I don't know. Too much time has elapsed, people have died and retired, memories have faded, and evidence all seems to be dubious.

Should he be considered a suspect now? Same. It was the investigators' job to do that immediately, and perhaps he lucked out that he wasn't examined much more closely then would be expected in a situation like this. He appears he has not committed any further crimes and is not a public safety risk.

I don't even know if SA should be released. A new trial seems appropriate in a different venue.

BD should be released. He complied with providing information and was told because of his confession, he would be awarded a significantly lighter sentence.

If you already know that he is an ex who is still friends with the victim and they see each other regularly, the fact that he visited her house the day before is irrelevant, unless there is something particularly suspect about that visit. Dropping something off that he can't remember the exact details of months after the fact doesn't seem all that suspicious.

Of course interviewing people is part of an investigation, both to eliminate them as suspects, and to determine whether they know anything about the crime. Would you agree that once the victim goes missing and her vehicle is discovered, the highest priority persons to investigate would be those who 1. Live in the vicinity of the area where the vehicle was found and
2. Had contact with the victim shortly before she went missing.?

And that random male acquaintances of the victim who don't fit either of these criteria would be pretty far down the list of people to interview?

They obviously cleared loose ends enough to get the guilty verdict, which is what the prosecutors care about. So what that there was a highly biased documentary on it and tons of conspiracy theorists believe that every stone wasn't unturned. Could they have run a better investigation? Sure. None is perfect. But they got the right guy and got the guilty conviction which is what they care about. Torturing a confession out of RH wasn't necessary, sorry guys.

Yeah, I mean - even if you think it might have been worthwhile early in the investigation to focus on the victim's exes and other male acquaintances (which, again, it's very likely that the police did in a cursory way, in the process of gathering information for the missing persons case - and you can bet that if her next door neighbour turned out to be a convicted rapist, they would have followed him up closely, etc.).. you'd have to think that by the time they had enough evidence to press charges against Avery, that there would no longer be a point to ruling out anyone.

I mean, you talk about ruling people out. Ruling Avery in as the murderer pretty much rules everyone else out, no? Unless some specific evidence comes up linking someone else to the crime (as in fact happened for Dassey).

It doesn't work like that as a few law enforcement explained.
If you rule out people and tunnel vision. Once you hit a wall you may have missed some opportunity to gather evidences. But it's easy to see why people take shortcut in their job sadly as a cop consequences aren't the same as if you work in a call center.

Let's say hypothetically that the day after Halbach's car was found, the police had brought Avery in for an interview and he had willingly confessed to the murder and led police to her body.

Would you still say it was worthwhile to pursue Halbach's current and past romantic interests for evidence of their involvement? There has to be some point where the evidence is clear enough that you don't need to look elsewhere.

Yes, I understand you claim you are just arguing that there were problems with how the police handled the case. However, its hard for people like me to take your questions seriously or think they are genuine when you are posting links that imply the police recovered the rav4 and Th on nov 3rd.

So you think there is a world where RH should be a suspect NOW with the mountain of evidence pointing to SA? That imo is illogical and silly.

BD shouldn't be released either, he knew she was shot in the garage and with what gun. He also testified in court that he helped SA clean up a large 2x2 area of reddish orange stuff in the garage, the same size area that was found to be cleaned with bleach and paint thinner next to the bullet. He also testified in court to being at the bonfire, at the same fire pit TH remains were found in. Was he coerced under oath on the stand while defending himself as well?

Honestly, I don't see anything wrong with focusing on where she was last seen.. Especially when she made 0 phone calls and didn't answer her phone after being at averys, and when her phone was turned off 45 mins after last being seen with avery. That is a very small window and I would argue 99% of the time avery or someone on that property knows what happened.

I'm more surprised they didn't focus on there sooner. She's last seen Oct 31 at Avery's. Nothing is found until Nov 5. Seems like a long time to search the area she was last seen.

She was reported missing in the early evening on Nov 3.

The Rav4 was found on the morning of Nov 5.

I'm not sure they had confirmed the timeline at that point, as they were still planning on interviewing the Zipperers as well on Nov 5.

They did investigate RH. They may not have done it to the extent that you thought reasonable, but they still did. What we are trying to tell you is that the mountain of evidence surfaced pointing towards SA's guilt, and the investigation of RH did not warrant continuing further with him as a suspect.

