Summary of Steven Avery's inconsistent statements re the fire:

1. In November 2005 Steven Avery denied having a Halloween fire, a statement initially corroborated by his family.

2. Within a week Steven's family began changing their statement to include a fire, and Steven changed his own statement to match what they said, now agreeing he did have a Halloween fire. Steven has since consistently maintained he did have a Halloween fire.

Summary of Bobby Dassey's inconsistent statements re the fire:

1. Under police pressure, Bobby Dassey contradicts his family's consistent denials of a recent fire, claiming to have seen one on Nov 1 or 2 with Steven and Brendan standing beside it.

2. After Bobby's family changed their statement to include a fire on Halloween, Bobby changed his own and agreed the fire was on Halloween rather than Nov 1 or 2.

3. At Steven's trial under oath Bobby placed the most recent burn pit fire he saw a week or more before Halloween.

4. Post premier of MaM and Zellner's allegations against Bobby, police re-interviewed Bobby and he once more mentions a fire on Halloween.

Who is the Real Fire Liar?

• Bobby was the one who first broke from the family consensus that no fire occurred. Bobby's mom Barb later changed her statement to include a fire. Steven only changed his statement to include a fire because his family changed theirs first. As for Bobby, he was very obviously prodded into mentioning a fire by men with guns and badges. And Barb and Blaine (who went from "no fire" to "fire" after Bobby) also claimed to have faced police pressure. As time went on Bobby couldn't remain consistent about the fire his family initially denied. In fact, Bobby contradicted himself about the fire more than Steven ever did.

• So if Steven's family only mentioned a fire after police squeezed it out of them (as the record suggests) and they weren't relying on genuine recall, Steven's revised account of a fire cannot reliably be characterized as him scrambling after being exposed by his family's sudden and flawed but totally genuine recall of a fire. In reality, the record suggests it's more likely Steven only changed his statement because he got confused after a successful pressure campaign aimed at his family caused them to go from corroborating him to contradicting him. A puzzled Steven ultimately accepted his family's claim that HE had the faulty memory, and that he DID have a recent fire on or after Halloween.

• Ironically, Bobby was the first to contradict the family's consistent fire denials, leading to a narrative shift wherein most everyone agreed a fire occurred on or after Halloween. But whether due to the threat of perjury or a simple failure to remember his fire lie, when Bobby was under oath he casually reverted to the initial exculpatory fire story by placing the most recent fire BEFORE Halloween occurred. WTF LOL Certainly, the most likely explanation for Bobby's mess of contradictory fire statements is not that he was relying on a genuine memory his family initially forgot. It's that the pressure Bobby faced on November 9, 2005, resulted in him offering police a false or mis-dated fire memory in order to "help" police keep the burn pit cremation narrative alive and keep focus off himself. Bobby's fire admission was purely performative self preservation, rather than based on a real memory, and that's why he could not remain consistent when asked about it over the coming months and years.

Is skipping Topp still about on the page??

Chances he did it ?

How did the roommate get her updated day planner if she never made it back to her house to drop it off?

At trial, Andrew Colborn claimed the reason he "wasn't any too gentle" with the cabinet he claims produced the key is because he was "exasperated".

A. I will be the first to admit, I wasn't any to gentle, as we were, you know, getting exasperated. I handled it rather roughly, twisting it, shaking it, pulling it.

When asked what exasperated him to the point he couldn't help but get rough with an inanimate object (but only that one as near as we know), he replied with the following:

Q. What was exasperating you about the bookcase, or that bedroom, on November 8, 2005?

A. The content of the material that we were collecting.

The worst "content" we know of they were finding/collecting in the cabinet that day was Playboy magazines. Ah ok, so I guess this caught him off guard or something. Oh, but wait. On the evening of Nov 5, Colborn himself had searched the same cabinet and had already found them, handled them, and even laid them out on the floor for this picture along with some of the other items he had removed from the cabinet while searching through it that night (like the cuffs). One of the things LE were supposed to do on the 8th was simply collect them into evidence (as again, they already knew this particular "content" was there).

So seriously, why would nothing worse than porn mags that a seasoned cop and military vet already knew were there from days prior, now suddenly get exasperated about it? If he's trying to say it offended his morality (or any other reason at all one could think of), then the question is why wasn't he triggered on the 5th when he saw it all the first time unexpectedly?

