Candace Owens and Brandon Tatum expose Convicting a Murderer’s manipulation of Stephen Avery’s case, playing prison call audio where Avery and his family mock Teresa Halbach’s burned remains and joke about her death. Prosecutors subpoenaed documentary makers Ricciardi and Demos in 2006 for suspected collusion, though they later denied advocacy. Supporters like Stacy Seabrook (17 songs since 2016) and Mark Hoddenut fund $100K billboards, ignoring Avery’s pedophilia and threats to his ex-wife via child messages. The episode reveals how confirmation bias and emotional storytelling overshadowed evidence, leaving Halbach’s family in doubt while exploiting public sympathy for profit. [Automatically generated summary]
The season finale of Convicting a Murderer premiered last night.
So today I am joined by my friend and former police officer, Brandon Tatum, to discuss the finale.
And Brandon, I think before we even get into the content of this episode, we have to start with the opening of this episode, which is my favorite thing ever.
The fandom surrounding Stephen Avery, this wonderful musician, this beautiful song that this man created because he believed in Stephen Avery's innocence.
Well, let's roll the tape.
unidentified
So let's keep talking about Avery Yeah, let's keep talking till he's set free Oh, you just listen, I think you'll see Why it matters Really matters Put aside the documentary My name's Stacy Seabrook and I'm from Vancouver, from British Columbia, Canada.
And I've been following the case since 2015.
Yeah, January 2016 really.
And since then I've written about 17 songs just Making a Murderer, Stephen Avery, Brendan Dassey related.
I really do, I think it matters This documentary not only resonated in America, this was without a doubt an international success.
There were pockets of the world that really, until this day, are still very much active in posting about the case.
There are supporters of Stephen Avery and Brennan Dassey that are hosting rallies, which, by the way, are still going on in front of Manitowoc Courthouse nearly eight years later.
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Stephen Avery will call and they'll all sort of pass the phone around like he's a celebrity.
Some of those supporters are actually traveling from thousands of miles away.
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Think about that. I've traveled from Galashiels in the Scottish Borders.
A train up to Edinburgh, a flight from Edinburgh to London, the City of London Airport to Heathrow by public transport, then another plane from Heathrow to Chicago and came here.
So it's definitely been planes, trains and automobiles.
Then there are the supporters who pay for billboards all around Wisconsin offering $100,000 for more information leading to the arrest of Teresa Halbach's murderer.
It's really important to note here that that $100,000 is coming from the supporters' own bank accounts.
unidentified
They're willing to pay that.
I'm here to support Stephen and Brendan and all their families as well as to make sure justice is brought to this case.
They are doing too much. I am convinced people are crazy.
I don't care if the man was innocent or not in your mind, who in their right mind would spend thousands of dollars to go and protest on the side of the road somewhere in Wisconsin.
Yeah, I was really interested, first and foremost, just in the psychology of this.
And over and over again, as we were pulling things together and trying to understand how it is that despite so much overwhelming evidence, even now, a lot of people have dropped off now and they're not believing he's innocent.
Because to be fair, Netflix presented a really good story.
They convinced people because they omitted certain truths.
But now, there are still people that are holding on, sending me mean tweets right now.
He's innocent. He's innocent.
And you just have to wonder, how do you get to this part?
How do you convince yourself psychologically that this person who is so disgusting, so verifiably disgusting in so many different ways and has been his entire life from juvie to now is actually a victim?
So everything that they look at They're going to interpret it to confirm what they believe.
Same thing with people wearing masks.
I see people wearing masks at the airport today.
What in the world make you still wear a mask?
It's that they have built this reality that it makes sense.
And when they find out it doesn't make sense, they have to unravel everything that they are, all of what they represent, and they are not willing to do that.
So instead of saying, you know what, I was wrong and I'm embarrassed because I flew all the way from Australia, spent thousands of dollars to sit on the side to talk to a dude on a phone from a jail cell.
Instead of admitting that they were wrong about that, they have to double down.
And they have created a delusion and a reality that is never going to change.
Jesus Christ could come down from heaven and say, He's guilty.
They will not believe it.
They do not care.
And that's the way people operate, unfortunately, in psychology of, I would argue that people that have an emptiness inside of them, and this is consistent with what they do.
Like, is there a shortage of good men in the world that you are engaged to a potential murderer who's abusive through jailhouse letters, and these women are willing to still deal with that drama?
