Spoiler alert: if you haven't yet watched the 10 episodes of this show on Netflix and don't want the excitement ruined, stop reading now.

For the rest of us, I'd like to see what the community thinks about the case. On balance, I personally don't believe that either Steven Avery or Brendan Dassey can be considered guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning their convictions represent a miscarriage of justice. My reasons for believing this, as will be familiar to anyone who's watched the show, are these:

- if Theresa Halbach's throat was indeed cut while she was tied to Steven's bed, as the prosecution alleges (based solely on Brendan's testimony), then why in the hell was there not one speck of Halbach's blood or DNA found in his bedroom, let alone on his mattress? Cutting someone's throat is normally a very messy business, one would presume.

- if indeed Halbach was shot in the head while in the garage, as the prosecution alleges, why was none of Halbach's DNA detected anywhere in the garage? It would be effectively impossible for even an expert, let alone Steven Avery, to remove any trace of blood or DNA given how cluttered that garage was and how the blood would have sprayed from the force of the bullet's entry into Halbach's skull.

- Evidence of bloody hair having made contact with the back seat area of Halbach's RAV 4 SUV indicates that she was laying (dead) in the back of her vehicle. Her burned and shattered bones were recovered from a burn pit behind Avery's house, not far from his bedroom window. If he killed her in his garage or his bedroom, why would he have to put her body in her vehicle to move it if he intended to burn her remains so close by?

- Halbach's vehicle was discovered on the edge of the junked-car area, partially covered by branches (but not covered very well, suspiciously). Why would Avery have done such a poor job of hiding her vehicle, given that he owned and had easy access to a car-crusher that he could've used to destroy her vehicle and hide it much more effectively?

- One of the expert witnesses stated that the lack of the chemical trace in Avery's blood that was recovered from the RAV 4, which would have indicated that it came from his vial of blood if the chemical trace had been present, does not conclusively indicate that the sample did not originate from the vial of blood.

- The fact that Avery's house was searched several times by non-Sheriff department personnel before the key to the RAV 4 was discovered in Avery's bedroom by Sheriff personnel strongly suggests that Sheriff personnel (likely either James Lenk or Andrew Colborn) planted the key there. Furthermore, the key had ONLY Avery's DNA on it. How exactly did Halbach's DNA get removed from her own car key?

- Brendan Dassey's "confession" is highly questionable. He didn't "admit" to the crime until he was coaxed for hours (without his lawyer present), on more than one occasion. His version of Halbach's murder includes extremely implausible events (namely her throat being cut in the bedroom), and he didn't even mention her being shot in the head until one of the interrogators introduced that fact to him. Dassey was a highly impressionable and easily frightened teenager with an IQ of 65 who was falsely led to believe that he would be free if he told the investigators what he thought that they wanted him to say. His is a textbook case of the limitations of what's known as the Reid technique of interrogation -- ie. a risk of eliciting a false confession.

- Other questionable details include: Colborn's conflicting versions of the time of day that Halbach's car was last seen (two versions with a difference of ~4 hours, which in November would mean the difference between daylight or not. Hard to believe that he could confuse that memory so badly). Also, Avery's demeanor does not seem to be that of a guilty person (the way that he speaks with his family over the phone, his lack of obvious motive, etc).

Some evidence that apparently was not included in the documentary, which could be interpreted as indicating that Avery is indeed guilty, can be found in the link below. But in my opinion there still remains a reasonable doubt that either of them is guilty in the sense of the charges leveled against them.

http://www.slashfilm.com/making-a-murderer-theories/

There is already a thread for this in OOTV.

Oops, I didn't know where to look for it.

It is quite a robust discussion over there I see, but it doesn't have a poll like mine. Maybe a mod can somehow merge the threads or something? Or just leave it here (pretty please) cause I'm sure I'm not the only one who had never even visited that OOTV section before today.

I seem to have upset a few people in OOTV by saying it was a crap television show, so I'll repeat the sentiment here. Because it was. And somebody needs to let you people know that.

I agree. There is no need for the public to be made aware of these types of things.

Anybody not already aware of these things doesn't want to be aware of them, and I don't think boring them to tears for 10 hours is the best approach to force that awareness.

If you turn a critical eye to why the show has become a thing, it is in no way because people GAF about what the show was supposed to be about. It's because everybody is having a grand old time obsessing over the minutiae to bolster whichever side of guilt/innocence they feel like being on during office lunch breaks. It's about as meaningful as Team Edward vs. Team Jacob.

And what was the show supposed to be about, if not to publicize what may very well be a case of gross injustice? That's how I interpret it, which is why I think it's important to talk about.

I interpret this as sarcasm, in which case I agree.

where's the option for Steven not guilty, Brendan guilty?

you'll have to explain your theory for that one...

brendan admitted raping and killing her, steven hasnt

not much of a theory required

Somebody was bummed there were no rape reenactments?

What exactly do you want out of a true crime story that illustrates a likely gross miscarriage of justice? Car chases? It was an excellent series in my view and many others, and even made my very conservative dad come out and basically rail against the crooked system, something I thought I'd never see. Made for great holiday discussions around the card table with close family. 5 stars.

Was your father railing against the crooked system because he believed Avery is innocent? Because his guilt or innocence was never the point, and it's more likely than not he's guilty.

These sorts of Important Stories crop up on a pretty regular basis, and everybody is so proud of themselves for watching Something Important that they convince themselves it was, by the standards of the medium used, good. Most of the time, by those standards, it is at best mediocre. In this case it was outright bad. Way too long. Way too boring. Way too biased, to the point that its bias completely overshadowed its intended message.

I can see more coherent production, better narrative, and far more objectively presented stories that are equally Important any given week watching Frontline. Or even most episodes of Independent Lens.

Making a Murderer just wasn't very good television. It's the it thing of the moment because it had a sexy premise (Rape! Murder! Innocent man railroaded!), because it's on a streaming service (The future of TV!), and because the annoyingly repetitive camera shots that in no way served the story were actually quite good (had they been used better), but in the context of the show ended up just being a cheap trick to make people think they were watching something much better than it actually was.

The show will be completely forgotten in a few months, and none of the things it was trying to say will have garnered the slightest foothold in the collective conscience.