Attorney Dean Strang finally made it to Sudbury for an evening to chat with Laurentian University forensic anthropology professor Dr. Scott Fairgrieve inside a sold out Fraser Auditorium.
The defense attorney from the wildly popular documentary series Making a Murderer was originally slated to speak in Sudbury back on March 24, but a snow storm kept him from making the trip.
This wasn't Strang's first trip to the Nickel City however, as he spoke to one of Fairgrieve's classes back in 2009 after his client Steven Avery was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Teresa Halbach, and long before the documentary hit Netflix and sent the Internet into a frenzy.
In chatting with Fairgrieve, who testified as an expert witness during the trial, Strang was his familiar measured, and deliberate self that fans of the documentary have come to know, but with a certain measure of quick wit and humour mixed in.
Fairgrieve brought up the gruesome narrative delivered in a press conference by Crown Attorney Ken Kratz, who recounted the patched together accounts of Avery's nephew Brandon Dassey.
"You have a statement from Brandon Dassey that Teresa was killed using a knife with stabbing and her throat was slashed, and my expertise would tell me that's not a bloodless event," said Fairgrieve.
Strang quickly replied, "Well I've never done it but my sense too is that it's not."
The attorney shared some interesting information that was not touched on during the documentary, mentioning that Pamela Sturm, the woman who found Teresa's vehicle at the Avery family salvage yard, was in fact a licenced private investigator.
Strang and his co-counsel Jerry Buting were not actually involved with the case from the beginning, and it wasn't until around two months into the case that Strang and Buting were on board.
“They were televising news reports of this every day in Wisconsin,” said Strang. “And originally Manitowac County police had said that they would have nothing to do with the investigation aside from logistics. Then I remember hearing that they were the principal gatherers of locations and evidence and it just seemed strange to me.”
The Steven Avery trial wrapped up nearly a decade ago in June 2007, but Strang can still recount the trial and its details as if he just walked out of the court room yesterday.
Fairgrieve continued to pepper Strang with questions about the trial and the case and Strang fielded them all, with the exception of one glaring piece of evidence in the case that he was never able to get a handle on.
“That key to Teresa Halbach's SUV has always been inexplicable to me,” said Strang. “In a room that was searched six different times with nothing turned up, the seventh time was the charm and they found the key. I've struggled to find an innocent explanation for that but that's the thing that I've always had the most trouble with.”
Strang pored over unanswered questions like why did Lt. James Lenk of the Manitowac Sheriff's department give two separate and different sworn accounts of what time he entered the crime scene the day Halbach's vehicle was found.
He also pondered about the layout of the Avery salvage yard and the fact that the vehicle would have been driven past a car crusher to where it was found.
“If you had to drive past the car crusher and you're trying to hide a vehicle why would you not put it in the crusher?”
Despite the work of Strang and Buting, Avery was found guilty for the murder, in a trial that Strang felt was poisoned from the outset.
“You had this press conference from Kratz, which was then excerpted in print and on numerous other television reports, so before it even got to trial, it was in the public's mind that that's what happened,” said Strang.
“We narrowed down potential jurors to 130 who looked like the most likely qualified to serve, those jurors filled out a questionnaire and of those, 129 answered that they held the opinion that Steven Avery was guilty. The exposure of this story was pervasive and devastating to the assumption of innocence.”
If you haven't seen the documentary “Making a Murderer” you can check it out on Netflix, and for more on Strang, look for his new eight-episode series, “Dean Strang” Road to Justice” which is now in development.
