Steven Avery

The Crime

On July 29, 1985, at approximately 3:50 p.m., Penny Ann Beernsten was out running along the Lake Michigan shoreline and was apprehended by an unknown man who forced her into a wooded area and sexually assaulted her.

The Investigation 

Based on a physical description of Ms. Beernsten’s attacker, police provided a photo array of nine men. Ms. Beernsten selected the photograph of Steven Avery, who was arrested the following day.

The Trial

At trial, Ms. Beernsten identified Mr. Avery as her attacker. A state forensic examiner testified that a hair recovered from a shirt of Mr. Avery’s was consistent with Ms. Beernsten’s hair, but did not present qualifying information about the limitations of hair microscopy.

Mr. Avery presented 16 alibi witnesses, including the clerk of a store in Green Bay, Wisconsin, who recalled Mr. Avery, accompanied by his wife and five children, buying paint from the store. A checkout tape put the purchase at 5:13 p.m. Ms. Beernsten put the attack at 3:50 p.m. and estimated it lasted 15 minutes, which meant that Mr. Avery would have had to leave the scene of the attack, walk a mile to the nearest parking area, drive home, load his family into the car, and drive 45 miles in just over an hour.

The jury deliberated for only four hours and convicted Mr. Avery almost exclusively on the eyewitness account, on Dec. 14, 1985. He was sentenced to 32 years in prison.

The Exoneration

After losing several appeals, a petition for DNA testing was granted in 1995 and showed that scrapings taken of Ms. Beernsten’s fingernails contained the DNA of an unknown person. The tests were unable to eliminate Mr. Avery, however, and a motion for a new trial was denied.

In April of 2002, attorneys for the Wisconsin Innocence Project obtained a court order for DNA testing of 13 hairs recovered from Ms. Beernsten at the time of the crime. The state crime laboratory reported that, using the FBI DNA database, it had linked a hair to Gregory Allen, a convicted felon who bore a striking resemblance to Mr. Avery.  Mr. Allen was then serving a 60-year prison term for a sexual assault in Green Bay that occurred after the attack on Ms. Beernsten.

On Sept. 11, 2003, a request brought by the Manitowoc District Attorney’s Office and the Wisconsin Innocence Project to dismiss the charges was granted and Mr. Avery was released.

Life After Exoneration

In 2005, with support from Ms. Beernsten and Mr. Avery, the Wisconsin Department of Justice adopted a model eyewitness identification protocol.

On Oct. 31, 2005, 25-year-old Teresa Halbach was murdered. Mr. Avery and his nephew were convicted in separate trials and were both sentenced to life in prison.