With explanations like this, is it any wonder why people have a problem with the key find? And that's not even touching on any other aspect, such as their proposed explanations of how the key suddenly appeared (Colborn has now even claimed with help from God and/or the ghost of Teresa Halbach), or official docs later lying about who found it (claiming Kucharski did with no mention of MTSO even being present).

Ok so basically you got caught red-handed. The last place the dead girl was seen was with you. The murder weapon's hanging over your bed. Her incinerated remains are a few feet from your house. And the guy you did it with might testify. And maybe not.

So what do you do? Steven went with the 'cops planted all the evidence' strategy. But maybe he overlooked one?

The Lindsay Clancy trial suggested to me that maybe Steven had a diminished capacity or insanity defense. I mean he was in jail for a crime he didn't commit for a long time. He could argue that drove him crazy and he could no longer tell right from wrong. Therefore, he's not criminally responsible for what he did.

I'm thinking that would have been the way to go. The cops planting evidence thing is easy to raise but exceedingly hard to sell without any proof it happened.

Also Steven had to be scared shiftless that Brendan would flip and testify against him. That'd pretty much defeat his planting allegations. But a diminished capacity argument could still work even if Brendan was up there on the stand giving testimony against him. In fact Steven including Brendan in the crime, and making him a witness, might be something a person with no ability to differentiate right from wrong would do.

What do you think?

More stuff...

I was young when MaM first came out. I remembered some parts, but decided now, having started law school and working at a criminal defense firm, why not watch it again since my 10yr old self probably missed some parts.

I am not saying SA is 100% innocent, I do not know for sure, but I do believe the State did not meet their burden (but I wasn’t a juror so that’s moot).

But what doesn’t sit right with me is everyone so adamant that the police wouldn’t set this man up when the County was about to be personally liable for 36mil. Insurance was not going to cover due to the misconduct of the county. The county was going to have to pay out of pocket and potentially hold some officers personally liable, to an extent, for their roles.

I don’t think the cops killed the victim, but I think they saw an opportunity out of this civil suit and MONEY MAKES PEOPLE DO CRAZY THINGS. They failed Teresa and her family by, potentially, letting her killer walk free to settle a personal agenda and problem for the county that could not afford this civil suit.

This isn’t me saying they definitely did it or not, I just don’t see enough people pointing out the role of the civil suit in all this. Plus, we already know they were somewhat shady cops because of what happened in the first wrongful convictions, so it’s not farfetched to say they would stoop to this level of misconduct.

Edit: AGAIN this is not arguing guilty or not guilty, I really don’t know. I made this post to say I wouldn’t be surprised if evidence was planted due to the pending civil suit. That doesn’t mean I think evidence was planted, I am just saying that there is motive IF it happened.

Interesting...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPnMhHaBbBM&list=TLPQMTIwOTIwMjZyRg_0cI6MrQ&index=1

Brendan filed first, Steven filed second. I'll update if and when Dutcher gives an opinion on Avery's request.

Okay I rewatched the 2018 docuseries on Netflix; Making a Murderer.. and I feel like the whole Avery family is either drunks or drug addicts..
growing up in a family of drunks, all the family just looks a little off..
the fact more than one offspring has mental disorders and low IQs..
and the whole nephew involvement is just weird.. I feel like this place was a house of horrors and there was much more involvement than this family will admit. 🤮

Let's try this again. Attached are screenshots of the court docket showing the application for commutation has been filed with the circuit Court and then passed on to the governor. Also posted is the criteria Brendan must meet to be considered for a commuted sentence. Can he survive criteria 5A?

We need an explanation.

Does Anyone know the date and time David J Beach went to the Zipperer property to enquire about Teresa after being told at the Salvage Yard that Teresa had left the Avery property on OCT 31 05 ?

I’ve watched the series and watched it again and her version is the only plausible version I’ve heard. The prosecution version is clearly absurd and the fact that Dassey and Avery were convicted on different versions of events is an absurdity of justice of the highest order.

And that colbourn fella is a suspicious mf to say the least. What’s the deal with him calling in that licence plate after being told about her car by that neutral witness? Outrageous. This case is absurd beyond belief.

the police system is clearly taking advantage of the Avery's. It's pretty clear to me how they are just very afraid of being seen in a bad light, so they needed a scapegoat to take the blame for their incompetence. we can see that in the interview recordings of Brendan. Who in their right mind would actually think that spoon-feeding a supposed accomplice the facts is considered acceptable as a veritable statement just blows my mind. a key found in a bedroom free of the victim's DNA just doesn't logically make sense.

