Inmate Confessed to ‘Making a Murderer’ Homicide, Filmmaker Claims

Steven Avery (R) in the Netflix original documentary series "Making a Murderer." Netflix via AP

A documentary director says that an inmate has confessed to killing Teresa Halbach, whose homicide was detailed in the popular Netflix true crime documentary “Making a Murderer.”

Brandon Dassey and Steven Avery are in prison for Halbach’s death. Both have repeatedly insisted that they’re innocent.

Shawn Rech, director of “Convicting a Murderer,” which has not been released yet, said that an inmate the producers spoke to confessed to killing Halbach.

“We haven’t confirmed the legitimacy of the confession, but seeing as it was given by a notable convicted murderer from Wisconsin, we feel responsible to deliver any and all possible evidence to law enforcement and legal teams,” he told Newsweek.

“Having been in production for 20 months, we’ve uncovered an unfathomable amount of information and evidence that is leading us to the truth. Our investigation does not end here.”

Rech said that the inmate who made the confession was not one of the men in prison for Halbach’s killing.

Ken Kratz, a former district attorney who prosecuted Avery, reacted to Rech’s statement on Twitter. “To be clear, like everyone else, this is news to me. I have NO COMMENT until I see the details,” he said.

Rech said earlier this year that “Convicting a Murderer,” which is currently in post-production, is meant to be a sequel to “Making a Murderer” and he wanted to include information that the original series didn’t have.

“After watching the series I was angry with law enforcement, and even embarrassed as an American because of what appeared to have happened to Steven and Brendan. But after doing a little bit of follow-up research I learned that not only did I not have the whole story, but I was misled by the series. And I’m saying this as a fan, not as an established documentary filmmaker,” he told Newsweek in January.

Rech also spoke to Heavy, confirming what he told Newsweek about the confession. Avery’s lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, told the outlet that she obtained a handwritten confession she is attempting to verify. Investigators working for her are probing the background of the individual, she said.

Zellner said earlier this month that someone was offering $100,000 for information leading to the “real killer.”

“The inmate’s name is familiar to us but I do not want to release it yet. We were contacted a week ago by the inmate. He mailed the handwritten confession to us before he contacted the production company. The confession occurred solely because of our 100k reward offer and had nothing to do with the production company. When we did not immediately respond to this person he called the production company,” Zellner’s firm said in a statement obtained by the outlet.

Zellner took to Twitter to add: “We received the handwritten confession on Saturday. It is worthless unless it is corroborated.”