Disclaimer: This article contains mentions of murder and assault. Reader discretion is advised.
Steven Avery was convicted as a party to the first-degree intentional homicide of Teresa Halbach. He was also found guilty of being a felon in the possession of a firearm. According to A&E True Crime, Avery is currently incarcerated at the Waupun Correctional Institution, which is a maximum security prison in Wisconsin. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole after he was convicted in 2007.
Teresa Halbach was a freelance photographer who was reported missing by her mother on November 3, 2005. On November 5, a volunteer searcher found Halbach’s Toyota RAV4 on the Avery Auto Salvage property, the Avery family’s Manitowoc County Yard. On the property, authorities found burned bone fragments, which included fragments of a skull. A cell phone and camera were identified as those used by Halbach. They were also found in the yard, along with the bone fragments in a burn pit.
They also found Steven Avery’s blood in front of her car and Halbach’s blood in the car’s cargo area. Teresa Halbach’s car keys were found in Steven Avery’s bedroom in his trailer. In another search that was conducted after Avery was charged with the murder, a bullet and bullet fragments were recovered from the garage and were found to have been shot from a rifle found in his bedroom. According to court documents, the bullets had Halbach’s DNA on them.
Teresa Halbach reportedly went to the Avery family’s yard to photograph the vehicles. Steven Avery’s nephew, Brendan Dassey, was also convicted after he confessed to helping Avery carry out the rape and murder of Halbach. He was 16 at the time and was sentenced to life in prison, CBS News reported.
What was Steven Avery wrongly convicted of?
In 1985, Steven Avery was sentenced to 32 years in prison after he was wrongly convicted of the rape of Penny Ann Beerntsen. The victim was reportedly grabbed and taken into the woods, where she was sexually assaulted and choked unconscious. Despite multiple alibi witnesses, the court found Avery guilty, and in 1995, DNA testing revealed the DNA of another unknown man in Beerntsen’s fingernails. However, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, Avery’s appeal for a new trial was denied.
In 2002, attorneys for the Wisconsin Innocence Project initiated a procedure for the identification of 13 different pubic hairs that were found on Beerntsen after the crime. They then sent over the results to be matched with FBI records. It was discovered that the DNA matched with Gregory Allen. He was already serving a 60-year sentence in prison for sexual crimes. Allen bore a striking resemblance to Avery, making it possible that the victim was mistaken when identifying the culprit.
Steven Avery was then released after 18 years in prison and reportedly received a maximum state compensation of $25,000. After he was found guilty of Teresa Halbach’s murder, Avery alleged that authorities planted his blood and DNA that was collected during the rape case at the crime scene to undo the damage caused by the false charges and convictions, per CBS News.
“Return to Manitowoc County” is an episode of Dateline: Secrets Uncovered that was aired on November 5, 2018. It re-aired on Oxygen on March 6, 2024. The episode revolves around Teresa Halbach’s murder and Steven Avery’s subsequent conviction in 2007.