I know this is pretty far-fetched, but it got me thinking.

For the sake of the hypothetical, let’s assume Steven Avery is guilty, and that Brendan Dassey was pressured or coerced into helping with the cleanup, but was not involved in the rape, murder or mutilation of Teresa Halbach.

What if Avery eventually had a change of heart and decided to tell the truth — specifically, that Brendan was involved only in the cleanup and not the actual murder?

Would that potentially give Brendan grounds to seek a new trial, even though his conviction has already been upheld through multiple appeals?

And, hypothetically, if a court accepted Avery's new account as credible, what do you think would happen?
Would Brendan potentially be released because he had already served enough time, or would he still face his current conviction for being involved in the aftermath of the crime?

I'm curious what people who understand Wisconsin criminal law think — what mechanism, if any, could actually get Brendan a new trial in this scenario?

Greetings! Francesca Hong was a democrat candidate for WI Governor. The primary was this week. Although Ms. Hong was favored by 20 points in the polls, she lost a very close election. So, she will not be the next WI Governor.

Although to my knowledge she has never expressed an opinion on the issue of pardoning Avery and/or Dassey, her expressed positions on defunding the police and closing the prisons indicate that she may have been quite open to the idea. She's also in the age group that make her likely to have seen MaM.

The homework project that Avery claims to be working on to free himself might be some sort of coordinated approach for a pardon directed at outgoing democrat Governor Tony Evers, and failing that to the next Governor,. I think a Governor Hong might have been just the perfect political storm Avery needed to get out. Fortunately we won't know.

But he could still get one from Evers. Anyone know if he ever stated a position?

Also Barb says she believes her brother is innocent but married the man whose testimony contributed to putting him away. But the whole claim was that it was Steven and Brendan together so how does that reconcile?

INTRO: Bait and Bill (and Bail)

• I recently learned that in 2016, a Michigan Judge (Chrzanowski) dismissed a prospective juror for the "Millsap Murder Trial" because they had admitted to developing a negative bias of prospective Defense Witness Mike O'Kelly after watching Making a Murderer. Two others who watched at least some of MaM remained on the jury. In the end, despite being retained for $15,000, O'Kelly didn't even end up testifying or providing any useful work product, and then overcharged the county by more than double for his non-service. After learning this, I began digging into O'Kelly some more. As it turns out, this is a pattern of sorts. He was a serial over-biller.

• O'Kelly would market himself as an elite expert to inflate his credibility, hoping to be retained by desperate defense attorneys and defendants in felony murder cases. But after being hired (sometimes specifically to testify for the defense) he wouldn't provide any useful work product or even testify. He is also known to overcharge for his non-services before leaving the state to start again with a new victim. He comes off as a scam artist repeatedly using the lucrative American criminal justice system as his very fertile hunting ground.

• Surprising no one, it seems another pattern is at play with O'Kelly - those who facilitated his hiring in different states across the country (attorneys and judges) usually expressed concern about his conduct or outright regret about his hiring. Including Kachinsky. O'Kelly consistently failed his clients, overcharged taxpayers, and left a trail of frustrated judges and attorneys across multiple states. And in Wisconsin, he openly and harshly violated the rights of his developmentally disabled child client. And got paid far too much to do so.

2001: SCAN or SCAM

• O’Kelly has listed himself on his website as a forensic linguistic analyst, a forensic polygraph examiner, a certified forensic cellular analyst, a certified professional investigator, a certified court and deposition videographer and an accident and crime scene computerized animation specialist.

• In 2001 the Sacramento Daily Recorder ran an article describing Michael O’Kelly as "one of a dozen elite practitioners [of a] truth detecting technique" called SCAN - which relied on obviously subjective interpretations of linguistic deviations in statements from victims and suspects that allowed one to detect the truth simply by listening to choice of words or phrasing.
  

• In fact, O’Kelly claimed his SCAN technique was more dependable than a polygraph. Come 2006, O'Kelly's mistaken belief that he was a human lie detector would make it much easier to justify his unfair prejudice against and treatment of Brendan.

