Interesting parts of Part 2/3....

UNPLEASANT DETAILS

​The problem I have with the retrieved bullet has to do with several issues, and I’ll try to explain them without getting too graphic. I am (or at least was) a trained sniper. I have been educated about the physics of a bullet striking the head. The head will stop a bullet as well or better than any other part of the body. Why? Because the skull -- especially the side -- is a pretty stout section of bone, designed to protect the brain.

​A bullet slows rapidly when it hits thick bone, and slows almost as rapidly when it hits a fluid-like substance—say, a brain. When the bullet hits the soft tissue, most are designed (especially hollow-point bullets) to "mushroom," which increases their diameter, creates a wider wound channel, and transfers more kinetic energy into the target. The more a bullet mushrooms, the less likely it is to exit the body. This 'mushrooming' is facilitated in part by the extremely soft lead used in many bullets.
Picture
(L-R) .308 Sniper cartridge, 9mm pistol cartridge, .22LR cartridge.
"Making a Murderer," An FBI Agent's Take Episode 6, Part 2 of 3
3/10/2016

EPISODE 6:
"TESTING THE EVIDENCE"

THE MYSTERIOUS BULLET

Now we come to the mysterious bullet found in Avery’s garage. There are so many uncertainties about the bullet that I really don’t know if it puts us nearer or farther away from Avery. The devil, as always, is in the details. I simply must have more information about the slug before I can form an independent opinion. However, lack of that detailed information doesn’t keep me from some parameters by which we should judge the evidence, and may give some insight to those of you who are familiar with the ballistics and physical evidence reports that may or may not be 'out there.'

Was the bullet ‘planted’? Well, Buting and Strang very appropriately question why, during five search entries during the week of November 4, the bullet was never discovered. I think that's an excellent question. However, the failure to find the bullet is not prima facie evidence that the slug was planted. Searchers are not infallible. There are other possible reasons that the bullet would not have been found in the earlier searches, and one main possibility revolves around what searchers were looking for in the earlier entries.

INSIDE OR OUTSIDE THE SCOPE?

​I have been on searches where agents were searching for large items and therefore didn’t look in places where that large thing wouldn’t fit. For instance, if I was looking for a minivan, I might not look inside a closet. Warrants are specific for what is being sought. If my warrant was an authorization to search for a rifle, I likely wouldn’t look in a shoe box, and if I did and found illegal drugs, that part of the search might be thrown out for going "outside the scope" of the search warrant.

Therefore, based on “what were they looking for” in the earlier searches, then it’s possible for an item to go undetected. I mean, if they were looking for Teresa’s body, and the body wouldn’t fit under the compressor, why look there? (Except that under the plain sight doctrine, anything that is out 'in plain sight' is legitimately 'in-play.') The determining factor, then, would be what items were listed in the November search warrant as objects of the search. If the search listed anything as small (or that could be as small) as a bullet, then there is no logical reason the bullet wasn't found.

At a potential murder scene, you wouldn’t know what you were looking for. Frankly, you might be looking for a spot of blood the size of a pinhead. I find it difficult to understand that if they searched for eight days and collected more than 950 items, that they didn’t go through the garage with a fine-toothed comb. In fact, at the time of the March entry when the bullet was found, there appeared to be chalk outlines already on the garage floor. This indicates a search for physical evidence on the floor, not just a body. And the physical evidence for which they searched, as I said, could be the size of a pinhead. I have trouble understanding how they could miss the bullet. But I cannot say with authority that it is impossible that they did. Nothing about their procedures indicates to me that they were particularly well-versed in the subtleties and demands of crime-scene searches. Ultimately, as an investigator, I would want to know why the bullet was not found in the earlier searches, and I’d like to get a reasonable answer.

That said, regardless of how long “the bullet” had been under the compressor, I have some serious issues with the slug itself.

​I remind you all that I don't know what caliber the bullet is, at least from the documentary. That information is crucial in evaluating its importance. However, from the ruler in the photo, it appears that the bullet is likely a .22 to .25 caliber bullet. I suspect that it's a .22, because it's ubiquitous, and the .25 is usually used only in semi-automatic pistols that are rarely found in rural farm communities. Either way, both fire extremely small bullets--in fact, they are very close to the smallest projectile classified as a 'bullet.' To put it in perspective, the diameter of the .22 is only 43/1,000ths of an inch wider than the projectiles fired from kids' pellet guns.

