Arguably, there’s no series on television right now that’s hotter or more captivating than Netflix’s “Making a Murderer.”
Filmed over the course of 10 years, the 10-part series, takes an up close look at the case of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man convicted of killing photographer Teresa Halbach after he was exonerated and released from prison for a sexual assault conviction.
Though the series has been an immediate hit for Netflix and has drawn praise from both critics and viewers alike, it has not come without some controversy.
In an interview with People magazine, former Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz accused the show’s producers of leaving out key evidence from the trial in an effort to craft a particular story, but filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi vehemently deny Kratz’s claims.
“Ken Kratz is entitled to his own opinion, but he’s not entitled to his own facts,” Ricciardi told The Wrap. “If he’d like to put together a documentary and try to discredit us in some way, he’s welcome to do that. We’re not going to be pulled into relitigating the Halbach case with him.”
Demos added, “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.”
One of the bigger pieces of evidence that Katz feels was omitted was Avery’s alleged call to AutoTrader magazine — whom Halbach worked for and had previously photographed Avery for — on the day she was killed. In their previous encounter Avery is said to have spooked Halbach to the point that she told her management at AutoTrader she would not go back because she was scared of him. In his call to AutoTrader, Avery reportedly gave his sister’s name and number in an effort to lure Halbach back.
Ricciardi maintains that including every single detail in the series would have been a very difficult feat.
“It was a nearly six-week-long trial, and it would just be impossible for us to include all of the less significant evidence,” Ricciardi said. “Without getting into trying to refute specific pieces of evidence, I would say that our role here was as documentarians. We were not advocates. We’re not part of an adversarial system. We were documenting this case as it was unfolding.”