2006: Manitowoc County, The Brendan Dassey Case

• O'Kelly was retained as Brendan's defense investigator after Kachinsky found him through an internet search. He first administered a polygraph to Brendan. Despite the polygraph results being "inconclusive," O'Kelly's SCAN technique led him to declare Brendan "a kid without a conscience." After meeting Brendan's family, O'Kelly decided not only that Brendan was guilty, but that the entire family was "pure evil" with "no good in any member." This obvious animus appears to have shaped his conduct.

• Most notably, during a recorded May 12, 2006 interview, O'Kelly lied to Brendan that he failed a polygraph, refused to hear his claims of innocence, and demanded he confess against his own wish to maintain his innocence. He and Kachinsky then fed Brendan to police for another counsel-less interrogation without even any consideration for a plea on the table. O'Kelly fucked off days later, and months later Kachinsky was finally removed from the case due to him allowing Brendan to be interviewed by police without counsel.

• After working to harm Brendan's autonomy and help the prosecution in their case against Steven, O'Kelly submitted an invoice for roughly $7,000 and was issued $5,519, which Kachinsky admitted was "on the high side, higher than it really should have been if he stuck to the mission." Kachinsky also said O'Kelly's treatment of Brendan was "too harsh" and that he quickly grew concerned O'Kelly was "doing the prosecution's job for them." Kachinsky later called hiring O'Kelly his "worst mistake." As it so happens, Kachinsky wasn't the only one who would have buyer's remorse after hiring O'Kelly.

2010-2012: The Anthony, Coleman, Cummings and Brown Murder Cases

• In 2010, O’Kelly was listed as one of the defense’s expert witnesses in the now infamous Casey Anthony trial in Orange County, Florida. Although it's not clear why, it appears he was quickly dropped from the case and never gave testimony. In 2011, O’Kelly, now billing himself as a “forensic cell phone data consult,” was paid $24,304 as a defense expert by Monroe County in State of Illinois in a their case against Christopher Coleman, who was sentenced to life in prison for strangling his wife and two sons. He didn't end up giving testimony.

• In 2012, there was a delay in the McLennan County, Texas Rickey Cummings capital shooting murder trial after the defense motioned to retain O'Kelly. Judge Strother allowed O'Kelly to join the defense after being told he was "the best in the word." Once more, O'Kelly never wound up testifying, and then charged the county $100,000 dollars for his work on the case. Hunt and Reaves (Cummings Defense counsel) admitted the amount O'Kelly billed the county was "substantially more" that they had agreed upon and that he was often doing doing his own thing. O'Kelly was on this case for multiple months.

• Judge Strother (who became concerned after authorizing a bill for over $65,000) said he was "livid" when he saw the total $100,000 bill, fearing "the county had been shafted" while noting "the defense feels the same way." The total defense bill (for two attorneys) was only a few thousand more than O'Kelly's bill, despite him never testifying. Strother even said O'Kelly's work product resulting from his time on the case appeared to be "non-existent." Judge Strother ordered a closed door "show-cause" hearing where O'Kelly had to justify his overcharge.

• O'Kelly's counsel (Attorney Miears) then motioned to have Strother substituted for the show-cause hearing, claiming the judge didn't have the authority to seek collection of a debt and had clearly developed a bias against him and was already inherently biased. This request was granted by Strother to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, and the presiding judge of the administrative judicial district in Texas, Judge Stubblefield, assigned a "visiting retired judge Morris of Bell County" who quickly allowed O'Kelly's $100,000 bill to stand. This wild overcharge slipping through the cracks in the system certainly made news.

• When O'Kelly left Texas in 2013 he was eventually retained for "cell phone expert work" in the 2014 Michigan backpages:com serial murder case in Macomb County (including four asphyxiated female victims - Hunt, Landers, Curtis, and McCrary). During that case, O'Kelly accepted $2,500, a mere 2.5 % of his earnings in the Cummings case. After this, O'Kelly stuck around Macomb County for a bit without causing any problems ... until he took too big a bite of the Macomb County Apple.

2015: Macomb County, The VanCallis Case

• In 2015, Macomb County, Michigan defense counsel Sheikh represented defendant VanCallis, charged with the 2014 murder of 14 year old April Millsap. Towards the end of 2015 (as MaM was about to premiere) Sheikh motioned the court to allow testimony from O'Kelly as a cell phone data expert. But Judge Chrzanowski was aware of O'Kelly's prior work charge to McLennan County, Texas.