​The discussion is going to be a little technical now, so to ensure we're all on the same page here, lets look at some terms of art. A cartridge or "round" is the entire unit most people colloquially refer to as a “bullet.” In reality, the 'bullet' is only one part of the object. The cartridge consists of a casing [2], usually made out of brass, a primer [5] in the center of the rim of the casing [4], and propellant [3], usually smokeless powder, inside the casing, all of it topped with a bullet or "slug" [1], which is pressed into the neck of the casing. So the term ‘bullet,’ in reality, only refers to the part of the ‘round’ which leaves the gun. The casing is what remains with the gun or in the area of the gun.
What was found under the compressor in Steven Avery's garage was the bullet [1], in the diagram above. Once a bullet has been fired, the empty casing will remain in, or within the immediate vicinity of the gun, and it would likely be possible to determine which casing matched the fired bullet, if the slug was found.

UNPLEASANT DETAILS

​The problem I have with the retrieved bullet has to do with several issues, and I’ll try to explain them without getting too graphic. I am (or at least was) a trained sniper. I have been educated about the physics of a bullet striking the head. The head will stop a bullet as well or better than any other part of the body. Why? Because the skull -- especially the side -- is a pretty stout section of bone, designed to protect the brain.

​A bullet slows rapidly when it hits thick bone, and slows almost as rapidly when it hits a fluid-like substance—say, a brain. When the bullet hits the soft tissue, most are designed (especially hollow-point bullets) to "mushroom," which increases their diameter, creates a wider wound channel, and transfers more kinetic energy into the target. The more a bullet mushrooms, the less likely it is to exit the body. This 'mushrooming' is facilitated in part by the extremely soft lead used in many bullets.

(L-R) .308 Sniper cartridge, 9mm pistol cartridge, .22LR cartridge.
Snipers fire high-powered rifle caliber rounds (frequently .308 caliber) weighing about 10.5 grams, which travel at approximately 2,700 feet per second (1,840 mph). These rounds, when they impact the skull, usually travel through the head fairly easily. But the bullet in the .22 “Long Rifle” or ‘LR’ cartridge (which I’m estimating may be the caliber of the bullet in the photo in Avery’s garage), weighs only about 2.5 grams (1/4 of the .308 sniper bullet) and travels at about 1,400 fps, or 975 mph (about half the speed of a .308.)

The .22LR, therefore does not, except in the most unusual circumstances, exit the skull after it is fired into the head. It lacks the mass or velocity to punch through the second wall of bone. It is my opinion that if Teresa Halbach was killed with a .22LR bullet to the head -- even at point-blank range -- the bullet never exited her skull. So why, then, would it be on Avery’s garage floor? And why, then, does it even still exist? It should have been destroyed in the fire.
For a fire to have been hot enough to destroy Teresa's body the way it did, the temperature of the fire would have been had to of been over 1000°, probably closer to 1500°. Lead, which makes up the vast majority of .22LR bullets, melts at 621°. You see what I'm getting at here? If it was a .22, the bullet stayed in the skull. If the body was burned, the bullet melted. Period.

Could she have been killed by a larger caliber bullet that actually excited the skull? Certainly. But the bullet the prosecution claims bears Halbach's DNA is a .22, which poses a real problem for me.

What, you ask, if for some odd reason the .22 exited her skull? If the bullet which killed Teresa Halbach (if indeed a bullet ended her life), exited her skull, it would do so at a relatively high rate of speed. It would not have come out of her head and fallen onto the ground a few inches from her. It would've continued until it impacted something solid and then fell or ricocheted. When bullets hit solid objects, they either fragment or carry the marks of the impact with them. Therefore, examination of this bullet is crucial. It's not just whether Teresa's DNA is on it; the actual physical characteristics of the recovered bullet might provide valuable information.

I tried to imagine a scenario where Teresa, in the garage, was killed with a .22 rifle bullet to the head, which then exited her head (highly unlikely) and resulted in the bullet remaining in the garage (in this case, under the compressor.) The problem I continued to run up against is that there is no patent or latent blood in the garage, so I cannot explain how she could have been killed in the garage. If she was not shot in that garage, the killer (or someone else) would have had to have come upon the spent bullet after the murder, kept it, and discarded it on the floor of the Avery garage. Not something Steven Avery was likely to do. Why take the time to burn her body, then drop a bullet with her DNA on it on the floor of your garage? Another thought I had was that she might have been shot somewhere outside the garage when the the garage door happened to be open. Then, against all odds, the bullet ended its flight in Avery's garage. I find those scenario far-fetched.

