Making a Murderer: The Fight Continues

The zeitgeist-grabbing docu-series returns to offer fans a glimpse of the now-notorious Steven Avery’s ongoing struggle for freedom

When filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi set out to make a documentary series about Steven Avery, a man falsely convicted of sexual assault and attempted murder, who after his release from prison was accused of the brutal murder of a young woman and consequently sentenced to life behind bars, the two had no idea what kind of attention their project would gather.

“We had our viewers in mind the whole time that we were making part one,” says Demos. “You haven’t met them yet, you haven’t heard from them yet—they may or may not even exist—but you’re speaking to them for years. To finally put it all together and to share it, that alone was incredibly rewarding. But then to have so many people respond to it—it was a very encouraging moment about humanity, to believe that people would care and that in fact they did.”

The 10-episode series, which was released in 2015, garnered accolades from Emmys to the Producers Guild Award, and a massive fanbase that warranted a continuation of the story. After securing access to some new key players, Demos and Ricciardi started production on the second season in the summer of 2016.

While the two filmmakers had been able to assemble the first series in total anonymity for a period of nearly 10 years, circumstances were very different for the follow-up. “In part one, we were graduate students, we didn’t have a car, we didn’t own a camera. Our only asset was time and the ability to borrow money from our student loans,” says Demos. “We were two female film students making a silly project and it was much easier to be invisible. You could use the fact that people didn’t take you seriously to your advantage.”

By the time they returned to documenting the Avery story, they were far from the only ones following the case. “We were documenting a story that you could read about online every day,” says Demos. “Everybody has an opinion about it, everybody had an opinion about us, so part of being a creative is needing to block out all that noise and focus on the work.”

It is the acknowledgement of that “noise”—i.e. a montage of news clips—that kicks off the second season. But we quickly return to the nail-biting predicament of whether or not Steven Avery was framed by law enforcement for the murder of Teresa Halbach. At the end of part one, an incarcerated Avery vows that he will continue to fight. “Law enforcement keeps taking his life and he wants it back,” says Ricciardi. “Early in part two, we learn that Steven was pursuing a post-conviction attorney, so we meet a new player, Kathleen Zellner, who’s the winningest private post-conviction attorney in the United States.”

We also follow Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, who are representing Steven’s nephew Brendan Dassey, who confessed to assisting Avery in the murder, in what many argue is a coerced statement. “At the end of part one Brendan has a case that’s pending in the federal court and so when we catch up with Laura and Steve, we’re learning about the status of that case and awaiting a decision,” says Ricciardi.While Avery and Dassey’s families continue to be at the centre of the documentary series, Teresa Halbach’s family remains largely absent, other than in available news footage. “We reached out to the Halbach’s and while Teresa’s family members declined to participate, for reasons we understand and respect, we were fortunate enough to have a college friend of Teresa’s sit down with us,” says Ricciardi. “He was incredibly thoughtful and gracious and shared some archival material with us of Teresa, which was really nice because we certainly wanted to include her in the story.”

Demos and Ricciardi had wished to include more of the Halbachs’ side in their series. The credits of the second part even include a card with people to whom the filmmakers reached out, without success. “Since the launch of the first season we’ve talked about how important we thought it was to include a range of views in the story because, just by the very nature of these cases, so many people are affected by what happened,” says Ricciardi. “It’s not just the person who stands accused, it’s not just the people who’ve lost someone. Everyone who’s involved is impacted by it. So we thought by including the card, we could make explicit our effort to include a range of voices.”

Where the second season of Making a Murderer comes to a head, life certainly doesn’t. Neither Demos nor Ricciardi rule out another season of the series, but hope viewers will be satisfied, at least temporarily, by the next part of Avery’s trajectory. “It’s real-life, so it’s true that things don’t just end,” says Demos. “We do feel like there’s an arc to this season. It’s not a total resolution, it’s open ended and there’s a potential for more, but I think it will be a fairly defined arc for viewers.”

Season 2 of Making a Murderer is available on Netflix October 19th