughter, and he killed her, and you need to learn to fucking get over it.” Hayes and other detectives then got Fox alone and told him they knew prison inmates and would make sure they raped him once he was locked up. They yelled that his dead daughter was on her knees begging him to admit what he did and give her closure. They showed him photos of Riley’s body—revealing to him for the first time that she had been bound with duct tape. Traumatized, Fox finally gave a short confession that Riley died after he accidentally hit her with the bathroom door and she then fell and hit her head on the bathtub.

Zellner’s law office was across the hall from that of Fox’s brother Chad, who called her after Fox “confessed.” She immediately began her investigation and learned that Hayes had called the FBI after arresting Fox and told them not to test the DNA evidence in the case. It took Zellner eight months to get the DNA found on Riley’s body to a private lab. “The results showed with 100 percent certainty that Kevin was not the donor of the DNA found on a vaginal swab and on the duct tape on Riley’s mouth,” court papers state. Fox was released the next day.

Zellner believes she may have the evidence she needs to justify a new trial, but says she is working on strengthening her case as such proceedings do not come with a second chance.

With the case reopened, investigators finally got around to examining a pair of white athletic shoes pulled from the creek 100 feet from where Riley was found. Written inside was “Eby.” Scott Wayne Eby lived about a mile away and was out on parole for burglary. Detectives had bagged the shoes in evidence but never looked into whether the name written inside meant anything. Eby eventually confessed to Riley Fox’s murder.

Zellner continued to represent Fox as he filed a lawsuit against Will County and the detectives who had coerced his confession. Her preparation for that 2007 trial is what put her on a bridge with her investigator and a dead lamb that weighed about the same as Riley. When the bag was put in the water at the base of the bridge, where Fox had said he placed it in his coerced confession, it got hung up in debris. But when it was thrown from the bridge, it floated to the spot where Riley’s body was found. Zellner also produced a staged re-enactment of the Fox interrogation for the jury, with Fox playing himself and the detectives played by actors.

Robert Smith, the defense lawyer facing her in that case, recalls the moment he realized the depth of Zellner’s preparation. “I don’t know if she’d ever admit she did this, but I had Kevin Fox on the witness stand, and I’m confronting him with his statements from the transcript. I say to him, ‘Mr. Fox, did you make this statement?’ and he says, ‘Y’know, Bob, I’m just a painter, not a lawyer.’ I thought to myself, Son of a gun, she told him to call me by my first name, like he’s a country bumpkin. And I thought to myself, This has been rehearsed; they’ve done focus groups and mock trials.… When I heard that I thought, Oh man, she’s now the director, not just the lawyer.”

After six weeks listening to Zellner shred the conduct of the detectives, the jury awarded Fox and his wife $15.5 million.

Perps & Planters

Zellner’s career has mirrored progress in law-enforcement technology and thinking, particularly in terms of DNA technology, the acceptance of false confessions and the advent of the regular tossing of wrongful convictions. The first DNA exoneration happened in 1989 when the new technology cleared Chicago high school dropout Gary Dotson of a rape that never happened. Zellner opened her law firm a year later. “Pre-DNA was like working with the lights off. We didn’t know what we didn’t know. DNA was like turning the lights on and finding out all the mistakes that were made,” Milan says. He adds that when he came up as a young prosecutor neither he nor his colleagues believed in false confessions. “The fact that she was on this very early made her a very successful lawyer, and a very wealthy one.”

Zellner will need that forensic expertise if she’s going to free Avery. The case has been decided. Avery’s appeals are exhausted. Only the discovery of new evidence—of the type Zellner has dug up for men she’s represented before—will reopen the case. “We have to have new evidence that could not have been obtained before that would result in no juror believing that Steven Avery committed the crime,” Zellner says. “So that’s the standard—it’s kind of a high hurdle to jump, but we can jump it with the new technology. With someone who’s innocent, you can definitely jump that hurdle.”

Avery is escorted from jail to the Manitowoc County Courthouse for a hearing in Manitowoc, Wisconsin on Feb. 2, 2007.

Zellner is now digging into every aspect of the Halbach murder and the investigation that followed. She is talking with experts and planning new forensic tests. She has already identified leads she says local detectives should have pursued instead of focusing solely on Avery, including two phone calls Halbach made two days before she was killed to a man recently arrested for sex crimes. She also says she’ll argue Avery’s conviction should be overturned because of ineffective assistance of counsel, arguing that lawyers Dean Strang and Jerry Buting bungled Avery’s defense by not arguing that Halbach’s cellphone records show she left Avery’s property alive. “It’s really hard to figure out how in the world did the defense not seize on this,” Zellner says. “It would have created reasonable doubt.”