THE IMMACULATE RECOVERY

​Neither can I divorce the immaculate discovery of the bullet, from Fassbender's statement to the Sherry Culhane, the DNA Technical Unit Leader, “Try to put her in his house or garage." This is simply mind-boggling to me. In discussing cases with lab experts, I have made statements along the lines of, "I can't put this person at the crime scene," or "I hope this gives me evidence that the suspect was at the crime scene." But never, never once, have I ever asked, wanted or expected the lab expert to "help" me in my case. Never would I expect them to even think that's what I wanted.

"Try to.." is an instruction, an action; not a hope, an observation or discussion of a case. How do you "try to" put Teresa Halbach in the garage? Theoretically, a DNA technician can only prepare a sample and interpret the results. So how can she "try to" do anything with it? It indicates that there are ways of making something happen. So, in that statement, both Fassbender and Culhane implicitly indicated that there was a way to influence the results. If one improperly influenced the results, then the one thing that couldn't be allowed to exist would be extra DNA material -- because that would give the defense the opportunity to disprove the findings. Conveniently, all of the DNA sample was consumed. I also find it very strange that (as far as I know) the very first time Culhane ever contaminated a sample with her own DNA was during this very test. Usually, mistakes of all kinds are made when regular procedures are not followed.

The subsequent finding of the victim's DNA on a bullet; a bullet which, by my logic shouldn't even exist, four months after an extensive search of the crime scene didn't turn it up, combined with the improper conversation between Fassbender and Culhane, creates (at least for me) a significant appearance of wrongdoing.

UNIMPORTANT "BOMBSHELLS" FROM THE SEARCHES

Fassbender, on the stand, testified that deputies found shell casings that matched up to a rifle in the house. That might seem significant. However, unless that rifle was the same caliber as the bullet found in the garage, and testing proves that it was the rifle that fired the bullet, the statement is pretty much worthless. The mere existence of shell casings without a link to a body means nothing, and the fact there were shell casings "all around the property," leads me to believe that the Avery property is located in rural Wisconsin. The .22LR cartridge is what is known as a "varmint" round, used to shoot pests such as squirrels, gophers and small game.

Kratz went to great lengths to portray insignificant items as suspicious evidence. For instance, Halbach's phone number was written on a note pad on Avery's computer table. What does that evidence tell us? It tells us that Avery had business with Halbach. We already knew that. Several other people in the same town had business with Teresa that day. Likely they had her phone number written somewhere too. Importantly, though, it also tells us that Avery did not have Halbach's number memorized. This is important, because somebody who was stalking Teresa would likely have the number memorized.

The most critical takeaway from the searches, was that after four months of investigation, not a single person was able to find one shred of evidence that Teresa Halbach was ever in Steven Avery's house or his garage. The most significant thing about the searches is what they didn't find.

RULES OF CRIMINAL PROCEDURE 101

So where is the murder scene? When reporters asked Ken Kratz why he had not brought up the murder scene in trial, I was absolutely dumbstruck at his answer. He said that he was going to explain all that "...in closing arguments." Whiskey tango foxtrot? Closing arguments do not introduce new evidence, and are not evidence in and of themselves. A closing argument can only refer to evidence that has already been placed into the trial. What Kratz was admitting was that he had not a single shred of evidence to prove where the murder was carried out. But apparently that wasn't going to keep him from telling the jury where it was, without evidence of any kind. To put forward a theory of how the crime could have happened, without providing evidence for the conclusion(s) is appalling. If the judge allowed that, well... I have no words...

Where does this leave us? Kratz doesn't know where the murder occurred, he probably suspects that using Brendan Dassey as a prosecution witness would be disastrous, and continues to try to make a criminal case against a defendant without the use of reliable or convincing evidence--and has no explanation for why the evidence was not found. But I can tell you one thing the evidence proves to me; regardless of who killed Teresa Halbach (even if it turns out it was Steven Avery), she was not killed in Avery's garage or trailer.

(Pt. 3 of 3, Sunday: "Three burn sites??")

