Two sides of the story have spoken.
As always with any ‘Making A Murderer’ story, if you haven’t seen the Netflix documentary then consider this to be your spoiler alert warning.
Still with us? You probably know that it has been a mixed week for Steven Avery in his appeal to be exonerated for the ’05 murder of Teresa Halbach.
New legal representation and a reinvigorated commitment for justice has been met with the damning fact that the Governor of Wisconsin seems committed to upholding the August 2011 conviction that was made by a three-judge panel of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
One of the most contentious issues of the case has surrounded the make-up of the jury panel in Steven’s case. Avery has now claimed that his jury was tainted in a petition that was signed on January 7, one day before Kathleen Zellner announced that she would represent him.
It’s very likely that Carl Wardman is the juror in question because Avery says that he (C.W) had “intimidated fellow jurors and contributed to the violation” and that “juror C.W. made repeated remarks that Avery was FUCKING GUILTY”.
The website onmilwaukee.com have also revealed that Wardman acted as a juror in Avery’s case while also staying on in his role as a volunteer for the Manitowoc sheriff’s department.
Wardman’s son, Chris, also worked as a Manitowoc County jail supervisor during the time of Avery’s conviction.
Avery’s latest petition claims that Wardman ‘tainted’ the jury pool because he had “preconceived guilt of Avery”. The Daily Beast have since contacted Wardman for a statement about these allegations and he said that “nobody got bullied” and he denies any claims of wrong doing.
Staying with the case but on a very different tangent, Steven Avery’s ex-fiancee Jodi Stachowski has said that Avery is guilty of killing photographer Teresa Halbach.
Speaking with Nancy Grace, Stachowski says that Avery is “a monster”, that he “beat her all the time”. She claims that he developed a violent attitude towards women as soon as he was released from prison in ’85 after being wrongfully convicted for sexual assault.
“He told me once, all bitches owe him, because the one that sent him to prison the first time”. When asked if Avery was guilty, she had this to say “Yes, I do. Because he threatened to kill me and my family and a friend of mine.”
Stachowski also claims that she purposely ate rat poison just so she could get away from him and that Avery threatened to throw a hairdryer into the bathtub while she was in it.
The pair were engaged when Avery was arrested on suspicion of killing Halbach in 2005 but broke up before his 2007 conviction. Stachowski’s interview comes one day after Avery filed his appeal.
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