That's crazy to me.
He can't even touch you. He can't even really talk to you whenever you want him to, and they're still dealing with the drama.
They're trying to play Captain Savor, build a bear, or whatever they're doing with these men.
And they are trying to get the worst man on planet Earth, potentially, that has done the most heinous crime ever and say, look at me, I can't even fix him.
I mean, I'm not going to say God couldn't fix him, but...
God is working on him.
He ain't got it yet. And somehow these women think they're going to fix this guy.
It's crazy because, like you said, it's not the first time that this has happened.
People that have done heinous crimes, documented, in many cases they've admitted to, there's tapes, there's records, and women still want to go, and they probably get conjugal visits, they still go and lay up with these men, knowing they have 100 wives in prison.
And they still do it.
It's actually comical to a certain degree.
If it wasn't so sad, I would probably laugh the rest of the episode about it.
Yeah, the craziest thing about that is that they're on a jailhouse call, which they know is recorded.
So if you are as brazen as they appear to be, which means you're going to joke about potentially this woman's muscle, even if Stephen Avery is remaining and he didn't do it, Whoever he think did it, the girl's dead body is still there and there's pieces of her body that a normal person wouldn't make fun of.
Because you would still feel sorry for her, even if you didn't do it.
You'd be like, well, it's still sad somebody killed her and pieces of her muscle is found on my property.
I still feel some type of weight on a recorded jailhouse call.
I mean, the audacity and the brazenness of the conversation is telling.
Them joking about sexual stuff.
Indicates to me that maybe this is a consistent thing.
This is how he was raised. His daddy is just as nasty and dirty and sexualized as he is to find that, you know, potential muscle from a person's genitalia is somehow comical.
Right. And so I think it speaks in volumes to a certain degree.
If somebody is looking at this to want to really evaluate what kind of people we're dealing with, I think a rational person would make fun of that And they definitely wouldn't do it on a recorded phone call.
Right. And when you go through just the criminal history of all of the Avery clan, there's so many instances of pedophilia, sexual deviancy.
I mean, we talked in previous episodes about just his porn collection, how he so comfortably says, oh, you know, I was just in the room watching some porn.
He's clearly a porn ad, doesn't even view it as anything weird.
And those sorts of things can create sexual deviancy down the line.
And so when I hear that prison phone call, first and foremost, if you're still part of the deluded few that believe that he is innocent, when you find out that they have found muscle on your property, you'd be incredulous.
When you told your dad, he'd be equally as incredulous.
How did that get there? What do you mean?
How could that possibly have gotten there?
What's going on here? You're not just going to be like, oh, did you find a piece of her C word?
That's not the normal behavior of somebody who's innocent.
It's just basically you're saying to your dad like, all right, we got like...
You know, a little more to deal with here because they've got something concrete and your dad is basically mocking it.
And so it's super disturbing to hear that phone call and it's just also disturbing to realize they're talking about someone that they knew was dead.
They knew was dead. They knew that she had died violently.
And they are mocking her and talking about her private areas in such a derogatory manner.
Definitely one of the grossest prison calls that I've heard.
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We also have this exclusive audio clip, and this was something that we didn't actually include in the docu-series, and this is Ma.
So just to be clear, Ma is Dolores Avery.
She was just on the phone call that you just heard.
She was also cackling and laughing as she was talking to both of them at the same time.
So really good people, and they're going to keep continuing to be good people in this clip.
unidentified
Take a listen. Yeah, because it sounds like if they get you for murder...
You don't get that money. Horror bucks get it or whatever her name is.
Pick a member. I don't know where she got that from because I didn't see a single black person in the whole city by the time I've been watching the episode.
And apparently the backstory of that is, you know, people were kind of trying to say where they saw Teresa and so many conspiracies are being shrewd.
And so I'm like, oh, I saw her at a gas station with a black guy.
And so she's kind of running with that.
And this is the way that she speaks about black people.
You know, not exactly a surprise.
I always say, comment, people that use these kinds of words and people that are overtly racist are always the most ignorant people in In society, not someone that I would ever feel threatened by, like Dolores, you know what I mean?
But it's just stunning because when you read these Reddit feeds, people were convinced by the Netflix doc that this was like a close-knit, which they are close-knit, they're thicker than thieves, but like loving family, right?
This poor family just trying to get their lives back together.
The ma, the pa, they care so much about their son.
How can this be happening again and again?
