An unaffiliated documentary claims to have gotten a confession in the Making A Murderer case
It’s been nearly a year since Netflix went back to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, for another look at the murder of Teresa Halbach and the controversial conviction of Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey for season two of Making A Murderer. The first season was a smash-hit, introducing the case and its many suspicious twists and turns to the public consciousness while convincing a number of people that Avery—and especially Dassey—were actually innocent. The second was a bit less impactful, as most sequels are, following the various movements that had been made in the case since the first season had given it a spotlight, but both Avery and Dassey remain in prison despite the efforts to change that. Of course, the state of Wisconsin has largely maintained that the two of them are guilty, and there are plenty of people who are still convinced that Avery and Dassey did it.
Now, though, a new documentary that is unaffiliated with Making A Murder—yet has a suspiciously similar name that is clearly designed to make you think it’s affiliated—has supposedly gotten a confession in Teresa Halbach’s murder from someone who is not Steven Avery or Brendan Dassey. Speaking with Newsweek, filmmaker Shawn Rech revealed that his documentary series Convicting A Murderer (which was pitched as a “sequel” last year even though that’s not what it is) has been investigating an unnamed person currently serving time in a Wisconsin prison for an unrelated murder. Rech says that his team has found an “unfathomable amount of information and evidence” since going into production 20 months ago, and they will continue researching the case even after somehow securing this surprise confession (which came from a “notable convicted murderer” and has been passed along to the relevant authorities).
Rech’s series, which doesn’t have a platform attached yet but almost certainly won’t be going to Netflix, will reportedly include aspects of the story that “the Netflix series left out” since Rech says he “was misled” by Making A Murderer. Tonally, that (plus the idea that they got a huge break in an extremely high-profile murder case in only 20 months) makes this all seem like a weirdly desperate attempt to just replicate the success of Making A Murderer, but in a “better” way because this time they got a confession out of someone. That confession might not be all its cracked up to be, though, with Avery’s attorney Kathleen Zellner telling CBS News that the it’s “worthless unless it is corroborated.” That means this could all be about nothing, or at least nothing beyond the fact that another filmmaker is making a Steven Avery documentary with the Something A Murderer title construction.