• Initially Chrzanowski only allotted $9,000 for ALL experts hired by VanCallis. Given O'Kelly's prior $100,000 Texas bill, the judge understandably expressed reluctance to allow the hiring of O'Kelly. She worried his Texas bill revealed he may be attempting to “get as much money out of this case as he can.” Chrzanowski went on to say: “I never in my 20 years on the bench paid anyone $100,000, and that includes some big civil cases with big-time attorneys. One hundred thousand dollars is not even in my realm of possibility.”

• By November 2015, Sheikh convinced Chrzanowski to allow O'Kelly to join the case if he agreed to a $15,000 retainer, which was still one of the highest ever authorized for an expert in Macomb County. And then? Making a Murderer came out exposing O'Kelly's violation of Brendan's rights to client autonomy. The series began exploding in popularity just as a jury was to be selected in the VanCallis case. At the time of jury selection, O'Kelly was a prospective witness, retained to testify.

2016: Jury Selection and Invoicing for VanCallis Case

• In January 2016, propsective jurors in the VanCallis case were asked if they had watched Making a Murderer. THREE had watched at least some of it. ONE had watched enough of it to "harbor negative perceptions of Michael O'Kelly." The prospective male juror admitted he thought O'Kelly manipulated Brendan and was "horrified" by that and other aspect of MaM. Rightfully so, Sheikh expressed concern about jurors having a "negative bias against his witness."
  

• Judge Chrzanowski excused the man and instructed the remaining jurors to not watch MaM while the trial was ongoing. VanCallis was convicted on all counts, including by jurors who had watched at least some of MaM. Consistent with an already established pattern, despite O'Kelly being retained with the expectation that he would testify at the trial for VanCallis, he never did. Worse, despite providing no in court testimony, O'Kelly billed the County over $37,000 for his two or so months on the case, OVER DOUBLE the agreed upon retainer of $15,000 (and over $9,000 MORE than Sheikh himself was paid as the defense attorney).

• After submitting his 17 page $37,000 bill Judge Chrzanowski refused to authorize the required compensation and ordered a show-cause hearing where O'Kelly was to justify the charges. This time around, O'Kelly didn't try to substitute Chrzanowski (or maybe he couldn't) and just skipped the hearing all together. Sheikh, whose relationship with O'Kelly deteriorated after trial, told Chrzanowski she was "was well within her rights to not pay" O'Kelly if he didn't show up for the re-scheduled post trial hearing. O'Kelly, in fact, didn't show up, but did text Sheikh to confirm he would accept a payment of $10,000 dollars, which the court allowed.

Get Retained, Deliver Nothing (or Deliver Harm), Overcharge, Disappear, Rinse and Repeat

• Attorney Sheikh was right to request the prospective juror (who watched MaM and developed a negative opinion of O'Kelly) be removed from the case ... but O'Kelly never testified in that case, so the removal wasn't even necessary. And despite not testifying, O'Kelly still overcharged the county for his non services by more than double the agreed upon amount ... seeking more compensation than the defense attorney himself. Unfortunately for O'Kelly, he didn't get away with overcharging Macomb County like he got away with overcharging McLennan County, Texas. He was stuck with Chrzanowski.

• I suspect O'Kelly knew he couldn't actually justify his overcharging the County by more than double at a hearing. And his take on the Texas Cummings case exposed his grift to Chrzanowski, so he decided to cut his losses, skip the show-cause hearing, and accept a near 75% pay cut. Chrzanowski's suspicions (that O'Kelly was trying to suck the County dry) were well founded. She could have avoided delaying the trial, needlessly excusing a juror, and a frustrating billing fight if she simply never allowed that grifter on the case in the first place.
  

• Even in the Dassey case, where O'Kelly made a mere $5,000, Kachinsky suggested O'Kelly had overcharged the County while being too harsh with his child client. The problem is O'Kelly probably enjoyed his harsh approach. O'Kelly thought them all evil. It certainly didn't matter to O'Kelly if Brendan wanted to maintain his innocence. And of course he moves from one state to the next without building a permanent accountable business presence (with storage lockers registered as labs) so it's hard to hold him accountable. He moves around like a cockroach scattering when the lights come on.

