“Well I can tell you when I want to know what is going on in Avery and Dassey’s cases, I go to your articles. So for any of you out there listening, John Ferak is the person you need to read.” – Beth Karas, nationally recognized broadcast journalist, legal analyst and consultant.
This month’s Manitowoc County Courthouse filing by Steven Avery’s exoneration lawyer, Kathleen Zellner – 18 months in the making – has drawn a flood of reaction across the globe and rekindled interest in the case made famous by the Emmy-award winning documentary “Making a Murderer.”
Mostly, I’m the one writing, researching and reporting on these developments. But not always. Last week, Beth Karas tracked me down for an interview. Given that Karas has a exemplary reputation as a broadcast journalist and former District Attorney in New York City, I was more than willing to oblige and share my insights about Zellner’s monster 1,250-page Post-Conviction Motion.
Karas does her legal homework. She is already quite familiar with the Teresa Halbach murder case and the key people: Ken Kratz, Jerry Buting, Dean Strang, Mark Wiegert, Tom Fassbender, etc.
To hear the full unedited interview, please use this link: http://bit.ly/2rPF2Wy
One side note: Karas has read one of my four true-crime books, offering a glowing assessment of my best-selling 2016 work for Colorado-based WildBlue Press: FAILURE OF JUSTICE: wbp.bz/foj
For those of you who may want to jump around our Steven Avery podcast interview, here are the primary questions Karas posed to me during our taped interview from last week:
7-minute mark: “Let’s get to the filing from June 7, 2017, which is the mega filing by Avery’s attorney Kathleen Zellner. Have you had a chance to read this?”
8:30 mark: “Are you working on any other stories or is this it?
10:45 mark: “Kathleen Zellner … she takes on the two defense attorneys who kind of rose to celebrity status after the Netflix series, Dean Strang and Jerry Buting. But they don’t seem to be that troubled by it, correct?”
12:10 mark: “She names a killer. She also goes after the police so she does say there is some police corruption though not everything that was alleged at the trial by Strang and Buting. What did she say about the planted blood?”
14:02 mark: “Another point was that key, that single key to her car. She raises something really interesting about that key?”
15:50 mark: “There’s video with Teresa Halbach’s ex-boyfriend, with a key and the lanyard is in the background. And that was video shot before her car was found?”
19-minute mark: “At trial, it was put forth that Teresa Halbach was probably shot in the head. And Zellner takes issue with that too, right?”
21:50 mark: “She also attacked the prosecution, Ken Kratz, a lot of people have attacked him just because of his conduct afterwards, which got him sanctioned. But also Tom Fassbender of the Wisconsin Department of Justice and Mark Wiegert of Calumet County … Regarding the police do you recall what she has to say about Wiegert and Fassbender?”
24:40 mark: “Is it his or her blood in the back of the SUV?”
26:08 mark: “So she has a totally different scenario for how the murder happened and she says it’s Ryan Hillegas … He was an ex-boyfriend, jealous, controlling, what was the deal?”
30:!5 mark: “Didn’t Zellner also deal with Teresa Halbach’s cell phone and make an allegation about Hillegas, the ex-boyfriend, having knowing her password, or being able to delete messages or something?”
32:32 mark: “But why would he kill her?”
34:08 mark: “Has he reacted at all to the allegation that he’s killer?”
35:20 mark: “There has been some reaction from law enforcement, from the prosecution, right? I can’t imagine they’ve digested it in detail, but they’ve made some blanket statements, right?”
37:25 mark: “So what’s the next step? The State has to respond to this motion?”
39:02 mark: “Let me ask you, what’s going on with Brendan Dassey’s case?”
41 minute mark: Beth Karas closing down her show: “Well I know that I am going to keep on following your stories and staying in touch with you, John Ferak, because you are the man who knows this case the best certainly of all the journalists I know that are following it.”
For more about Beth Karas, visit www.bethkaras.com/about-beth-karas/.
True Crime Author John Ferak 