Avery certainly believes in her. In a note he wrote in prison February 19 to Newsweek in mid-February, he said, “I first saw Ms. Zellner on TV in another case. I told Sandy, my friend, to watch it. Sandy said, ‘She will be the one to get you out.’…So I started writing [her.] Since she has taken my case on January 8th she has figured out more than all of my other attorneys together. I totally trust that she is going to get me out. [Signed,] Steven Avery.”

Avery wrote a note about Zellner and gave it to her when she visited him in a Wisconsin prison in February. "I totally trust that she is going to get me out," he wrote.

Taking on the Avery appeal represents higher stakes than any case in Zellner’s past. With the release of Making a Murderer, his investigation and conviction in Wisconsin were talked about across the world as a symbol of crooked cops and prosecutors. But it’s not just Manitowoc and Calumet County law enforcement that believes Avery is a killer. In an editorial titled “Avery Absolutely Guilty but Dassey Innocent,” ABC News legal analyst Dan Abrams detailed the evidence against Avery, including:

Halbach was at the Avery property to take photos of a maroon van;
he was the last confirmed person to see her alive;
her charred remains were found on his property;
her car key found in his home;
a bullet with her DNA was found in his garage.

Calumet County Sheriff's Department Bill Tyson holds up a sign used as evidence during day six of Avery's murder trial at the Calumet County Courthouse in Chilton, Wisconsin on February 19, 2007. Halbach, 25, had went to the family's rural salvage lot to photograph a minivan they had for sale.

This doesn’t deter Zellner, who believes the evidence against Avery was planted. Asked whether she would seek a new trial, she says, “No, don’t want to do that. Not my style. I told [Avery], ‘I’m a sprinter. I’m not a long-distance runner.’” Her goal always is to vacate the conviction and have her client walk.

Zellner’s strategy in the Avery case also involves aggressive Twitter posts: She tweets what she sees as evidence Avery was framed, posts handwritten notes from him and taunts the police and prosecutors who investigated and convicted him. “One thing perps & planters have in common is leaving their signatures at the crime scene. Science always transcribes. #MakingAMurderer,” Zellner tweeted February 1, implying that someone planted the evidence and left behind evidence that “transcribes” their scheme. Less than a week later, she posted a photograph of a note Avery wrote in looping cursive: “No one in my family including me was involved in the murder of Theresa [sic] Halbach. It is obvious who killed Theresa [sic] but the Manitowoc cops chose not to investigate him so they could frame me. Just like the first time.”

She even tweeted a grainy photograph of her posing next to the Toyota Rav4 she purchased because it’s the same car Halbach drove. Buying the Rav4 might look like canny showmanship, but Thomas, Zellner’s brother, says it’s an example of how she meticulously prepares her cases. He says part of his sister’s success comes from the way she combines methodical preparation—common among well-paid civil attorneys—with superior skills in the courtroom and before a jury—a trademark of busy criminal attorneys. “If she’s cross-examining a firearms expert, she’ll know more about the gun than he does,” her brother Thomas says. “By the time she’s finished, she’ll be able to tear the [Rav4] apart and put it back together.”

Zellner with the car she bought because it is identical to the one driven by the woman Avery was convicted of murdering, an example of both her showmanship and meticulous preparation.

Police and prosecutors in the case dismiss Zellner’s claim that Avery was framed. “It just didn’t happen. I don’t know where she gets that from. I think she might just be using this tactic just to keep the story alive,” says Manitowoc County Sheriff Robert Hermann. “I believe this is a very good case. If it wasn’t for the 1985 case, it wouldn’t even be a big story.” Calumet County Lieutenant Mark Wiegert declined to speak on specific Zellner allegations but said, “We stand by the integrity of the investigation. He was judged by a jury of his peers and found guilty.”

Zellner shared the focus of her early work with Newsweek, including mysterious phone calls made to Halbach’s cellphone in the weeks before her murder, the unusually limited DNA testing done in the investigation and the two phone calls made from Halbach’s phone to a man arrested in December on sex abuse charges. “We’ve got access to documents the public doesn’t have. We’ve got all the police reports, we can see exactly what they did and did not do,” Zellner says. “And it’s a lot more about what they did not do.”

