Murder of Teresa Halbach

Teresa Halbach, a freelance photographer, disappeared on October 31, 2005. Her final scheduled appointment that day was to photograph a minivan at the property of Steven Avery's Auto Salvage near Mishicot, Wisconsin, where Avery lived. Investigators later located Halbach's vehicle partially concealed within the salvage yard; bloodstains recovered from its interior were reported to match Avery's DNA. Charred bone fragments were subsequently identified in a burn pit near Avery's residence.

Steven Avery was arrested and charged on November 11, 2005, with Halbach's murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse; he had already faced a weapons charge as a convicted felon. Avery maintained that the murder charge was a frameup connected to his pending $36 million civil lawsuit against Manitowoc County over his earlier wrongful conviction. Because of that suit, Manitowoc County ceded formal control of the murder investigation to the neighboring Calumet County Sheriff's Department, though Manitowoc deputies participated in searches of Avery's property under Calumet supervision. A Manitowoc deputy found the key to Halbach's vehicle inside Avery's bedroom. Avery's attorneys raised concerns about a conflict of interest and possible evidence tampering, including questions about a vial of Avery's blood from a prior case that appeared to have been tampered with; prosecutors countered with FBI testimony that blood found in Halbach's car tested negative for a preservative chemical (EDTA) that would indicate the blood came from a stored vial rather than a fresh wound.

In March 2006, Avery's nephew Brendan Dassey was charged as an accessory after confessing under interrogation to helping Avery kill Halbach and dispose of her body; Dassey later said the confession was coerced and did not testify to involvement at Avery's trial, though he testified at his own separate trial without alleging coercion. Dassey was convicted of murder, rape, and mutilation of a corpse in that separate proceeding.

In January 2007, kidnapping and sexual assault charges against Avery were dropped ahead of trial. Avery's trial took place in Calumet County in March 2007, prosecuted by District Attorney Ken Kratz with Judge Patrick Willis presiding. On March 18, 2007, Avery was found guilty of first-degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm, and acquitted of the corpse-mutilation charge. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on the murder count, plus a concurrent five-year term on the weapons charge.

Avery's case, along with Dassey's, became the subject of the 2015 Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer, which examined allegations of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and witness coercion. Subsequent appeals by both men have proceeded through Wisconsin and federal courts; as of the most recent reporting, Avery's murder conviction has been upheld by higher courts, and Dassey remains incarcerated after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review his case.