• When judges, clients, and defense attorneys all say the same thing (he overcharged, produced nothing, did the prosecution's job for them, and then vanished) it's more a pattern than a coincidence. Across at least four states, O'Kelly billed counties for work he didn't do, testimony he never gave, and results he never produced. And nearly every single one of the people who hired O'Kelly (or allowed him to be hired) totally regretted it.

• In the end, O'Kelly is nothing but an over confident serial over-biller who extracts thousands in payment from desperate defendants and defense attorneys across the country while providing no useful work product or (worse) harmful work product. He's a deluded manipulative systemic scam artist. Not a well meaning, overly sensitive, or even all that of a capable private investigator.

So Avery was denied further appellate review by the WI Supreme Court on May 21, 2025.

Under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), 28 U.S.C. § 2244(d), a state prisoner generally has one year after that to file a federal habeas petition.

Accordingly, Avery's deadline to file a federal action expired on May 22, 2026. Once expired it cannot be revived.

Reading the tea leaves and Avery's recent facebook posts, I'm thinking he and Zellner consulted before the deadline. Zellner told him she's not doing it, and now Avery is busy as a bee representing himself and preparing a mystery filing.

So for everyone waiting for this case to hit federal court, doesn't look like it's ever going to.

O'Kelly teared up while reading evidence into the record of his malicious animus toward Brendan and plan to violate his client autonomy, which had nothing to do with the blue ribbon

• On May 9, 2006, O'Kelly sent an email to Kachinsky explaining he and a friend discussed how incestuous and monstrous the Dassey and Avery family was (all "evil with no good in any member") and how they should try to "end the gene pool here." In the same email, O'Kelly coordinated with Kachinsky, planning to manipulate Brendan into abandoning his claims of innocence and admit guilt. Despite having every reason to recognize O'Kelly's visceral animosity and hostility toward Brendan was inconsistent with respecting his presumption of innocence / client autonomy, Kachinsky facilitated a solo interview between O'Kelly and Brendan on May 12, 2006. During that interview, O'Kelly lied to Brendan and extracted a confession using tactics so outrageous Kachinsky himself would later condemn as "too harsh" (such as threatening Brendan that his defense would abandon him if he maintained his innocence).

• Also recall that May 12, 2006, was the day O'Kelly presented multiple items to Brendan related to Teresa or the alleged crimes against her, including the infamous blue ribbon. Although such ribbons were hung around the community in memory of Teresa, O'Kelly claimed to have commissioned a florist to specifically make the blue ribbon he presented to Brendan while trying to break him down. Even though Brendan was an intellectually disabled 16 year old kid with a total lack of evidence linking him to the crime, O'Kelly showed no interest in respecting his presumption or claims of innocence. However, he showed great interest in pressuring Brendan to confess to Teresa's assault and murder. O'Kelly even coldly directed Brendan to draw pictures of the assault. That blue ribbon was right there in the room on the table along with a picture of Teresa. But O'Kelly showed no emotion, because at that point he was simply using Teresa's memory and the blue ribbon as a prop, looking to extract something useful for the state in its prosecution of Steven Avery.

• Now recall the scene from Making a Murderer where O'Kelly, during his January 2010 post conviction testimony, was forced to read his disturbing May 9, 2006 email aloud. It looked VERY BAD for him to be using such ugly hostile language while scheming to overcome Brendan's desire to maintain his innocence. And does everyone remember what happened while he was reading that ugly email into the record? He began crying. Blubbering. But he wasn't crying because of what he did to Brendan, but because he couldn't stop thinking of that damn blue ribbon. Oddly, the email O'Kelly was reading didn't actually mention the ribbon. So the fact that he brought it up at that time suggests his entire emotional performance was more of a panic response to being exposed as a biased and manipulative systemic predator. A systematic predator who developed intense personal animus toward his child client while scheming to violate his right to client autonomy, for thousands in financial gain. That shit was insidious, so O'Kelly needed some immediate damage control. What else could he do but manufacture some sympathy right there on the stand with some very obvious crocodile tears?

