Steven Avery

Steven Allan Avery (born July 9, 1962) is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who had previously been wrongfully convicted in 1985 of sexual assault and attempted murder.

Steven Avery was born in 1962 in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, to Allan and Dolores Avery.

Since 1965, his family has operated a salvage yard in rural Gibson, Wisconsin, on the 40-acre (16 ha) property where they lived outside town.

Avery has three siblings: Chuck, Earl, and Barb.

He attended public schools in nearby Mishicot and Manitowoc, where his mother said he went to an elementary school "for slower kids".

In March 1981, at age 18, Avery was convicted of burglarizing a bar with a friend.

After serving 10 months of a two-year sentence in the Manitowoc County Jail, he was released on probation and ordered to pay restitution.

On July 24, 1982, Avery married Lori Mathiesen, who was a single mother.

They have four children together: Rachel, Jenny, and twins Steven and Will.

In late 1982, two men admitted that, at Avery's suggestion, they threw his cat "in a bonfire and then watched it burn until it died" after Avery had poured gas and oil on it.

Avery was found guilty of animal cruelty and was jailed until August 1983.

"I was young and stupid, and hanging out with the wrong people", Avery said later, of his first two incarcerations.

Allen, who bore a striking physical resemblance to Avery, had committed an assault in 1983 at the same beach where Beerntsen was later attacked in 1985, and was under police surveillance during the period of Beerntsen's assault due to his history of criminal behavior against women.

According to one of his lawyers in 1985, school records showed that his intelligence quotient was 70 and that he "barely functioned in school".

In January 1985, Avery ran his cousin's car off to the side of the road.

After she pulled over, Avery pointed a gun at her.

He was upset and alleged that she had been telling people he had been masturbating on the front lawn, which he stated was not true.

Avery maintained that the gun was not loaded and that he was trying to stop her from spreading what he alleges are false rumors about him by threatening to kill her and was not actually prepared to commit murder.

He was sentenced to six years for "endangering safety while evincing a depraved mind" and possession of a firearm.

In July 1985, a woman was brutally attacked and sexually assaulted while jogging on a Lake Michigan beach.

Avery was arrested after the victim, Penny Beerntsen, picked him from a photo lineup, and later from a live lineup.

Although Avery was forty miles away in Green Bay shortly after the attack – an alibi supported by a time-stamped store receipt and sixteen eyewitnesses – he was charged and ultimately convicted of rape and attempted murder, then sentenced to thirty-two years in prison.

Appeals in 1987 and 1996 were denied by higher courts.

Around 1995, a Brown County police detective contacted the Manitowoc County Jail, saying that an inmate "had admitted committing an assault years ago in Manitowoc County and that someone else was in jail for it".

The jail officer transferred the call to the Manitowoc County detective bureau.

Deputies recalled Sheriff Thomas Kocourek telling them, "We already have the right guy. Don't concern yourself with it."

Avery continued to maintain his innocence in the Beerntsen case.

In 2002, after serving eighteen years (the first six concurrently on the prior endangerment and weapons convictions), the Wisconsin Innocence Project used DNA testing – not available at the time of Avery's original trial – to exonerate him and to demonstrate that a different suspect, Gregory Allen, had in fact committed the crime.

After serving 18 years of a 32-year sentence (six of those years being concurrent with a kidnapping sentence), Avery was exonerated by DNA testing and released in 2003, only to be charged with murder two years later.

Avery's 2003 exoneration prompted widespread discussion of Wisconsin's criminal justice system; the Criminal Justice Reform Bill, enacted into law in 2005, implemented reforms aimed at preventing future wrongful convictions.

Following his release, Avery filed a $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County, its former sheriff, and its former district attorney for wrongful conviction and imprisonment.

In November 2005, with his civil suit still pending, he was arrested for the murder of Wisconsin photographer Teresa Halbach, and in 2007 was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.

The conviction was upheld by higher courts.

Avery's 2007 murder trial and its associated issues are the focus of the 2015 Netflix original documentary series Making a Murderer, which also covered the arrest and 2007 conviction of Avery's nephew, Brendan Dassey.

In August 2016, a federal judge overturned Dassey's conviction on the grounds that his confession had been coerced.

In June 2017, Wisconsin prosecutors appealed this decision.

Eight months later, a panel of seven judges of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled in favor of upholding the original conviction by a vote of 4 to 3, ruling that police had properly obtained Dassey's confession.

On February 20, 2018, Dassey's legal team, including former Solicitor General of the United States Seth Waxman, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On June 25, 2018, certiorari was denied.

Avery and his legal team continue to advocate for a new trial.