Zellner says the biggest piece of evidence she’s uncovered is the cellphone records that show Halbach left Avery’s property before she was killed—which Strang and Buting never brought up at trial. The state says Avery shot Halbach in his garage and then burned her body in the Avery family’s salvage yard. “So it’s absolutely shocking to see cellphone records that were part of the discovery that were turned over to the defense...document her route leaving the property. She goes back the same way she came, she’s 12 miles from the property on the last ping,” Zellner says. “They screwed it up.” Zellner also tells Newsweek that the defense team apparently didn’t realize that Daylight Savings Time ended on October 30, 2005—and that not all cellphones reset automatically—which meant that their timeline for the two independent witnesses who saw Halbach leave the Avery property was off by an hour.

Photos of evidence related to the murder of Halbach, including a blue car which belonged to Halbach.

In emails, Strang, Avery’s former defense lawyer, called Zellner “a competent, aggressive lawyer” and said, “That she is criticizing some aspects of the work I did at trial means that she is doing her job.” He declined to comment further. His co-counsel, Buting, declined to comment except to say, “I continue to hope that Steven Avery gets a new trial.”

Just as Strang and Buting claimed at trial, Zellner says there are many glaring examples of investigators failing to look past Avery at other suspects. For example, two days before her murder, about 15 minutes before midnight, Halbach made two calls to a phone number that belonged to a man recently charged with sex crimes in Arizona, records show. “A well-trained investigator, they’d be all over that. And they would have gone and talked to [that man], and they would have interviewed these other people that she’s talking to right before her death,” Zellner says. “She’s like prey being stalked, and that’s [the most likely type of] person who would have been after her.”

According to the Calumet County Sheriff's Department report on its interview of Thomas Pearce, a photographer who shared his studio with Halbach, Halbach was getting numerous phone calls she wouldn’t answer. The calls began in early summer to midsummer, there was a break, and then the calls started up again about three weeks before she was murdered. Zellner’s review of the initial investigation shows there was no probe of these mysterious phone calls. “You don’t just get information like that and file it,” she says. “What investigation was done? None. There was no effort to trace those calls.”

Another example of investigators doing an incomplete job, Zellner says, is the small number of DNA tests they did—just 12, and only on members of the Avery, Dassey and Halbach families. Zellner says that in the case of Ryan Ferguson—a Missouri man who did 10 years in prison after his conviction for killing a newspaper editor, before she cleared his name—the police did DNA tests on about 40 people. “Everybody they interviewed had to give their DNA. Everyone,” Zellner says. “I’ve never seen this before in a case where they kept it so close to Avery, just his family.”

Avery's trailer and a barrel nearby is taped off during the police investigation into Halbach's murder. Halbach was scheduled to photograph Avery's sister's minivan for a sale ad when she went missing the same day. Her charred remains were found on the property, leading to Avery's arrest.

People who believe Avery was framed say police took a sample of his blood from the vial held at the Manitowoc court clerk’s office from his 1985 case and planted it in Halbach’s Rav4. But any blood from that vial would have included a blood preservative called EDTA, and a FBI agent who testified at Avery’s trial said his test showed no EDTA. One of Avery’s trial defense attorneys said this year that the FBI test was rushed and that an independent test of the blood that revealed EDTA could force a retrial. Zellner also says she is paying close attention to the hundreds of tips sent to her office by everyone from scientists to people who took screen shots from Making a Murderer— effectively “crowdsourcing” the investigation.

Zellner likens her strategy to what she learned as a child reading those martial arts instruction books back in Oklahoma. “If you think of the concept of using your opponent’s strength against them, it’s kind of similar to a lot of the stuff I’ve done.” She says that Manitowoc police planted the evidence against Avery, and she hopes to detect that misconduct using physical clues she thinks they left behind: “They used forensic science to convict [Avery], and I’d be using it to convict them of planting the evidence.”

Some of the lawyers who’ve faced Zellner caution Wisconsin prosecutors not to underestimate her, don’t bluff her and to anticipate that she’ll have a deep knowledge of the case. “She’s smart as the dickens and skilled, skilled, skilled,” says Robert Smith, the attorney who defended Will County when Zellner sued in the Kevin Fox case. “She makes use of all 52 cards and both jokers if you’re in the courtroom with her.”

On a cool and windy Friday in February, Zellner drove herself almost three hours to Waupun Correctional Institution, built in 1851 using convict labor. After seeing Avery and climbing back into her car for the drive home, Zellner pulled up Twitter to tap out a new message. “Fifth trip to Steven Avery. Collected samples for new tests. The inevitable is coming—he was smiling so were we.”

Halbach was at the Avery property to take photos of a maroon van;
he was the last confirmed person to see her alive;
her charred remains were found on his property;
her car key found in his home;
a bullet with her DNA was found in his garage.