It's hard to call it tunnel vision with the amount of evidence pointing towards SA's guilt. There are limited resources, especially with a small PD such as Calumet County. Difficult choices are made as to how to allocate those resources. They chose to only speak to RH a limited amount which is more than reasonable. There's no reason to think that if evidence surfaced pointing towards RH's involvement, that LE would not have investigated him further. This is a witch-hunt.

So what about this new evidence that TH left the Avery property alive?

We have not seen any evidence of this yet, only claims by Steven's lawyer that cell tower records show she left the property.

This is the same lawyer that claimed the "body was not burned in burn pit bc heat would have burned down Avery's garage", so IMO she's just misinterpreting things once again (which happens quite often with cell tower records).

Ofc you can talk about tunnel visionning when they accuse someone of murder before knowing that she is dead and having evidence against your main suspect.
Nvm tunnel visionning is an understatement.

As for the proof she left the property. Her phone was tracked leaving the property

I haven't seen this substantiated. I have only heard it claimed.

It's not tunnel vision, it's making reasonable assumptions about what probably happened and following up on those reasonable assumptions first, before moving on to less likely options.

A missing person is last seen with Avery, who is a convicted violent criminal. A few days later her car is found on his property with a large amount of blood in it. It's an obvious assumption that she may have been a victim of violent crime and that Avery may have something to do with it, or know something about it. Any police force would devote the bulk of their resources to Avery, his associates, and the people who live in the area.

The victim has an ex-boyfriend who has no criminal history, who didn't see her the day she went missing, and who has no connection to Avery or that area. There is no reason whatsoever to assume that this guy had anything to do with the crime. No reasonable police officer would devote resources to investigating him at this stage in the investigation (beyond possibly doing a background check and checking for any link to the main suspect Steven Avery). Is it possible he was involved? Sure, just like it's possible any number of other people may have been involved. But if that was the case, the best way to uncover it would not be by bringing everyone the victim knew in for an interview and checking their alibis. It would be by doing just what the police did: canvassing the people who lived nearby, searching for evidence on the property, and collecting and testing samples from the car and the surrounding area.

If during the investigation someone had reported a guy matching RH's description hanging around the Avery property the night of Halbach's disappearance, the cops would have followed that up. If a blood sample from her car had not matched anyone on the Avery property, the cops probably would have taken samples from Halbach's male acquaintances.

If something like this had come up and the cops didn't pursue it, that would have been tunnel vision. But in reality that's not what happened.

if a woman is dead they will check the husband and ex boyfriends it s common sense around law enforcement as confirmed by a few fbi guys and ex cop. there s no arguing that it s common practice and wasnt done in thise case.

You don't know that they didn't check them out. You don't know that they didn't run background checks and ask Halbach's family about her exes. Probably they did.

It depends on the specific circumstances of the case how extensively they will investigate romantic partners of the victim. The 9-11 victims were homicide victims. Should their spouses have been checked as potential terrorists?

yeah let s compare a single woman murdered with a terrorist attack...

THEY DID CHECK

STOP THIS NONSENSE

I was only bringing it up to show how ridiculous your blanket statement is. To what extent they check out a victim's ex depends on the specific facts of the case.

In this case there was nothing that came up in the early stages to suggest that her ex was involved. That's why they didn't focus on him. And early on, they found a huge amount of evidence implicating Avery as the murderer, and arrested him. There was never a reason to look at ex or current boyfriends beyond what they did.

No it is common practice to follow leads, such as victim's car being found half-hidden on the property of her last known location. They spoke to the ex-bf. Had they found any evidence connecting him to her murder then they would have followed those leads in his direction. They didn't because all the leads pointed to SA.

The desperation for which you guys want it to be the ex-bf (or in SMACC's case, someone in the Zipperer clan) is pretty strange considering a young woman was brutally murdered and all the evidence points to SA being the person who did it.

If only there was weren't questions about the validity of all the evidence. Even if you think he is guilty you have to admit there are unanswered questions.

What is the question about his blood in her car? The defense staked their case on the blood being planted, and then when the test didn't pan out the way they'd hoped, they tried to say the test itself was no good.

There is zero evidence any of the evidence was planted, none. Buting and Strang are very good lawyers, and they spent the entire case trying to argue that all the different pieces of evidence were planted. None of it stuck.