I know its been said ITT before but as I had dismissed this guy I had to post these words from Moore as I did jump the gun with him, Sorry Moore.
A magic bullet indeed.

Revots: Are you the same poster as Revots33?

^^^ Nevermind. Had a long day.

Did mr big shot former FBI agent ever consider that Avery burned Theresa first then took the remnants of her skull out of the fire placed it in his garage, shot it, then put it back then cleaned up any soot or DNA from the skull?

I am sure that is what the jury determined.

Mark, for the love of pete.. Keep up.

I just finished episode 5. Feel like I'm on fire. How can that ****ing crooked ass cop be allowed to wear a badge / why isn't he in jail?

He looks sooooo scared and guilty on the stand.

I'm interested to know if a person specializing in body language has chimed in on this

He becomes head of detectives.

Everyone associated with Avery gets to the top rank. The arresting officer in the first case become head sheriff. Colburn goes from watching the county jail to Lead Detective. Kratz would have been a US Senator if he didn't text salacious stuff to domestic abuse victims.

All were rewarded with trophies and really do believe they did the 'right' thing. They just view this whole hype as no-nothing outsiders judging their community.

Another TV soul-reader itt.

Forget about the blood and the DNA and the bones and the car... that cop looked shifty!

It really reinforces just how stacked the deck is against those accused.

Prosecutor is an elected official. You need the police union endorsement to win. The judge is usually a former prosecutor. The for-profit jail system needs customers. The government has unlimited resources to use. The defendant usually has a public defender that has no motivation to help their clients. The police can legally lie while everything the defendant says can be used against them.

It is an individual trying to beat a professional football team.

I am surprised anybody ever is found not guilty. And even if you are found not guilty, you are usually drained anyway, financially and emotionally.

Federal

Fiscal year 2010

Nationwide
Total charged: 98,311
Guilty pleas: 87,418
Convicted by jury: 2,066
Acquitted by jury: 286

.2% of charged cases end up in acquittals. Which reinforces that you are better off to take a guilty plea.

The problem is the system cannot handle 100,000 jury trials. You have to pound people into submission to avoid having to try every case. You have to make the penalty for losing at a jury trial 10x more prohibitive than a guilty plea. Which is why you have a lot of people admitting to guilt (even when they know they are innocent) than gambling at a jury trial.

If you are facing 20-years at a trial, right or wrong, what % of people would just accept an 18-month plea than even trying to gamble? Even if you were told that you had a 95% chance of winning at trial, that 5% chance of losing would be frightening enough it is probably best to just plea. When you take into account the cost of just defending yourself, you are going to lose regardless. The government doesn't reimburse you if you are found not guilty.

Usually when someone is charged with a crime there is a lot of evidence that they actually committed the crime. And the overwhelming majority of people charged did actually commit the crime. Not to say there isn't mistakes or shady cops etc.. Of course there are. But the numbers you posted could also illustrate how often the guilty are pursued over the innocent.

That falls into the bias of if a person is arrested, they did the crime. Which Kratz plays off beautifully in the press conference of the kidnapping, rape, struggle, torture, and murder with his nephew. Even though there is very little evidence that supports the allegation. But 99.9% of the community believes it and good luck getting an impartial jury pool after that which we are all entitled.

I am not basing that conclusion off of any bias. I am basing it off of the numbers you just posted. The overwhelming majority of people who are charged with a crime are convicted of that crime. And most of them are guilty because evidence supporting their innocence doesn't ever surface. In fact, most of them willingly admit they are guilty of the crime even after entering a plea.

Simply not how it works. It is pretty easy for a prosecutor to get an indictment and charge someone with a crime. The process is completely one-sided and has a relatively low burden of proof.

DA's will indict people to apply pressure while looking for more evidence. The can drop charges and refile as necessary. You seem naive to the ways prosecutors wield criminal indictments.

In fact almost all criminal charges never go to trial and DA's regularly make deals for lesser charges, deferred adjudication or even just drop cases. This goes along with the common use of over charging, like happened in this case with the corpse mutilation charge being thrown in. The reality is almost all criminal charges filed are the opening salvo in a negotiation that prosecutors expect to end in a plea deal.

