–Jason actually went to the theater and saw Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens and…well, he didn’t hate it. That’s something, at least! Bobby questions him to find out what he liked and didn’t like about the movie.
–Sandy Hook massacre denying professor is fired by his university. We give our thoughts on the news, including our surprise at the reasons he was terminated.
–M. Night Shyamalan is rebooting Tales From the Crypt to air it on TNT this Fall. Will it be self-contained episodes, or a new anthology series? And what will become of the great Cryptkeeper?!?
–We spend the rest of the show talking about the Netflix documentary series, “Making A Murderer,” which has become quite the pop culture sensation. We give our thoughts on whether or not we think Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey are guilty of the crime, if we think they had a fair trial, and get into the ins and outs of a lot of the evidence showcased in the series, other evidence that wasn’t, and more! We also talk about the nature of documentaries, the agendas they have, and how it can be tough to take them at face value sometimes. There is lots of feedback from the chat room, which leads to a variety of other angles, including ruminations on the criminal justice system itself, and, while we probably didn’t touch on everything, we tried our best to cover the most relevant information.
Listen: http://www.strangefrequenciesradio.net/Shows/sfr_show358_full.mp3
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Strange Frequencies Radio 
Your Wisconsin accent are AWFUL, dontchyaknow! 🙂 Gotta go for deeper, narrower vowels if that makes sense. Broader vowels like ah sounds turn into oo or eh. Don’t becomes doon’t, etc, etc.
I was talking to an acquaintance of mine about this show. I grew up near Chicago and she grew up just outside of Manitowoc County where this all happened. Culturally, we probably had almost identical experiences, but it’s worth remembering that Wisconsin has a weird relationship with Chicago- the whole southern half of the state is full of what are practically resort towns; all the wealthier people in Chicago buy, rent, or just vacation in Wisconsin so during the summer there’s booming business and a chunk of locals are getting rich off of the seasonal Chicagoans. Because of it there’s huge economic disparity; you’ve got people who are living extremely comfortable, relatively wealthy lives from serving the vacationers, and the extremely poor, undereducated factory workers, farmers, and junkers like the Averys. Good people or not, class probably played into this, since the victim was a well-to-do woman whose husband owned a business.
For the record, I think Stephen Avery is complete scum, and I think he probably killed her (he’s an idiot, I bet he honestly thought he now had friends in high places and being exonerated for rape would keep people from believing he would murder someone, remember his disbelief and betrayal that the guy at the head of the Avery Bill wouldn’t just jump to his defense and believe he’s innocent?) but I would not have been able to find him guilty if I were on the jury. I do think the police tampered with the evidence. The sad thing is, had they just kept their grubby paws off, we might actually know for sure if he was truly guilty or not and the verdict wouldn’t be in question.
What is the best evidence that police tampered with evidence?
In my opinion, the broken seal on the blood evidence (I’m not law enforcement but I’m assuming that if testing were done a new seal with the date and everything would be applied, not scotch tape) and keys appearing from nowhere and being found by local cops the moment they aren’t being babysat after third party law enforcement had already searched the area several times. But, I’m biased- I know the cops in my home town were dirty, and Avery’s town just feels exactly like my home town.
I’m discounting the blood smear near the ignition entirely though because I myself own work gloves with leather or rubberized palms but are fabric on the sides and back- in my opinion, it’s just as likely that Avery bled through the fabric of his gloves (explaining why there would be blood but no prints) as it is that cops planted the blood, if not more likely. The unexplainable broken seal on the evidence means more to me than the actual presence of his blood.
My theory is that Avery did it, but not how the nephew was coerced into explaining it, and that cops “helped things along” when they shouldn’t have even touched the case and ended up muddying the waters entirely. But again, reasonable doubt. I would not have been able to find him guilty.
That’s an interesting point about the gloves, I haven’t seen anyone else consider that.
I definitely teeter on the edge a bit regarding the blood evidence and key. On the one hand, yes, it’s suspicious as hell to find the key under those circumstances, and for the seal on the blood vial to be tampered with at some point. But that’s all I have is a bit of suspicion. The key had Avery’s sweat DNA on it, at least according to the prosecutor, and there’s no indication the police had the ability to plant his sweat on the key (or under the hood latch, for that matter). The blood vial seal was broken, yes, but no one can say when. Since it was from his rape trial two decades earlier, it’s quite possible it happened back then. Plus, no EDTA preservative was found in Avery’s blood taken from multiple places in and around Halbach’s car. But, I will say this: even with that being said, I’m still suspicious!
So, like you, I do think he did it, and it’s also quite possible I may have voted “not guilty” at the trial. I certainly would have had I believed that even one piece of evidence was planted. That I can say for sure. However, I’m always hesitant to say what I would or would not have done as a jury member since all I know is taken from the documentary and online articles, and can never really know what it was like to hear it during the trial.
I’m better off speculating, and doing bad Wisconsin accents than pretending I am sure about anything in this case, haha.
Anyway, great discussion, thanks!