• IMO if in 2010 O'Kelly was genuinely triggered by that blue ribbon or thoughts of what happened to Teresa Halbach, he would not have been able to so coldly and calmly sit beside the ribbon AND a picture of Teresa on May 12, 2006, forcing a lonely and scared developmentally disabled child client into admitting and describing Teresa being violently assaulted and killed. Even directing him to draw a picture of it. All without showing any emotion! Well, other than a smug satisfied look on O'Kelly's face when Brendan finally stopped resisting him. The ribbon and his tears were both props. The ribbon was a prop for O'Kelly to manipulate a child; and later, his tears were a prop to evoke sympathy by manipulating focus away from his predatory conduct: "Look, I'm crying about the prop I commissioned! It's evoking emotion in me! I must be human!" It's truly impressive to think that in a case with figures like Creep Kratz and Cat-Call-Kachinsky, O'Kelly was SUCCESSFULLY auditioning for the title of "most shit human being in the room." That takes some skill, even for a scam artist like him.

• O'Kelly charged Wisconsin for $7,000 for his time on the Dassey case. According to Ferak, public records from Manitowoc County PDO reveal he was paid $5,519. I'm sure O'Kelly was perfectly happy to act on his hatred of the Avery family and bolster the state's prosecution of Steven Avery. And Kachinsky (who made $9,749) said hiring O'Kelly was his worst mistake, and believed his $5,519 take was too high a price for the "services" rendered (See Ferak article: "Kachinsky, O'Kelly paid $15K in Dassey defense). Brendan NEVER had a fair shot in the system when he was being pressured by police without counsel and then "defended" by incompetent or malicious counsel / investigators. Unfortunately, Brendan is not the only child who the system failed in this case. Blaine Dassey, Brendan's brother, was suspected by police to be a victim of Kornely (his boss). But rather than treat him as a potential victim, police FURTHER victimized Blaine by intimidating and pressuring him to change his statements about the fire. And the computer from Bobby's room contained disturbing and illegal evidence of child predation, including repeated searches for images of CSAM and instant messages from someone (identifying themselves as Bobby) seeking to exploit underage girls over webcam. And instead of former child crimes investigators / prosecutors identifying victims and contacting their families, the evidence was tucked away in a desk drawer, and the PC was secretly returned to the Dassey household, thereby enabling a sex predator still free in the community.

In Summary: Both the ribbon and O'Kelly's tears were props for manipulation

• On May 12, 2006, O'Kelly sat across from an isolated, terrified 16 year old intellectually disabled kid (from a gene pool he wanted to end) and presented him with a Blue Ribbon and a photo of Teresa (and other props) in order to manipulate and pressure him to admit guilt against his own wishes. But on that day, neither the photo of Teresa or the blue ribbon moved O'Kelly to tears, not even when he was using those props to violate the rights of his child client and force him to incriminate himself in violent crimes. No. O'Kelly was only moved to tears by that blue ribbon years later ... when he was on the stand under oath having his personal animus and violation of Brendan's rights exposed to an audience, cameras and judge.

• If that damn blue ribbon caused such a strong reaction during the 2010 post conviction hearing, why didn't O'Kelly have an even stronger reaction when he was actually sitting and looking at the ribbon and a photo of Teresa in 2006 while pressuring Brendan to describe and draw depictions of crimes being committed against her? Because O'Kelly's tears in 2010 weren't for Teresa or even for the ribbon. They were for himself. To manipulate and garner sympathy for himself after being forced to read evidence into the record of his disturbing animus (ending the "evil" family gene pool) and scheming to betray Brendan's rights. That looked ... well ... evil. So he desperately tried to paint himself as "imperfect but human" rather than was the record now suggested - he was imperfect inhuman scum.

• O'Kelly knew just how evil his predatory behavior was. Brendan was a developmentally disabled, highly suggestible child client. O'Kelly was required to adhere to the same ethical standards as Kachinsky. Brendan was to be presumed innocent and in control of his own defense. But O'Kelly harbored intense personal animus and malice towards Brendan and his family, and thought him a guilty kid without a conscience. So O'Kelly isolated him, lied to him, threatened him, denied him client autonomy, and worked to bolster the state's case against Steven even if it happened to further incriminate Brendan. Worse, O'Kelly got paid THOUSANDS to do this. It was predatory and exploitative, and he knew it. So IMO his tears were a panic response to that exposure, and not genuine emotion or grief. Kind of like how the blue ribbon was a calculated prop made for Brendan's manipulation, and not a genuine memorial creation or gesture.