Just the complete wrong picture of who the Avery clan actually is.
And I think it's based in a lot of delusion because, like I said, I watched the original documentary.
And if you watch it and you have any type of intelligence, you can tell that there's something not right.
There's no way a person gets that deep in the trial, gets convicted by his peers, and there's nothing there.
People just don't do that.
Innocent people just don't go down that path.
And I've always had this idea, being a former police officer, is that normally people are wrongly convicted.
A lot of times those people are wrongly convicted of that case or maybe they just can't find enough evidence for them, but they probably did other stuff.
It's not like some random person living wholesome their whole life and then they get caught up in something.
A lot of times as people live in a degenerate life and that degeneracy lead them to a place that they probably should have never been and they got caught up in something.
And the same thing about Stephen Avery.
Like, oh, he was just so innocent.
He did 16 years.
He was going to do 30-something years in prison.
But if you look at his history, he had been doing things that he probably should have went to prison for a long time ago.
He had potentially been sexually assaulting people long before that.
Maybe that's not even recorded.
And so when you see that and you watch the documentary, you use your common sense, you say, yeah, it is compelling to believe that he may be innocent based on the documentary, but use common sense.
It's always two sides to the story.
Documentaries like that one normally take a side.
So you understand that they're taking a side.
There has to be another side.
And most people don't get caught up like this and get so deep into a trial after being wrongly convicted the first time.
It has to be something there.
But these people are operating in confirmation bias.
So they will look at anything that leads down the path of confirming what they believe and not looking at the truth at all.
Well, speaking of choosing sides, the documentary makers very clearly had their angle, and yet they pretended they didn't when they did their press tour, and they went around and they told people, no, no, no, no, we just wanted to tell the story.
We weren't omitting certain things for any reason whatsoever.
So let's formally debunk that and listen to what they say in their words versus what they say in prison calls to Stephen Avery himself.
unidentified
Take a listen. We did not assume...
An advocacy role here.
You know, we were not interested in having an impact.
In fact, we worked very hard not to have an impact on the cases.
They came here to follow the story wherever it may lead.
In the very first interview that the filmmakers did with Steven, Laura Ricciardi tells him that the reason that she wants to do the film is because she believes that it will help him in some way.
unidentified
Well, I hope you can remain strong and hopeful in there.
I hope that what I'm doing with the film helps in some way.
I really believe that it will, and that's why I want to do it.
But yet they still claimed journalistic privilege in 2006 after the prosecutor subpoenaed them for their footage because he suspected that they were, in fact, giving information to Stephen Avery's attorneys.
unidentified
We had to hire a lawyer and try to essentially quash that subpoena.
I want to talk about the justice system being corrupt.
It's realizing that these two documentary makers basically got away with everything.
You go back and you really understand what happened to these police officers, how their lives were ruined because of a documentary, how they sought to prove that they were defamed in this documentary, they lost.
How they sought to prove that these women were on a press tour saying...
We are not journalists, documentary makers, and then present the exact opposite evidence to the court, and the court just accepted that they were flip-flopping on that narrative.
And that's really the place that I see the most injustice happening in the court system, is just the fact that Netflix and these documentary makers got away with it.
Later on in this episode, we show Netflix's emails that they, even though they said they had nothing to do with the documentary, they received awards for editing.
Actually, Netflix received awards for editing.
They were sending emails saying, you know, we want the family to look close-knit.
We want this person, like, really directing it like it was a play.
And no consequences for Netflix, no consequences for a documentary maker other than making,
you know, having millions of people watch it and obviously making a ton of money.
So, of course, they want to make him look good because he's the underdog.
Everybody wanted to see the underdog win.
And it plays on the emotions of the American people, all people all over the world.
Everybody wants to see the underdog win.
This was a perfect story to make an incredible amount of money.
And I don't think they cared about him no more than to tell him what he wanted to hear.
And make the documentary compelling enough so they can make a ton of money.
And I think that's all it boils down to.
And they know that people are gullible.
People are gullible to certain storylines.
And they exploited that tremendously, as I found out, you know, watching your documentary and comparing it to.
And that's all it is.
You know, of course they lied.
That's a lot of money being made.
That's a lot of popularity.
The court system, somebody knows somebody that knows somebody in that small town.
I'm pretty sure they can get away with murder just about in that town related to what they were doing.
So I'm not shocked.