Prosecutors are not actually fighting the good fight and just trying to lock up the bad guys. They are running a numbers game to simply get as many positive outcomes spun in their favor as possible. That is one of the issues with these particular cases. They accentuate and highlight how flawed our criminal justice system is. This is one of the foundations for the outrage in these cases. So while you think DA's only file charges against people they think are guilty or who they think they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt are guilty, that is not close to the truth.

Do you think a guy like Ken Kratz would hesitate for one second in applying pressure to someone who they have no idea if they are guilty just to get a plea deal from? Of course he would. And unfortunately so would too many other DA's in the United States.

This literally contradicts nothing I said. I know people are often over charged. They are still guilty of the crime, especially the one they plead to. I went through the criminal justice system when I was 17 and got a deferred judgement. In fact, I was over charged just so the state could prosecute me as an adult. Then they let me plead to the original charge.

Also, did you see the numbers mark? .2% of people charged are not convicted. How can you look at that and say that's because the system is dirty and not because our justice system has gotten very good at pursuing the correct people who are guilty?

How many guilty verdicts have been later over turned? Less than a few thousand? There are millions of people charged with crimes every year. The ratio of convicts who are innocent vs convicts who are guilty is very small. I would argue, it is almost as small as it possibly could be without the ability to see the past or read peoples minds. Unless of course you want to make the burden of proof so ridiculous that we have murderers running the streets.

Wait nvm, I am talking to a guy who thinks making up his own theories without evidence is reasonable doubt.

Lol because as stated, most of the guilty verdicts are pleas for lesser crimes to avoid the nearly impossible task of going to trial and winning.


Haven't spent time in jail myself for a crime I did not commit would be my evidence to support this

I think you are looking at it backwards. Prosecutors offer deals because they cannot try all those cases, just as you said. That does not mean the goal is to get innocent people to admit guilt. The goal is just what you stated - to reduce the number of jury trials.

Well again you paint this as some sort of nefarious ploy by the prosecutors. Obviously the plea deal has to be attractive, or no one would ever take it. And since the goal is to reduce the # of jury trials, they want people to take it.

To look at it another way, a HUGE number of GUILTY defendants are getting far lighter sentences thanks to the plea deals. So it is a net positive for criminal defendants that these deals are offered. You are focusing on the tiny number of innocent defendants who might be tempted to take a deal rather than gamble with a jury.

It's a very small police department. You can say that ppl associated with the Avery cases have been promoted because of it, but more likely here, correlation does not prove causation. These people would stay in LE and be promoted anyway.

It's such a small dept that a crime as big as the ones Avery was convicted of could almost not be worked by every key member of LE.

Once again, people are simply jumping to conclusions without really applying rational thought.

Fmp

I don't agree. The prison system requires a huge number of customers, non-profit and for-profit. There is a huge incentive to prosecute as many people possible for the cheapest price. The best way is to scare people away from trials with huge penalties for even taking the risk of proving your innocence.

I'm not positive if he's innocent. But everyone involved in his arrest, investigation and prosecution completely ****ed things up/ made it look like they tampered with evidence, planted evidence, and lied under oath. Those are some huge holes the defense punched. Avery did not receive a fair trial.

100% guilty criminals have been found not guilty on far less. Just look at OJ.

I'm curious... The people itt saying hes guilty... What do they think about Kratz? Or the police? You don't think any of those people were dirty?

No penalty for falsely convicting an innocent person, financially or career-wise.

Where else can you receive a call that a person in jail may be innocent, ignore it, write a memo 8 years later documenting the event, and the only recourse is a civil suit where there would have been dubious individual liability anyway. And it was a miracle that he was released to even be able to file that suit.

I do agree it is a very small department and just by not getting fired, you are going to get promoted.

And we have increased dramatically the prison population.

You can use that number as evidence that our current society is more criminal than the past.

Or that our prosecutors have gotten very good at how to maximize the number of guilty convictions.

Statistics show the crime has gone down dramatically yet the # of prisoners has increased. Which could also be correlation in itself.

100,000 people being charged in one year with committing a federal crime seems awfully high. And 286 being found not-guilty seems awfully low. Just with that information alone, it seems that there may be something dysfunctional. With society or 'the system'.

Kratz is a camera whore and a slimeball. That does not make SA innocent. The evidence convicted Avery, not Kratz.

What exactly about the police was "dirty"? I mean, leaving aside conspiracy theories about the Avery lawsuit, or the way the series was edited to portray Coburn and Lenk as some sort of criminal masterminds.