So what evidence did they have that could possibly eradicate the reasonable doubt?
Take for example - the lack of blood in the garage and the bedroom?
If that was where the stabbing and shooting took place. Where was the blood?
Bedroom use was not argued in Avery's case. They dropped first-degree sexual assault and kidnapping charges. Effectively it came down to almost something like - there might be a question where exactly (in which corner) the murder happened, but with all the bones, items, bullets and stuff - there is little doubt it was around that property. Plus accused had enough time to clean, however poorly, after his deeds.
Either the Avery losses cleaning skills of Dexter but somehow forgot to clean off his own DNA from the keyfob. or the prosecution got that 100% wrong and didn't happen there.
Or they had the foresight of burning the body but not the foresight to crush the car.
He was actually found not guilty on count of mutilating a corpse but I think that was the prosecution point almost - that he wiped the key but left his DNA on it in process. You know, IQ in low 70ies and all... profile of a half wit ef up criminal - the guy that would try to move bones out of the pit, but couldn't do all of it properly, didn't crash the car in the crasher available to him but disguised it, it stayed with jury even if they couldn't charge him for it.
And how does anyone know she was shot? I thought her body was burnt down to just a shin. There was no autopsy to confirm the cause of death, the cause of death put forward is speculation.
Pathologist found markings consistent with high velocity gun wounds IIRC.
There is too much reasonable doubt.
I agree. But here's what we didn't see (I'm just chucking these out from recent browsing about memory and links, so might be highly inaccurate):
Although defence argued that the blood DNA inside RAV4 was from the vile in Lenk's possession - not only they failed to disprove EDTA test but weirdly, if I read correctly, what we don't see on TV is that they also fail to prove that the hole in the vial was not part of a standard blood evidence procedure as piercing the tops of blood tubes was considered to be standard practice while filling them. As for broken seal on evidence - members of Avery's defense team recorded breaking into the package during Avery's appeal against his rape conviction. More importantly - Avery's DNA from sweat was also found on and under RAV4's hood and around hood latch (not shown in documentary at all). The evidence conclusively shown that Steven Avery's hand was under the hood while the accused insisted he never touched the victims car.
Bullet in the garage, although defence tried to prove it was planted afterwards, due to lack of any blood stains or splatter, was undeniably from Avery's rifle. Defence could succeed in disproving that the victim was killed inside of the garage, but couldn't prove that she was not shot or wounded with his gun, obviously the weapon would have his fingerprints, count of illegally possessing a firearm confirmed in the process.
The victim had a history of minor harassment from Avery and on that day he used fake name to schedule the appointment and phone records shown that he called her repeatedly using *67 to hide his number.
Along with the RAV4 key wiped from victims DNA (but contaminated with his sweat), police also found handcuffs and leg irons (not shown in documentary) and few other things that were wiped and free of anyone's DNA. You would think lack of DNA is good, but apparently...
Victim's phone, camera and PDA were found in Avery's barrel close to home, bones found elsewhere had burned tyre markings on them, the only place they found similar accelerant material was the fire pit next to his house and they also found 5 gallon buckets which were used to distribute the remains around other parts of property, or something to that effect.
Prosecutors also included statements from prisoners who served time with Avery during his "rape" sentence confirming that Avery talked about and showed them diagrams of a torture chamber he planned to build when he was released. This paired with multiple testimonies of neighbours and I think also family statements, police records of animal cruelty, odd behaviour, previous misdemeanors, etc painted character profile of someone highly volatile and unstable.
And just keep in mind, that this is all one close connected rural community of people with generationally mispronounced Eastern European surnames, where things like "I believe God led me to her car that day" are taken in with teary eyes. They're all beach strolling, village meeting attending, church going landowners, "upper class working farmers" I think was the term used, and there is this "*****" lot - people that don't sound like them and live in trailers on junk yard. Where in your "community" you would be within "six degrees" of someone meeting James Cameron, they were within two degrees of someone who had a story about this family, be it theft, robbery or running onto the road with ahem... junk in their hand. And there they were, looking with horror at the hard evidence and records of all of those urban myths being true, cats burning, bars trashed for handful of change, members of family being molested and the like. It's a classic "do not want"/"now or never" scenario. And with all the eyes of the world and media vans firmly on them, they still decided to purge and nuke from orbit.