I'm not surprised when it comes to these big conglomerates and them making a film and making it so global like they did that they're not going to get in trouble for it.
I think the suspension of morality for business, okay, I guess I can understand that in this capacity for Netflix because they were looking to grow their company very quickly.
But I am struck by it when it pertains to the two women.
You've got these lesbian documentary makers who essentially reburied Teresa.
Like, you know, I said it felt like they killed her in the afterlife.
I just don't know how as a woman, and I hate to say that as a woman, but I really do mean that, That you could understand, be this close to the trial, understanding exactly what happened to her, understanding that she was raped, understanding that you saw the full confession tape that you didn't show your audiences, that the 16-year-old said he just wanted to see what sex felt like, you know, that his uncle was high-fiving him and, you know, telling him, good boy, do you want to see what it feels like?
How you can know all of that, have access to all of that, understand that she was then not just, you know, raped, but she was shot, that she was burned.
And you go out and you make this documentary and you know that her family, who not only has to deal with this tremendous amount of grief, right, of losing someone that they had for 25 years who they loved more than anything, but now they have to deal with this second tidal wave of grief because people are convinced that there's some conspiracy here, that she's maybe still alive, that, you know, you guys are working with the police, that you staged this, that she never existed, however crazy it is.
Like, how do the documentary makers...
Put their head on a pillow at night.
Because that's why I always say in politics, for me, the most important thing, whether people love me or hate me, is that I can lay my head on a pillow at night and know that I told the truth, right?
Yeah, I mean, it's the type of person, you know, and I bet they're leftists, in my opinion, that they don't care about that.
It's irrelevant. You know, thinking back on it, you brought up an incredible point.
Watching the original documentary, I don't ever remember the focus being the young lady that was murdered.
No. All of it was Stephen Avery.
All of it was surrounded about was he innocent or guilty, but the horrific truth that this woman was murdered and the way she was potentially murdered.
Body burn, charge, and her bone fragments and her cameras and stuff were all burned in a barrel on his property.
He lied. People were potentially raped her and confessions.
I mean, this is, to be honest, it would have been good for her to gear the story towards the young lady who had been murdered.
That should have been the focal point.
But instead, it was the sensationalized one that's going to make everybody rich.
And these women don't care nothing about that woman.
That's my opinion. I don't know these women, but it doesn't appear that they care about that woman.
And it's very sad because there are other people involved in this that's not Stephen Avery fans that are on the other side that are just dying inside every time they see this.
And the young lady and her family was from that I think at least that town or near that town.
And they have to potentially drive by and see them still holding signs and saying that he's innocent and billboards.
It's horrific.
It reminds me a lot of the way that they did George Floyd.
And I don't want to rehash that, but imagine him having a statue somewhere and the woman that he conducted a home invasion on that was pregnant at the time.
She'd probably still have She's probably traumatized over that.
Have to drive by and see a statue of this crackhead every time she go by.
I mean, just reliving the pain is something that I think is shameful.
I would love to see them apologize at least for that and say, we did a documentary, we did what we did, but we are apologizing if we offended the family of the person who was deceased.
I'm not going to lie. I said, I don't know how she's going to surmount this amount of evidence because the original documentary was very compelling.
But I think that there was a lot of points during these series...
That really showed a different side of Brandon Dassey, showed a different side of Steven Avery, just the fact that he had potentially a sexual encounter with Brandon Dassey and manipulated him.
That was something that I didn't expect to happen, and that changes a lot.
Even his communication with his ex, his ex-wife, or one of them, where he was talking about he was going to kill her, sending the messages to the kids.
Anybody that's an innocent man that have done that much time in prison for something he didn't do wouldn't come out and be a raging lunatic enough to tell your kids you're going to mutilate their mom.
It seems like he is the person that obviously has been revealed.
And I think you did a really good job.
And that was a big challenge.
And I was like, Candace is my girl.
Please don't go down like this.
But I said, Candace, she must have a smoking gun at one of these segments.
And sure, you did. And I'm sure a lot of people, even my wife and other people that I've invited to watch, they've been like skeptical at the beginning.
And now they're starting to see that there's a lot of room to question what the original documentary had presented.
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And I will say this back at home. If you still think that Stephen Avery is a teddy bear, I challenge you to marry him from prison.
You go for it. You go, girl or boy.
You write him some love letters and keep us posted on it.
Brandon, thank you for joining me. That is all the time that we have for today.